A friend asked me to summarize how I have gone about studying the thought and work of Gordon Clark - that is, what methodological approaches have I used (consciously or otherwise) that would I recommend others take when trying to correctly understand, accurately represent and articulate, and/or develop the thought of another theologian, philosopher, etc. The following is a list of what came to mind:
Is the Theologian/Philosopher Worthwhile?
I started reading books by Gordon Clark a little more than a dozen years ago. At the time, I wanted to be confident in how to defend a faith I had been taught from youth and was learning more about in college. I used to seek out discussions or debates with others to fine tune my apologetic thought processes: what do I find to be good arguments? What arguments seemed to ring hollow? Were there areas in which I was not confident?
To make a long story short, prior to my exposure to Gordon Clark, I toyed with the idea that a transcendental argument could prove the "Christian" worldview true. I knew that evidential arguments would not suffice for a strict proof, so I tried testing, usually in discussions and debates with agnostics and atheists, whether a certain feature or features unique to "Christianity" - for example, the Trinity - had to be implicitly accepted (e.g. either for metaphysical or epistemological reasons). If I couldn't do that, then I felt - at the time - that my faith would rest on shaky grounds. I suppose I was thinking like a rationalist.
Typically, at some point in a conversation, the other person I was talking to would acknowledge that they had certain inconsistencies within their own belief systems and would stop conversation. But I was left with the worried feeling that if they simply pointed out that my own, specific views did not follow from the fact that theirs were flawed - or that whatever arguments I was using did not and would not specifically select for my faith - then I would be unable to affirm with certainty that "Christianity" is true. I felt better about having comparative consistency in my beliefs - I was never tempted to abandon my faith - but I wasn't sure how to pacify my uneasiness in being unable to prove "Christianity" was true.
[I put "Christianity" in quotes because had someone ever stopped to ask me how I knew what "Christianity" - or a unique feature thereof - was, that may have led to me question how I could prove the Bible itself (a canonical collection of specific books and passages) really was God's Word. It was a question I had never considered, so don't know how I would have answered that.]
In 2009, I happened upon the presuppositionalism of Gordon Clark, whose points about the need for first principles allowed me to see that everyone makes assumptions. We cannot "prove" all of our beliefs ad infinitum. I found this convincing, and the way in which the point was presented was so simple, I found myself wanting to read more by him: did he have ideas about how or why some assumptions or presuppositions could be better than others, or how we could defend some to be true and find others to be false? Yes, he did. The more I read, the more I became interested. I doubt I would have kept reading Clark if he had only made that solitary (though important) observation and left readers to figure out any subsequent questions on their own.
In short, then, I generally liked how he thought, and his writing was personable enough for me to want to continue learning more about what he had to say. I can imagine that another reason one might be attracted to Clark's thought is by having knowledge of the man himself: in all areas of his life, he stood for what he thought was true. If I were to recommend a starting point for others who want to "master" the thought, so to speak, of another person, it would simply be to find a person whose content or life story you enjoy reading about or listening to.
Alternatively (or additionally), one can study an author so long as one has a defined motivation, goal, or purpose. A long time ago, I read William Young's "The Shack," not because I thought I would particularly enjoy the content, but precisely because I gathered that someone I knew might enjoy the content - content which I gathered contained unorthodox views of Christianity. While I would not have otherwise read the book, it wasn't so much a chore for me to do so because I had a reason for it: to highlight remarks in the book that an unsuspecting reader might overlook and point them out as having dangerous implications.
Now, while that was just one book, I could extrapolate the principle to an entire collection of works by an author with whom I disagree, and indeed I have done in at least one other case that I can recall. In preparation for the 2012 TrinityFoundation essay contest - contests which were motivation enough for me to begin reading Clark in the first place - I not only read John Robbins' book-length critique of Ayn Rand's so-called Objectivist philosophy, I bought all of her published books and read them myself. I studied her thought, not just Robbins'.
As penetrating as Robbins' critique may have been, I wanted to make sure, among other things, that it was accurate as well as developed, two other methodological points which served to supplement my motivation and to which I will return below. Would I have had a personal interest in reading Ayn Rand were it not for an essay contest? No. But again, having a specific goal helped the cause: I wanted to write my own critique of Rand simultaneous to reviewing Robbins' book.
One thing I think is important to mention is that all of these authors mentioned thus far wrote as popularizers, which is not meant as a pejorative (just the opposite). Rand and Young wrote fiction for wide readership. Robbins and Clark wrote so that lay Christians - particularly, Reformed Christians - could understand philosophy and its importance. Their works are all relatively inexpensive. I do not know how easy it would be to invest myself in reading an author whose content, price point, or intended audience is rather specialized unless I had a natural interest in the content about which they wrote or specific purpose for reading their work in mind.
So: do you want to learn about the sorts of things a given philosopher or theologian has to say? Do you have some definite reason for reviewing their work? Do you plan to write a book on them, talk about them with others, or synthesize some of what insight you think they have into your own belief system or life choices? Make sure your study is worth your time.
Comprehensiveness and Patience
I didn't immediately know that I was going to study Clark as much as I have. It was due to the essay contests put forward by the TrinityFoundation that I was able to acquire some of Clark's relatively more expensive collections without having to spend a lot of money which, as a poor college student, was important. At some point, I decided that because I had already acquired so many of his books, it would be cool to have them all.
It was convenient to not have to search hard for a bibliography of his works. At the time, the TrinityFoundation had nearly every publication I could find online. For some authors, this is not so easy. Rand only wrote a dozen or so books. Clark wrote around forty, and even though around 300 writings or transcriptions by Clark have been discovered in the past decade, many of these are short and not nearly as dense as other philosophers or theologians.
For instance, James B. Jordan, whose work I began looking into last year, is a much more prolific writer and speaker: in a festschrift written for him, the bibliography runs approximately 25 Word document pages long, is now out of date by over 10 years, and does not adequately capture the reality that there are nearly over 1700 recordings of him (compared to the perhaps few dozen or so one can find of Clark).
Hence, studying even one philosopher or theologian can require a great deal of patience. Even before a wife and house and real job (and, in the future, kids), it took me a little less than a year to feel like I had thoroughly studied Rand's philosophy, and it took over 3 years for me to grasp Clark's thought before I really felt equal to the task of understanding him well enough to challenge and/or develop his ideas. It will take a long time for me to be able to do that with respect to Jordan.
The mindset and approach to how one studies is as important as the study itself. Accepting that studying a philosopher or theologian can be a long-term and ongoing process is important to not feel discouraged, especially if it seems you can't quite get a proper perspective of some aspect you feel as though you should. Even now, with the release of many new articles by Clark, I find myself returning to a project (see below) I had thought was essentially complete. But the payoff is mastery, so I advise collecting as much of the person's works as you can in preparation to be thorough, then reading or listening to them once to get a sense of the general thought, and only afterwards setting yourself to the task of "studying," on which see below.
The Actual Study or Research
What helped me as I went through Clark's books after the first read was setting a goal. As I read more, I found that even in books not specifically geared towards epistemology or apologetics - the reasons I began reading him in the first place - Clark would usually make a few comments that would have some bearing on these subjects. Searching for these over time became almost like a scavenger hunt, which was what probably led me to a research project of compiling a list of his quotes relating to epistemology and apologetics.
After my first read-through of a book, I would go back through it and skim to find and highlight certain sentences or paragraphs which I later intended to transcribe to a Word document. I only looked for statements that I found relevant to epistemology and apologetics. I worked on this for around a year, with the result being some 200+ pages of Clark quotes. I have been compiling further quotes from newly released articles by Clark over the past few years (at a much slower pace than my original project), and this has led to 350+ additional pages of quotes. There are still 30+ longer articles/transcriptions for me to review, and I anticipate 150+ more pages of quotes to include. This addendum to the original project is ongoing and will probably be another several years before completed to my satisfaction (fortunately, these writings are online, so it is not so much transcription as it is editing). Like I said, patience is a necessity.
While repeat reading and transcription probably helped to solidify Clark's thoughts in my mind, I think what helped more was beginning to apply his thinking to conversations I was having and posts I was writing. The research process I described above facilitated that by making it easy for me to search through my compilation for key words as well as reference to where and what the fuller context of those statements were (if I needed to). When someone had or has a question about Clark's views, I haven't had to work from memory: I have a searchable and quotable resource from which I can lead the questioner straight to the source.
For instance, a few years ago, there was a question in Scripturalist circles as to how Clark defined knowledge: as 1) mere true belief or 2) as [so-called] "justified" true belief. I was able to answer the question for a few people by producing multiple quotes in defense of a particular interpretation of Clark's thought (in essence, of the two choices, I believe the latter description more accurately reflects Clark's thought). Similarly, when some refer to Clark as an epistemological coherentist or externalist, I have resource to think otherwise and have argued to that effect.
Or if I have wanted to write a post on Clark's views - for example, regarding a specific apologetic argument from partial knowledge - having a full library of books at my disposal has been important, but parsing those books down into relevant and searchable portions has been indispensable. But if I had finished the project and not applied it to my any conversations or reflections, I don't know that I would have retained the information very well.
Authorial Tension, Openness to Revision, and History vs. Development
No one theologian or philosopher is perfect. In any work or collection of works, there may be errors or lacuna - the latter might even be by design, given the intended scope of a work. Further, like anyone else, philosophers and theologians can change their minds over time. Therefore, those who study them ought to be open to a revised understanding of what they taught. In his late life, Augustine wrote a whole book of reconsiderations in which he outlined points at which he had changed his mind. In the case of some authors, like Clark, new publications or anecdotes by people who knew him can also surface that can also broaden our understanding of his thought.
Example: I remember listening to Greg Bahnsen say that in a conversation he had with Clark, Clark openly questioned the Westminster Confession's doctrine of assurance (link, minutes 50-52) due to his skepticism (at the time of the conversation) that a person could have self-knowledge. This is an anecdote you won't find in any of Clark's publications, and the anecdote illustrates the importance of reading or listening to other material than who it is being studied. It is an anecdote I have no reason to doubt; on the contrary, given that Clark wrestled with the question of self-knowledge and found himself answering it in affirmative in some publications and in the negative in others, I can easily enough believe the conversation happened as described.
What then? Well, I affirm self-knowledge and see that Clark did too... sometimes. Such does not entail that Clark did so at all times, and as much as I or others admire Clark, we need to accept that he was sometimes wrong or did not believe everything that we may wish he did. Authorial tension and history are realities. If one finds real authorial tension or certain historical statements by an author frustrating - especially if it is someone one might consider a "hero of the faith" - I think there may be a danger in implicitly treating him as infallible. A mature Christian ought to be able to separate he believes from what an author believed or believes.
Another example: Clark once wrote, "Science is always false, but often useful." Even when I read that for the first time, it didn't make sense. If two scientists formulate two contradictory hypotheses and, after scientific procedures, come to contradictory conclusions, one must be right and the other must be wrong. Of course, the scientific procedure of the one who is right may or may not enable that scientist to know that his hypothesis is true, but this is a separate question from whether or not the hypothesis of that scientist is itself true. So many admirers of Clark can't seem to grasp that Clark simply blundered at this point. I suspect Clark intended to say something to the effect of "Science cannot enable us to know truth." But since that isn't what he wrote at this point, the reader has to address the content of the statement as it is: false.
With that said, one can and should, as Bahnsen was, be charitable about disagreement. We can, like Bahnsen did, speculate that Clark perhaps intended something other than the face-value of the statements he made. Even when the disagreement is real and substantial, one can be kind while delivering a rebuke or rebuttal.
But in order to improve or develop an author's thought - whether towards truth or the application of the thought to other contexts than those the author addressed - one must first have an accurate understanding of the thought as the author himself expresses it. If disagreement exists, it has to be recognized and confronted so that a better view can be proposed. This is best done only after having as full an understanding of an author's reasons for disagreement as possible, as one can then argue the contrary more effectively... or, perhaps, allow that the author's reasoning is sound and change his own mind! Either way, reading or listening to others about the same subject matter as the author being studied will tend to provide needed balance.
Summary
Have a purpose for your study.
Own all the person's works (or as many as possible).
Read and/or listen to the person normally, then skim/highlight with intention.
Consider transcribing/editing quotes of interest for use in conversation, reflective writing, etc.
Accept the possibility of tension within the author's own thought, but be charitable.
Be open to revision.
Differentiate between what the author believed or believes and what you yourself believe.
Think about how to improve the author's thought, whether towards truth or comprehensiveness.
Read other material.
Be patient, and enjoy the study.
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