Dr Greg Bahnsen - Van Til's Presupp Apologetic: Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark, Part 1 (Part 5)

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.

Understood autonomously to judge the word of God. Dr. Van Till believes that as one wrong morally to make God stand in the dock before the bar of human reason, arrogating to itself the ability to use logic or empirical fact or appeals to history or human personality, apart from an understanding of those things within the context of a Christian world and life view, it's immoral to do that. That is not the way the Lord God should be treated, indeed, will not be treated, for in the final day he will be the judge. And secondly, it is mistaken epistemologically because once that approach is taken, the non Christian has every right to say he does not need the Christian system added to his own. His own is perfectly all right as far as it goes. And secondly, there is going to be, it seems to me, no way truly to break down his arrogance against the gospel. Now, by God's grace, we all grant. And I want to say this at the outset, and even saying it, I realize there will be people here tonight who will go out and not remember this. It's just one of the occupational hazards of this kind of work. But the fact of the matter is we recognize that God does, by his grace, bless imperfect evangelism, imperfect apologetic systems. He blesses a number of things which are short of perfection, because that's what, of course, we all represent imperfection. And so nobody is saying, for instance, that the work of Dr. Clark or of Dr. Schaeffer or any of these men has not borne fruit for the kingdom of God. We praise God that it has, and we give him the glory for it. But we do think that we need to be talking to each other about improving our system in the same way that we want to improve the style of our lives according to the word of God. We want to improve the style of our apologetic by the word of God. And although it may sound from time to time over the next three nights that we're getting very negative, drawing some pretty heavy artillery out to shoot at our evangelical brothers, please don't see this in a militaristic way. As a matter of fact, I see this as doing each other a favor. If I have a neighbor who through the back door of his house has a skunk enter, and I go to the front door of his house and say, neighbor, a skunk has gotten in to your house. And he is offended, he says, who are you to say that my house is A skunk in it. What a terrible, demeaning thing to say. And slams the door in my face. Of course, he's reacted improperly, hasn't he? It's not flattering to say there's a skunk in your house, but it's far worse to leave it there. And so what I'm going to be doing over the next three nights, I hope you'll see it in this light, is saying that Dr. Clark, Dr. Montgomery, Mr. Sproul, Dr. Schaefer have skunks in the house of apologetics that they are living in. And I'd like to help them get the skunks out. And I'm sure that they'll return the favor sometimes. Right. So we begin tonight with Gordon Clark. And what I'd like to do is first of all, look at how Dr. Clark has criticized Dr. Van Til. And then I'd like to turn around and perhaps suggest, advance with some force, maybe some criticisms of Dr. Clark's own method of apologetics. Dr. Clark's criticisms of Van Til can be found conveniently in three places. First of all in an article that he wrote on apologetics in. In the volume Contemporary Evangelical Thought, edited by Carl F.H. henry in 1957. And then also in an article that was published in Bibliotheca Sacra in April of 1957, entitled the Bible as Truth. These two are important sources to see the criticisms that Dr. Clark has to make. And then, most recently, Dr. Clark has repeated, for the most part, criticisms that can be found in print. But he has repeated them on a tape in the series that has been entitled the Gordon Conwell Series on Apologetics. And it's number nine, as I recall. Anyway, it's entitled John Frame and Cornelius Van Til. These are the sources primarily that I'll be using. Okay, I'll begin with Contemporary Evangelical Thought, 1957. In this article on apologetics, Dr. Clark levels, oh, three or four criticisms of Dr. Van Till, the first of which is this, and I quote, Van Til seems to imply that the unregenerate mind never makes a moral judgment that conforms to divine standards. He goes on. Insistence on the necessity of Scripture, however, does not depend on the unusual claim that an unregenerate mind can have no moral knowledge. Not only does Dr. Clark think that if you take the presuppositional approach of Dr. Van Till, you have to say the unregenerate has no moral knowledge, it turns out he thinks that Dr. Van Til claims that the unregenerate has no knowledge whatsoever. In that same article he says Dr. Van Till is confused because there is no agreement about the nature of man. There can be no common area of knowledge. So Dr. Van Till has said. He says this is confused. We must distinguish between the man and the system that the man uses. The reason of sinful man always acts wrongly, according to Dr. Van Till. And we can't admit the unbeliever's ability to interpret any area of experience whatever. Now these again are claims of Dr. Van Till. And now I quote Dr. Clark drawing the conclusion. Certainly these passages imply that an unregenerate man is totally ignorant. Now although these are not the words of Dr. Clark, they are the words of, at least earlier in his career. One of his authoritative interpreters, Dr. Nash, who edited the Festschrift the Philosophy of Gordon h. Clark and Dr. Nash, says on page 135, Clark is a Calvinist and thus believes in original sin. How has sin affected man's ability to reason? Some Calvinists like Cornelius Van Til argue that a combination of man's finitude and man's sin makes human reason completely defective. Clark disagrees and he goes on to explain what he takes Dr. Clark's view to be. Alright, so let me summarize for you. The first major criticism that Dr. Clark would make, or has made in print anyway, is that if you hold to the presuppositional approach of Dr. Van Til where you challenge the unbeliever to give an account of the intelligibility of his laws of logic, to give an account of his appeal to the facts of history or nature, if you say that no knowledge in principle is possible for people who use an autonomous approach to life, then you must conclude that the unbeliever is totally ignorant. Now if Dr. Van Till held that the unbeliever was totally ignorant, we'd really have some problems, wouldn't we? As a matter of fact, just to use one of many, many illustrations, it was two unbelievers who saved my life. Open heart surgery. I'm not inclined to say that they didn't know anything at all. Okay, we all grab. But unbelievers send rockets to the moon and build bridges and think through complicated problems in logic. True enough. And so if Dr. Van Til's system implies that the unbeliever is totally ignorant, then Dr. Van Till's system implies what is false. And it's a well known law of thought that whatever implies that which is false is itself false. And so we have to ask the question, does Dr. Van Til's system imply any such thing? And the answer is no. By no stretch of the imagination does it imply such a thing. And in 1957, when these words were written by Dr. Clark. I think we have to question whether there wasn't something perhaps impeding Dr. Clark's vision and understanding of what Dr. Van Till was saying. Because the number of quotable places in Dr. Van Till's writings up to that point where he demonstrates and asserts unequivocally that the unbeliever knows many things. And in fact must know things, must have knowledge of the world and of God. There's so many of these that there must be some other reason why Dr. Clark has missed it than that Dr. Van Till hasn't said it. Because it's been said and said and said and said and said. But let's try to think this through. Why might it be thought that Dr. Van Till would have to conclude that the unbeliever is totally ignorant? Well, Dr. Van Til says that on the unbeliever's espoused presuppositions he could know nothing. If the unbeliever is right about this universe being a chance universe. Then it sound infuriate, signifying nothing. In a chance universe, there are no universal. There are no principles of regularity. There is no induction, no deduction. There is no self understanding. Well, then maybe. Maybe Dr. Van Till does say the unbeliever doesn't know anything. No, he doesn't. Because as it turns out, what I said is. On the unbelievers espoused presuppositions, there could be no knowledge. That's what gives us our opportunity for apologetical argument. By the way, that the unbeliever says one thing. He says, I assume this about the universe. I work on these assumptions, and then we can debate with that. But as a matter of fact, the unbeliever does not live according to those presuppositions. And those of you who have read anything of Dr. Van Till will undoubtedly recognize immediately the language of the common metaphor borrowed capital. Borrowed capital. Dr. Van Till says the unbeliever lives on borrowed capital. He says one thing about his philosophy, his world and life view. But he lives in terms of another one. So he believes, for instance, that the Christian God exists and that this world is controlled by Providence. He believes that, but he suppresses that by means of unrighteous. And says other foolish things to take its place. Okay, this is what we call self deception. The other evening I gave as a very quick illustration of self deception. The individual who puts down on a job application that he doesn't believe women are inferior. He espouses the view that women are not inferior. But how does he live his life? He lives his life treating his wife like she's just a slave, a servant of some sort. He despises the opinions of women. He's shown that he's a chauvinist in so many ways. We would say of this man that he does not believe that women are his equal, but he believes of himself that he's an enlightened modern man and that he wouldn't ever believe that women are inferior. Now these sorts of things happen all the time within the system of thought that a person has self deception. We believe one thing, but we don't want to believe that we believe that. So we bring ourselves, and if you want you can read my doctoral dissertation on this as to how this happens and that it is in fact possible we bring ourselves to believe things contrary to the truth. Not everything we believe about ourselves is automatically right. Not all of our self knowledge is incorrigible, as we say. Sometimes I think things about myself which are false. For instance, that I'm no chauvinist. I believe women are equal and then I treat them otherwise. Now the unbeliever according to Dr. Van Till is in the same situation, a parallel situation anyway. He believes in the Christian God, he believes in Providence, he believes in the regularity of the universe. And therefore he goes about doing his science, applying the laws of logic, believing in human personality and dignity, believing in moral absolutes and applying them to life. He believes all these things because he knows there's a God to whom he will answer, a God who has made him a God who controls everything by his sovereign plan. And yet he doesn't want to think of himself that he is such an archaic old fashioned religious person. Oh no, he is free, he is independent, he is autonomous. He doesn't believe these things. So he believes in God, but brings himself to believe about himself that he does not believe in God. And so Dr. Van Til is really saying two things in terms of the unbelievers espoused presuppositions. In principle, if he were true to what he says about the universe and about himself, if he could be true to his word, he could know nothing. That's our argument of course, that is our apologetical argument. You answer the fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit. You say, okay fool, listen to your folly. Where does it take you? Yes, you heard me quote Dr. Van Till in the past Dr. Van Till says we must reduce our opponent's position to absurdity. He says this is the way the world is. Reduce that to absurdity. Show that he could build nothing at all, as Dr. Van Til says. He wouldn't even be in a position to challenge the existence of God if God did not exist, making it possible for him to think, to predicate to reason at all. On the other hand, the unbeliever doesn't really believe those things. The unbeliever, down deep in his heart, has this suppressed knowledge of God, his maker, the the providential controller of all events, the judge to whom he will answer. He has a knowledge of him, and he lives in terms of that knowledge, living off of that borrowed capital. He can make advances in this world. He can discover things in modern medicine, send people to the moon and do problems in logic and geometry. So Dr. Clark is wrong to think that Dr. Van Til holds that the unregenerate man is totally ignorant. He is not totally ignorant. And in fact, in the defense of the faith, Dr. Van Till says, if man could be totally ignorant, he would not be culpable for his sin. But it's just because that he knows God, that what he does is sinful. Because he sinned against his better knowledge, the suppressed truth. The first criticism then of Dr. Clark must be dismissed as at best a misreading of Dr. Van Till. And at worst, perhaps an interpersonal problem that he's having with him that leads him not to read his writings in the best possible light. Now we come to a second criticism from Dr. Clark. In the same article, Contemporary Evangelical Thought. He says, if Dr. Van still believes there's an absolutely valid argument for the existence of God, he ought to state his basic premises and give the argument step by step. One must ask whether it is valid to argue from creation to the existence of God. Or whether the notion of creation does not already presuppose God's existence. And I quote, has not Van Til interchanged premises and conclusions. However, Dr. Van Till disclaims pure deduction by syllogism and prefers a method of reasoning by analogy. And yet he repeats. And here Dr. Clark is giving the citations in Van Til. He repeats that the argument is objectively valid. And I quote. One pauses to ask only how an argument can be known to be objectively valid and absolutely sound when the argument has never been formulated. There is no point in talking about a perfect argument that no one has ever correctly formulated. Now, in a piece produced by Dr. Clark and printed in the Trinity Review for September of 1979 on the cosmological argument. He goes through five basic problems with the cosmological argument and then his last this is about half a column, so bear with me as I read it, the last portion of his essay says this despite these objections, Roman Catholics continue to depend on the cosmological argument. So do most Lutherans, and some Calvinists offend it too. J. Oliver Boswell Jr. Was one of these, at least in his earlier writings, though he seems to have agreed later that it's not strictly valid. Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia makes very strong statements on the validity of the argument. Boswell had accused Van Till of disparaging the objective evidences for Christianity and of rejecting the cosmological argument. Van Till replied in A Christian Theory of Knowledge, by the way, again, just to show the misreading that becomes possible, it is true that the quote comes from the Christian Theory of knowledge, but Dr. Van Till in the Christian Theory of Knowledge indicates that he's quoting from the Defense of the Faith. And so we must take this back to 1955 at least. And it turns out in the Defense of the Faith he is quoting from Common Grace means we must take this back to 1947, at least the first half of the quote. We're going to get to. You say, well, so what? Well, you'll see so what in just a second. And he charged Buzzwell with formulating the argument improperly. Now, quoting partly from one of his earlier works, Common Grace, he says the argument for the existence of God and for the truth of Christianity is objectively valid. We should not tone down the validity of this argument to possibility level. The argument may be poorly stated and may never be adequately stated, but in itself the argument is absolutely sound. Accordingly, I do not reject the theistic proofs, but merely insist on formulating them in such a way as not to compromise the Scripture. That is to say, if the theistic proof is constructed as it ought to be constructed, it is objectively valid. Those are very strong words. There is an objectively valid argument for the existence of God, and not just that God probably exists or possibly exists, but that God certainly exists, the God of the Scripture. Now, Clark says this assertion that the cosmological argument is antill Talking about the cosmological argument. Well, I've done all the research I think that's necessary here and looked up the context within 50 pages of either side of the quote. He's not talking about the cosmological argument. He's talking about proving the existence of God in whatever way. But anyway, this assertion that the cosmological argument is valid, Absolutely sound. A formal demonstration and not merely a probability argument does not hold true of any cosmological argument argument published in any book. Van Till pays no attention, by the way. I just have to say, because Dr. Clark is so prone to make those kind of remarks, that's just not true. Okay. I can point you to writings of George Mavrodi's and you'll find a deductively sound argument for the existence of God. A cosmological argument. It's very easy to do. Anybody studying logic can do it. All right. God exists as the creator or nothing exists. It's the case that something exists. Therefore, it's not the case that nothing exists. Ergo, God exists as the Creator. Deductively sound. Now, why anybody would. Would buy the argument, why anybody would be persuaded by that, when in fact it begs the question. The first premise assumes the conclusion. That's another point altogether. But that there's a deductively sound argument is beyond question. But I continue. Van Till pays no attention to the fallacies embedded in Thomas Aquinas. Isn't that strange? My reading of Dr. Van Till. He seems to be always picking on Thomas Aquinas. But the argument he defends is one that no one has ever yet written. I want you to hear that sentence again. The argument he defends is one that no one has ever yet written. But. But how does he know that it's possible to formulate this ideal argument? What is the argument he defends? He says he insists on formulating it correctly. For many years, some of Van Till's contemporaries have been challenging him to produce this reformulation he insists upon. He has not done so since Van Till and Boswell, in the passage cited, are engaged in recommending a method of preaching the gospel to unbelievers. It is doubly unfortunate that Van Til cannot justify his position, for unbelievers cannot be expected to be impressed with an argument that the evangelist himself is unable to present to them. Now, what's very sad about these words is that if they were the case, they would be very telling. If it were the case that nobody can give us what the argument is and somebody just claiming an abstract. Well, in some ideal realm there must be an argument for God's existence is objectively valid, well, that would be a hopeless situation. But as it turns out, to create that kind of a straw man and knock it down is really not worthy of anybody who studied philosophy. Dr. Clark shouldn't have to do that. Dr. Clark has done that, though, for you see, I'm going to give you just a few illustrations. Let's take the Defense of the Face, which I remind you was published in 1955. Oh, that reminds me. There's another note here on the tape. On the tape that Dr. Clark has about Dr. Van Til. He makes a similar remark. He says. Dr. Van Til says there's an absolutely certain proof of God's existence. For 40 years, Van Till has not provided this to me. For 40 years, Dr. Van Till has been unable to do this. Which would date back, I would say, probably to 1930, 31. In that range. In 1955, however, Dr. Van Till published a book which was in large measure a compilation of many of the syllabi. And he says, for instance, our argument as over against this would be that the existence of the God of Christian theism. And the conception of his counsel as controlling all things in the universe. Is the only presupposition which can account for the uniformity of nature which the scientist needs. I don't know about you, but that's a rather clear statement of the argument, I think. But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God Is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world. We cannot prove the existence of beams underneath the floor. If by proof we mean that they must be ascertainable in the way that we can see the chairs and tables of the room. You go into a room, you can directly see the chairs and the table. But you can't prove that there are beams underneath the floor in that way. But Dr. Van Hill says the very idea of a floor as the support of tables and chairs. Requires the idea of beams that are underneath. But there would be no floor if no beams were underneath. Thus, there is absolutely certain proof for the existence of God in the truth of Christian theism. Even non Christians presuppose its truth while they verbally reject it. They need to presuppose the truth of Christian theism in order to account for their own accomplishments. That's page 120 on page 396. And I remind you that in this series I'm using the first edition of the Defense of the Faith on page 396. That therefore the claim must be made that Christianity alone is reasonable for men to hold. And it is utterly reasonable. It is wholly irrational to hold to any other position than that of Christianity. Christianity alone does not crucify reason itself. Without it, reason would operate in a total vacuum. And now listen. The argument for Christianity must therefore be that of presupposition. With Augustine, it must be maintained that God's revelation is the sun from which all other light derives. The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity which Dr. Clark says has never, ever been stated in 40 years of Dr. Van Kill's writing. The best, the only, the absolutely certain proof of the truth of Christianity is that unless its truth be presupposed, there is no proof of anything. Christianity is proved as being the very foundation of the idea of proof itself. You'll remember from my previous lectures that that's what we call a transcendental argument. And Dr. Van Til has stated it and stated it very clearly that the proof of Christianity. Remember, I think I told you to memorize this, didn't I? It would be on tonight's quiz that the proof that the Christian God exists is that without him you can't prove anything at all. And so the argument has been stated. But it's not a deductive argument. Please notice that that is what Dr. Clark is looking for. And that's why he says, tell me the premises. Because the transcendental argumentation doesn't proceed in terms of premises. It proceeds by a comparison of worldviews and asking after the preconditions of knowledge. It would be sophomoric for somebody to suggest that Immanuel Kant never presented an argument for his position because his argumentation was transcendental. You don't read in Kant syllogism because Kant was doing something far more important than syllogism. He was, as he thought, laying down the preconditions for the use of syllogism. And this Also is what Dr. Van Till is doing. Although I think Kant did it terribly. And Dr. Van Till has done it right now in the Introduction to Systematic Theology from 1937, the first edition. It's gone through a number of them on pages 102 and 103. Dr. Van Till has this to the better theologians have sensed something of the fact that all the theistic arguments should really be taken together and reduced to the one argument of the possibility of human predication. Intelligent predication about anything with respect to nature or with respect to man were impossible unless God existed as the ultimate reference point of it all. He goes on to discuss how the cosmological and teleological and ontological arguments relate to that one transcendental argument which is at the heart of the thrust of all theistic proof. And I'm not going to take any more Time. Because I hope by now I have. I've made the point that again, Dr. Clark has sadly misinterpreted Dr. Van Til. And has not really done a good job of reading his writings. Now, my own personal conviction, and it's only speculation, I have no way of knowing this. My own conviction is that Dr. Clark's eyes have gone over those sentences, but they haven't registered. And I want to suggest that there's a reason for that. Again, there is something more to it than just an academic debate between Dr. Van Till and Dr. Clark. But whether that's right or wrong, the fact of the matter is the claims he has made cannot be supported. They're not true. Okay, the one argument that the unregenerate man is totally ignorant on Van Till system shown to be wrong. The second that Dr. Van Till has never stated what the theistic proof would be is wrong. And now Dr. Dr. Clark gets to what I think is the heart of the disagreement between them. When he says indubitably. Van Til has said that the natural man actually has true knowledge. For a man who stresses coherence in his writing. It's interesting that he would have that sentence after the other one that I quoted. It is also indubitable that Van Till is denied a common area of knowledge. Van Till has contradicted himself and forgotten his previous remarks. Do I have to say anything more? Who has forgotten their previous remarks? No, Dr. Van Till hasn't contradicted himself. Dr. Van Till has said the unbeliever knows in one sense and doesn't know in another sense. Now if Dr. Clark disputes that and it's his course, it's his politically free. It's his freedom to do that in our society to dispute that. And it is of course his obligation as a responsible scholar to argue for his disputed point. That's fine, but he doesn't. He says rather Van Til just straight out contradicts himself. But you can read Van Til and he says quite clearly that the unbeliever knows in one sense, doesn't know in another. And in fact in certain passages almost painfully says this is a very difficult point. It's hard to give an account of this. But you see, the very fact that he says that indicates that he too knows that. But you see, the very fact that he says that indicates that he too knows that. It might be taken as a contradiction if he didn't say in one sense and another. And it's hard to specify those senses. Okay, now we come to the heart of the matter. After that third one, Dr. Clark says in the text of a complaint. And those who aren't up on their Presbyterian modern history would say, text of what complaint? Well, as it turns out, the text of a complaint that was written by certain individuals in this area, most of whom connected with Westminster Seminary. A complaint written against the ordination and the procedure by which the ordination of Dr. Clark came about in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in 1944. This is not an ad hominem argument, friends. This is an attempt to explain something to you. There's bad blood between these two men, rightly or wrongly. But you better understand that when you start looking at the writings of a man who is fairly competent as a scholar like Dr. Clark, and you see him making these obvious mistakes and interpreting his opponent, I suggest that we are motivated to look for another reason than that he just doesn't read or that he doesn't have the ability to understand. Now, I think that there is some bad feeling here, if you will. There is emotion that is blocking his ability to be fair to his opponent. And so now we come to it in the text of the complaint. And now this is being discussed in a book edited by Carl Henry on contemporary evangelical perspective. That is the evangelical world now as its badge sets out before the world. Its understanding of revelation, its understanding of apologetics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And somehow Dr. Clark felt that it was appropriate to err before the world. His disagreement with Dr. Van Till. When it came to the text of the complaint. That would not ordinarily have been thought to be appropriate. I want to suggest, if it weren't for the fact that there is some really bad feeling here. I think that's sad. And you may think, well, this hardly is academic to talk about these things. But you see my understanding of academics as it is, that if you want to resolve this, you better do some personal work as well as some work on the chalkboard. He says in the text of the complaint. Van Till denies true knowledge to the unregenerate. We've already seen that that's not the case. And further implies that no human being can have knowledge. You see, it's not just that the unregenerate don't know anything. Dr. Clark says, horrors. It's worse. According to Van Till, nobody can know anything. Why, and I quote, there is a qualitative difference between the contents of the knowledge of God and. And the contents of the knowledge possible to man. This is what is claimed in the text of the complaint. And Dr. Clark says this is not a difference in Psychological procedure for God, it's admitted, knows intuitively, man knows discursively, and yet it is said that there is a qualitative difference beyond that. And now we go to Bibliotheca sacrament, April of 1957, the same year the other article appeared in the article the Bible as Truth. He repeats in this article that Dr. Van Til, because of his view of the noetic effects of sin, holds that the unregenerate can't understand the meaning of any sentence in the Bible whatsoever, which is not true. We've talked about this and he goes on to discuss at great length Dr. Van Till's doctrine of analogy. And he claims that in terms of that doctrine of analogy, where there is not any point of similarity or identity between the contents of God's knowledge and man's knowledge, that man only knows analogies. And it turns out, according to vanthil's claims, there is no point of univocity in those analogies and consequently no point of identity. And at no point does man know anything truly about God. And I quote, if God has the truth, and if man has only an analogy, it follows that he does not have the truth. An analogy of the truth is not the truth. And even if man's knowledge is not called an analogy of the truth, but an analogical truth, the situation is no better. And analogical truth, except it contain a univocal point of coincident meaning, simply is not the truth at all. In particular, and the most crushing reply of all, if the human mind were limited to analogical truths, it could never know the univocal truth that was limited to analogy. This theory, whether found in Aquinas Bruner or Van Till, is unrelieved skepticism. According to Dr. Clark, Dr. Van Till has actually embraced neo orthodoxy in saying these things. Now in the tape that I have mentioned to you, John Frame and Cornelius Van Till, the Gordon Conwell Lectures on Apologetics. This is what Dr. Clark focuses on, Dr. Van Till's view of analogical reasoning, which he recognizes means reinterpreting God's thoughts after him, that man reinterprets God's thoughts after God's own creative thoughts. And now Dr. Clark asks this question. How do we know that our reinterpretation of God's thoughts is correct? According to Dr. Van Til, God's knowledge and man's do not coincide at any single point. So there cannot be identity of content in any sense, according to Dr. Clark. Now, before I answer this, I want to say that it is true that Dr. Van Sill uses the language of analogy in his writings in a way which is not the ordinary or customary way you would find it, for instance, in popular thomistic writers, the 20th century. Anyway, when they speak of analogical knowledge and knowledge of analogy and that sort of thing, they mean something which I think Dr. Clark would rightly object to. But interestingly enough, in the writings of Dr. Van Til, he has objected to it as well. And so with a little bit of extra effort, it would be possible for somebody to read Van Til and recognize that he's not being Thomistic. And he is certainly not proposing a theory of theological language here. He is not suggesting that the way we know God is in terms of analogies, I.e. language expressed in analogy. He is not speaking about the language by which we know God. And he's not taking up a tonistic approach either. And so what is going on here in the first place, I want you to notice. I think this is best seen in this remark on the tape, although you can see it elsewhere in the writings of Clark, too. He says, according to Van Til, God's knowledge and man's knowledge do not coincide in any single point. Their knowledge does not coincide at any single point. And therefore there cannot be identity of content in any sense, because they don't coincide at any single point. But you see, there's a real confusion here. There's an equivocation. Sorry, but in this discussion of equivocation and university and analogy, Dr. Clark is guilty of equivocation. For, you see, when we say that man's knowledge and God's knowledge don't coincide at any single point, what we're saying is in the domain of knowledge at any single point, there isn't this coincidence that isn't to say that the word content or identity of content as a phrase does not have a sense that might be true for God and man having identity of content. You see, Dr. Clark is moving from the fact that Dr. Van Till is applying his doctrine of analogy to every point in the field of knowledge. He moves from that to saying there is no sense to the expression identity of content. Where Dr. Van Till would say that God and man have an identity. But as we've been doing so far tonight, quoting from Van Till, as a matter of fact, he says there is identity of content between God and man. And I quote from the Introduction to Systematic Theology now at page 164, much more could be said. But, you know, I'm not doing a lengthy dissertation on any of these men. So I'm trying to keep this somewhat limited. But this is I think a very clear expression of the point man. Tilt. I'm coming into the middle of the discussion. It is only at these two points we take them together. The fact that man knows something about everything, including the very essence of God, and on the other hand, that he does not know anything exhaustively. That the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God can be seen for what it is in the first place. It is possible in this way to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at every point. It's really amazing, isn't it? The very thing Dr. Clark says Van Hill cannot say. He says, and I want to remind you, at least in this edition, and I haven't checked all of them. The word every is underlined, accentuated. It is possible in this way to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at every point. In the sense that always and everywhere man confronts that which is already fully known or interpreted by God. The point of reference cannot but be the same for man as for God. What is the point of reference for God's knowing his own mind? What is the point of reference for man's knowing God's mind? And so for both of them, at every point they have the same point of reference. There is no fact that man meets in any of his investigation where the face of God does not confront him. On the other hand, in this way it is possible to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at no point. In the sense that in his awareness of meaning of anything, in his mental grasp or understanding of anything, man is at each point dependent upon a prior act of unchangeable understanding and revelation on the part of God. The form of the revelation of God to man must come to man in accordance with his creaturely limitations. God's thought with respect to anything is a unit, yet it pertains to a multiplicity of objects. But man can think of that unit as involving a number of items only in the form of succession. So Scripture speaks of God as though he were thinking his thoughts step by step. All revelation is anthropomorphic. When God reveals himself to man, he reveals something of the fullness of his being in God's mind. Any bit of information that he gives to man is set in the fullness of his one supreme act of self affirmation. We could go on, but I think I've read enough to at least indicate to you that according to Dr. Van Till's view of analogical reasoning, man's mind, man's knowledge I'm going to make sure I say this right. Man's knowledge coincides with God's knowledge at every point. And that in another sense, man's knowledge and God's knowledge coincide at no point. Okay? So it obviously is going to require some careful reading. I've already indicated to you there may be an unusual use of vocabulary here. But it is not by any means so obscure that the diligent student cannot understand it correctly. Let's stop and ask ourselves. Let's just be very simplistic about this. What is an analogy? Analogy draws the comparison between two different things. In any analogy, there is going to be something which is alike and something which is different. If everything is alike, then you have identity. If everything is different, then you don't have any analogy. So an analogy means in some ways it's alike. In some ways it's different. What Dr. Van Till says is that man reasons analogously to God. And at this point, remember, very importantly that Dr. Van Till does not say that what we know of God is an analogy. What he says is that we know God analogously. We know we reason in an analogous fashion. But that what we know is not an analogy. What we know is God, the living and true God. All right? Now, in an analogy, there are points of likeness and points of dissimilarity. The way in which man knows, the way in which man reasons and understands then is going to be in some ways like God. And in some ways, unlike God. That's not at all hard to understand. And so there is an analogous way of reasoning. Now, as it turns out, in the knowing situation, you can think of at least. Well, I'm going to simplify this. Because I know that you here are tired of that complicated epistemological clock from last night. But in any knowing transaction, there's going to be a subject of knowledge. But that doesn't mean the subject is strawberries. Let's talk about strawberries. What do you know about strawberries? The subject of knowledge means the knower, me or you or God, the one who knows. Okay? There's the subject of knowledge. There's the object of knowledge. That's the strawberries, okay? What we know as the strawberries, the subject of knowledge, the object of knowledge, the event of knowing. This is another problem which, if we are going to be fair to Dr. Van Til and fair to Dr. Clark or anybody else. That we as Christians are going to keep the ninth commandment about when we do our reasoning. We just have to realize that the English language is subject to this Kind of ambiguity that sometimes by analogical knowledge, we mean analogical knowing. The event of knowing. There is that, and then. Okay, so there's three things going on here. A subject, an object. The event of knowing that takes place between them. And then you can look at the whole ball of wax, if you will. So I'm going to bracket this. The entire transaction. All right, so there's four things. Subject, object, the event between them. The knowing event, if you will. And then there's the entire situation. Which means the way in which all these things are related to each other. And Dr. Van Till says that when God knows something and man knows something, man knows. Analogously, there are points of identity and points of difference. Okay. Would the point of identity be the object of knowledge? Yeah, when God knows the strawberries. What he knows is what I know. Of course, that's really not put in the right order. What I know is what he knows. I think his plots after him. But the point is, what I know is identical with what God knows. The strawberries. The object is the same. Now, let's ask, is there identity in terms of the subject of knowledge? Am I the same as God? Rhetorical question in evangelical circles, right? Obviously, there's no identity there. My mind is not God's mind. Romans 11. Right. That's the whole point. God is beyond me. I can't even be his counselor. Much less claim to have a part of his mind. Mind. So the subject is different, the object is the same. Now, how about the knowing itself? Now, everybody in the dispute seems to have been willing to grant. That the knowing was different. God knows, as Dr. Clark liked to put it. In an eternal intuition, man knows discursively. What God knows is everything there is to know. In the flash of that moment of eternal intuition, if you will. What man knows is not only discursive, but also limited. He never knows the whole story at the same time. So the event of knowing is clearly different. Now, all I'm going to ask you tonight at this point is. Is it not at least reasonable to say that there's something. That there's analogous reasoning going on here? Points of identity, points of difference. And I, for one, though I may not have used the language of analogy. If I were writing in the 1930s in this way. I, for one, don't see why it's not possible to understand this correctly. But now let's go on to the heart of the matter. According to the complaint. And I want to remind you that Dr. Van Till did not author the complaint. He signed it. Just like witherspoon signed the Declaration of Independence. That doesn't mean that he authored everything in the Declaration of Independence. The complaint against the ordination of Dr. Clark was authored by somebody else. The thrust and motif, if you will, the underlying force of that complaint, Dr. Van Till surely agreed with. But when Dr. Clark complains against the precise wording of one sentence in that complaint, he's not necessarily arguing with Dr. Van Till. And even if he were, even if Dr. Van Till is the one who penned that sentence, what do we do as Christian scholars when we find that somebody has not expressed himself in the way that really gets at what we know he's trying to say? Don't we usually say what you're trying to say? Is this right? We don't read it in the worst possible light. We read it in the best possible light, and then when it's wrong, we criticize it. And so I'm not really happy with the way this whole debate is going on. It doesn't seem to me one charitable, two true, and three, profitable. But here's the point. The bone and contention. According to the complainants, Dr. Clark's view of the incomprehensibility of God is quantitative in the sense that God is incomprehensible because he knows more than man. Man will never know everything as God knows. And it's quantitative in the sense that this event, this method of knowing, this mode of knowing is different, but that there is not a qualitative difference between the knowing of God and the knowing of man. And those who were adamant against the ordination of Dr. Clark said there must be a recognition, a more a clear recognition of taking seriously, if you will, of the qualitative difference between God's knowing and man's knowing? Now, is there a qualitative difference between man's knowing and God's knowing beyond the mode by which they know and the quantity of what they know? And again, I, I, I feel badly about this because I think it should be obvious that the answer is yes. Because who is it that knows the strawberries here? Well, it's the one who created the strawberries. It's the one who providentially makes them function in history the way they function in history. It gives them their qualities and makes them uniform in their nourishing effect. And everything else you can say about strawberries, it's the Creator who knows them here. And when the Lord God, the Creator, knows, remember that his knowing is creative knowing. When I know the strawberries, they don't come into existence. But God can say, let it be God knowledge is creative. Mine is never creative knowledge. Secondly, God's knowledge is always criteriological. When God knows something, what he knows is the standard of truth. The reason you can never challenge God's word about something is because what he knows is the standard. That's what makes things true. But when I know something, it is never the standard for knowing. God's knowledge is criteriological. It is creative. God's knowledge is beyond challenge. My knowledge is never beyond challenge. You see, I know as a creature and therefore I know in humility. God knows as the Lord God the Creator, and therefore he knows in a way that is beyond challenge. His knowledge is powerful. It can create strawberries. My knowledge isn't. It can only appreciate strawberries. And so there is a qualitative difference. And now let's look at this whole brackening thing. Fourthly, the whole knowing transaction here, is that the same for God and for man? Well, obviously it's not the way in which the subject knows the object. This whole situation here is not the same for God as it is for man. Dr. Van Til is fond of this illustration and I've learned to be fond of it and so I'm going to use it. You'll forgive me for plagiarizing him. I guess it's inevitable that that will happen. Dr. Van Til used to say when I want to know how many pairs of socks I have in my drawer, how many I have to go look. Okay, I'm always coming to knowledge. I'm always learning what I know. I'm always, you see, seeking out to find out whether there are three, four or ten pair of socks in the drawer. But God never goes looking to find out about things. Although anthropomorphically, I realize you can give me passages in Scripture where he comes down to search out Sodom, so forth. But God, you see, his knowledge is not this kind of transaction. Why? Why isn't it? Because it so happens that the only reason that the creature as a subject in the knowing transaction can know the object at all is because God by his creative act has pre interpreted the object and has made the creature the subject the way he is. God, you see, makes this whole situation possible because he has pre interpreted everything. Now if you don't believe that God has pre interpreted the entire universe, then what you have in the end is a phenomenological problem. You have the problem of Kant. Okay, what is it out there? What is the thing in itself that I know? Well, it's just some kind of a buzzing confusion. Now as in the aesthetic forms of space and time. Empirically, as this buzzing confusion comes to me, my mind, having categories of interpretation and ordering, imposes upon that a grid. What is disordered, I put in order, I make cause, effect, relationship in my understanding. Because my mind imposes that on the world out there. But the Christian is not forced to say that sort of thing. What the Christian says is that he comes to a situation that is not made, interpreted, is not made to be formed according to a certain order, but rather has already been made in this way by the creative act of God. And it's because God knows everything. It's because the one and the many, you see, are brought together in the mind of God. That when I go to the many and try to understand it so that there's this oneness between my mind and the world out there that I'm reinterpreting what God has already done. And so this fourth situation, the whole knowing transaction, is different between God and man. I go to the drawer to look for the socks, to count them. God never has to do that sort of thing where you see, God is the one who makes the world knowable and allows my mind to interpret things properly because he has pre interpreted everything. And so there is a qualitative difference between the knowing of God and the knowing of man. And I think that can be called reasoning. Analogously, I remind you, Dr. Van Til does not say that what man knows is an analogy of God, but that when God knows man, he knows him analogously. And so on, the four major criticisms that Dr. Clark has given from Dr. Van Till. I find in the first three cases that there is really inexcusable misinterpretation of what Van Till is saying. And in the fourth one, I think I would have to agree with the complainant. Maybe the complaint could have been written clearly, a little more clearly. But the fact of the matter is that Dr. Clark has a deficient understanding of the incomprehensibility of God. He does not properly respect the creature creator distinction when it comes to knowing. After all, according to Dr. Clark, according to Dr. Clark, God and man, their minds overlap. And that is the language he uses. Their minds overlap when it comes to the laws of logic. And yet to know anything, you must know everything. According to the idealist epistemology that lies behind much of what Dr. Clark says, knowing is knowing. A system where everything is deductively related to everything else. And so if God's mind and man's mind overlap when it comes to the laws of logic and you can only know those things if you know the whole system. And I wouldn't for a moment accuse Dr. Clark of actually believing this. But the implication of saying those things is that God's mind and man's mind overlap completely because they have the whole system in common. And at that point, we clearly have not guarded the incomprehensibility of God, either quantitatively or qualitatively. So let's take a five minute break and when we come back, I'll try to turn the tables and start criticizing Dr. Clark.

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