Trinitarian and Anthropological Metaphysics

In the comments of a recent post, I was recently asked some challenging questions regarding Trinitarianism, Christology, and anthopology. In the past few years, I've mentioned several times the need for humility and balance when positing a doctrine of God (see here and pursuant links). On the one hand, I aim to do a better job of avoiding dogmatism on points of speculation. On the other hand, even in the case that answers to certain questions are underdetermined by biblical data, apologetic concerns warrant consideration of possibilities to prevent one's faith from being undercut. 

In what follows, my goal is to provide answers that are faithful to Scripture insofar as they are deducible from or coherent with it. Keeping in mind that this latter qualification - coherence - is a necessary but insufficient condition for truth, the questions I was asked will be indented:

I'm trying to also keep in my the Trinity, with the three persons united in one being. Being would be identical to nature (divine nature), would it not?

On the concept of "unity," this post would provide a helpful background for my own thoughts (excepting a few uncareful remarks in the final paragraph).

I don't think the Trinity are united "in one being" if that means persons are subsumed under nature. Don't get me wrong: natures don't exist without persons, and persons do not exist without natures. Yet insofar as "nature" or "being" discusses what is common to individuals, natures belong to and are predicated of persons, not persons to natures. "Enhypostasis" - nature is in the hypostasis. If persons were "in" natures, then Christ's having two natures would seem to imply Nestorianism.

Now, the members of the Trinity are consubstantial. In fact, I think the meaning of their being consubstantial is just the same as the meaning of you and I being consubstantial, although the manner of consubstantiality differs between Trinitarian members (eternal, necessary) and us as men (temporal, contingent). Regardless, they indeed are of the same nature. 

But I would balk at certain theories of divine simplicity that may be implicit in the phrasing of your question. That is, Trinitarian consubstantiality does not imply only one concrete nature. Recall that you mentioned mind is "indexed" to nature: if we subsumed the divine persons under or in a single, concrete divine nature, then, that would entail that there is just one divine mind. The problem with that - as you seem to recognize - is that it runs against biblical data suggesting the members have distinct, self-reflective thoughts (e.g. John 17). On that note:

So the mind of the Son would have self-referential propositions that the Father would not (e.g. "I am the eternally begotten one"), but that mind would not be coextensive with the person of the Son? What would be the remainder? Would it be something like the shared divine nature that extends beyond the self-referential thoughts of the mind?

While the mode of the Son's existence is eternal, He is also eternally begotten. Here is precisely where I think Clark, for example, went wrong: it is not merely that the Son thinks something of Himself that is different than His thought of the Father or Spirit; rather, this thought corresponds to something about the Son Himself. I argue Clark's rejection of the correspondence theory of truth in the 1940s led him to collapse persons into propositions/thoughts (link). I further argue I think Clark's reasons for rejecting it only pertain to a certain kind of correspondence theory of truth (link). 

What I am saying, then, is that the persons of the Trinity are not simply minds - and again, since you agree minds are "indexed" to nature, that would not constitute a differentiating principle between the individual Trinitarian persons anyway. Nor are the persons the thoughts of the mind (as if it is intelligible to suggest the divine persons are products of three minds?). On the contrary, the thoughts of the persons of the Trinity about themselves reflect or correspond to something unique about the way that they themselves are: unbegotton/originate, eternally begotten/generation, eternally spirated/process. Epistemological and ontological categories should not be collapsed. 

Also remember that in the original post on Clark and Nestorius, I was only attempting to provide a connotative definition of "person" in general. I was not talking individual persons/hypostases/subjects. For example, I think the Father, Son, Spirit, the angels, and humans are all "persons" because they have something in common: they each have a mind or minds. But this definition does not individuate any one individual "person" from any other. Well, that makes sense, for we agree that the having of a mind (or minds) is something properly belonging to the category of nature - not that we have the same nature as God, of course, but the overlap explains (at least partially) in what sense creaturely persons might be images of divine persons. 

So what individuates individual persons/hypostases/subjects? We might posit (as Clark did) that they can be individuated by their thoughts (of themselves). In a cursory analysis, this might be sufficient. But foundationally, note again that thoughts are products of thinkers. To the extent that an individual's thoughts of himself is relevant to this question, that to which the thoughts correspond - the individual himself - is all the more so. 

Let me suggest that an individual person is the correspondent of whatever may truly be predicated of him either timelessly (if His mode of existence is timeless, e.g. the Father) or at time t (if his given his mode of existence is temporal, e.g. an angel or human). What I "think" of myself is irrelevant, because my thoughts of myself are potentially false. Rather, true propositions about me (corresponding to my existence at time t) are those thoughts God thinks about me (corresponding to my existence at time t).

The above is perfectly intelligible to me. Even the case of Christ incarnate can be nuanced (example). Here is one catch, however: it suggests that the divine nature is concretized in the three persons. This should be obvious anyways if we accept a model of the Trinity on which each member of the Trinity has a distinct mind, but it should be noted. Not all (or even most) Trinitarian models would accept this. If we take Clark's definitions of thoughts/beliefs as involving volition, three concrete minds also entails three concrete wills.

Clark's own reasoning supports this, for he reject faculty psychology in the context of anthropology and Trinitarianism:

In the case of God, the simplicity of his reality should favor still more such a identification, rather than a development of divine faculty psychology. (April 3, 1937, Letter to J. Oliver Buswell)

A man is not a compound of three things, an intellect, a will, and an emotion. Each man is a single personality. (1943. On the Primacy of the Intellect. Westminster Theological Journal Vol. 5 No. 2, May. 182-195)

The question has to do with Ephesian 4 where it speaks of man’s mind being darkened. Well, I would include in the functions of mind the assent as well as the notitia, but I distinguish between the two functions. This is not faculty psychology, but it is two functions of the same spirit. (1977. A Defense of Christian Presuppositions in the Light of Non-Christian Presuppositions)

Just as in the post on "unity" I linked to above, these statements exhibit an internal inconsistency in Clark's thought. If the same spirit has two functions - assent and notitia or knowledge - then on what grounds could Clark affirm three distinct functions in one respect (self-knowledge) but not the other (assent)? If only the Son thinks "I am the Son," what does it mean to "think" if assent is not involved?

We can certainly differentiate the relationship between our persons to propositions we "know" (acquisitional, receptive) to the relationship between the Trinitarian persons and propositions they "know" (active, generative). In both cases, the objects of knowledge - truth-bearing propositions - are the same, although the psychological activity of "knowing" differs.

To reiterate, on the model I gravitate towards, the Trinitarian persons are consubstantial just as you and I are consubstantial. What it means for the divine nature to be "in" each person is the same, is true, and therefore corresponds to the existence of each person. There is just one "divine nature" that we conceptualize: all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, etc. Each member of the Trinity is all-wise, all-good, etc.

It's just that how consubstantiality cashes out is not in persons being found "in[side]" of a common nature but rather along the lines that a person who is a principle or "fount" (e.g. the Father; Adam) communicates his same nature to others who find their "origin" in him (e.g. the Son/Spirit; the rest of humanity). This bears on the unity of persons and explains the connection to traducianism, by the way, which I'll return to momentarily.

In the context of the Trinity, there is a necessary connection between the members. The property of the Father, the attributes of the divine nature He enhypostatizes, and mode of the communication of His divine nature to His Son and Spirit is such that the three persons 1) mutually depend on each other - for example, the Father is not who He is without His Son and Spirit - and 2) always act conjointly and agreeably. 

A comparison could reasonably be made between 1) three distinct knowers who distinctly and reflexively index the same, objective body of propositional meaning, and 2) three distinct operators or actors who necessarily produce one and the same conjoint operation or act (which, incidentally, includes the body of propositional meaning comprised of necessary and contingent truths).

A traducian friend of mine (Ken Hamrick) uses the language of "shared agency" to describe our participation in Adam's sin while the mode of "our" being was not yet (i.e. at the time of the Fall) as individuals but as the singular nature of Adam through which he sinned and out of whom we were not yet propagated as individuals (link). I agree with him, although how we think this analogizes to the Trinity differs. 

Ken would emphasize the numerical sameness of the spirit traduced to us and thereby argue for the numerical sameness of essence shared among the Trinity (link). I would emphasize that once we are propagated out of Adam, our possession of the same spirit is nevertheless concretely distinct and thereby argue that the Trinitarian persons exhibit an analogy to "shared agency" in the eternal communication of the divine nature through which the persons operate even as they are eternally individuated and individuals. As I mentioned at the outset, these are rather deep waters to stake out a dogmatic claim that one can confidently swim them. 

In either model - Ken's or mine - there is an analogy one could make between Trinitarianism and traducianism. There are also disanalogies in either case, of course. For Ken, whereas we have distinct, concrete natures (albeit inherited through our fathers once we are propogated out of them into a different mode of being, i.e. as individuals), the members of the Trinity would not. On my end, the manner of consubstantiality between the Father, Son, and Spirit would be eternal and grounded in their intrapersonal relations rather than temporal (such as my relation to my father). This interesting impasse at once suggests an argumentative parallel between Trinitarianism and traducianism regardless of which one of us is correct as well as that other reasons must be given for independent support for either of our positions.

I think my model goes some way in explaining biblical texts like John 17, the covenant of redemption, and the resonance between theology proper and anthropology. 

Further, on the subject of anthropology in general and traducianism in particular, I think this model (and Ken's) also avoids nominalism while affirming a realism in the contexts of original sin and justification which does not devolve into erroneous positions. For example, erroneous positions such as: 

1) one wherein Christ assumes a sinful nature (cf. uncareful statements of the doctrine of original sin), 

2) one wherein I am unjustly punished for sins which are really and completely alien to me (cf. representationalist theories of original sin), 

3) one wherein Christ assumes and glorifies a human nature under which all persons are said to be subsumed (cf. Eastern Orthodoxy and deification, despite the protestations of its apologists to believe that natures are in hypostases rather than the reverse), 

4) one wherein infused righteousness is argued as necessary for justification to be justly possible in this lifetime (cf. Roman Catholic apologists, although those who argue this are themselves inconsistent).

On several of these points, see here for more. Further potential advantages of this model are that it seems to cohere with other metaphysical ideas which have separate appeal: theistic propositional realism (i.e. divine conceptualism), a version of divine simplicity which allows for formal distinctions, an Aristotelian theory of universals, etc.

I've thought about this quite a lot, and while the above is not a full story, it's probably the best articulation I can come up with at the present. To your next question:

If by inheriting one's father's "spirit" means those immaterial attributes that he possesses (analogous to the material attributes one possesses), then I think I can get my mind around what "spirit" means. Just as our bodies are made from our parents's bodies without being identical to them, so our spirits are made from our parents's spirits without being identical to them.

But then what distinguishes mind and spirit, or are they the same?

I think they are the same. Christ assumed a body and a rational soul or spirit without assuming a person, so there is no Christological difficulty, at least. Ken has elsewhere suggested that the "spirit is the seat of the will regarding moral matters" (link), and I think this all dovetails with Clark's aforementioned thought that knowledge and assent are two functions of the same spirit.

Finally, I had written:

The separation of body and spirit is "death," and such is predicated of our persons; but so too is the separation of our spirit from the Spirit "death" also predicated of our persons... suggesting the relationship between man's body and his spirit is analogically related to the dependency of our spirit to God's Spirit?

Maybe all of this becomes simplified by looking at a case most Christians would agree with: Christians will be conscious in the intermediate state. Are these Christians still human? If so, then it appears that they just are, ontologically speaking, spirits. To say that the person experiences death is to say that his body has been separated from his spirit (i.e. himself). Men are not, ontologically speaking, composite beings, for although these spirits do normally have bodies, the separation of the normal unity between spirit and body does not ontologically change a person (spirit). Likewise, the separation of the designed unity between spirit and Spirit does not ontologically change a person (spirit). If physical death is not an ontological change, neither would be spiritual death.

Your question: 

As for the subsequent post wherein you discuss the intermediate state, have you considered also that our spiritual bodies may be of a different order than our physical bodies? Paul's statements about the natural body and spiritual body are puzzling. "Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." The first man was made of the earth from dust, the last man is from heaven. Is it not safe to say that even in our present state we not "fully human" but are "incomplete" because the body we were given (even Adam's sinless body) was only the seed of what will only be completed in the resurrection? So, it may be the case that there is no ontological change since the separation of the spirit from the body in death is part of the planned transformation from natural body to spiritual body (like the seed germinating).

Did you mean to ask whether it's possible that "even in our present state we [are] not "fully human" but are "incomplete""? If so, did the incarnate and yet-be-glorified Son assume a fully human nature? Further, when this Son died and was buried (prior to His resurrection), was He fully human or not? Surely the former. 

I would also keep in mind the question of whether or not the reprobate are fully human: they will experience a bodily resurrection too, but their spirit remains severed from the life-giving Spirit of God and, thus, experience a second death. These points cumulatively suggest that death entails no change in nature.

Now, my original comment was about whether is ontological change at the time of death. Here, on the other hand, I am here emphasizing that there is never a change to the human essence each of us has. Ontology is indeed a broader category than humanity, I just wanted to answer your specific questions by distinguishing between an eschatological telos and a change in nature.

Clark's Gradual, Metaphysical Synthesis

A recent question was asked about Clark's theology proper which allowed me to collect thoughts that I have been meaning to put into words for some time. The question was as follows:

Clark was known to have translated John 1:1 so that the Logos was rendered as "Logic". Along these lines, Clark would argue to the effect that logic is the manner or characteristic of God's thinking.

How or where does Clark deal with the objection where logic is the art which orders discursive thought (something of which God does not have)? In other words, how can logic (as that which applies to reasoning from premises to conclusions) be said to be the characteristic of God's thinking if God's thinking is non-discursive?

This is an excellent question in that it draws out some implications of Clark’s view that may not be immediately obvious to the ordinary reader. 

Several people who responded to this question pointed out that an answer to it might depend on what the questioners thinks characterizes “discursive” reasoning. Clark himself used the word "discursive" to mean different things in different contexts.

For example, does “discursive” reasoning in the context of the above question involve a temporal succession and/or dependent process? If so, Clark would reply that God’s knowledge is not "discursive" in this sense:

The Complaint admits that Dr. Clark distinguishes between what may be called the divine psychology and human psychology in the act of knowing. God’s mode of knowing is intuitive, while man’s is always temporal and discursive. This distinction, the Complaint claims, is insufficient; a further distinction is needed. It is obvious therefore that the complainants hold to a two-fold theory of something in addition to a two-fold theory of the act of knowing. (Winter 1946/1947. Studies in the Doctrines of the Complaint. PCA Archives and SDCS)

Or does "discursive" merely suggest (in the context of the above question) that one’s thinking is syllogistically ordered? If so, Clark would reject the questioner's premise that God’s thinking is not "discursive":

God's knowledge is sometimes called intuitive rather than discursive. These terms are unfortunate, because if discursive means “syllogistic,” then God thinks in syllogism (Rom 4:2-3), and because men also presumably have intuitions. (1972. In Encyclopedia of Christianity. Philip E. Hughes, ed. Marshallton, Delaware: National Foundation for Christian Education. Feuerbach, Ludwig A.)

For Clark, however, for God to think "in syllogism" does not mean that there is some so-called fundamental truth or truths from which God must deduce all others. That would mean there would be more fundamental parts of God than others since, for Clark, God just is truth itself. I'll return to this point below, but by way of anticipation, I think Clark does implicitly provide answer to the questioner's confusion (although in such a way that it still leaves problems with Clark's larger theology). 

I'll put it another way: for humans, Clark says the law of contradiction is a test that requires supplementation – God’s word – in order for knowledge to be possible. For God, this is not so:

The substantive point needing discussion is whether the law of contradiction is the one and only test of truth.

Ideally or for God this seems to be the case. Since there is nothing independent of God, he does not conform truth to an alleged reality beyond truth and beyond him. Since there is no possibility of “vertical” (to use Carnell’s terminology) coherence, the “horizontal” test, or, better the horizontal characteristic of logical consistency seems the only possible one.

Weaver correctly notes that I do not claim for human beings the ability to apply this test universally. In this sense it is a “negative” or, better, an incomplete test. For this reason it must be supplemented some way or other...

Undoubtedly I hold that truth is a consistent system of propositions. Most people would be willing to admit that two truths cannot be contradictories; and I would like to add that the complex of all truths cannot be a mere aggregate of unrelated assertions. Since God is rational, I do not see how any item of his knowledge can be unrelated to the rest. Weaver makes no comment on this fundamental characteristic of divine truth.

Rather, he questions whether this characteristic is of practical value, and whether it must be supplemented in some way. It is most strange that Weaver here says, “I must agree with Carnell,” as if he had convicted me of disagreeing with Carnell by providing no supplementation whatever. Now, I may disagree with the last named gentleman on many points, but since it is abundantly clear that I “supplement” consistency by an appeal to the Scripture for the determination of particular truths, it is most strange that Weaver ignores my supplementation.// (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pgs. 287, 290)

A shorter statement by Clark to the same effect is as follows:

One who believes in the unity of truth may still believe that the false system entails contradictions; but to prove this is the work of omniscience. (Historiography: Secular and Religious, 1971, pg. 370)

Now, the following is very important: Clark held to a coherence or consistency theory of truth.

This gentleman distinguishes between logical consistency and a coherence view of truth. Since he stresses the latter rather than the former, he might think that Nash rates me too highly by asserting that I hold to coherence. However, neither Professor Nash nor I acknowledge this distinction, and while I now prefer the word consistency for clarity’s sake, I have no objection to Nash’s statement at this point. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pg. 142)

For that reason, I believe, Clark came to reject that there could be multiple propositional systems that are completely coherent or consistent. If truth is coherence or consistency, there must be only one completely consistent or coherent system. Clark considered this even as early as 1952. From the Introduction to his A Christian View of Men and Things, he writes:

Now, there is a theory that the ultimate test of truth is coherence, and on this theory it would be impossible to have two self‑consistent, mutually contradictory philosophies. A false statement, so it is said, will always, if pursued far enough, imply its own falsity. If this coherence theory of truth should be established, then we could rely with confidence on this application of the law of contradiction. Its sufficiency would be inherent in the nature of truth. The mere fact that the coherence theory of truth would eliminate a final impasse might even be reason enough for adopting it. One might hold that all other theories of truth lead to skepticism, and that therefore the coherence theory alone is coherent and true. Possibly all this is so, but surely it needs some more talking about. And in talking about it, there can be no logical objection to using the law of contradiction as far as it will go.

Over time, I think his acceptance of a coherence theory of truth pushed him to accept necessitarianism (see here). There is necessarily only one coherent or consistent system of propositions, and God necessarily just is this system.

For Clark, the idea of multiple propositional systems that are coherent or consistent would not only have posed an epistemic difficulty for God but also a metaphysical one since, for Clark, God just is truth. Clark himself says: "Truth is God... God is truth." (1984. In the Beginning. The Trinity Review Nov.-Dec.). This dovetails with his theory of personhood in which persons just are that which they think:

As there is no temporal priority, so also there is no logical or analytical priority. Not only was Logic the beginning, but Logic was God. If this unusual translation of John’s Prologue still disturbs someone, he might yet allow that God is his thinking. God is not a passive or potential substratum; he is actuality or activity. (1980. God and Logic. The Trinity Review Nov.-Dec.)

God thinks truth; therefore, God is truth. Returning to an earlier point, for Clark, the unity of truth (God) is such that any single, true proposition will mutually entail all others, whereas a false proposition will always lead to systematic inconsistency. God has no need for axiomatic truths (unlike us), for He is in no need of "supplementation" (unlike us) to apply the law of contradiction to Himself - or, what is equivalent, to His own knowledge - with complete sufficiency. God just is the singly coherent, consistent, necessary, logical system: truth itself. God is this truth actually and actively. There is no potential for God to have been another system of so-called truths. 

Roughly, then, one can argue that epistemological beliefs Clark became committed to in the 1940s-50s - e.g. man's knowledge is univocal with God's; coherence theory of truth; anti-empirical means of knowledge - shaped his later, metaphysical views. For example:

- Clark's theory of truth was such that in order for Clark to account for knowledge of persons (e.g. man's knowledge of God or God's knowledge of men), he believed he had to change his views (cf. his earlier anthropological views here) by collapsing personhood into 1) propositions or 2) thoughts. 

[As an aside, these two positions might be distinct (link). In particular, the second position - i.e. persons are what they think - might seem to require what Clark calls elsewhere a "subjective, psychological act" (link), implying something seemingly distinct from propositional objects yet corresponding to them: i.e. thinkers. 

An interesting question is whether Clark believed these positions were distinct. It does not appear so, for in his book The Trinity, he says in the same chapter ("Individuation") that persons are a "collection of thoughts" and that his wife is "merely a set of propositions." He appears to equate positions 1) and 2), at least in terms of his own, proposed definition of personhood.

So did Clark think propositions can think themselves? Is this intelligible? And contrary to contemporary philosophers, did Clark think propositions have causal powers? Combined with his quote from the "God and Logic" article above, it does indeed appear Clark thought such to be the case! Of course, an obvious, unfortunate product of this position as held by elder Clark is a two-person theory of the incarnation (two thinkers = two persons).

On the other hand, even if our "subjective, psychological act" of believing might itself be a proposition, Clark does nevertheless seem to introduce something distinct from propositions elsewhere in accepting Clark's acceptance of a "Platonic-Philonic" dualism (link). But this then begs the question as to whether one must know phenomena qua phenomena or if it suffices to know the noumenal, suprasensible world. Likewise, Clark's theory of language trades on nonpropositional "symbols" which, in Clark's own words, correspond to propositions (link). 

This would be problematic unless the following assertion Clark made to Buswell in 1948 is false: "The correspondence theory would require us to compare an idea we have in consciousness with some utterly unknown object." But if it is false (as I've argued, link), it demotivates Clark's reason for accepting the coherence theory of truth and, in turn, the many metaphysical views Clark was led to as a result.]

- Likewise, Clark's theory of time as a "succession of ideas" suggests yet another collapse of a metaphysical category into an epistemic one. 

[Another aside: I wonder if this may function to explain why Clark waffled on the age of the earth prior to the creation of man. Clark did believe angels had successions of ideas; I suppose only the hypothesis that angels were the first creations would prevent one from asking Clark "how much time elapsed between the creation of the heavens and the creation of angels?" This question might be problematic if no angels existed to have a succession of ideas according to which the elapse between the creation of heaven and the creation of angels might be measured.]

- Returning to Clark's metaphysic of persons, one might suggest that whereas Thomistic divine simplicity is subject to comparison to Plotinus' One, Clark's version of divine simplicity is more subject to comparison to Plotinus' Divine Mind (link). To the chagrin of adherents to these versions of divine simplicity, I think the comparisons are warranted.

To expand on Clark's view, it is fairly apparent that Clark's affirmation of univocal knowledge plays a part in his unique understanding of divine simplicity. If Clark can be categorized as a classical theist - for he did accept divine simplicity, immutability, timelessness, and impassibility - he is certainly an odd one! On the other hand, that a comparison to Plotinus might nevertheless be made to Clark's views might lead one to theorize that Clark had a tendency to overly depend on ancient philosophers (with whom Clark was so familiar).

- In support of this thesis, 1) Clark's view of time depended on Augustine; 2) elder Clark seemed to deny the possibility of an infinitude of knowledge in The Incarnation, a denial which Steve Hays once point out presupposes a pre-Cantorian definition of "infinity" and simultaneously demonstrated Clark's ignorance of mathematics (cf. Personal Recollections, pg. 117); 3) elder Clark's acceptance of necessitarianism is somewhat similar to Plotinian necessitarianism. In this last case, however, I would say his view is rather more similar to that of Leibniz, which is nevertheless striking in that so far as I am aware, elder Clark never responded to his own, proleptic criticism (written in 1957) of his later acceptance of necessitarianism: 

If all truths are to be deduced by logic alone from the being of God, this world cannot be the best of all possible worlds because there are no other possible worlds. Are the theorems of geometry the best of all possible theorems? The question is meaningless, for there are no other theorems. God, therefore, exercised no choice in causing the world; he is its cause in precisely the same sense in which the axioms of geometry are the cause of the theorems. (Thales to Dewey, pg. 327, 1957)

Clark wrote other criticisms of necessitarianism he also neglected to address when he later came to accept the position (cf. Karl Barth’s Theological Method, 1997, pg. 36).

- One final metaphysical category that seems driven by Clark's epistemic beliefs pertains to causation. I've suggested that elder Clark's acceptance of occasionalism (link) was due to his anti-empirical epistemology. Clark might have feared that an alternative account of causation would support his critics, who perpetually asked if Clark had to read his Bible in order to know its contents. 

Now, I've also argued there was no reason for Clark to have had this fear (if he did; link). It is possible for propositional truths to correspond to nonpropositions - and even for the truth-values of contingent propositions to be determined by nonproposition[s] (for God Himself is not a [set of] proposition[s], link) - without devastating a revelational epistemology. Additionally, in the context of the specific critique regarding the reading of one's Bible, it is possible Clark conflated the basing relation in epistemology (or something like it) with causation simpliciter.

These are the beginnings of an interesting story one might tell about how Clark's unique thought developed and converged over time, a story I eventually hope to narrate in a more ordered form. 

As a perhaps unnecessary outro, I don't agree with Clark on several of these points. Nor were his views on several points I've outlined above always the same. For example, as I point out in one of the above links and quotes, one will find statements earlier in his life in which he (correctly) rejects necessitarianism. 

However, I think there is a gradual, metaphysical synthesis in Clark's thought that implies his awareness of such problems as the one posed at the beginning of this post. Even though I think Clark gets quite a few things wrong, his attempted synthesis is nonetheless impressive. Clark's following speech "from the grave" was a little too humble: "Clark never had much to do with ta meta-ta-phusica."

Discriminating Presuppositionalism

A few days ago, a friend asked me for my thoughts on this video. 

At the outset, the author, David Pallmann, asks, 

Just what is presuppositional apologetics? It is a school of apologetics which tries to show that Christianity is true via a transcendental argument (minute 1).

Now, this is quite a narrow view of presuppositionalism, especially in light of my own criticisms (as a presuppositionalist) of other presuppositionalists who thought transcendental argumentation could conceivably enable one to reason to God (link). His classification of versions of presuppositionalism which might differ from that of Greg Bahnsen as "deviant" (minute 8) is rather restrictive. If nothing else, I hope this post illustrates that one ought to discriminate the varieties of presuppositionalist perspectives. 

Mine bears an affinity with that of Gordon Clark and does not attempt to "show" (prove?) that Christianity is true via argumentation. Any arguments Clark might have made function as a defense of Christianity; but the arguments are not meant to function as "proofs," as if God's word (Clark's foundation or axiom) could have somehow been the conclusion to a (circular?) argument. 

Many flawed criticisms of Clark by fellow believers rest on a conflation between apologetics and epistemology. See my distinction between the two here. In short, apologetics or arguments presuppose epistemology or knowledge [of the most basic premise]. The two must be kept distinct. Apologetics is subordinate to epistemology. 

Another mistake is to think Clark was a traditional coherentist. Even people who claim to follow Clark's view sometimes make this mistake. He was a foundationalist. See point 5 here. A reason people make this mistake is because Clark accepted a coherence theory of truth; while I disagree with Clark on this, the point is that a coherence theory of truth (i.e. a definition of truth) is different than coherentism in epistemology (i.e. how we come to know the truth). See here.  

At minute mark 5, David says: 

In this video, I want to explore a response that has been periodically hinted at in the literature but is never, to my knowledge, been fully developed. I intend to defend the thesis that human reasoning is autonomous.

Given that his final quote in the video is from a chapter on autonomous human reason in a book written as a challenge to presuppositionalism (free on Kindle Unlimited here, by the way), I found this quote confusing. Does he think that his video or channel fully develops a thesis Joe Depoe does not?

Regarding the idea of autonomous human reason, in 1943, Clark anticipated the idea that this might be a problem for presuppositionalists in an article he wrote for The Presbyterian Guardian (link). Clark says: 

A rational being, the liberals argue, cannot abdicate the throne of his autonomy. He cannot avoid the necessity of making the final decision, and even if he decides to abdicate, it is he who decides. Further, if he should abdicate, the question would always remain whether or not he should reascend the throne - and again it would be he who would make the decision. 

The liberal continues: Reason cannot abdicate because it must choose from among different alleged revelations. And to try to persuade a person of the truth of a revelation implies that there is a common ground of persuasion. That common ground is reason. Anyone who argues or persuades at all recognizes reason as the final court.

Is there any reply that an orthodox Christian can make without denying the principle of authority? 

The first observation is that the fact that a decision is our own does not imply that we are the final authority. If a person wishes to measure a distance, there are essentially only two ways of doing it. He may look at the distance and guess its length. This is not a very accurate method, nor does it make the guesser the final court of appeal; but it illustrates the attempt to make one's unaided reason the final court. The second method is to use an accurate measuring device such as a yardstick. In using this method, it is we, of course, who make the decision, but we appeal to the yardstick. And the second method has the advantage of being much more accurate. In such a situation, most people do not object to being bound by an external authority. 

Since all analogies have their limits, a second observation must question the matter of abdication. To abdicate a throne, it is absolutely essential first to be on the throne. A person who has never been king cannot possibly abdicate. The liberals simply assume that man is on the throne, but that is the very point at issue. If God is on the throne, and if man is not autonomous, then the liberal argument is completely irrelevant. 

A third observation is all that the present limits allow. The liberal has argued that we must choose the yardstick, one revelation among other alleged revelations, and that no doubt we seek to persuade others of the truth of the revelation we have chosen. But to persuade is to appeal to the common ground of reason. 

This very plausible argument is obtained only by misunderstanding the implications of supernaturalism. To convict supernaturalism of inconsistency, it is necessary to represent it accurately. The plausibility of the objection to orthodox Christianity results from combining a supernatural view of revelation with a purely naturalistic view of persuasion. And the result is easily shown to be inconsistent. But if persuasion and revelation both are understood supernaturally, no inconsistency can be found. For, be it observed, there is no such thing as a common ground between the Christian and a nonchristian system. From a, world naturalistically conceived, one cannot argue to the God of the Christians. From a world-view that denies all revelation, one cannot produce a Biblical revelation. Persuasion therefore is not an appeal to a common ground or to a nonchristian reason. Persuasion must be regarded as a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. The true Christian presents the Christian faith to unbelievers, he explains it and shows it in its fullness. Then the Christian prays that the Holy Spirit regenerate, his auditor, renew his mind, and enable him to see the truth of what has been said. This is not an appeal to experience, or to reason, or to a common ground; it is an appeal to the sovereign God of the universe.

Around minute 10, David says: 

By assumptions and presuppositions, I mean beliefs that are taken to be true apart from independent non-circular justification. In other words, I reject the idea that there are any beliefs that must be accepted without a justifying reason. 

I found this confusing too, since David elsewhere claims to be a foundationalist. The above quote appears to be a form of infinitism (link), not foundationalism. Unless I am misunderstanding him, his statement is not consistent with the rest of his video. 

At minute 12:20, David cites Timothy and Lydia McGrew: 

...to claim that there can be genuine epistemic principles that although rationally dubitable cannot be defended against someone who is skeptical about them is to allow an indefensible proposition to have epistemic weight. 

I had to read my own copy of that book for some context. The context is this: "Regardless of whether... a proposition is true, if it really is indefensible, it cannot be used as a premise to justify belief in anything else. If it is indefensible, it is epistemically irrelevant" (Internalism and Epistemology, pg. 80).

The question seems to be whether indefensible propositions can have epistemic weight (positive epistemic status). David blows by this question very quickly - too quickly (at this point) to allow for the nuance necessary to address the question. 

For instance, let's start with this: do axioms/foundations have positive epistemic weight? Well, a foundationalist had better say that in certain cases (i.e. God's word), "Yes, we can know axioms without having to defend them." There is positive epistemic weight regardless of whether we attempt to defend them. If God's word is our axiom and we can't know our axiom, then we are in trouble (this position is known as positism; link). 

Now, does the above mean that it is impossible to defend axioms/foundations? In one sense, yes; in another no. The epistemic justification of an axiom/foundation is not determined by a prior reason, premise, etc. For a foundationalist - as was alluded to above - the positive epistemic status must be intrinsic to the truth of the axiom/foundation itself. I interact with contemporary epistemologists on this very point here and here. 

On the other hand, it is possible to "apologetically" defend one's axiom/foundation. What does this mean? It means that in everyday conversations with others, one can point out that his axiom/foundation coheres with that which is derivable from it, that it answers important questions, etc. It is in this sense that we can understand Clark's affirmation that: "by the systems they produce, axioms must be judged." 

A self-defeating axiom cannot be defended (or known), whereas a self-consistent axiom can be defended insofar as the claims of its adherent can be harmonious, although we should not say we know said axiom by means of this or any other such defense. 

In other words, I agree with his denial around minute 13 of any attempt to circularly justify a knowledge-claim. I (and Clark) reject traditional coherentism, since it would be impossible to discriminate between circles without a foundational principle (like John Frame's foundational principle about the different between "narrow" and "broad" circles at minute 14; how could Frame say one is better than the other without assuming axiomatically that there is a difference in desirability?). 

As an aside, it's a bit funny that if Van Tilians defend traditional coherentism, then Clark's presuppositionalism is somehow "deviant." One would think that the very name of "presupposition"alism would more closely associate with foundationalism, not coherentism. 

Anyways, the point is that apologetic defenses of axioms/foundations are practical and persuasive, not epistemic. I put it this way in a post I have elsewhere said (link) I am planning to write in response to an article by Dan Kemp (link), whom David cites at minute 14:40:

When a mom calls a child to dinner, she doesn’t need to identify who she is for the child to "know" who is calling. If she did identify herself, such self-attestation ("Ryan Hedrich, your mom is calling you!") wouldn’t be "needed"... but it also wouldn’t be unreasonable. Self-attestation might serve as a reminder to the child to take her words seriously. Aside from questions of knowledge, such reminders might have a psychological or pragmatic purpose (e.g. behavior reinforcement, mindfulness).

Apologetics or defenses of our axioms can be useful in terms of being means by which the Spirit convicts the hearts of others without thereby becoming premises or reasons by which we somehow circularly know the axioms/foundations. Indeed, our methods for apologetic defenses ought themselves to be derivable from our axiom/foundation (e.g. 1 Peter 3, Acts 17, etc.). 

One final point. A phrase that David cites which caught my eye is "rationally dubitable." If David is talking about principles that are open to rational doubt and whether these can be defended in the face of a skeptic, he seems to suggest that if the answer is no, there is a problem. But if I am understanding him correctly, I don't see the problem? If something is "open to doubt" (dubitable), of course it is possible a skeptic is going to doubt it. In fact, some skeptics will even claim to doubt even those things which are indubitable, such as the revelation or promises of God. Just because we can't prove to the skeptic that God's word is God's word (or would David claim to be able to do this?) does not mean there is a problem - nor does it mean that our axiom/foundation is "rationally dubitable" after all. On this point, the problem with the skeptic is ethical. He refuses to submit to the self-justifying truth of God's word. 

Maybe I am misunderstanding what David means by a "defense" - or maybe I am misunderstanding something else But this is why it is important to provide some nuance to statements and quotes of other authors. Instead, David skips quickly to the claim that he sees no other way forward than to vindicate deduction and induction. That is much too fast a conclusion. If it isn't a non sequitur, then at the very least, I couldn't follow his reasoning. 

At around 18:30, David distinguishes between "self-justifying" beliefs and "immediately justified" beliefs. He thinks the former implies justificatory circularity (traditional coherentism) and the latter implies foundationalism. I disagree with his definitions, and so do contemporary epistemologists - see here, where Jeremy Fantl refers to "self-justifying" reasons or beliefs in the context of foundationalism. But to be clear, I also reject justificatory circularity. 

I've read Fumerton's work. I actually quite like him. I gave a former student his introductory book on epistemology. At the same time, I don't agree with everything Fumerton says (link). And I suspect that the idea of "direct acquaintance" (which David gets from Fumerton) might be another area of disagreement. He says: 

Direct acquaintance with correspondence between truth-bearer and truth-maker ensures that the belief is justified and infallibly so... Direct acquaintance is not itself a belief but it relates a subject to a fact in such a way that the subject is aware of the correspondence between his thought and the fact that makes it true. 

Notice what is being argued: justification for beliefs depends on "acquaintance." But "acquaintance" is not itself a belief. Well, if "acquaintance" is not a belief, can "acquaintance" be a truth-bearer? If it can't, then how is it that "acquaintance" can "ensure" the justification of beliefs? Can that which does not bear a truth-value function as a justification for that which does? 

In other words, what does it even mean to say that direct acquaintance can "ensure" justification? That sounds suspiciously like saying that acquaintance is itself a logically distinct and preceding justificatory condition for one's belief(s) - a reason. But this would undermine the David's claim to be a foundationalist. 

Relatedly, a topic in contemporary epistemology is how something without that is neither true nor false - say, a sensory experience qua experience - could function as a justification for the truth or falsity of a proposition[al belief]. This seems to be a directly relevant question, for David goes on to say: "...one can be immediately justified through direct perceptual awareness..." 

Notice the word "perceptual" (and see his headache example at minute 21 and his direct reference to sensation at 21:30). Recall every Clarkian argument against empirical knowledge (link). He even admits that one's sensations may not correspond to external states of affairs (but attempts to suggest that our beliefs regarding our private experiences are not open to question - this move doesn't work insofar as David later admits to holding to fallibilism, contrary to his above statement that direct acquaintance can ensure "infallible" justification, on which see below). 

In short, his reply to possible objections at minute 22 is dismissive and avoidant. He responds to an easy objection while failing to address more difficult ones (how is "direct acquaintance" able to function as justification). This is a meta-epistemic concern, but meta-epistemology has direct relevance to normative epistemology. Analogously, infinitism is a meta-epistemic position on the structure of epistemic justification. If infinitism is inherently problematic, an infinitist does not actually know anything by the structure he claims is correct. If "direct acquaintance" is inherently problematic, a direct acquantaincist does not actually know anything by "direct acquaintance" (so-called).

This gets a little deep, but here is another question David fails to entertain: while I agree that there is a correspondence between truths and other realities - I reject the idea that everything is metaphysically reducible to [sets of] propositions - does that mean non-propositional realities (like my body) are truth-makers (like propositions about my body)? 

As a Reformed Christian, I rather think that God is the truth-maker of all propositions. In particular, it is He who determined the truth-values of contingent propositions in accordance with His eternal decree. As such, it's possible that the truths God has eternally decreed may, in some way, actually be means by which non-propositions (like my body, which is not eternal) are made. For a probably clearer idea of what I'm getting at, read this article by Clark in which he writes: "when compared with verses in the Pentateuch the words strongly suggest that the visible world came from a suprasensible, ideal world."

Moving ahead to minute 26: "Knowledge does not require certainty." Three questions: 

1) Is David certain of this? If not, wouldn't such an admission be problematic in the possible case that certainty actually is required for one's beliefs to count as knowledge (a possibility which I don't understand how he could rule out non-arbitrarily)? 

2) I thought that David earlier said, "Direct acquaintance with correspondence between truth-bearer and truth-maker ensures that the belief is justified and infallibly so..." What happened? When is and is not infallibility applicable to one's beliefs? 

3) If knowledge does not require certainty, then what does it mean to say that any beliefs are "justified"? 

Around 30:30, David shows the three potential responses to Aristotle's transcendental argument for the laws of logic. They are ones I've encountered and thought about before. In response, I will offer three counters: 

1. David basically says that "Aristotle might be right that one must think in accordance with the laws of logic, but that this doesn't establish anything is true." In response, two questions: 1) What is the David's alethiology (theory of truth)? Perhaps one's alethiology (which might entail consistency amongst true propositions) would entail that in accordance with said theory, the laws of logic cannot be false. He somewhat gets around to this at minute 37. 2) If David acknowledges that one cannot speak without first assuming the laws of logic, then his own response admittedly presupposes the laws of logic. But in that case, is it legitimate to use that which he might purport to reject? Is it legitimate to admit that a hilltop (truth) can only be reached by climbing a ladder (the laws of logic) and then from said hilltop deny that he ever used a ladder? Ironically, in another video David makes against presuppositionalists, he cites a "magic 8-ball" illustration that it seems he himself falls prey to here. 

2. David's response to Aristotle certainly isn't a persuasive response. But that's how I interpret a correctly oriented defense of the laws of logic in the first place: again, a defense or apologetic needn't be interpreted as a circular justification. 

3. David's reference to dialetheism returns us to the question of alethiology. This is probably the strongest counter he raises (then again, he addresses his own concerns by providing a very good quote at 38:55 which undercuts dialetheim). I needn't say much more, since David denies dialetheism himself (44:45ff.).

Nevertheless, I will offer a few more thoughts. In particular, are there some cases in which the law of noncontradiction do not hold? Typically, a dialetheist will not be a trivialist; he will not suggest that every pair of contradictories can be or are true (which is subject to the principle of explosion). 

Underlying this theory, then, seems the assumption of alethic particularism: rather than start with a broad, theory of truth (e.g. consistency among propositions which may correspond to kinds of realities), we might start with what we consider are intuitive and particular examples of truths - some of which might consist of contradictories which can both be "true" - and attempt to form a resultant theory of truth (such as dialetheism) with these examples in mind. 

While I would like to flesh an argument against dialetheism further than I am able at present, given the above, one possible line of argument against it and its implicit alethic particularism could perhaps be made along the same lines as I have made against epistemic particularism (in isolation from epistemic methodism) here.  

This is probably a more important point than I can emphasize here, for repeatedly in the video, David often uses paradigm cases to defend his position. For example, at minute 36:10, he uses an particular example that he assumes his audience will agree is justified to defend a broader methodological principle. That is, in appealing to his audience's intuitions, he appears to be a particularist, and if he is not, he does not sufficiently distance himself from particularism; a quote around minute 52 might obliquely allude to it, but even there, not enough context in the quote is provided to even understand its purpose. 

With the above in mind, can logic justify logic? No. Again, circularity is not the structure of epistemic justification. In other words, we do not know anything by reasoning in a circle. As I've mentioned before, though, we can still make arguments for propositions we know non-inferentially or foundationally. These arguments do not justify said foundations but can function to persuade others [especially that alternatives to our view are non-viable]. 

The laws of logic in particular are embedded within the Scripturalist's foundation as a subsidiary, ontological precondition for knowledge, as I argue here and here. Thus, our knowing them is, in conjunction with our knowledge of God's revelation, immediate or non-inferential.  

I don't have much further to say about his discussion on analyticity, except to note that he doesn't think he needs to explain how we have them "so long as we do" (minute 26:30). Well, does he have concepts? If the answer is potentially "no," that is a serious problem. 

But as I said in an earlier post, God's word is not rationally dubitable. The problem the skeptic has is one of ethical rebellion (which affects his ability to reason soundly, not his ability to reason validly per se a la Clark). 

David's part of the video on induction was extremely weak. He did not address the question of what number of observable cases would suffice for epistemic justification. He does not address what constitutes a "large sample." The concept of "large" is finite and therefore relative. As one might approach infinitely many observations, any concrete number of observations is infinitesimally small by comparison... in which case, is not an inductivist's epistemic justification (and "confidence" therein) virtually (as well as really) non-existent? This is a much more difficult issue than David intimates. 

In my opinion, the best one can expect on this topic is doxastic defendability. A Scripturalist (and only a Scripturalist, insofar as any kind of "defenses" are parasitic upon internalist and infallibilist "knowledge") might be able to defend his extra-Scriptural beliefs to the extent that they conform to his alleged experiences (this would be inductive), but he must also be open to revising such beliefs in the case of alleged defeaters, e.g. experiences which do not conform to what he has experienced previously. This theory only would apply to extra-Scriptural information, and it would not qualify as strict epistemic justification (although we might also colloquially refer to any such beliefs as "known"). 

Another reason the response to the problem of induction was weak was because David only went so far as to address Hume's skepticism. Clark's concerns regarding induction - as an anti-empiricist - deserved more attention than Hume's. 

My friend mentioned that he thought David is an evidentialist. In his last part of the video, I can see why: he says as much. In particular, at 1:00:50, he cites an author who says, "the epistemic justification of a belief is determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief." Again, I am confused how such a view can be consistent with foundationalism. If foundations do not rely on evidence, then one's justification for one's foundational beliefs cannot fall within the realm of an evidentialist theory. David appears plainly inconsistent on several points. 

David concludes, "...the Christian [presuppositional] apologist tries to gerrymander the rules of epistemology..." 

I had a good chuckle at this! Still, I enjoyed the video insofar as I'm glad to see professed Christians engaging in contemporary epistemological issues. I agreed with him regarding foundationalism, the resolvability of paradoxes, and some other points. I wouldn't want my above responses to be taken as suggesting his videos are valueless, only that, as with anyone (Clark and myself included), one must wisely apply discrimination where appropriate.

Clark, Van Til, and Some Extended Thoughts on a Footnote (Without Excuse)

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.