Dr Greg Bahnsen - Van Til's Presupp Apologetic: Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark, Part 2 (Part 6)

This recording has been released into the public domain by the Bonson Institute, where we aim to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.

Well, you know from our first hour this evening that I do not think that Dr. Van Till's apologetical system has suffered, really anything at all, at the hands of Dr. Clark. Although I do think from a sociological standpoint that it has been a sad affair that there has not been a fair interpretation given and a real understanding advanced, so that perhaps Dr. Clark and Dr. Van Til could constructively help each other in the task of Christian apologetics. But as a matter of fact, the Criticisms leveled by Dr. Clark are not telling. I'd like now in this hour to turn, to summarize Dr. Clark's own approach to apologetics and say a few words by way of criticism of it. And I have in my written manuscript here looks like about 70 pages of typed criticism of Dr. Clark. And don't worry, we're going to leave on time tonight. I'm not going to tell you all of that, but I will do my best to summarize systematically most of what's in it. But first, a survey of Clark's own outlook. I want to begin by noticing that Gordon Clark, contrary to some oversimplified accounts of his outlook, certainly believes that there's a place for evidences in the propagation of the Christian faith. He clearly states that the resurrection of Christ should be preached and the testimony of eyewitnesses recounted, et cetera. However, he does not classify this as apologetics, but rather as the proclamation of the faith or popular testimony to the faith. That is, he sees that as evangelism. In preaching. After these things, he says, auditors may ask us a reason. And at that point, apologetics begins with its interest in first principles and philosophical systems. And thus, for Clark, the apologetic task has limited concerns, a specific occasion and a temporal place. And I quote, apologetics has its place too, but in the temporal order. It is the latter place. Now, I say this so that you will understand. There's a clear difference between the Reformed Presbyterian now in the Presbyterian Church of America, Gordon Clark, and the Reformed Presbyterian now in the Presbyterian Church of America, Francis Schaeffer. For Gordon Clark, apologetics is the second step. And for Dr. Schaeffer, apologetics is pre evangelism. It is the first step in our encounter. In this way, proclamation and defense, for Clark, are separated. Evidences serve a purpose in the earlier task of proclamation, whereas subsequent to witnessing and in answer to questions, apologetics turns attention to philosophically demonstrating that Christianity is the most rational option available to man. The most rational option available to man. You already begin to see that this is not the same as what Dr. Van Til would say. Dr. Van Til says it's not the most rational option. It's the only rational option available to men. Now, it is in this subsequent task of apologetics that Clark shows his preference for rationalistic epistemology, although he repudiates the school of rationalism. And that's something that's. I know it's confusing. I run into this all the time. I'm sorry for it. But it's just the fact that you have rationalism used for a school in the Enlightenment, you have rationalism used for.

A particular.

View of epistemology, and you also have rationalism or rationality used for an understanding that something even a Christian should say, you know, the rationality of the universe, if you will. But anyway, Clark repudiates rationalism as a school that endorses rationalistic epistemology and rejects quite wholeheartedly empirical epistemology. And this is what has generated his many disputes with John Warwick Montgomery and other evidentialists in apologetics. And yet, even in the realm of apologetics, and for all of his emphasis on logic over sensation, part still has a place for evidences. Admittedly, it's very limited, almost a begrudging place. All appeals to evidence ascertained empirically are used for answering particular challenges to specific statements of Scripture. And all such appeals function only as ad hominem arguments, he says, nothing more. He needed to catch on to this. His use of empirical evidence is empirical meaning having connection with sensation. All right, we know things by means of perception or observation, he says. We can use these evidences that we gain through perception or observation in an ad hominem way against the person who directs his criticism to the Bible. If an unbeliever should be so foolish from Clark's perspective, if he should be so foolish as to depend upon an empirical theory of knowledge or method, then he can be answered by appealing to the putative findings of archaeology and other empirical sciences. But this is done only to embarrass the destructive critic, to show that he's not adhering to his own accepted norms, and to suggest that he's really contradicting himself by not recognizing the evidence which vindicates the biblical assertion in question. But that's a begrudging thing, Dr. Clark says. You can use those evidences only if the critic is so foolish as to rely upon his senses in the first place. That reduces him to silence. And in that case, There exists no empirical objections to Scripture. You'll see that he takes this approach, for instance, in his Three Theories of Religious Philosophy, or that isn't the title of it, is it? And I Don't have It With Me Anyway, his latest work on comparative approach to religious philosophy. So Clark allows for a negative use of evidences, even in the realm of apologetics. For argument's sake, he utilizes empirical findings, even though in the long run he does not believe that empirical methods can genuinely gain knowledge for man. Why can't evidences be used positively? Well, because, he says, inductive arguments are formally fallacious. No historical or evidential argument resting on sensation as a path to knowledge can prove the resurrection of Christ or its significance. Archaeology and history are incompetent to perform such a feat as isolated events. Historical evidence has proved nothing per se and could mean anything at all. Even if we empirically confirmed many statements in the Bible, our conclusion would exceed the strict evidence if we said the Bible were wholly true or infallible. Furthermore, the moral condition of the sinner prevents him from reading the evidence correctly. These are all defects in the positive use of evidences by a Christian apologist. But the fundamental problem remains epistemological, namely, that empiricism cannot justify claims to knowledge. In brief, Dr. Clark doesn't think you can rely on your senses. And since you can't rely on your senses, then it can't be used in epistemology to justify claims to knowledge. I've listened to Dr. Clark lecture and attempt to prove this point. By the way, it never ceases to amaze me how he knows that you can't rely on your senses. He always gives us illustrations to show that we can't rely on our senses, illustrations in which we must rely on our senses to see that at some other time our senses were unreliable. You know what I mean? The traditional types of illustrations, you look out, you see the railroad tracks going in the distance, and they seem to converge in the distance. And yet you walk up to the point that you were looking at where the railroad tracks converged, and lo and behold, they weren't converging at all? So my senses weren't reliable. Well, okay, but when weren't they reliable? Were they not reliable when they seem to converge, or were they not reliable when I walked up there and looked down and said, lo and behold, they don't converge? You see, he only knows that they weren't reliable in the first place because he thinks they are reliable in the second. That's not a real good position to Be in for a philosopher to contradict yourself anyway. Using traditional arguments advanced by rationalists, by David Hume, by Immanuel Kant and others, to show that universal and necessary principles, for instance the causal maxim or the laws of logic, cannot be derived from observation or sense experience, Clark rejects empirical investigation, empirical epistemology, and experience as a way to truth. According to Clark, the laws of science are not discoveries which describe the actual world of nature. They are only summaries of experimental operations and as such are non cognitive. And thus science is, and I quote, incapable of arriving at any truth whatever. Yeah, that's going to sound a little too, a little too strong to you, I know, but what he means by that is that science is non cognitive. Science does a lot of things. But what science does is it has power, if you will, to do things in the world. It has operational power, it performs feats, important ones, to be sure, but it doesn't tell us anything that's true. It doesn't give us any intellectual information about the world. It just enables us to control the world to a certain extent, not completely, obviously. Empiricism, therefore, is epistemologically feudal, according to him. And so, having noted the grand failures of evidentialism and rejecting natural theology and all arguments for the existence of God of that form, Clark turns to deductive argumentation, holding that Christian apologists should rather use arguments capable of formally valid demonstration in logic. Of course, these arguments must begin somewhere. What he says is you should use logical argumentation. And so you say, you take premise one and two and from them you infer premise three. Now, if you happen to believe premise three and somebody challenges you for an argument, what are you going to do? You're going to go back to premise one and two to show that. Now, if you go through a whole system of thought, you may have, let's say, I think it's 9,462 propositions, and if somebody challenge you, challenges you at the 9462nd proposition, then you're going to go back to earlier ones to prove it. And then when they are challenged, earlier ones and earlier ones and earlier ones and earlier ones, and where am I going to end up eventually at 1 and 2, right. So the real question in philosophy is what should our presuppositions be? Now, that's what Clark says. He calls them presuppositions. I'm going to maintain that he would be better to call them suppositions, not presuppositions. That is, they are hypotheses, they are axioms. That are just chosen. They are postulate. Try these two or three or four. Actually, he wants to take the whole Bible, try these propositions, and if they work out, then fine. But that's something that you do by choice, and then only later prove it by means of developing an axiomatic system, a coherent system of thought. Now, he doesn't think the unbeliever can do that. The axioms of everybody's system are the ultimate test of truth for that system, along with the laws of logic by which further theorems are deduced from the axioms. All demonstrations proceed from these chosen axioms according to logical laws. And he says every worldview implicitly has those axioms as the basis for all argumentation. These first principles cannot, cannot be previously demonstrated, in which case arguments between adherents of different worldviews must assume the point in dispute before they even start their argumentation. And Clark designates this outlook, and these are his own words, fetistic dogmatism, in his Three Theories of Religious Philosophy on pages 4 and 7 and 104, Feedistic Dogmatism. And so I've told you earlier in the week that Dr. Van Till, by no stretch of the imagination, is a feedist. He's a transcendentalist instead. But Dr. Clark willingly takes the title Fidism. You just posit those first axioms, dogmatically asserted, and then you try to show that you can build a better system with them. Like rationalism, dogmatism recognizes that first principles must be positive. But whereas rationalism sees its first principles as innate, Feedism simply posits them, as did Euclid, according to Clark. Clark likens this simple positing of first principles or axioms to a blick. And to understand that, you need to read this article by RM Hare in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, which, to any student of religious language, that'll make a lot of sense. But the blick, as you see, is a controlling outlook. It's something that's just there. You can't argue for it, and you can't disprove it either. As a matter of fact, it's just something that controls your outlook, your perspective. And I now quote Clark. There must be principles. A system cannot start unless it starts. The start is first good. Therefore, no one, since all must start, start somewhere, can consistently refuse permission to the dogmatist to start where he chooses. Everybody must start somewhere. I must start somewhere. And so you have no right to criticize me for where I start. I'm not sure that that is the best line of reasoning I'VE read in Clark. But what he's saying is everybody's just going to begin somewhere authoritatively. Everyone except the skeptic is an authoritarian. Even the least knowledge depends on a first principle. Any system ends its regression, its first principle. It certainly puts an end to further explanation. Now, what's the difference between Clark and Van Till here? The difference is that Dr. Van Till believes we have presuppositions, a starting point, if you will. But he doesn't say they are unargued. They aren't just theistically positive. Dr. Van Til says we can argue for our presupposition. Now, Dr. Clark might be willing to pounce. We see our eager to pounce at that point, saying, now how could you possibly prove your first principle? If you used something previous to them to prove the first principles, then that which you used to prove them would be your first principle. And so now how do you prove that by which you proved what you called your first principles? Well, you see, that isn't the way Dr. Van Till argues. He says, I'm not giving a direct argument for my Christian presuppositions. I'm giving an indirect argument. I'm arguing that unless you use these first principles, you can't argue at all. And so again, it's a transcendental form of argumentation which is not deductive and not inductive. It's a special kind of argumentation that you'll find from time to time in the history of philosophy and I think should be found more often in Christian apologetics. Okay, I quote. Again, it remains true that no demonstration of God is possible. Our belief is a voluntary choice, says Clark. Now, why should a person choose one axiom over another? How could any defense of the Christian faith, the Christian axiom, be possible? Which axiom is the true one, Secularism or Christianity? Clark's answer is if one must choose without a strict proof, nonetheless it is possible to have sane reasons of some sort to justify the choice. Ultimately, these reasons reduce to the principle of consistency. Okay, I'm going to. I'm going to save some time here and just try to explain this without my notes for a while. Dr. Clark says everybody chooses their first principle. Okay? Everybody authoritatively takes some beginning point. Now, from that beginning point, though, he develops a system of thought. Okay, so the secularists, the naturalists, the empiricists, the existentialists, the ptolemist, for that matter, develop systems of thought. And so does the reformed Christian develops a system of thought. Now, the test for which of these systems of thought is the correct one is the test of consistency. According to logical laws, whichever system is the most consistent, most logically coherent, this is one which we should take as true. Now, that assumes, of course, and I quote here, that reason therefore can be considered to be an element in common to believer and unbeliever. Clark says that dogmatism is in agreement with rationalism in its use of logic, the only difference being the source of their respective first premises. He says that because they are universal and necessary, the laws of logic cannot be derived from sense experience. Experience, but must be a priori. They must be known apart from observation or experience. They cannot be questioned. However, if one wants to speak in a meaningful fashion. I want you to remember the lecture from last night. I can't repeat it now, and I don't think you would want me to anyway, but the lecture last night indicated that there's a lot of question about the laws of logic that can be raised. And for Clark simply to say it's meaningless to question the laws of logic. It's just to close your eyes, ostrich style, to what is actually happening in the field of philosophy. Okay? According to Clark, the laws of logic are really the structure of the divine mind. They are the way God thinks. He translates. John 1. In the beginning was the logic. Logic is the mind of God. And logic is known by man because man is the image of God. All right? So man cannot know anything empirically. Can't know by your senses. Your senses deceive you. What you do know, because you're the image of God, are the laws of logic. And you know by revelation the truths of Scripture, and they are your axioms. And so you take a system, the Christian system, fully axiomatized, if you will, laid out with all of its connections. And then you look at the secular systems, laid out their axioms and all their inferences, and then you test them by the laws of logic to see who is the most consistent. Okay, now I need to add here, I'm going to have to hurry. That Clark does introduce something else that is important. A new twist comes into his apologetic after and in many writings that I can quote here. From the very beginning of his publishing career down to his most recent publications, Clark has been pushing the coherence approach to apologetics, the axiomatic test. But now there is this twist that has to be remembered because if I've been sensitive to Dr. Clark's inability to interpret Dr. Van Till correctly, I want not to be guilty of the same thing. I'm sure he'll think I am in some way anyway, but I do want to do my best to be fair to him. In reading through Clark's writings, it becomes evident that the coherence test which he would apply to axiom systems includes a criterion that goes just a bit beyond simple laws of logical consistency. In the choice between antithetical axioms, Clark often suggests that we should choose the one which, when applied to the whole of reality, will give us the most coherent picture of our world. And I quote, a postulate must be chosen such that it makes possible a harmony or a system in all our thoughts, words and actions. Now, this broadly conceived harmony or criterion of richness, what John Frame calls it, the criterion of richness, calls for an axiom system to function adequately as a worldview encompassing a wide variety of human concerns, not only epistemology. De Clark sometimes argues from ethics, psychology, history, language, civil government, social stability, et cetera. Look particularly at his early book, the Christian View of Men and Things, and also at the philosophy of Gordon Clark. The Wheaton lecture is found in his best script. No other system but Christianity can give a satisfactory account of these things. According to Clark, and so he says, Christianity is a comprehensive view of all things. The axioms of faith are all comprehensive, and the sciences have no independent existence. Now this indicates that in his coherence test, Clark is seeking the widest possible consistency. Again, I quote, if one system can provide plausible solutions to many problems while another leaves too many questions unanswered, if one system tends less to skepticism and gives more meaning to life, if one worldview is consistent while others are self contradictory, who can deny us? Since we must choose the right to choose? The more promising first principle, and therefore the coherence test, which Clark applies to non Christian axiom systems, argues that they fail theoretically and practically. They reduce the skeptical inconsistency and they reduce to an impoverished worldview for men. Okay, now I'm going to give you a quote to somewhat summarize. He says acceptance of divine revelation gives a more consistent view than any other. The proof of God's existence, and he puts proof here in quotes, is to be very clear what people might call a proof. Really, the proof of God's existence results from showing that consistency is maintained by viewing all things as dependent upon God. If the biblical doctrines are self consistent, they have met the only legitimate test of reason. Logical consistency, therefore, is evidence of inspiration. The attempt to show the Bible's logical consistency is, I believe, the best method of defending inspiration. All right, so you get an idea then of the kind of apologetical system that Dr. Clark has proposed. What now can we say by way of critique of it? Dr. Clark, in a sense argues if this system of thought is the most consistent, it's the one that should be chosen as true. So since he thinks Christianity is the answer here, his argument would be, for instance, premise 1. If Christianity is the most consistent axiom system. No, no, no. If Christianity is true, then it will be the most consistent axiom system. Second premise, Christianity is the most consistent axiom system, therefore Christianity is true. Okay? If A, then B, B, therefore A. If Christianity is true, then we'd expect it to be the most consistent system. Then we say it is the most consistent system. Ergo, Christianity is true. Now, it's getting late and not all of you are popular fans. Logic is not real popular with you. But anybody who studied logic is going to see that that is the traditional fallacy of affirming the consequent. Let me put it on the board so you can follow it a little bit easier. The form of the argument is if A, then B. B, therefore A. Okay? If Christianity is true, it will be most consistent. Christianity is most consistent, therefore Christianity is true. Okay? The difficulty is that that form of argumentation is the logical fallacy. And you can see that. I'll just use a little reductio ad absurdum here. I'll give you another argument in exactly the same form, okay? If Shakespeare wrote Paradise Lost, then Shakespeare is a great author. Shakespeare is a great author, therefore Shakespeare wrote Paradise Lost, which, by the way, he didn't. Milton wrote Paradise Laws. Okay? So if A, then B, B, therefore A is never a form of argumentation that is going to be reliable in our reasoning. But it's that form of argumentation that Dr. Clark is using and is apologetic, it seems to me. And therefore, to escape from the problem of that logical fallacy, what Dr. Clark has to do is rely really on that step in his apologetic where he disqualifies the rival hypothesis. What he has to do is he has to go through and show that all the other axiom systems are incoherent and can be rejected. Well, there's some problems with that too, though. In the first place, the weakness of the rivals does not show the strength of the alternative. And the fact that every other system has defects in it does not prove that your system doesn't have defects in it, does it? So that's not going to help. That's not going to completely help anyway. Moreover, if you read the writings of Dr. Clark, he certainly does not do justice to the Viable option. It's true that you find Dr. Clark refuting this view and that view. I mean, he attacks Aquinas and he attacks Sartre and so forth, but he doesn't come anywhere close to dealing with all the schools of epistemology, all the schools in the history of philosophy. And so, given the fact that he has a logical fallacy here and the only way he's going to rescue his defense of Christianity is by defeating the alternatives. The fact that he hasn't looked at very many alternatives, at least percentage wise, does not speak well for his defense of the Christian faith. Moreover, at one point in his writings, Dr. Clark admits only omniscience could apply the coherence test exhaustively with final satisfaction. By the way, that's very true. You see, if you're going to. Let's just try to understand what an axiom system would look like here. It's nice to talk about it formally, but when it gets down to looking at axiom systems, frankly, you would need some pretty powerful computers to get the work done. Because if I have. What should we say? If I have nine propositions, and I'm going to order them in all the different ways that I can, all the different relationships that I can, I'm going to end up with at least 81 combinations, right? Now, what's going to happen if I have 81 propositions? Then we're going to have to square that. But now, how many propositions do you figure there's going to be in a worldview? How many propositions are there in the Bible? Well, a whole lot more than 81. You can be sure the Jews knew that There were over 600 laws in the Old Testament, not to mention all the historical statements and on and on and on. By the time you get all the combinations and all the logical relations between all the propositions in the Bible, you're gonna have a lot of testing to do. And remember that when you've done all of that homework, the Philippe and task isn't over because you now have to test Sartre's proposition and Kant's proposition and Aristotle's proposition. And when you're done with the philosophers, you have to go on to Freud and Skinner and the psychologists. And when you're done with them, you got to go on to the sociologists and the historians, and it's just a big task. And so Clark, I think, is just being requisitely humble when he says only on. When you're done with them, you got to go on to the sociologists and the historians. And it's just a big task. And so Clark, I think, is just being requisitely humble when he says only omniscience could apply the coherence test exhaustively with final satisfaction. But what's the problem? His apologetic requires us to apply that test. So what he's saying is, only God could do my apologetics. And as should be obvious, it's God that's in question in apologetics. And so that's not going to help. And so it seems to me that his basic approach to apologetics just structurally drives the apologist to ignorance and skepticism. Now, what does Clark do? Well, it turns out that in the history of his writing, faced with this kind of a problem, although I don't mean to suggest that he recognizes it as a problem, but at some points in his writings, Clark retreats to probabilism. He says, Christianity is the least irrational system since it has the less difficulties. It has less difficulties than its competitors. Christianity is the least irrational because it has less difficulties than its competitors. Now, what is this? To admit it is to admit some skepticism. In the alleged only alternative to skepticism, he thinks it's the best option. But since it's the least irrational, what he's saying is there is some problem. We can't be absolutely sure of the coherence of the system. And so there is just the slightest degree of justification for skepticism in Christianity. Okay, we just have a little pinch of salt of skepticism here. So we have whole mounds of salt, you see over here. But the problem is that if Christianity, too is afflicted with some degree of skepticism, it's not the only alternative to skepticism. Skepticism is the sort of thing that doesn't just stop with just a little pinch of it here. You put a little bit of that into the system, and it's like yeast, not salt, and it goes throughout the whole system. In the end, it seems to me, I'm putting it now in my words, which are critical. Dr. Clark wouldn't admit to this, but as I see it, when he makes this kind of admission, Dr. Clark is saying, really, we're all in this rowboat that's sinking. But Christians are at the high end of the rowboat, okay? Everybody else has skepticism, and they're already underwater. And there's a little bit of us, it's still above water, but going down, too. It's just not enough to say, you got to test these axiom systems, and you can't test Christianity. You can't know for sure. So it's the least irrational. We want to say that it's not irrational at all and that all the alternatives are irrational at base. And so Clark ends up reducing Christianity from an absolute demand to a recommendation. When Dr. Van Till comes to the unbeliever, he can show that God absolutely demands their repentance and that there is no, as Paul puts it, no apologetic for their unbelief. Whereas Clark would want to say those things in his preaching, but in his apologetic he'd have to say, well, there's a little bit of problem improving our view too. This is, I think, subscriptural because the Bible is not to be likened to the post at Odds at Las Vegas. Your best bet for getting into heaven is Christianity. What we want to say is there's no alternative but Christianity. Moreover, remember, we don't know how extensive our ignorance is, do we? Since we aren't omniscient, we don't know how many systems we haven't tested yet. We don't know how many problems in our own system we haven't yet found out. And since we don't know the extent of our ignorance, we can't really rate our probability for truth. If Clark says very probably Christianity is the system that's going to be consistent, then he can only say that if he knows the degree to which the other systems fail and the degree to which his system fails or doesn't fail. But he doesn't know that, because to know the degree you have to know what the full extent and then how far it's filled up. But he doesn't. So we can't even rate this probability. Because time is running out. Let me just say about this richness appeal, as my friend John Frame has put it. That richness appeal, though it's I think, attractive to other apologetical schools like the school that Schaeffer has founded. That appeal doesn't really comport very well with everything else Clark has written. The idea that I should test Christianity and the other options as to whether they give me an adequate political ethic or an adequate view of history, historiography or what have you, doesn't work well when a man says there's no way of knowing anything through my senses and that I only appeal to empirical evidences as an ad hominem device against the foolish person who is using empiricism as his theory of knowledge. Okay, I come now to what really the heart of the philosophical problem with Clark's apologetic, though, and that's problems with his coherence test. And I have five things that I'm going to try to say in five minutes. Real quickly here. First of all, the coherence test is, and I do not mean this in an arrogant way at all, but it is trivial. It is just trivial. George Mavrodi pointed this out very well, I think, in the Clark festscript when he says if you want an axiom system, it's very easy to make an axiom system. What you do is you just start with your first axiom P, and then you just assert that it entails Q, and then you just go on with entailment after entailment after entailment. And then when you finally get to the end, you just say that last one entails the first one and you've got a coherent system. It's easy. As Navarro says, we can teach five year olds and computers to do this sort of thing. It doesn't make anything true that you can have a coherent system in that way. So it's a trivial thing. It's also, I must hurry here. Secondly, inappropriate. It's inappropriate because Christian philosophy is certainly much more than elementary first order predicate logic. Moreover, when you look at the language of the Bible, you must notice that it is written not in a formalized language, okay? With molecular propositions and predicates and symbolic notation for such things. The Bible is written in ordinary language, not formalized language. And truth applies to those propositions of the Bible even when the propositions of the Bible have not been translated into formal notation and tested. And truth applies to more than propositions. According to the Bible, truth applies to the mind of God and to God's own son. Remember, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. It is in the end a personal conception of knowledge that we are defending and not an axiomatic or logicistic view of knowledge as Clark gives it. So it's inappropriate to the system being defended, I think. I wish I could say much more about that. But thirdly, it's impractical because we have to ask Clark which logical rules should we apply. He takes it for granted that everybody knows which rules we're going to apply. And if you think that's the case, listen to last night's lecture in our second hour where I at least quickly indicate that there are questions in the history of philosophy about which rules to apply. Disputes have arisen in the history of logic. Moreover, we have to ask who is going to apply these rules even if we have them? Because application and interpretation disputes are going to arise in the use of logic. Real obvious illustration, one of the laws of logic that nobody is supposed to question is the law of identity. A is A. That may be all right in a formal notation, but the difficulty is, since the Bible is written in an ordinary or what's called a natural language, then in order to test it by these sorts of rules, you have to translate it into a formal notation. Anytime you're going to test the system, you have to take the natural language and put it into formalized notation. But what happens when you do that? I'm going to give you an English sentence that meets this standard, which I hope nobody in this room, any bible believing Christian, is going to be willing to use, especially when you remember how often it is coming into context in which it is used. All right, Your employer asks you to do something, you say, well, I've got scruples against that sort of thing. I don't think that's honest. And he says, listen, business is business. And you say, I'm sorry, I don't believe that. He says, what are you, some kind of a logical fool? Don't believe the law of identity. Business is business. It's obvious. And what's the problem here? Well, the word business is being used in two different ways, right? Before I could test the statement business is business, I would have to know whether to translate that into formal notation as A is A or A is B. That is business in sense A, business in sense B. But to do that requires interpretation. And so we have to know who's going to do the interpreting of our language before we can apply the test. Moreover, natural or. That's what I've just said here. And then what is the source of the necessity of logical laws is question that needs to be answered as well and has to be argued, it seems to me, by Clark. Fourthly, as a problem with the coherence test, Clark eventually has to appeal to brute facts anyway. He doesn't get away from empiricism at all. A good way of seeing that is this. Dr. Clark says the only thing we can know are the propositions of the Bible. But then you have to ask yourself, well, how do we know the propositions of the Bible? They would answer a lot of pastoral dilemmas. If you could know the propositions of the Bible by leaving it closed over there on the shelf, right? A lot of parishioners do that very thing. But what we have to ask them to do is what? Pick up the Bible and open it and use your eyeballs and look and read and understand. But what has Dr. Clark taught us? Our senses are not reliable. So the only thing we're supposed to be able to know are the propositions of the Bible. But we can only know the propositions of the Bible empirically. But since we can't know anything empirically, we can't even know the propositions of the Bible. And Dr. Clark's own system reduces the skepticism again. Now this criticism was leveled at him in his fesh script and his answer, I think is worse than the problem. Here's the case where the medicine kills the patient even quicker than the disease. Dr. Clark says, well, the answer to that is that all men intuitively know these things. It's kind of like invisible ink. And when I look at the Bible, it's just heat being applied to invisible ink. And it may what was already there innately in a Neoplatonic sense now you see, becomes recognized. But you see, if that's the case, then Dr. Clark wittingly or unwittingly has undermined the necessity of revelation. By the way, if you can't know things empirically and can only know the propositions of the Bible, then you may know that Jesus is the only way to be saved, but you cannot know that you are saved. Right? Because it's not a proposition in the Bible that Gordon H. Clark is saved. Nor is it a proposition in the Bible that he has repented of his sin. Now, when I was at Covenant College and had a long, I think about a three hour discussion with Dr. Clark of some of these things and proposed that criticism of him and I don't know him well enough, I'm not close to, and I'm sure after this lecture will not be close to Dr. Clark, but, and so he may have just been teasing me, but he did for a long time, in the presence of his students at the college, argue, well, that's right. I don't know that Gordon H. Clark is saved. And I don't think he was suggesting that he was having, you know, some kind of personal problem that he wanted pastoral help on. What he was saying is epistemologically, that's right. And then I pointed out, of course that the Westminster Confession says that it is the ideal and it is possible for us to have it in fallible assurance of our salvation. How is that, how is that possible if our names are not found in the Bible and we can only know the things of the Bible? Pardon me. Well, fifthly, the incoherent and the coherence test is ineffective. Dr. Clark admits that a secular system might be so consistent that we could not find the incoherence in it. The Bible cannot Be systematized in the way necessary for the coherence examination that is proposed by Clark. And thirdly, and this is a very damaging quote. He says no proof is forthcoming that the Bible is not just an accident. Because, after all, we begin voluntaristically with our first axiom, remember? And we develop it out. But it just may be a felicitous accident that we had the right opening proposition and it turned out to be productive of a consistent system of thought. There's no proof forthcoming that the Bible is not just an accident. So after we've tested all the systems. And again, I don't think this is successful. But even if you're successful in testing all of the other systems. And you come down to the Christian system, that's the only consistent one. Or the most consistent or at least the least irrational or at least the richest system or whatever it's going to be for Clark, he has to say, even at that point, but maybe it's just an accident. I can't prove that it's not an accident. So you can't be absolutely sure even at that point. And again, it just seems to me that skepticism opens its jaws wide at that point. And swallows in the system that Dr. Clark is proposing. Okay, I'm going to make my last criticism the toughest one to follow. And I'm going to have to do it in the quickest amount of time. So I apologize, Bad pedagogy. But I'll give you your money's worth tonight. I think that last remark tells you something very important about Dr. Clark's outlook on life and the world and knowledge. He says no proof is forthcoming. The Bible is not just an accident. Now, I have here. I guess I'll just demonstrate. People on tape won't see it. But I have here already in type, set form, long galley proof of quotations. And these are all quotations from Dr. Clark on these sheets where he says things about his notion of possibility. It's not the sort of thing you think about very much, but it's an important concept in philosophy. What Dr. Clark says about possibility and about Christianity possibly being true. And about the possibility of our logical laws being wrong and so forth. Indicates that in terms of his system of thought. Logical possibility is not controlled by his Christian world and life view. If he says that it's just possible that the Bible is an accident, Then what he's saying is that there is at least that logical possibility behind the hope for and very probable truth of the Bible. But the logical possibility lies behind it, that it's still wrong. Dr. Van Till, by contrast, would say the mind of God is the source of all possibility, not just the source of all material possibility, but the source of all logical possibility as well. And that when people argue against the Scripture, they argue against the source of logical possibility. They argue against the foundation of logic as well. And therefore it is illogical to question the Scriptures in that broader sense in which we're talking about logical foundations. It's illogical because you're undermining the very foundation of logic to question the Scriptures. But as you can see from that one quote, Dr. Clark couldn't say that. He would have to say that there's at least the logical possibility that. That the Scriptures are wrong, but the laws of logic remain. And so that God's revelation, God's mind is not the ultimate source of possibility, at least in this thinking. And I want to believe, to be fair to Dr. Clark, that in his better moments he would see that this was wrong. But unfortunately, in many of his published moments, he's written otherwise. And that must be criticized. I think at the heart of the matter that shows the difference between Dr. Clark and Dr. Van Till. For Dr. Van Till is a transcendentalist. All fact, all logic, all personality, all ethical absolutes can be interpreted and made intelligible and be given a foundation only within the Christian world and life view. For Dr. Clark, there's at least the possibility that you have the laws of logic that can be used outside of the Christian world in life view and apart from the Christian world in life view. It's those laws of logic that eventually stand in judgment over the system of thought found in the Scriptures. Now, I know he says that God is the laws of logic and all that, and therefore he's not testing God by something higher. But his idea of possibility, the very possibility that the Bible might be just an accident betrays that ultimate commitment. So in the end, Dr. Van Till is saying we must challenge the unbeliever to give an account of logic. Where Dr. Clark is saying we must challenge the unbeliever to use logic even as he understands it, to test all the other systems, including our own. And therefore it is wrong. Although it is a kind thing to say and a peaceful thing to say, it is still epistemological wrong to say that Dr. Van Till and Dr. Clark are promoting the same basic school of apologetics. They may both use the language of presuppositionalism, but their methods are worlds apart. Well, you've been a very patient audience, and I thank you again. For that I will take just a few moments here for questions and then let you go home on this cold night. Yes, sir. Secondly, what's the biggest minimum of what God has totally revealed? Viral or what? Okay, your first question again is. The the three traditional laws of thought, the laws of identity, contradiction and excluded middle. A is a, the law of contradiction. A is not not A, and it is either A or not A. Okay, and then what is the bare minimum for a transcendental apologetic in a presuppositional sense? What I'm saying is that the Christian world and life view must be compared to the non Christian world and life view as a whole. And as this is not a Christian fellow, but I mentioned him last night, Willard Van Orman Quine has written, and I think correctly, it turns out that it's the whole system, our whole theory, our whole network, our web of beliefs that encounters falsifying experiences as a whole. So what I want to take is everything I understand is the Christian worldview and compare it to the whole existentialist worldview or naturalist worldview and then point out that the other ones cannot justify what they are doing and only in terms of the entire worldview that I'm proposing can they. Now, it's true that I'm going to correct my worldview at places, okay? I'm not infallible by any means. I haven't absolutely understood the Bible correctly or the world correctly or the relationship between to do correctly. So on the periphery of my network of beliefs, I'm going to constantly be making revisions if I'm not intellectually lazy, okay, Constantly being proving that. But when I go to the unbeliever, I'm taking my whole worldview to him. I'm not saying I just want to argue for a few basics. The fundamentals of my faith, if you will, the lowest common denominator, that might be called Christianity. Now I'm taking my Calvinistic worldview with my experiences and my understanding of ethics and the applications of the Bible and allowing that I may make corrections at the periphery. But it's only in terms of that basic perspective on life that I can make sense of logic and ethics and everything else. Please, to all of them, aren't you? It's true that you never know your own civil worldview. No, no, as a matter of fact, I do know my entire worldview, but I don't know the entire Christian worldview. But my worldview overlaps and hopefully more and more, you know, spreads to fill the the same parameters as the Christian world worldview. My worldview is a Christian worldview. So my worldview is not the Christian worldview, is it? In one sense, the answer to that will be what Paul talked about in Romans 1 is revealed through nature and conscience. Because that would be enough for him to know about the God who providentially controls all things, the coming judgment, things of that nature, so that he could, if it weren't for sin, could carry out the epistemic enterprise. Why? Because of sin? It turns out that it's only the scriptural revelation that will now perform that Tao. Because it's only the correction of the natural man's unregenerate heart and incorrect view of the world and the supplementing of natural revelation by the way of salvation that is going to give a man a consistent and adequate worldview for man as he is now found. And so natural revelation would other things not considered be epistemically adequate. But now it's only going to be the scriptural revelation that is going to give us a worldview that will hold up because of the introduction of man's sin.

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