Gordon Clark: ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑ in Plotinus (Philosophical Essays in Honor of Edgar A. Singer, Jr.)

1942. ΦΑΝΤΑΣΙΑ in Plotinus. In Philosophical Essays in Honor of Edgar A. Singer, Jr. F.P. Clarke and M.L. Nahm, eds. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

ΦANTAIA in Plotinus1

The high metaphysical topics of the One, the Divine Mind, and the Soul; the perennially interesting religious problem of mysticism; and such broad subjects as the origin of evil or the nature of beauty are those which, naturally, have received the greatest attention in the study of Plotinus. The value of a man’s thought, however, can often, and often better, be measured by his application of the general principles to questions of detail. Here is undertaken an examination of the detail, imagination.

The first section of this article is an Introduction, consisting of a brief historical paragraph and a survey of Plotinus' usage; the second is an annotated translation of the most important chapters; and the third is an index.

Because of the paucity of references and the lack of developed theory, Plato can hardly be considered to have inaugurated the study of imagination or representation. In the Sophist 263D-264B he discusses thought, opinion, and representation. After practically identifying the first two, he describes representation as the condition of thinking when sensation is its cause. Representation, therefore, is a mixture of sensation and opinion.2 So far as the word itself is concerned, Plato does not go far beyond colloquial usage.

Aristotle takes pains to indicate that with him imagination will have a new meaning; and this is natural because, when Platonic omniscience is replaced by Aristotelian abstraction, representation in the form of imagination becomes technically important. Freudenthal has admirably studied the Aristotelian theory. But it is to be noted that even in Aristotle the word has also the wider uses of sense presentation and of thoughts of intellectual objects.3

The materialism and the empiricism of the Stoics obviously requires a strict interpretation of representation, seeing that one type, the comprehensive, is the criterion of truth. Yet not all representations are sensible and come through a sense organ; some are rational, as for example, the representations of incorporeals.4. In fact a proposition may be called a representation. Thus we see that the history of the word before the time of Plotinus does not force a limitation of its significance either to memory-image, since it may occur during sensation, or to any image strictly speaking, since there are representations of non-sensible objects. 

When on comes to study Plotinus, who, by the way, does not discuss the subject separately but is involved in it mainly because of the discussion of memory, not only does colloquial usage produce a range of meaning not easily gathered into a single formula, but, further, Plotinus' metaphysics prevents the drawing of any hard and fast line between imagination and the activities above and below it. Unlike Aristotle with his clean-cut distinction, Plotinus merges each faculty with the next; and while the notion of faculty is frequently found, and while there is an apparent tendency to hypostatize each function into a separate little spirit, faculty psychology is perhaps further removed from his system than from than of Aristotle. In fact, it seems that Plotinus had to defend, against the questioning of the more traditional Academicians, his allegiance to the Plato who so sharply separated sensation from reason. But, however he may have satisfied the Platonists, the levels of consciousness are in reality more like the continuity of an inclined plane than the discrete steps which Aristotle's theory suggests.

To develop the subject a survey will be made of the various meanings which Plotinus gives to this word, imagination.

False notions, particularly the false notion that bodily beauty and musical ability contribute to happiness, are representations of imaginations.5 Again, some passions are the result of opinions, as when the opinion that death is imminent causes on to be fearful. "Now imagination takes place in the soul, both the former which we call opinion, and also [the latter], its derivative [fear] which is no longer an opinion but something like a vague opinion or uncritical representation occurring in the lower part of the soul."6 Not only are sense objects, such as the Sun and the stars, objects of representations or imagination, but even the Good itself is capable of being imagined or represented.7

Thus, it is seen that with respect to merely literary usage the range of objects falling under the power of representation is very wide and cannot be restricted to sense image or memory image, but includes emotions, universals, and judgments.

There is in the Enneads no formal definition of imagination, but one passage stands out as more explicit than the others, and besides leads on to other considerations which advance the study. In discussing the freedom from evil of the soul which is not in contact with something inferior to her station, the question, not only of desire, fear, and anger, but of representation also arises. Representation or imagination is then denied to the pure soul on the ground that "imagination is an impact from an irrational, external object, and [the soul] received the impact when it is not indivisible."8

This phraseology, apart from the whole Plotinic background, may seem to resemble and to be based upon Stoic materialism. But Plotinus frequently enough guards against not only Stoic materialism, but also the materialism or behavioristic traces in Aristotle. In addition to the general refutation of these two schools in IV, vii, a more particularized account occurs in III, vi, 1-3. Toward the end of a discussion defending the impassibility of the soul, he asserts that while the soul causes fear, shame, and blushes, it is the body and not the soul which experiences these effects. Then, in a summary which both Heinemann and Brehier believe that Porphyry added, but which in any event is thoroughly Plotinic, imagination is explicitly mentioned. "Imaginations are not like imprints [of seals] in wax."9 The notion of an imprint is again rejected in IV, vi, 1. Sensations, he says here, are not imprints, and consequently memory cannot depend on the conservation of imprints. The remainder of the passage makes the matter perfectly clear. In seeing we grasp an object at a distance. Whatever impression there may be occurs, not in our soul, but at the place in which the object seen is.10 If there were an image in the soul, how could the soul assign a distance to the object? It could not see as separated from itself what actually was in it. Again, the soul recognizes the dimensions of the object seen; but if seeing took place by means of imprints in the soul, how could the extent of a very large object be recognized? And there is the further objection, the most fundamental of all, because it is essential to a realistic epistemology: If we can see only imprints or images, then we do not see the objects themselves.

Representation of imagination, therefore, must not be regarded as a dead impression with depressions and elevations as in wax; nor even as a qualitative change in the organ; but as an activity of the soul in grasping the object.

Whatever is said against materialism or behaviorism, when Plotinus is speaking of sensation, applies with even greater force to imagination, for imagination is on a spiritually higher level than sensation.11 And Plotinus clearly indicates that in sensation one is dealing with an activity of the soul and not with a necessary result of the law of inertia by which impressions are preserved in material stuff. In III, vi, 1, 1, sensations is called an ἐνἐϱγἐἰὰ as opposed to πἀθος, and both here and in IV, vi, 2 sense is said to pronounce judgment. In IV, vi, 3, 15-16, the soul illumines sense objects, which perhaps is an echo of the ancient notion that the eye of the mind resembles a lamp or searchlight. And again, VI, vii, 7 asserts that sense objects are images of intelligible objects and literal sensation is more obscure than the perception of the intelligibles; in fact sensations are faint intellections, and intellections are clear sensations.

Although Plotinus is thus careful to refute materialism and behaviorism, he is by no means blind to the physical conditions, causes, and accompaniments. Discussing freedom and volition,12 Plotinus remarks on the instability of right self-determination apart from right reason and sound knowledge. With nothing by a correct opinion one's freedom would be precarious, for chance and imagination are not dependable guides to duty.

And since imagination is not in our power, how can we class as free agents those who act under its influence? For by imagination we mean imagination strictly speaking, viz., that type excited by bodily passions. For lack of food and drink produces imaginations...

Plotinus continues in this chapter to insist that imagination depends on the condition of the bodily organs.

Frequently he is not so physiological as Aristotle, and speaks only of a disturbance or shattering of a mirror, rendering images impossible. Nothing too scientifically exact is found in IV, iv, 17, 12ff. Something a trifle more explicit is given in IV, iv, 20. This latter chapter argues that desire, at least bodily desires, originates in the living body - of course not in inanimate things - when the body requires for its self-preservation some contrary state. This desire produces a more perfect one in that "nature" which, being the lowest extremity of soul, has been the animating cause of the living body. Next, sensation experiences a representation after which the soul decides to satisfy or deny the desire of the body.

A final illustration of the dependence of imagination on bodily conditions may be taken from IV, iv, 28. A certain bodily organization inclines one to anger; sick people are more irritable than the healthy. Following upon such emotions we have sensation and representation, and by taking cognizance of these the soul decides upon the proper reaction. Not only does the line of causation proceed from below to the soul; the reverse also is possible. The soul, using reflection and perceiving some evil, stirs to anger the hitherto quiet body.13

Not too far removed from the bodily conditions of imagination, and occurring with sufficient frequency to justify separate mention, emotion is named as a result of imagination. The imagination of imminent death causes dear.14 Imagination gives to those who have that faculty the knowledge of what they are suffering.15 Emotion and imagination, as antithetical to true freedom, are mentioned together.16

Consequently, from Plotinus' ethical and mystical standpoint, imagination involves pollution and necessitates purification. To rise to the higher world one must rid the soul of the representations of things here below.17 The end of IV, iii, 31 with chapter 32 does not specify the complete eradication of all earthly experience because they describe a process not yet completed; but the following chapter, IV, iv, 1, which Brehier edits so that it begins in the middle of a sentence - so close is the connection with the preceding - entirely erases the memory of earthly events. To the same effect is the consistent placing of intellection on a higher level. "Intellection is superior to imagination, for imagination stands between the [physical] imprints of nature and intellection."18 Thus, imagination is not the lowest stage in the cosmic hierarchy; not the lowest even among the conscious activities of the soul; nor is it the highest.

So far most of the references cited occur in passages where Plotinus mentions the subject more or less incidentally. The theory itself, as it relates imagination to sensation, to intellection, but chiefly to memory, can best be explained by analyzing the few short chapters which bear directly and intentionally on the subject. This will involve a translation, for various reasons; first, Plotinus has written so explicitly that he ought to be reproduced in full; second, the existing translations are not quite satisfactory, as comparisons will show; and finally - a fact which will prevent this new translation also from being satisfactory - the difficulties of Plotinus' language19 both force a translation to assume the role of an interpretation and render it expedient that an interpretation approximate a translation.

Translation of IV, III, 23.

Each part of the body illumined and animated by the soul participates in the soul in its own peculiar manner. And according to the fitness of the organ for its work the soul gives it a power suited to that work. Thus [5] the power in the eyes is that of sight; the power in the hearing is in the ears; of tasting in the tongue; of smelling in the nose; and the power of touching is present everywhere, for with reference to this type of perception the whole body is present to the soul as an organ.20

Since the organs of touch [10] are in the primary nerves, which also have the power of moving the living being and from which this power distributes itself; and since the nerves have their origin in the brain; that is where [medical men] place the origin of sensation, desire, and in general all functions of life; on the assumption that where the [15] organs take their rise, there is to be situated that which uses them. But if would be better to say that the origin of the activity of the power is there; for it is at the point at which the organ begins to be in motion, that the power of the operator, that power which is suited to the tool, must, so to speak, exert its force; or rather, not the power, for the power [20] is everywhere; but the origin of the activity is there where one finds the origin of the instrument.

Accordingly, the powers of sensation and appetition, since the soul is a sensitive and imaginative21 nature, have reason above them, just as the soul by its lower part neighbors on that which it is above.22 Thus the ancients placed the soul [25] in the uppermost part of every living being, in the head, as being not in the brain but in that principle of sensation by which reason23 is seated in the brain. Something must be assigned to the body;24 but also something that has no community with body whatsoever must participate in that [30] which is a form of soul, of soul capable of accepting the perceptions which come from the reason.25

[Such must be the relative positions of these factors] because the faculty of sensation is a sort of judge, the faculty of imagination is quasi-intellectual, and appetition and desire follow upon imagination and reason. Accordingly, discursive reason is not in the brain as in a place, but because what is there participates in it. And the meaning of [35] localization with respect to the faculty of sensation has been explained.26 

Translation of IV, III, 29

Are we then to refer memory to the faculty of sensation so that the faculty of memory and the faculty of sensation will be the same. But if the shade27 remembers also, as was said, the faculty of sensation will be double, or if the faculty of sensation is not the [5] faculty of memory, but is another faculty, then that which remembers will be double. Again, if the faculty of sensation also deals with things learned, it will be the faculty of concepts too.28 Certainly these two must be different. Shall we then assume a common faculty of perception and give to it the memory of both [sense objects and concepts]? Not if it is one and [10] the same thing which perceives sensibles and intelligibles, this suggestion might amount to something, but [since this reverts to the notion that concepts could be sensed] if it must be divided into two, there will none the less be two faculties. And if we give both to each of the two souls29 there would then be four.

And in general, why is it necessary to assign memory to that by which we sense, so that both should belong to the same [15] power; and why must one assign the memory of things reasoned about to that by which we reason? Those who reason the best are not the same as those who best remember. Those who benefit equally by sensation do not remember equally well; some have keen senses, but others remember although their sensation is not so sharp.

Now, in the next [20] place, if each of these faculties is distinct, and if the one is to remember the things which sensation has preciously grasped, does it not follow that memory must sense what it is to remember? [Not exactly.[ Rather, nothing will prevent the sense-image's30 being a representation-image to that which will remember it; so that memory and retention belong to the faculty of imagination which is a distinct faculty.31 For [25] sensation culminates in imagination; and when the sensation no longer exists the visual image is present to the faculty of imagination. If, then, the imagination of an absent object is already in this faculty, it is remembering, even32 if it endures but a short time. If it remains a short time, the memory is brief; when the image remains longer, they remember better, since the imagination is then stronger and does not readily change so as to unseat and throw off the memory. Memory, then, belongs to the faculty of imagination, and such are the objects we remember.33

We should explain the difference among memories either by the difference among the powers themselves, or by exercise or the lack of it, or by bodily admixtures [35] inhering or not, which do or do not cause qualitative changes and disorders. But these matters are discussed elsewhere.

Translation of IV, III, 30

But what about [the memory] of reasonings? Does the faculty of imagination deal with these also? If indeed an imagination follows upon every act of thinking, then, perhaps, when such an imagination, like an image of an object of thought, endures, there might be [5] memory of the thing known. But if not, another explanation must be sought. Perhaps that which is received into the faculty of imagination is the verbal formula34 which accompanies the to the faculty of imagination, concept. For the concept is indivisible, and not yet externalized; it remains internal and escapes our notice. But speech, by unfolding it and leading it from the state of a thought exhibits the thought as in a mirror, and thus [10] we have the perception of it, its conservation, and memory. And therefore, since the soul is always thinking, we have perception whenever it arrives at this stage. For thinking is one thing, but perception of the thinking is another; and while we always think, we do not always perceive. This is because the recipient not only receives thoughts from above, but also sensations from below.

Translation of IV, III, 31

But if memory belongs to the faculty of imagination, and both souls are said to remember, there will be two faculties of imagination. When the two are separate such is the case, but when they are the same thing in us how can there be two and in which of them does imagination occur? For if it occurs in both [5] there will always be two imaginations, for it is not true that one of them deals with intellectual objects and the other with sensibles. For such an arrangement would in every case result in there being two persons35 having nothing in common with each other. If, then, in both, what is the difference?36 And how is it we do not perceive the difference? [There are two possibilities.] When the one is in agreement with the other, so that the [10] faculties of imagination are not separate, though the better dominates, there is but one image, with a sort of shadow accompanying in the other [faculty], like a dim light merging into a greater. But when they conflict and discord arises, the lesser becomes perceptible by itself; but we fail to notice that it is in another [15] because also in general we fail to notice the duality of the souls. For the two form a unity in which the one drives the other. The one sees all things and when it leaves [the union with the other soul in the body] it retains some images from the lower stage but dismisses others, just as we remember little of the conversation of our inferior friends after we have changed to others of higher rank [20] whom we keep in mind very well.37

An Index

The student of Plotinus has no aid for his work comparable to Bonitz's Index Aristotelicus, or even to Ast on Plato. Both Creuzer and Brehier provide an index for a few important passages. For example, in addition to an Index des References dan les Notes, and Index des Textes Cites par Plotin, and an Index Analytique des Matieres, Brehier has an Index des Mots Grecs in which he lists six references for oaioaoBa, one for oUioaoeo, five for oUioaoia and one for oaioaooeeuo. The following will give some idea of the possibilities; it is intended to be complete.

φανταζῳ

I, i, 8; ii, 2, 25; vi, 1, 7; 3, 9; 4, 10; viii, 1, 11; 9, 13.

II, v, 4, 12; ix, 9, 63;

III, v, 1, 36; 4, 17; vi, 5, 11; 7, 17; 7, 21; 7, 23; 7, 26; 13, 17; 14, 14; 14, 26; 15, 22; vii, 1, 21; 2, 5; viii, 9, 14;

IV, iv, 3, 7; 13, 15; vi, 2, 24;

V, viii, 4, 23; 5, 22; 9, 33;

VI, iv, 12, 32; v, 9, 15; 9, 23; vi, 3, 33; 3, 38; vii, 15, 27; 15, 30; 29, 27; viii, 3, 14; ix, 3, 29; 6, 14; 10, 15.

φαντασια

I, i, 9, 8; ii, 5, 20; iv, 10, 19-21; 15, 12; viii, 14, 5; 15, 18;

II, ix, 11, 22;

III, i, 7, 14; vi, 3, 30; 4, 19; 4, 21; 4, 45; 4, 46; 5, 10; 5, 26; 15, 12; 5, 16; 18, 33;

IV, iii, 23, 33; 29, 27; 30, 3 (twice); 31, 5; iv, 3, 7; 4, 6; 8, 3; 8, 18; 13, 12 (twice); 13, 13; 13, 14; 17, 9; 17, 12; 20, 17; 28, 41; 28, 48;

V, i, 10, 26; iii, 3, 6; v, 6, 18; vi, 5, 15; viii, 9, 5; 9, 8;

VI iii, 12, 13; vi, 3, 39; 12, 5; 12, 6; viii, 2, 8; 2, 17; 3, 7; 3, 8; 3, 11; 13, 13; 3, 16; 11, 17; 13, 46.

φαντασις

III, vi, 7, 23; 13, 52; 17, 6.

φαντασμα

III, v, 7, 8; vi, 5, 3; 6, 67; 7, 13; 14, 17;

IV, iii, 29, 23; 31, 11;

V, iii, 11, 7; viii, 9, 12; 9, 14;

VI, vi, 17, 10.

φανταστιχος

IV, iii, 23, 22; 23, 32; 29, 23; 29; 31; 30, 2; 30, 7; 30, 10; 31, 1; 31, 2; 31, 10.

1. From Philosophical Essays in Honor of Edgar A. Singer, Jr., F. P. Clarke and M. L. Nahm, editors. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1942 [1969].

2. Compare Timaeus, 52A; Theaetetus 193B, 195D; Philebus 38B-39C.

3. Compare Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, sub voce. Also Hicks, Aristotle De Anima, 460.

4. Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta, II No. 61, 24, 1, 15; and No. 65, 25, 1, 15ff.

5. I, i, 9, 8; I, iv, 15, 12 (The number after the third comma is always the line in Brehier, Plotin Enneades.)

6. III, vi, 4, 18-21.

7. V, viii, 9, 5; VI, viii, 13, 46.

8. I, viii, 15, 18.

9. III, vi, 3, 30.

10. A passage which seems to contradict this is found in I, i, 7, 9-14: "With respect to the soul's power of sensation, it does not have to do with sense objects, but grasps the impressions arising from the sensation in the living being, for these are already intelligibles. External sensation is an imitation of this, but this is in reality more true, for it is an impassive contemplation of forms." The confusion arises because Plotinus has here called this higher activity sensation. Compare below on VI, vii, 7.

11. IV, iii, 29, 22ff; IV, vi, 3, 27ff; IV, iii, 23, 31ff.

12. VI, viii, 3

13. Compare IV, iii, 23, 33.

14. III, vi, 4, 19ff.

15. IV, iv, 13, 14ff.

16. VI, viii, 2, 8ff; VI, viii, 3, 7ff.

17. III, vi, 5; I, viii, 14, 5.

18. IV, iv, 13, 12-13; compare I, i, 2, 28; V, v, 6, 18.

19. Paul Elmer More, Hellenistic Philosophies, 174, says bluntly, "His handwriting was slovenly, his spelling and grammar... faulty... his style so crabbed that the best scholar of his day found it unintelligible and the modern Grecian reads it with agony." His philosophy matches his language: "a meaningless answer to an impossible question raised by a gratuitous hypothesis" (223).

20. Brehier's translation omits the phrase on smelling, and the explanation of the omnipresence of the power of touch.

21. It is to be noted that while, in references from diverse sections, φαντασια includes all forms of representation, when Plotinus comes to the main discussion of the subject, it is imagination more strictly which is considered. Thus he follows Aristotle rather than the Stoics.

22. The general principle by which each power of faculty neighbors on the next higher and next lower is frequent in Plotinus. Brehier translates this particular phrase, "la raison, qui, par sa inferieure, est voisine des parties superieures de ces facultes." But since γειτονουσα is feminine, it must be the soul, or faculties, which neighbors. Mackenna has, "downward, it [the soul] is in contact with an inferior of its own."

23. Brehier makes εχεινος refer to soul. which is impossible; and since αισθητιχῳ is neuter Mackenna is right in referring it to λογος four lines back. 

24. Mackenna has the impossible rendering, "the activity of reason."

25. The something assigned to the body is the work of the organs, including the sensory and motor nerves. The soul itself is the other something, which participates in reason, its Form.

26. The remainder of chapter 23, dealing with the vegetative functions, is omitted.

27. I.e., the shade or ghost of Hercules in Hades, while his spirit at the same time is with the gods.

28. Concepts could then be perceived by sensation.

29. The two souls are either the ghost in Hades and Hercules with the gods, or the soul in the body and the soul detached and purified. The latter pair is more in keeping with the general context. The two which precedes and the four which follows must be faculties, and not memories, as Brehier supposes.

30. αισθημα... φαντασμα.

31. Compare Aristotle De Memoria, 450a22ff. Brehier, Notice in loc., 31, remarks that chapters xxix-xxxii present the character of a scientific research after the fasion of Aristotle's De Memoria, "que Plotin a eu probablement sous les yeux en redigeant ces chapitres." In chapter xxv Plotinus appeals to a definition of memory which is often related elsewhere; and most naturally makes memory deal with the past - hardly an Aristotelian discovery however; and IV, vi obviously involves the Aristotelian treatise; but it cannot be said that Plotinus faithfully follows the Aristotelian theory.

32. Mackenna omits this relatively important clause. A textual problem is involved.

33. Brehier translates: "The memory of sense objects belongs, therefore, to imagination." It is true that so far only sense objects have been mentioned; the emphasis however, is not on sensation, but rather on images. Therefore, the word such refers, not to sense objects, but to images, and the question of the memory of concepts is left open for discussion in the following chapter.

34. The difficulty in this passage centers in the word λογου, which Mackenna translates as Reason Principle. This meaning is frequent in Plotinus; compare above IV iii 23, 31 and 32. The notion is still clearer in the cognate words το λογιζομενον. In I vi 2, i5 and 17, it is a divine reason. In I, iv, 3, 17, it is species and therefore nearly Idea. This latter passage continues by ascending from the Idea of Beauty in nature through the Idea in the soul, particularly the wise soul which the Idea illuminates, on to a still superior λογος, yet which does not descend into things but exists in itself, and is more properly termed νους. In the same vein I, iv, 2, 25-27 and the context shows that above sensation there is something which judges, and this is λογος or νους. Obviously the meaning is reason. But, unfortunately, in the passage to which this note is attached, reason makes no sense, for discursive reason itself can hardly be received into the faculty of representation. Therefore Mackenna found it impossible to translate the γαϱ of line 7. This γαϱ, and the exigencies of Plotinus' system as well, require some result of discursion to be received into the faculty of imagination or representation; and Brehier with a stroke of genius translates the λογου as formule varbale. Whittaker, also, in The Neo-Platonists (2nd ed., 51), very briefly makes the same suggestion. Since there are many passage in which Plotinus uses λογος in the sense of word, definition, or argument, no grammatical reason can oppose Brehier's translation.

It may be a stroke of genius on the part of Plotinus also, for the question of the memory of concepts was one which Aristotle did not fully answer. For Aristotle, memory depends on the preservation of a sensible affection, and not on a concept. Further, the continuance of the affection result, not from the activity of the soul, but from the physical condition of the organ. Summarizing 450a22ff. we find that memory is a function of that part of the soul to which imagination belongs, and all sense object are immediately and properly objects of memory, while concepts are objects of memory per accidens.

It is interesting to note how closely Plotinus follows Aristotle in details while coloring them by a foreign metaphysics and to note also how Plotinus makes more definite some matters left vague by Aristotle. Perhaps the earlier philosopher's theory is sufficient to explain the memory or recollection of the concept horse; no difficulty arises from basis it on the image of a particular member of the species. Plotinus, however, with his Platonic orientation, apparently has in mind more complicated notions. What image could be pointed out as the stimulus to the recollection of the meaning of logarithm?

Modern psychologists, in order to preserve the theory that no thought is possible without images, have not only added auditory, gustatory, etc. to visual images - quite properly - but have also, when the other forms of imagery failed to sustain their conclusion, extended the notion of images to kinaesthesia. The word image, however, in the phrase kinaesthetic image, has lost all its literal meaning, and even a gustatory or olfactory image would be difficult to define. It may have been by reason of such vagueness that Plotinus was not willing to subscribe wholeheartedly to the proposition that every act of thought involves an image.

For Plotinus, there are two sorts of imageless thought. First, faced with the difficulty here outlined, he still holds that there should be something akin to an image - a substitute for an image, by which memory and thinking take place. The faculty of discursive reasoning in the soul judges on the basis of images derived from sense. Compare V, iii, 2, 7ff. and V, iii, 3, 6. Sensation is the necessary meaning of consciousness; compare I, iv, 10, 2. Accordingly, when a concept cannot be imaged, there must be some other method of externalizing it. The reason is given in IV, iii, 30, 7ff. Discursive reasoning, by means of verbal formulae, is, therefore, one type of imageless thought. One may note that for Aristotle images are natural, and the same for all men, while language is conventional.

The second type of imageless thought is more properly called such, and to it the above explanations do not apply. The theory above holds for conscious, discursive reasoning. A few lines below the point at which this footnote began Plotinus says that we always think, though we do not always perceive. Sensation, as stated above, is necessary for consciousness, but since mind and soul are prior to sensation, they may act unconsciously. The body is a sort of mirror to the action of mind and soul, so that in sleep or in insanity when the mirror is to a greater or lesser extent disturbed, there is either no consciousness at all, or a confused consciousness. Compare I, iv, 10. When, on the other hand, the bodily organs are properly disposed, the activity of νους is mirrored and we have sensations and images. But the images are not a necessary condition of the thinking which causes them.

The unconscious activity is more noble than sensation and imagination. A person who is intent on reading will not be conscious that he is reading. The best courage, and the best artistic creativity, are unconscious. Consequently, consciousness and imagination weaken the acts which they accompany.

35. Persons here is the translation of ζῳα. Zeller, Die Philosophie de Griechen (3te Aufl.), III 2, 583, is mistaken. "Es ist aber eine doppeete Einbildungskraft ze unterscheiden, die der niederen und die der hoheren Seele; jene bewahrt die sinnlichen Bilder, diese die Gedanken..."

36. Mackenna paraphrases: "And if both order of image act upon both orders of soul, what difference is there in the souls?" Brehier has it: "Si done la memoire est dan les deux imaginations, en quoi different les deux images?" Perhaps the conditional clause is better given by Mackenna; but that it is Brehier who has correctly understood the question is seen in the fact that Mackenna's question receives no answer. Plotinus explains that we do no notice the duality of the images because we are not aware of the distinction between the souls.

37. Compare III, vi, 5, 26 mentioned above, and I, viii, 14, 5.

Gordon Clark: Plotinus’ Theory of Empirical Responsibility (The New Scholasticism)

1943. Plotinus’ Theory of Empirical Responsibility. The New Scholasticism. Vol. XVII No. 1 Jan.

Plotinus’ Theory of Empirical Responsibility1

In addition to the intrinsic interest in the problem of freedom, determinism, and responsibility, the study of Plotinus' views is stimulated by a clash between two well-known scholars. Thomas Whittaker in The Neo-Platonists (page 76) says, "He is without the least hesitation a determinist"; while Dean Inge in The Philosophy of Plotinus (Volume II, page 185) replies, "It is not correct to say, with Mr. Whittaker, that Plotinus is 'without the least hesitation a determinist.'" A more extensive examination than either of these authors gives may therefore be desirable.

Plotinus organizes his solution to the whole problem on three levels. First there are the arguments applicable to the empirical or phenomenal self. This is the level on which the question is popularly discussed, and it involved chiefly questions of mechanism. In the second place the analysis of the empirical self, reveals, as is always the case with Plotinus, a higher self, and consequently a higher freedom. On this level the chief problem centers around the theory of emanation. Finally one must consider to what extent the freedom discovered on the first and second levels can be predicated of God. In this article only the first phase is discussed.2

The main discussion of freedom on the empirical level is found in Ennead III, tractates i, ii, and iii. The first tractate is virtually a preliminary survey designed to lead up to a statement, in chapter 8, of the conditions necessary to the solution of the problem.

First of all every particular thing subject to generation and every eternal being that does not always have the same activity, such as the soul of man, comes within the sphere of causation. The Epicureans and perhaps some others have attempted to save human freedom by repudiating universal causality. The declination of atoms, however, and capricious spurts of the soul, independent of any preceding condition, must be ruled out from the start. A soul, the victim of such senselessness, could not be said to act voluntarily, for volitional action requires at least an object willed or desired. A theory of free will that denies any pre-existing motive, such as going to the market place to collect a debt, does not in fact retain a will at all. Later the insistence on proximate causation becomes highly significant; at this point it may not be so profound, but it is indispensable, for Plotinus thus sees, what has sometimes escaped the minds of other religious writers, that the emancipation of the soul from ordinary psychological conditions enslaves it to a fate worse than that of the Stoics and destroys both responsibility and religion.

If the inviolability of causation is the first necessary condition for the solution of the problem of the will, the next step is to review the various types of causation. In general these either appeal to a multiplicity of corporeal principles - Democritean atoms or Aristotelian elements - or to a single omnipresent Fate.

Since Plotinus had just written a detailed refutation of materialism (IV, vii), he here merely touches on the chief considerations. 

Given atomic motions only, it would be, according to Plotinus, impossible for a world to arise. To have the orderliness of the world on the disorderly swirl of atoms is an absurdity. Plotinus does not consider as such the mathematical argument and the base of atomism, that in an infinite time all possible combinations of swirling atoms must be realized, and that this world is one of the possible combinations. He apparently regards such an argument as a begging of the question, not because one over infinity is zero so that a bare possibility becomes an impossibility, but because this world is not just a combination of atoms and because no possible arrangement of them can provide a basis for teleology and divination of result in life and mind. If like and mind could by a bare possibility arise from atomic combinations, Plotinus still might argue that the derivation of the corporeal world from mind would be a more elegant and therefore a more reasonable solution of the cosmological problem; but in fact he argues not that atomism is less plausible, but that it is impossible,

Having disposed of materialism and mechanism, Plotinus proceeds to eliminate the theory that a single soul permeated and controls all things. This view requires each particular thing to be regarded as a part of the whole, somewhat as each part of a plant derives its motion from the plant as a whole. Thus the central life of the plant would illustrate the overruling destiny of the world.

Obviously universal causation is recognized here as well as in materialism; and, further, this view is superior to the last by reason of its immaterial basis; and still further, it seems at first glance so similar to the opinion of Plotinus himself that one wonders at its being introduced for refutation. The objections that Plotinus levels against it, however, show that he understands this Stoic thesis to involve a denial of all other causes. The single soul is considered the only and immediate cause of every act, so that nothing can be referred to our own personality.3

And in the same manner [writes Plotinus] if also in the case of the universe it is, both as active and passive, all one; and if it is impossible to trace a causal series among items that are not identical with one another, then it is not true that all things happen by causes, for all things will be one. Consequently, we are not we, nor is any act ours; we ourselves do not thing, and our volitions are the reasoning of another being.4

In chapters five and six, devoted to a refutation of astrology, Plotinus again insists on the necessity of individual realities and causes. To refer all our fortunes to the stars is simply another way of denying that volitions, passions, evils, and initiative are ours. The stars, the weather, the world, all have an effect on us; but individual personality must not be obliterated.

This point is so important that one must also reject the Stoic theory of a single soul, even when modified by the introduction of seminal reasons. Apparently these forces provide for a distinction and concatenation among causes, and the Stoics intend to place some things in our power. Nonetheless the theory is a failure. It is necessitarian because, when all the causes are taken into account, nothing can be otherwise than it is.5 Our impressions and ideas result from antecedent conditions, and our initiative is governed by our impressions. To speak of anything being in our power is on this showing, a mockery. It is of no use to say the impressions and the initiative are ours, for this does not advance us beyond the level of children, of the insane, or even of the inanimate activities of fire. Beyond these, other causes of human action must be discovered. 

It is at this point that Plotinus, as a result of the foregoing critique, sets down four conditions that must be satisfied if a proper view is to be obtained. What explanation is there, he asks, other than the preceding, that will maintain the principle of universal causation,6 preserve sequence and order, place something in our power, and sustain prediction and divination?

At this point it is possible to pass a preliminary judgment on Whittaker and Inge. The particular statements that Inge makes to support his contention that Plotinus is not a determinist are by no means incorrect. But one must seriously consider whether his statements justify his conclusion. The expressions of Plotinus in III, i are less deterministic than those of other sections, as will be point out later, yet even in this tractate, since he has made universal causation a requirement, it seems that he can be absolved from determinism only by identifying determinism with mechanism. If Inge has fixed his attention on the materialistic determinism of the nineteenth century, there is no question of the justice of his conclusion. Whittiker, however, recognizes other forms of determinism, such as psychological and theological determinism. Will a study of the details of later passages absolve Plotinus of the charge of determinism in these other forms? Let it be noted that Ennead III, i is the third tractate Plotinus wrote, while III, ii and iii are the forty-seventh and forty-eighth. Granting that Plotinus at the age of forty is not likely radically to alter his views, and observing that the remainder of III, i gives in brief the view that pervades all the Enneads7, it is nonetheless true that the later tractates treat this topic more consistently, more realistically, or more harshly if you wish. Therefore, whatever of indeterministic tone of implication is found in the early writing must be scrutinized and, if necessary, discounted in the light of later explicit statements.

It is not true, however, that all the later passages give prima facie evidence of a deterministic view. And it seems best to proceed by first collecting and summarizing the indeterministic sentiments without paying attention to the other side of the picture.

Order is primary, disorder secondary. But order does produce disorder. Disorder may result from the fact that things that tend to order are hindered by their own nature or by circumstances (III, ii, 4, 30-33).

One should not blame providence for the evil acts of men. Responsibility rests on the voluntary agent (III, ii, 7, 19-20). This passage is fairly important because the main phrase comes from Plato's Republic, X, 617e. The complete phrase is, "Responsibility rests on the chooser; heaven is guiltless," and it was frequently employed by later Greek writers defending the freedom of the will.8

Providence is not to be considered a force that reduces men to nothing; rather its function is to preserve the nature of each thing. Man has chosen his intermediate position in the universe, and providence by the moral law is leading him upward. Man has the power to act in defiance of the gods; man is a first principle (III, ii, 9).

As in a drama, the words are fixed by the author, but the actor contributes his personality; he has been chosen for his ability and will be promoted for success or will be assigned less important roles in cases of failure (III, ii, 17).

The universal Logos does not generate evils (III, iii, 1, 3).

These passages as summarized apart from their context seem strongly indeterministic. But before final judgment can be made, their contexts and other passages must be examined.

The quotation from Plato, that "responsibility rests on the chooser; heaven is guiltless," is an idea that Plotinus emphasizes. But it is an idea so easily discounted by a critic who sees Plotinus as a determinist that one wonders at the emphasis. The choice in question, on which responsibility here is founded, is not a choice in this empirical world. Plato was talking of souls about to be born choosing their lot for their coming life. And Plotinus returns to this pre-incarnate choice so frequently and so forcibly that it must be taken, not as a pleasant myth to lighten his argument, nor as a device of caution to deceive his readers, but as an integral part of his serious system.9 In addition to the two occurrences of this idea in the list of passages above, it is also found in III, ii, 13, III, iii, 4, 53-54, and, implicitly at least, in all those passage which describe the empirical souls of men as parts of the Logos of World Soul.

Plotinus becomes all too explicit in the detailed justification of evil on the basis of reincarnation. He explains that evil masters in one life becomes slaves in the next; prodigals become paupers; a murderer is reborn to be murdered; and so on (III, ii, 13). Such argument as this supports determinism because it shows that Providence takes care of every detail and leaves nothing to chance.

Against one objection to the appeal to reincarnation Plotinus can easily defend himself. Inge (II, 185) complains that Plotinus "nowhere clears up the difficulty about the original choice of a character which inevitably produces evil actions." The defense is obvious. There never was an original choice; there has never been a first life in which evil lacks justification; every life is a rebirth, and every incarnation depends on the preceding.

There is, however, and objection that Plotinus might have found embarrassing. Aristotle, it will be remembered, argued that there was no first motion: Every motion followed on a previous motion. Yet this fact of an everlasting series is not an explanation of motion. The logical series of steps in a real explanation proceeds in another dimension and arrives at the Unmoved Mover. Similarly evils and their punishments are not explained by an infinite series of evils and punishments in previous lives.

Fortunately Plotinus, though stressing the series of reincarnations, also gives an explanation in technique resembling Aristotle's progress toward the Unmoved Mover. Assuming that the appeal to a previous life is not a subterfuge on Plotinus' part to distract the reader from the basic explanation - any more than Aristotle's theory of endless time and motion detracts from this theology - it is only the emphasis Plotinus lays on reincarnation that causes wonder. If the modern critic must dismiss this argument as useless, why should Plotinus have used it? The answer is no doubt that since Plotinus believer Plato's myth to be sober truth, it becomes one of those items intended to implement the contention that this is the best of all possible worlds. But where Leibniz was ridiculed by Voltaire, Plotinus was favored by Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Proclus. At any rate, the choice before reincarnation does not make Plotinus an indeterminist.

The mention required for the items that show all is for the best may well begin with the present punishments of previous evil lives. The evil master becomes a slave: This is of advantage to him for he is thereby taught a lesson in sound morality. The poverty to which the previous prodigal is born, and as well a robbery (III, ii, 15), teach the victims that wealth is unimportant. Vice and its consequences rouse men from their lethargy and start them thinking (III, ii, 5). And the murderer who is murdered in this life may not now derive profit, nor is his murderer any less unjust, but distributive justice has been satisfied and the arrangements of the world are thus seen to be good.

In showing that this is the best of all possible worlds, Plotinus does not rely on the argument that the apparent evil is itself really good. Ware and crime, brutality and vice, are real evils; but the best world as a whole requires them.

The whole, say of a painting, is not ugly because a part of it is. Each part must be considered in its relation to the whole. Though a toe or some hair may produce no aesthetic response, the statue or painting may be a great work of art for all of that. If we are looking at men, we should not fix our attention on Thersites (III, ii, 3).

Or again, a drama cannot be composed of all heroes; there must be servants and low characters, for otherwise it would be incomplete (III, ii, 11). In the world, as in the drama, conflicts between parts occur, but the whole harmonizes these conflicts (III, ii, 16). Wickedness therefore has its place in the beauty of the universe (III, ii, 17, 83).10

It is in this attempt to show that the best possible world cannot dispense with evils, that some rather harsh statements are made.

If it is possible for souls to be happy in this world [Plotinus writes] then if some are not happy, we must not blame the place [i.e. this world], but their inability to put up a goof fight where the rewards of virtue are offered (III, ii, 5, 1-4).

Evil men often rob and maltreat the virtuous. But the virtuous were not virtuous in failing to provide for their self-defense. One should not be astonished if a pugilist can beat up a philosopher. People ought to learn how to take care of themselves. Victory in battle requires an army, not prayer; and harvest requires work. There is no ground for complaint if the ignoble work and fight harder. They gain their power through the laziness or cowardice of their victim. And these arrangements are just; the reverse would be unjust (III, ii, 8).

It was the occurrence of injustice that originally threw doubt on the doctrine of an all embracing Providence (III, ii, 1), and on the tenability of determinism. These attempts to show that certain details are for the best, and the explicit general assertions, such as that providence extends to all things (III, ii, 6, 21 and 13, 18), and that the world could not have been made better (III, ii, 14, 2), tend to remove the original doubts as to Providence and so far forth to sustain a deterministic interpretation of Plotinus. But the root of the matter, even on the empirical level, has not yet been touched.

The phase of Plotinus' worldview that gives the final solution on the empirical level of the problem of evil and confirms the proposition that Plotinus is a determinist can in principle be stated briefly. It is simply that the universal Logos11 contains differences and that therefore a world, to be a world, must contain and even accentuate those differences. Since any difference is inferior to the First Undifferentiated Good, evil is a necessity in any world.

The Logos, virtually a fourth hypostasis derived from the Soul and the Divine Mind and to all intents identified with the principle of providence, is the immediate cause of the world and its events. Lower in the universal hierarchy than the Divine Mind, which itself contains multiplicity, the Logos must also be unlike in its parts (III, ii, 12, 1 and III, ii, 16, 13ff.).

For this reason, the world must contain not differences only, but greater differences than those in its source. In the first place, without differences, without particular things, there could be no world. In the Divine Mind each Idea can be all Ideas, but in a sensible world each thing must be just itself. And this involves differences (III, ii, 14). In the second place, the Logos makes things as different as possible, not as similar as possible. Therefore the world contains contraries - the greatest possible difference - with their resultant conflicts (III, ii, 17, 52ff.). Then, third, the existence of the greatest possible difference is to be expected because this is a world extended in space. The parts of this world are separated from one another; separation produces hate and imperfection produces discord. Even in a seminal reason, though the parts of an animal are all together, when the animal is born and the parts separate, one part may be an obstacle to another or even destroy it (III, ii, 2 and 17).

These differences are evil - some more colloquially so than others.

In general one can affirm that evil is a deficiency of good, and in this world such a deficiency is necessary because the good is in an alien subject. This alien subject, in which the good resides, by the very fact that it is other than the good, causes the deficiency, for it is not good. Therefore evils are ineradicable, because with respect to the nature of good one thing is less than another, and because, while the cause of their existence is in the good, they are all different from the good and become what they are by their distance from it (III, ii, 5, 22-32).12

The two propositions, that the world must contain differences and that differences are evil, constitute Plotinus' basic explanation of evil. The idea recurs in phrases and hints wherever the problem is raised. 13 There is no other, no deeper solution, to be found. To complete the deterministic interpretation of Plotinus, there remains therefore only the mention of several passages to show that the Logos is the cause of evil. No one objects to referring good things to divine agency; it is the evil that sets the problem, and Plotinus warns against depriving the Logos of doing good by removing from it the causation of evil (III, ii, 18, 20).

Some passages have already contributed to this conclusion, and the following will leave no room for doubt. First, "the Logos, sovereign, makes all these things and wills them as they are; it itself rationally produces even what we call evils for it does not wish everything to be good" (III, ii, 11, 2-6). Again, "The universal reason contains evils as well as goods; both are parts of it" (III, iii, 1, 1-2).14

Plotinus also compares Providence with a general who plans all the details of the army's operation. But he explicitly notes that the comparison fails, in that a general does not arrange the details of his enemy's army, while in the case of "the great general, under whom are all things, what is there unordered, what does not fit the plan?" (III, iii, 2, 13-15).15

Two further points will complete the discussion. It must be shown that the Logos is not blameworthy or responsible for evil, and that man is. On the first of the Plotinus has sufficient to say, but he may need a little assistance on the second.

Plotinus in several places denies that the world is a creation based on reflection a deliberate action. But this consideration does not so much relieve the higher principles of blame as guarantee their immutability against the changes of discursive reasoning. In any event, if the world were the result of reflection and volition, it could not have been made better, and the creator would not need to be ashamed of it (III, ii, 3). Some other factor therefore must absolve its maker from blame.

More to the point; In the same chapter is the idea that the world is the best possible, that every being in the world desires the good and attains the good within the limits of its ability. The injustices of man to man result from their striving to attain the good and their falling short through impotence. And, in this case on cannot blame the cause for having made the best possible world, nor ought one to demand an equal degree of goodness from unequal things.

Furthermore, the human mind, when studying this problem, is subject to the distortion of myopic astigmatism. Undoubtedly the existence of injustice sets a problem of theodicy; but it is not nearly so serious a problem as is commonly believed. Since men are intensely interested in themselves, their sufferings shut out the wider view. This Earth at the center of the universe is but one of the stars in the vast expanse of heaven. Situated between the beasts and the gods, men, some very bad, some very good, and the majority medium, are not the most honorable nor wisest objects in the universe. Their misfortunates therefore ought not to occasion too great solicitude (III, ii, 8).16

A very important factor in absolving Providence from blame, a factor previously discussed in the first tractate, is that Providence is not to be conceived as a force which reduces men and things to nothing. If men were nothing and Providence all, it would be deprived of its sphere of operation. The function of providence, rather, is to preserve the nature of each thing, and preservation for a thing means obedience to the law of its being.

This is in effect an assertion of the reality of secondary causes, and if responsibility can somehow be referred to the proximate cause instead of the highest cause, then it will be man who is responsible and heaven guiltless.

Before developing this hint in order to show that man is responsible, there is one idea or one set of ideas that provides the final defense of providence against the charge of being evil. If the Logos were a force external to the soul, and if it had forced independent souls to enter the world against their nature and to their hurt, the Logos could be held blameworthy. But souls are not independent, and the Logos is not external; souls are parts of the Logos and constitute one spiritual reality (III, ii, 12; compare III, ii, 10, 11; III, iii, 3). The relation of the individual soul to the World Soul and the discovery of a higher self beyond the everyday person become part of the solution of the problem of freedom above the empirical level.

How then can man be held responsible? It must be said that Plotinus has not evaded stating the objections clearly and even forcefully. Possibly every objection ever raised against determinism is found in these three tractates. Since they are so pointedly stated, it must be assumed that Plotinus thought he had answered them.

Superficial objections are easily brushed aside. If evil is something contrary to nature, and if in a deterministic system everything happens according to nature, how can there possibly be any evil? Such an objection becomes plausible only by a failure to attend to the proper points of reference. Everything happens according to the universal nature, but not everything is in accord with an individual nature. Wickedness really exists and has its place in the beauty of the universe, for that which is contrary to nature for an individual is according to nature from a universal standpoint (III, ii, 17, 83ff.).17

But if the wickedness has been determined and cannot be otherwise, how is man responsible? Should he not be pardoned? No, he should not, for the prerogative of pardon belongs to the Logos and the Logos, instead of granting pardon, determines to hold man responsible (III, ii, 17, 14-16).

Though there may be no logical answer to this position, the problem is not completely solved until the proximate ground of responsibility is uncovered. That ground is man's agency.

Taking up the burden of Plato, Plotinus holds that men sin involuntarily, but nonetheless it is they that sin (III, ii, 10). Even if the descent of the soul into the body is in a sense necessitated, necessity involves free agency; and, therefore, a soul suffers justly for its own action (IV, viii, 5). If man's nature were fixed so that he acted and was acted upon always in the same way, blame would no more attach to him than to the animals (III, iii, 4). The bare fact that man is an agent is therefore insufficient to be a ground of responsibility. But under actual conditions man is justly blamed when he does evil because he acts by a free principle the animals do not possess. This free principle does not make man independent of Providence or the Logos (III, iii, 4), but it frees him from the laws of mechanism, chemistry, and animal psychology.18 Similarly man is to be praised for his good acts, for man, not Providence, is the agent (III, ii, 5, 24ff.).

For this reason the application of some broad statements that Plotinus made in attacking unsatisfactory theories must be limited to their narrower context. He had said (III, i, 7, 15) that the mere fact that man initiates an action no more makes him responsible than it does a lunatic or an animal. But this must be taken in conjunction with a theory of sensation and imagination that Plotinus rejects, and must not be taken to invalidate his later insistence on agency.

Agency, however, though essential, is not sufficient. And Plotinus does not seem to have completed the detailed justification of empirical responsibility. He might have identified the free principle with volition and made it the differentium between human and animal action. But he says in many places that evil is involuntary and is not an act of the true self. If, however, there are two selves, could there not also be two volitions? And in this case empirical volition, distinguishing man from animal, could be the sufficient ground for empirical responsibility. Thus, in an altered sense, blame would lie with the chooser, and heaven would be guiltless. 

This study therefore justifies Whittaker rather than Inge. If Whittaker has erred, it is merely in the phrase "without the least hesitations," for it must be admitted that there are a few hesitant passages; the theory itself, however, is thoroughly deterministic.

1. The New Scholasticism, January 1943.

2. Hugo von Kleist, H. P. Miller, and Theodor Gollwitzer have contributed articles on the general subject. The first of these writers attempted merely a running exposition of Enneads III, i; the second, under the title, Plotinos uber Notwendigkeit and Freiheit, has given a more general discussion culminating in an exposition of Ennead VI, viii; the third has undertaken a comprehensive treatment of Plotins Lehre von her Willensfreiheit. None of them, however, distinguishes the empirical level of the problem as it is considered here.

3. III, i, 4, 12. The word for personality is το ὴγἐμονουν, and the argument is clearly ad hominem.

4. III, i, 4, 16-22.

5. This is introduced as an objection to the theory in question, but below, II, i, 9, 3, it is made a part of Plotinus' own view.

6. With the exception, of course, of the primary, eternal beings, which, since they are the causes of all else, have themselves no cause.

7. Since the remainder discusses the freedom of the higher self, it is omitted here.

8. James Adam, Republic of Plato, II, 455.

9. Plato, Laws 870d, e, and 872d, e, takes it as an edifying myth.

10. Plotinus stressed the illustration of a drama; he obviously thinks it is a good one. Contrariwise, George B. Foster, quoted by D. C. Mackintosh, in The Problems of Religious Knowledge, 118, exclaims, "Anything but a man being a character in a drama!"

11. The embarrassment of a fourth hypostasis in Plotinus' system need not be discussed here. Compare A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe, 102ff.

12. B. A. G. Fuller, The Problem of Evil in Plotinus, 83 and passim, underlies an inconsistency in Plotinus. If all difference is evil, evil should make its first appearance in the second hypostasis; yet Plotinus has only eulogy for the Divine Mind and the Soul, and evil is mentioned only in connection with the physical world. Fuller, 87, refers to I, viii, 2, and II ix, 13.

13. III, iii, 4, 44ff.

14. The next phrase is, "for the universal Logos does not generate them." By itself such a phrase might indicate that the Logos is not the cause of evils. But note that in that case neither would it be the cause of goods. And the conjunction would have had to be "but" rather than "for." The idea seems to be merely that "generate" is the wrong word to describe the relation between the Logos and the goods and evils which are its parts. "Include" is a better word. It is at least clear that evil is not independent of the Logos.

15. B. A. G. Fuller, page 200, would probably not agree with this interpretation. He writes, "Evil is an effect necessitated by a cause indeed, but by a cause not implicated in the providential order..." He refers to III, iii, 6. This may be taken as a hesitant passage, since Plotinus says that providence does not compel evil acts. This inconsistency rests, I believe, upon a common confusion between, to use Christian theological terms, the preceptive and the decretive will of God. God decrees all events, but his precepts describe the type of act that he will reward. He decrees evil acts also, but he will punish them nonetheless. In the present passage, "Providence" has taken on the meaning of precept. In this sense Providence does neither good nor evil, but one act is in accordance with Providence and another is not. Fuller would have none of this because he himself is a dualist and can see no good in monism. "If she [the soul] must fall, there is no moral responsibility" (321). He attacks the value of Plotinus' basic analogy of light on the ground that light never "fades by any inner necessity of its nature, but is dissipated by the agency of principles other than itself... Given but a single force overflowing from its source with nothing to oppose or dissipate it, and that force would forever express the full strength of its origin without any diminution" (324). And he concludes (327), "With the collapse of the great Plotinian analogy, all the effort to deduce the imperfect from the perfect which it seemed to encourage and validate comes equally to naught."

16. Crude attacks on Christianity sometimes identify it with geocentric astronomy, and Copernicus is pictured as having shaken not only the Earth from the astronomical center but man from the theological center. This crudity does not express the correct relationship between theology and astronomy. It is interesting to note that in Plotinus' pagan system geocentric astronomy is affirmed and homocentric theodicy is denied.

17. In emphasizing the paradox of a perfect world that is yet imperfect, and in arguing that Plotinian mysticism is strangely similar to Stoic naturalism, B. A. G. Fuller, pages 150-161, seems to neglect the point of reference: The world as a whole is good, but man is not, and needs improvement. This is not a logical impossibility as Fuller seems to think.

18. With respect to the question of responsibility Fuller, pages 203-204, writes, "Plotinus' reply is unsatisfactory... The real point at issue is not touched... To disengage the will from the causal nexus of phenomena is merely to assert its freedom from phenomenal determination. But that freedom had still to be reconciled with the necessity of the emanatory process. On this problem Plotinus offers no solution." But Fuller immediately, though too timidly, comes to Plotinus' rescue with a very plausible solution. On the phenomenal or empirical level Plotinus needs to be rescued by much the same method of pointing up the hints actually found in the Enneads.

Gordon Clark: Assorted Letters, 1947-1980 (PCA Archives)

Doug Douma has published several letters written by Gordon Clark (link). I've also typed some of Clark's letters that can be found here (link), here (link), and here (link). The following are the rest of the letters publicly available, written by Clark between 1947 and 1980. Original scans can be read online at the PCA Archives. Additionally, I have typed Clark's handwritten notes in the margins of several letters.

When I find a scan to be unreadable, I insert a [?]. I'll link to scans of the letters in question, and perhaps the reader will have better success understanding some of what was written than I have:

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[link, page 3]

November 19 1947

Dr. J. Oliver Buswell Jr.

The National Bible Institute

New York, N.Y.

Dear Dr. Buswell,

I am very happy to avail myself of your kind invitation to reply in The Bible Today to your review; and I hope I have not transgressed the limits of propriety either in space or in any other way.

Perhaps you may wish to change the tentative title

As for John Dewey I can hardly agree with you that the quotations in my last letter are inconsistent with behaviorism. In their total context they seem to be strictly behavioristic. While you do not quote from Dewey’s other books, I shall try to look through them for anything that is clearly anti-behavioristic. The fact that Blanshard said emphatically that behaviorism is out proves nothing. Blanshard has always been anti-behavioristic. I mentioned him to a well known scholar who says that Dewey is a behaviorist, and who quotes Dewey as admitting behaviorism. The very fact you allude to reinforces my point: you say, “they believe in consciousness but only as a function. A function of what?” Exactly – it is a function of the muscles and organs. And one who says thinking and thought are muscular motions, or motions of the cortex, is a behaviorist. It is not necessary to reduce all conduct to the reflex arc. The essence of behaviorism is that thought or mind is behavior. If need not be restricted to the reflex.

You may be interested to know that I am starting on An Introduction to Christian Philosophy. Maybe I can get through the first draft in two years.

Cordially yours,

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[link, pages 9-11]

December 9 1947

Dr. J. Oliver Buswell,

In reply to your letter of December 4, first I wish to return the check that you so kindly sent. And if I should have the fortune to continue our discussion to or three times in The Bible Today, the same principle shall apply.

In the second place, you did not make sufficiently clear the status of the rough draft of your reply to me. I assume that you have a finished copy that you will print with my remarks on your review. And I take it from the draft itself that I am at liberty to write something about “system”. If you wish the draft returned, or if I have mistaken your intent in any other way, please let me know. I would like to have the draft while writing anything further. This may be sufficient answer to page one of your recent letter, except to say that the reference to Russel which you ask for is found in The Scientific Outlook, pages 94-95. As a matter of fact I do not have this material under my eyes at the moment, but I think that this is the correct reference.

With these matters disposed of, the remainder of this letter can continue our subsidiary discussion of John Dewey. First of all let me say that I admire the thorough way you went into the subject. You have gathered together quite a number of passages, and perhaps the most pertinent ones. From all the opinions expressed, by Santayana, Blanshard, you and me, one point of agreement soon emerges: Dewey is not altogether consistent. But as to the exact import of the quotations you gather, I have some remarks to make.

In your original review of my book, page 15, you said that I erred in classing Dewey’s psychology as behavioristic. I now note that you are modifying this statement by speaking of “Watsonian behaviorism”. I should guess that this means that Dewey does not reduce knowledge or consciousness to the reflex arc. In this you are absolutely correct. Not only in the article of 1896 which you mention in your review, but in other passages your statement is justified. But, then, it is not necessary to be a Watsonian in order to be a behaviorist. There may be varieties. And I wish to show that Dewey is one of the varieties.

Blanshard, it is true, wants to think that there is more than, or something other than, behaviorism in Dewey. But Dewey himself “formally… disavows belief in any thought that is not a mode of behavior in physical things” (Blanshard, page 385). I think that Blanshard may very well say that Dewey is inconsistent; or that Dewey smuglles in by the back door what he refused admittance at the front door. But in view of Dewey’s own words, I cannot see how one can properly deny that Dewey is a behaviorist.

It does not seem to me that Blanshard has made the mistake you attribute to him. Or, in other words, I do not think your reference to Santayana, Green, and mechanism, prove what you think they prove. After all, mechanism and materialism are not the same thing. And, further, a denial of matter is not the equivalent of an assertion of consciousness (in the sense of a conscious spirit). When it is remembered that “matter for the British empiricists was something that could not be seen, touched, or sensed in any way, that is, when it is remembered that matter is not an object of experience, then Dewey’s rejection of the ontological reality of matter no longer seems to favor any spiritualism. For John Locke as well as for Aristotle matter and body are very different things. What Dewey is saying is that bodies cannot be explained by matter or by mechanism. But though Dewey rejects matter, he still makes physical, corporeal, sensible, spatial reality the ultimate reality.

The sense in which I and doubtless Blanshard also use the term behaviorism is simply that thought is behavior, or thought is a function of an organism, or that thought is the motion of bodies. I do not know that Blanshard says that Dewey is a Watsonian; and neither did I. But that Dewey teaches that thought is physical motion, I shall shortly show.

You seem to question my answer to your question, “function of what?” I replied, organs. You say that Dewey “might have given” that answer (page 3 of your letter); I say that that is the answer that Dewey as a matter of fact gave.

Take if you will Schilpp’s book. As its close there is a long contribution by Dewey himself. It cannot be accused of representing a view long discarded. It is one of Dewey’s latest writings. On page 531 I take it that Dewey accepts the phrase, “experience (is) an interaction of organism and environment.” At the top of the next page, the same notion is repeated twice. Toward the bottom of the same page (532) I assume that Dewey means that the interaction of organism with environment is the cognitive experience. I should say that this justifies the statement that for Dewey knowing is the function of the organism. If differs from Watson in that the environment is emphasised, for Watson seems to think of a reflex arc within the organism.

At the bottom pf page 533, the word “biological” indicates the same position. About ten lines from the bottom of page 535, we have a reference to the “interactions of an acculturated organism”.

And in particular, page 542: “By way of further clearing up my own position I would point out that I hold that the word subject, if it is used at all, has the organism for its proper designatum. Hence it refers to an agency of doing, not to a knower, mind, consciousness or whatever. If the words, subject and object, are to be set over against each other, it should be in these situations in which a person, self, or organism as a doer sets up purposes” etc.

Note that what he means by a person is an organism.

And on page 544 he says, “According to the naturalistic view, every experience in its direct occurrence is an interaction of environing conditions and an organism.”

Page 555, which you yourself quote, sustains my position. Here Dewey claims to be a behaviorist. True, he says, there are several forms of behaviorism; mine (Dewey's) is different from some of them, for I erase any absolute distinction between organism and environment. Behavior is not limited to something in the nervous system under the skin. But still (as I interpret Dewey) “the psychological theory involved is a form of Behaviorism.”

How, then, in the face of this explicit statement, can you say that I erred in classing Dewey as a behaviorist? Maybe Dewey is a submarine aviator, as you suggest; or better, he is a submarine, but sometimes talks as if he were in a place.

I think that this fairly well covers your remarks on Dewey; if you have further comments or further references, I should be glad to examine them.

And now I finally have time and space to wish you all a Merry Christmas. Mrs. Clark wishes to be remembered to your good wife.

Cordially yours,

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[link, pages 1-2]

October 14 1953

Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

Shelton College

Dear Dr. Buswell,

Thank you for sending me your review of my book, A Christian View of Men and Things. I wish you had told me where your review will appear. Your vigorous opposition to my views does not affect in the least my friendship toward you, and I trust that the converse is also true. Indeed, I am convinced it is.

As your review is quite long, I do not see how I could examine it in detail without writing another book, which would in turn require another review. But I should like to make one or two points.

One point is that here and there you ascribe to me views that I do not hold. Naturally your criticisms of such views is irrelevant as applied to me. One of the clearest and most comprehensive instances is found on page 15 of your MS. You say, “Looking back over Dr. Clark’s constructive efforts to prove the existence of God from the existence of truth, we must say that it takes the pattern of the cosmological argument. Taking truth as an existing datum, Dr. Clark draws the inference that because truth exists therefore God exists.” Since you admit that you are looking back over the whole of my argument, I must reply that it is the whole of my argument that you have missed. I have nowhere attempted to prove the existence of God. I have not tried to prove God’s existence from the existence of truth, and I certainly did not take truth (if truth is other than God) as an existing datum. Naturally is you miss the main idea of the book as a whole, the particular criticisms are understandably irrelevant.

A second point is what I believe to be your historical inaccuracy. You say on page 4, and you have said before, that Thomism does not regard the proofs as logically demonstrative. Would you kindly provide the evidence. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 64, supports my view.

Allow me just one instance of your irrelevancy, for I cannot possibly take the time to discuss them all. On page 13 you refer to my position that truth is mental and is not, as behaviorism teaches, a physical motion. Part of my argument is that communication requires the presence of the same thought in two minds, and also that memory requires the same thought to occur twice to one mind. But you reply that your thought of Mt. Shasta today is not the same as your thought of Mt. Shasta yesterday. This is irrelevant, for I have not argued that a thought must recur, or that any given thought is the same as a previous one. I have argued that unless one thought occurs twice, there cannot be communication or memory. The fact that a given thought, the thought of Mt. Shasta, does not occur twice, does not show that a thought cannot occur twice. The remaind of the argument, of course, is that these phenomena cannot be physical; they can only be mental.

Again let me say that I am sorry you discontinued publishing The Bible Today. Perhaps you would have permitted me to say there that I disavowed your statements of my position.

Cordially yours,

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[link, pages 5-6]

October 24 1953

Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

Shelton College

Ringwood Borough, N.J.

Dear Dr. Buswell,

I debated with myself whether or not to answer your letter of Oct. 19, for I know how busy you are. You are at perfect liberty to ignore this letter if you are pressed for time, but I concluded that I ought to ask you to implement your previous reply on one point at least.

You wrote, “I have several times pointed out that Thomas does not regard the theistic arguments as proof in the sense of what you call logical demonstration… I have quoted him extensively.”

In your letters to me you have several times asserted that Thomas did not regard his proofs as logical demonstration. But I do not remember a single time that you quoted him to support this assertion. If you could send me the references, I would certainly look them up. And Gilson, with whom I agree, would surely have discussed any statements that contradicted his view.

You suggest that I read the proofs, which you say are not lengthy. Perhaps you refer to the summary of the proofs in the Summa Theologica, which precedes the final conclusion. The proofs themselves are a hundred pages or so long. But I think the material to be examined is not the proofs, but rather Thomas’ theory of demonstration. Let me quote one little bit.

S. Th. I, Q2, Art. 2: “Whether it can be demonstrated that God exists? … I answer that demonstration can be made in two ways: one is through the cause and is called proper quid, … the other is through the effect and is called a demonstration quia… And from every effect the existence of its proper cause can be demonstrated… If the effect exists, the cause must preexist. Hence the existence of God can be demonstrated from those of his effects which are known to us… Reply to Obj. 2. When the existence of a cause is demonstrated from an effect, this effect takes the place of the definition of the cause in proving the cause’s existence… Reply to Obj. 3… Yet from the every effect the existence of the cause can clearly be demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from his effects…”

Now, unless you can show from Thomas’ commentaries on the Posterior Analytics, which I must examine, or from elsewhere, that Thomas rejected the Aristotelian theory of demonstration, it seems to me that the above quotation tells heavily in my favor against your interpretation. Certainly the quotation uses the term demonstration several times, refers to middle terms in some lines I omitted here, and says the cause must preexist. If this does not mean a strictly logical demonstration, such as is best exemplified in geometrical proofs, then the wording is singularly misleading.

Since you say that you have a 100 page paper on St. Thomas in multilith offset, I would be glad to receive a copy, and see if you have given reference for a non-aristotelian theory of demonstration in Thomas.

I refrain from mentioning other items in your last letter, for I fear it would complicate things entirely too much.

Very truly yours,

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[link, pages 8-9]

345 Buckingham Drive

Indianapolis, Ind.

November 4 1953

Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr.

Shelton College

Ringwood, N.J.

Dear Dr. Buswell,

Thank you for sending me your student of Thomas and the Bible. It has clarified the point at issue.

My statements have been that Thomas intended the arguments for God’s existence as demonstrative arguments. You say I am historically incorrect and that Thomas did not assert that these arguments are demonstrative. This seems to me to be the point at issue, and I was perplexed how you could assert that I was historically mistaken when Thomas explicitly calls the arguments demonstrative.

In your paper, page 81, you quote Schaff as saying that “the existence of God… has been demonstrated by philosophers with irrefragable proofs.” I take it therefore that Schaff agrees with me.

On page 82 you say, “the opinion that the... arguments are deductive or a priori throws confusion into the whole field… Thomas’ arguments are clearly inductive inferences a posteriori from effects to cause. Thomas makes no claim to deductive demonstration.”

Now, first, he did indeed so claim, as I quoted in my last letter. He explicitly says that the existence of God can be demonstrated.

But you apparently confuse deductive demonstration with the a priori. There are two meanings of a priori, the Kantian and the Aristotelian. If you will reread what I have written, both in my book and in my letters, you will see that I never said Thomas used a priori proofs in the Kantian sense of a priori. In fact I placed Thomas under the subsection entitled Empiricism. Nor did I ever say that the proofs were a priori in the Aristotelian sense. It is quite true that Thomas’ arguments are a posteriori, both in the Kantian sense of requiring sensation and in the Aristotelian sense of proceeding from effects to cause. And if that is induction, there are inductive proofs. But they are still deductive demonstrations. Even you admit, by quoting Robinson with approval on page 83 that “Deduction is really present in all inductive inferences.” Thomas distinguishes between two types of demonstration: from cause to effect and from effect to cause. But though the latter may be inferior in a certain respect, it is still a valid inference and Thomas still classes it as demonstration.

On page 84 you seem to quate deductive argument with the ontological proof. But if this is the limit of the term deduction, then there are no deductive arguments whatever in Aristotle or in Thomas. Surely I am not to understand you as saying that Thomas denied that he ever used deduction; but in this case he must have used a posteriori deductive arguments.

Not only have you confused demonstration with the a priori, you also characterize the arguments as probable, on pp. 83 & 85. Note that Schaff said irrefragable demonstration. Now, if Schaff is mistaken, you ought to cited references where Thomas admits that the syllogism he uses are not necessary inferences but are only probabilities. At any rate I know of no place where Thomas makes such an admission.

Hence I must continue to believe that Thomas intended his arguments to be irrefragable, strictly valid syllogisms. They claim to meet all the requirements of validity in deductive logic, and since they are not intended to be fallacious probability arguments, their conclusions claim to be necessary inferences from their premises. This is demonstration, as Thomas explicitly claimed.

Of course, I believe that Thomas was wrong in his claim, and that the arguments are really fallacious. But this is not a matter of Medieval history.

Very cordially yours,

Gordon H. Clark

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[link, page 1]

August 21 1975

Mr. and Mrs. William R. Hawley

[?], Indiana

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hawley

It was so generous of you, so kind, and so unnecessary to give my wife and me the sumptuous gift with which you have delighted us. She will write to thank you, if she can find the words. But this letter has to do with far less pleasant matters.

In the light of the Commission’s action, I do not know what you are going to do. You could attend the Bible church once every two years. I make no comment. You could join [?] church, even though it is under the same Synod. I promised to advise you to join some church, though I told the commissioners that I thought such advise was superfluous. Otherwise I do not know what to say: I need advise myself.

Let me only advise you of my great respect and affection for you, and of our prayers for your comfort in time of trouble.

Yours sincerely,

Gordon H. Clark

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[link, pages 7-9]

Rev. Stephen Smallman

McLean Presbyterian Church

7144 Old Dominion Drive

McLean, Va. 22101

September 8 1979

Dear Mr. Smallman,

First of all, I wish to thank you for the note and the papers you sent me on Aug. 20. Since I am new on this committee, there is much I do not know. In fact, I need to learn about everything the committee has done. For this reason some of my comments may be inappropriate. I trust I can work my way into your accomplishments.

Because of my ignorance your desire, expressed in the middle of you MEMO of Aug. 30, that those who write should prepare their materials so that they can be incorporated in the final report, cannot begin to be met until after I have met with the committee. Nevertheless there are some comments which I hope you will consider.

These are comments on pages 6-9 (there were no pages 1-5 nor 10ff.) with four numbered “tentative conclusions.”

May I say, with regard to the first paragraph of point 1, that I think the wording is confused because of the definition of apostasy. In a previous paper that I sent you, I tried to say that on the dictionary definition, neither the Mormons, the Roman Catholics, nor the Unitarians could be called apostate. Hence the term is useless for us, and unless redefined should be dropped.

Once, however, the word is redefined, or replaced, then “the implication of such a declaration are too enormous for a church made up of sinful people to undertake,” is a statement that precludes all discipline. The church is authorized to judge of cases. We jduge that a man is guilty of murder, or of adultery, or of embezzlement. The Westminster Assembly judged that the Pope was the Antichrist and our present Confession judges that the Romish church is a synagogue of Satan. Not to judge is to renounce our responsibilities. This is surely made clear in I Corinthians. You refer in the paragraph to a church that continues to confess Christ as Lord. A seminary professor whom I knew confessed Christ as Lord, but asserted rather forcefully that he did not accept anything as true merely because Jesus said it.

The second paragraph under point one, with the exception of the word ‘apostasy,’ is a statement with which I am in hearty agreement. Let us use the terms heretical and anathema. The latter means a curse. We should curse the synagogues of Satan. We should do all we can to rescue confused believers from their clutches.

In the first paragraph under point 2, I believe there is a historical misstatement. There is a slight possibility that I may be wrong, but I believe that Dr. Machen never “felt it necessary to prove that the PCUSA was apostates. Ed Rian, in his book, The Presbyterian Conflict, never used the word apostate. I think were all very careful not to use that word. If I am mistaken, I wish someone would provide me with the contrary documentation.

With respect to paragraph three under point 2, I have no objection against distinguishing between the legitimacy of leaving a denomination (because there is no congregation in the town to which we just moved) and the necessity of leaving a denomination. But I strongly object to the last half of the paragraph. It says that we are not “in a position to say that after we had made the separation of 1936’ it was absolutely necessary for others to do the same.” You remember that in 1934 the General Assembly decreed that the ministers and people were under the same obligation to support the boards and agencies of the denomination as they were to celebrate the Lord’s Supper. Dr. Machen refused to obey. He was adjudged guilty of breaking one of the laws of the church. Had he submitted, he would have had to support, not only financial but by personal inclusion in the body, the anti-christian activity of Pearl Buck, the translation and distribution on our mission fields of Fosdick’s peril of worshipping Jesus, and many other unchristian policies. The point is that the General Assembly commanded the church to commit sin, and the Judicial Commission upheld the penalty imposed on Machen. People who remained in the USA church by their actions supported these conditions, whether they knew it or not. Today, with even the ordination vows gone, a candidate cannot be ordained without promising to take part in ordaining women, etc. etc. etc. I conclude that it is clearly sinful to support those actions and that body. Incidentally, when in 1965 the Evangelical church united with the Reformed church, we required the Evangelical body to drop the Harvey Cedars statements,

On page eight, just below the middle, if the Bible of Evangelical church did not require a man who was previously a Romish priest to be ordained, all I can cry is Shame! In the previous paragraph, although it cites Hodge correctly, my reply is that however great a theologian Hodge was, his ecclesiology was deplorable. We today should bring our practice into conformity with our doctrine. I do not think the Reformed Presbyterians ever committed such sins; and I feel sure that my grandfather in the old OP church would have been aghast at such conduct.

With respect to the first paragraph under point 4, I would like to say that the conduct there described is an evidence of deterioration and the first steps toward the positions already taken by the heretical bodies. The declension of the denominations, or organization such as the YMCA, of the originally Christian colleges, begins with small steps. Then comes an acceleration. We should resist the beginnings.

The first half of the middle paragraph seems to be based on a Congregational rather than a Presbyterian view of the Church. Of course we should “encourage” believers in depraved churches – we should encourage them to leave. To cooperate with them, with their evil denominations, is to compromise and to weaken our doctrinal position. If we give the impression that they are not so bad off in their bodies, we encourage them to sin – encourage them to support all sorts of liberalism.

It seems to me that it would be useful to study the steps by which originally orthodox churches and universities began to decline. This is the real and present danger to us now.

Dear. Mr. Smallman, I thank you for your letter, and I recognize the time and effort that you have put into the subject. This is a letter to you. I am not sending it to the other members of the committee. Of course, I shall use the ideas in discussion whenever the occasion demands. I take all this very seriously, for I foresee the possibility that our denomination may go the way of all flesh.

Very sincerely yours,

Gordon H. Clark 

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[link, pages 8-9, marginal notes, letter from Short, Dec 5, 1979]

Would a Mormon or Muslin ordination be acceptable?

Could a Muslim baptize?

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[link, pages 3-4]

March 28 1980

Dr. John W. Sanderson

Covenant Seminary

Dear John,

You wrote your letter on March 3. I just cannot keep up with time. Milton was sure stupid when he said time travels on leaden feet.

Now as for your suggestions: 24 I would be glad to have you alter this, and anything else. I took it that Paul at Ephesus, unlike his conduct at Corinth, thought that the congregating was in the power of unbelieving Jews and that he must leave them

27 does not seem to me an unsupported generalization; John viewed this particular case in which he judged that the church would or might become apostate, and he spewed out of Christ’s mouth. I am everywhere willing to have you make improvements, in substance or in form.

28 repeat the sentence above.

83 I have inked in this phrase (some), though this itself allows a doubt as to the denomination as a whole; though it would be better to say, that if the Synod does not face this challenge, the denomination as a whole is deterioting.

116 A ticklish point? How so? What about Second Pres. and Ninth Pres. in Indianapolis? Bethel and Bethlehem in Phila? And others in Phila. Are there not some in St. Louis you could mention? I am not familiar with Oklahoma City, or even Chicago. Do you know what is the case with Macartney’s church in Pittsburgh? And MacClleands? (Was that his name – the pastor of the Wnanmaker church in Phila, who went to Pittsburh. Then there are the old UP churches… Princeton, Ind. There must be a large number of such instances, but I do not know them. Volga, S. D.?

As for my conclusion. I did not condemn the whole Presbytery individually. I condemned those who voted in favor of the Overture. You refer to proposing a judicial procedure. This is a possibility. But before going to that much trouble, and it would be a trouble, I merely suggested that those in favor of the Overture withdraw. There is nothing illegal in such a suggestion. It is an appeal to their conscience, if they realize their action is subversive. However, I am not insistenet on this suggestion. What do you wish to offer. Let me see it. No doubt it will be an improvement over mine. And I hope it would be more likely to gain the support of the Synod.

Will you than take the time and trouble to amend my document. My ambitions are solely for the preservation of the purity of our denomination.

Cordially

[cf. Handwritten notes by Clark in response to Sanderson's letter on March 3, 1980:

You rephrase it

I see no unsupported generalization. John viewed apostasy as possible.

If you can make it stronger, fine! 

[check mark]

Second Presbyterian Indianapolis

Bethel Philadelphia

Bethlehem “ and others.

Some St. Louis churches?

Macartney’s?

I don’t know.]