Book Review: Scripturalism and the Senses (Part 4)

Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's third chapter in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses.

The Test of Skepticism

The opening of Mr. Lazar's third chapter pithily asks whether Clark's philosophy is any more capable of deducing Herr Krug's pen than Hegel's philosophy was. Because Clark found fault with Hegel for being unable to deduce said pen (given Hegel's philosophy), the implication is that unless Clark can do so (given his own philosophy), Clark's criticism of Hegel blows back upon himself. 

However, in reply to the above suggestion about Herr Krug's pen, Clark could simply reply that the criticism lands against Hegel, but not himself, because Hegel "denies that there is any limit to knowledge" and that "there is no unknowable" (emphasis mine). In fact, Clark mentions these, in the context of Herr Krug's pen, as reasons why Hegel must deduce the pen (given Hegel's philosophy). All Clark must do, then, is affirm that there is a limit to knowledge, that there is an unknowable, to avoid the burden of deducing the pen on his philosophy.

And Clark does this, at least to some extent. I have written on the problem of partial knowledge and why it is a powerful apologetic argument that a Scripturalist can use against a wide variety of worldviews (cf. link). One such quote by Clark is the following, and it illustrates the relevant difference between his view and Hegel's such that Clark's philosophy needn't be able to deduce things such as Herr Krug's pen to be successful:

Plato and Hegel constructed theories of knowledge which, if pressed to their logical extreme, imply that man must be either omniscient or completely ignorant. If every item of knowledge is so intimately connected with every other that its true nature cannot be seen except in its relation to all, then either we know all or we know nothing. Plato and Hegel both had a hard time escaping this dilemma.

Now Moses said, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29). The Bible, therefore, both here and everywhere, assumes that we can know some truths without knowing all truths. Accordingly it is incumbent upon us to develop an epistemology in which the relationships are not such as to limit us to the disjunction of total ignorance or omniscience.

This epistemology may follow Augustine’s view that Christ is the light of every man: that is, mankind possesses as an a priori endowment at least the rudiments of knowledge, so that whenever anyone knows anything he is in contact with God. Or, the epistemology required may be more skeptical as to geometry and science and simply insist that God, being omnipotent, can be a verbal revelation make his truths understandable to me. (Baker's Dictionary of Theology, 1991, pgs. 245-246)

If there are limits to what we can know, we needn't be ashamed to admit them. Clark was not, for he knew he wasn't omniscient. On the contrary, precisely because he wasn't omniscient, he recognized the need to rely on the omniscient members of the Trinity for his knowledge. 

Therefore, as can be seen in the quote, Clark was comfortable in admitting that his epistemology could be regarded as relatively skeptical in regards to certain knowledge claims that other philosophical systems, such as Hegel's, make. To the scores of critics who cried out against him, Clark's reply was simple: "It is incorrect, therefore, to complain that the axiom of revelation deprives us of knowledge otherwise obtainable. There is no knowledge otherwise obtainable" (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pgs. 75-76). 

Now, Mr. Lazar is in good company among the many incredulous persons who wonder how Clark can admit he does not know his wife, pen, etc. Can one sanely suggest he does not know these things exist? Well, yes. Even as someone who now disagrees with Clark here - for I do believe such things are knowable in some sense - this criticism never impressed me. Clark's answer to it is quite satisfactory:

The objection was that even if revelation gives us some knowledge, it does not give us very much. In particular, it does not provide knowledge of zoology and Russian history. At that earlier point a systematically sufficient answer was given, namely, some knowledge at least is thus possible. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pg. 77)

Although not usually recognized as such, a certain claim to infallibility meets us in our everyday affairs. When an accountant balances his books, does he not assume that his figures are correct? When a college professor hurries to class for fear that his students will disappear if he is late, does he not make judgments as to the time of day and the proclivities of students? When a chess club challenges another to a match, does any suspicion of fallibility impede its action? Cannot this club distinguish the dogma ecclesiastica that there actually is another club from the dogma haeretica that no other club exists? Must not all people act on the assumption that their beliefs are true? (Karl Barth's Theological Method, 1997, pg. 146)

In other words, we may assume or believe to be true that our wife is not a substitution, a pen is in our hand, etc. We act as if our beliefs are true. But for Clark, "knowledge" is not a kind of belief that may turn out to be false. It may be that any reasons I have for believing a pen is in my hand are insufficient insofar as I am hallucinating. It cannot, on the other hand, turn out that divine revelation is false. 

And whether one agrees with Clark's restrictive understanding of "knowledge" or not, one would be wrong, as Mr. Lazar is, to suggest Clark's philosophy collapses into skepticism (and thus fails said test) unless one is willing to attack either the possibility of knowing divine revelation in general or knowing divine revelation on Clark's version of Scripturalism in particular. Knowledge of biblical propositions would be enough to pass the test of skepticism. Mr. Lazar will challenge Clark's ability to know even biblical propositions, as I will return to in a moment, but pausing to note the sufficiency of having some knowledge rather than none is, as Clark, says, important.

Miscellaneous Comments: An Intermezzo

There are some things in the chapter that I think would be beneficial to address even though they do not directly bear on the question of the test of skepticism:

1) Clark was wrong to say "science is always false." He probably meant that scientific analyses are always unknowable. For example, two scientists can, by similar procedures, arrive at opposite conclusions. One meteorologist may say it will rain tomorrow. Another may say it will not rain tomorrow. One's conclusion will be true and based on certain, scientific analyses, but the fact that his conclusion is true does not mean he "knows" his conclusion (at least, not in the sort of internalist, infallibilist sense I believe in which Clark was interested). That is, most meteorologists would admit that their individual conclusions could, for all they know, prove false. But, in fact, one (or more) will be right. So Mr. Lazar is right to correct Clark, but really, this is a simple error Clark made that isn’t relevant to whether or not Scripturalism is true or fails a test of skepticism.

2) Clark may have said that an objection to his philosophy was that we can't know zoology or Russian history. But he never said the objection was true. He simply dismissed the objection as relevant to the point that he was, in contrast to his critics, at least able to account for some knowledge. In fact, Clark wrote a whole chapter on [biblical] history in A Christian View of Men and Things. He did believe we could know some history, contrary to what Mr. Lazar states. Similarly, the Bible also mentions many animals. Is it enough knowledge to satisfy critics? Not usually. But it at least sets the record straight.

3) To Mr. Lazar's allusion to the difficulty of self-knowledge on a Scripturalist epistemology, the quote he mentions doesn’t show Clark regarded self-knowledge is impossible, just harder than people imagine. Personally, I believe Clark held different beliefs at different times in his life. At one point in his life, Clark rejected the possibility of self-knowledge (Modern Philosophy, 2008, pgs. 273-274). At another point in his life, he affirmed it (see below). I argue that self-knowledge is compatible with and necessary for Scripturalism. At any rate, I can do no better at this point than to repeat remarks I have elsewhere made, including the links provided:

I think Clark, consistently acknowledging the difficulty of the subject, both denies and affirms self-knowledge in various places (link). Personally, I defend it (link) and believe it to be as necessary to Clark's epistemology as logic or language. All of the points Butler makes, I address in that post, including that I needn't know my name to have self-knowledge, that the meaning of "I" can be gathered from Scripture, that there are various books of Scripture addressed to the elect in general, and that one must know he is a believer if he is to know Scripture comprises the extent of God's special revelation. There is no incompatibility between self-knowledge with the idea a certain kind of knowledge (i.e. infallibilistic, internalistic) must be divinely revealed, explicitly or implicitly. There is incompatibility between the impossibility of self-knowledge and the concrete revelation of Scripture, which just is the axiom by which we can know anything in an infallibilistic, internalistic sense. Therefore, self-knowledge is legitimate.

4) Mr. Lazar, citing Ronald Nash, supposes Clark must be using "knowledge" in "a very idiosyncratic way." This is an excellent thought! It is unfortunate that it was not followed up by a meta-epistemic discussion of what Clark meant by "knowledge," whether he was right or wrong to think of "knowledge" in that way, and/or what an alternative proposal would be. I will, as in my last post, defer to here for an explanation as to the kind of knowledge Clark had in mind for now (as well as some evaluative, parenthetical comments on where Clark's thought might be improved).

5) One final comment that I will keep brief, since I've mentioned the distinction between epistemology and apologetics in my last two reviews (link and link), is that when Mr. Lazar saying "Clark's negative and positive apologetics both result in skepticism," he really should be speaking about Clark's epistemology, not his apologetic. Mr. Lazar's comments come in the context of his support for Gordon Lewis' criticisms of Clark. I have already addressed Gordon Lewis here. I will only highlight the following points from that post to reiterate what the proper function of tests for truth are (i.e. apologetic, not epistemic): 

Note that the following isn't true: "Clark chooses to believe their truth because Christianity... is alone consistent." Rather, Clark chooses to argue their truth because Christianity is alone consistent. This is the difference between apologetics and epistemology. Apologetics consists in making arguments. This is not always so in epistemology - axioms are not known because they are the conclusion of some argument, they are known because they are self-authenticating. 

Clark has to argue for Christianity via logical consistency and practicality because, at the risk of stating the obvious, he can't know Christianity for those to whom he is engaging in apologetics. He could just say divine revelation is self-authenticating and leave it at that, but it is more persuasive (which is another function of apologetics) to additionally point out, when applicable, that an opponent's system 1) can't be self-authenticating if his system inconsistent or impractical, or 2) that his system is less coherent than Christianity is, in the case of something like Judaism. 

Lewis seems to think that Clark's tests for truth are the basis on which Clark claims to know Christianity. That is really the only explanation for why Lewis would think Clark would have to sift through infinitely many systems before knowing that just one, Christianity, is consistent. But that interpretation goes completely against what Lewis himself stated Clark believed regarding the nature and knowability of axioms earlier in his summary.

While "test[s] for truth" can serve as confirmatory evidences of Christianity, they shouldn't function as the ground of knowledge; divine revelation does. Elsewhere, I have called tests for truth necessary conditions for knowledge and the postulate[s] by which one claims to know anything the sufficient condition[s] for knowledge (link). The former are the means by which we make arguments for (i.e. apologetics) the latter (i.e. epistemology).

Again, apologetics should include an explanation of the epistemology of the system one is defending. Any good defense of a system of knowledge should explain what that system says about how we can know anything. But that explanation and defense should not be confused for that actual process of knowing. In fact, apologetics is only possible insofar as we know the system we are defending is true in the first place (see here).

As I've mentioned, it seems Mr. Lazar doesn’t understand that for Clark, we know the axiom of Scripturalism because it is self-authenticating. Clark was an internalist and foundationalist. We don’t know our axiom because other, non-Christian systems are false. That would be to make the axiom a conclusion, which Clark clearly rejects. It also means we would be searching for a true first principle, system, or worldview by sifting through false ones first, which would be circular, anti-foundationalistic, and/or question-begging given that such an enterprise would already presuppose knowledge of what a true first principle, system, or worldview would look like. Instead, given that apologists or defenders of the faith engage with other worldviews which have their own first principles, we argue about or against those first principles and their relationship to the resulting belief systems they produce. Such apologists already know (or should know!) their own system is true before they argue against others’. 

That is, the “tests” Mr. Lazar mentions are not neutral methods by which one can choose an epistemological first principle/axiom (which, again, would be impossible; cf. link). Rather, they are apologetic tools used to display or witness to the superiority of one epistemological system over against another. There is a very clear distinction between from what all our knowledge claims derive from (our epistemological axiom) and how we then go about trying to defend all of our knowledge claims (which is apologetics, not epistemology as such). We ought to defend our faith in a manner consistent with our epistemology, but it is a common mistake to conflate the two, as Mr. Lazar does in his appeal to Lewis’ critique of Clark.

The [Real] Test of Skepticism

The most noteworthy section in this chapter is entitled, "Is Scripturalism Skeptical of Revelation?" It must be an enticing thought to the critic, for if it were possible to show that Clark's philosophy results in skepticism of divine revelation itself, Clark would be in real trouble! This type of criticism would be much more problematic than one which suggests that Clark can't know certain propositions that other people normally take to be knowable. It would actually be an attempted reductio ad absurdem of [Clark's] Scripturalism. This section of Mr. Lazar's writing is worth quoting at length:

...here's the problem: according to Scripturalism, I can't gain knowledge by reading the Bible. In fact, I don't even know if my mother's New Testament exists. I have opinions about it, but I don't have knowledge of it. So where does that leave my Bible memorization? Do I really know those Biblical propositions or do I merely opine that I do? And how do I tell the difference which verses I know and which I merely opine?

Do you see the problem?

...So far as I can tell, Scripturalism has no way of distinguishing between knowledge of Biblical propositions and mere opinions.

Above, I quoted from 1 John 5:7. If you're familiar with textual criticism, you know the special problem associated with that verse, namely, most Greek manuscripts omit it. It may not be Scripture. In fact, the textual evidence is against it...

I have to wonder, how did Clark acquire his propositions about the evidence for or against the TR? And did he know them or merely opine them? Did the amount to revelation knowledge or something less?

And what about other textual issues? How about the longer ending in Mark?

Or the Pericope Adulterae?

Or Psalm 151?

Are the Scripture or not? How does the Scripturalist know?  

...How does the Scripturalist know if it really is Scripture? What does he check his beliefs against? Anything?

I'll tell you what I do. When I'm in doubt about something being Biblical - regarding the best translation, or the best reading, or whether something is canonical at all - I get out my Bible and check it. If necessary, I'll refer to my Greek New Testament, and to the best scholarship on the issue.

But the Scripturalist can't do that because he can't get such information by reading the Bible or other books. What, then, can he do? How does he distinguish between knowledge and opinion when it comes to Biblical propositions? So far as I can see, the Scripturalist has no way of discerning between the two. Yes, he can say that Scripture is his axiom, and he can formally define that to mean the 66 books of the Protestant canon, but he can't know if any of the propositions he believes are, in fact, part of the canon, can he? What would he do to check to see if there were? He can't check his Bible.

The result is that Scripturalism leads to skepticism about Biblical propositions, too. They function as a Ding an sich (the unknowable thing-in-itself), in the send that Biblical propositions are postulated by the system, but the actual content of the propositions are unknowable.

Hence, despite Clark's claims to the contrary, Scripturalism leads to skepticism about the Bible, too. 

One point of tension Mr. Lazar touches on is between Scripturalism and textual criticism. Clark himself never made much of a deliberate attempt to harmonize the two, although he does mention it in one or two instances I'll come back to later. It doesn't much matter, though, for in seeming contrast to Mr. Lazar, Clark believed that the Bible was propositional, not "ink marks" (God's Hammer, 1995, pgs. 180-182). Clark has his own method of answering how we acquire biblical propositions - occasionalism, as was mentioned in my last review. I would venture to guess that Clark would have resorted to this if someone had pressed him on the matter of textual criticism. 

Then, if someone complained that such meant he can’t know about textual variants – since they haven’t been divinely revealed – I can just imagine Clark being delighted to reply that it is so much the better for Clark not to have the trouble of needing to respond to any criticism dealing in it! Rather, the trouble would be for the person on whose epistemology textual variants are known to exist and inhibit him from knowing the content of divine revelation.

As I said in my last review, I disagree with occasionalism. I'll return to why this hypothetical approach by Clark would be suboptimal. But it is worth taking a moment to appreciate why the response would have some merits. Take Mr. Lazar's own implied position. I question whether Mr. Lazar can claim to be any kind of Scripturalist (neo- or whatnot) when he says that if he is in doubt about something being biblical, he resorts to "the best translation… reading… [or] scholarship." Wait... "best" by whose definition? In the scenario Mr. Lazar outlines, is Scripture his ultimate, epistemic foundation? Rather, does it not seem that his real epistemic foundation is whatever source he defers to in order to erase his doubts and come to assurance regarding what the content of Scripture is? 

Not only does this apply to textual variants (what some have called "micro-canonical" issues), the same question applies to the books of the Bible at large (a "macro-canonical" issue). How does Mr. Lazar claim to know that entire books of the Bible are divinely revealed? Is it the epistemic axiom, presupposition, or foundation with which he begins divine revelation? It seems not. Instead, he first "get[s] out [his] Bible and check[s] it." 

What I'm left wondering is in what way this procedure cures his doubts. What is it about a physical book in his mother's library that gives him confidence? Is he really suggesting that he can reason his way towards knowing the content of divine revelation? As I wrote on the Scripturalist's ability to know the canon of Scripture long ago (link), such an answer would falsely suppose:

...that it is more legitimate to evaluate a creator by His creation than creation by a creator. Are any of these options really more plausible than a self-authenticating revelation? Do any of these alternatives have something more substantial than a superficially intuitive appeal? Well, I must leave that to the reader to decide. I would obviously answer in the negative...

Of course, there are perspectives which I would allege attempt to copy the method of knowing God's word, distorting it by substituting in place of Scripture something not of divine origin. And this troubles people, because if revelation is supposed to be self-authenticating, then how is it possible to sift through all these varying claims? Is playing a back-and-forth game of "my source is true and yours is not because my source says so" really the best that a Christian apologist has to offer? Still more troubling, how can our answer to such questions be made without presupposing revelation? After all, if some sort of revelation is necessary, then we wouldn't be able to answer any question without first specifying said revelation.

Well, actually all of this doesn't turn out to be so problematic. For the reply to this last question just is that we can't answer any question without first presupposing a specific, concrete revelation. So what? The reason why some accept and others reject one proposal over against another should depend on what one's revelation has to say about such. In the case of Scripture, while God's word may be self-evident, the only means by or reason for which any sinner would acknowledge it as such is grace.

Even so, we may further note that we are not left without means of distinguishing false claims to divine revelation. Keeping in mind that no necessary condition for knowledge can ground or function to demonstrate a sufficient condition for knowledge (link), there are nonetheless tests we can perform which serve as confirmatory evidences.

...the Bible itself prescribes criteria against which we can test its claims. Prophecy is one example. Internal consistency is another necessary condition for some communication to have been revealed by God. Etc. I have outlined and dealt with numerous such conditions elsewhere on this blog. Once again, no matter how many of these subsidiary conditions we show the Bible must and does satisfy, our trust in it must ultimately be based on its own, self-authenticating claim to be God's word. But by applying these subsidiary conditions to other worldviews, we can falsify them and thereby lend credibility to our own. While this is not demonstration - no first principle can be demonstrated anyway - it is a technique which is seemingly the most plausible means of persuasion available. The rest is left to God.

So, to summarize, Scripturalism - the axiom that the canon of divine revelation in general and the Bible in particular comprises the extant extent of that which men can know - is clearly not the conclusion of a set of theorems, no matter how necessary those theorems may be in order for a system to be true. Axioms must be self-authenticating or self-evident.

But the acceptance of an axiom is not arbitrary. If it were arbitrary, then it would be unnecessary. One of the necessary conditions, however, is that partial knowledge requires self-authenticating communication from one who is omniscient. We may not be able to demonstrate or prove the Bible in particular is said revelation, but this isn't relevant. For the Bible is taken to be the sufficient condition, not a mere necessary condition, and no axiom can be demonstrated, proved, or externally justified. The fact it just is self-authenticating is enough. People may not accept this, but then again, people may not accept that I know myself. I can't demonstrate that either, but is that any reason to think I can't know myself? No.

I do not see in what way Mr. Lazar could 1) think our epistemic foundation is not divine revelation but 2) also think that the alternative he will eventually prescribe can legitimately be called "neo-Scripturalism." Given the nature of his criticisms against Clark, Mr. Lazar's epistemology apparently relies upon an empirical method of inferring truth from sensations (i.e. referring to his Greek NT, a physical Bible, scholarship, etc.). I hope I am wrong, I just do not know how else to take Mr. Lazar's criticisms of Clark's epistemology than as a reflection upon his own.

Does this not mean that any confidence he has from these sources is on shaky grounds? As I mentioned in my last review, Mr. Lazar would have to confront Sellars' Dilemma and explain how he can start with a non-propositional Bible in his hand and somehow use that as a premise (seemingly without a truth value, since it is non-propositional) from which he is able to infer a propositional truth about what the true content of Scripture actually is... unless Mr. Lazar plans on addressing the whole host of criticisms regarding empirical knowledge that Clark argues in his many works. Even if it is not a pure empiricism to which Mr. Lazar holds, so long as he relies on empirical elements for his epistemology to function - as would be the case if he thinks he can avoid Sellars' Dilemma by actively, consciously derive propositional thoughts from sensations - Clark's criticisms are relevant and must be addressed.

Alternatively, the only way in which one could try to read Mr. Lazar's section here that would enable him to avoid the set of above problems and questions is if Mr. Lazar intends to criticize Clark's apologetic rather than his epistemology. But given that, in this section, Mr. Lazar discusses knowledge vs. opinion and believes he is reducing Clark's Scripturalism to skepticism, it is quite clear that he really is attacking Clark's epistemology after all. 

If Mr. Lazar restricted his critique to Clark's apologetic - if his criticism is merely that Clark cannot defend his beliefs as Mr. Lazar can - then Clark would not fail the test of skepticism. One's doubts could be relieved by recalling that one's apologetic abilities and lines of defense are subordinate to his epistemology. Neither Mr. Lazar nor Clark would (or could) defend their beliefs by appealing to some mysterious, spontaneous intuitions, yet neither would (or should) feel unconfident because of that apologetic limitation. As has been emphasized, apologetics presupposes an epistemology to defend. A more skeptical epistemology will entail a more skeptical apologetic, but "more skeptical" is not "totally skeptical," and is still better than epistemologies that make grand claims but collapse into skepticism upon closer examination.

Textual Criticism

Turning now to a more positive reply to the subject of textual criticism, I have addressed the subject in a few places (link, link, link) that are intended to be supplement a developed Scripturalism - that is, relevant differences between Clark's thought and my own are accounted for within these posts. But even Clark and I could agree with "rhetorical critical" arguments that do not depend on evaluating external, non-propositional realities (such as examining textual transmission and the like) but rather internal ones (such as examining literary structure or implicit, authorial themes present within the propositional revelation itself). 

That is, Clark could easily find common ground with me in giving apologetic reasons, for example, for why the so-called "longer ending" of Mark is divinely revealed. Two such reasons would be the Elijah theme and chiastic parallelism, both of which internally refer to the propositional (including interrogative and imperative) contents of Mark itself and, thus, are not extra-biblical. Of course, one can’t use apologetic arguments or defenses to, say, bootstrap axiomatic belief in Mark or its ending, but that’s true of any epistemic first principle. Clark's epistemology is in much safer territory than Mr. Lazar's.

Now I will return to discuss why I believe the above apologetic possibilities available to Clark are, while sufficient, incomplete. They are only part of a more robust defense available to a Scripturalist. First, let's take a look at a few instances in which Clark mention textual criticism in the context of apologetics:

Once when I quoted a verse from John’s Gospel to a modernist, she quickly replied, “But how do you know that he actually said that?” By the grace of God, I was able immediately to shoot back, “How do you know Jesus said anything?” The other faculty members at the lunch table gave vocal evidence of a point scored. The modernist woman professor and missionary to India wanted to use some verses, but not others. But she saw then that if she insisted on her verses, she could not object to mine. At any rate the attempt to destroy Christian faith by an appeal to the difficulties of textual criticism has been based on considerable exaggeration. (Against the World, 1999, pg. 147) 

Here, Clark made a fair point in the right context. Once one begins to cherry-pick which biblical statements can be regarded as trustworthy, one has begun to slide upon a slippery slope that will, if left unchecked, lead to skepticism. But what of a woman professor who would bit the bullet and admitted that nothing could be known of what Jesus said? Some time ago, I read Gordon Clark's thesis for his doctorate at UPenn. Clark must have been about 27 when he wrote the following:

In the case of Aristotle we are not dependent on fragments, for we have his complete works; we are perfectly familiar with the usages of his language; the only difficulty is textual and whoever bases a skepticism in textual criticism asserts that not only nearly all philosophy, but nearly all history as well, before the Renaissance, it forever unknowable. This is a reductio ad absurdem. We can with tolerable certainty ascertain the exact working of Aristotle, but to understand his thought we need also to know the arguments and discussion of previous arguments men which were the motives to his solution. Are these unknowable? My answer would be, try and see. (pg. 10)

Ironically, Clark would later reverse his thought and admit most of what is commonly supposed to be known is not. He no longer considered it to be a reductio ad absurdem to follow through the logical implications of a textual criticism which often presupposes an empirical methodology. Far from attempts to destroy Christianity through textual criticism being based on an "exaggeration," as Clark said, is this not what we are seeing in modern day anti-Christian polemics? 

The Bart Ehrman's of the world undermine the confidence of Christians, with Muslims and new atheists in tow appealing to their publications (which Mr. Lazar must hope does not constitute the "best" scholarship!) to attack the Christian faith. If anyone should have anticipated this, it should have been Clark, who recognized in other areas that the doctrine of Scripture "on which all other doctrines depend is the one most viciously attacked of all. By a satanic instinct, the battle against Christianity is directed against its citadel" (God's Hammer, 1995, pg. 113). Whatever was the case when Clark wrote the following, it no longer matches the landscape of today's textual criticism:

The author suggests that there is no use discussing whether the alleged error was missing from the original until we have the original. This seems to betray a forgetfulness of textual criticism. The differences between the Greek New Testament which we have and the autographs are few in number and of slight consequence. Most of them are differences in spelling, or in word order, or in some small detail that does not affect the sense. To suppose that we are so ignorant of the original wording as this argument requires is to cast aside the whole science of textual criticism. (God's Hammer, 1995, pgs. 122-123)

The above, originally written in 1963, makes it sound as though Clark thought the science of textual criticism could indeed play an apologetic role to build up the confidence of believers... and he is right, although 20 years later, Clark seemed to have come around a little to look upon textual criticism with suspicion, remarking that modern textual criticism is "untrustworthy" (Behind the Versions, 1983, link). It is easy to understand why, for we can fast forward to present day in which modern textual scholars are positing that "the process of transmission of the New Testament texts resulted in a high degree of contamination" (link). We now have computers that attempt to reconstruct what the original or earliest texts may have been: 

The stated goal of the CBGM is to help pastors, scholars, and laypeople alike determine, “Which text should be read? Which should be applied? ... For the New Testament, this means trying to determine, at each place where our copies disagree, what the author most likely wrote, or failing this, at least what the earliest text might have been.” (link)

Likely wrote? Might have been? The problem with foundationally relying on the "best" scholars is that one has no idea to what conclusions their hidden assumptions will lead. There is no problem with scholarship per se unless one suggests, as Mr. Lazar implicitly has, that one's knowledge of God's word and divine revelation are end-products of such investigation. At that point, we have abandoned presuppositionalism in favor of rationalism, empiricism, some hybrid, or, for all intents and purposes, skepticism. Still worse, the doubt a Christian who subordinates his knowledge of Scripture to knowledge of creaturely authorities faces is left unresolved when the best that these "authorities" can offer are probabilistic "knowledge" of God's word (and we might even, as Clark did, contest how such an "authority" calculated the probabilities).

As I mentioned in my last review, I disagree with Clark's occasionalism. I think Clark's occasionalism would have, if push came to shove, forced Clark to fall back to internal, confirmatory evidences. In light of the above, it can be tempting for Scripturalists to abandon the enterprise of textual criticism - of understanding and evaluating the physical codifications of God's propositional revelation in history - when one begins with the propositions and not the physical codifications anyways. Why bother?

We are to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Educated Christians equipped with the word of God are equipped for every good work, including providing pushback to modern textual critical methodologies that, intentionally or not, undermine or control God's word. No such methodology is neutral. Assumptions are always built in to anyone's investigations. 

What then? The Scripturalist should, armed with God's word as his foundational assumption, be encouraged to apply it to textual criticism. Rather than merely retreat to defend our citadel, we must attack other citadels from it (which, in turn, is a form of apologetic defense). There is ample supply of apologetic material a Scripturalist can use that has already been provided in this [series of] post[s] by which he can defend himself against those who would use textual criticism to spread doubt. 

But we needn't only rely only on internal, confirmatory evidences and reductio ad absurdems, sufficient though they may be. A complete, optimal Scripturalist apologetic should feel free to incorporate textual critical evaluations that are appropriately guided by his epistemic foundation of Scripture itself into his defense of the faith. 

Example: patristic quotations can be used to argue that the books of the New Testament were written early and relatively shortly after Jesus' ascension. This is an example of how our confidence is confirmed and how doubt can be caused in those who oppose the faith. It is not that the argument is then used as a basis upon which to believe the New Testament, for from the divine revelation itself with which we epistemically begin, we can know the New Testament was written by contemporaries of Jesus. Rather, the point is that the truth of Scripture with which we begin has empowered us to find and then speak of extra-biblical confirmations of these truths, confirmations we already had reason to expect to find from divine revelation itself. All of creation is a superabundance of evidence for the Trinity we worship.

Of course, a through-and-through follower of the thought of Clark may ask, for example, how we know patristic quotations are authentic. Or perhaps they might ask how a Scripturalist can know that textual critical evaluations accurately depict the history of the transmission process. The question is legitimate. Because externalism is addressed in a future chapter in Mr. Lazar's book, I will leave most of my reply for a later review. But between this post, the last review, and this link (particularly the last four paragraphs), interested readers can anticipate what to expect. In short, because our epistemic foundation, God's word, indicates that extra-biblical knowledge is possible, we can construct arguments regarding "knowing" extra-biblical ideas. 

Can extra-biblical ideas conflict with our epistemic foundation? No - the latter always establishes the limits of the former. If, for example, it should appear that external, textual critical indicators are apologetically insufficient for defending the longer ending of Mark, Scripturalists should simply use what other apologetic defenses he has available to him to defend what he already knows is true.

Does extra-biblical knowledge eliminate the need for Scripturalism? No - "need" is context based, and I can think of a few reasons why the kind of knowledge Scripturalism defends is needed that the kind of extra-biblical knowledge on offer cannot supply (link, link). 

The upshot of this is that Mr. Lazar can know about the Bible in his mother's library, even though he should not found his epistemological axiom on it - again, see my last review for argument as to why we do not begin with the physical, non-propositional text that codifies the propositional revelation (the latter which we do epistemically begin with) - much less what creaturely scholars[hip] have to say about it. 

One final comment regarding Mr. Lazar's statement that biblical propositions, for Clark, "function as a Ding an sich (the unknowable thing-in-itself), in the sense that Biblical propositions are postulated by the system, but the actual content of the propositions are unknowable." This criticism by Mr. Lazar doesn't make sense. Propositions are the only kinds of things "knowable" (at least if we are speaking about "knowledge" literally). If Mr. Lazar is saying that Clark did not have had a criterion for epistemically deciding between two textual variants, that is because Clark's epistemic first principle already takes care of that question in the first place. Clark doesn't reason to divine revelation, he begins with it and defends from it. The absence of a criterion for discovering one's first principle is something inherent in every first principle, for every first principle must be self-authenticating:

But if there is a revelation, there can be no criterion for it. God cannot swear by a greater; therefore he has sworn by himself. One cannot ask one’s own experience to judge God and determine whether God tells the truth or not. Consider Abraham. How could Abraham be sure that God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac? Maybe this suggestion was of the devil; maybe it was a queer auto-suggestion. There is no higher answer to this question than God himself. The final criterion is merely God’s statement. It cannot be tested by any superior truth. (Today's Evangelism, Counterfeit or Genuine? 1990, pg. 113)

This disjunct faces two replies. First, it assumes that a first principle cannot be self-authenticating. Yet every first principle must be. The first principle of Logical Positivism is that a sentence has no meaning unless it can be verified (in principle at least) by sensory experience. Yet no sensory experience can ever verify this principle. Anyone who wishes to adopt it must regard it as self-authenticating. So it is with all first principles. (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pgs. 46-47) 

This is how to approach questions concerning the canon and textual criticism from a Scripturalist perspective. Thus, in the final analysis, while there is some truth in this chapter mixed in with some error, and while the truths are worth the emphasis, none of them result in a decisive failure of Scripturalism (not even Clark's occasionalistic version of Scripturalism) to pass the test of skepticism. 

In the next part of my review, I will turn to chapter 4, which Mr. Lazar calls the test of explanatory power.

Book Review: Scripturalism and the Senses (Part 3)

Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's second chapter in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses.

The Test of Reason

I agreed with most if not all of what I read in the first three sub-sections of this chapter ("Introduction," "Examples of Self-Refuting Claims," and "Axioms and Presuppositions"). One test of first principles for which Clark advocated was the test of reason. I would say that the test of reason is a good apologetic tool because it remarks upon the nature of truth: truths are mutually consistent, not mutually inconsistent. This is a characteristic of what truth is, and to defend one's worldview on such grounds is reasonable. 

As Mr. Lazar notes, "self-contradiction is a sure sign of error." If the first principle of a worldview is self-contradictory, then it is "self-referentially incoherent" and "refutes itself." It is false. So long as one views this test as an apologetic test rather than an epistemic one (and that epistemology grounds apologetics, not vice versa), I would have little more to add. I was particularly pleased that Mr. Lazar pointed out that archaeological "evidence" has a role within Clark's apologetic, even though "ad hominem" and "elenctic" (link). 

However, as I mentioned in my last review, I do believe that Mr. Lazar views the test of reason as an epistemic test, at least for the Scripturalist. Not only does he view Scripturalism as falsifiable, but he thinks Scripturalism actually "fails the test of reason." As a presuppositionalist, Clark did "assume" the truth of Christianity - but he did not thereby imply that Christianity could be false: "Logically the infallibility of the Bible is not a theorem to be deduced from some prior axiom. The infallibility of the Bible is the axiom from which several doctrines are themselves deduced as theorems" (What Do Presbyterians Believe? 1985, pg. 18). As Clark said, "my skepticism ends where divine revelation begins" (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pg. 258). Likewise, I point out, for example, here (emphasis added):

...I think special divine revelation - the extant extent of which is concretely codified in the Scriptures - is the premise with which one must begin in order to intentionally defend his beliefs with full assurance. This is not to say that my arguments are reasons for this foundational belief, but as Gordon Clark put it, by the systems they produce, axioms must be judged. If an axiom doesn't produce a sufficiently coherent system, can't account for certain worldview necessities, isn't sufficiently explanatory - however you want to phrase it - the axiom itself fails to give us knowledge of the infallibilist and internalist variety. Of course, one may object that we need any such knowledge, which is itself another discussion, one about needs. One can also be mistaken in his judgment, and the "tests" - for the present lack of a better term - do not imply that the falsifiability of an axiom is a live possibility. Yet there is practical use for these tests, and apologists ought to be in the business of being practical whenever possible.

I wrote the above years before Mr. Lazar's book was published. What I am arguing about Clark and Scripturalism is not ad hoc. I truly think an understanding of the epistemology-apologetics distinction I mentioned in my previous review is fundamental to grasping why some of Mr. Lazar's criticisms miss the mark. 

For Clark, the test of reason is not a test by which to epistemically justify the truth of his axiom. "This justification of axioms" would be "the fallacy of asserting the consequent," as Clark suspects Spinoza or other rationalists did (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pgs. 24-25). Now, Mr. Lazar may not believe that Clark's Scripturalism accurately reflects divine revelation, so he can attempt a critique along those lines; my only point here is how Clark would have regarded his own position.

Having already covered that ground in my last post, I think it would be more useful to spend time evaluating Mr. Lazar's thoughts on the relationship and distinction between Clark's epistemic source of knowledge and his means of knowing the content of that source. 

Epistemic Sources and Means of Knowledge

The arguments in Mr. Lazar's second chapter seem neatly divisible into two categories: against certain phrasings of the epistemic axiom of Scripturalism – one's epistemic "source" of knowledge – and against certain Scripturalist's account of one's epistemic "means" of knowledge. The distinction between one's source[s] of knowledge and means of knowing is one I have written about elsewhere (link):

A source of knowledge is something from which we acquire knowledge. Means of knowledge outline the process or processes by which we acquire knowledge from sources of knowledge.

If a person is to know what are the means by which he obtains knowledge, it is fairly obvious this must be accounted for by his sources of knowledge. The primary question, then, is what is or are one’s source[s] of knowledge. Whether this or these sources account for the alleged means of obtaining knowledge is only answerable after this primary question has been answered. It may turn out that whether a source or sources are able to account for the means of obtaining knowledge can help us sort through which of the various proposed sources of knowledge are viable, but first things first.

In other words, when examining a worldview, you have to start with the alleged source[s] of knowledge. What one claims as his source[s] of knowledge functions as his stated sufficient condition for knowledge (link).

Our ability to test such source[s] is limited to examining whether or not they are “self-consistent,” which encompasses multiple evaluative procedures that an apologist can undertake, including but not limited to answering if the source self-attesting, if it provides a theory of knowledge, language, metaphysics, and ethics, and if any of the answers it provides mutually exclusive.

The discussion that follows below takes for granted that the reader has read this post. In it, I discuss in what meta-epistemic context one's epistemic sources and means of knowledge are, for Gordon Clark, seemingly meant to function (with a few additional thoughts of my own). With this context in mind, I turn to the evaluation of the remainder of Mr. Lazar's chapter on "The Test of Reason."

Source[s] of Knowledge

In the first few paragraphs of a subheading entitled, "Clark's Unclear Axiom," Mr. Lazar quotes several isolated statements by Clark in which different words are used to express his epistemic axiom. Mr. Lazar believes these statements could mean different things. I'm not so sure that is true, since we can't seriously think, for example, that Clark would have used the word "revelation" as Muslim would have. That is, context matters. 

I will return to the question of "vagueness" later to provide some thoughts of my own, but that context matters is a point Clark himself made to Mavrodes long ago. The words used to express the axiom are not words "without content" or "empty." Clark's words intentionally referred to certain meanings. Thus, my initial reaction was the same as one Mr. Lazar himself anticipates: "You might think I'm being uncharitable to Clark, and that if you put those statements together, the general idea is clear enough: the Scripturalist takes the Bible as his axiom." If he had stopped on this note, Mr. Lazar's point thus far could have been well-taken: in our own explanation of our beliefs, we really ought to try to be as clear as possible. 

Instead, Mr. Lazar continues in his criticism to say that the above "general idea" is "not what Clark meant (not exactly). Instead, what Clark meant was that Scripturalism takes the Bible as the only source of truth." Thus, the first argument against "Scripturalism" that Mr. Lazar makes is as follows: "The Scripturalist axiom states the Bible is our only source of truth, however, that is not a Biblical claim... Therefore, the axiom refutes itself, making it self-referentially incoherent. Scripturalism fails the test of reason..." 

Here's the problem: Mr. Lazar does not produce any statement by Clark in support of the above, and I don't believe he can. What we instead find are quotes from other authors. I seem to recall that one of these authors does not even profess to be a Scripturalist (Cheung). While Mr. Lazar says that he will "leave [whether Clark had developed a new theory of knowledge] for the historians to debate," I was left with the feeling that a bait and switch had occurred. I had thought that what was going to be analyzed was what, as Mr. Lazar himself says, "Clark meant" - not what later Scripturalists either wrongly inferred or haphazardly phrased. 

To be fair, readers should agree that Mr. Lazar is correct in his criticism of W. G. Crampton: the Bible does not have "a systematic monopoly on truth." God Himself clearly knows things that He hasn’t revealed in the Bible, such as when the Lord will come (Matthew 24:42). Jesus performed and communicated more to his disciples than what was written (John 20:30), and unless Jesus was mute until adulthood, we can say the same about things He told His earthly family as a child. Instead, God – or, rather, the Trinity – possess a monopoly on truth: therefore, what they reveal to us is the extent of what we can know. The Bible just is the extent of what has been revealed, so it is the extent of what we can know (again, keeping in mind that "knowledge" means something definitive and along the lines of what I argue in the aforementioned, linked post on meta-epistemology).

But to call Crampton's expression of Scripturalism "Clark's later formulation" is misleading. The only piece of evidence to support Mr. Lazar's thesis that I could find was the following: "…Dogmatism does not conflict with truth from other sources because there are no other sources of truth!" (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pg. 20). If Clark meant that a Dogmatist would say that his epistemological source of truth is the Bible alone, then Clark's axiom would be problematic. It then would be impossible to identify when the second coming of our Lord and our glorification occurs, for no new divine revelation could ever be known (or even true). Of course, this is not what Clark thought. For a few examples of what he did think:

...a Christian university should commit itself to the proposition that the triune, sovereign God, the creator and preserver of the universe, is the source of all truth, that as revealed in the Scriptures he directs the course of history to its determined end, and that the chief end of man is to glorify him... (The Philosophy of the Modern University)

It is inherent in the very nature of the case that the best witness to God’s existence and revelation is God himself. There can be no higher source of truth. (A Christian View of Men and Things, 2005, pgs. 182-183)

Christ said, “I am the door”; but he did not mean that he was made of wood. Christ also said, “This is my body.” Romanists think he spoke literally; Presbyterians take the sentence figuratively. Similarly the statement, “I am…the truth,” must be taken to mean, I am the source of truth; I am the wisdom and Logos of God; truths are established by my authority. (God's Hammer, 1995, pgs. 34-37) 

In a broad sense, all Christians could and should say the ontological source of truth (and knowledge) is the Trinity, for they are the ontological source of all things. But the propositional, divine revelation particularly codified in the Bible is our sole, current epistemic source of "knowing" ontological (or any) truths insofar as it is the extant extent of divine revelation. It is the epistemic foundation for the extant extent of what we can know to be true:

The principle is sola Scriptura. This is a repudiation of the notion that theology has several sources such as the Bible, tradition, philosophy, science, religion, or psychology. There is but one source, the Scriptures. This is where truth is to be found. Under the word truth there is included, in opposition to irrationalism, logic and the law of contradiction. Whatever contradicts itself is not truth. Truth must be consistent, and it is clear that Scripture does not both affirm and deny an atonement. God is truth. Christ is the wisdom and Logos of God. And the words he has spoken to us are spirit and are life. (How Does Man Know God?)

There is a difference between highlighting a source where truth currently is to be "found" (read: "known") and who the sources of truth ultimately and ontologically are. To show the difference, the Trinity will always be the ontological source[s] of truth. But sola scriptura will not be true forever, for Scripture will not always be the sole location from which we can find (know) truth. Even Clark recognized this: 

...no limit is placed on the knowledge redeemed men man acquire in heaven. If the redeemed are to know as God knows them, it would seem that God will reveal a much greater amount of knowledge in the future life than we now expect. Furthermore this verse implies that though our present knowledge is partial, it is nevertheless true knowledge of the same meaning that God has. (The Answer, 1944, pgs. 13-14).

That is, the more abstract formulation of a Scripturalist's epistemic foundation (say, an appeal to "divine revelation" in general rather than the "Bible" in particular) will never change. But our concrete epistemic foundation will change, for Scripture alone does not comprise the entirety of what will ever be divinely revealed, only what is currently revealed. More knowledge is yet to come, for more divine revelation is yet to come. 

But we must note that the concrete revelation we do have is not something we epistemically reason towards discovering, so referring to it (the Bible/Scriptures/codified propositional content) in our formulation of our epistemic axiom is not only understandably motivated, it is legitimate. We can qualify such formulations by noting that when divine revelation expands, so too will our epistemic foundation. To use a few quotes from Clark that Mr. Lazar brings up to illustrate, perhaps it's more digestible to distinguish our epistemic axiom in the following way:

Concrete formulation: "[L]et the Christian axiom be the truth of the Scriptures." (How Does Man Know God?)

Abstract formulation: "[R]evelation should be accepted as our axiom." (An Introduction to Christian Philosophy, 1993, pg. 59)

Denotatively, these currently refer to the same thing: the content of Scripture. For only Scripture has been currently divinely revealed to us. But the latter formulation is generic enough to allow that the scope of the concrete formulation can broaden to include future divine revelations which will also be axiomatically knowable. Both formulations are true in that both new divine revelation (that will come in the future) and current divine revelation can be known axiomatically or apart from inference. Both formulations overlap in the propositional content they currently reference. It's just that the former content is static (Scripture will always remain Scripture) and the latter content is capable of expanding on the former content in the future.

Vagueness

To return to the question of vagueness or [lack of] clarity, perhaps this explains why Mr. Lazar believes Clark's formulation to be vague: to capture both our present circumstances and potential future ones, a Scripturalist might oscillate between concrete and abstract expressions of his axiom. Whether or not this was true of Clark, Scripturalists should find this to be a good thought for future consideration. 

In any case, I argue that the basic thrust of the axiom and what Clark says is clear enough, however we end up parsing or attempting to fine-tune it. We can agree that there is a more precise way to state the axiom of Scripturalism... just as there is a more precise way to phrase most other statements we make. For example, this blog could probably be more clear! 

Nevertheless, we can't necessarily call vagueness a failure of the test of reason for the same reason that we can't refer to Paul's difficult sayings in Scripture (2 Peter 3:16) to be due to a failure of the test of reason. Rather, these difficulties may be expected due to the deep questions being asked. Sometimes, clarity requires background knowledge. Other times, vagueness is even useful: think of double entendres. Vagueness is important so that both meanings can be communicated with one line. Similarly, in this context, we want both the concrete and abstract formulations of our axiom communicated. Regardless, in the whole of his works, Clark does define, elaborate on, or specify the relevant terms Mr. Lazar questions.

History and Apologetics

In conclusion, Scripturalism does not fail the test of reason here, for it is not self-referentially incoherent. Or, at least, Mr. Lazar's attempted blow may hit the mark against some disciples of Clark, but from what I've read, speaking of "Clark's later formulation of the axiom" is historically inaccurate, for there is no such thing. 

One can't leave a critical point of historical accuracy for "historians to debate" when one's criticisms of a person depend on historical accuracy. Likewise, it would hardly be fair for me to say that Mr. Lazar revised his position based on what some readers of his book say, attack that position, and leave it to others to decide whether Mr. Lazar himself even believed what I attacked. 

Should Mr. Lazar provide evidence that Clark himself did change his axiom or was imprecise at certain points, I would have no problem admitting that (so long as I understand such evidence rightly). Lord knows I've criticized Clark as much as anyone else! That is because I respect the man and his work, as I believe Mr. Lazar does. Because we both respect him, when we criticize him, we should be careful to depict his thoughts as they were, not as others have construed them to be.

[Side Note: Mr. Lazar references extra-Scriptural knowledge as a reason for considering the Scripturalist's axiom to be self-referentially incoherent. I will interact with this more so when reviewing chapters 7 and 8 of the book, chapters to which Mr. Lazar also defers when making this reference. To briefly anticipate: if we construe "knowledge" to refer to a certain kind - along the lines of what I mention in my post on Clark and meta-epistemology linked above - I believe any perceived tension in the Scripturalist's epistemic axiom evaporates. Analogously, a Scripturalist can and should accept that husband can sexually "know" his wife without inference of such from Scripture. The kind of "knowledge" we are speaking about in different contexts is important and why Scripturalists should be more precise about and interested in what sort of epistemic "knowledge" they intend to apologetically defend.]

Means of Knowledge

Mr. Lazar mentions one other criticism of Clark in this chapter. The question revolves around the means by which we know anything. Mr. Lazar writes, "Scripturalism fails the test of reason due to Clark's answer to a recurrent objection to his apologetic." From what he continues to describe, I think Mr. Lazar should have said "his epistemology," not "his apologetic," since Mr. Lazar is going to question the means by which Clark thought one comes to know the propositions of Scripture.  

In any case, Mr. Lazar quotes Ronald Nash favorably: "In order to know what the Bible says, I must be able to read it with my eyes or hear it with my ears or touch the braille with my fingers. But this is sense perception." The issue at hand is that Clark rejects sensation as a means of knowledge. The criticism is that Scripture is physical. It is writ. That writ corresponds to propositions, but it is not itself propositions. So how do you "get" the propositions from the physical writ if you reject sensation as a means of knowledge? Mr. Lazar cites Crampton’s following argument as Clark's response: 

Since all knowledge is propositional, and since the senses in interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot originate, be conveyed by, or be derived from sensation. Rather, as noted above, the senses seem to stimulate the mind of man to intellectual intuition, to attend to or to recollect the God-given innate ideas that man already possesses. Dr. Clark used the illustration of a piece of paper on which is written a message in invisible ink. The paper (by illustration, the mind) might appear blank, but in actuality it is not. When the heat of experience is applied to the mind (as when heat is applied to the paper), the message becomes visible. Human knowledge, then, is possible only because God has endowed man with certain innate ideas.

Mr. Lazar refers to this as an extra-biblical theory and, therefore, dismisses it. His point is that Clark only believes biblical theories can be known. Since this view is extra-biblical, it cannot be known on Clark's own grounds. 

There are a few comments to be made here. Firstly, Mr. Lazar cites the book "Lord God of Truth" as where he finds Clark's theory of recollection. Perhaps he meant to cite Religion, Reason, and Revelation, where Clark does speak to that. I don't know what pages he has in mind because Clark himself is not quoted at this relevant juncture. While Crampton and others might summarize Clark rightly, I think it best to deal with a person's own publications when advancing arguments against him. 

In Lord God of Truth, Clark defends Malebranchian occasionalism (pg. 27) and thinks that Augustine's theory of divine illumination anticipated it. He also thinks Jonathan Edwards, an Islamist, and the Westminster divines (timidly) support the position. Clark's idea that the "second causes" in the WCF can be identified with Malebranche's occasions is absurd, but nonetheless, whether one agrees with Clark or not, it is not as if Clark never defended his premises from Scripture (or, at least, others' expositions of Scripture). See Lord God of Truth (pgs. 16-18):

More surprisingly Jonathan Edwards, of all people, provides some support for Malebranche’s views. This is not to say that the great Puritan agreed with Malebranche in great detail. He does, however, provide some Scriptural support for the doctrine of divine illumination. The general Christian public, then, will be somewhat disabused of their anti-philosophical, pragmatic prejudices, and the apologetes will be warned not to strain out a Plato and swallow an Aristotle.

Though there is enough in Malebranche that Edwards would not like, nevertheless in his sermon on A Divine and Supernatural Light Immediately Imparted to the Soul, Section three, he goes further than one might anticipate. Note the word Immediately in the title. The subhead to Section III refers to a “spiritual light that has been… immediately let into the mind by God.” Hence sensation cannot be the means. This he supports by a number of Scripture verses: 1 John 3:6, negatively, “Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him.” John 17:3, not obviously pertinent, “And this is eternal life, that they may know you.” More clearly pertinent is his comment, “This light and knowledge is always spoken of as immediately given of God.” Of Matthew 11:25-27 he writes, “This effect is ascribed exclusively to the arbitrary operation and gift of God.” I have italicized immediately and exclusively because apologetes, confronted with the Scriptures, make a last ditch stand and argue that God uses other and necessary means. Edwards continues with 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God….” Again he comments that this light is “immediately from God… the immediate effect of his power and will.” There is also Psalm 119:18, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from your law.”

In paragraph 2 of his Secondly (pg. 18) he repeats: “It is rational to suppose that this knowledge should be given immediately by God, and not be obtained by natural means.” He then continues to stress its immediacy, using the word several times on this one page, and negatively adding, “it should not be left in the power of second causes…. Immediately by himself, as a thing too great for second causes to be concerned in…. immediately by himself, according to his own sovereign will” (18, 19).

The empiricists, as hinted at above, will no doubt remark that the reference to beholding wondrous things in the Law shows that sensations of black on white are necessary second causes, so that our knowledge of divine truth is obtained by “natural means.” For the moment, and not to repeat or anticipate all the arguments against empiricism, it will suffice to say that Jonathan Edwards denies it. The empiricists may find some solace in Abraham Kuyper and Guido de Brès, who had some idea of divine illumination, but who did not go so far as Malebranche and Edwards. However, I neither assert that Edwards totally agrees with Malebranche, nor that the latter is infallible. But both men show that Christianity cannot be empirical.

If Mr. Lazar thinks the theory Clark presents is extra-biblical, he ought to engage with Clark at these points, since Clark does attempt to defend his theory as biblical. Note, by the way, that Clark is arguing (through Edwards) that knowledge acquisition is immediate. The question is not whether or not there are innate ideas. That may be a further inference Clark makes elsewhere. But the question in Lord God of Truth and the question about whether Clark "has" to read his Bible is, for Clark, satisfied if he can show that "God alone is the cause" of everything. 

To say "the senses stimulate the mind of man to intellectual intuition" rather seems to suggest that senses could play a causal role in knowledge acquisition. If it does, I would agree, but I doubt Clark would go that route. The whole point of his appealing to occasionalism is to say that sensation is not causal. Or if Clark would not mean that senses play a causal role when speaking of their capability to "stimulate," then such a position must basically collapse back into occasionalism to explain what does cause the ideas in question. Hence, I personally try to speak directly against Clark's occasionalism.

I have criticized Clark's occasionalism here. I think the criticisms are sufficient to show the inconsistency of the position both with Scripture and several of Clark's other beliefs. However, for my part, to respond to Clark by way of responding to Edwards' comments on the Scriptures mentioned, God can be an ultimate cause without being an immediate cause. God opens eyes, yes. He also opens wombs. But while he may be the ultimate cause of these things, it is still the eyes that see and wombs that give birth as mediate or secondary causes. Even supposing that divine illumination is immediate in some circumstances, it would be fallacious to infer it is immediate in all circumstances. Edwards' and Malebranche's comments do not warrant Clark's conclusions in favor of occasionalism in Lord God of Truth. But interaction with these comments is needed so that readers are aware of the reasons for the theory (even if they are wrong).

There are a few more things to say about why Clark was an occasionalist. To me - and I could be wrong - it is as though Clark felt pressured by the "don't you have to read your Bible?" criticism and took up occasionalism in order to refute it. This could have been another stepping stone toward the propositional monism that, while he never fully embraced, Clark was heading towards. Clark may have reasoned that if our "knowledge," properly speaking, is of propositions (which is true), then it would be problematic if these propositions corresponded to non-propositional realities (which is false, but it is something Clark seemed to reject in rejecting the correspondence theory of truth). For then how could we know that the propositions we claim to know correspond to these physical or spiritual non-propositional realities (e.g. Scripture, persons, etc.)?

Even if that was not Clark's concern - again, I am only hypothesizing as to why Clark accepted certain, extreme positions like occasionalism, the idea that persons are propositions, etc. - I think Clark would have done better to respond to the criticism in the following way: do I have to read my Bible (or hear someone preach it) to know the propositions encoded therein? Perhaps, perhaps not. 

If I do, however, this only speaks to an ontological precondition for me to come to know anything. Consider that God is an ontological precondition for me to come to know anything, my parents were ontological preconditions for me to come to know anything, etc. I wouldn't exist and so could not know anything unless God or my parents existed. Similarly, is it impossible to conceive of sensations as ontologically causing thoughts? No. God could certainly decree that sensations function as a mediate cause of my thoughts just as He decreed my parents to function as mediate causes of my existence (and, therefore, thoughts). My thoughts may exist because of certain sensations I've had.

However, whether I do or do not have to hear or read the Bible for ontological preconditions to be satisfied such that I can come to know the corresponding, propositional content, the point is that I don't need to give a particular account of the causal chain by which I come to know anything in order to know anything. If I didn't know who my parents were, I would still know I needed parents in order for it to be ontologically possible to be who I am and know what I do of myself. If I don't know the particular chain of sensations (or other potential causative factors) that have led to my beliefs, that doesn't mean I can't know what I believe. To take another example:

The Bible may have been written by the apostles such that their births were ontologically prior to inscripturation, but the only reason I know about apostleship in the first place is by means of Scripture. So Scripture is epistemically prior to the birth of the apostles. Scripture is a historical document. Things occured prior to inscripturation on which inscripturation depended (ontological preconditions), but the point is these can only be known by Scripture (epistemological precondition). (link)

That is, analogous to the distinction between ontological and epistemic sources of knowledge mentioned above, there is a distinction we can make between ontological and epistemic means of knowledge. The ontological source or foundation of all knowledge and truth and things are the Trinity. But they are not the sole cause of all things (a la occasionalism). The [current] epistemic source of all "knowledge" (of a certain kind) of the truth is divine revelation in general and Scripture in particular. 

Now, linguistically, words refer to certain things. Do we then axiomatically begin with Scripture/the Bible as physical and non-propositional writ, or do we begin with the propositions to which the words of the writ refer? The latter. My knowledge claims are founded or sourced on divine revelation. Divine revelation is primarily propositional, not physical. 

When newer prophets, apostles, or Christ Himself quote older prophets as Scripture (divinely revealed), they refer to the propositional content those prophets communicated. They were not primarily referencing a particular, physical text, although there were and are such texts that correspond to, codify, and perhaps even cause thoughts regarding these propositional contents. This should be especially clear given that when new prophets do reference Scripture, they often do so to an audience through an entirely differently codified sensory medium (like speech) than that by which Scripture was originally revealed (writ) as well as that what writ they did possess wasn't the same as that which originally codified the revelation.

Hence, the WCF also is completely sensible when it says that things may be "deduced" from Scripture by good and necessary consequence. These deductive inferences come by reflection and are our means of knowledge. The WCF is, I think, clearly referring to Scripture as a primarily propositional source from which we can make propositional inferences, not primarily as a physical, non-propositional text. 

Again, this is not to diminish the value of non-propositional texts or roles they can play in knowledge acquisition, as they do codify the propositions in language. We are an embodied, physical people. It would make sense that we ontologically come to causally acquire knowledge by means physical, non-propositional realities. Thus, we can construe sensation as having a causal role (ontological) in knowledge acquisition. This is not troublesome, and in that sense, sensation can be a means of knowledge (of a certain kind). 

It is only if we suggest sensation has an inferential role (epistemic) in knowledge acquisition that we would have to confront Sellars' Dilemma: how can that without propositional content - that which cannot be either true or false, like a sensation - be a foundation or means from which we attempt to infer or deduce the truth or falsity of a proposition[al belief]? In this sense, a Scripturalist would (correctly, I think) deny that sensation is a means of knowledge (of another kind). 

Instead the epistemic means of knowledge is the other side of the coin of the epistemic source of knowledge. In conjunction, these refer to the structure of our epistemic justification for knowledge, which is foundationalistic. Foundationally, we begin with propositions. We make propositional inferences from propositions. The codification of a proposition may be in or from a text such that it is a secondary causal means by which the propositions are effected as ideas we have, but we epistemically start with the propositions that have been codified and only can only "know" (in a certain sense) this hypothetical by deduction from said propositions. 

In this way, Clark would have avoided the trap in which his critics wanted to catch him. They want Clark to defend himself with occasionalism, for that theory is rife with problems. Or they wanted Clark to admit that sensation does play a role in knowledge acquisition, for then they could ask why Clark would say it can only play that role for acquiring knowledge from reading Scripture. That would be special pleading, and the critics would be right to say so. But if we approach the question as I have above, I think there is a way in which to preserve the heart of what Clark wants to get at... although this would seem to concede to critics of Clark (including myself) that there are other kinds of knowledge that can indeed be acquired apart from Scripture. 

Now, this begins to wade us into the waters of discussing the differences between internalist and externalist accounts of knowledge, which is why I having been alluding to different senses or kinds of knowledge throughout this post. But as this will be addressed in future chapters of Mr. Lazar's book, I will reserve comment on that until later. Textual issues will also be something Mr. Lazar brings up in a later chapter. I will likely revisit what I have said here, which I think is a good start for confronting later questions that will arise. 

For those interested in reading more now on the relationship between the divinely revealed propositions, texts in which those proposition have been correspondingly encoded, and externalism as an explanation for why such propositions have been encoded even though I am here suggesting that the Scripturalist's epistemic axiom primarily refer to the propositional content of divine revelation, I'd suggest the following (link, link). 

I will conclude that while Mr. Lazar could have said more to the effect of why it is wrong, he is ultimately correct that Clark's occasionalism is in need of revision. Yet this is not fatal to the project of Scripturalism, and I do not think that Clark's epistemic axiom fails the test of reason. Instead, I conclude Clark failed to make correct inferences about means of knowledge from his epistemic axiom.

In the next part of my review, I will turn to chapter 3, which Mr. Lazar calls the test of skepticism.

Trinitarianism and [Eternal] Hierarchicalism

Because I wasn't able to participate in our monthly podcast in May due to the passing of my grandmother, I recently reviewed a book called "Masculine Christianity." In the course of writing the review, I had a few thoughts on "hierarchicalism," a term I use to mean that all [earthly] societies exhibit an ordered hierarchy. These thoughts diverged from the point of the review enough that I felt a separate post on the subject was warranted. So here we are:

Whether it is in the context of the church, government, family, or work, all earthly organizations have authorities and those who submit to said authorities. Because, as I mentioned in the review, I think earthly societies image the divine society, I think there is good reason to consider some idea of eternal hierarchicalism as understandably motivated. It would make sense that the functions of the economic Trinity were rooted in the ontological Trinity, for example.

Could the Father have been sent by the Son to become incarnate? Did the Father not have authority to send His Son? Is it possible for the Son to even obey the Father? A common reply to eternal hierarchicalism is the idea that there is one Trinitarian will, which would seemingly prevent any one person from submitting to or having the capacity for authority over any other. This idea does not seem to do justice to the fact the Father sent/loves His Son (cf. John 17:24) or how the Son obeyed/loves His Father. Rather, a more plausible possibility is that the members of the Trinity have distinct wills - similar to how they must have their own, distinct minds to respectively think "I am the Father" vs "I am the Son" (and perhaps distinct minds itself entails distinct wills) - which, because they are of the same nature, will always be mutually interdependent and directed.

In the book, the author made much of chronological priority in Adam and woman's case as to why Adam was the head over woman. Is there perhaps an analogy to be made - albeit not in temporal terms, obviously - with eternal generation (in that the Father may be considered the fount of divinity)? If so, eternal hierarchalism would make the author's case in the book even stronger. Of course, I would stress that the author is correct to say that women and men are of equal value, equally image God, are equally human, and think they are equally important to that for which God commissioned them in the dominion mandate. But, as the author says, "rank" or hierarchy exists. So too, the Father and Son are equal in nature... thus, I think 1 Corinthians 15:28 and the like (John 5:19, 26) could use better argumentation as to why the authority or hierarchy implied is only an economic one (due to the incarnation) rather than an eternal one - especially since, in the 1 Corinthians passage, Paul specifically switches terminology from Christ to Son.

Nevertheless, in spite of my above reservations and thoughts, I am not as dogmatic about this as I used to be. The subject is complicated, to say the least! Before all else, I deny that the Father and Son are of different natures. After all, if we are speaking of analogies, there is a clear analogy between sonship in human terms vs. Sonship in divine terms in that our being sons of fathers doesn't mean we have different natures than our fathers. So, too, the Son and Father do not have different natures. This parallel is clear, and it is the one I think through which we should evaluate any other parallels we wish to draw (if such there be). That is, human nature and generation differs from divine nature and generation. Thus, if any other parallel we draw would logically imply that the Father and Son are not of the same nature, we should reject such parallels as being instances of disanalogies due to these differences.

While it is possible for those of the same nature to differ in terms of who is authoritative, then (for earthly fathers have authority over sons), if - and this is the big question - it turned out that eternal hierarchicalism would entail that the Father and Son have different natures (e.g. due to aseity), we must reject that the idea that a father-son relationship necessarily entails a hierarchy. One can point out that earthly fathers have authority over their earthly sons as an example of how those of the same nature can differ in rank or authority. But to parallel this to the Trinity would be wrong to do so if such would imply that the Father and Son are of different natures. The intended parallel would break down at precisely this point due to the difference in human and divine nature. Eternal hierarchicalism would be wrong.

Now, I don’t find such an entailment to be a clear implication - and if it were, I would have questions about eternal generation too - but the situation is unclear enough that I hesitate to dogmatically assert eternal hierarchalism. On the other hand, in contrast to the author of the book, I would not be dogmatic in denial of eternal hierarchicalism either. The position makes sense to me, but there are orders of belief, and this one would be subordinate to my belief in the consubstantiality of the Trinity.

Perhaps the author or others have searched the matter more deeply. If so, and to return to the question and men and women and authority, I wish the author would have explained why he thinks a difference in rank or authority implies a difference in nature between men and women, both of whom he regards as equally human but, somehow, as having different natures. After all, fathers and sons or masters and slaves or kings and citizens or elders and congregations have different authority, but they do not have different natures (presumably?). If rank or authority does not usually imply a difference in nature, why suppose that men and women must have different natures? Is it because in the other cases, the relationship is contingent (one can fail to become a father, master, king, or elder) whereas a human is necessarily either a man or woman? Crucially missing in the book was a definition of “nature,” so I can only attempt to hypothesize the author’s case so far.

Either way, care is needed when comparing the earthly father-son parallel to the Heavenly Father-Son parallel. For example, when children leave their earthly fathers and mothers to start new families, new headships and priorities are established that eclipse old ones. In fact, at some point, children begin to become responsible for the well-being of the parents in their old age. Should we press the analogy such that when the Son left His Father’s domain to come wed the church, He similarly has left the divine family to be the Head of a new one? Of course not. Nor can we regard the Father as capable of aging, etc. There are limits to parallels and analogies we can make between human and divine families, though such parallels there are.

Of What Advantage is Baptism [for Infants]?

Much in every way. Firstly, I think a good way to frame the question is in terms of advantages and privileges, for baptism does not always communicate or indicate grace. No one ought to question that the world aside from Noah's family, Pharaoh's army, or unbelievers at the parousia were or will be fearfully judged, for example. Baptism can point to this eschatological reality as well as to blessed salvation. Likewise, one baptized into the visible body of the covenant community is privileged to be a member of it - properly able to be instructed and disciplined by elders-fathers, as I will return to below - though not without warning should they rebel and fall away (Hebrews 6:4-8, 10:26-31).

Anthropologically, soteriologically, and ecclesiologically, we are (or can be) newly born into households. Only those born into these houses are, properly speaking, discipled and disciplined by the fathers of said houses. Only sons and daughters consistently receive fatherly instruction, training, and correction. The potential blessings should be obvious. But this too means judgment must begin at the house of God - since, a fortiori, it is obvious what judgment befalls those who are not members of the house (1 Peter 4:17-18). Now, we know sons and daughters can rebel against fatherly authority. But such cases, as heartbreaking as they are, does not mean there is no reason for sons and daughters to have been in a position to receive instruction and discipline in the first place. At the very least, it must cause sober reflection upon our own relative births and positions into the various, divinely appointed households. But we must remember that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose, not all without exception.

Or, to put the point another way. In addition to the anthropological, ecclesiological, and soteriological households, we can consider the cosmological household of God of which we are all a part, believer and unbeliever alike. Nature has a way of instructing and disciplining men (Romans 1:18-32), because we are all God's offspring (Acts 17:29), His image, in His macrocosmic house of creation (Genesis 1). This too comes with its own advantages and privileges, for life is good.

However, it might be a bit difficult to understand, from a bird-eye view of the reprobate, how he has been divinely favored by the rain and sunshine God sends and makes (Matthew 5:45). That is, should we view such as grace? Gordon Clark thought we could:

One theologian argues that the gospel is both a savor of life unto life and also a savor of death unto death. To the reprobate the preaching of the gospel is no favor because as it increases their knowledge, it increases their responsibility and condemnation. Better if they had never heard the gospel. One can reply, nonetheless, that in some cases the preaching of the gospel may restrain an evil man from some of his evil ways. Since therefore sins are not all equal, and since some are punished with many stripes, but others with few, the preaching of the gospel results in the lessening of the punishment. Thus preaching would be a small favor, a modicum of grace. (link)

I am less sure. We could regard it as an advantage or privilege for anyone who already exists and sins to not be immediately cut off from his sinful life, and to that extent what Clark says above can hold true. It is, likewise, certainly a privilege to have once been enlightened, tasted the heavenly gift, have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. Perhaps this restrains one from committing as much evil as he would otherwise have done. Yet it seems to me that the privileges of these new births which even reprobates can experience must be balanced against the strong language of, for example, Mark 14:21 - spoken of one who was a disciple of Christ (how much more advantage or privilege towards a sinner can one conceived?) - and that baptism can be unto fearful judgment. To whom much is given, much is expected (Luke 12:47-48). If one tramples underfoot the advantages and privileges of God, it would be better for that man if he had not been born.

Nevertheless, this bird's eye view is not available to us. We can only speak in regards to what we know, and what we know is that one is advantaged or privileged to hear the gospel, for one can only please God and be at peace with Him through justification by faith, and faith can only come by hearing the gospel. We cannot know, in this lifetime, who will hear and reject the gospel, and it is far beyond our purview to presume upon who will or won't heed its call. Much less are we able to determine whether, even if it is rejected, it may yet be beneficial to the extent that those who hear and reject it sin less and are punished less severely as a result. Similarly, we may consider the case of baptism to be a privilege and advantage, if not necessarily a means of grace, even in the case that it leads to negative judgment.

Suppose instead that our infants are only welcome to church meetings to the extent that other unbelievers are. In the first place, we should probably think harder than we do before inviting open unbelievers to what is supposed to be a family communion with and worship of God rather than an evangelistic outreach. What is the goal? Unbelievers should normally find our worship strange and alien because in it, we draw near to God (precisely where they usually don't want to be).

But is this normally how our infants grow to view our assembling to worship? They may, of course, have questions of the worship service (Exodus 12:24-27), but do they normally shrink back as we draw near to God and He to His church? Are not our children participants in corporate worship? If not, I do not see how church can even be considered a foster home to unbaptized children. Rather, it looks as though these children get (have?) to visit a family not their own once a week without participating in the corporate life of it then and there, much less throughout the rest of the week.

On the other hand, if they are participants, fathers discipline sons. Likewise, elders administer discipline to their sons, the visible flock over which they shepherd. If infants are never members of the visible church, then they are never disciplined by elders. You might discipline your son, but just because his friend is around when you do doesn't mean his friend is a "participant" in that discipline. To the extent one wants to speak of someone as a participant in worship and yet without discipline, I think such a person would be an illegitimate child rather than a son (Hebrews 12:7-8).

The same could be said regarding instruction. Fathers are to instruct their children (Ephesians 6:4). The elder instructs his sons, the visible flock, in worship. But if infants are never members of the visible church, then they are never instructed by elders. You might instruct your son, but just because his friend is around when you do doesn't mean his friend is a "participant" in that instruction.

Whether or not your son rebels against your discipline and instruction is a separate question. But it is without question he is a legitimate son of yours because of how you behave towards him. Likewise in regards to God towards His elect sons and the elders towards their sons-flocks.

One final question that bears pastoral reflection: if infants are not treated as sons, how will they come to think about the church? Frankly, as a child, I would have felt awkward and out of place in the presence of my friend being instructed or disciplined by his father. I would be viewing an internal family matter as an outsider. To say in the first place that infants cannot be participants in worship - that they are presumed to be outsiders - then, would naturally seem to lead them to doubt, uncertainty, or anguish. Being cognizant of the manner in which we, as the visible church, treat our children from birth as well as how they grow to perceive themselves in virtue of our treatment is easier said than done, especially if some of us actually view them as looking in from the outside of God's visible household.