Confessional Arians

Scott Clark responded to my statement that

If God’s essence is unknowable, then Scripture is not a divine self-revelation. God hasn’t revealed himself to us in Scripture. Rather, God has revealed something other than himself.

by saying:

His first conclusion is false. It doesn’t follow.

Asserting that my conclusion is false, asserting that it doesn't follow, is not an argument.

What is God if not his essence? The essence of God is God. That's what God actually is, right? If that's not what Clark means by God's essence, what could he possibly mean?

Well, if according to Clark, Scripture cannot reveal the essence of God, then Scripture doesn't disclose what God is really like. Rather, it reveals something other than God. 

If that's a fallacious inference, where is Clark's counterargument? 

 It is true that we don’t and can’t know God as he is, as I showed from Scripture...

He didn't show that from Scripture. Quoting Scripture doesn't show that your claim is Scriptural. You need to explain and defend your interpretation. You need to explain and defend your inferences from Scripture. 

…but apparently quoting Scripture doesn’t count if a confessionalist does so. Quoting Scripture only counts if a revisionist does it.

i) Everyone quotes Scripture to prove their respective position. I've had Scripture quoted to me by atheists, Anabaptists, annihilationists, Dispensationalists, Lutherans, Arminians, unitarians, universalists, Muslims, &c. So, no, just quoting Scripture doesn't count. You need to exegete your prooftext. And you need to argue for your application. 

ii) There are confessional Lutherans. There are confessional Baptists (e.g. the London Baptist Confession of Faith). What would Clark do if he got into a debate with a confessional Baptist? One confessionalist quotes paedobaptist prootexts while the other confessionalist quotes credobaptist prooftexts. Confessionalism won't adjudicate that disagreement, for both sides are confessional.

iii) Clark is not even entitled to drape himself in the mantle of a confessionalist. He's not a strict subscriptionist. He picks and chooses which parts of the Reformed creeds he prefers to espouse. When it comes to the days of creation or the duties of the civil magistrate, his confessionalism goes out the window. 

That’s the point of the Reformed doctrine of accommodation. God is pleased to reveal himself analogically, which includes the various forms of speech in Scripture. We do know God truly—to deny that is skepticism and to deny salvation—but we know him in the way that God wills.

I don't object to saying our knowledge of God is analogical knowledge. But how does that warrant treating what's analogical as an antonym for what's essential? He apparently assumes that an analogy can't show you what something is essentially like. Well, how does he justify that arbitrary dichotomy? 

I could use a boat to illustrate the principle of transportation. I could use an airplane to illustrate the principle of transportation. In that respect, a boat is analogous to an airplane, and vice versa.

Does that mean the analogy fails to show us what a boat or airplane is essentially for? No. Both are essentially for transportation. They are both modes of transportation. That's not just what they are like. That's what they are. 

The Reformed have NEVER thought that we must know God as he is in himself to be know him truly. That’s a rationalist premise. The Reformed faith isn’t rationalist. 

Ironically, Clark is the rationalist because he refuses to submit to the testimony of Scripture. His a priori commitments to his tradition gag the voice of Scripture. Take how he mishandles his prooftext:

No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known (Jn 1:18, ESV).

He uses that to prove his assertion that:

As a matter of truth, God’s essence is a dark, unrevealed entity. God, as he is in himself (in se) is hidden from us…We know that God’s hidden essence is but we don’t know what God’s essence is. We’re not capable of knowing or understanding that essence. 

i) First of all, lets try to map that back onto his prooftext. How does Clark understand the contrast?

The Father is the archetype to the Son's ectype? Well, I guess that's good Arian Christology. But it's hardly Johannine Christology.

The Father is essentially God, whereas the Son is not essentially God? Again, that's good Arian Christology.

ii) Now let's exegete the text. Clark seems to begin and end with the first clause. Now the first clause states a principle that goes all the way back to Exodus. God is invisible. God is spirit. God is not an object of direct observation. Possibly, we might take that a step further, if divine invisibility is emblematic of divine transcendence. 

However, unless Clark is a radical empiricist, how can he assume that what's invisible is essentially unknowable? 

iii) Does Jn 1:18 say that God's essence is an "unrevealed entity"? No, just the opposite. 

God is inaccessible from our side. But God can make himself accessible. The Incarnation makes the empirically unknowable Father known to us in the person of his Son.  

Jn 1:18 involves a like knows like principle. Like reveals like principle. The Son is God made visible. Because the Father and the Son are two of a kind, if you've seen the Son, you've seen the unseen Father (Jn 14:9). This is one way that Jesus is intrinsically superior to Moses (1:17). 

In defiance of Jn 1:18, and other like passages, Clark makes the impious claim that the Incarnate Son does not and cannot reveal what God is truly like. 

As I keep saying, once the triperspectivalist magicians are done, they think they have God in a headlock. That’s why it’s near impossible to argue with them, which is why I generally don’t do so.

i) To begin with, there's no evidence that Clark even understands triperspectivalism. 

ii) More to the point, I didn't use triperspectivalism in my analysis. So he's burning a straw man.