Dr Greg Bahnsen - Van Til Copernican Revolution: Gordon H. Clark (Part 2)

All right. Thank you for coming back for the second lecture. We've tried to do the monumental task of reconciling one major 20th century conflict in the theory of apologetics between the giants of Warfield and Kuyper. And now in the second lecture I'll be doing, I'll be trying to do the same sort of thing by way of comparison between two men who have dominated reformed thinking in the latter part of the cent, Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark. But many of you who know, and I know some of you do, of the kind of animosity that has grown up around the conflict between the followers of Van Till and the followers of Gordon Clark, will probably think that I have somehow charismatically assumed the age of miracles is not over because it is certainly a tough task to do this. I don't want to askew the hard work, however, because I think it's worthwhile. And I'm not going to be coy with you. I'm not going to play games here. I didn't come in here as somebody trying to mediate the baseball strike. And it's going to be friends on both sides in the end. I am a student of Van Til and I agree with Van Til over against Clark where they disagree. So you know that in advance. But I also want to tell you because when you see the debates in print, and we'll all just in all graciousness say it comes from both sides, but when you see the debates in print, you would not get the impression that you could have an appreciation for either one or the other. It's like one must be a demon and one must be a saint. And I don't really think that's fair. I don't think that is commonsensical, but it certainly is not biblical to look upon this particular debate in that way. And so even though if you happen to be here this morning favoring a Clarkian approach to things, you already are on edge. Knowing that I'm going to be moving toward a critique of him. I do want to present this in such a way that you can appreciate why it is many people are able to use both Clark and Van Till, what it is they have in common and then why it is that they differ when they ultimately do difference. It would be my preference to get into the issues having to do with the theory of knowledge. Right now. Let's just jump in here. And if I were to do that, I would point out to you that though Van Til is called a presuppositionalist and Clark is called a presuppositionalist. In fact, they did not use the word presupposition in the same way. And that always confuses students. It's a shame that that kind of thing has to happen. But it is the course of natural languages. And though there are things that are similar between the two. Clark used the word presupposition in the sense of an axiom, a chosen first principle which is beyond proof. Van Till used the word presupposition for an ultimate perspective or point of reference, not just an axiom. And as such, it is subject to proof of a transcendental source. So that's where I'd like to begin and then elaborate on that and show you the differences. But we're not going to make any progress in the way that I've been praying that we can make progress in this dialogue and discussion if we don't first address what turned out to be the most explosive historical encounter between Van Till and Clark, or better, between the followers of Van Till and Clark and his followers. And that is the controversy over God's incomprehensibility, which was waged in the 1930s and came to a head in a dispute over the ordination of Gordon Clark in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. It could easily take more than an hour or a morning just to discuss the history of those events, who sided with whom, why the interactions, the legal maneuvers and so forth. And I'm going to tell you straight out from my heart, I think it's a dreadful message. It's one of those cases where Presbyterianism did not live up to its credentials and its ideals. And I'm not at all happy about the situation. I'm not even sure that I would have as a member of a church court. I'm not sure I would have followed the techniques and the events or actions of those who were the vanthillians. But I will say that as struggling scholar, I hope to be a scholar as I analyze the issue. If it had been properly stated, it wasn't always, and that's part of the difficulty, but had it been properly stated, I would certainly have been against Clark's point of view on this matter. But then I also have this kind of hubris to believe that if it had been clearly stated, I'm not so sure Clark would have disagreed. You know, maybe he would have. We all have. It's not just Gordon Clark or Van Till or Greg Bonson. We all have a stubborn shriek in us, don't we? So you never can say for sure. But I'd like to believe that if we could talk in a friendly and charitable way and clarify some of these things. Maybe some of the animosity and the disagreements could have evaporated. But let's talk about the incomprehensibility of God for a moment, just so we can finally put that on the shelf. It has to be referred to because the followers of Clark continue to assert that Van Til's view of the incomprehensibility of God makes him an irrationalist. And not just an irrationalist. Neo orthodox as well. As one contemporary writer never tires of trying to accuse Van Till of being. Now, it's a strange thing to say, isn't it, that Van Till, who led the evangelical community in writing books against Barth and Bruner and the crisis theology, his first major book was on the new Modernism. He's the one who wrote the book on Christianity and Bardianism, any number of pamphlets and articles and so forth on the subject. And it's the one point which many of his critics compliment him on. I mean, John Warwick Montgomery can't stand Van Till's approach to apologetics, but he says he's got Bart down. Nailed, that guy. It would be passing strange, wouldn't it, that a man of Van Til's intelligence and sincerity. I mean, he's not being a hypocrite, putting on a suit to fool people here. A man of his intelligence and his integrity who has written extensively and been complimented extensively on his reputation of neo orthodox theology should in fact be neo orthodox, as again, contemporary Clarkian writer likes to say. The reason why this sort of thing is said and why Van Till is accused by followers of Clark of being an irrationalist is because in this controversy of the 40s, about which I've already said, great headache, a great embarrassment to us all. But nevertheless, in that controversy, Gordon Clark asserted a certain view of the incomprehensibility of God that was deemed inadequate didn't go far enough by the followers of Van Till. And to put it in simplistic terms, Clark said that God's knowledge is incomprehensible and is different from man's knowledge because God never makes any mistakes. God knows everything, and God knows everything intuitively or in a moment. And so that the process by which God knows the scope of what God knows and the quality of what God knows exceeds what any man is capable of doing. All of which, praise God, we should all agree with that. And we should all bow before God in wonder and amazement at the difference between his thinking and our thinking. So what Dr. Clark said, there is praiseworthy and good, the Ventilian said, but there's more to it than that. And it's the more to it than that that seems to have caused all the trouble. The Ventilians wanted to assert that there's also a qualitative difference between God's knowledge and man's knowledge. A qualitative difference incomprehensibility encompasses more than just quantitative limitations on the thinking of man. The Bible verse that comes to mind is Isaiah 55, 8, 9. God's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts in some important sense. The Van Till side in this Clark controversy of the 40s wished to see a more adequate recognition of the Creator creature distinction in discussing the relationship between God's knowledge and man's knowledge. The Clark side did not want to be pushed to use language that would suggest that God is unknowable. And I've already said this in other settings, it's no great revelation. Though I'm a follower of Van Till. I don't think he is some kind of plaster saint who always did everything exactly right. And in this particular controversy, Van Till and his followers used a way of expressing their difference which was just fated to create trouble. What they said is we know God. Analogously. Now, upon analysis, and Vantilla has written plenty on it, there is nothing, as far as I can see, nothing objectionable in what he was intending to say. But if you will not do the analysis, if you will not look it up, will not follow it out, let him explain how that is being used, then it might suggest to you that what Vantil is saying is all we know of God is an analogy. We don't know God himself. We don't know the object directly. We don't know. We only know an analogy of God, in which case we are cut off from any literal substantive knowledge of God and we might end up in irrationalism or maybe horror, neo orthodoxy. And I am convinced that the two sides in the 40s were really talking past each other by refusing to clarify what they each meant by talking about whether man's thoughts are ever identical with God's thoughts, or about the relation between the thought content of God and the thought content of man. Though I don't compliment Van Til in using the analogy of analogy. You follow that? Let me see if I can explain this. It's like an analogy. Like an analogy. In other words, it's analogous to an analogy. And that's not the greatest form of communication. I'm not the greatest communicator either, so I'm not Putting myself above them, but with a few years distance and looking back at it, I think we can all see that really didn't help much. On the other hand, if you stop and think about it, it's not that hard to understand. And I think the Clarkians are guilty, on the other hand, of not being willing to see this in the way that the author intended. What Van Till is saying when he says there's analogy between God's knowing and man's knowing is that in some ways they're identical and in some ways they're different. That's what an analogy is, right? There's commonality and yet it's not the same thing. And so Van Til said, we think analogously. We think God's thoughts after him. What we are thinking is what God thinks, but we don't think it the way God thinks it. So there's identity and yet there's difference. We think analogously. And as I've indicated, the Clarkians translated that into we only know an analogy of God, so he's an irrationalist, Neo orthodox, whatever it may be. John Murray put it very clearly in the ensuing and rancorous debate between the Vantilians and the Clarkians that we may know God analogously, but what we know is not simply an analogy. So it was stated in the 40s, early 50s, just that clearly. And yet the Clarkians to this day, in the mid-90s of the century, perpetuate the debate and the misunderstanding by suggesting Van Till is an irrationalist. How can we resolve this? Well, here's my resolution. Maybe I'll just muddy the waters more, but I think this will help you. When you think of the knowing process, there are various things that you can focus on and talk about various aspects of it. You can talk about the objects of knowledge, what it is that we know or that God knows. You can talk about the standard of thought, that is the standard of truth. You can talk about the process of thinking about those objects according to a standard. You can talk about, and this is a metaphysical issue, the thoughts themselves. What is the nature of a thought? What distinguishes one thought from another? You can talk about the meaning of sentences which express the thoughts, and in talking about the meaning, you have to distinguish the referent from the connotation and the implications of it. And you can talk about the qualities of the thinking or the qualities of the thoughts. And so when you talk about the quality of thinking or the quality of the thoughts, you're looking at qualitative distinctions, qualitative differences. Now, how does man's thinking relate to God's thinking on each one of these points. Let's go down the checklist here. As to the objects of thought, Van Til maintains, and rightly so, that they're the same. For God and man, the object of thought is identical. So already the misrepresentation that we only know in analogy has got to be scuttled. When God knows a rose in the garden and I know a rose in the garden, we know the same object of thought. There's no difference. Secondly, as to the standard of truth or thought, it's the same for both God and man. The standard is God, the way he sees things. So whatever God thinks is true. Right? Because whatever God thinks is according to his own standard. He can't deny himself. That's why we say whatever he reveals is inerrant. Whatever God says is true. No one can challenge God. The standard for man's thought is the same. Whatever God says. However, we don't always follow what God says. We're not inerrant. We're not automatically right in what we say. We're not infallible. But the standard is the same. So the object of thought and the standard for truth or thinking is the same for God and man. As to the process of thought, obviously they are different. God doesn't learn things at all. And what God knows, He didn't come to know in any way similar to the way we come to know or learn about things. Van Til used a homey illustration when I was with him. Often. He'd say, you know, if I want to know how many pair of socks are in my dresser drawer upstairs in my bedroom, I have to walk up the stairs and open the drawer and count them. He said God doesn't have to go through the process of discovering the number of socks I have in my drawer. In fact, God's thinking the number of socks I have in my drawer is what makes the fact what it is. Okay, so that God's process of thought, if you want to speak that way, is completely different than man's process of thought. Because he's the Creator and I'm the creature. He doesn't discover, he creates. I don't create. I learn about, or I come to know. I discover things. How about the thoughts themselves? Are the thoughts that are entertained by God the same thoughts metaphysically as entertained by me? Well, no one wants to make that mistake, right? Because I would assume that my mind is God's mind. So certainly there's a difference there. How about the meaning of the sentences expressing those Thoughts. Is the referent, connotation and implications of those sentences the same for God and man? Absolutely. That isn't to say, however, that man knows all the implications. Clark said God knows all the implications immediately. He was right about that, and we shouldn't disagree. But the point is, the implications are the same for God and for man. Even if man doesn't know all the implications, the meaning of the sentences is the same. We don't have an analogy of what God tells us. When God says he does not lie, that's literally true. That's not an analogy of the truth. That's literally true. And so the meaning of the sentence is the same for God as for man. But now, how about the qualities of the thinking, the qualities of the thought process itself? And I want to suggest to you, I'd like to take a long time doing it, but I'm going to give you a real quick explanation of why the Clarkian should be willing to say there's a qualitative difference in the process of God's thinking, in the process of man's thinking. And this, I believe, gets close to the Mantillian insistence on the creator creature distinction between the two. In the first place, God's thought has a quality that mine doesn't have. His thought is original. It's creative. And it's creative in both. The sense that he thinks of new things. I never do think of new things. And when he thinks of things, his thinking makes them what they are. That isn't true for me. I don't have a new thought. There's nothing new under the sun, as Ecclesiastes says. And whenever I do the best, let's say I write some brilliant novel, wouldn't that be wonderful if I could? If I write some brilliant novel that no man has ever written before, I'm still only doing what? Thinking God's thoughts after him. I'm reconstructing what God already knows and so forth. But when I think of this brilliant novel, or maybe some brilliant new invention or idea, that doesn't create it, does it? It doesn't make it historical, doesn't make it real. But when God thinks creatively, it makes things the way they are. His thinking is the standard of reality. Therefore, the way things are is structured by made to be what it is because of God's thinking. So we certainly want to say God thinks in an original way. He originates and what he makes is original. Whereas my thinking is always derivative, it's always receptive and reconstructive of God's thinking. Secondly, God's thoughts have a quality about them that mine never have and that's that his thoughts are criteriological. They have a logical status in terms of the theory of knowledge and my thoughts never have. When God says something, that's the criterion by which we mark everybody else's opinion and assess every other opinion. His is the ultimate standard and as such he never has to revise his thinking. Now, is that quality of thought true of any human being? Even an unfallen human being? I would argue no, not at all. My thoughts are never the standard by which the truth is to be measured by other people. Now there are people who have attained a certain level of excellence and achievement in a particular field and we say they're such experts that when you want to know what's right or wrong, if you want to judge what some low life student is saying on the subject, you might check it against the great professor or what he wrote in the encyclopedia article, what the experts have to say. So I'm familiar with that. Let's just pretend. And it really would be pretend. Let's just pretend. Dr. Bonds could be, quote, an expert at something. Okay, maybe I have. What would I like to master? Let's say I have mastered computer technology. I mean, everybody in the world defers to my opinion. Okay? So I've gotten to such a place that I am the reigning expert in computer technology. Even in such a situation, Van Til teaches us and I agree with him. My thoughts are not the criterion of truth. Only God's are. No man. Even the expert in the field, the top dog in the field, no man has the right to say it's true because I said it. But you know, it's not arrogance on the part of God to do that. Let God be true though. All men are liars. Paul said, if God says it, that settles it. God doesn't defer to other experts. His thinking is the criterion for all other thinking. And that's a quality of the process of thought that should be recognized. The difference in quality between God and man. And then I'm going to add one more. There's a quality of awe. Awe, you know, not like awe shucks, but a quality of awe about God's thoughts that does not attach to mine, which can be illustrated in the following way. I do have from time to time people who flatter me in terms of boy, you're so smart. Okay, I'll have students who say, well, I want to study with you Dr. Bunsen, because boy, oh boy, you sure know a lot. And it's just such a great privilege, you know, to talk to somebody who knows so much. And I really do internally and usually externally laugh about that kind of stuff. But I know that that happens. There are people who feel that way. But now, here's a fascinating thing. If you'll become one of my students and work with me for whatever, let's say a year or two, five years, then you start to. To know a lot of the things that I know, right? And you. You come closer and closer to being, if not appear, maybe even exceeding my ability in some area. Now, what happens to that, that kind of awe that the student had in the presence of Dr. Bronson once he starts catching up with me? You know, all of a sudden it's kind of like, well, you know, you're not always right. You kind of lose that distance, don't you? So as the student starts catching up to Dr. Bonson, I kind of lose out in terms of the honor category. It's like, oh, yeah, just another one of these schmucks. Okay? But if you ever stop to think about this, this is remarkable. That is never the case with God. We all stand in awe of God and all that he knows, and so we try to learn more about him, right? But have you ever noticed that the more you learn about God, you do not decrease the intensity of your awe? You do what? You increase the sense of distance. The more you know about God. This is not a play on words, not merely a play on words. The more you know about God, the more you stand in awe of him. And that's not a quality of human thinking, as I've just illustrated. I know a lot. My student knows a little. He starts catching up. I'm not such a great guy anymore, but the more I, quote, unquote, catch up with God, the further away I get from catching up with God. And there's no other being in the universe or over the universe that has that quality of thought besides God. So that's why I do agree with the Ventilian side, ultimately. And I'd like to believe that any Clarkians who are listening this morning or pick up this tape when they hear this, they'd say, well, we don't disagree with that. I'd say, great. Praise God. Let's go on now, okay? Let's work together and not keep fighting and calling each other names and so forth. If they do disagree, all I can say is I think that Van Till was on the right side of it. There is a qualitative difference, but that doesn't Mean we don't know God, we only know an analogy. We're neo orthodox. Okay, that was the PS PS Meaning previous to the script, before the lecture, not at the end. I had to say that because it's going to come up eventually. Somebody's going to know that. Now let's try to compare Clark as a presuppositionalist in Van Til. As a presuppositionalist. I can say with all sincerity that the value of Clark's contribution to apologetics is evident at many, many places in his numerous publications. His criticisms of unbelieving philosophy are often enlightening and beneficial to those of us who wish to defend the faith. Moreover, I think that genuine presuppositional analysis and method often appear in his writings. And maybe I can give you a sampling of them to indicate where Van Till, as I read it and Clark would be in complete agreement. Clark says in the Evangelical court quarterly in 1940, in a war a general does not willingly abandon half of his position to the enemy in order to protect a few central points. And in the battle of ideas it is not only safer, but it is actually easier not to say absolutely necessary to defend the complete position. Amen. Van Till says, when we defend Christianity, we don't defend it piecemeal. A little here, a little there. We defend the entire worldview taken together. So they were together on that point, Clark and Van Till. Clark said in the book, can I trust my Bible? Because God is sovereign, God's authority can be taken only on God's authority. Van Till throughout his career insisted on the self authorizing or the self attesting authority of Scripture. If Scripture is God's word, then by definition there can be nothing higher or more authoritative than it. Then what then authorizes the acceptance of Scripture's testimony? It can only be Scripture itself. Clark recognized that in the end the final authority has to be its own authority. In the same article, Clark wrote, there is no proposition on which a consistent be believer and a consistent unbeliever can agree. Therefore, the doctrine of inspiration, like every other Christian doctrine, cannot be demonstrated to the satisfaction of a clear thinking unbeliever. A conviction that the Bible is really the word of God cannot be the conclusion of a valid argument based on more clearly evident premises. This conviction is produced by the Holy Spirit himself. Later, I'm going to criticize one aspect of of this statement, but the main thrust. I really believe what he was trying to get at here is completely right. That in principle an unbeliever who is consistent with his ultimate Authority could not ever agree with anything that the believer who is consistent with his authority says in principle they have conflicting worldviews. In a Christian view of men and things. Speaking of worldviews, Clark said a philosophy that is based on the existence of of God will differ throughout from a philosophy that has no place for God. And similarly, two systems that do not agree as to what sort of being God is will also differ in all their details. So we've already made that point, but there's another quote supporting it. In the Christian view of men and things, he said, the precise question is merely what must be true if history and humanity are to be meaningful. What is the presupposition of significance? Well, that's the very heart of Van Til's critical challenge to the unbelieving world. It says, what presupposition, what transcendental starting point is necessary to make intelligible? The use of facts appeals to history, science, logic, human personality, freedom, dignity, or what have you. And so Clarks had points in his writings when he said virtually the same thing in his book Historiography, Secular and Religious. Clark said all historical writing in fact depends on presuppositions. Norms of possibility must be accepted from naturalistic scientism, existential hunch, or the biblical revelation with its miraculous supernaturalism. There is no neutral historiography. All historical writing depends upon presuppositions. And the norms are going to be taken from this philosophy, this or the Bible. In Karl Barth's theological method, Clark wrote Christianity should develop its epistemology and theory of language from the information contained in the Scriptures to which we say Amen. In his A Christian Philosophy of Education, Clark said, said, a man either lives with the fear of God before his eyes, attempting to make his whole life a song of praise to his Creator, or he does not. If he does not. If he does, pardon me, if he does, he is a theist. If he does not, his life shows that far from being neutral, his serious belief, if that God. His serious belief is that God will not judge him in his actions, that is that there is no God who rules the universe with him in it. The atheist who asserts that there is no God asserts by the same words that he holds the universe in his mind. He asserts that no fact, past, present, future, near or far, escapes his attention, that no power, however great, can baffle or deceive him. In rejecting God, he claims omniscience and omnipotence. In other words, the atheist is one who claims that he himself is God. Van Til has said similar sorts of things. In the philosophy of Gordon Clark, the Fetch rift that was written for him, Clark said, no methodology is ever neutral. Therefore, the use of method presupposes epistemological and metaphysical positions in religion, reason and revelation. Clark said, a theory may precede the choice of facts. The most deceiving and the most deceived author is the one who thinks he is simply describing what is there. The there itself cannot be selected without presupposition. In the same book, he said, the non Christian arguments regularly assume the point in dispute before they start. The questions are framed as to exclude the Christian answer from the beginning. And this is very much what Van Til insisted. And that's that when unbelievers ask whether God exists, they're already assuming that they're autonomous and can approach this without being committed to the existence of God. So the very asking of the question is the begging of the question when it comes to the Christian God. In historiography, secular and religious, Clark says presuppositionless experience is an impossible philosophy. In the Bible as Truth from Bibliotheca Sacrament, Clark said, sin has so vitiated human powers that man can read neither the heavens nor his own heart aright. The doctrine of total depravity teaches that no part of human nature escapes the devastation of sin. It must be asserted that sin has also affected their intellect. The intellect became depraved as well as the will. This is the doctrine of total depravity. No part or function of man is free from the effect of sin. Pure Van Til. Well, pure Paul. Right. They both agree on that point. And how may I know the Bible is inspired? He said, reasons or premises by which to prove the authority of Scripture cannot be used because the consistent unbeliever will not accept any Christian premise. That is, any premise interpreted in a Christian way. In three types of religious philosophy, he said, philosophers must be evaluated on the ground of what. What they begin with. The starting point determines all that follows. Van Till said, your presupposition, your transcendental controls everything else in your thinking and reasoning. In three types of religious philosophy, there is nothing more certain than the word of God from which that word now needs to be proved. And then one more quote from historiography. Each has his own presuppositions and each follows their logical implications. The only personal solution to this logical impasse is a change of heart on the part of one of the contestants. Agreement can be obtained only by one party's repudiating his premises and accepting the other's presuppositions. One of them must be converted, one must be regenerated, one must be born again. And the change is something logic cannot do. Well, there are others, but I'm going to wear you out and lose all my time if I continue. I would like to believe that I have convinced you by this litany of quotations from Clark that Van Till and Clark said many things, if not in an identical way, so close as to certainly be complementary and mutually beneficial. There are true points of vantilian analysis in Clark. Now, if I was a Clarkian, I'd say, well, there are true points of Clarkean analysis in Van Till. But saying it either way, we're saying they certainly had significant overlap on many points. What then? Is there difference? Well, in the first place, as I've already indicated to you, when Clark would formulate his outlook and try to be very precise about it, he ended up saying that for him a presupposition was like an axiom that you choose. It's a dogmatic starting point for which there can be no proof, since all proof is controlled by your starting point, by that first premise or outlook that you dogmatically assert. And so he has a different conception of an ultimate starting point, seeing it more or less in a logical geometric framework. It's like an axiom, as he often said. Whereas Van Till saw your ultimate starting point as a point of reference. It's something against which everything else is measured and it's in the light of which everything else is interpreted so that it isn't axiomatic so much in the strict syllogistic or geometric sense as it is more in the Kantian sense, a transcendental perspective in terms of which all thinking is controlled and evaluated. And moreover, Dr. Van Til believed that that ultimate presupposition is not beyond proof, whereas Dr. Clark argued that it is beyond proof. You cannot demonstrate your first premise or your opening axiom. Now, that raises some questions as to then how we could ever know as Christians that our opening axiom, our dogmatic starting point, is the true one, rather than these incompatible dogmatic starting points that are out there competing with it. And Dr. Clark had an interesting way of approaching that. And I'm going to suggest that there's a kind of way in which what he was doing was ventilian, but when you see what he ends up with, it's so completely unvantilian that you wonder whether the likely, I mean, whether the likeness was real or whether it was completely, completely misleading. But here's what it seems to me is similar between Van Till and Clark on those points. Van Till says that we prove the Christian presupposition from the impossibility of the contrary. That is, if you don't have this point of reference, this revealed point of reference, you can't make sense out of empirical methods of learning, learning from observation, sensitive what have you. You can't make sense out of logic and the use of logic with respect to empirical matters. You can't make sense of human freedom in a world that has a causal principle controlling what happens. You can't make sense out of human dignity. You can't make sense out of moral absolutes. So we prove the Christian's ultimate presupposition from the impossibility of the contrary because nothing else can be made sense of. Nothing else else is intelligible apart from that worldview. If you remember the last lecture, that's what I was saying about Kuyper and Warfield. We show, as Warfield said, that only Christianity is rational, but we do it, observing what Kuyper did, that there are two different sciences that develop and the non Christian's view of science isn't worthy of the name. It's really irrational. The only thing that saves rationality is the Christian worldview. And so here again I would say Van Till's approach is to show our presupposition to be the precondition for the intelligibility of human experience, reasoning, history, science, morality, freedom and dignity. Now, Clark looks a little bit like that because what he says is we have a dogmatic starting point, this axiom with which which we begin. And then he goes on to say, and there isn't any knowledge available to man by means of empirical procedures, so you can't know anything outside of the Bible and the laws of logic. And so a good portion of Clark's scholarly career, and much of this is helpful and amusing and interesting to read. A good portion of his scholarly career is given to poking holes in empiricism. Empiricism is the view that all knowledge is observational. Clark says no knowledge is observational because you can never be sure your senses aren't deceiving you. And on and on and on. Okay, so I'm just looking at Clark's general strategy. Then I'm going to come back and say, I don't agree with the strategy, but notice how it is in a way similar to Mantill's. Clark says, I want to leave you with two options. He says that in three types of religious philosophy, for the sake of time, I'm not going to Open it up and read it. But he says that openly. He says, since all the empirical objections have been dealt with because it's impossible to know anything empirically, then there is no objection to Christianity and the apologetic task was done. People object to the dogmatism. He says of my position. Well, the choices are clear. Dogmatism or nihilism, which they're going to be if you're nihilistic. There is no value, there is no knowledge. And so what have you chosen? So the only option you have is dogmatism. Now, can you see if we can just be gentle with each other as warring schools of thought here? Can't you see that there is something of an analogous analogy? Isn't there something of a similarity between what Clark is saying here and what Van Til is doing? Van Till says, look, there's only two options. Autonomous thinking. Christian thinking and autonomous thinking destroys the possibility of rationality. Clark says there's only two options, dogmatism or, you know, this more or less empirical approach out there. But empiricism leads to skepticism and nihilism. So it's either all Christianity or nothing. Those are the choices. In that sense, the students of both Clark and Van Till can use both of these teachers. But then I say that similarity tends to. To not look so similar when you push it a little further. And so now a step more in the analysis. Clark doesn't argue as Van Till does. Let me distinguish this. Clark is not saying, as Van Till does, that unless you have the Christian worldview, empirical methods are unintelligible. Clark is saying empirical methods are unintelligible. He boldly asserts in many of his writings, illustrates in his History of Philosophy, over and over again boldly asserts we don't know things through observation. And in his Festschrift, the Philosophy of Gordon Clark, he openly states, the only knowledge we have is of the Bible. And then the laws of logic, which he thinks arise from a knowledge of the Bible and the mind of God. Now, since there is no knowledge but possible outside the Bible, then no one can complain about the Bible. Right? And this is something Bantillians do not agree with. I certainly do not. I think this is bad philosophy. I also think it's bad theology. And I say this with charity. I hope that I'm not misrepresenting, but here's why I have problems with it. First, it's bad philosophy. The argument that we don't know anything from sensation or observation is in the many writings of Clark, always in the form of you can never be sure of your senses. In one way or another, you cannot have certainty from your observations. And that's true. Observations are not automatically infallible. They're not always interpreted properly. And so Clark concludes from the fact that some observations are unreliable or some information that we take from our observations is unreliable to the conclusion what? That all observations are unreliable? Well, that's a logical fallacy. Clark was a great logician. He shouldn't have made such a mistake. Let's see if we can resurrect it a bit, though. We can restore this. When we say that some are unreliable, therefore all are unreliable, Clark would say, no, that is legitimate because. Because we're talking about reliability. I don't mean that all observations are false. I only mean that all observations are unreliable. You can't ever be sure that they're reliable. Okay, but now what is the argument against the reliability of observation? It comes from such things as optical illusions, misperceptions that we have. So Clark says some of the observations we have are misleading. And now I'm going to ask the question that any philosopher has to ask. How do you know that? How do you know that some of our observations are misleading? And the answer to that is because other observations conflict with them. I look down the railroad tracks and I see that those iron bars, they touch each other out there. What is it? You all can help me. About 700 yards or something out there in the distance, these parallel lines are going to come together. Now, you all know that's due to the nature of the eye. That's an optical illusion. But how do we know that it's an illusion? Well, it's because when we walk down there, whatever it is, 500, 700 yards, they aren't touching at all. Now, you could conclude they were touching and then when you got there, they went back and said, now what we tend to do is we say, no, I looked at it and I was wrong. Because what when I looked at it again? Well, now, if my looking at it again corrects my original looking at it, then you can't throw out all looking at that. Easy enough to follow. It turns out that one observation corrects an another observation. That's how Clark knows not every observation is reliable. Well, if one observation is being used to correct the other, then Clark is illegitimate to throw out the reliability of all observations. It does not follow. That's bad philosophy. It's also bad philosophy to argue against empiricism and conclude that all empirical methods are to be thrown out as well. Empiricism says all knowledge is based on observation. Van Till repudiates that. I repudiate that. I've written against it. And actually, if you know modern epistemology, nobody in his right mind defends naive empiricism today. Okay, but that doesn't show that empirical methods do not bring us the truth. It only shows that you cannot say that all knowledge is observational. Van Till says, within the Christian worldview, we affirm empirical methods. Now, empirical methods correct our empirical observations sometimes, but we affirm that we can know things empirically and that can only be made sense of within the Christian world. If, on the other hand, you try to say everything is known empirically, you destroy empirical methods themselves. Clark, on the other hand, says you can't know anything by empirical methods. And that's why no one can stand outside the Bible and criticize it. The only knowledge available to man is knowledge that's in the Bible. And I want to say now, that's bad theology, too. It's bad theology for the same reason that it's really a mistake for the airlines. I was talking about this with some friends recently to write down on the safety card, if you cannot read these instructions, inform the stewardess. When they composed that. You know, it's what I call a living, walking contradiction. If you cannot read this, tell the stewardess. You can imagine a person going to the stewardess with a card in hand saying, could you tell me what this says? She says, well, if you can't read it, tell me. Well, I already did. If he can't read it, he can't be instructed to tell the stewardess that he can't read it. Okay, now let's go back to Gordon Clark for a minute. And this, though that's humorous and light hearted, this is fairly serious. Gordon Clark says you can't know anything apart from what's revealed in the Bible and you can't know anything from your senses. Well, then, can Gordon Clark know anything? If you put both these together, Gordon Clark would have to be able to read his Bible to know anything from the only source of knowledge. But his other premise is no one can know anything through his senses. And so the one premise or the one proposition takes away with what seems to be asserted in the other. It's kind of a living contradiction. And so that's bad philosophy, bad theology, because now we're cut off from. From being able to know anything about God. Moreover, when you do read your Bible, you find, I think rather abundantly that God's people were to know things about the world around them in history by opening their eyes. And observing. See, John says we touched and we saw the word of life. He doesn't say we couldn't know anything by that. No, the experience of the incarnate Christ wasn't just some kind of rational, intuitive thing. It was through their senses. We're supposed to look at the world about as Paul says, and all men know God when they look at his created, you know, the glory and his created world. And so I think it's bad theology, and it's desperately bad theology when you realize that if you follow Gordon Clark's epistemology all the way out here, none of us can know that we're saved. I had lunch with Gordon Clark once. I have met him on more than one occasion. Not many, but I did have the privilege of having one long afternoon lunch with him and being able to discuss epistemology and discuss our differences. And I brought this up to him. And I'm even to this day a bit shaken that a Presbyterian minister would answer in the way that he did. But I said, well, now, if I understand you correctly, Dr. Clark, we can only know the things which are found in the Bible. And, well, we've already talked about how you can't know what's in the Bible without using your observational abilities. But forgetting that for a minute. Can I know? Or can you, Gordon Clark, know that you are saved? Because the proposition Gordon Clark is saved is not something you can read in the Bible. For Gordon Clark to know that he is saved, or for Greg Barnson to know that he is saved, or Cornelius Van Till to know that he is saved, we need to read what the Bible says about salvation, the conditions of salvation, and then observe of our lives that we meet those conditions. I said, since you can't read Gordon Clark is saved in the Bible, you can't know that you're saved. And so I figure, you know, in debate that's known as a reductio ad absurdum. I've reduced you to something that even you would call absurd. But a reductio ad absurdum only works when the person thinks it's absurd. And Clark said, well, which of us can know that we're saved? At first I thought he was toying with me, and maybe he was. I mean, it would be easier even at this point, even though there's no indication of it, I'd still like to believe he was just saying that with a wink in his eye. And it's like, I don't have an answer. Leave me alone. But he insisted on that, because when I pointed out that the confession of faith says we can have an infallible assurance of our salvation. His answer was the confession is not always right. And so it's not only bad philosophy, it's bad theology. To push the anti empiricism angle in your apologetic to such a point that you become anti empirical. And that's one of the main differences between Clark and Van Til. In his book Three Types of Religious Philosophy, Clark has posed to him another difficulty, and this is the one we're going to end with, but it'll take a few minutes to get it out before you. In chapter five, he lays out his view, which he calls dogmatism. Elsewhere he calls fideism. We have a dogmatic proposition that we have a faith commitment to. It's our starting point and that's all there is to it. It at the beginning we see a kind of vantilianism. When he says that dogmatism is in ill repute if there is any chance of avoiding it in rationalism or empiricism, nearly everyone would choose to avoid it. But these two highly respected philosophies are failures. Well then would one prefer irrationalism to dogmatism? Okay, all of that. A Mantillian could say rationalism, empiricism are failures. They're reduced to irrationality. And so somebody says, well, I don't want to be a presuppositionalist. We can say to them, well, what do you prefer? You know, nihilism, irrationality or presuppositionalism? Those are really the only choices you have. But then again, you have to remember that Clark does not believe that there is any positive proof of the Christian faith. Your axiom is unprovable. It is defendable against those who are outside. And the way you defend it is by whittling them down to nothing. They can't know anything. But there is no positive proof of your particular axiom. He says every philosophy must have its first principles. He says this is not far removed from the dogmatism or that simply posits them as Euclid did in the case of Euclid's geometry. Okay, but here's the major problem. Having said that, the dogmatist does not try to prove his original axiom. Clark says on page 110. The question is granted that one must choose a first indemonstrable principle. How does one decide between two incompatible principles? Okay, the first principle can't be demonstrated. It can only be chosen. So he's a fetish and he's proud to call himself a fetishist. Van Till repudiated Feedism and said our first acts. Well, he didn't call it Nassim. Our first or original presupposition is provable from the impossibility of the contrary. All right, But Clark says it's not demonstrable. The question is, well, then why choose the Christian first principle rather than, say, the Islamic first principle? You have incompatible first principles. How do you choose between them? And Clark, he wanders through a discussion of this, basically saying, everybody's got to choose. Everybody's got to choose, all right? And that's all there is going to be to it, is that you have to choose. He proposes. I mean, he brings up, he broaches for discussion, however, an example of a kind of dogmatism that is not satisfied with the idea that there is no proof. And this is interesting because it involves yours personally here. He says that certain students from Westminster Seminary formed a sort of deputation team that visited, among others, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And they carried with them a paper that's propounding Calvinism and Bantillian apologetics. One of the articles that was in that issue of SYNAPSE was entitled, titled the Impropriety of Arguing Evidentially for the Resurrection. The article looked at the account in Luke 16, where Jesus says, if they have Moses and the prophets and they don't believe them, neither will they believe the 1 rise from the dead and a lot of other things. But that's kind of like the heart of the article. Well, when this was taken to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where John Warwick Montgomery was then teaching, it really incensed him. And so he took advantage of his bully pulpit in Christianity Today. He was at that time a regular columnist. And he published an article that is now noted by Gordon Clark in Christianity Today for March 31, 1972. Montgomery's article was entitled Having a Fuddled Easter Question Mark. And Clark said it was a condemnation of the position in question. That is, it was condemning the kind of approach that I'm advocating advancing here. But now Clark wants to set himself over against that kind of approach. Now, this is interesting to me, of course, because what Montgomery was responding to was me. And so Gordon Clark now is responding to John Warwick Montgomery responding to me. And he does it by way of interacting with three students who responded to Montgomery's article in Christianity Today. He says the three students had been there at Trinity. Only one of them had. But then again, since you can't know anything from history, according to Clark, we can't hold him, you know, guilty of making that mistake. Not A big deal. That's tongue in cheek. Just kidding. Just kidding. Okay. He says three students who had visited Dr. Montgomery Seminary wrote letters in reply and Christianity day published them May 12, 1972. And then he. He gives a digest of the three letters and gives his response to show how it is he is dead different from these three students who are defending the point of view of poor Dr. Bonson that Dr. Montgomery doesn't like either. Well, I tell you, you gotta line up to criticize us. But this is a convenient way, I think, for us to come close to ending this lecture to show the difference between Clark and a Vantillian approach, one that I'm interested in because I'm ego involved. Dr. Clarks Dogmatism. His view applauds Mr. Poythras. This is Vern Poythras, now teaching at Westminster Seminary, applauds Verne Poythris assertion that there is nothing more certain than the word of God from which that word now needs to be proved. His repudiation of sense data is quite in line with the preceding arguments in the preceding sections of the present volume, that is this book here. These ideas are essential. Nevertheless, this is where we all have to pay attention. Nevertheless, he compromises or weakens his position by making or seeming to make. The arguments against empiricism depend on the corrupt mind of sinful man. Okay, so as Clark reads Poythras, he goes, oh, yes, yes, yes, I compliment you. You criticize empiricism, but no, no, no. The criticism is not just that the empiricists are using a sinful mindset. You're wrong to make it sin being the problem. I know it's going to be kind of hard to swallow, but what Clarkson ends up saying is the problem with empiricism is not sin, although sin is there. The problem is empiricism. You can't prove anything. He says. This flaws even more clearly exemplified in the third letter by David King. He's a member of my denomination. David King, then a student, wrote, unbelief is not a problem of inadequate evidence or poorly argued logic. It is a matter of willful rebellion against the God of the facts. The evidence abounds from the stars in heaven to the 500 witnesses of First Corinthians 15:6. But men are not disposed to admit the evidence or able to away it until the Spirit unshackles the bonds of sin. End of quote. Clark says, once again, this locates the difficulty in the sinful rebellion of man against God. But this misses the main point you're all with me. You see, he should have attacked empiricism, not the sinful disposition of the empiricist. He says the second letter by Paul Andrews, by the way, was a friend of mine at the time we were in touch, is more perceptive. It reads, the issue is not historicity or possibility of proof as Montgomery claims. Rather it is the question of the propriety of basing one's apologetics on these foundations without taking into account the presuppositions of the natural man. Presuppositionalists challenge the idea of a neutral reasoning and show clearly that Christian confidence in the law of non contradiction as over against the non believers concept of the same. And then Clark says the wording here seems to indicate that Mr. Andrews denies that there is any such thing as neutral reasoning. And he emphasizes foundations, presuppositions or starting points. All this is excellent. Nevertheless, Contrary to what Mr. Andrews says, the issue is in indeed the possibility of proof. In this particular the letter has misunderstood Dr. Montgomery, so forth and so on. Okay, so Here you have three presuppositionalists defending Dr. Bonson, who is supposed to be a student of Antill. Three presuppositionalists defending that approach against John Warwick Montgomery. Clark, if you want to see now how all these things stand in relation to each other. Clark enters the discussion and he says, well, you presuppositionalists have said some good things against Montgomery, but all of you have missed the major point. Well, if they've all missed the major point, this can maybe help us see what in a friendly atmosphere is the real difference between a Vantillian and a Clarkian approach. Clark says the issue is not sin, though we do have to look, look at presupposition, starting point and so forth. The issue is not sin. The issue is the possibility of proof for him. You can't prove anything outside the Bible. That doesn't mean, as with Van Till, you can't make sense out of the procedures of proving things. It means there isn't anything to know. There isn't any proof outside of the Bible. Empiricism can't lead to any knowledge whatsoever. And that's what the Ventilians miss. Okay, well for argument's sake, let's say we miss it. We still want to know. Dr. Clark, finally, what's your answer? How do you choose between the Islamic first principle and the Christian first principle? He says they can't resolve their differences by argument. They can't resolve their differences by argument. And so he says the question therefore urged by the atheist, evangelical Christian and evangelistic Moslem is why does anyone choose the Bible rather than the Koran? The answer to this question will also explain how a Christian can present the the Gospel to a non Christian without depending on any logically common propositions in their two systems. Now, I'm going to go very slow here because there is an incredible mistake that's going to be made. But it's said in just the course of a conversation as though no bump in the road could be felt. It comes down to this. You presuppositionalists, you want to prove your first axiom can't be done. There is no proof for our first axiom. Well, then the question why does anyone choose the Bible rather than the Koran? Is that since all possible knowledge must be contained within the system and deduced from its first principles, the dogmatic answer must be found in the Bible itself. The answer is that faith is the gift of God. As Psalm 65, 4 says, God chooses a man and causes him to accept Christian dogmatism. Of course, Psalm 65 doesn't mention Christian dogmatism, but you all know what he's getting at. Okay, the answer is that faith is the gift of God. God chooses a man and causes him to accept Christian dogmatism. Conversely, the Apostle John in fact informs us that the Pharisees could not believe because God had blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts. The initiation of spiritual life, called regeneration, is the immediate work of the Holy Spirit. It is not produced by Abrahamic blood, nor by natural desire, nor by any act of human will. In particular, it is not produced by arguments based on secular and empirical presuppositions. Even if there were a common truth in secularism and Christianity, arguments based on it would not produce faith. What empirical evangelicals think is most necessary is most useless. And now the difference between the two systems stands before even stark contrast. And here's the mistake. I say with all charity, and I think I've shown a lot of respect for much of what Dr. Clark has, but I do not agree with this. Dr. Clark says there is no argument for your presupposition, your first principle. There is no positive proof of it. Why then does someone choose the Christian first principle rather than the Islamic one? It is all based in the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Now, no Calvinist is going to disagree that it is, you know, based in the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. But as you know from my first lecture this morning, where Abraham Kuyper made this kind of mistake, that Is not the issue because there is a difference between reasons for believing and the causes of our believing. A difference between reasons for believing and causes for believing. Let me see if I can illustrate that for you. You somebody might wonder, what reason do we have for believing that a particular kind of medication is beneficial in relieving the symptoms of malaria? What reason do we have for believing it? Now, as I try to give you reasons for believing it, I'm going to appeal to some such things as laboratory studies, statistical analysis, cross checking and so forth. Anecdotal evidence, you know, causal analysis, stuff that's repeatable, that you can go to, so forth and so on. I'm not going to bother to wow you with my knowledge of medical science by doing it for you, I guess, because you wouldn't be wowed if I tried. But you know, what kind of thing would go into showing the reasons for believing? You know, Brand X helps relieve the symptoms of malaria. Now it's conceivable, isn't it, that somebody could believe that Brand X relieves the symptoms of malaria because they have invested quite a fortune in the company that produces Brand X. Am I not right? That happens sometimes People believe things that are to their advantage. And it being to someone advantage to believe, this may very well be the cause for their believing it. Now, let's take this person that I've sketched out for you. Hypothetically, this person who has a financial stake in believing that Brand X will relieve the symptoms of malaria. Someone comes to this person and says, what is the reason I should buy Brand X rather than Brand X? Why? For relieving the symptoms of malaria. Do you see the difference between reasons and causes? If the person that I've sketched out says, well, because I'll get more money if you do it, the other person says, well, that has anything to do with the merits of the case. Whether you get money or not has nothing to do with whether that really is better for relieving the symptoms of malaria. There's a difference between the reasons that support the truth of a proposal and the causes of someone believing the proposition. If knowledge is justified, true belief reasons pertain to the truth, causes pertain to the believing. Now, in rational people, the cause for believing should be the reasons, okay? But there isn't always a connection between them. Gordon Clark has left us with this someone who said, what is the reason reason for believing the Christian presupposition rather than the Islamic presupposition or any other. And instead of giving reasons, Clark says there are no reasons. There's only a cause. And by the way, he's right about the cause. The cause is the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. But to appeal to the work of the Holy Spirit in the place of apologetical argument is in fact to destroy apologetics. And. And that's why, having done a short but I hope competent comparison between the two systems, you can understand why I believe that Van Til has a superior approach. He doesn't confuse reasons with causes. Van Til says there's a reason for believing our ultimate presupposition, the impossibility of the contrary. If you don't follow this presupposition you can't make sense out of any other method, reasoning, empirical research, whatever it may be. And in Van Till's approach there is a place for using our senses, using observation, using logic and so forth. Whereas in Gordon Clark's approach the stark choice between Christianity and every other option comes down to skepticism. Not just for the empiricism that is arrogant and says all knowledge is observational, but also skepticism regarding any empirical method methods that could be used as well. And moreover, I prefer the Vantillian system because it doesn't commit the philosophical and theological fallacies that I mentioned in the course of this lecture as well. The difference between Gordon Clark and Van Till will sadly continue to confuse the Christian church. I hope that you might be agents for reconciliation charitable understanding of where they have many things to in common and parallel each other. But I hope also agents for clear thinking. So you'll understand why it is the argument that Van Til offers is both theologically and philosophically superior. Thank you very much.