Some time ago, my friends and I had a podcast. One of the books we had intended to review was Without Excuse, a compilation of essays which are "quite critical of the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til" (pg. viii.). I had been looking forward to this review before my friends and I decided that our time was better spent on other activities. While this is not to say we won't do podcasts ever again, it does mean that I might as well post what I had planned to discuss, particularly from my perspective as a presuppositionalist who has been more influenced by the work of Gordon Clark than Van Til.
Generally, Without Excuse suffers from the lack of an index. Likewise unfortunate is that Clark appears to be mentioned in just two chapters - the first and the eleventh - and scantly at that. In a book whose subtitle is "Scripture, Reason, and Presuppositional Apologetics," I consider this a glaring oversight.
I'll discuss the first chapter in a separate post. The eleventh chapter, written by John R. Gilhooly, is entitled, "Van Til's Transcendental Argument and Its Antecedents." Clark is mentioned once in a footnote. Normally, I would not pass comment on something so apparently trivial, but the footnote puzzled me. Further investigation has led to some reflections I felt were worthwhile to post. The footnote reads:
It seems one of the biggest complaints against Van Til (particularly with reference to the transcendental argument) is that he does not clearly state what it is. For example, Gordon Clark, "Apologetics," in Contemporary Evangelical Thought, ed. Carl F. H. Henry, 140, or Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 58; both suggest what the is calling a transcendental argument is really fideism.
Gilhooly's edition must be different than mine, as page 140 of my hardback (which has no edition remarks) doesn't mention anything like this. In fact, I've transcribed Clark's entire article on "Apologetics" (link), and although Clark does criticize Van Til in it, he never explicitly mentions a transcendental argument or fideism.
Possibly, Gilhooly thought Clark alludes to these things. For example, after quoting Van Til as saying, "The argument for the existence of God... is objectively valid," Clark does rhetorically question "how an argument can be known to be objectively valid and absolutely sound, when the argument has never been formulated." Maybe this is where Gilhooly thought Clark criticizes Van Til for failing to "clearly state" what the transcendental argument is. If this is not what Gilhooly had in mind, I don't know what else in the article Gilhooly could be referring to.
If this is what Gilhooly had in mind, though, the context of this apologetic interlocution takes place under subsection III on "The Cosmological Argument." The following ruminations of Clark have little to do with a transcendental argument (pgs. 148-149):
Strange as it may seem, and it will seem still stranger as we proceed, Van Til also asserts "the Reformed apologist maintains that there is an absolutely valid argument for the existence of God" (p. 121). Van Til, of course, is less Aristotelian than Hamilton. If the Van Til does not start from sensory experience, he ought to state his basic premises and give the argument step by step. He seems to suggest that the premises have something to do with the doctrines of creation and providence, and "when the proofs are thus formulated they have absolute probative force" (p. 196). Here one must ask whether it is valid to argue from creation to the existence of God, or whether the notion of creation does not already presuppose the existence of God? Has not Van Til interchanged premises and conclusion? However, though the phrase "probative force" suggests valid demonstration, Van Til immediately disclaims the pure deduction of one conclusion after another from an original premise. Instead of syllogisms he prefers a method of analogy, to which reference will be made later. Finally he repeats "The argument for the existence of God... is objectively valid. We should not tone down the validity of this argument to the probability level. The argument may be poorly stated, and may never be absolutely stated. But in itself the argument is absolutely sound" (p. 256).
One pauses to ask only how an argument can be known to be objectively valid and absolutely sound, when the argument has never been formulated. Could we judge the Pythagorean theorem, if it were defectively stated? The Roman Catholics appeal to Romans 1:20 as guaranteeing the validity of the cosmological argument. Similarly, Dr. Buswell in The Bible Today (Oct., 1947, p. 6) writes, "The so-called cosmological argument is precisely the teaching of Paul in Romans 1:20." But surely Paul did not mean precisely to confer infallibility on Thomas Aquinas. Still less did he confer formal validity on the sketchy summaries of other writers. And to avoid all confusion, it should be noted that any assertion to the effect that Romans 1:20 is the cosmological argument is false. The verse has neither premises nor conclusion; it contains no hint of an implication; it is a simple statement, and simple statements are not arguments and can be neither valid nor invalid. Beyond this, there is no point in talking about a perfect argument that no one has ever correctly formulated.
Another reason I find the footnote puzzling is that upon an initial scan of Clark's article, the nearest reference to fideism seems to implicate Warren Young, not Van Til (pg. 151):
Although many popular preachers use the unscriptural antithesis of head verses heart, anti-intellectualism is still a minority view among evangelicals. Carl Henry writes on "The Reasonableness of Christianity" in Remaking the Modern Mind: "Revelational theism has never offered itself as an escape from rationality... it offered a rationally consistent view of existence" (pp. 213, 215), and he clearly expresses his displeasure with anti-intellectualism. Carnell commences his "Preface" by accepting the task of constructing a rational explanation for the whole course of reality; he emphasizes systematic consistency (though he believes that consistency is insufficient and must be supported by coherence - a different concept, though many other writers use the two terms as synonymous), and he even dares to accept the term rationalism (pp. 7, 56, 152, 153). My own writings also emphasize logic.
But Warren Young disagrees. He does not accept the task of attempting to demonstrate that Christian philosophy is more coherent (consistent?) than other systems (p. 200); coherence itself is always relative, depending on assumption of faith rather than on rational demonstration (p. 201).
Perhaps the question turns on Gilhooly's understanding of "fideism." Is fideism a rejection of an apologetic or epistemology in favor of so-called blind faith ("anti-intellectualism")? Given Clark's awareness of Van Til's affirmation of objectively valid and absolutely sound argumentation for God, surely Clark did not consider Van Til a fideist in this sense. Clark or others might say that Van Til did not provide clear argumentation, but Clark is at least aware that Van Til advocated for argumentation.
On the other hand, if a "fideist" is simply one who believes that knowledge depends on [faith in] divine revelation, Gilhooly could be onto something; Clark does take issue with some statements by Van Til that he interprets to mean Van Til thinks unregenerates or unbelievers are "totally ignorant" and "totally devoid of knowledge." That is, Clark does think that in some places, Van Til made remarks which indicate that only regenerates or believers are able to know anything. I suppose it is possible that Clark understood Van Til to be a "fideist" in the sense that knowledge depends on [faith in] divine revelation.
If Clark did view Van Til as a fideist in this sense, Gilhooly might also be right to say that such is traceable to Van Til's transcendental argument. As Clark writes (pgs. 154-155):
Van Til emphatically asserts that no "area or aspect of reality, any fact or any law of nature or of history can be correctly interpreted except it be seen in the light of the main doctrines of Christianity" (p. 113). Therefore an apologist cannot "agree with the non-Christian in his principles of methodology to see whether or not Christian theism be true." Romish and Arminian apologists, e.g. Thoman, Butler, A. E. Taylor, to the extent that they believe in human autonomy, try to use the unbeliever's methodology; but a truly Reformed Christian must disagree "with the natural man on the nature of the object of knowledge [and]... on the method to be employed in acquiring knowledge" (p. 116). In total opposition to Thompson's point of view, the Reformed apologist frankly admits that his methodology presupposes the truth of Christianity. Therefore "the issue between believers an unbelievers in Christian theism cannot be settled by a direct appeal to 'facts' or 'laws' whose nature is already agreed upon by both parties to the debate" (p. 117). Since "there is one system of reality of which all that exists forms a part," and since "any individual fact of this system is what it is in this system," it follows that apart from Christian presuppositions "no facts mean anything at all" (p. 164). "All reasoning is, in the nature of the case, circular reasoning. The starting point, the method, and the conclusions are always involved in one another" (p. 118). These quotations, of course, seriously abbreviate Van Til's exposition, but if one keeps in mind the acknowledged control of axioms over theorems, and the theorem's presupposing the axioms, in which case geometry itself may loosely be called circular reasoning, it will not be too difficult to grasp Van Til's thought.
Before unpacking this, a side note: this last sentence would have been a welcome inclusion in chapter 1 of Without Excuse, particularly in M. Dan Kemp's subsection on "Justification and Circularity." Clark is mentioned just once in that section and given short shrift, as I will aim to show in my review of that chapter. To repeat, I think contemporary philosophers do themselves a disservice when they more or less fail to engage Clark's thought in such discussions.
In any case, as I said, one might be able to argue that the above summary is suggestive that Clark was aware of so-called transcendental argumentation in the writings of Van Til. Assuming that this is true - and to me, it is still by no means obvious that it is true - then rather than asserting that Van Til fails to "clearly state" the transcendental argument, Clark says Van Til's thought "will not be too difficult to grasp"! So much for comment on Gilhooly's footnote.
I have some extended thoughts, however. If Clark thought that Van Til was a "fideist" in the sense that only regenerates or believers are able to "know" anything - for "knowledge" depends on [faith in] divine revelation (and only regenerates have faith) - a Scripturalist ought to be quite interested in the fact that in this article, Clark rejects fideism, at least insofar as Clark does not agree with Van Til - or, to be more precise, certain statements made by Van Til - that only regenerates or believers are able to know anything (pg. 158):
One important reason for maintaining the distinction between consistent systems and inconsistent persons is that unregenerate persons are thereby permitted to have at least some knowledge. Since the Scriptures base responsibility on knowledge, and since Romans 1:32 assigns to the wicked an amount of moral knowledge sufficient to make them guilty of sin, the evangelical must frame a theory by which this knowledge is shown to be possible. Were a man totally ignorant, he could not be guilty of sin.
Why do I find any of this is noteworthy? Well, if unregenerates and unbelievers have some knowledge, the question naturally arises: how? Clark himself admits that he "must frame a theory by which this knowledge is shown to be possible." What, then, is Clark's theory?
Clark's theory dovetails with his criticism of Van Til - he distinguishes, unlike Van Til (or, at least, so Clark argues), between systems and persons. This is reminiscent of Clark's exchange with Buswell in 1947-1948 (link, link). Clark even references this very exchange on pg. 150 of his article on "Apologetics," on which page he affirms that "the truth is a perfectly consistent system." Here, I will leave aside the question whether truth is just a consistent system [of propositions] or if truth also involves something like "correspondence" - a question which arises in the Clark and Buswell exchange and one on which I've critiqued Clark's view (link).
Of greater moment is that Clark's disagreement with Van Til on this point appears to stem from their debate in the OPC. To see this will take some effort. I'll begin that effort by returning to the paragraphs by Clark that follow what I already cited above from pages 154-155:
But apologetics is more complicated than plane geometry, and the matter of the starting point becomes involved with the notion of a common ground, the noetic effects of sin, and a theory of analogy.
In this discussion of the starting point with the example of the axioms and theorems of geometry, it is immediately obvious that there can be no theorem common to two systems of geometry. Euclid and Lobachevsky may both use the phrase "parallel lines," but they mean different things; and when a perpendicular crosses them, Lobachevsky's results differ from those of Euclid. Similarly, in Christianity and in a naturalistic philosophy the words fact, reason, and God may occur, but the meanings, determined by the axioms, are not the same. Hence even if two sentences are composed of identical words, if one is in a naturalistic system and the other in a Christian system, it does not indicate that the two systems have a proposition in common.
Does it follow, however, that two persons, a Christian and a naturalist, can have no knowledge in common? A person is not a system, and hence we cannot say of a person what we say of a system, unless some further reasons be adduced.
Before I come to any point on which Clark and Van Til disagreed, it ought to be observed on what point they did seem to agree. Both men seemed to agree that different systems or philosophies entail different meaning. Words, phrases, and sentences (see the italics above) are utterances that express some meaning. To put it simply, two people might say the same thing but mean different things. One who strictly adheres to a pantheistic system may talk about "god," but what he affirms is obviously meaningfully different than what one who strictly adheres to the Christian system affirms. This seems clear enough.
At this juncture, Clark's distinction between persons and systems also seems relevant: "A person is not a system, and hence we cannot say of a person what we say of a system, unless some further reasons be adduced." The implications of a system are fixed. A system is either consistent or inconsistent, true or false. A system does not change. Individual persons, on the other hand, can change. They may also be relatively more or less inconsistent with the system they verbally espouse at a particular point in time. As an example, the system of scientism does not entail ways in which one ought to act, yet an adherent of scientism may come to accept that there are ways he and others ought to act.
Indeed, this is often the case. The thought of an adherent of scientism is not ontologically restricted to the epistemic philosophy he verbally espouses. This very ontological - specifically, "psychological" (see the below quote) - inconsistency is Clark's basis for apologetic interaction with them. Such is his "point of contact," as he puts it in Karl Barth's Theological Method (which I outline here). I think Clark's debates with Buswell and Van Til afforded him sharpened focus when expositing and critiquing Barth in the early 1960s:
Two systems of thought as such cannot contain common knowledge. Based as they are on separate sets of axioms, they can have no proposition in common; and if one system is truth, the other must be false. However, living people are not so thoroughly consistent as ideal systems. People are inconsistent; they believe contradictories without noticing the fact. Hence it is psychologically possible for an unbeliever and a believer to agree on a given proposition. And this point of agreement may be used as a point of contact for the Gospel. What is thus theoretically possible, the majority of exegetes have supposed to be declared actual in the first chapter of Romans. Does not Paul assert that the heathen have a knowledge of God? This knowledge may not be extensive, but its importance depends on its being the basis of heathen responsibility.
Now, because such beliefs held inconsistently, the Gospel has a point of contact, and apagogic argumentation can be extended. Not only may the apologete show the self-contradiction inherent in secular axioms, as we said above; he may now stress the inconsistency of accepting both a secular axiom and a divine truth; and he may draw out the inferences of the divine truth and show its consistency with the additional truths of revelation. (Karl Barth’s Theological Method, 1997, pgs. 117-118)
The similarities to what has been discussed already on systems and persons are only too obvious, which is why, I suppose, Clark says, in the "Apologetics" article, that "Van Til shows a close affinity to neo-orthodoxy" even though he also recognizes points at which "Van Til diverges from neo-orthodoxy."
With this background in order, can we specify a definition of knowledge Clark would have accepted and applied to unregenerates given that they do not accept the [axiom of the] Christian system? Here, as with his book on Karl Barth (see the linked outline above), I think Clark must be defining knowledge as "belief in or acceptance of a true proposition" (Karl Barth’s Theological Method, 1997, pg. 169).
Back in 2015-2016, something of an intramural debate occurred amongst Scripturalists regarding how Clark defined knowledge. Now and then, this question resurfaces. In 2015-2016, I was asked for my view on the matter by several people: did Clark consider knowledge to be
mere true belief or
justified true belief? At the time, I made it clear that I thought Clark subscribed to a theory of knowledge that entails "justified" true belief, and I even tried to defend what sort of epistemic justification I thought Clark [implicitly] held. I particularly recall a set of emails in which I provided a number quotations of Clark which eventually made their way into
this post (on the now defunct scripturalism.com webpage). Since then, I've elaborated this defense in a number of places (e.g.
link), and I still believe it holds up. Clark too was a fideist (even accepting the moniker as a synonym of presuppositionalism,
link) in the sense that he believed that knowledge depends on [faith in] divine revelation.
However, it does look like - given his belief that unregenerates and unbelievers have moral knowledge - that Clark also had a place for considering knowledge as mere true belief. Unregenerates and unbelievers have no epistemic justification available to them - at least, not the sort of epistemic justification for which Clark elsewhere advocated - due to their adherence to false systems or philosophies; consequentially, they can provide no defense or apologetic for any true beliefs they may have.
As Clark says in the "Apologetics" article, while "Romans 1:32 assigns to the wicked an amount of moral knowledge," it is also true that "Christian morality cannot be defended without the prior principle of revelation." Epistemology grounds apologetics (link), and whatever sort of "knowledge" the wicked have, it is not such that they have epistemic justification, let alone a robust defense, for their beliefs.
Did Clark change his views on what "knowledge" means over time? Well, he himself was not a system [of propositions]... despite what he may have said later in his life! It would take some research to substantiate the following, but more likely than not, I think the most charitable reading of Clark leads to the view that he was a contextualist. The word "knowledge" has a "variety of meanings," and the context in which the word is used will determine which of these meanings is the one intended:
1) The various Scriptural usages of the verb know raise a problem in apologetics to which a commentary can only allude in a footnote. The common meaning is exemplified in simple sentences, such, “I know that there is a tree on the lawn,” and “I know that David was King of Israel.” But sometimes, both in Hebrew and in Greek know means believe, obey, choose, have sexual intercourse. English too uses the verb in a variety of meanings. In their opposition to the intellectual emphasis on truth, experiential, emotional, mystical, and neo-orthodox apologetes have contrasted the intellectual Greek meaning with the (sometimes) sexual Hebrew meaning. This contrast is misguided because the Hebrew verb and the Greek verb are both so used. More serious than this linguistic incompetence is a flaw or a gap in the apologetics of these apologetes. It is well enough to point out the extended meanings of the verb. The verb is indeed so used. But such information is irrelevant as an argument against intellectualism and truth. The fallacy or defect is that these apologetes fail to explain knowledge in its basic sense. To insist on extended meanings of knowledge is no substitute for a basic epistemology. (The Pastoral Epistles, 1983, pg. 166)
In some cases, then, "knowledge" can only mean mere true belief. Such is the case with unregenerates or unbelievers. In other cases, "knowledge" can mean something more than mere true belief. Such is the case for a Christian who, like Clark, has a consistent, systematic basis upon which to affirm that "there is a difference between right opinion and knowledge" (Lord God of Truth, pg. 40). Although more could be said on the matter, I hope this first extended thought has provided a resolution to the intramural Scripturalist debate on how Clark defined "knowledge."
A second extended thought regards Clark's point that "A person is not a system, and hence we cannot say of a person what we say of a system, unless some further reasons be adduced." Did Van Til have "further reasons" to think that an unregenerate or unbeliever could not know the truth?
Before answering this, it is worth pointing out that in his "Apologetics" article, Clark claims Van Til contradicts himself. On the one hand, he cites Van Til as saying, "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." On the other hand, Clark cites Van Til as saying, "I have never denied that he [the natural man] has true knowledge."
This should cause some pause. Just as I have tried to be charitable in reading Clark - explaining that in different contexts, I think Clark believed the word "knowledge" can mean to different things - one should also afford Van Til the same courtesy. I found one article (link), for example, that defends the consistency of Van Til on just this point by an appeal to context. The article's author, Michael Warren, attempts to resolve the tension between the preceding quotes of Van Til by an appeal to a third quote: for Van Til, Warren says, "men in general “are first of all truth possessors, or truth-knowers, who have, by sinning, become truth suppressors.”"
Well, isn't this exactly what Clark thought? In his theological examination conducted in 1944, Clark said that "knowledge is the possession of truth" (link). Might not Van Til have said the same - that belief in the Christian system is necessary for knowledge in one sense but not another? Is Clark being overly critical of Van Til, finding contradictions where he instead ought to find context?
If he is overly critical, it is not without reason. Here we see in what way Clark's "Apologetics" article finds its origins in the 1940s OPC debate. Consider the following account of a debate (on April 10th, 1945) within the Philadelphia Presbytery of which Clark and Van Til were members:
...according to Mr. Kuschke, "Dr. Clark regards man's intellect as occupying such high rank that the understanding of the natural man can grasp the meaning of the words 'Christ died for sinners' 'with the same ease' as the born-again man. If that is the case, the understanding does not need to undergo renewal like the rest of the human personality." Mr. Kuschke quoted and discussed at length the statement of the proposed answer that "regeneration, in spite of the theory of the Complaint, is not a change in the understanding of these words [Christ died for sinners]." He pointed out that the Bible teaches that all of man's faculties are corrupted by sin, and that every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart is only evil continually. "If regeneration did not change our understanding of the words 'Christ died for sinners,' " he declared, "then we would never be saved!"
...The supporters of Dr. Clark's theology made valiant effort to defend the statement of the answer that "regeneration... is not a change in the understanding of these words [Christ died for sinners]." Mr. Kuschke, on the other hand, defended the position of the complaint and pointed out that, when content is injected into the sentence, the unregenerate man must invariably inject the wrong content and the regenerate man the true content. (The Presbyterian Guardian, April 10th, 1945, link)
Arthur Kuschke, like Van Til, was one of the men who signed the original complaint against Clark (written in 1944, link). Kuschke admits that the complaint denies that unregenerates possess any component of saving faith... including the unregenerate's ability to even understand the gospel.
Clark agreed that unregenerates do not assent to or believe the gospel. But it is not clear why unregenerates would invariably inject the wrong content regarding the gospel truth unless the same would hold for any truth. That is, Kuschke seems to be suggesting that since unregenerates don't accept the Christian system, they can't understand the truths of said system. This would conflate systems and persons, as Clark points out, but it would at least explain why the complainants didn't think it was possible for unregenerates to understand the gospel in particular.
As I see it, then, the complainants are caught on the horns of a dilemma: if they only think that unregenerates cannot understand the gospel truth, they are begging the question: why is this truth unable to be understood by unregenerates? On the other hand, if the complainants deny that unregenerates can understand any truth, they avoid begging this question, but in turn, Clark is right: there can be no context in which Van Til can have grounds to say that unregenerates know anything, for knowledge, like faith, presupposes understanding.
Were Kuschke's expressions agreeable to Van Til? Van Til was recorded as present for March 19th and 29th debates during which this question - the question of what can unregenerates understand - arose within the Philadelphia presbytery. If Van Til spoke a word of correction against his fellow complainants in defense of Clark, Birch didn't record it (as one would think Birch would have done).
As a complainant, I think Van Til had an obligation to correct his fellow complainants if he disagreed with them, especially in defense of the one against whom the (i.e. his, at least in part) complaint was directed. If Van Til did not confront them on this point, Clark had good reason to take his silence as implying Kuschke and others accurately "defended the position of the complaint."
To focus on Kuschke's remarks, they are to the effect that something is wrong about the idea that the unregenerate does not need to have his understanding "undergo renewal like the rest of the human personality." Kuschke says, "If regeneration did not change our understanding of the words 'Christ died for sinners'... then we would never be saved!" These are not so much arguments as they are insinuations that beg the question. The burden of proof lies on Kuschke to justify these claims, for as they stand, they are assertions in search of an argument.
But we might also ask what is wrong with the idea that Adam's sin concerned a change in his
ethical disposition to the truth as opposed to his capacity to understand [and even, in some non-salvific contexts, to "know"] it? Analogously, Van Til himself says in his
Survey of Christian Epistemology (originally a syllabus written in 1932,
link):
It is not, then, as though the clear recognition of the fundamental ethical difference between the regenerate and the non-regenerate consciousness implies that there is a twofold truth, or that we must use one type of argument for one type of consciousness and another type of argument for the other type of consciousness. It is exactly the deep conviction that there is metaphysically only one type of consciousness, and that the nonregenerate and the regenerate consciousness are but ethical modifications of this one fundamental metaphysical consciousness, that leads us to reason with unbelievers. And it is exactly because of our deep conviction that God is one and truth is therefore one, that we hold that there is only one type of argument for all men. All that the recognition of the deep ethical difference does is to call attention to this very fact that it is God who must make this one truth effective in the hearts of men. Magna est veritas et praevalebit!
Would Kuschke say that Van Til was wrong to believe that the type of metaphysical consciousness unregenerates have is the same as the type of metaphysical consciousness unregenerates have? Is it a problem for Van Til to implicitly deny that the consciousness "need[s] to undergo renewal like the rest of the human personality"?
I could leave matters at that, but I'll posit four counters to Kuschke's position. Firstly, Adam accepted revealed truths in Genesis 2. Once Adam sinned, did Kuschke think Adam somehow was rendered unable to understand these truths which were previously revealed to and accepted by him? I don't see any reason to think so. In fact, Adam's subsequent action - hiding from God - suggests that Adam still had an understanding and belief in the consequences of sin(Genesis 2:17) - "knowledge," of a sort.
Secondly, Satan seems to have some understanding of the truth (not to mention demons who have true beliefs; cf. James 2). Why else would Satan have tempted Adam in the garden in the first place? Satan's attempt to suppress the truth is not accidental. Satan understood the truth God has revealed to His people, and he opposes it intentionally.
Thirdly, the fact that Paul reasoned with unbelievers in Acts 17 indicates that unbelievers can understand truth. Van Til admits as much when we says that "we hold that there is only one type of argument for all men." Does not one present an argument so that others may understand him (to say the least)?
Finally, if Kuschke is worried that Clark underestimated the depths of renewal necessary for redemption, one wonders whether Kuschke believed that unregenerates could be images of God. That is, if one believes that both unregenerates and regenerates are images of God, then there is something about a sinner that is not in need of change or renewal upon his conversion. Why can't this "something" involve man's capacity for understanding truth? More could be said, but these replies should be more than sufficient to show that a converted Christian may have understood the gospel or even had some true beliefs prior to his or her conversion.
To close out this second extended thought, I tried to think of what motivation Kuschke et al. had for insisting that an unregenerate's understanding of the gospel cannot be the same as a believer's understanding. The only possibility that came to mind is that they inferred that if an unregenerate's understanding is not in need of renewal, then total depravity is being denied. That is, did they think that a mere understanding of the gospel constituted some sort of ethical good on the part of the unregenerate? If so, that would be a non sequitur and biblically falsifiable (Hebrews 11:6).
While I am quite removed from anything Gilhooly had in mind when he mentioned Clark in his footnote, I have one final, extended thought based on my recent reading related to the 1940s "Clark case" in the OPC. Consider the issue of The Presbyterian Guardian that came out a little later in the same month as one quoted above. The following is from an article by the same author as the one above - Thomas Birch, managing editor of The Presbyterian Guardian - containing an account of a debate within the same Philadelphia Presbytery on March 29th, 1945 (10 days after the debate recorded in the above article):
Dr. Strong questioned Dr. Clark as to what occurs when a man is born again. He replied, in words similar to those of the answer, that regeneration did not necessarily involve a change in the understanding of the words, "Christ died for sinners," but that regeneration brings belief in the truth of those words where formerly there was denial of them...
Much other debate filled the late hours of the evening, all of it no doubt profitable but much of it contributing little new light to the problems facing the presbytery. The high point of the meeting was an unexpected speech by Mr. Kellogg. He said that he had previously been one of those who had championed Dr. Clark but that he no longer felt able to do so." If knowledge of a proposition is the same for God and man," said Mr. Kellogg, "then you must have a perfect and exhaustive knowledge of each word of the proposition." He felt that this was a serious and central flaw in Dr. Clark's position, and was therefore forced to retreat from his earlier support of Dr. Clark. (The Presbyterian Guardian, April 25th, 1945, link)
To anyone reading the excerpts of these accounts, it should be obvious that The Presbyterian Guardian sympathized with the complainants. In fact, two of the five members of the editorial council - Ned Stonehouse and Leslie Sloat - were, along with Kuschke and Van Til, signers of the original complaint against Clark. Along these lines, Thomas Birch, the author of the two articles I just cited, said, in the April 10th article, that in the course of the March 19th debate, Van Til provided "a masterful exposition of the meaning of analogy and its inherent proof of incomprehensibility" (how one wishes he recorded this exposition!). For Birch to call Mr. Kellogg's speech a "high point" of the meeting further suggests it was another speech with which the complainants agreed.
Let's examine Kellogg's argument more closely: "If knowledge of a proposition is the same for God and man... then you must have a perfect and exhaustive knowledge of each
word of the proposition." In response, for starters, one could be technical: propositions don't contain
words. As was mentioned above, words, phrases, or sentences are
utterances (i.e. physical symbols) that
express propositions. Clark has well said that "The letters dog and the letters hund and the letters chien are all adequate to
represent a certain type of animal.
Symbols are always adequate, just because they are
symbols" (
link).
To provide an illustration: if someone asks, "what is the animal on the card?" I can reply "a dog" and the meaning of my reply is clear. Those
words I uttered (i.e. verbalized, wrote, or otherwise physically communicated)
represent the immaterial
proposition that 'The animal on the card is a dog.' While physical communication may involve sentences (speaking them, writing them, etc.) to express propositions, such isn't always necessary, for such utterances are merely
symbols of an immaterial proposition. Perhaps this point goes some way in supporting an idea I've had that commands and questions can symbolize propositional content (
link).
So then, [immaterial] propositions don't contain [material] words; but propositions do contain
concepts. Perhaps Kellogg was speaking colloquially, equating concepts and words. If this theory is correct, the technical way to express Kellogg's intention would be as follows: "If knowledge of a proposition is the same for God and man... then you must have a perfect and exhaustive knowledge of each [
concept] of the proposition." If this wasn't his intention, then whatever changed Kellogg's mind from Clark's position to that of the complainants is unintelligible to me. If I'm on the right track, though, then a theory I had 10 years ago seems to have been correct: "whether Van Til's metaepistemology emphasizes
concepts over
propositions... is probably something worth looking into" (see my first comment in
this post).
A further reason to consider this theory as plausible is that in the same issue as the one in which Kellogg's quote is found, Ned B. Stonehouse - another co-signer of the complaint against Clark, fellow editor of The Presbyterian Guardian, fellow faculty member of Van Til at Westminster Theological Seminary, and member of the Philadelphia presbytery in which the original debates already cited occurred - wrote an article in which he said, "If the content of the knowledge of the truth, or of a truth, and the truth itself may not be distinguished, then indeed one would have to insist upon identity of content or land in skepticism. On Dr. Clark's definitions of knowledge, the position of the complaint is indeed an absurdity." This is quite an admission!
In Doug Douma's The Presbyterian Philosopher, he showed that what the complainants considered to be the "content" of knowledge was opaque. See pg. 137, footnote 7: Clark writes, in 1952 a letter to D. Clair Davis, that the complainants "have (to this day, as far as I know) refused to define content so as to distinguish it from mode and object" [of knowledge].
In the thick of the original debate, the above quote of Stonehouse makes it clear that the content of a truth was distinguishable from the truth itself; otherwise, Stonehouse admits, the position of the complainants collapses into absurdity. Since objects of knowledge are truths, if the "content" of a truth is distinguishable from truth itself, then, as Clark mentions, "content" must likewise be distinguishable from the "objects" of knowledge. What could be this "content" of one's knowledge if not truth itself? What is the "content" of a truth?
Douma points out that in the 13th General Assembly, the OPC majority report found that the complainants "do not define" this term. One might speculate that the "content" Stonehouse intended is "concepts." If this is the case, Stonehouse appears to have been cognizant that concepts are not truths and, therefore, cannot be known.
Whether this speculation is true or not, Kellogg seems to have been under the misimpression that concepts can be known: God has "exhaustive knowledge of each [concept] of the proposition." Here is a line of questioning from Clark's original examination in theology:
Q What is your - shall I say in the introduction, in connection with the term "omnisciened", the subject of the manner of God’s knowledge? I of course agree that subject is one of greatest importance when we consider the difference between God and man. God knows truth in a different way than man does know truth. But, why do you introduce that in connection with the subject of omniscience, and you won't -- why they are not restricted to the items of his knowledge.
A In the previous examination last March, I did restrict myself to the concept -- to the content or items of his knowledge -- and that produced misunderstanding among a few people and I found out since there are some gentlemen in the room who don't think that it mentioned God knows everything and hence, in order to make it quite clear, I make the distinction so that anyone can understand what I mean.
Q Would you say all the contents of God's knowledge is communicable to man?
A I would say any particular proposition is communicable.
Upon reading this transcript, one might initially mistake Clark to mean that he himself identifies the content of God's knowledge with concepts. But as was even noted at the time of this written transcript was created, the meaning of it is notoriously difficult to decipher. What Clark actually seems to means is that "the content or items of [God's] knowledge" is itself a concept - one which he discussed in another examination. What is in quotes here - "the content or items of his knowledge" - is obviously not in the form of a proposition. It is, instead, a concept.
To say that Clark discussed a concept (God's knowledge) is not even remotely to suggest that Clark thought concepts just are the contents of God's knowledge. As is evidenced from his answer to the follow-up question, Clark equated "contents" of knowledge with "objects" of knowledge, and for Clark, a fundamental character of knowledge is that its "content" or "objects" are propositions. This is also clear from other lines of questioning in his theological examination. See here:
Q I will ask you this question, which you may have already answered: Is all truth in the mind of God, capable of being addressed in propositions intelligent to the mind of man?
A I would no know what the word: "truth" meant unless as a quality of proposition. I cannot conceive of anything that is of truth that is not a proposition.
And here:
Q Will the infinite mind be able to know God directly in His wisdom, apart form God's revelation of Himself, in the finite?
A By “Infinite" you mean - proposition? No, I think only through propositions.
Q And, is the finite mind limited by the finite?
A Yes, we know by propositions, -- by means of propositions and that is the only way we do know.
And here:
A The only kind of knowledge which I am familiar - is the knowledge of the proposition, knowledge is the possession of truth, and the only truth that I know anything about is - a proposition. If you are talking about something else. I don't know just what you are talking about.
Again, for Clark, a fundamental characteristic of "knowledge" - whether knowledge as "mere true belief" or knowledge as "justified true belief" - is that its objects are propositions. Concepts themselves are neither true nor false.
For that matter, a word, phrase, sentence, or utterance qua symbol isn't a truth-bearer any more than a concept is. Rather, that which words et al. symbolize or refer to - propositions - are truth-bearers. This analogy is expressed in an article by Marla Perkins Bevin called, "Linguistics and the Bible" (link): "Knowing the syntax in order to know the meaning of the elements of a sentence is a corollary of the logical principle that the proposition is the basic unit of rational thought; its components, such as words, phrases, and sounds, are not." She would have been better off referring to concepts as the "components" of propositions, but the spirit of the statement is sound.
[Parenthetical thought: I have elsewhere written on concepts (link). I think concepts may "connote" or "tag" propositions that are tied to a proposition in question. For example, take the proposition, "Ryan is a Christian." Here, "Ryan" is a concept within the proposition and is the subject of the proposition. The concept-subject of this proposition ("Ryan") is also the concept-subject of other propositions.
The proposition "Ryan is a Christian" has a corresponding referent - an ontological individual whose name is Ryan - who isn't reducible to a proposition or propositions. The proposition refers to Ryan, as do many others of which "Ryan" is the subject. Insofar as the referent, Ryan, is he in whose existence the many propositions of which "Ryan" is a concept-subject are "tied together," so to speak, it is in this sense that although the concept-subject "Ryan" is neither true nor false - a concept is not the basic unit of thought - the concept-subject is that "component" of the proposition which connotes or tags other propositions associated with this referent. That is, a concept-subject that is not tied to the referent Ryan would entail a different propositional thought, referent, and set of corresponding propositions.
Perhaps this is unclear, but it is a line of thought in working progress.]
Returning to Clark, the simpler point is that this is one interpretation of what Stonehouse objects to when he writes, "On Dr. Clark's definitions of knowledge, the position of the complaint is indeed an absurdity." If what Stonehouse and the complainants mean by "content" is too ambiguous, at least Kellogg's remarks seem clear enough that the "Clark case" was not only a debate about epistemology but also about meta-epistemology: what is knowledge [and its objects]? What is the character of knowledge and that which is known? From the complaint itself (link):
The fundamental assumption made by Dr. Clark is that truth, whether in the divine mind or in the human mind, is always propositional. Truth, it is said, cannot be conceived of except in terms of propositions (Cf. 2:9ff.; 11:2, 14f.; and especially 22:19ff.). It will be observed that Dr. Clark does not claim to derive this judgment from Scripture; it is rather regarded as an axiom of reason (Cf. 36:13-17; 19:19ff.).
It is not necessary or appropriate to consider here all of the implications of this fundamental assumption. A few observations are, however, of immediate importance. This view of truth, it will be noted, conceives of truth as fundamentally quantitative, as consisting of a series of distinct items. Now even if it could be assumed that human knowledge has this propositional character, it would still involve a tremendous assumption to conclude that the divine knowledge must possess the same character. Since our thinking is pervasively conditioned by our creaturehood, we may not safely infer the character of our knowledge what must be true of the knowledge of the Creator. Even if we could be sure that human knowledge might be resolved into distinct propositions, it would not necessarily follow that the knowledge of God, who penetrates into the depths of his own mind and of all things at a glance, would be subject to the same qualification. And it may not be overlooked in this connection that Dr. Clark does not claim Scriptural proof for his fundamental assumption as to the character of knowledge.
Not to delve even deeper into this rabbit trail than I already have, a key disagreement between Clark and the complainants seems to be whether it is legitimate to conceive that for God, "truth [i]s fundamentally quantitative, as consisting of a series of distinct items."
With respect to Scripture, would the complainants have considered Psalm 139:17-18 an anthropomorphism? If truth is neither quantitative nor a series of distinct items, then there are not a literal plurality of truths about which God would have a literal plurality of thoughts. Take note of a common remark made by the complainants, that "truth is one." Thomas Birch reports, in the March 19th debate, that Stonehouse argued this:
Dr. Stonehouse then discussed in considerable detail the doctrine of the knowledge of God. As there are two levels of being, the Creator level and the creature level, so there are two levels of knowledge, and man's knowledge must necessarily always be analogical to God's knowledge. "Truth is one. And man may and does know the same truth that is in the divine mind because of his likeness to God and because of the fact of divine revelation."
Before rushing past this quote too quickly, notice that Stonehouse assumes that a difference in "level of being" entails the kind of difference in "levels of knowledge" suggested by the complainants (i.e. that "man's knowledge must necessarily always be analogical"). I don't see how this follows. Sure, God is eternal, and we are not. Therefore, God knows eternally, and we do not. Were this all Stonehouse intended, Clark would have agreed. But the complaint goes farther, and so does Stonehouse.
A relevant consideration to keep in mind when reading the above quotation of Stonehouse is that God is not identical to His thoughts and His knowledge. Such an idea would lead to necessitarianism (link). God exists necessarily, whereas some of the objects of His knowledge are contingently true. If we say that God's knowledge of Himself necessarily entails knowledge of me - e.g. that "God created me" - then insofar as God is necessary, this proposition would be necessarily true. My existence, in turn, would be necessary. This is a problem, and the way to avoid it is to reject that "God created me" is a necessary truth, one entailed by God's necessary knowledge of Himself. I'll return to this later.
Thus, at stake in the "Clark case" is not only [meta-]epistemology but also metaphysics. Of course, that upon which God's knowledge is contingent is His own, eternal will; nevertheless, there is a distinction to be made between God and His knowledge. Stonehouse and the complainants cannot legitimate the inference that a difference in "level of being" entails that man's knowledge is "analogical."
Moving on, Van Til was also cited earlier in this post as having affirmed (back in the 1930s) that "God is one and truth is therefore one." What does it mean to the complainants to say that "truth is one"? To return to the language of systems, for Clark, truth comprises one system. In this sense, Clark would and did accept that "truth is one" (link), for the meaning here would be that "truth" (a metonymy for the singular system) consists of truths are neither disconnected nor disjointed, truths that are the same objects of knowledge for both God and man.
In other words, the one system consists of multiple truths. A system itself is said to be "consistent" or "inconsistent" to the extent that the propositions (plural) contained within said system are consistent with each other. The objects of knowledge are truths. Truths are propositional. Propositions are distinct. In his Survey of Christian Epistemology, Van Til himself wrote things that seem to agree with Clark on this point:
It is not the impartation of intellectual truths only that we meet in the Christian revelation. There is a constant danger lurking here. We tend so easily to think of Christianity as a series of intellectual propositions only. But the intellectual element cannot be separated from the factual element.
Van Til denies that intellectual truths (plural!) alone comprise the Christian revelation, but he does not deny that there are a "series of intellectual propositions" or "intellectual truths." Plurality implies distinction, so in what way does Van Til avoid the charge of the complaint regarding what truth fundamental is? If truth does not (as a system) consist of a series of distinct items, what did the complainants think instead?
All one can do is work with what is given. Unfortunately, the complainants did not outline their own view. If I had to take an educated guess as to what the complainants meant when they said that "truth is one," we must return to Kellogg's argument and Clark's theological examination. Just as I tried to understand the motivation for Kuschke's arguments above, I have tried to understand Kellogg's motivation for his change of mind below. If I'm right, I didn't have to look far. In the transcript of Clark's theological examination, we read:
BY DR. WELMERS: Q I have three questions and it may turn out to be one or more less, or the parts of the questions may be in one: Apart from the argument as to whether God's knowledge can be spoken of as a series of propositions, would it be your opinion that some of those propositions, if they are propositions, are, of themselves, an infinite content? For example: The proposition - God is Love, that is a proposition as much as A plus B. Does that, in your opinion, have, in itself, an infinite content?
A No, in itself, it is just that one proposition, no more.
Clark even emphasizes this point in his handwritten notes in the margins of a personal copy of this written transcription. He writes, "Can a proposition have
infinite content?
No." I think this functions as a direct response to Kellogg. Kellogg said, "If knowledge of a proposition is the same for God and man... then you
must have a perfect and exhaustive knowledge of each word of the proposition."
Ignoring the point that concepts cannot be objects of knowledge, let's run with Kellogg's line of thinking. Take a concept X in a proposition. If, per Kellogg, God's knowledge of a proposition entails perfect and exhaustive knowledge of X within said proposition, does he not mean to say that in turn, God's knowledge of X will entail "perfect and exhaustive knowledge" of anything used to define X, ad infinitum? If not, what would it mean to have a perfect and exhaustive knowledge of X?
Thus, Kellogg's apparent motivation for demurring from Clark's defense is that he thinks God's knowledge of any single proposition entails "infinite content." Man's knowledge of a proposition is, as Van Til puts it in A Survey of Christian Epistemology, only true "as far as it goes." In contrast, God's knowledge "goes all the way," so to speak, for God, in the words of the complaint, "penetrates into the depths of his own mind and of all things at a glance."
Perhaps this interpretation of Kellogg still makes it seem as though the disagreement between Clark and the complainants was simply about quantitative knowledge: God has infinite knowledge, whereas we don't. This is not all that is at play, though. Kellogg could have misinterpreted the complainants, but the complainants seem to suggest that "truth is one" in a "fundamental," holistic, deeper sense than that it comprises one system of multiple truths. If the complainants reject that truth is fundamentally a series of "distinct items" and if Kellogg implies a "perfect and exhaustive" knowledge is entailed by God's knowledge of any one proposition, these men appear to be in danger of serious conflation. They are in danger of thinking "truth is one" in that in some sense, there is fundamentally only one, single, ultimate meaning of which God alone perfectly and exhaustively "knows."
This is an ironic extreme that at first glance appears to be on the other end of the spectrum of the equally extreme supposition that propositions have infinite content. Yet this oscillation is sometimes the sense I get when I've talked to people who stress a radical archetypal-ectypal distinction in the knowledges of God. Scripture itself expresses distinct propositions, and if God knows His own revelation, God knows distinct propositions. Defenders of the complainants typically respond that divine revelation is an "accommodation" to men, an "ectype" of God's "archetypal" "knowledge." Apparently, God metaphysically possesses two kinds of knowledge at the same time.
While it is easy to talk past others in conversations on this subject, I think the main question is how God's alleged archetypal and ectypal knowledges relate. If they don't relate, then how could truth be "one"? Better still, if they don't relate and yet one insists that truth is one, then does this not mean that either archetypal knowledge is unrelated to truth or ectypal knowledge is unrelated to truth? In an Introduction to Warfield's "The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible," Van Til writes:
“When the Christian restates the content of Scriptural revelation in the form of a ‘system,’ such a system is based upon and therefore analogous to the ‘existential system’ that God himself possesses. Being based upon God’s revelation it is on the one hand, fully true and, on the other hand, at no point identical with the content of the divine mind.”
Van Til apparently denies that the two systems God knows - the archetypal and the ectypal - are related. Either this entails advocacy for two systems of truth or a denial that "the ‘existential system’ that God himself possesses" is related to truth. The former would mean Clark was spot on criticism of the complainants for failing to maintain that "truth is one" (see the most recent link). The latter would render the word "system" unintelligible.
One must avoid the idea that propositions have "infinite content" and the idea that truths are not "distinct items." God's knowledge of contingent truths reflects the contingency of creation. Contingency is a precious safeguard of divine self-sufficiency in opposition to necessitarianism. While contingent truths are connected to necessary truths - there is one system of truth - one must be careful regarding the metaphysical grounds of this system, for contingency and necessity must be kept distinct. Here, a brief digression on truth-makers might be helpful, for again, what is at stake is not just epistemological concerns (which alone suffice to vindicate Clark against the complainants) but also metaphysical ones.
Truths are connected, yet they cannot be internally related such that to know one truth entails knowledge of every truth. Clark outlines the epistemological problem with this:
That relations are internal, and especially that the truth is the whole, are themes hard to deny. Yet their implications are devastating. So long as you or I do not know the relationships which constitute the meaning of cat or self, we do not know the object in question. If we say that we know some of the relationships – e.g., a cat is not-a-dog and admit that we do not know other relationships – e.g., a cat is not-an-(animal we have never heard of before) – it follows that we cannot know how this unknown relationship may alter our view of the relationship we now say we know. The alteration could be considerable. Therefore we cannot know even one relationship without knowing all. Obviously we do not know all. Therefore we know nothing.
This criticism is exceedingly disconcerting to an Hegelian, for its principle applies not merely to cats, dogs, and selves, but to the Absolute itself. The truth is the whole and the whole is the Absolute. But obviously we do not know the whole; we do not know the Absolute. In fact, not knowing the Absolute, we cannot know even that there is an Absolute. But how can Absolute Idealism be based on absolute ignorance? And ours is absolute ignorance, for we cannot know one thing without knowing all. (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pg. 153)
A further insuperable hurdle for rationalistic logic is a proposition’s meaning. The meaning of a sentence depends on its context. Logicians recognize this fact, but they identify the context as the totality of knowledge. Hence, as is all too evident with Plato and Hegel, one must be omniscient to grasp the meaning of even a single sentence. This obviously rules out all human knowledge. (Thales to Dewey, 2000, pg. 398)
When the unity of truth and personality is so stressed that one must be omniscient in order to know anything, the theory for all its superficial piety is as skeptical as Hume's (link).
Accepting that truths are internally related would mean that our knowledge is not true "as far as it goes;" our knowledge wouldn't "go" anywhere. Fundamentally, and contrary to the complaint, truths must be "distinct items," albeit metaphysically connected in some way. How is this possible?
The Reformed distinction between God's natural and free knowledge is crucial (link). Both God's natural knowledge and His free knowledge are grounded in God, yet they are grounded in different ways. God's natural knowledge is of Himself. God exists necessarily; just so, God's natural knowledge is of necessary truths: God knows who He is, what He is, and what He has the power to do. What metaphysically grounds necessary truths? God Himself.
God's free knowledge, on the other hand, is of what God actually and freely decrees and does with His power. While God was never in a state of "suspended animation" - His exercise of His power is timeless or eternal - it is nevertheless true that His exercise of His power was externally uncoerced and internally non-necessitated. God freely created me in accordance with His nature and natural knowledge. That is, my existence is contingent rather than necessary or necessitated; just so, God's free knowledge is of contingent truths. What metaphysically grounds contingent truths? God's free exercise of His will.
To conclude this extended thought (and post), God is the truth-maker for necessary and contingent truths, and truths are thereby systematically connected. Yet it is equally important to maintain that God is the truth-maker of necessary truths in a different way than He is for contingent truths, or else we run into epistemic issues (skepticism) and metaphysical issues (necessitarianism). Contrary to the complainants, then, a fundamental character of truth is that it is a series of distinct items (but not separate items, as if there a source of truth other than God). This rebuts any motivation Kellogg or others might have had for shying away from Clark's view.
