Gordon Clark: [Gordon Clark Feels at Home on Lookout Mountain] (Covenant Courier)

1978. [Gordon Clark Feels at Home on Lookout Mountain]. Covenant Courier. Winter, pg. 3-4.

Round-faced and trim, he sits quietly at his office desk on the second floor of the Anna Emma Kresge Memorial Library.

"Laymen pick up ideas from newspapers, magazines, and books. They do not know the source of these ideas," he says.

"They absorb false, anti-Christian ideas without knowing it. A knowledge of philosophy makes them less gullible."

The man is Gordon Clark, emphasizing the importance of knowing philosophy. At 75, he is teaching it less but writing it as much as ever, and happy to be part of the Covenant College faculty.

It was over fifty years ago that Dr. Clark himself was a college student - then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also completed his graduate and doctoral studies. H e well remembers his college years and the academic rigors lie went through.

All this has come to shape some definite opinions in his mind about the nature of an academic institution. He thinks college is a place to study, and his high standards make most students think that he is a little tougher than the average professor. His succinct answers (often in the form of another question) and dry wit have come to be the mark of his classes.

Dr. Clark has reason to expect high achievement from his students. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college and later studied in the Sorbonne in Paris.

And so Dr. Clark spurs his students on to intellectual exercise. Objecting to the idea that there is something suspicious and dubious about the intellectual realm, he stresses the need for careful doctrine. “Non-doctrinal Christianity is the opposite of Christianity,” he says. Thus Dr. Clark resists the tendency to put the emotional over the intellectual.

That mistake has resulted in a lack of interest in philosophy classes, and Dr. Clark is the first to point in out. But he adds balance to the discussion: “Philosophy has never been popular. The Greeks didn’t like their philosophers. Plato was driven out, Socrates poisoned himself, and Aristotle got by because he was a friend of the emperor. I’ve never thought that it was possible to change things so as to make philosophy more popular,” he adds.

Still, Dr. Clark is satisfied with teaching it in the Covenant classroom. And while that is important to him and his students, it is his writing which absorbs the largest part of his time. Having authored at least 20 books and numerous, articles, he is currently working on books entitled A Commentary on Colossians and Philosophy of Language. The latter will be formulated in part next spring when he teaches a course by that title at Covenant.

What makes a good writer, according to Dr. Clark? "You should know the meaning of the words you use. Strict definitions, I believe, are a matter of primary importance," he says. "Too often authors use the same word at different points with two or three meanings, and the result is complete confusion."

The Westminster Shorter Catechism, on the other hand, which Dr. Clark loves, contains many strict definitions, he says. Students often hear reference to this catechism in his classes, and his reverence for the truth of it is obvious during his lectures.

As for Dr. Clark's own philosophy - what experts call "presuppositionalism" - it is gaining in popularity in some circles. "Conservative seminaries today are somewhat more favorable to this point of view than 30 or 40 year ago," he says.

"Presuppositionalism" is a term used to denote the necessity of indemonstrable axioms for any system. The Christian system takes. Holy Scriptures as its axiom and deduce its doctrinal theorem from them.

When Dr. Clark is done with his work for the day, there are other diversions which he enjoys. Playing a game of chess or sitting at an oil painting easeI are favorite recreations. His high reputation as a chess player has spread over the Covenant campus and it is such that few would challenge him to a match.

Painting interests have led to his enrolling in several art classes under covenant art professor Ed Kellogg. In pleasant weather students may see him on campus painting a landscape or panoramic mountain view.

The beauty of those mountain has impressed Dr. Clark. His home - situated on the west brow of Lookout Mountain - has provided comfortable living quarters with its sweeping view of the valley and Georgia mountain ranges. He appreciates their beauty but at the same time states firmly that he could live anywhere and be happy.

"It doesn't really matter where I live," he says. "South or north, there is not a lot of difference."

Covenant people are especially thankful that he chose Lookout Mountain for his home. For them, it makes a great deal of difference.