Gordon Clark: Review of “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” by Langdon Gilkey (Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society)

1965. Review of “Maker of Heaven and Earth,” by Langdon Gilkey. Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society. Vol. 8. No. 3. Spring.

Maker of Heaven and Earth: by Langdon Gilkey (Doubleday and Co., Inc., Garden City, N.Y. 1965), 378 pages, $1.45. Reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis. 

The aim of this book is "to reinterpret the idea of creation so that it is not just an irrelevant dogma inherited from a prescientific and prehistorical past, but a symbol which points to the profoundest understanding . . . of human life" (pp. 13-14). In pursuing this aim the author shows the bearing of the doctrine of creation on other doctrines, so that in a sense the book becomes a reinterpretation of a large section of Christian thought. The reader must observe, however, to what extent the reinterpretation preserves or does not preserve thought that is Christian. 

In opposition to some theologians, Edgar Sheffield Brightman, for example, who say that "goodness is more fundamental than power" and "there is nothing worthy of worship in power as such," and who therefore posit a finite God, Dr. Gilkey writes, "Through God's redeeming works we know that he is supremely righteous and supremely loving. But when we ask who is supremely righteous and loving, the answer comes in terms of God's original activity, creation . . . The transcendent 'Godness' of God, what gives him deity and so ultimate significance to our lives, is most directly manifested to us through his creative activity as the transcendent source of all being and of all existence" (pp. 83-84). In particular the author objects to those who are so enamoured of personal categories that they deny any relevance at all to ontological concepts in speaking of God (p. 86, footnote). 

These lines in themselves sound Biblical; but when he refers to the idea of creation as a symbol of human life and assigns mutually exclusive spheres to science and religion, one begins to wonder if he has preserved any of the old idea of creation or has substituted something wholly other. 

The first chapters of Genesis, he asserts, are fables and nothing else: the story is Babylonian mythology. The point of the fable, i.e. the doctrine of creation, is not "about" science; and hence science cannot object to it. Science investigates origins and causes; it asks, what state of affairs preceded this one; but science does not ask about the origin of reality as a whole. Therefore science and the creation fable cannot conflict. There have been conflicts in the past only because religion and science were confused with each other. 

Science, and only science, can give information. Religion reveals no facts. Therefore the notion that the universe began at a moment, since it is a cosmological fact, cannot be a religious truth (p. 314). Creation therefore is a myth, something beyond all questions of fact: "the myth of creation does not refer to a particular event . . . any more than the myth of the Fall tells us about a first human being" (p. 317). 

If we want facts, let us rely on science. By all means let us have no facts in religion: particularly the fact of creation. This last sentence is not a verbatim quotation. 

Metaphysics as well as science should also be kept separate from religion. "Philosophy seeks to resolve the problems of thought, not necessarily of life (p. 36. italics his, as if thought and life were antithetical). Philosophy thus drives toward the goal which the mind demands, the goal of complete intelligibility ... . The theologian, however, is more apt to be wary of such demands for total coherence . . . the incoherent and paradoxical, the intellectually baffling . . . character of our experience reflect not merely our lack of systematic thinking but also the real nature of creaturehood" (p. 37). 

One must pause to take this in. The lack of coherence and intelligibility is not the result of our poor thinking, as if we were students who could not get our geometry correct. Unintelligibility is rooted in ontology: it is a characteristic of the real nature of things created. From which we may infer that God made a mess of things when he created them. 

Therefore "we will misunderstand the deeper facts of our life if we seek to understand everything too clearly." 

Apparently intellectual confusion is a spiritual asset. By it we are, are we not?, more conformed to the image of God who created the incoherent world. By all means, let us not understand anything too clearly! Let us keep clarity, as well as facts, out of religion. 

At the beginning of the following chapter the author blandly assumes that "In the preceding chapters we have tried to understand the meaning of the Christian doctrine of creation" (p. 319). It is good of him to tell us so, for we would not have guessed it otherwise. He asks, "Why does Christian theology hold to these clearly paradoxical anthropomorphisms?" To which he replies that all language about God is analogical. 

But, first Christian theology does not hold to these paradoxical anthropomorphisms. Christianity has always held that creation is a fact and that the Fall is a fact. Hence a theory of analogical language to do away with these facts is unnecessary. Furthermore, if coherence is bad, and if religion contains no facts, how could one select a proper analogy? The author admits that the problem of theology is to select the best analogies, the most appropriate symbols, the most illuminating descriptions (p. 324). But if we have no positive knowledge of God to begin with, we have no ground for judging what is most appropriate or illuminating. 

Not only is there no knowledge by which we could see that one analogy is appropriate and its contrary is not, another reason makes all analogies equally appropriate and unilluminating. The author tells us, "Whatever we say of him [God] must be affirmed and denied at the same time." For example, God is holy and God is not holy; he is creator and he is not. This explains why those excellent religions, Brahmanism and Zen Buddhism, abound in paradoxes. But instead of this being a recommendation for Christianity to follow, as the author apparently assumes, a Biblical position would deploret the conclusion and deny the premise. 

Finally, at the end of the book, the author asks, Do myth and paradox leave us in total ignorance? Must there not be some direct and unsymbolic knowledge? Yes, there is, he says. God is directly known in Christ as holy love. "Thus the personal recreative love of God in Christ, not the ontological power of God in general existence (cf. pp. 83-84, 86, quoted above), is the one unsymbolic and direct idea of God that Christians possess" (pp. 359- 360). 

Strange, is it not, that if metaphysical being and cause are symbolic, if Creator and Lord are only analogical, and if "we can never regard personal symbols about God as literally applicable," the term love, the very personal term love, is unsymbolic, direct, positive knowledge. This unsatisfactory and inconsistent defense of the new doctrine of creation leaves us with the conclusion that mythological theology is indeed mythology.