A fellow church member recently loaned me a copy of Crossed Fingers, by Gary North. This is the first book by North that I have read, and I can't recall a history book that I found more enjoyable than this one. It chronicles how the PCUSA declined into liberalism. Originally written in 1996, it outlines questions and considerations still relevant to contemporary Presbyterians and contemporary Presbyterianism. Any further recommendation would be admittedly generic, for I don't intend to review the 1,000+ page book here. I do recommend it, though. It is not faultless - for a balanced review, see here - but it is engaging, thoughtful, and challenging.
At the time he wrote this book, North seems to have espoused Van Til and Rushdoony (North's father-in-law) as the foremost Presbyterian apologists of the twentieth century. A few comments in the book pertained to Gordon Clark, and I can't resist a thought or two on them:
In 1955, a book was published with the title, What Presbyterians Believe. I can think of no book with a more misleading title, given its date of publication. It was a study of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647). It was written by a Calvinist minister, theologian, and philosopher, Gordon H. Clark. Clark was a member of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, which three years later would merge with the far larger mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), at which time Clark left the denomination. The United Presbyterian Church in 1955 was drifting into liberalism. It had been dabbling with liberalism for a quarter of a century. It had initiated discussions on a possible merger with the larger denomination in 1930, but then had voted not to follow through after the PCUSA voted for the plan in 1934. It was obvious in 1930 that the PCUSA's liberals had brought the conservatives under control. Nevertheless, from 1948 to 1958, Clark subordinated himself to the jurisdiction of men who did not believe in Calvinism, and who proved it in 1958 when they voted to join the PCUSA. Had Clark been more honest in selecting a title for his book, he would have called it What a Handful of Presbyterians Believe, or What Presbyterian Officers Swear They Believe, But Rarely Do, or even What Presbyterians Believe in the Small Denomination I Abandoned as Hopeless in 1948 When I Joined This One. But he didn't. Instead, he pretended in public that he was not a minority voice, that he was not under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Presbyterians who did not believe. In this, he was not alone.
Today, there are millions of confessionally faithful but ecclesiastically compromised Church members and thousands of compromised pastors who are in a condition similar to Clark's in 1955. (pgs. xv-xvi)
This is over the top. Given that the UPCNA (of which Clark became a member after his departure from the OPC in 1948) did not vote to merge with the PCUSA in 1934, I would have liked for North to expand upon his reasons for stating that the men of the UPCNA "did not believe in Calvinism" during the time Clark was a member. I gather North means the UPCNA was drifting towards liberalism in an inevitable manner; otherwise, a merger never would have occurred. Even if this assumption were true, North seems to further assume Clark was aware of such when he joined the UPCNA. But hindsight is easier than foresight.
Additionally, would North have considered Machen an "ecclesiastically compromised Church member" while Machen remained a member of the PCUSA until the mid-1930s, long after the PCUSA "had been dabbling with liberalism for a quarter of a century" (at the very least, according to North)? Did not Machen subordinate himself "to the jurisdiction of men who did not believe in Calvinism"? Would North say that Machen "pretended in public that he was not a minority voice"? If asked these questions, North may very well have acknowledged Machen was susceptible to these analogous criticisms. For example, North does not spare criticism of Machen for the latter's rejection of 6 day creationism.
The point, though, is that North's framing is selective. The book provides plenty of context and understanding for Machen's actions; in the above quote, no qualifying context is spared for Clark. No mention is given as to why Clark left the OPC in the first place (e.g. chapter 8 of Doug Douma's bibliography; cf. John Robbins' account that Clark "would have preferred to stay in the OPC"). No suggestion is given as to why Clark might have chosen the UPCNA (e.g. the UPCNA was the denomination in which Clark's grandfather ministered).
Is it more misleading for a Presbyterian minister in the UPCNA which had rejected a merger with the PCUSA to write a book about What Presbyterians Believe? (Clark) or more misleading for a Christian who accepted liberalist presuppositions in an increasingly liberal PCUSA denomination to write a book on Christianity and Liberalism (Machen)? This is less a shot at Machen and more a shot through North's slight of Clark.
In fact, North was a Presbyterian himself. It is my understanding is that he died last year as a member of the PCA - the same denomination which Clark opposed an RPCES merger with in the early 1980s (link). Was Clark less scrupulous than North... or more? In this book, North never asked - let alone answered - whether he considered himself a "compromised Church member." From North's concluding proposals (pgs. 931-935), it is hard to imagine he thought any Christian - including himself - could have been a consistent, Bible-believing Christian without being "ecclesiastically compromised." Whose fingers aren't crossed?
[Funnily enough, while I haven't read anything else by North, I would not put it past him to have intended to provoke this question. An evident purpose of this book is to prompt Presbyterians to self-reflect on the current state of ecclesiastic affairs, including Presbyterian governmental structure, membership qualifications, confessional progress (with fidelity), and priorities. With respect to these questions, I take no issue with North raising them. Several of his proposed answers seem sensible, albeit distantly achievable in the short-term. All I am pointing out is North's assessment of Clark's actions is unreasonably cursory and uncharitable.]
The following is the only other time Clark is mentioned in North's book:
Schaeffer took Van Til's apologetic method, which Van Til had taught him at Westminster, and the philosophy of Gordon Clark, which was a common-ground rationalistic system, and reworked them into a partially presuppositional, partially Clarkian-logical hybrid. Never did he footnote Van Til in any of his books. For that matter, neither did he footnote Clark. When asked in 1968, "Where did your husband get all this?" Mrs. Schaeffer offered a long, rambling disquisition about his discussions with "existentialists, logical positivists, Hindus, Buddhists, liberal Protestants, liberal Roman Catholics, Reformed Jews and atheistic Jews, Muslims, members of occult cults, and people of a wide variety of religions and philosophies, as well as atheists of a variety of types." This went on for two pages.
The hybrid nature of his apologetic method made it difficult for him to come to grips with the idea of the common ground between believer and unbeliever. Van Til argued that the common ground or point of contact is the image of God in man. Covenant-breaking man knows that he is a covenant-breaker. Clark argued that it is common logic: the principle of non-contradiction. Schaeffer was more Clarkian than Vantillian. This made him more susceptible to the idea that Christians might have a positive influence on non-Christians even though Christians must remain as minority participants. Somehow, Christians can argue their way into the dialog. Van Til, as an amillennialist, had no illusions in this regard. He expected increasing persecution for the Church as each side becomes increasingly consistent with its presuppositions. This is certainly more consistent with Schaeffer's premillennial belief that the Great Tribulation lies ahead of us, and the Church will go through it. Historic premillennialists generally share this eschatological belief with amillennialists.
Firstly, I might as well point out that Clark himself did not think Schaeffer even qualified as a philosopher, much less one whose thought aligned with Clark's own:
These notes, however, are only a semi-defense of Francis Schaeffer. If I were criticizing him, I should first say that he is not a philosopher at all. To be sure, he discusses certain philosophical problems, but he omits so much that he does not deserve the title. In fact, I rather guess that he admits that he is not a philosopher. His great work lies in other fields, particularly the field of evangelism. And there are others who discuss more of philosophy than he does and still omit a great deal. It is not enough to state that the doctrine of the Trinity solve the one-many problem. One must state what the problem is and show just how the Trinity solves it. It is not enough to assert the trustworthiness of sensory experience in an attempt to avoid skepticism. One must define sensation, prove that there are uninterpreted elements in the mind, show how these can be combined into perceptions, and then develop concepts without assuming, what is factually false, that all men have sensory images. Besides which, one much choose from among Plato's, Aristotle's, and Kant's theories of individuation, or produce a further alternative. Schaeffer is not the only one who omits these essential elements in a philosophy. (link)
Secondly, Clark did emphasize "that the common ground or point of contact is the image of God in man." In chapter 4 of Karl Barth's Theological Method ("Prolegomena and Apologetics"), Clark spends 17 pages on the following subsections: "Common Ground" and "God's Image to Man." Any writer who fails to see that Clark linked the common ground a believer has with an unbeliever to the image of God indicates they have not read Clark:
It is indubitable that the heathen and the believer have this knowledge in common.
Although indubitable, Barth doubts and denies it. In addition to the passages so far examined, others, perhaps not independently important, corroborate Barth’s rejection of a common ground. Since the idea of the image of God is uniformly conjoined with that of a common ground, the latter vanishes with the removal of the former...
The point of interest is a common ground between believer and unbeliever. In spite of his aim Barth has not succeeded in erasing a common ground; at most his argument denies that the image consists of rational personality and asserts that it consists in being a witness.
...Barth rules out a common ground by denying the image of God in man... (pgs. 105-107 in above link)
Regarding Van Til, North says, "Van Til argued that the common ground or point of contact is the image of God in man. Covenant-breaking man knows that he is a covenant-breaker. Clark argued that it is common logic: the principle of non-contradiction. Schaeffer was more Clarkian than Vantillian." North obviously intends to contrast Clark and Van Til.
But how can an unbelieving man "know" that he is a covenant-breaker without using the principle of non-contradiction (even if he is unaware that he is using it)? Did North think that the knowledge that a covenant-breaker possesses is possible or intelligible without the principle of non-contradiction?
Of course, anyone who has read Clark would also know that to argue an unbeliever is able to exercise logic does not mean the unbeliever does so soundly. Even if the reasoning of unbelievers can be valid (and it can be) and even if unbelievers can have meaningful, true thoughts (and they can - this is one sense in which unbelievers can be said to have "knowledge"), unbelievers ultimately reason from false premises. Whatever knowledge unbelievers possess, their reasoning is unsound, all of which enables believers to have an apologetic point of contact with unbelievers. As I address all of these points here, I digress.
Finally, for all of North's footnotes throughout the rest of his book, his section on Schaeffer, Van Til, and Clark was a let down. He does not give a citation for Van Til's belief that "Covenant-breaking man knows that he is a covenant-breaker." On the other hand, Clark did give citations for Van Til's statement that "It will be quite impossible then to find a common area of knowledge between believers and unbelievers unless there is agreement between them as to the nature of man himself. But there is no such agreement" (link). Contra North, is this not to say that Van Til believed that covenant-breaking man cannot know anything regarding himself? I
Nearly 10 years ago, I advocated the following (link):
My opinion: if Scripturalism is to have a bright future, Scripturalists need to start talking to and about people with opposing views that fall between the extremes of materialistic, empiricistic, skeptical atheism on the one hand, and Van Tilianism on the other. More often than not, that doesn't seem to be the case. In addition to explicating Scripturalism beyond the introductory level of, say, Crampton's Scripturalism of Gordon H. Clark - again, there's nothing wrong with introductory material, but at some point a position has to adapt to new challenges or be abandoned - that's a lot of uncovered ground.
I do still believe this. However, my research on Clark has required me to spend more time on church history and less time on philosophical theology. As this has been the case, over time, I have become more sympathetic with those who are constantly irritated by poor misrepresentation of Clark's thought. Such misrepresentation is pervasive; North is just one example of an educated writer who should have known better than to make there kinds of ill-informed critiques.
Nevertheless, I hope like-minded readers remember that there is much good in North's book and much in need of improvement in Clark's thought. One Christian's admiration of another ought to be measured in proportion to the latter's agreement with Scripture. Let us not catch ourselves crossing our fingers as we affirm that in this life, all Christians - Clark's included - were and are progressively sanctified.
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