Gordon Clark: Statement of Protest (The Presbyterian Guardian)

1944. Statement of Protest. The Presbyterian Guardian. Vol. 14, No. 2. pgs. 25-26. Nov 20.

As a matter of personal privilege I desire at this time to protest against the misrepresentations of the Complaint that has just been read. It was not until November 6, 1944 that I was able to obtain a copy of a copy of the Complaint. With the unusual pressure of duties during this month I have not had time to prepare a full reply; and if I had, there would hardly be time enough today to read it. Hence this briefest possible statement does not discuss the poor logic of the Complaint, but merely protests against the most salient misrepresentations. 

On page 20 of my copy of the Complaint I read, "Clark holds that man's knowledge of any proposition," if it is really knowledge, is identical with God's knowledge of the same proposition." This statement is false. Nothing I have said or written supports this false statement. I have always carefully explained that man's knowledge of a proposition and God's knowledge of a proposition are radically and completely different. The series of conclusions based on this false statement therefore does not represent my views at all. 

On page 36 I read in my copy: "A recollection of Dr. Clark's forthright denial of anything that might be called 'emotion' in God, cited above, will thus impress us . . ." I never made any such sweeping denial, and no citation justifies the complainants' statement. The tissue of distortion woven around this false statement of the complainants seriously misrepresents what I have said and written. And that their charge against me is false may be seen from their own significant confession on page 51. It reads, "In this connection reference must again be made to Dr. Clark's view that God has no emotions, If his definition of emotions be granted, God certainly has none." In other words, they admit that if attention is paid to what I actually said or wrote, my doctrine will be seen to be correct. Note also that my definition of emotion is not some queer, a priori oddity, as is suggested on page 29, but is based on that in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. 

The lengthy quotations of the Complaint are sometimes beside the point and sometimes they definitely support my position. If I can publish a full reply, other passages will be adduced from men such as Charnock, Witsius, Augustus Toplady, and others to show my accord with the historic position of Calvinism. 

On page 40 I read, "there is not one shred of evidence that man's religious activity undergoes any qualitative change through regeneration. That bears all the earmarks of rationalism, humanistic intellectualism. It seems to share the very same vicious independence from God..." These intemperate words may perhaps be referred to a faulty memory. In the first, six-hour examination before Presbytery I was questioned on regeneration, and my views, substantially those of John Laidlaw in The Bible Doctrine of Man, were judged satisfactory. For this reason the subject received little or no attention in the second examination. How could there then be many shreds of evidence in the transcript of the second examination? And because the Presbytery, the complainants included, did not ask questions about regeneration, I am now charged with "rationalism, humanistic intellectualism. . . vicious independence from God." 

Because of the ambiguities in the complainants' argument and because of the many details it is no less difficult to reply briefly to the remainder of the Complaint. Exegesis is involved. Discussion would be required as to how much "by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture." Is not the setting of a limit a claim to have exhausted the Bible? Is it not a claim that every implication of every verse has been discovered? Discussion would also be required as to whether logic were merely human or whether it is a divine gift - the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Comparison would have to be made between the ambiguous statements and questions of the complainants on the sincere offer of the gospel and the very precise and acceptable language of R. L. Dabney. Also the several distinct meanings of human freedom and their differing implications, which the complainants fail to consider, would require analysis; as also the principle they seem to adopt, viz: that a man, to be subject to God's Word, must fail to understand it. These points. all occur in the last two sections of the Complaint. 

There is no doubt a difference between my views and those of the complainants. On page 20, after the false statement quoted above and just after another statement that in no way represents my views, the Complaint concludes, "a proposition would (therefore) have to have the same meaning for man as for God." Do the complainants deny that a proposition has the same meaning for God and man? Now, I believe in the doctrine of verbal inspiration and inerrancy. The proposition "Christ died for our sins" has a single definite meaning. The words are plain. To say that God places some other undiscoverable meaning upon these words, perhaps that God means Christ did not die for our sins, is to empty the Bible of all truth and to deny that it really reveals God's mind. I am content to believe that God means what he says.