Following the pattern of posts
here and
here, this one will offer some commentary on a noteworthy critic of Gordon Clark: in this case, Greg Bahnsen. I had thought it might take more effort to consolidate the materials in which Bahnsen mentions Clark, but it wasn't too hard to find these resources:
- A few recordings in which Bahnsen mentions Clark can be found
here,
here, and
here. There may be more, but I don't have time to sift through thousands of hours of recordings to be sure.
- In terms of books, there are 1) Bahnsen's
Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, and 2)
Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (
link). Being book-length, these are rather long. Fortunately, I have a pdf of the former, so both are searchable.
- Miscellaneous: a letter on John Robbins (
link); an article on the "
At War With The Word - The Necessity Of Biblical Antithesis" (
link); an article on "Science, Subjectivity, and Scripture" (
link).
Not having read or listened to much of Bahnsen at the outset, I probably missed some items. I don't have a few books recently published by American Vision (
link,
link), although it would somewhat surprise me if these contained anything not already covered in the above resources. I also left off a few materials which mention Clark but contain no distinct or substantial critique.
After a brief reading of any one of the above publications, one can see that they worthy of interaction. Bahnsen's reputation is not for nothing. Actually, I was surprised at how much my thought matches his. I might say that I know of no other writer who has put to fine words some ideas I more or less came to realize haphazardly. For example, he discusses the necessity of a self-sufficient knower, the apologetics-epistemology distinction, the natural revelation-natural theology distinction, the problem of the criterion, the interdependence of epistemology and metaphysics, the message of Scripture being the strict object of inspiration (rather than physical words), the need for full assurance, etc. These are questions about which I've needed many years of reading and reflecting on a diversity of sources to come to some satisfactory answers. Bahnsen wrote with conviction on all of these subjects, and my conclusions are similar to his. One who reads Bahnsen, then, might come to the same realizations I did, just much more quickly.
Thus, in this post, there will be more critiques of Clark with which I will agree than is often the case. Even so, Bahnsen is not above correction. I hope what follows highlights both the good and bad in his comments on Clark. This post will cover the aforementioned lectures and articles in which Bahnsen mentions Clark. God willing, a future post will look at Bahnsen's books. I'll begin with his miscellaneous material:
At War With The Word - The Necessity Of Biblical Antithesis
This article contains the briefest mentions of Clark and, for that reason, might be a useful point of departure. Clark is mentioned twice in this article, both relating to a similar criticism Bahnsen will make:
What is the apologetical method that results from these observations? It will be contrary to that method which we see in men like John Warwick Montgomery, Gordon Clark, or even Francis Schaeffer. When worldviews collide the truly presuppositional and antithetical approach will involve two steps. It will involve first of all an internal critique of the unbeliever's philosophical system, demonstrating that his outlook really is masking a foolish destruction of knowledge. And then, secondly, it will call for a humble, yet bold, presentation of the reason for the believer's presuppositional commitment to God's Word...
The approach to apologetics which gives us piecemeal evidences (e.g. John Warwick Montgomery), or the approach to apologetics which gives us pragmatic, personal appeals (e.g. Francis Schaeffer) or the approach to apologetics which begins with voluntaristic, fideistic axioms (e.g. Gordon Clark) do not adequately deal with the antithesis - thus with Christianity's indispensability for making sense of rational thought, history, science, or human personality. It is not a matter of whether we should choose between those approaches and the presuppositionalist approach. Given the fact of antithesis, the only approach that will be usable is the presuppositional one. The situational perspective advanced by Montgomery and the existential perspective advanced by Schaeffer cannot compete with the normative apologetical approach of Cornelius Van Til. Only that perspective challenges the unbeliever with Christianity's indispensability.
Bahnsen accused Clark of beginning his approach to apologetics with "voluntaristic, fideistic axioms." That Clark's apologetic begins with axioms is undeniable. But that these axioms are accepted by faith - which is all that Clark meant by fideism - is admitted by Bahnsen in Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended (pg. 65). So why did Bahnsen have a problem with Clark's "fideistic" approach to apologetics? Because Bahnsen operated with a different definition of "fideism" than Clark:
we must not present
Christian faith as an unreasonable, voluntaristic, fideistic decision of
the heart...
we must not be satisfied to present Christianity as
the most reasonable position to hold among the competing options
available to men. Rather, the Christian faith is the only reasonable
outlook available to men. Fideism says Christianity is not a matter of
reason. (Bahnsen, Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, pg. 65)
Bahnsen mistakenly read his own understanding of fideism into Clark's view. Clark's view was that there are multiple possible definitions of fideism - one of which he would, like Bahnsen, reject, but another which he might accept (link):
...are there two sorts of fideism—one that fits Hanna’s description and claims that no theory is better than any other, and a second type of fideism that denies an equal epistemological basis to absurdities? Can there not be a presupposition that insists on the difference between truth and falsity? I could mention two names in support of this contention. Now the author has several good pages defending fixed truth and the necessity of logic. Indeed, these are very good pages. But his refutation of fideism, as stated and as applicable to Barth and Brunner, has incautiously and without further argument been extended to include presuppositionalists who abhor absurdities as much as the author does.
Obviously, Clark is identifying as the sort of fideist or presuppositionalist who "abhors absurdities," "insists on the difference between truth and falsity," and "denies an epistemological basis to absurdities." In accepting "fideism," I believe Clark just meant to reject infinitism. Axioms have "nothing prior from which to deduce" them:
The first principle cannot be demonstrated because there is nothing prior from which to deduce it. Call it presuppositionalism, call it fideism, names do not matter. But I know no better presupposition than “The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the word of God written, and therefore inerrant in the autographs.” (link)
We shall, therefore, have to disambiguate what Bahnsen means by our having a "reason for... presuppositional commitment to God's Word." I'll do that in a different section.
For now, as far as "voluntarism" is concerned, I'd already briefly commented on that - including Bahnsen - in
this post (subheading "Defending this Distinction in Clark's Thought"). My conclusions there will need to be revisited, which I'll also do later. Here, it suffices to say that labelling Clark's axiomatic apologetic as voluntarist would imply that Bahnsen thought Clark's choice of axiom was a matter of
mere will. Were that the case, it would be in tension with Clark's above statement about presuppositions - that he "denies an equal epistemological basis to absurdities" and "insists on the difference between truth and falsity."
A simpler observation is that [axiomatic] beliefs do involve the will. People do have to
choose what will be their foundation: rock or sand. Did Clark think we can know whether our foundation is rock or sand?
Yes. Did Clark always do well to avoid charges of voluntarism? No - as I've intimated, this point will come up again below. But continuing with the question of whether one's [axiomatic] beliefs are chosen, this seems to be implicitly admitted by Bahnsen in his debate with Stein, where Bahnsen said (
link):
If there are no arguments for the existence of God, I wouldn't believe in God... Rationally speaking, if there is no basis for belief in the existence of God I would relinquish that belief.
Bahnsen not only 1) implicitly conceded what Clark meant when Clark talked about [the necessity of] choosing an axiom but also 2) seems to fall suspect to the same charge of "suppositionalism" that, in a different book, Bahnsen made against Clark (see the discussion on "suppositionalism" here and below). That is, in response to Stein's questioning, Bahnsen entertained Stein's "if"-hypotheses, i.e. that there could be no basis for belief and no arguments for the existence of God. Bahnsen then admitted that given such hypotheses, he thought he would choose not to be a Christian! That would make Bahnsen to be what he called Clark: a suppositionalist who "treats Christianity as a possibility" rather than "the precondition for all intellectual endeavor" (Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, pg. 142).
I didn't get the sense that Bahnsen was answering rhetorically for effect (cf. Paul's method of argumentation in 1 Corinthians 15:16-19). So while this was in the heat of a debate, if we can afford Bahnsen some charity when considering the broader context of what he taught - and we should - we can and should also do the same for Clark (e.g. regarding uncharacteristic views mentioned in his letter to Robbins here). Bahnsen disputed that Clark's writings are as consistent as I've made them out to be, though, as we shall see.
Either way, a final observation is that one's axioms or ultimate presuppositions must be chosen to correspond to the biblical description of unbelievers as ethically rebellious. If unbelievers did not choose their axioms or ultimate presuppositions, on what basis would they be held liable for believing them? In fact, is it even intelligible to speak of "belief" that is not (in some sense) volitional? One who is not careful might end up unintentionally positing a divine voluntarism on which God punishes those whom He wills irrespective of whether they have participated in sin (cf. link).
Science, Subjectivity, and Scripture
Bahnsen only mentioned Clark in this article to argue that his attitude towards "formal logic" is one of "extreme rationalism." He said:
Likewise Clark teaches that, while certainty is impossible with empirical science, memory, common opinion, etc., the laws of logic cannot be questioned since they are universal, necessary, and known a priori. The eternal principles called logic are "the prerequisites of all argumentation," being basic to every aspect of theorizing if "irrationalism" is to be averted. So settled is logic for Clark that he sees it as "God thinking" and as "the basic image of God in man." To deprecate or curb logic is, accordingly, pious stupidity, irrationalism, and sin. Any improvements which are to be made in the science of logic, moreover, "must build upon Aristotelian principles." For Clark, therefore, logic is "the most certain of all principles" and "the only legitimate test of reason"; "there is no method of understanding superior to deduction."
It's difficult to tell what in the above Bahnsen considered to constitute as "extreme view of logic." All of it? If not, it would have been helpful to have had some clarification. We are left to make a guess. For instance, it's hard for me to imagine that Bahnsen thought the laws of logic weren't "universal, necessary, and known a priori." I doubt Bahnsen thought it "extreme" to consider them as "prerequisites of all argumentation" or as necessary to avoid "irrationalism," "sin," and "pious stupidity."
Did Bahnsen take issue with the laws of logic being "eternal principles"? Why I ask is that Bahnsen elsewhere wrote:
All our thinking must be brought
in line with His; we must think His thoughts after Him in a receptive
and re-creative manner. He, on the other hand, need not compare His
thoughts with anything, for His knowledge is receptive only in that it is
creative knowledge. God does not come to knowledge—even by an eternal
intuition—but creates knowledge; being perfectly self-conscious of his
creative activity and plan, God can anthropomorphically be said to receive knowledge.
Did God create [His knowledge of] the laws of logic? If not, the above is opaque. If so, the consider that creation connotes contingency; God was not necessitated to create. Since creation was God's pleasure - a free, indeterministic choice - if the laws of logic were created, would that mean that they are only universal, invariant, and so forth by virtue of the divine decree... in particular, God's "
mere will"? If so, I think Bahnsen accepted a worse version of voluntarism than he alleged against Clark (
link).
If this were Bahnsen's view, I would also have trouble following why one could not just retort that the laws of logic are reflective of God's character. This is analogous to what Bahnsen said about God's goodness when Stein asked him about Euthyphro's dilemma. Indeed, this is what Bahnsen wrote elsewhere: "“logic” can refer to the genuine thing (reflecting God’s mind)" (Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, pg. 236). Unless Bahnsen thought logic reflects God's mind contingently, then, I suppose this is not what he considered extremely rationalistic.
Going back to the article, did Bahnsen take issue with Clark's mention of "Aristotelian principles"? On a related line of thinking, Bahnsen did (correctly, I think) criticize Clark for finding helpful Aristotle's phrase “thought thinking thought” as a qualifiedly true summary of his Logos doctrine, i.e. “God and logic are one and the same first principle” (The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, pgs. 67-68; cf. Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, pg. 231, footnote 168). Clark's position is flagrantly false: we do not worship logic but the Lord of logic (especially given Clark's definition of logic).
Take John 1. What is the referent of "Logos" - a divine person or divine attribute? The two are not interchangeable. Given that the Logos was made flesh, it would seem to be a person: the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity. In that case, though, it would be equivocal to involve a different referent (like logic, i.e. "the science of necessary inference") in one's exegesis of John 1. The Son is neither the characteristic of God's thinking nor the law of contradiction. Further, on the subject of divine attributes, while God is love, is it correct to say love is God?
I think Clark would have been better off following his own thinking on page 67 in The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark: the law of contradiction "is neither prior to nor subsequent to God’s activity." This statement, I think, is true, for I take it that God is not identical to His activity. Now, God is not temporally prior to His activity - or, at least, to such activity as is being here discussed - but it is God's activity. The activity depends on the Actor, even if we consider certain activity as necessary or natural in view of who or what the Actor is.
Since I've reflected on the relationship of Clark's critics' and Clark's own views of John 1 to divine simplicity in other places (link), I won't delve into another deep discussion here. But even Bahnsen used language like the following, which implies a distinction between the eternal truth and the eternal mind of God in which we find eternal truth: "Our thinking begins with, and is
based upon, the absolute, complete, underived, and eternal truth in God’s
mind..." (Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, pg. 285). I agree with Bahnsen here. Is this not suggestive - in language if not intention - of eternal activity and an essence-energy, nature-operation, actor-activity distinction?
Moving on, perhaps Bahnsen also thought Clark was an "extreme rationalist" due to Clark's anthropological understanding of logic as distinctively characteristic of images of God. I actually didn't find anything in the other publications mentioned at the beginning of this post to help answer this question. Personally, I agree with Clark that only images of God have a rational faculty. But I deny that the image just is said rational faculty. In the latter case, we will have capitulated to later Clark's theory of a person as equivalent to a mind (cf. his book The Trinity) and, therefore, his late Nestorianism (link). Christology should inform anthropology, so the falsity of Nestorianism must inform our understanding of the imago Dei. [As an aside, on anthropology, I recommend Robert Strimple's lectures.]
There are a few more quotations from Bahnsen's article. Regarding one of them, Ronald Nash, not Clark, wrote that "The law of contradiction is the most certain of all principles." Nash wrote it about Clark, but as Clark passed over comment on this representation, so I will too.
Regarding another quotation, did Bahnsen disagree that the laws of logic are "the only legitimate test of reason"? If so, I'll mention below at least one other test Clark used. Or perhaps he protests against Clark's application of a "test of reason" (self-consistency) to "Biblical doctrines" (link)? If so, there's only a problem if Clark really believed that the Bible is falsifiable (link). I don't believe that conclusion can be borne out from the article from which Bahnsen quotes, especially since Clark accepted Calvin's position on the "certainty of revelation" and rejected the law of contradiction as an "external test" - as if it were capable of being abstracted from God['s word] - in the same context. This topic will also be re-examined below, along with Bahnsen's evidence that Clark was an epistemic voluntarist.
The final Clark quote from the article: Bahnsen might deny that "there is no method of understanding superior to deduction." I don't know the answer to this question either, especially since I myself am not sure what Clark meant. My best attempt: in context, Clark is discussing "syllogistic theology." Clark implies axiomatization is ideal and that it provides us with what "knowledge that something is so." This is important for other reasons - that Clark thinks axioms can be known - but sticking to the question at hand, Clark then says, "a greater degree of faith, belief, knowledge, and
understanding requires a grasp of why something is so." I gather he means that our grasp of why something is so must come by the method of deduction from axioms. Given axioms, deduction is the best method to acquire a better understanding of faith et al. If this is what Clark meant - and I'm not positive - it seems right. I don't know of a better method of inference than deduction (cf. WCF I.6).
Perhaps Bahnsen thought that his transcendental argument is different from but at least equal to the understanding one can attain from axiomatization-deduction. Later, we'll see Bahnsen does not think his transcendental argument proceeds from premises to conclusions. In that case, though, in what sense can Bahnsen's transcendental argument even be considered an argument? Don't arguments have premises? Is Bahnsen just offering a transcendental assertion? Rather, isn't it the case that if Bahnsen compares worldviews via preconditions for knowledge, the conclusion of his comparison will have been premised on whatever Bahnsen takes to be preconditions for knowledge? These are questions to keep in mind when that topic is revisited.
With all this said, was Clark an "extreme rationalist"? Well, his anthropology and doctrine of God - particularly in his elder years - were majorly unsound, and in both cases due to Clark's view of the relation of logic to man and God. God is not reducible to Logic, and we are not reducible to our rationality. It is understandable why an error in one doctrine led Clark to an error in the other, for the grain of truth in Clark's position is that images are as their archetypes. But if one fails to understand what the archetype or image is, that is bound to discolor one's understanding of the other.
One would tend to think a rationalist (and an extreme one at that) advocates rationalism. It turns out that Clark did identify as a Christian rationalist (Lord God of Truth, pg. 13). I would say this was ill-conceived nomenclature. In The Philosophy of Gordon H. Clark, Clark also admitted that "My realism is so pronounced that everyone but the
most enthusiastic disciple would call it extreme." With appropriate nuance (cf. here), calling Clark an "extreme Christian rationalist" seems to be justified. At any rate, Clark's later metaphysics in particular were [extremely] false.
I have benefitted from and enjoy my research on Clark, but it is needful not to become jealous to defend anything other than the truth of God's word. I too have written posts that advocate extreme rationalism (e.g. my former defense of necessitarianism). In the face of the truth, what is required is humility and repentance. It is not the end of the world that Clark was a Christ-like yet flawed theologian-philosopher.
This has been a long review of what amounts to one paragraph, but hopefully these remarks anticipate Bahnsen's other publications and will shorten my reviews of them.
Letter on John Robbins
In a letter in which Bahnsen laments that a magazine decided to publish a letter by John Robbins, Bahnsen mentions Clark a few times. Most of his criticisms are solid, including:
1) Clark's denial of self-knowledge meant that personal assurance of salvation would be impossible. I've written about this here, but see here and here for the qualifications that Clark did accept self-knowledge at times as well as that self-knowledge is compatible with Scripturalism.
2) Clark's translation of John 1:1 indeed led him to a "rationalistic view." Enough was said about this above.
3) There is a tension between the WCF I.1 and the Augustinian view Clark suggests as a defense against Nash's criticisms in The Philosophy of Gordon Clark, especially those relating to whether Clark can know the content of the Bible apart from sensation. Bahnsen highlights Clark's exposition of Augustine:
Augustine is so little enthusiastic about written or spoken words that he
can say, “To give them as much credit as possible, words possess only
sufficient efficacy to remind us in order that we may seek things, but not to
exhibit the things so that we may know them.” No doubt someone will
immediately point out the context of this quotation and remark that
Augustine attributed a greater role to sensation than I do. Quite possibly
that is the case. But if I have gone further than the great bishop, it only adds
emphasis to his concessions. Maybe, too, he might have gone further, had
he lived longer, for the changes from his earlier to his later writings are
considerable.
However this may be, note in addition that he did not learn the story of
the three young Hebrews who were cast into the fiery furnace from inked
lines on a manuscript. “Has this story been transmitted to us otherwise than
by means of words?” he asks. “I answer that everything signified by these
words was already in our knowledge.”
Bahnsen counters that what Clark says here would mean that that which is signified by the words of Scripture were already in our knowledge, contradicting WCF I.1. WCF I.1 states that general revelation is "not sufficient" to give redemptive knowledge. That is, redemptive knowledge cannot be innate or "already in our knowledge." Since this just is what Clark and Augustine are suggesting - that, say, the ink marks of John 3:16 signify truth already in our knowledge - there is a problem.
Of course, all of this is related to the age-old argument against Clark: "don't you have to read your Bible?" I've addressed this numerous times (link, link, link). Now, Bahnsen is right that the physical text of Scripture is not merely "to remind us" (as Clark implied) but to teach us. On the other hand, even Bahnsen seems to recognize that to say that the physical text "teaches" us is metonymic.
Take Bahnsen's statement here: "the message conveyed by the words of the autographa, and not the physical page on which we find printing, is the strict object of inspiration." Amen! We even now have the inspired word of God - the message which was conveyed in the physical words of the autographs. There is a distinction between the immaterial message signified and the physical words which signify. Just as the message is the strict object of inspiration, so too is the message the strict object of our knowledge rather than the physical words on the page. I discuss this further in the last of the above three links.
This undercuts the objection by Bahnsen that "Clark could not even 'know' what the Bible taught since he relied upon sensation - reading, hearing - to learn it." It is true that sensation is required to "learn" what the Bible teaches. Bahnsen is correct in that. But it does not follow that Clark's insistence that "we cannot know anything on the basis of sensation" means that Clark "could not even 'know' what the Bible taught." As I wrote years ago, "when I talk about 'learning' in this post, I am referring to a metaphysical process, not the process of epistemic justification."
That is, when Clark says that "we cannot know anything on the basis of sensation," I argue that he's referring to the idea that sensations cannot function as epistemic justification. Does Bahnsen think they can? Can sensations be strictly true or false? No. On the other hand, sensations can be ordained by God as secondary causes of beliefs, and these beliefs may be true or false, known or not. In this way we can legitimately say we "learn" by sensation.
As an aside, in one of the three links above, I note that Clark's later occasionalism - with which I disagree - indicates Clark acted "as if metaphysics and epistemology were interdependent, even if he insisted the latter was more philosophically basic." This will be another point on which Clark was wrong and Bahnsen was right. I myself came to the same conclusion long before I ever read Bahnsen (link).
Elsewhere in his article, Bahnsen expresses his distaste for Robbins' and Clark's "strident spirit of style" in their writings. He says that Clark "lowered himself to accusing Van Til of being an irrationalist under the influence of neo-orthodoxy!" Bahnsen references this article. Clark indeed compares Van Til's view to that of neo-orthodoxy in one respect, but he is less "strident" than the impression given by Bahnsen. Clark defends Van Til:
Van Til says, "Our knowledge is analogical and therefore must be paradoxical" (p. 61). On this point, we are glad to say, Van Til diverges from neo-orthodoxy. The dialectical theologians weave actual, irresolvable contradictions into the warp and woof of reality. They picture God as irrational. But Van Til uses the term paradox in the earlier and usual sense of seeming contradiction.
I don't read where Clark called Van Til an irrationalist - not in this article, anyways. Bahnsen might have wanted to keep in mind that Van Til likewise made a few remarks about Clark and others about neo-orthodoxy, one of which was that they were "not answering the neo-orthodox" because they wanted "to keep in touch with the neo-orthodox, because that's the movement going in theology, and with existentialism in philosophy" (link) - this despite that Clark wrote a whole book against the theology of Karl Barth. I suppose pointing out that both sides were guilty might be regarded as a tu quoque fallacy, but it balances the historical record. Regardless, Bahnsen seemed a bit emotional when he penned this letter. He was much more cordial in his reply to Anthony Flood.
One more thought on this letter comes from the first footnote, where Bahnsen wrote: "Anything outside the Bible was, at best, a mere matter of 'opinion' for Clark, never 'knowledge', by which he artificially meant knowing with 'certainty'." This moves us in the direction of meta-epistemology. Bahnsen makes a similar charge in Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, where he writes: "Clark’s philosophy is self-contradictory, results in skepticism, and/or (most likely) rests on an entirely artificial notion of knowledge."
Bahnsen thinks it is "artificial" for "knowledge" to require or entail "certainty." Now, "knowledge" is a word which can bear more than one meaning, as Clark understood (cf. The Pastoral Epistles, 1983, pg. 166, which I've quoted on this blog before). But let us ask Bahnsen whether "God’s inscripturated Word bears highest epistemic certainty." Well, Bahnsen himself wrote that (Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended, pg. 10). On pg. 33, Bahnsen further writes, "God tells us to apply our
hearts unto His knowledge if we are to know the certainty of the words
of truth (Prov. 22:17–21)." Finally, on pg. 246, Bahnsen says, "we must draw back when history and logic come to have
greater epistemic certainty than the revelation of God’s mind."
How can Clark's definition of knowledge as it applies to the Bible be "artificial"? If the Bible bears the highest epistemic certainty, doesn't Bahnsen agree with Clark after all? Bahnsen's own remarks rule out anything "outside the Bible" (the extant extent of divine revelation) as having the greater epistemic certainty. Does Bahnsen deny that "knowledge" can in some contexts mean "beliefs with the highest epistemic certainty"? It doesn't appear so, given his comments regarding Prov. 22:17-21.
While all of this will be discussed in more detail, my suspicion is that Bahnsen is unhappy with Clark's relegation of all beliefs which cannot have the "highest epistemic certainty" to a single category of "opinion." But suppose that some other sorts of beliefs can legitimately be referred to as "knowledge" (in some sense). Nevertheless, it is interesting that Bahnsen affirms Clark's view: there is something unique about beliefs respecting special divine revelation. I do not find it "artificial" to claim that the superiority of this "knowledge" is worthy of its own category.
Copernican Revolution: Gordon H. Clark
One taped lecture by Bahnsen compares Clark and Van Til, "two men who have dominated reformed thinking and the latter part of the century." Bahnsen is well-spoken. I also found that Bahnsen here is more open and intentional in building rapprochement between admirers of these two men. Bahnsen spends 10 minutes showing similarities between Clark and Van Til (minutes 24-34). He compliments numerous quotations of Clark, which is not only helpful in terms of establishing lines of dialogue but also in establishing Bahnsen's knowledgeability of Clark's works. I commend Bahnsen's procedure in conversations with those with whom one disagrees: pull no punches, but be "agents for reconciliation" and "charitable understanding."
I also agree that to make progress in this particular dialogue, it's necessary to address the 1940s OPC debate (minute 3). I actually wish Bahnsen was more forthright on this topic. Perhaps he is so in his books as Doug Douma is in
The Presbyterian Philosopher, the best explanation of the 1940s debate of which I am aware. Admittedly, Bahnsen's unhappiness with the affair is evident. He concedes that "as a member of a church court, I'm not sure I would have followed the techniques and the events or actions of those who were the Van Tilians." But rather than explain what these events or actions were, he rushes to clarify that "I would certainly have been against Clark's point of view."
Now, there's only so much that one can cover in an hour-long lecture. Bahnsen noted it "could easily take more than an hour or a morning just to discuss the history of those events." He chooses to spend his time on other matters, and that is indeed his prerogative. But it would be a pleasant change of pace to hear one summary of the 1940s debate from an admirer of Van Til spend more than a sentence or paragraph generalizing the existence of unfortunate decisions or outcomes. Such passing statements don't do justice to the victims of these decisions and outcomes. Again, Bahnsen may do this in his larger publications.
Bahnsen is never quite clear on just it is about "Clark's point of view" that he is "against." Skipping Bahnsen's tangent on the accusations of neo-orthodoxy which were thrown around (see above discussion), on the one hand, Bahnsen says that Clark's view of God's incomprehensibility "didn't go far enough" (minute 7). On the other hand, Bahnsen then says "the two sides in the 40s were really talking past each other" (minute 10). Which is it?
I think Bahnsen understates the stated differences between the complainants and Clark. Bahnsen says, "what Van Til is saying when he says there's analogy between God's knowing and man's knowing is that in some ways they're identical and in some ways they're different" (minute 11). The definition of "analogy" Bahnsen aims to express is true enough in most contexts - an analogy is indeed normally a comparison of two things, a comparison which will have overlap and distinction - but Bahnsen's application of this definition to the present context is false.
The Complaint uses "analogy" or "analogical" four times, three of which are citations of 19th and 20th century Reformed theologians. On how these three citations relate to the complainants' understanding of the terms in question, I can hardly improve on the minority report of Floyd Hamilton here, pgs. 73-85 (Historical Survey of Views of Theologians Appealed to in this Controversy, originally signed by Edmund P. Clowney and Richard W. Gray). Note in particular the following:
This survey has been significant because the signers of the Complaint have insisted that “content” and
“analogy” found specific expression in the quotations from the theologians included in the Complaint. But we have seen that these expressions are not uniform with each other, nor with the Complaint. Shedd, as was pointed out, uses the term “analogy” but declares that the difference between God’s knowledge and man’s can only be expressed quantitatively and not qualitatively. Bavinck, on the other hand, employed the term “analogy” in reference to the knowledge man may have “of a being who in himself is unknowable but nevertheless can
make something of himself known to his creatures.” And Bavinck has indicated
that to a remarkable degree he can agree with the doctrine of the unknowability of God as it appears in philosophers such as Kant and Fichte. Thornwell, the
third theologian quoted in the Complaint who utilized the concept “analogy” applied it not only to the distinction between the “unknowable essence” of God
and His attributes, but also to man’s knowledge of everything. For Thornwell
maintains that man cannot know things as they are in themselves (noumena),
only things as they appear to his sense and faculties (phenomena).
The use of "analogical knowledge" by Bavinck and Thornwell do not line up with Bahnsen's definition (for my interaction with Bavinck, see here). The only other instance in which "analogical" is used in The Complaint is this statement: human "knowledge must be analogical to the knowledge which God possesses, but it can never be identified with the knowledge which the infinite and absolute Creator possesses of the same proposition."
Firstly, notice that contrary to Bahnsen, what is being discussed is not "God's knowing and man's knowing." Knowing pertains to the manner or way in which one "possesses" knowledge. Knowing is subjective. As Clark wrote in the margins of one of the reports of the OPC’s Committee to Study Certain Doctrines "Knowing is mode" (emphasis Clark's), and the complainants argued that "the doctrine of the mode of the divine knowledge is not a part of the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of his knowledge" - which, by the way, is an unusual rephrasing of the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God.
Secondly, what is being discussed in The Complaint is knowledge one "possesses." For them, then, knowledge is an object possessed. Now, the knowledge possessed by God is of the same proposition (or object) as the knowledge possessed by man. Thus, there is, in The Complaint, a point of contact between God and man. Bahnsen's understanding of "analogical" knowledge could apply here after all. As we will see, though, the use will be inappropriate, for the stated point of difference will be problematic.
Here, too, Floyd Hamilton's minority report, pgs. 88-93, dovetail with the findings of Clowney and Gray. Hamilton looked at The Complaint, the majority report, and papers by complainants subsequent to The Complaint. Both his findings and those of Clowney and Gray suggest the complainants advocated a sort of "Christian phenomenalism" and "uncritically
utilized... unguarded terminology" associated with "Kantian epistemology" and "Barthian theology."
To unpack the synthesis of the findings by Hamilton, Clowney, and Gray, one need only examine the words of the complainants. The complainants take issue with the "fundamental assumption made by Dr. Clark,"" i.e. "that truth, whether in the divine mind or in the human mind, is always propositional." Why is this supposed to be problematic? Because "the far-reaching significance of Dr. Clark’s starting point" is that "there is no single item of knowledge in God’s mind which may not be shared by the human mind." That is, if they can be shared, then despite that "Dr. Clark distinguishes between the knowledge of God and of man so far as mode of knowledge is concerned... it is a tragic fact that his dialectic has led him to obliterate the qualitative distinction between the contents of the divine mind and the knowledge which is possible to the creature, and thus to impinge in a most serious fashion upon the transcendence of the divine knowledge which is expressed by the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God." This is the view of the complainants, and these quotes indicate that the complainants think Clark incorrectly conflates propositions with items of knowledge or contents of knowledge.
By contrast, the complainants themselves distinguish between that which is in the divine mind (the "contents" of knowledge) and that which is not (the "objects" of knowledge). The objects are what God and man have in common or are the same - propositions, as was said earlier - and this allegedly differs from the meaning of the propositions to each knower. So the complainants argue:
The far-reaching significance of Dr. Clark’s starting point, as observed under 1. above, is evident when we note that Dr. Clark holds that man’s knowledge of any proposition, if it is really knowledge, is identical with God’s knowledge of the same proposition. If knowledge is a matter of propositions divorced from the knowing subject, that is, of self-contained, independent statements, a proposition would have to have the same meaning for man as for God. And since Dr. Clark holds that no limitation may be placed upon God’s power to reveal propositions one at a time to men, there is no single item of knowledge in God’s mind which may not be shared by the human mind...
In fact, it is perfectly clear, from the statements that man’s highest religious activity is intellectual and that intellection means knowing propositions, that Dr. Clark conceives of man’s religion as nothing greater than knowing propositions as such. This knowing of propositions cannot, in the nature of the case, reflect or inspire any recognition by man of his relation to God, for the simple reason that the propositions have the same content, mean the same, to God and man.
The complainants imply that Clark's conclusions are undesirable. They aim to avoid the view that "a proposition would have to have the same meaning for man as for God." How? By asserting that knowledge cannot be regarded a matter "divorced from the knowing subject." For the complainants, the contents of knowledge are not propositions "as such" (cf. "self-contained, independent statements") but what they "mean" to the knower(s).
If one accepts, like Clark, that the truths which men and God know just are propositions, then one can understand why Clark viewed the complainants as advocating for a "two-layer theory of truth" (link). The complainants may have accepted a single-layer theory of propositions, but they also accepted a two-layer theory of meaning, the latter of which they regarded as equivalent to the contents of knowledge or truths in the divine and human minds.
On the other hand, if one rejects that the truths which men and God know are propositions, we must then ask whether propositions are true. If so, why can't they be known by men and God? Further, what else is true and knowable? For example, are the alleged meanings of propositions - which are allegedly separable from propositions themselves as the former are found in individual minds - true? In other words, is truth comprised of the objects of knowledge, so-called contents of knowledge, or both?
No matter how one answers, there are problems. The majority report of the 1948 OPC Committee to Study Certain Doctrines was that to which Hamilton's aforementioned minority report, in part, responded. In response to the statement in The Complaint that "If knowledge is a matter of propositions divorced from the knowing subject... a proposition would have to have the same meaning for
God as for man," the majority report of this committee acknowledged:
We consider that the first of these statements is regrettably infelicitous and misleading. We hold that the sense of the word “meaning” that is liable to be conveyed by a statement of this kind and in a discussion of this sort is that of “import” or “signification.” The denial... that a proposition
has in any respect the same meaning for God as for man would be incorrect
and would be fraught with skeptical implications.
Consider that two committee members were also complainants! In the margins of a printed copy of this report, Clark underlines the word "infelicitous" and writes, "! just plain false." Clearly, he was not impressed with polite dilution of the magnitude of the complainants' error.
At this point, it might serve as a useful reminder that we should, like Bahnsen, find room for commending the complainants where and when they exhibit proper, Reformed convictions. We should allow space for a change of mind. At the same time, we shouldn't pull punches where and when we find legitimate problems with the views of the complainants. That includes calling the complainants to publicly confess and repent when a change of mind apparently occurs. In any case, a history of the debate requires an evaluation of the original Complaint before any subsequent corrections. Otherwise, one might get the mistaken impression, as Bahnsen did, that the two sides were talking past each other.
Bahnsen concludes his talk about the 1940s debate by arguing the following ways in which there is a "qualitative difference in the process of God's thinking in the process of man's" - firstly, God's thought is original and creative. Secondly, God's thoughts are criteriological. Finally, there is a quality of awe which attaches to God's thoughts. Much could be said in response to this, but to keep it simple, let's take these in turn:
In The Answer to The Complaint, Clark says, "A valid deduction from this relationship would be that man can think
only God’s thoughts after him and cannot originate thoughts not already in God’s mind." The "relationship" to which Clark refers is the "Creator-creature relationship." Without delving into questions such as the distinction between necessary and free divine knowledge, divine self-knowledge, and a philosophy of time, Clark apparently qualifies as believing in what Bahnsen says was The Complaint's first qualitative distinction between God's thought and man's.
The following quote shows Clark's acceptance of the first as well as the second qualitative distinction Bahnsen mentions: "Only the Son has that original and underived knowledge of the Father, which can initiate a revelation.
Man cannot know God unless the Son “willeth to reveal him.” But when the Son reveals God, man can
know him truly insofar as he is revealed, and that knowledge is true knowledge, true both for God and
for man." The Son's knowledge, being original, can alone initiate the revelation without which man cannot know God.
Similarly, Clark writes, "Here we have described the true way to true knowledge of God-revealed doctrine.
Willing to do God’s will is the way of knowledge of God’s revelation. Certainly knowledge of God-revealed truth is here set as a goal before the man who wills to do God’s will." God-revealed truth is the goal because it is the criterion, the way of knowledge. For Clark too, God's thoughts alone are "criteriological," and it is by way of revelation that we come to true knowledge thereof.
In terms of both the second and final qualitative distinctions between God's thoughts and man's, the following statement by Clark implies both: "The significance
of the verses therefore lies in a comparison between human thoughts about salvation and God’s
thoughts about it. God had plans about sending a substitutionary Saviour, which were not revealed to
man, and those plans were so wonderful that there was no comparison with earthly standards." The only standard or criterion for divine and human thoughts [about salvation] are God's plans. Man's "earthly standards" don't compare. Again we see that Clark did not dispute a criteriological distinction.
Additionally, we read something of Clark's "awe" (as Bahnsen puts the final qualitative distinction) in referring to the wonderfulness of God's plans. Clark's agreement with various theologians in The Answer should cement Bahnsen's suspicion. Bahnsen even began his lecture by remarking, "I'm not so sure Clark would have disagreed" with a clear formulation of the qualitative distinction the complainants were after.
The problem is this: Bahnsen's outline is ahistorical. Did Bahnsen think Clark disagreed with these distinctions between God's thought and man's? Did Bahnsen think the complainants thought Clark disagreed with any of this? The contention with respect to the doctrine of incomprehensibility that was made against Clark by the complainants had nothing to do with the fact God's knowledge is original, creative, criteriological, or awe-inspiring. The complainants even highlight Clark's position that "Man is dependent upon God for his knowledge" - that is, that God's knowledge alone is "original" - in order to dismiss its relevancy to their concerns. One will search The Complaint in vain for Bahnsen's understanding of the qualitative distinction between the knowledge of God and knowledge.
Perhaps Bahnsen goes into more detail in his books, but as it stands, his representation is, to be blunt, false. Were it correct, The Complaint's largest concern would have been groundless. In other words, Bahnsen's narrative undermines the very existence of The Complaint, implying the signers didn't have real disagreement with Clark on key issues.
I submit that this could be because Bahnsen's view of "analogy" is really that of Clark's, not the complainants. If it turned out that the complainants and Clark were talking past each other, that would make it easier for Bahnsen to justify siding with the complainants. On the other hand, saying the sides talked past each other would still beg the question raised earlier as to why Clark's view of the incomprehensibility of God was insisted by Bahnsen to be inadequate.
Moving on from the 1940s debate, at minute 42, Bahnsen accuses Clark of a generalization fallacy, i.e. inferring from the fact that some observations are unreliable the conclusion that all observations are unreliable. A source for where Clark has argued like this would have been helpful. Bahnsen then aims to undercut Clark by way of illustration: essentially, if two observations contradict, why is it that we usually use one to correct the other?
Bahnsen basically gives away the case when, in the same breath, he admits that "observations are not automatically infallible." Unless Bahnsen has a method by which he is able to attain infallible beliefs regarding observations (and he offers no suggestions), then he should admit that any observation must be forwarded tentatively. Even if we conclude that the iron bars of railroad tracks 500 yards down the road do not actually touch each other as might have first appeared to our senses - if we have attempted to correct our initial observation by investigating the situation - our conclusion itself is tentative, not automatically infallible. Isn't our investigation open to further correction?
Thus, in response to Bahnsen's question, "how do you know that some of our observations are misleading," Clark could probably just point out that some of our observations have yielded contradictory beliefs. One belief must be false. The railroad tracks either converge or don't - how does Bahnsen know which is true? Better, Clark might question the entire enterprise: suppose the railroad tracks don't converge... because there are no railroad tracks! Perhaps we are hallucinating or dreaming. According to Bahnsen, is this impossible?
Such questions might have led Bahnsen to return us to his concern that Clark's definition for "knowledge" is "artificial." Now, I already defended the significance of infallible beliefs about which we can be certain - one definition of "knowledge." And I agree with Clark that observations don't give us this sort of knowledge. On the other hand, biblical statements do favor extra-biblical "knowledge" of another sort. While he might not agree with this understanding, Keith Mathison's sixth chapter in Toward a Reformed Apologetics is one recent summary of such data (pgs. 128ff.).
I've found externalism (link, link, link) to be a thoughtful way to harmonize Clark's defense of the exclusivity of the reasonableness of the Christian worldview with being able to refer to everyday beliefs as "knowledge." Externalism can allow gor "justified" beliefs without requiring a person who justifies them - there is a justificatory factor external to the one who has the justified belief.
An alternative (or addition) which could supplement both Clark's interest and biblical warrant for extra-biblical "knowledge" would be to argue that Christians can fallibly justify their everyday beliefs. This would differ from externalism, of course, because the justification for one's belief would be internal to the one who has the justified belief. This would also harmonize with Clark's defense of the exclusivity of the reasonableness of the Christian worldview, for fallibly justified beliefs could never be used to refute infallibly justified beliefs about which we are certain. One sort of "knowledge" is clearly subordinate to the other.
I mention these alternatives because Bahnsen seems inclined to this latter option: "we affirm that we can know things empirically and that can only be made sense of within the Christian worldview" (minute 45). Unfortunately, Bahnsen does not attempt to defend how such knowledge is possible in light of Clark's criticisms. Rather, he relies on the audience's intuition that Clark view is "kind of hard to swallow" (minute 57). This is one area on which I will look to Bahnsen's other publications for an answer.
Bahnsen then talks about a conversation he had with Clark at Covenant College. I've already written about that here, but see also earlier links to posts regarding assurance and self-knowledge.
The final points in the lecture surround the idea of axioms. Bahnsen mentions the following quote from Three Types of Religious Philosophy:
Although Aristotle’s Empiricism is a failure, if first principles can be had in
some other way, demonstration and system escape infinite regress.
Rationalism does not produce first principles out of something else: The
first principles are innate. And this is not far removed from the Dogmatism
or Fideism that simply posits them as Euclid did.
A charitable interpretation of Clark: what did Euclid do? He posited geometric axioms. That is, he put forward some propositions as a basis upon which theorems could be inferred. Just so, a dogmatist forwards some propositions as epistemically basic (i.e. foundationalism). Even given this charitable interpretation - on which, see below - a few questions arise:
A Christian hopes to defend the Trinity, the Ten
Commandments, and some historical statements. But where can he begin?
Is there anything so sure and certain that the distortions of sense and even
Descartes’ demon cannot overthrow it? What truth is there that is absolutely
basic? Is any proposition self-authenticating? Augustine said, Yes.
Clark also answers "yes," although the truth he takes as self-authenticating is the Bible, not Augustine's starting point. In fact, Clark says "every first principle must be" regarded by its proponents as self-authenticating. Naturally, this leads Bahnsen to ask about the apologetic implications of this: if two people who have chosen their first principles disagree, each will regard his own position as self-authenticating. "Why," Clark asks, "does anyone choose the Bible rather than the Koran?" Bahnsen quotes Clark's answer to this (1:02:30):
Since all possible knowledge must be contained within the system and
deduced from its principles, the dogmatic answer must be found in the
Bible itself. The answer is that faith is the gift of God.
I have to admit that with Bahnsen, I too was unimpressed when I first read this over a decade ago. Clark has answered the "why" question with a reference to causes. But Bahnsen, myself, and others are more interested in why one should choose Clark's first principle rather than a Muslim's, not in a causal explanation for why one does. Any answer Clark gives "must," as Clark notes, "be found in the Bible." So why didn't Clark answer why one should choose his first principle? This is a fair question, for Clark's discourse concludes unsatisfactorily.
If Clark hesitated to answer this question because it may have sounded like any answer would have unintentionally led to readers inferring he promoted a prior premise for his first principle, he could have written a response to account for that. In fact, he had already done this in A Christian Philosophy of Education, writing that "it is possible to have sane reasons of some sort to justify the choice" in one's indemonstrable axiom. He then mentions the principle of consistency as a "reason," terminology that could easily give the reader the impression of a prior premise after all.
So in this present context, at the very least, Clark could have answered that God's revealed words are alone self-authenticating. This first principle rules out all others by its very truth for which we have non-inferential justification for believing. Another way to put it is that the theorems which follow from this self-authenticating axiom can function to explain something about this axiom without thereby rendering the axiom epistemically dependent on the theorems doing the explaining.
The Muslim may not be happy with this epistemic claim - or they may even attempt to copy it - but that isn't problematic. Firstly, flow of Clark's thought would have remained uninterrupted, and a true answer would have been given. Secondly, engaging with the Muslim after the fact would be a matter of apologetics (e.g. the Koran is internally contradictory and, thus, cannot be self-authenticating, whereas the Bible has never been shown to be internally contradictory), not epistemology. As I (and Bahnsen) have said many times, these two disciplines are distinct, on which see below.
On the topic of unprovable axioms, there is one more quote in Clark's Three Types of Religious Philosophy which deserves mention:
Since it is easier to distinguish the difference between Christianity and
Playboy’s obscenities than it is to distinguish Riemannian from Euclidean
geometry, wisdom counsels us to rephrase the objection, to state what Dr.
Montgomery intended to state, and then to answer what he meant but did
not say. What he obviously meant was that a priori principles, since they are
not based on evidence, are arbitrary; and if arbitrary, the a priori of Playboy
is just as legitimate as the fundamental principles of Christianity. Now,
there is a certain sense in which this is true enough. If neither set of
principles can be based on evidence, and if both sets are regarded by their
advocates as the starting point for all demonstration and argument, then
obviously no one can support either set on anything more fundamental. This
is simply to say that every system of thought must start somewhere.
Earlier, I provided a charitable interpretation of Clark's statement that Dogmatism "simply posits" axioms "as Euclid did." A more severe critic might posit that it was, shall we say, infelicitous of Clark to make Euclid the illustrative standard of a Dogmatist's epistemic thought process.
What's worse is Clark's awareness of geometries other than Euclid. Still worse, comparing this to one of his last writings, Clark said, "Euclidian, Riemanian, and Lobachevskian
geometries are each alone free of contradiction" (Clark Speaks from the Grave). Does all of this imply Clark thought that his own Dogmatism and someone else's first principles could each be free of contradiction? Clark's follow-up answer in that book is:
So far as one can surmise, it may be possible for a non-Christian system
to be free from contradictory pairs....a comprehensive non-Christian
philosophy, such as Kant’s or Hegel’s, without internal contradictions,
would be hard to find. Remember the quip: Without the Ding an sich one
cannot get into the Kantian system, and with it one cannot stay in. If the
God of the Bible is Truth, one can at least expect that somewhere a non-Christian system will run into difficulties.
Bahnsen's evaluation that Clark's axiomatic views were voluntaristic has some teeth to it after all! If a "comprehensive" (and this word rules out the idea that Clark had in mind what he called "truncated" systems) non-Christian system could be without internal contradictions, Clark appears to have put abstract possibilities before Scripture. Consider that Clark accepted a consistency theory of truth. This means that while he criticized the complainants for a "two-layer theory of truth," in allowing for the possibility of multiple consistent systems, he's opened himself up to a similar (if not worse) charge.
One can begin to see why Clark thought choosing between the "fundamental principles" of Christianity, Islam, and Playboy would be an "arbitrary" choice. In my mind, Bahnsen was extremely kind in his lecture not to have brought this up. It's not only horrible for a Presbyterian minister to have written, it makes Bahnsen's point: contradictory are 1) Clark's affirmation of the Bible's self-authenticity and 2) his affirmation that "if arbitrary, the a priori of Playboy is just as legitimate as the fundamental principles of Christianity." 1) means believers can be epistemically certain; the meaning of 2) doesn't even allow for epistemic probabilism (per Bahnsen) but only epistemic indifference and, thus, epistemic voluntarism.
As an admirer of Clark, I speak to fellow admirers when I push that one cannot look past what must be called trash. Even supposing that Clark only meant that the first principles of adherents of both non-Christian and Christian systems are "arbitrary" in that each and every first principle is reasonless - i.e. the first principles are not epistemically inferred or "based on evidence" - only truth can be a "legitimate" "starting point for all demonstration and argument." And we can know the truth, for the Bible is self-authenticating. A "Playboy" axiom can in no sense be "just as legitimate" as the Christian axiom. Above, Clark made a statement starting with "If the God of the Bible is Truth..." Clark's statement must be false if "if" implies that it is metaphysically possible that there is no God of the Bible who is Truth.
When comparing worldviews, axioms, and so forth, it is necessary to remember that epistemic neutrality is an impossibility (link). A corollary to this is that laws of logic, contingency, and possibility must be concretely rooted. That is, they exist within a particular world, and they must be conceived as existing within a particular worldview.
There is much talk of "possible worlds" in philosophical circles - and that's fine - but for there to even be possible worlds depends on an actuality. As a simplistic illustration, one might think of God as a chef. He's fully satisfied and perfect in Himself. He also doesn't have to cook if He doesn't want to, because it won't add anything (like nutrients) to Him by which He might progress, be improved, etc. Thus, necessitarianism and process theology are ruled out.
If He is pleased to do so, He can choose to cook up a meal (instantiate a possible world). Or He can enjoy Himself and decline to cook (another possible world). The possibilities are rooted in God Himself; it's not as if, say, there are ingredients that God has to go somewhere to find. But the real point of this metaphor is that the food possibilities require one who can cook. The concrete God grounds all necessities and possibilities, not vice versa. This is as true in epistemology as it is in metaphysics. Unless we are speaking ad hominem, then, to speculate or hypothesize about the truth of the Bible or God's existence entails that one really has some other first principle. For more on possibility and necessity, see here.
This segues into transcendental arguments for Christianity. One of Bahnsen's primary points in his lecture is that Clark denies axioms can be proved whereas Van Til says we can prove ultimate presuppositions by the impossibility to the contrary. I've linked to the transcendental argument at the bottom of this post before, but I still know of no better presentation of the argument itself or response to an anticipated objection.
This, by the way, is another response Clark could have provided as to why one should choose the Bible over the Koran without compromising his view of axioms as unproveable. If Clark had no issue with defending the Bible by appealing to its internal consistency, he should have had no issue with defending the Bible using transcendental argumentation. Each of these defenses exhibits self-referential coherence.
In fact, Clark has used transcendental argumentation in his apologetic. Take his following argument from The Wheaton Lectures: "It is incorrect, therefore, to complain that the axiom of revelation deprives us of knowledge otherwise obtainable. There is no knowledge otherwise obtainable." This is excellent. It excludes the epistemic viability all non-Christian axioms and theorems.
Now, I take the transcendental argument to be apologetic, not epistemic. That is, the language of "proof" sounds as though the transcendental argument is that which epistemically justifies my belief in the Bible. I deny this - and so does Bahnsen, if we take him at his word that the Bible bears the "highest epistemic certainty." I prefer the language that this is a "transcendental argument," for arguments are related to apologetics, defenses of that faith which we already know.
Clark, therefore, is right insofar as any "dogmatic answer must be found in the Bible itself." Apologetics is dependent on epistemology, after all. And as Ron Digiacomo says, the premises in the argument in turn are defended by "appealing to the absolute authority of Scripture," the extant extent of God's self-authenticating word. God's word is epistemically basic, foundational, or axiomatic. It stands in no need of prior, epistemic proof.
I've likely written more than is helpful, but one more statement by Bahnsen made at mark 1:07:00 is connected to the foregoing: "If knowledge is justified true belief, reasons pertain to the truth. Causes pertain to the believing." Bahnsen says this in the context of taking Clark to task for failing to give a proper answer (and even a proper formulation of the question) regarding choosing between Christian and Islamic first principles. Again, no one much wants to compare these to know that which each first principle (or its theorems) attribute to be causes of beliefs in them. Rather, people want to know why one should be chosen over another.
I've already provided my answer to this. I don't quite understand Bahnsen's own answer. That which is true is true regardless of one's reasons for his belief... if he even has any. One can have a true belief without reasons, after all. Perhaps Bahnsen meant to say that reasons pertain to justification?
If I am interpreting Bahnsen correctly, then I have two questions. The first is: in order to have justified true belief (knowledge), does Bahnsen think one always need reasons? If so, I disagree. Knowledge of or justification for belief in God's word does not require reasons. Reasons cannot make me to know or become justified in my belief that God's word is true if God's word already bears the "highest epistemic certainty," for if the "reasons" did do so, they would themselves then have the "highest epistemic certainty." God's word is justified non-inferentially.
The second question is whether Bahnsen considers the transcendental argument to be epistemic, apologetic, or both. I've stated why I think the transcendental argument is apologetic: the argument is itself grounded in one's knowledge of the Christian first principle. But right after his definition of knowledge, at minute mark 1:08:00, Bahnsen says, "Van Til says there's a reason for believing our ultimate presupposition: the impossibility of the contrary. If you don't follow this presupposition, you can't make sense out of any other method."
It appears that one of two things has happened. Bahnsen may be subordinating his "ultimate presupposition" to his "reason" for it; that is, Bahnsen may be suggesting his "ultimate presupposition" is derived from some logically prior "reason." Is it realistic that Bahnsen thought his transcendental argument (his "reason") was more fundamental than that which has been divinely revealed ("ultimate presupposition")?
The other option is that the "reason" Bahnsen mentions is derived from his ultimate presupposition. After all, the concept of "the impossibility of the contrary" came from somewhere - and I don't mean in a causal sense. The concept must be related to Bahnsen's ultimate presupposition. But what is the relation? If one's knowledge of "the impossibility of the contrary" is derived from God's word, then isn't the argument's construction circular? If so, a tangential question I'll skip but write for my own reflection is whether Bahnsen's correspondence of reasons to justification and causes to beliefs in the "justified true belief" definition of knowledge means that circular reasoning would entail circular causation.
What is Bahnsen's position, then? I would not have thought the former was a live option, but in Bahnsen's debate with Sproul (link), we find the following exchange:
Sproul: How do you know the Bible's the word of God? I haven't heard a single response to that question. You've quoted the Bible, but you haven't...
Bahnsen: I know it from the impossibility of the contrary.
...
Sproul: How do you know that your presupposition is true? Where does your certainty come from? That's what I keep trying to ask.
Bahnsen: From the impossibility of the contrary.
Sproul: All right, how is the contrary impossible?
Bahnsen: Well, you want me to go through a few of the schools of philosophy and show you? I mean, how is it utterly impossible and unthinkable that there be no God?
Bahnsen repeatedly says he knows that the Bible is God's word from the impossibility of the contrary. How, then, can the Bible be his "ultimate presupposition"?
If Bahnsen's knowledge of "the impossibility of the contrary" were ultimately derived from the Bible itself, then Bahnsen's stated answer to Sproul would entail that his epistemic justification for belief in the truth of the Bible is circular: he knows the Bible is true because of the impossibility of the contrary, and he knows the impossibility of the contrary because he knows the Bible is true. I deny this attempt at circular justification, and so does Bahnsen himself (in his published works; e.g. Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, pg. 518, footnote 122). Apologetic arguments may be circular (i.e. self-referential), but as has been pointed out, that doesn't mean said arguments are also epistemic justifications for our beliefs.
In point of fact, Bahnsen denies that epistemic justification is circular at minute mark 1:51:29 in his conversation with Sproul about Gordon Clark's views (which are misrepresented, but we can leave that aside). When asked by Sproul how he knows the contrary is impossible, Bahnsen doesn't say, "because God has revealed such in the Bible." He replies by offering to discuss some contraries. At least this isn't an attempt to circularly justify how he knows the Bible is true.
But Bahnsen's response fails in two ways: 1) Bahnsen fails to demonstrate that the contrary to the Bible is true, which was Sproul's question; 2) Bahnsen subordinates knowledge of the truth of the Bible to logic, as if knowledge of the truth of the Bible depends on an argument that any and all unbiblical worldviews are false.
Regarding 1), Sproul didn't ask about the impossibility of a few contraries to the Bible, he asked how Bahnsen knows the impossibility of the contrary. That is, what is it about the Bible in particular such that a worldview which does not accept it is unworkable? It doesn't suffice for Bahnsen to refute individual worldviews which reject the Bible.
Think of it this way: if, as Bahnsen believed, we don't defend Christianity piecemeal, then Bahnsen shouldn't attack non-Christianity piecemeal either, for that won't defend his especially bold claim that he knows the Bible is true because the contrarY (i.e. non-biblical worldviews) is unworkable or impossible. Sproul put Bahnsen on the spot and showed that in the moment, Bahnsen's transcendental argument reduced to a transcendental assertion. Bahnsen might have been able to refute some non-Christian philosophies. But actually, one can only refute other positions if one already knows truth [axiomatically] in the first place.
Even if we grant that Bahnsen could have refuted a few non-Christian worldviews, such would have constituted a case-by-case, inductive study, a methodological procedure which cannot justify Christianity. Again, the transcendental argument is supposed to be the impossibility of
the contrary, not the impossibility of
some contraries. But in his conversation with Sproul, Bahnsen's stated justification of the impossibility of the contrary is inductive. Bahnsen himself explains elsewhere why this procedure for transcendental argumentation is wrong (
link):
Presuppositionalism is not a case by case by case inductive survey. It's not like we're going out there and saying, "Okay, here's a version of the enemy. It didn't work, now let's find another one. Oh, now this second one didn't work, now let's find another one. This third one didn't work..." And then eventually we stand back, either because we've gotten tired or we think we've done enough work and we say, "Well, then all of them won't work." That is not the argument. If it were, it would be weak, because any inductive survey that's incomplete. You don't know how much more of this is out there. But that isn't the argument. We don't consider this. I believe Christianity is the only option. On a case-by-case basis, I begin by saying Christianity is the only option. Now, who wants to fight?
[Parenthetically, if inductive reasoning is not acceptable here, Bahnsen again implicitly concedes the importance of Clark's emphasis on infallible, internalist knowledge.]
In the above quote, the highlighted portions are correct. Internally critiquing some non-Christian philosophies is insufficient to establish the impossibility of the contrarY (singular) to biblical Christianity, i.e. ~biblical Christianity.
When Sproul asked why the non-biblical worldview is unworkable or impossible, Bahnsen had the following options:
1) merely claim that "Christianity is the only option." This is a transcendental assertion, not a transcendental argument.
2) argue that all non-biblical worldviews don't work or are impossible because some don't work or are impossible. This is the inductive route he takes with Sproul, but it fails for the very reasons Bahnsen states above.
3) argue that all non-biblical worldviews don't work or are impossible because God has revealed such in the Bible. This is the straightforward, correct response; however, in this case, Bahnsen should not have told Sproul that he knows the Bible is true from the impossibility of the contrary. That inverts the truth: that Bahnsen and we know the impossibility of the contrary because he and we know the Bible first (the Bible is self-authenticating and known noninferentially). Bahnsen might defend the Bible from the impossibility to the contrary, but he shouldn't say he knows the Bible from the impossibility to the contrary. This would also be problematic in that it entails circular epistemic justification.
4) argue that all non-biblical worldviews don't work or are impossible for some other reason. This would beg further questions from Sproul that would further press the issue that Bahnsen is reasoning to Christianity after all rather than taking biblical revelation as his ultimate presupposition.
I think Bahnsen's published work contradicts certain statements in his debates. The transcendental argument is supposed to be used apologetically, not epistemically. To repeat the conclusion, the transcendental argument is a defense of the faith, not a justification by which we say we know the Bible is true. We know "the" transcendental argument is true (or, at least, some version of it such as Digiacomo provides) because we know the Bible is true, not vice versa.
Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark: Part 1
This lecture by Bahnsen is one of two parts. In this first part, Bahnsen responds to Clark's criticisms of Van Til
here,
here, and
here. Bahnsen's first claim is that Clark misunderstood Van Til in several respects. He does a fair job of making his case. For example, Clark writes of Van Til:
Do not these assertions imply that the natural or unregenerate man is totally devoid of knowledge? The first quotation in the preceding paragraph denied that there was a common area of knowledge; a later one says that reason of sinful man invariably acts wrongly; then, the unbeliever cannot interpret any area of experience; and finally, the traditional view that the natural man has a certain measure of correct thought content leads to self-frustration. Certainly these passages imply that an unregenerate man is totally ignorant.
Bahnsen denies Clark's conclusion follows from its premises. That is, Bahnsen rejects that Van Til held or implied that unbelievers are totally ignorant. He makes the same case that Mathison recently made in
Toward a Reformed Apologetics (e.g. pg. 93), i.e. Van Til speaks of "knowledge" in two ways (
link). Bahnsen gives a practical illustration at minute mark 11 and then essentially argues that the quotations of Van Til alluded to by Clark in the above paragraph speak of knowledge "in principle." Unbelievers cannot have knowledge according to their espoused principles, for all unbelieving systems of thought are incompatible with the possibility of knowledge.
On the other hand, because unbelievers act inconsistently with their espoused principles, living on "borrowed capital," they can have knowledge in practice. Just as one doesn't have to be able to account for the laws of logic to use them, one doesn't have to be able to account for his knowledge in order to have "knowledge" - although being able to so account would constitute having "knowledge" of a higher and significantly different sort (cf. externalism and internalism above).
For comparative purposes, consider that Clark affirmed natural knowledge (
link) but also says that "taking the Scriptural truths as axioms, all knowledge
is deducible from them" (
Language and Theology). If all knowledge is deducible from Scripture, then it would seem impossible to affirm natural knowledge. Is there an inconsistency here, then, or wouldn't a charitable reading conclude that Clark intended different definitions to be understood for the same word as it was used in different contexts? Just so for Van Til (per Bahnsen).
Bahnsen's case would have been more convincing if he had directly dealt with Clark's citations, showing how each context refers to knowledge in principle vs. knowledge in practice. He speculates, "I think we have to question whether there wasn't something perhaps impeding Dr. Clark's vision and understanding."
I believe there was some sort of tunnel vision, but not what Bahnsen intimates. This goes back to the 1940s debate, but it is not simple resentment blinding Clark to Van Til's views. In one of Clark's articles Bahnsen said he would address at the beginning of the lecture ("How May I Know the Bible Is Inspired?"), Clark writes:
Cornelius Van Til and some of his colleagues prepared
and signed a document in which they repudiate a particular
statement of the unregenerate man’s epistemological
ability. A certain professor, they complain, “makes no absolute qualitative distinction between the knowledge of
the unregenerate man and the knowledge of the
regenerate man” (The Text of a Complaint, page 10,
column 2). This statement not only implies that an
unbeliever finds it less easy to understand that David
smote the Philistine, but in asserting an absolute
qualitative distinction between whatever knowledge he
derives from that statement and the knowledge a
regenerate man derives, the quotation also suggests that
the unregenerate m an simply cannot understand
propositions revealed to man.
In another paper, two of Van Til’s associates declare that
it is “erroneous” to hold that “regeneration...is not a change
in the understanding of these words” (A. R. Kuschke, Jr.,
and Bradford, A Reply to Mr. Hamilton, 4). According to
them, it is also erroneous to say, “when he is regenerated,
his understanding of the proposition may undergo no
change at all [but] that an unregenerate man m ay put
exactly the same meaning on the words...as the
regenerate man” (6). Since these are the positions they
repudiate, their view must be precisely the contradictory;
namely, an unregenerate man can never put exactly the
same meaning on the words as a regenerate man, that
regeneration necessarily and always changes the meaning
of the words a man knows, and that the unregenerate and
regenerate cannot possibly understand a sentence in the
same sense. These gentlemen appeal to 2 Corinthians
4:3-6, where it is said that the Gospel is hidden to them
that are lost, and to Matthew 13:3-23, where the multitudes
hear the parable but do not understand it. These two
passages from Scripture are supposed to prove that a
Christian’s “understanding is never the same as that of the
unregenerate man.”
I've already written about Kuschke and Van Til on this matter
here and found Clark to have just cause for thinking "there can be no context in which Van Til can have grounds to say that unregenerates know anything, for knowledge, like faith, presupposes understanding." We can add to the evidence the statement in The Complaint that Clark quotes above. Here it is in fuller context:
The assumption has constantly been that the unregenerate man is polluted in every thought, every emotion, and every act of his will. Precisely here must be raised a final objection to Dr. Clark’s view of the primacy of the intellect. Dr. Clark does not deny the necessity or the fact of regeneration but he makes no absolute qualitative distinction between the knowledge of the unregenerate man and the knowledge of the regenerate man. With the same ease, the same “common sense”, the unregenerate and the regenerate man can understand propositions revealed to man (p. 20; 28:13-16; 31:13-17; 34:13-35:2)
The complainants use the same language of "qualitative distinction" in this context as they do in the context of comparing the knowledge of God and man. Following the argument already made about the complainants (see my comments under Bahnsen's lecture on the "Copernican Revolution" above), the parallel suggests that the complainants considered unregenerates to have a different meaning in their minds than regenerates have in their minds regarding the same proposition. This will be substantiated momentarily.
As an aside, the understanding Hamilton, Douma, and I have provided regarding the meaning of "qualitative distinction" is consistent across all contexts in which it is used in The Complaint. This is a stark contrast to Bahnsen, whose understanding of the qualitative distinction between God's knowledge and man's knowledge is repeated in this lecture but cannot be intelligibly applied to the context of the believer's knowledge and the unbeliever's knowledge.
Now, does the objection of the complainants pertain to knowledge unregenerates have in principle alone or also in practice? The complainants are talking about knowledge unregenerates have in practice or in fact, not merely in principle, a point confirmed by their implicit denial that "the unregenerate... man can understand propositions revealed to man." Well, if an unregenerate cannot understand revealed propositions, he cannot have knowledge - neither in practice nor in principle. Knowledge presupposes understanding.
The complainants also believed that "man’s religious activity undergoes... qualitative change through regeneration." From the most recent link above: "when content is injected into the sentence" - the sentence Kuschke refers to is 'Christ died for sinners' - "the unregenerate man must invariably inject the wrong content and the regenerate man the true content." Further, "If regeneration did not change our understanding of the words 'Christ died for sinners,' " he declared, "then we would never be saved!""
Summarizing: Van Til listened to Kuschke, his fellow complainant, as he spoke before presbytery about the very quote from The Complaint that Clark and I mention (note Kuschke uses the same language, e.g. "with the same ease"), and there is no record of pushback from Van Til. I think Clark can be forgiven if he truly did mistake Van Til's views, for it seems to me that Van Til either changed his position over time (cf. The Presbyterian Philosopher, pgs. 160ff.) or remained culpably silent as a poor accusation was made against a fellow presbyter.
I found it extremely weak when, at minute 49, Bahnsen tells the audience, "I want to remind you that Dr. Van Til did not author the complaint... when Dr Clark complains against the precise wording of one sentence in that complaint, he's not necessarily arguing with Dr Van Til." It is pure speculation that Van Til did not wholly subscribe to The Complaint. If there were any disagreements among the complainants about substantial content in The Complaint, they shouldn't have included such in the first place. After all, did Clark deserve special criticism for views potentially held by individual complainants themselves? The theory is nonsense. Bahnsen again undermines the complainants'
complaining. This time, it's to provide cover for Van Til.
Bahnsen repeats some material in this lecture that was already covered above in the discussion of another lecture. I won't go over again the qualitative distinction between God's knowledge and man's knowledge as they relate to The Complaint. We can also leave aside matters such as Bahnsen misspeaking at minute mark 50:43 - God's different mode of knowing entails a "qualitative" distinction, not a "quantitative" one. This is not a big deal.
At the end of the lecture, though, Bahnsen does somewhat explain why he agrees with the complainants instead of Clark. He says:
Dr. Clark has a deficient understanding of the incomprehensibility of God. He does not properly respect the creature-Creator distinction when it comes to knowing. After all, according to Dr. Clark, God and man - their minds overlap. And that is the language he uses - their minds overlap when it comes to the laws of logic. And yet, to know anything, you must know everything according to the idealist epistemology that lies behind much of what Dr. Clark says. Knowing is knowing a system where everything is deductively related to everything else. And so, if God's mind and man's mind overlap when it comes to the laws of logic and you can only know those things if you know the whole system... and I wouldn't for a moment accuse Dr Clark of actually believing this, but the implication of saying those things is that God's mind in man's mind overlap completely, because they have the whole system in common. And at that point, we clearly have not guarded the incomprehensibility of God either quantitatively or qualitatively.
I haven't heard this criticism before. In fact, it's an ironic reversal of what I suggest about Van Til
here. Keith Mathison separately finds that Van Til was subject to "propositional influence" from idealism (
link). Be that as it may, Bahnsen clearly was not aware of a letter Clark wrote to Van Til on August 28, 1937:
Christianity does not face the same difficulties here as does a pagan system. A pagan monism cannot logically derive its multiplicity. But Christianity does not have to derive multiplicity by logic. The creation is not a syllogism, but a voluntary choice.
For God, then, it is not true that "everything is deductively related to everything else." Clark lived most of his life without subscribing to necessitarianism. Further, Clark explicitly rejected the idealistic doctrine of internal relations in
Historiography: Secular and Religious (
link, pg. 226). Now, insofar as our knowledge relies on divine revelation, Clark did consider "Axiomatization, deduction, systematization... desirable" (
Clark and His Critics). But from this, it hardly follows that to know anything, you must know everything.
Recall that during the 1940s debate, the only persons that the churchmen of the time associated with idealism were the complainants. I mentioned the findings of Edmund Clowney, Richard Gray, and Floyd Hamilton in comments on Bahnsen's last lecture. I would also point out a paper written on behalf of the complainants. This paper (currently unavailable online) was presented before the Presbytery of Philadelphia, of which Van Til and his fellow complainants were members. One must assume it faithfully represents the views of the complainants. On page 6 of this paper, in first full paragraph, we read:
In the first place, so far as the reference to implications is concerned, we believe that this misses the real point at issue. One cannot say that man's knowledge of a proposition, if it is really knowledge, must be identical with God's knowledge of that proposition, and then state that they differ because of the implications which every proposition has. The distinction between knowledge of a truth and knowledge of its implications is artificial and atomistic. When God declares a truth with regard to himself, such as that he is eternal, he must be giving a revelation concerning his whole being. And when God gives a revelation concerning the created universe, that revelation must be a revelation about himself in the unity of his being in relationship to the universe. When God reveals the truth that Christ died for his people, that revelation has meaning only if the terms of the proposition (the subject "Christ" and the predication) are understood. The divine mind cannot know that truth at all without knowing its implications and the human mind likewise cannot know it as a bare proposition, apart from an actual understanding of implications. The revelation of it to men brings knowledge of it, but the divine knowledge of it necessarily stands on a different level.
Based on what is said here, Clark made two responses. The first is a thorough response to the above and can be read
here. The second response is from his personal notes on The Complaint and related papers (see pgs. 22-23
here):
In paper Incomprehensibility p. 6, they say the distinction between knowledge of a truth and knowledge of its implications (i.e. other truths) is artificial and atomistic. Why artificial? All meanings merge. No real or natural distinction.
I do not see anything artificial in distinguishing between 1) David was King and 2) Solomon ordered cedars for the temple. It seems to me that the distinctions between David Solomon and trees are entirely natural distinctions, not artificial. They are related in one system, but they are indeed distinct truths. This has a bearing on the confusion concerning paradoxes and their solution.
It seems to me that the Complainants actually hold, and by their logic ought to hold, that the solution of any paradox requires an exhaustive knowledge of all truth.
Clark infers the logic of the complainants is that of idealism. Bahnsen's stated reason for siding with the complainants is the very reason he should have sided against them. There is more material regarding this than can be shared in an already lengthy blog post, but for a sampling of what I mean, see
here.
Wrapping up the little left of Bahnsen's references to The Complaint worth mentioning, Bahnsen quotes Van Til as saying (
link):
...it is possible to see that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of man coincide at no point in the sense that in his awareness of meaning of anything, in his mental grasp or understanding of anything, man is at each point dependent upon a prior act of unchangeable understanding and revelation on the part of God. The form of the revelation of God to man must come to man in accordance with his creaturely limitations. God’s thought with respect to anything is a unit. Yet it pertains to a multiplicity of objects. But man can think of that unit as involving a number of items only in the form of succession.
I'll continue to quote some of Van Til's next paragraph:
For man any new revelational proposition will enrich in meaning any previous given revelational proposition. But even this enrichment does not imply that there is any coincidence, that is, identity of content between what God has in his mind and what man has in his mind. If there is no identity of content in the first proposition that God gives to man there can be no identity of content attained by means of any number of additional propositions of revelation that God gives to man. And there could be identity of content on the first proposition only if there were no first proposition. That is to say, if there could be an identity of content there would be and always has been an identity of content. There could and would be an identity of content only if the mind of man were identical with the mind of God. It is only on the assumption that the human mind is not the mind of a creature but is itself the mind of the Creator that one can talk consistently of identity of content between the mind of man and the mind of God.
Van Til, like The Complaint, associates the "content" of man's knowledge with the "meaning" which is in his mind and the content of God's knowledge with the "meaning" in his mind. That there is said to be no coincidence justifies what I, following others, concluded earlier regarding a two-layer theory of meaning.
To this, we can add that if there is no coincidence between the content of God's knowledge and content of man's knowledge, then that which God reveals (the "object" of knowledge, the revelation itself) will mean something other to man than it does to God.
Finally, on this schema, there seems to be something off about man's ability to reinterpret God's pre-interpretations of the facts. If God's knowledge is a unit and man's thought "of that unit" involves "a number of items only in the form of succession" - the result being that there is no coincidence between the contents of God's knowledge and contents of man's knowledge - does man's reinterpretation at all correspond to God's pre-interpretation? An alternative way of framing the question is whether God knows that which He communicates to us in Scripture. If not, then while the depiction of God's knowledge as a "unit" might have a certain legitimacy, it might need to be balanced by considerations such as divine counter-factual knowledge, the biblical account of there being a plurality of divine thoughts (Isaiah 55:8), etc.
Coming back to Clark's 1957 article on "Apologetics," Bahnsen argues that one other area where Clark misrepresents Van Til is with respect to the transcendental argument. Clark writes, "there is no point in talking about a perfect argument that no one has ever correctly formulated." That is, he claims Van Til has never stated the transcendental argument. Bahnsen finds the following statement Clark makes
here to be even more incredulous:
“With regard to the existence of God and the truth of Christian theism, there
is absolutely certain proof. There is a cogent theistic proof.” Now, Frame’s statement there is
quite true, Van Til has said this over and over again. He doesn’t accept Thomas’ proof or any
other proof. But he insists that there is an absolutely certain proof. A cogent theistic proof. And
he indicates he means the cosmological proof not the ontological proof. And for some forty years
3
now I’ve been bugging him to show me the proof, so I can see whether it is valid or not. He
hasn’t accommodated me as yet.
Was Van Til talking about the cosmological proof? No. Clark is indeed badly mistaken. Minutes 23-26 run through some quotes that would have been available to Clark in 1957 that basically express the idea of the impossibility of the contrary.
Bahnsen again speculates that Clark's inability to correctly read Van Til implies that "there is something more to it than just an academic debate." That's possible, but an alternative explanation is unwittingly given by Bahnsen a little earlier. Elaborating on Van Til's transcendental argument, Bahnsen says:
The argument has been stated, but it's not a deductive argument. Please notice that that is what Dr Clark is looking for, and that's why he says, "tell me the premises." Because the transcendental argumentation doesn't proceed in terms of premises, it proceeds by a comparison of world views and asking after the preconditions of knowledge.
Rather than supposing that Clark was still bitter about the outcome of the 1940s debate, I think it makes more sense to consider that he was predisposed to think of arguments as syllogisms. Van Til's transcendental "argument" apparently did not meet this condition, so Clark failed to consider it to be an argument at all.
It is interesting that Bahnsen does not think transcendental argumentation proceeds in term of premises (minute 27). Digiacomo's transcendental argument proceeded in terms of premises, and I find Digiacomo's presentation more thorough persuasive. As noted earlier, Bahnsen can sometimes come off as if he is begging the question or merely making an assertion. All this is simply to say that Bahnsen's rhetoric can be improved, which shouldn't be controversial.
Cornelius Van Til and Gordon Clark: Part 2
This lecture is a continuation of the last one, only Bahnsen will now directly critique Clark's own position. Bahnsen begins the lecture by saying he has "70 pages of typed criticism." Perhaps these are the pages which made their way into Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended.
After something of a semantic articulation of the different definitions and roles of apologetics given by various theologians, Bahnsen goes over ground I've already covered regarding the possibility of empirical knowledge (for unbelievers or believers). Yet again, Bahnsen does not attempt to explain how empirical beliefs which are fallible can be justified. He settles for charging Clark with contradiction by using the same railroad illustration discussed earlier in this post.
I was surprised that Bahnsen did not follow-up on his allusion to Clark's position that science is non-cognitive, i.e. that truth is not even discoverable (a much weaker condition than knowable) by observation. Perhaps he did not want to spend time engaging Clark's operationalism, Clark's challenge for opponents to show how concepts come from sensations, etc.
Whatever the reason, Bahnsen instead decided to focus on Clark's voluntaristic fideism. I suppose if one is confident that a criticism hits home, he is bound to repeat it in various contexts. There isn't much new in this other than that Bahnsen nitpicks Clark's claim that the laws of logic "cannot be questioned... if one wants to speak in a meaningful fashion." Bahnsen replies, "for Clark simply to say it's meaningless to question the laws of logic is just to close your eyes ostrich style to what is actually happening in the field of philosophy."
This caught my attention. Bahnsen misreads Clark. Certainly, philosophers question the laws of logic. Clark's statement implies nothing to the contrary. But does Bahnsen think that the philosophers who do so can in principle speak in a meaningful fashion? Are the laws of logic questionable in this sense on Bahnsen's worldview?
Bahnsen mentions that in addition to the test of logic, Clark applied another test to his axioms: the "criterion of richness." This is indeed something Clark talks about in his publications. I don't find Bahnsen's critique compelling. At minute mark 34, Bahnsen says the appeal to a criterion of richness
...doesn't really comport very well with everything else Clark has written. The idea that I should test Christianity and the other options as to whether they give me an adequate political ethic or an adequate view of history, historiography, or what have you doesn't work well when a man says there's no way of knowing anything through my senses.
Correction of Clark's views on the senses and "knowledge" has its place for debate, but I don't think this is it. Even without empirical "knowledge," Clark's view is compatible with asking whether a worldview addresses and grounds various disciplines or subjects, provides prescriptions for them, etc. Whether the actual data provided by these disciplines can be called "knowledge" in a narrower, stricter sense is largely irrelevant.
At 24:30, Bahnsen frames Clark's apologetic as the following syllogism:
P1. If Christianity is true, then it will be the most consistent axiom-system.
P2. Christianity is the most consistent axiom-system.
C. Therefore, Christianity is true.
Bahnsen then says that this is the fallacy of asserting the consequent. One problem with Bahnsen's claim is that for Clark, truth just is consistency. An axiom-system that is the most consistent would, for Clark, be true by definition. Rather than asserting the consequent, from Clark's perspective, Bahnsen would be stating a tautology.
Another problem with this argument is that Bahnsen is talking about Clark's "apologetical system" (minute 23:49). But how Clark would defend Christianity is true is not equivalent to how Clark would say he knows Christianity is true. Consider P2. Clark did not think anyone but God could apply the test of consistency as a sufficient condition for knowledge, as Bahnsen himself notes at minute mark 27:46. Consider Clark's following thoughts:
One who believes in the unity of truth may still believe that the false system entails contradictions; but to prove this is the work of omniscience. (Historiography: Secular and Religious, 1971, pg. 370)
The substantive point needing discussion is whether the law of contradiction is the one and only test of truth.
Ideally or for God this seems to be the case. Since there is nothing independent of God, he does not conform truth to an alleged reality beyond truth and beyond him. Since there is no possibility of “vertical” (to use Carnell’s terminology) coherence, the “horizontal” test, or, better the horizontal characteristic of logical consistency seems the only possible one.
Weaver correctly notes that I do not claim for human beings the ability to apply this test universally. In this sense it is a “negative” or, better, an incomplete test. For this reason it must be supplemented some way or other...
Undoubtedly I hold that truth is a consistent system of propositions. Most people would be willing to admit that two truths cannot be contradictories; and I would like to add that the complex of all truths cannot be a mere aggregate of unrelated assertions. Since God is rational, I do not see how any item of his knowledge can be unrelated to the rest. Weaver makes no comment on this fundamental characteristic of divine truth.
Rather, he questions whether this characteristic is of practical value, and whether it must be supplemented in some way. It is most strange that Weaver here says, “I must agree with Carnell,” as if he had convicted me of disagreeing with Carnell by providing no supplementation whatever. Now, I may disagree with the last named gentleman on many points, but since it is abundantly clear that I “supplement” consistency by an appeal to the Scripture for the determination of particular truths, it is most strange that Weaver ignores my supplementation. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pgs. 287, 290)
That is, Clark is a strange combination of one who held to a consistency theory of truth but a foundationalist theory of epistemic justification. Scripture, the extant extent of God's revealed word, can be known by men non-inferentially. While I've critiqued Clark's alethiology numerous times (
link,
link). Bahnsen misses the mark in his criticism.
This includes Bahnsen's assertion that Clark "has to go through and show that all the other axiom-systems are incoherent" (26:33). Bahnsen, like Weaver, ignores Clark's "supplementation." If Scripture reveals that all other axiom-systems are incoherent, Clark does not have to show all other axiom-systems are incoherent in order to know such to be the case. In apologetic contexts, it might be useful to perform reductio ad absurdems on an individual, case-by-case basis. But this procedure (which, ironically, Bahnsen himself followed in his conversation with Sproul) is unnecessary for Clark's knowledge that Christianity is true. Bahnsen himself acknowledges this at minute 46:25.
Has Clark unwittingly endorsed "probableism" (30:24) such that he "can't test Christianity" and, therefore, can't know for sure" (32:15)? Well, I chastised Clark earlier for making this mistake in the section involving Playboy. On the other hand, this mistake is mostly isolated. Clark is more clear than not that the test of consistency is not the basis upon which he could know Christianity is true, so Bahnsen is at least wrong for subjecting Clark's ability to know Christianity to this test. If we don't invert the order of epistemology and apologetics by mistakenly requiring our [non-inferential] knowledge to be epistemically based on how we defend said knowledge, then Clark's epistemology is untouched.
Turning from Clark's epistemology to his apologetics, is it true that "only God could do [Clark's] apologetics" (minute 29:50)? Well, only God can apply the test of consistency "universally," as Clark puts it. But because Scripture functions not only as Clark's foundation for knowledge but his so-called "supplementation" to the test of consistency, we only need to ask whether it is improper to invoke God when God is in question.
Bahnsen seems to answer this question in the negative at minute 29:55 when he says, "it's God that's in question in apologetics, so that's not going to help." In other words, if only God can perform the test of consistency - or even if we grant that Scripture is supplemental to logical consistency - Bahnsen appears to suggest that that doesn't help us, for the very existence of God is in question in apologetics.
What Bahnsen somehow seems to forget is that both apologetics and questioning presuppose an epistemology. One should not abandon his God-revealed epistemology just because someone questions the existence of God. Our defense of the faith must always be grounded in the faith. It is legitimate to construct a transcendental argument for Christianity being exclusively logically consistent, rich, etc. that is itself grounded in divine revelation. Perhaps Clark did not do so, but nothing prevents one who accepts Clark's apologetic methodology from doing so.
If Bahnsen were to object that this would be unpersuasive, that's an entirely separate question from whether it's a legitimate defense. It would also be strange, given that Bahnsen's formulation of the transcendental argument is no stronger. That being said, practical considerations do have there place in apologetics. It might be prudent to defend the faith using agreed upon criteria, even if the unbeliever has no grounds for his agreement.
A few, final criticisms of Clark that Bahnsen makes from minutes 35-48, some of which have already been discussed:
1) creating a consistent, axiomatic system is trivial (35:35);
2) the language of the Bible is informal, not systematic (36:19);
3) formalization of informal language requires interpretation (38:22);
4) don't you have to read your Bible (40:36) and assurance for Clark isn't possible (41:41);
5) the coherence test is ineffective, for Clark admits that other systems can be coherent or consistent (43:11), the Bible can't be formalized in such a way as to apply the test of coherence (43:24), and Clark admits - as a betrayal to his ultimate commitment - that the coherence of the Bible may be accidental (44:22, 48:28).
4) and 5) have mostly been discussed already. Context for Clark's statement about whether the coherence of the Bible might be accidental is provided here, and whether the Bible can be formalized so as to apply the coherence test collapses into critique 2) or 3), which I'll address momentarily.
In response to critique 2), Clark might have responded that while axiomatization is an epistemic ideal, God's conveying His revelation in a distinct mode only suggests that God's purposes in communicating to us extend beyond conveying a sound epistemology. By analogy, surely Bahnsen did not disparage systematic theologies on the mere grounds that the truths of the Bible were not revealed in the mode of a systematic theology.
Regarding 3), Clark could have taken at least two routes in response. When Bahnsen says, "we have to know who's going to do the interpreting of our language before we can apply the test" (39:27), Clark could have responded that interpretation is an unavoidable feature of exegesis. If such is a problem for Clark, then it would also be a problem for Bahnsen. But Bahnsen doesn't think it is a problem for himself, so it really can't be a problem for Clark either.
The second response Clark could have provided is to suggest that while divine revelation is communicated through "natural language," technically, our epistemic axiom is the propositions themselves to which the symbols point. In that case, it's not so much a matter of interpretation, for epistemically, one immediately interfaces with the meaning of the symbols. The symbols or natural language might provide the metaphysical point of contact by which we are caused to become aware of propositional truths, but it is these truths from which we epistemically deduce all else. Following Bahnsen's own illustration, this would mean that it would be implicitly evident whether "business is business" trades on two different senses of the word or is tautological (supposing, ex hypothesi, that were an item of divine revelation). Recall that Bahnsen himself identified the message of Scripture being the strict object of inspiration (rather than physical words).
Now, these responses to 1) - 5) have taken for granted that the coherence test is the only apologetic tool Clark had available. But one needn't accept Bahnsen's dismissal of the utility of the "richness" test within the context of Clark's apologetic thought (minute 34:12). For example, Clark appeals to this test in Clark Speaks from the Grave with respect to his criticism of Bertrand Russell, whose system of logic Clark regarded as "truncated." This was also discussed earlier and has relevancy to critiques 1) and 5).
Likewise, as has been mentioned, it is possible to construct a transcendental argument on the basis of divine revelation by which one defends his faith. Such an apologetic might in some respects go beyond Clark's own thought, but that only suggests Clark's thought can be fruitfully developed without compromising the fundamental, "ultimate commitments" Bahnsen mentions. And that really should be a goal in these sorts of interactions: not the defense of Clark, Van Til, or Bahnsen per se, but a furthering of the insights each provided, to the glory of God.
