Because the late Gordon Clark was a Reformed philosopher and apologist, he has something of a following--to what extent I do not know--in the Reformed community. Since the issue of Gordon Clark has come up at Triablogue, I’ll take the occasion to explain some of my disagreements with Clark.
Was Clark an idealist? There are at least a couple of lines of evidence to indicate that Clark was an absolute idealist. To begin with, he was an archenemy of empiricism. Take the following snippet, where he is summarizing some Berkeleyan and Humean objections to Lockean-style empiricism:
***QUOTE***
From Berkeley Hume accepts the conclusion that material or so-called external bodies do not exisst; and that, if they did, we could know nothing about them…How can the sensation hard resemble something invisible? Note that the alleged external objects are not perceptions. Therefore they are non-perceptible. Only perceptions are perceptible. No one has ever seen a material body. Colors are only mental events.
No one has ever seen extension or motion unless it is a colored extension. Experience never gives us extension or motion. One never sees anything but color.
If perhaps this argument does not complete disprove the existence of non-sensory bodies, extended in space, and if someone insists that there still might be such bodies even though we have no expeience of them, Berkeley and Hume reply, even so in that case no one has the remotest idea of what such bodies could be like. In particular we could never know that they are like our ideas of red and sweet. To know that one thing is like or unlikek another, we must see them both and so compare them. But since no one has seen an external body, no one can compare it with the red he has seen or the heard he has touched. Empiricism therefore furnishes no knowledge of an external world, finds no evidence for its existence, and confines the mind to the mind, i.e., its sensations.
Three Types of Religious Philosophy (1989), 76-77.
***END-QUOTE***
Now, does Clark agree with this analysis? There are several reasons for supposing that he does. Although he is summarizing the position of others here, and not his own, yet he is summarizing this material to present an argumentum ad impossible against empiricism. Hume and Berkeley, representing the tradition of British empiricism, are, at the same time, delivering the coup de grace to empiricism. Empiricism cuts its own throat.
Further confirmation for this interpretation comes from the fact that this particular summary occurs in a chapter, the entirety of which is a frontal attack on empiricism. So the Berkeleyan-Humean material functions to further that larger argument.
Finally, Clark recycles these stock objections to empiricism in the chapter, tellingly entitled “A Christian Construction, of another book, in which, “to prepare for a positive formulation of a Christian theory of language, the first thing is to clear the ground of empiricism,” Language & Theology (P&R 1980), 131.
Consider, for example, his question, “Where, then, did the knowledge of space come from? Has anyone seen, smelled, or touched it?” (134). The next sentence continues with Hume and Kant.
Another line of evidence concerns his definition of personhood as well as his principle of individuation:
***QUOTE***
Therefore, since God is Truth, we shall define person, not as a composite of sensory impressions, as Hume did, but rejecting with him the meaningless term substance, we shall define person as a composite of truths. A bit more exactly…the definition must be a composite of propositions. As a man thinketh in his (figurative)_ heart, so is he. A man is what he thinks.
I am referring to the complex of truths that form the Three Persons [of the Trinity]. Though they are equally omniscience, they do not all know the same truths. Neither the complex of truths we call the Father nor those we call the Spirit, has the proposition, “I was incarnated.” This proposition occurs only in the Son’s complex. Other examples are implied. The Father cannot say, “I walked from Jerusalem to Jericho.”…If this be so, no difficulty can arise as to the distinctiveness of human persons. Each one is an individual complex. Each one is his mind or soul. Whether the propositions be true or false, a person is the propositions he thinks.
The Incarnation (Trinity 1988), 54-55.
***END-QUOTE***
And again:
***QUOTE***
Like Locke they posit a material substance and a spiritual substance, to no avail…What modern Christian academics needs need therefore, among other things, is a theory of individuation…The Scripture itself reminds us that “as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. Cannot we then infer that a man is what he thinks?
Accordingly the proposal is that a man is a congeries, a system, sometimes an agglomeration of miscellany, but at any rate a collection of thoughts. A man is what he thinks: and no two men are precisely the same combination.
The Trinity (Trinity 1985), 104-106.
***END-QUOTE***
So it seems that Gordon Clark was an absolute idealist. Negatively, he seems to believe that we have no good warrant for affirming the existence of bodies or an external world. Even if such things really exist, they are underdetermined by the available evidence. Hence, we are not justified in affirming their existence.
Likewise, he apparently rejects substance dualism. So he resolves the mind-body problem in favor of the mind.
Positively, he offers a purely mentalistic definition of personal identity--not only for God, but also for man. He doesn’t just say that a person has a mind. Rather, a person is his mind. The soul is not merely the seat of personality--it is identical with the human subject.
So far I’m offering an exposition, not a critique. But there are a number of heretical consequences which either must follow or may follow from the above:
1.Pantheism
It is profoundly unclear whether Clark has any room for a doctrine of creation. On the traditional Reformed view, God has a complete concept for the world (the decree) which he instantiates in time and space. Time and space are limits. That is what makes us finite creatures. But time and space have no place in Clark’s epistemology:
***QUOTE***
To compose a tree, one must make use of time and space. But time and space cannot be seen, smelled, or touched. They are not simple impressions such as green and hard. For this reason both Berkeley and Hume account for these ideas as ideas of relatives [relations?] between things. But if so, one must have the things before he can produce the idea of relation; and the trouble is that he must have the relations before he can produce the things. Empiricism fails at the very start.
With Hume’s disaster before us, it is unnecessary to say much about space and time. Let us merely quote two of Kant’s sentences. “Space is a necessary representation a priori which serves for the foundation of all external intuitions…Space is not discussion or…general concept6ion of the relations of tings, but pure intuition.”
The Incarnation, 35-36.
***END-QUOTE***
For Kant, and apparently for Clark, time and space are mental rather than extramental categories. But in that case, a man is consubstantial with God, for a man is merely a set of propositions, which are, in turn, a subset of divine propositions. We are God thinking us, just like dream characters are the direct product of the dreamer's imagination and thought-process.
If that is not what Clark means, then I don’t know what he does mean. Given what he has taken off the table, I can’t see what alternative he has left.
2.Modalism
Notice that Clark individuates the persons of the Godhead by reference to the economic Trinity. In so doing, he collapses the intramundane Trinity into the economic Trinity. That’s classic modalism. Instead of three eternal and ontologically distinct persons, you have one person in three historical manifestations.
Now perhaps he can salvage some remnant of the intramundane Trinity by recourse to eternal generation and eternal process. Indeed, in his book on The Incarnation, he just touches upon that, but he does so in contrast to his principle of individuation: “I am not at the moment referring only to the eternal generation of the Son and the eternal procession of the Spirit,” and he then goes on to say what I already quoted from p55.
So it would seem, at most, that the persons of the Trinity are partly individuated by eternal generation and eternal procession, as well as partly by their economic relations. But that hybrid solution is still modalistic inasmuch as it leaves the Trinity incomplete until it is fully individuated by the historical process. So this looks like process theology or Neoplatonic emanationism.
There is also a fundamental tension between (1) and (2). For if one denies the objectivity of spatiotemporal relations, then there is no economic Trinity, for there is no external world to redeem. There is no place for historical redemption.
3.Docetism.
If (1) is a correct interpretation and logical consequence of Clark’s doctrine of creation, or the absence thereof, then certain other heresies follow in due course.
i) There was no Incarnation. The Word did not become flesh.
ii) There was no hypostatic union, for under pantheism you have a relation of identity rather than unity. So Clark’s position reduces to a variant of the monophysite heresy--as well as the monothelite heresy.
iii) Likewise, you can have no physical death or bodily resurrection or literal return of Christ. And there can be no blood atonement.
So bedrock principles of Christology and eschatology regarding the person and work of Christ must be jettisoned.
iv) By this same token, there can be no original sin insofar as original sin entails physical death—among other things. Likewise, there can be no general resurrection or resurrection of the just.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Gordon Clark. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Gordon Clark. Sort by date Show all posts
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Ink marks on a page
Sean Gerety did a post a while back entitled “Ink marks on a page.” Normally, when I quote someone, I give the URL. However, an URL would be a sensory object. A string of meaningless numbers and letters. Since Sean denies sense-knowledge, it would be an exercise in futility for me to give the URL.
In his post, Sean attacks the notion that ink marks on a page convey knowledge. To make his case, Sean uses ink marks on a page to prove that ink marks on a page can’t prove anything.
Well, to be more precise, he uses electronically simulated ink marks on a page to prove that ink marks on a page can’t prove anything.
Assuming that Sean’s demonstration is successful, we can safely disregard his entire post, since his entire post consists of ink marks on a page.
Indeed, we can safely disregard his entire blog. Why bother to read his blog when his blog consists of electronically simulated ink marks on a page?
But, for the sake of argument, let’s waive his self-defeating exercise and press ahead.
“Which brings me to what may be the biggest hurdle most people have in coming to grips with Clark’s biblical epistemology and that is his complete rejection of the belief that sensation plays a role in knowledge. Needless to say, the rejection of sensation in the acquisition of knowledge seems counter-intuitive and not at all in accord with so-called ‘common-sense.’ Didn’t God give us sensations and sense organs so that we might come to know Him? Well, not necessarily. After all, and as Clark would say, God gave us stomachs too, but that doesn’t mean that stomachs have an epistemic function…although he was quick to add that it’s hard to study if you don’t eat.”
i) Is that supposed to be an intelligent response? What does that comparison amount to? Is that supposed to be an argument from analogy?
But when the question at issue is sense-knowledge, why think a stomach is analogous to an eye or ear? A stomach is not a sensory organ. It wasn’t designed to perceive the external world.
Gerety might as well say: “Didn’t silversmiths give us steak knives to cut steaks with? Well, not necessarily. After all, and as Clark would say, silversmiths gave us forks and spoons too, but that doesn’t mean you can cut a steak with a spoon.”
Well, suppose you can’t cut a steak with a spoon. Does that also mean you can’t cut a steak with a steak knife? Does that mean a steak knife wasn’t designed to cut steak?
What possesses Gerety to think that Clark’s reply is any sort of counterargument to the issue at hand?
ii) But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we accept the comparison. While a stomach isn’t a sensory organ, per se, a stomach does sense certain things. If you drink a nauseating fluid, the stomach will make you feel nauseous. So even a stomach is a source of sense-knowledge.
“But don’t we have to read the Bible with the eyes in our heads? Clark’s critics routinely argue that even if we accept Clark’s position that knowledge is limited to those things set down in Scripture and their necessary inferences, don’t we first have to read the Bible with our eyes? Or, to put it another way, isn’t knowledge necessarily mediated through the senses? Again, not so fast. Clark would reply, and in good lawyerly fashion, by answering this question with the question: How do you know you even have a Bible in your hands?”
Several problems with that response:
i) Is that a Scriptural objection to sense-knowledge? Does the Bible ever pose that question?
ii) According to the Book of Acts, Paul would go into synagogues and reason with his fellow Jews from the Scriptures. Suppose one of his listeners tried to deflect Paul’s appeal by saying: “Paul, how do you know you even have a scroll of Isaiah in your hands?”
Does Gerety think that would be a sound objection to Paul’s practice? Is Paul begging the question by waiving their own copy of Isaiah in their face? Quoting from the scroll which the synagogue kept in its own library?
Gerety isn’t raising a scriptural objection to sense knowledge. Quite the contrary. Gerety is raising an extrascriptural objection to sense knowledge.
iv) What is more, he’s raising an extrascriptural objection to the scriptures. To the written record of God’s word. When a Christian turns to the Bible to quote a passage of Scripture, Gerety’s response is to say, “How do you know you even have a Bible in your hands?”
How in the world does Gerety think that’s a Christian response to the possibility of sense-knowledge?
v) Answering a question with a question is not an answer: rather, it’s a way of ducking the question.
Clark is trying to shift the burden of proof. But even if his opponent ought to be able to answer Clark’s question, that doesn’t absolve Clark of the corresponding requirement to answer the opponent’s question. And even if his opponent were unable to answer Clark’s question, that doesn’t absolve Clark (or Gerety) of shouldering his own burden of proof.
“To which Clark replied: The substantial question is how do we know the contents of the Bible. If Louis XIV or my wife could be replaced with an imposter twin, then maybe the Bible in my hand is a cunningly devised substitute. Mavrodes lays this on rather heavily, and I am glad that he does. So few people are willing to give the point any serious attention. He also mentions, and I wish he had discussed, solipsism; there are also the skeptical arguments of Carneades and Aenesidemus; and as well Descartes’ omnipotent deceptive demon. In fact, until these arguments are successfully circumvented, no one has a firm basis on which to object to my general position… I must point out that he has not met the issue when he says, ‘Sense experience is required for the derivation of such [Biblical] belief’ and ‘every consistent epistemology which assigns a role to the Bible…must assign a role of equal scope and in precisely the same area to sense perception.’ To make such assertions presupposes satisfactory answers to Aenesidemus and Descartes’ demon. Can it be shown that an imposter twin is impossible? Can we be sure that we have not overlooked a ‘not’ in the sentence? There are even greater empirical scandals than these. How can one prove the reliability of memory? Any test designed to show which memory is true and which is mistaken presupposes that a previous memory is true – and this is the point in question. In large measure the psychological force of my position derives from the impossibility of empiricism.”
Several more problems:
i) Once again, how does citing the objections of Carneades, Aenesidemus, and Descartes to sense-knowledge constitute a Scriptural objection to sense-knowledge? These are secular objections. Extrascriptural objections. Pagan objections!
But, according to Scripturalism, extrascriptural objections wouldn’t be knowledgeable objections. At best they’d be merely opinionated objections, and, at worst, ignorant objections. Moreover, you can’t tell which is which.
So why is a Christian “empiricist” obliged to answer objections to sense-knowledge which, according to Scripturalism, are nothing more than philosophers opining against sense-knowledge? These are merely the opinions of Carneades, Aenesidemus, and Descartes. But unless their arguments are demonstrably true, why is a Christian “empiricist” obligated to refute them?
ii) Suppose a Christian layman can’t circumvent the objections of Carneades and Aenesidemus? So what? Does Scripture require a Christian to be able to refute philosophical objections to sense-knowledge?
iii) Suppose a Christian layman, or even a Christian philosopher, can’t disprove a skeptical thought-experiment? So what? Does Scripture require us to refute skeptical thought-experiments?
For that matter, is it the case that we can’t know anything or justifiably believe anything unless we can refute a skeptical thought-experiment?
Why should we make that artificial demand a precondition of knowledge or warranted belief?
iv) What about solipsism? What about Cartesian demons? These aren’t objections to empiricism, per se. These could just as well be deployed against Scripturalism.
If Scripturalism affirms the existence of the external world while solipsism denies the existence of the external world, then even on Scripturalist assumptions no Christian has a justified true belief in the external world unless he can circumvent solipsism. And a Scripturalist can’t very well invoke the Bible to refute solipsism, for the Bible presupposes the existence of the external world–which is the very thing solipsism denies!
Likewise, Cartesian demons aren’t limited to sensory perception. Cartesian demons can be unleashed to bedevil absolute idealism.
The Scripturalist thinks that Jn 3:16 is a divine promise, but that idea was implanted in his mind by a Cartesian demon. How can Clark or Gerety disprove that hypothetical?
Hypothetically speaking, maybe Jesus had an imposter twin. Maybe his imposter twin was crucified. Maybe his imposter twin rose from the dead. Maybe the apostolic eyewitnesses to the crucifixion and Resurrection were (unbeknownst to them) actually witnessing his imposter twin.
Can Clark or Gerety disprove that hypothetical?
v) What about the possibility of overlooking a negation (“not”) in a sentence? To begin with, Clark expressed his opposition to sense knowledge in the form of sentences.
How can a Scripturalist make a case for Scripturalism without expressing himself in sentences? If you can’t articulate your case for Scripturalism without resorting to linguistic tokens, then the possibility of overlooking a negation vitiates the verbal case for Scripturalism.
vi) What about the reliability of memory? If a Clarkian questions the reliability of memory, that isn’t limited to empiricism. The same skepticism will infect Scripturalism.
Scripturalism equates knowledge with deducing propositions from Scripture. But that involves an act of memory. If you misremember the premise, you don’t know if the conclusion was validly inferred from the premise.
vii) The upshot is that if we take Clark’s skepticism seriously, not only would that prove the impossibility of empiricism, it would also and equally disprove the impossibility of Scripturalism.
Continuing with Gerety:
“For Clark, the acquisition of knowledge is not a sensory process and those who insist on a role for sensation are just begging the question. He argued that it is the Divine Logos ‘which lighteth every man’ and that Christ alone is the sin qua non of knowledge, not sensation.”
i) Clark’s appeal to Jn 1:9 is begging the question unless Clark can account for how he acquired his knowledge of Jn 1:9.
ii) Jn 1:9 was written in Greek. You can’t know Jn 1:9 in the original unless you know Greek. Knowledge of Greek involves a knowledge of comparative Greek usage. That’s inductive.
iii) Clark also misinterprets his prooftext. In context, Jn 1:9 has reference, not to general revelation, but special revelation.
“Clark writes: 'With less literary flourish than Malebranche’s peroration one may summarize by saying that truth concerns Ideas, Ideas are in God, and the mind can perceive them only there. These Ideas are alone the objects of thought. Nor can sensory images in any way be transformed into truth. In the language of antiquity and of modernity, abstract concepts can never be derived from sensory images. Though different human beings may and must have different sensations — for your pain is not mine — there is only one set or world of Ideas. It is the system of God’s mind, and we can see them only there'.”
Several problems:
i) How does Clark access divine ideas? Is Clark divine? If divine ideas inhere in God’s mind, how are they available to Gordon Clark?
He can’t appeal to the scriptures, for these are empirical objects.
ii) How does Clark know that different humans have different sensations? Does he mean that each normal human being has its own set of sense organs? I have a pair of eyes. You have a pair of eyes. Your eyes are different from mine?
If, so, how would Clark know, apart from using his own sensory receptors, that each human has his own set of sensory receptors? And doesn’t that also involve an inductive generalization?
iii) Clark fails to distinguish between raw stimuli and the use of sensory media to encode ideas in the form of sentences. Even if, for the sake of argument, you deny that raw stimuli can’t convey abstract concepts, it doesn’t follow that encoded stimuli can’t convey abstract concepts either.
Indeed, Clark is using encoded stimuli (written words) to transfer abstract concepts from his mind to the mind of the reader.
iv) Furthermore, it isn’t obvious why raw stimuli can’t be a source of abstract concepts. If I count 999 black ravens, then I form an abstract concept on the basis of my observation.
I observe 999 instances. I attach a number to my observations. That’s an abstract concept.
This doesn’t tell me that every raven is black. And I don’t derive my concept of enumeration from seeing a series of black ravens. But as a result of observing 999 ravens, I did form an abstract concept.
Likewise, if I play a game of pool, I observe a correlation between a given action and a given reaction. I don’t observe cause-and-effect. But I do observe a correlation. That’s an abstract concept.
Continuing with Gerety:
“Another way to think of Clark’s view, and one I think most Christians can easily grasp, is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith which states that belief in the truth of Scripture rests ultimately on ‘the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts’.”
This is a bait-and-switch tactic. There’s a fundamental difference between what makes something true or knowable, and what makes something believable. Belief is a relation between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge. That’s distinct from whether the object of knowledge is true. Or whether a given truth is an object of knowledge (i.e. knowable).
“As Clark would repeat over and over, the Scriptures are not black ink marks on white pages in a black book. They are the eternal thoughts of God. Ink marks may provide an occasion by which we might come to know some of God’s thoughts, even to the saving of our souls, but the ink marks themselves reveal nothing.”
Is that what Scripture says about itself?
“Dr. W. Gary Crampton in his book, The Scripturalism of Gordon Clark, defends Clark’s position this way: God’s Word is eternal; the printed pages of the Bible are not. The letters or words on the printed page are signs or symbols which signify the eternal truth which is the mind of God, and which is communicated by God directly and immediately to the minds of men…Since all knowledge is propositional, and since the senses interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot originate, be conveyed by, or be derived from sensation.”
i) Where does Scripture ever tell us that “the senses interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot originate, be conveyed by, or be derived from sensation”?
That is not a Scriptural claim. That’s an extrascriptural claim.
ii) If the word of God is “communicated by God directly and immediately to the minds of men,” then the scriptures are superfluous. Clarkian epistemology represents a full-frontal assault on the Bible.
It’s far more radical than Fosdick or Bultmann or Spong. It’s an attack on the credibility of every single clause in the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation.
iii) Does God upload the content of Scripture directly into the mind of every Christian? When does this occur, actly? Is this given in regeneration? Is every Christian a walking Bible, with every single verse at his cognitive fingertips?
iv) Or is this some form of occasionalism? If so, that has it’s own problems. To name a few:
a) Where does Scripture teach occasionalism?
b) Which version of the Bible does God upload?
c) Suppose a Christian is reading a unisex version of the Bible, like the TNIV. Does my idea of God’s word correspond to that occasional prop?
d) What if one Christian is reading an edition with the short ending of Mark while another Christian is reading an edition with the long ending of Mark. Does occasionalism upload rival editions?
“Ink marks, various pitched sounds, Braille, Morse code, sinographs, and whatever else that might be used to communicate are arbitrary conventions, and, in and of themselves, are meaningless signs signifying nothing. Black marks are neither true or false and cannot be properly the objects of knowledge for the simple reason that only propositions can be either true or false. Ink marks have meaning only insofar as rational minds assign them meaning.”
So what? There’s a reason why language is called symbolic discourse. The relation between word and object is a social convention.
To say these linguistic tokens are meaningless in and of themselves is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
It’s like a game of cards. By common consent, certain values are assigned to certain cards–from the deuce of clubs to the ace of spades. Same thing with chess.
Clark was reputed to be a fine chess-player. That involves the assignment of a distinctive “power” or set of “powers” to each chess piece. That’s a truth: an analytical truth. Truth by definition.
Analytical truths have their limitations. It’s not a good way to do history or science.
But it’s perfectly appropriate for games and sports and linguistic activities.
As a result, you can make truth-valued statements about a game of cards or a game of chess. Unless that’s possible, Gordon Clark could never win a game of chess. To win at chess, he had to form “justified true beliefs” about the various powers of the various chess pieces.
“Clark argued that if someone thinks there are truths embedded in ink scratches or which can somehow be derived by sensing them should provide some sort of argument to show how, starting with any number of black marks, they can arrive at any universal truth such as, ‘all men are sinners.’ Yet, not one of Clark’s critics even tried to overcome his challenge and to this day Clark’s critics merely beg the question when insisting on a role for sensation in the acquisition of knowledge.”
Is this paragraph true or false? Gerety’s statement is a series of linguistic tokens. Do these linguistic tokens embed truth-valued propositions?
He accuses us of “begging the question.” But “begging the question” is a verbal phrase. So Gerety is begging the question when he uses that verbal phrase to deny the truth-value of linguistic propositions.
Poor little Gerety keeps banging his birdbrain against the same window. He never tires of smashing his avian skull into that window.
In his post, Sean attacks the notion that ink marks on a page convey knowledge. To make his case, Sean uses ink marks on a page to prove that ink marks on a page can’t prove anything.
Well, to be more precise, he uses electronically simulated ink marks on a page to prove that ink marks on a page can’t prove anything.
Assuming that Sean’s demonstration is successful, we can safely disregard his entire post, since his entire post consists of ink marks on a page.
Indeed, we can safely disregard his entire blog. Why bother to read his blog when his blog consists of electronically simulated ink marks on a page?
But, for the sake of argument, let’s waive his self-defeating exercise and press ahead.
“Which brings me to what may be the biggest hurdle most people have in coming to grips with Clark’s biblical epistemology and that is his complete rejection of the belief that sensation plays a role in knowledge. Needless to say, the rejection of sensation in the acquisition of knowledge seems counter-intuitive and not at all in accord with so-called ‘common-sense.’ Didn’t God give us sensations and sense organs so that we might come to know Him? Well, not necessarily. After all, and as Clark would say, God gave us stomachs too, but that doesn’t mean that stomachs have an epistemic function…although he was quick to add that it’s hard to study if you don’t eat.”
i) Is that supposed to be an intelligent response? What does that comparison amount to? Is that supposed to be an argument from analogy?
But when the question at issue is sense-knowledge, why think a stomach is analogous to an eye or ear? A stomach is not a sensory organ. It wasn’t designed to perceive the external world.
Gerety might as well say: “Didn’t silversmiths give us steak knives to cut steaks with? Well, not necessarily. After all, and as Clark would say, silversmiths gave us forks and spoons too, but that doesn’t mean you can cut a steak with a spoon.”
Well, suppose you can’t cut a steak with a spoon. Does that also mean you can’t cut a steak with a steak knife? Does that mean a steak knife wasn’t designed to cut steak?
What possesses Gerety to think that Clark’s reply is any sort of counterargument to the issue at hand?
ii) But suppose, for the sake of argument, that we accept the comparison. While a stomach isn’t a sensory organ, per se, a stomach does sense certain things. If you drink a nauseating fluid, the stomach will make you feel nauseous. So even a stomach is a source of sense-knowledge.
“But don’t we have to read the Bible with the eyes in our heads? Clark’s critics routinely argue that even if we accept Clark’s position that knowledge is limited to those things set down in Scripture and their necessary inferences, don’t we first have to read the Bible with our eyes? Or, to put it another way, isn’t knowledge necessarily mediated through the senses? Again, not so fast. Clark would reply, and in good lawyerly fashion, by answering this question with the question: How do you know you even have a Bible in your hands?”
Several problems with that response:
i) Is that a Scriptural objection to sense-knowledge? Does the Bible ever pose that question?
ii) According to the Book of Acts, Paul would go into synagogues and reason with his fellow Jews from the Scriptures. Suppose one of his listeners tried to deflect Paul’s appeal by saying: “Paul, how do you know you even have a scroll of Isaiah in your hands?”
Does Gerety think that would be a sound objection to Paul’s practice? Is Paul begging the question by waiving their own copy of Isaiah in their face? Quoting from the scroll which the synagogue kept in its own library?
Gerety isn’t raising a scriptural objection to sense knowledge. Quite the contrary. Gerety is raising an extrascriptural objection to sense knowledge.
iv) What is more, he’s raising an extrascriptural objection to the scriptures. To the written record of God’s word. When a Christian turns to the Bible to quote a passage of Scripture, Gerety’s response is to say, “How do you know you even have a Bible in your hands?”
How in the world does Gerety think that’s a Christian response to the possibility of sense-knowledge?
v) Answering a question with a question is not an answer: rather, it’s a way of ducking the question.
Clark is trying to shift the burden of proof. But even if his opponent ought to be able to answer Clark’s question, that doesn’t absolve Clark of the corresponding requirement to answer the opponent’s question. And even if his opponent were unable to answer Clark’s question, that doesn’t absolve Clark (or Gerety) of shouldering his own burden of proof.
“To which Clark replied: The substantial question is how do we know the contents of the Bible. If Louis XIV or my wife could be replaced with an imposter twin, then maybe the Bible in my hand is a cunningly devised substitute. Mavrodes lays this on rather heavily, and I am glad that he does. So few people are willing to give the point any serious attention. He also mentions, and I wish he had discussed, solipsism; there are also the skeptical arguments of Carneades and Aenesidemus; and as well Descartes’ omnipotent deceptive demon. In fact, until these arguments are successfully circumvented, no one has a firm basis on which to object to my general position… I must point out that he has not met the issue when he says, ‘Sense experience is required for the derivation of such [Biblical] belief’ and ‘every consistent epistemology which assigns a role to the Bible…must assign a role of equal scope and in precisely the same area to sense perception.’ To make such assertions presupposes satisfactory answers to Aenesidemus and Descartes’ demon. Can it be shown that an imposter twin is impossible? Can we be sure that we have not overlooked a ‘not’ in the sentence? There are even greater empirical scandals than these. How can one prove the reliability of memory? Any test designed to show which memory is true and which is mistaken presupposes that a previous memory is true – and this is the point in question. In large measure the psychological force of my position derives from the impossibility of empiricism.”
Several more problems:
i) Once again, how does citing the objections of Carneades, Aenesidemus, and Descartes to sense-knowledge constitute a Scriptural objection to sense-knowledge? These are secular objections. Extrascriptural objections. Pagan objections!
But, according to Scripturalism, extrascriptural objections wouldn’t be knowledgeable objections. At best they’d be merely opinionated objections, and, at worst, ignorant objections. Moreover, you can’t tell which is which.
So why is a Christian “empiricist” obliged to answer objections to sense-knowledge which, according to Scripturalism, are nothing more than philosophers opining against sense-knowledge? These are merely the opinions of Carneades, Aenesidemus, and Descartes. But unless their arguments are demonstrably true, why is a Christian “empiricist” obligated to refute them?
ii) Suppose a Christian layman can’t circumvent the objections of Carneades and Aenesidemus? So what? Does Scripture require a Christian to be able to refute philosophical objections to sense-knowledge?
iii) Suppose a Christian layman, or even a Christian philosopher, can’t disprove a skeptical thought-experiment? So what? Does Scripture require us to refute skeptical thought-experiments?
For that matter, is it the case that we can’t know anything or justifiably believe anything unless we can refute a skeptical thought-experiment?
Why should we make that artificial demand a precondition of knowledge or warranted belief?
iv) What about solipsism? What about Cartesian demons? These aren’t objections to empiricism, per se. These could just as well be deployed against Scripturalism.
If Scripturalism affirms the existence of the external world while solipsism denies the existence of the external world, then even on Scripturalist assumptions no Christian has a justified true belief in the external world unless he can circumvent solipsism. And a Scripturalist can’t very well invoke the Bible to refute solipsism, for the Bible presupposes the existence of the external world–which is the very thing solipsism denies!
Likewise, Cartesian demons aren’t limited to sensory perception. Cartesian demons can be unleashed to bedevil absolute idealism.
The Scripturalist thinks that Jn 3:16 is a divine promise, but that idea was implanted in his mind by a Cartesian demon. How can Clark or Gerety disprove that hypothetical?
Hypothetically speaking, maybe Jesus had an imposter twin. Maybe his imposter twin was crucified. Maybe his imposter twin rose from the dead. Maybe the apostolic eyewitnesses to the crucifixion and Resurrection were (unbeknownst to them) actually witnessing his imposter twin.
Can Clark or Gerety disprove that hypothetical?
v) What about the possibility of overlooking a negation (“not”) in a sentence? To begin with, Clark expressed his opposition to sense knowledge in the form of sentences.
How can a Scripturalist make a case for Scripturalism without expressing himself in sentences? If you can’t articulate your case for Scripturalism without resorting to linguistic tokens, then the possibility of overlooking a negation vitiates the verbal case for Scripturalism.
vi) What about the reliability of memory? If a Clarkian questions the reliability of memory, that isn’t limited to empiricism. The same skepticism will infect Scripturalism.
Scripturalism equates knowledge with deducing propositions from Scripture. But that involves an act of memory. If you misremember the premise, you don’t know if the conclusion was validly inferred from the premise.
vii) The upshot is that if we take Clark’s skepticism seriously, not only would that prove the impossibility of empiricism, it would also and equally disprove the impossibility of Scripturalism.
Continuing with Gerety:
“For Clark, the acquisition of knowledge is not a sensory process and those who insist on a role for sensation are just begging the question. He argued that it is the Divine Logos ‘which lighteth every man’ and that Christ alone is the sin qua non of knowledge, not sensation.”
i) Clark’s appeal to Jn 1:9 is begging the question unless Clark can account for how he acquired his knowledge of Jn 1:9.
ii) Jn 1:9 was written in Greek. You can’t know Jn 1:9 in the original unless you know Greek. Knowledge of Greek involves a knowledge of comparative Greek usage. That’s inductive.
iii) Clark also misinterprets his prooftext. In context, Jn 1:9 has reference, not to general revelation, but special revelation.
“Clark writes: 'With less literary flourish than Malebranche’s peroration one may summarize by saying that truth concerns Ideas, Ideas are in God, and the mind can perceive them only there. These Ideas are alone the objects of thought. Nor can sensory images in any way be transformed into truth. In the language of antiquity and of modernity, abstract concepts can never be derived from sensory images. Though different human beings may and must have different sensations — for your pain is not mine — there is only one set or world of Ideas. It is the system of God’s mind, and we can see them only there'.”
Several problems:
i) How does Clark access divine ideas? Is Clark divine? If divine ideas inhere in God’s mind, how are they available to Gordon Clark?
He can’t appeal to the scriptures, for these are empirical objects.
ii) How does Clark know that different humans have different sensations? Does he mean that each normal human being has its own set of sense organs? I have a pair of eyes. You have a pair of eyes. Your eyes are different from mine?
If, so, how would Clark know, apart from using his own sensory receptors, that each human has his own set of sensory receptors? And doesn’t that also involve an inductive generalization?
iii) Clark fails to distinguish between raw stimuli and the use of sensory media to encode ideas in the form of sentences. Even if, for the sake of argument, you deny that raw stimuli can’t convey abstract concepts, it doesn’t follow that encoded stimuli can’t convey abstract concepts either.
Indeed, Clark is using encoded stimuli (written words) to transfer abstract concepts from his mind to the mind of the reader.
iv) Furthermore, it isn’t obvious why raw stimuli can’t be a source of abstract concepts. If I count 999 black ravens, then I form an abstract concept on the basis of my observation.
I observe 999 instances. I attach a number to my observations. That’s an abstract concept.
This doesn’t tell me that every raven is black. And I don’t derive my concept of enumeration from seeing a series of black ravens. But as a result of observing 999 ravens, I did form an abstract concept.
Likewise, if I play a game of pool, I observe a correlation between a given action and a given reaction. I don’t observe cause-and-effect. But I do observe a correlation. That’s an abstract concept.
Continuing with Gerety:
“Another way to think of Clark’s view, and one I think most Christians can easily grasp, is found in the Westminster Confession of Faith which states that belief in the truth of Scripture rests ultimately on ‘the inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts’.”
This is a bait-and-switch tactic. There’s a fundamental difference between what makes something true or knowable, and what makes something believable. Belief is a relation between the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge. That’s distinct from whether the object of knowledge is true. Or whether a given truth is an object of knowledge (i.e. knowable).
“As Clark would repeat over and over, the Scriptures are not black ink marks on white pages in a black book. They are the eternal thoughts of God. Ink marks may provide an occasion by which we might come to know some of God’s thoughts, even to the saving of our souls, but the ink marks themselves reveal nothing.”
Is that what Scripture says about itself?
“Dr. W. Gary Crampton in his book, The Scripturalism of Gordon Clark, defends Clark’s position this way: God’s Word is eternal; the printed pages of the Bible are not. The letters or words on the printed page are signs or symbols which signify the eternal truth which is the mind of God, and which is communicated by God directly and immediately to the minds of men…Since all knowledge is propositional, and since the senses interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot originate, be conveyed by, or be derived from sensation.”
i) Where does Scripture ever tell us that “the senses interacting with creation yield no propositions, knowledge cannot originate, be conveyed by, or be derived from sensation”?
That is not a Scriptural claim. That’s an extrascriptural claim.
ii) If the word of God is “communicated by God directly and immediately to the minds of men,” then the scriptures are superfluous. Clarkian epistemology represents a full-frontal assault on the Bible.
It’s far more radical than Fosdick or Bultmann or Spong. It’s an attack on the credibility of every single clause in the scriptures, from Genesis to Revelation.
iii) Does God upload the content of Scripture directly into the mind of every Christian? When does this occur, actly? Is this given in regeneration? Is every Christian a walking Bible, with every single verse at his cognitive fingertips?
iv) Or is this some form of occasionalism? If so, that has it’s own problems. To name a few:
a) Where does Scripture teach occasionalism?
b) Which version of the Bible does God upload?
c) Suppose a Christian is reading a unisex version of the Bible, like the TNIV. Does my idea of God’s word correspond to that occasional prop?
d) What if one Christian is reading an edition with the short ending of Mark while another Christian is reading an edition with the long ending of Mark. Does occasionalism upload rival editions?
“Ink marks, various pitched sounds, Braille, Morse code, sinographs, and whatever else that might be used to communicate are arbitrary conventions, and, in and of themselves, are meaningless signs signifying nothing. Black marks are neither true or false and cannot be properly the objects of knowledge for the simple reason that only propositions can be either true or false. Ink marks have meaning only insofar as rational minds assign them meaning.”
So what? There’s a reason why language is called symbolic discourse. The relation between word and object is a social convention.
To say these linguistic tokens are meaningless in and of themselves is irrelevant to the issue at hand.
It’s like a game of cards. By common consent, certain values are assigned to certain cards–from the deuce of clubs to the ace of spades. Same thing with chess.
Clark was reputed to be a fine chess-player. That involves the assignment of a distinctive “power” or set of “powers” to each chess piece. That’s a truth: an analytical truth. Truth by definition.
Analytical truths have their limitations. It’s not a good way to do history or science.
But it’s perfectly appropriate for games and sports and linguistic activities.
As a result, you can make truth-valued statements about a game of cards or a game of chess. Unless that’s possible, Gordon Clark could never win a game of chess. To win at chess, he had to form “justified true beliefs” about the various powers of the various chess pieces.
“Clark argued that if someone thinks there are truths embedded in ink scratches or which can somehow be derived by sensing them should provide some sort of argument to show how, starting with any number of black marks, they can arrive at any universal truth such as, ‘all men are sinners.’ Yet, not one of Clark’s critics even tried to overcome his challenge and to this day Clark’s critics merely beg the question when insisting on a role for sensation in the acquisition of knowledge.”
Is this paragraph true or false? Gerety’s statement is a series of linguistic tokens. Do these linguistic tokens embed truth-valued propositions?
He accuses us of “begging the question.” But “begging the question” is a verbal phrase. So Gerety is begging the question when he uses that verbal phrase to deny the truth-value of linguistic propositions.
Poor little Gerety keeps banging his birdbrain against the same window. He never tires of smashing his avian skull into that window.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
You're dethpicable!
Sean Gerety has done a post in response to me and others:
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/vantillian-shadow-boxing-round-one/
Cutting the dead wood, I’ll comment on his major claims:
But how can he possibly know this?…Beyond that, Manata has no way of knowing that the Bible contains even one “unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer.”
i) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this is an accurate description of Manata’s position. Let’s further assume, for the sake of argument, that this is, indeed, a consequence of Manata’s position.
So the basic objection is that we should reject Manata’s position if a consequence of his position is that Manata can’t know what the Bible says about this or that.
Now, assuming that this consequence is sufficient to invalidate Manata’s position, it’s equally sufficient to invalidate Sean’s position. If Scripturalism is true, then Sean can’t know a single thing about the Bible. He can’t know anything the Bible says. Indeed, he cannot knowingly distinguish a Bible from a Koran or Playboy magazine or Mad magazine.
ii) If the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then Sean can’t get past the subject/object duality. Scripture would be the object of knowledge, but the subject of knowledge (e.g. Sean) would be an extrabiblical entity. So how could an extrabiblical subject of knowledge ever come to know the biblical object of knowledge if the Bible is the only source of knowledge?
iii) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through the use of his senses, for Scripturalism rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. The Bible is the only source of knowledge.
iv) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through innate knowledge, in part because he has no innate knowledge of the Bible. We’re not born knowing what the Bible teaches.
Indeed, that would undermine the very notion of a public, historic revelation. God revealed himself through the medium of speakers and writers. The spoken word and the written word. And the written word is also the record of the spoken word.
It was revealed to Christians via prophets and Apostles. Bible writers.
v) And even if, for the sake of argument, the knowledge of Scripture were innate, Scripturalism would reject that mode of knowledge–for in that case, Scripture would not be the only source of knowledge. Rather, the knowledge of Scripture would be mediated by the innate knowledge of the human mind. The human mind would be the immediate source of knowledge, and not the word of God.
If that isn’t enough to show the absurdity and blasphemy entailed in defending the idea of Biblical paradox, shall we revisit some of the incredible nonsense — along with outright and open heresies — some of these men have defended all in the name of “biblical paradox”? It is no coincidence that virtually all defenders of the false gospel of the Federal Vision are self-professed Vantilians. It’s no surprise either that virtually all of the Federal Vision opponents that happen to be Vantilians remain utterly incapable of doing anything to stop it’s advance and instead call the FV men currently disturbing the church “our brothers in Christ.” I guess one good paradox deserves another.
Three problems with this claim:
i) If Scripturalism is true, then Sean is in no position to know what Van Tilians believe. He’s in no position to know what Federal Visionaries believe. He’s in no position to impute the views of the Federal Vision to any Van Tilians.
Sean is like a drunk who keeps swearing off the bottle, only to find himself back in the saloon a day later. In one breath he vigorously asserts the tenets of Scripturalism, but in the next breath he relapses into extrabiblical assertions.
It’s hard for him to keep up the Scripturalist act 24/7. He keeps forgetting his lines. He keeps reverting to the default position of extrabiblical knowledge.
ii) Does he have any evidence that Anderson endorses the Federal Vision? Does he have any evidence that Sudduth endorses the Federal Vision?
Both Manata and I are on record repudiating the Federal Vision.
iii) While we’re on the subject of “outright and open heresies,” what about Clark’s pantheistic idealism, when he reduces human beings to nothing more than divine ideas? What about Clark’s modalism, when he collapses the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity (cf. The Incarnation, p55)?
Calling Manata out again on his sinful treatment of Clark, who was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century.
Is that a fact? No. Not on Scripturalist grounds. Does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that Clark was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century? Obviously not.
That is simply Sean’s opinion. And opinion which falls short of knowledge. An opinion that he can’t even probabilify.
For all he knows, Clark might just as well be the least important Christian thinker of the last century. For all he knows, Clark may not even be a Christian thinker. For all he knows, Clark may be a Scientologist.
If Scripturalism is true, these extrascriptural assertions fall short of knowledge. If Scripturalism is true, then you can’t even rank extrascriptural assertions according to probable degrees of truth.
Hence, one man’s opinion is no better than another man’s opinion.
And Robbins, who was Clark’s most able and best known defender, became the catalyst for another tired attack on Scripturalist epistemology.
If Robbins was his most able defender, then the case for Clark’s position weak indeed!
Now, I never claimed that one could know that Clark, Robbins, or even Manata exist.
If Scripturalism is true, then he can’t even know that Adam, Abraham, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ever existed.
Heck, he can’t even know if Jesus ever existed. He may opine that Jesus existed, but his opinion is no better than the contrary opinion of Richard Carrier.
Frankly, since the word “exists” can be predicated on everything from hallucinations to Klingons, I would argue that everything exists. Regardless, perhaps “Gordon Clark” was the nom de plume of some ghost writer. I honestly have no way of knowing. Seeing that Paul Manata has posted under the name Tom Bombadil, perhaps Bombadil is really Manata or perhaps both are Steve Hays? The Internet is a funny place. Yet, somehow men like Hays and Manata think that if I cannot account for the existence of a given person apart from Scripture and can’t “know” they exist in the sense of a justified true belief, then any opinion I may have of these men, even if true, is therefore moot.
Frankly, Sean can’t even “give an account” of how he knows Scripture. For Scripturalism, Scripture is like a safe with all the right answers on the inside. But we lack the combination to open the safe.
I have to wonder if these men while claiming to be Christians (something I also cannot know, but can only presume) would agree that Scripture does in fact prohibit false witness along with slander in many places including Colossians 3:8; “But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.”
Agree on what grounds? Scripturalist grounds? On Scripturalist grounds, we can’t say that Scripture prohibits false witness or slander. We can’t know what Scripture says because we can’t “give an account” of how we know that–if Scripturalism is true. We can’t give an empirical account of how we know that since Scripture rejects sense knowledge. And we can’t give an intuitive account of how we know that since we’re not born with a knowledge of Scripture.
For all we know, a la Scripturalism, Scripture commends and commands slander and false witness.
So, the question is, does Manata and Hays think Gordon Clark and John Robbins are men? Notice, the question is not do they know they are men? This is important, because Hays is correct, if Manata really thinks Clark is a fictional character, then he can’t libel Clark anymore than he can libel Tinkerbell.
On the other hand, Manata has given no indication that he thinks Clark is a fictional character, therefore if Manata thinks Clark was a man he is under the command of Scripture not to slander Clark (libel being just slander in written form) and is therefore guilty of sin.
Bracketing, for the moment, the pesky fact that, by his own admission, Sean can’t possibly know what he’s talking about, does this consequence actually follow from Scripture?
Suppose that Manata bore false witness against Daffy Duck. And suppose Manata happens to believe that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky, person.
According to Scripture, has Manata sinned against Daffy Duck? Can you sin against a fictitious character?
Where does Scriptural explicitly or implicitly address the sin of slandering a fictitious character? Does a fictitious character have a reputation to protect?
In Scripture, bearing false witness is a judicial term. Would Scripture view Daffy Duck as a bona fide defendant in a court of law?
What if Manata compares Daffy Duck to a drug dealer? Is that a sin? Although Daffy Duck might regard that comparison as “dethpicable,” I don’t see that Biblical jurisprudence would convict Manata for defamation of animated characters.
However, I’ll grant you that Sean has opened my eyes to a very creative way of looking at Biblical jurisprudence. In future, I’ll be far more circumspect when I venture to opine about Tweety Bird or Pepé Le Pew.
I’d also add, in passing, that if Manata was actually under the impression that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky person, then it seems to me that his delusion would be, at the very least, an extenuating circumstances if not, indeed, an exculpatory circumstance.
The argument would be simply:
Scripture teaches that slander/libel is sin
Manata slandered/libeled Clark
Manata sinned against Clark
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, there are three little problems with his three-step argument. Sean can’t prove the major premise. He can’t prove the minor premise. Hence, even if the conclusion follows from the premises, the argument is unsound.
But aside from the drab little fact that Sean’s three-step argument happens to be a misstep every step of the way, it’s a pretty impressive argument. Far be it from me to quibble over these niggling details.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Clark is a man or that he exists. If Manata thinks Clark is a man then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Clark.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Daffy Duck is a duck or that he exists. If Manata thinks Daffy is a duck then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Daffy.
Either that or explain how painting Clark as the philosphical equivalent of a crank dealer looking to create a bunch of strung out Scripturalist tweekers isn’t libel?
i) Maybe because it’s a figurative analogy. Sean has yet to show how Manata’s figurative analogy is even mistaken, much less deliberately and maliciously false. It’s undoubtedly provocative, but the Bible itself is chock-full of provocative metaphors (e.g. the whore of Babylon).
ii) BTW, it’s not as if John Robbins was this lamb-like figure whose commentary on his theological opponents resembled a Hallmark greeting card. Indeed, some of his opponents would say that Robbins libeled them.
All men are sinners.
Michael Sudduth is a man.
Therefore, Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
There are two little problems with this syllogism:
i) It’s deceptive to cast the argument in terms of a categorical syllogism. That takes the major and minor premises for granted, as if these were true. But Scripturalism is in no position to affirm the truth of either premise.
Hence, if the argument were true to the tenets of Scripturalism, it ought to be cast in terms of a hypothetical syllogism:
If all men are sinners,
And Michael Sudduth is a man,
Then Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. A valid argument is not a sound argument. Validity is a necessary, but insufficient, condition of a sound argument.
Unless a Scripturalist can demonstrate the truth of the major and minor premises, the validity of the argument is irrelevant. Take a comparison:
If all ducks are sinners,
And Daffy is a duck,
Then Daffy Duck is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
Do you deny that Michael Sudduth is a man? If so, you have a problem.
No, Scripturalism has a problem with that claim. Scripturalism can’t prove from Scripture that all men are sinners, since Scripturalism can’t know what Scripture teaches. And it can’t know anything about Michael Sudduth.
It matters not that Scripture nowhere says that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you think you are a man, you are required by the syllogism to think that you are a sinner.
The syllogism remains valid however you arrived at the conclusion that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you happen to think you are an angel, Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. You have excluded yourself from salvation. It matters not whether you have knowledge or true belief of the minor premise. The conclusion follows. The syllogism is valid.
i) The syllogism about Daffy Duck (see above) is valid too. What if a man happens to think he’s Daffy Duck? Is he thereby required to think he’s a talking duck?
ii) Does the Bible require me to hold false beliefs as long as they are validly derived from false premises? Is it my epistemic duty to believe a false conclusion if it’s a valid conclusion?
Seems to me that, according to Scripture, it’s my epistemic duty to recant a false belief.
To do that, Hays or Manata would have to show that the Scriptures really do teach insoluble paradoxes that are forever beyond the bar of human reason. This would admittedly render the Scriptures, taken in and of themselves and as the axiom or starting point for the Christian faith, contradictory and self refuting because we would know then at least some of Scripture is false. That’s because one side of any given contradiction must be, and not may be, false.
Several issues:
i) That’s not my position. My position is that we shouldn’t come to Scripture with an extrascriptural presumption regarding the presence or absence of revealed paradoxes. Rather, we should find out what God has revealed. Our posture is to listen and learn. Not superimpose an extrascriptural presumption on the nature of what God is permitted to tell us.
ii) Ironically, Sean’s a priori opposition to Scriptural paradox is a violation of Scripturalism itself. He is assuming, apart from Scripture, what it is possible for Scripture to disclose. Fitting Scripture with an extrascriptural muzzle.
iii) Sean is resorting to the same methodology as a Catholic apologist. Stipulate an unacceptable consequence. Then confabulate a religious epistemology to avoid the stipulative consequence.
iv) I myself am not a big fan of theological paradox. That said, there’s no antecedent objection to theological paradox.
v) Apropos (iv), before we get to the question of what is possible as a matter of revelation, we ought to ask what is possible as a matter of reality. Revelation is a revelation about reality. If reality is paradoxical, then it wouldn’t be surprising if revelation is paradoxical.
vi) Apropos (v), paradox is a common feature of human experience in science, mathematics, and logic. It often requires great ingenuity to resolve a prima facie paradox, and some prima facie paradoxes remain unresolved despite the best efforts of the best minds.
This phenomenon figures in some very abstract disciplines, where pure reason reigns supreme.
vii) Apropos (vi), if reality confronts us with a variety of prima facie paradoxes, then there’s no prior expectation that revelation would be devoid of prima facie paradoxes since revelation is a revelation of reality–albeit a partial revelation thereof.
viii) The obvious reason for this impression is that reality is far more complex than the human mind. It seems to me that paradox is a predictable result of a finite mind that’s attempting to grasp an object of knowledge that’s far more complex than the subject of knowledge.
ix) By contrast, the mind of God is infinitely more complex than mundane reality, while abstract objects are isometric with his own mental complexity. Hence, what is paradoxical for the human mind would not be paradoxical for the divine mind.
x) This doesn’t begin to mean the paradoxical teachings of Scripture, if there are any, are false. Sean is equivocating. A prima facie paradox is not the same thing as an actual contradiction.
ix) Finally, even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the presence of insoluble, prima facie paradoxes in Scripture, what practical difficulty does that actually pose? Even if we can’t grasp how the relata interrelate, we can grasp and affirm each relatum. For example, we can know what it means for Jesus to have a human nature and a divine nature, even if we can’t exactly put the two together.
Perhaps if men like Manata, Anderson and Hays spent more time trying to solve any of the remaining the so-called “paradoxes of Scripture,” rather than attributing them to “an unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer,” they might actually contribute something worthwhile to Christ’s church.
A few more issues:
i) While it’s flattering to be classed with Anderson, I’m a Lilliputian to his Gulliver.
ii) As for Manata, it’s only a matter of time before he leaves me in the dust. In fact, I often have to dust off my windshield as I try to play catch up.
iii) I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time on alleged contradictions. Unlike Sean, I don’t talk about it–I do it.
iv) Sean is just a poseur. He plays the role of a Christian rationalist, yet something is missing: he’s long on rhetoric, but short on reasons.
Indeed, he’s the flipside of Hitchens and Dawkins. One is struck by the gaping chasm between the intellectual pretension and the intellectual performance. A wealth of rhetorical flourishes to camouflage the poverty of argumentation.
Sean keeps harping on Manata’s alleged slander because that’s a face-saving device. Since Sean can’t actually argue for his position, he covers his ignominious retreat with show of moral outrage.
If the traditional formulations need improvement then they should be revised in the light of Scripture.
To revise the confessions in light of Scripture, you’d have to be in a position to know both the confessions and the Scriptures. Scripturalism denies the possibility of knowing either.
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/04/29/vantillian-shadow-boxing-round-one/
Cutting the dead wood, I’ll comment on his major claims:
But how can he possibly know this?…Beyond that, Manata has no way of knowing that the Bible contains even one “unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer.”
i) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that this is an accurate description of Manata’s position. Let’s further assume, for the sake of argument, that this is, indeed, a consequence of Manata’s position.
So the basic objection is that we should reject Manata’s position if a consequence of his position is that Manata can’t know what the Bible says about this or that.
Now, assuming that this consequence is sufficient to invalidate Manata’s position, it’s equally sufficient to invalidate Sean’s position. If Scripturalism is true, then Sean can’t know a single thing about the Bible. He can’t know anything the Bible says. Indeed, he cannot knowingly distinguish a Bible from a Koran or Playboy magazine or Mad magazine.
ii) If the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then Sean can’t get past the subject/object duality. Scripture would be the object of knowledge, but the subject of knowledge (e.g. Sean) would be an extrabiblical entity. So how could an extrabiblical subject of knowledge ever come to know the biblical object of knowledge if the Bible is the only source of knowledge?
iii) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through the use of his senses, for Scripturalism rejects the senses as a source of knowledge. The Bible is the only source of knowledge.
iv) He can’t learn what the Bible teaches through innate knowledge, in part because he has no innate knowledge of the Bible. We’re not born knowing what the Bible teaches.
Indeed, that would undermine the very notion of a public, historic revelation. God revealed himself through the medium of speakers and writers. The spoken word and the written word. And the written word is also the record of the spoken word.
It was revealed to Christians via prophets and Apostles. Bible writers.
v) And even if, for the sake of argument, the knowledge of Scripture were innate, Scripturalism would reject that mode of knowledge–for in that case, Scripture would not be the only source of knowledge. Rather, the knowledge of Scripture would be mediated by the innate knowledge of the human mind. The human mind would be the immediate source of knowledge, and not the word of God.
If that isn’t enough to show the absurdity and blasphemy entailed in defending the idea of Biblical paradox, shall we revisit some of the incredible nonsense — along with outright and open heresies — some of these men have defended all in the name of “biblical paradox”? It is no coincidence that virtually all defenders of the false gospel of the Federal Vision are self-professed Vantilians. It’s no surprise either that virtually all of the Federal Vision opponents that happen to be Vantilians remain utterly incapable of doing anything to stop it’s advance and instead call the FV men currently disturbing the church “our brothers in Christ.” I guess one good paradox deserves another.
Three problems with this claim:
i) If Scripturalism is true, then Sean is in no position to know what Van Tilians believe. He’s in no position to know what Federal Visionaries believe. He’s in no position to impute the views of the Federal Vision to any Van Tilians.
Sean is like a drunk who keeps swearing off the bottle, only to find himself back in the saloon a day later. In one breath he vigorously asserts the tenets of Scripturalism, but in the next breath he relapses into extrabiblical assertions.
It’s hard for him to keep up the Scripturalist act 24/7. He keeps forgetting his lines. He keeps reverting to the default position of extrabiblical knowledge.
ii) Does he have any evidence that Anderson endorses the Federal Vision? Does he have any evidence that Sudduth endorses the Federal Vision?
Both Manata and I are on record repudiating the Federal Vision.
iii) While we’re on the subject of “outright and open heresies,” what about Clark’s pantheistic idealism, when he reduces human beings to nothing more than divine ideas? What about Clark’s modalism, when he collapses the immanent Trinity into the economic Trinity (cf. The Incarnation, p55)?
Calling Manata out again on his sinful treatment of Clark, who was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century.
Is that a fact? No. Not on Scripturalist grounds. Does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that Clark was easily the most important Christian thinker of the last century? Obviously not.
That is simply Sean’s opinion. And opinion which falls short of knowledge. An opinion that he can’t even probabilify.
For all he knows, Clark might just as well be the least important Christian thinker of the last century. For all he knows, Clark may not even be a Christian thinker. For all he knows, Clark may be a Scientologist.
If Scripturalism is true, these extrascriptural assertions fall short of knowledge. If Scripturalism is true, then you can’t even rank extrascriptural assertions according to probable degrees of truth.
Hence, one man’s opinion is no better than another man’s opinion.
And Robbins, who was Clark’s most able and best known defender, became the catalyst for another tired attack on Scripturalist epistemology.
If Robbins was his most able defender, then the case for Clark’s position weak indeed!
Now, I never claimed that one could know that Clark, Robbins, or even Manata exist.
If Scripturalism is true, then he can’t even know that Adam, Abraham, David, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John ever existed.
Heck, he can’t even know if Jesus ever existed. He may opine that Jesus existed, but his opinion is no better than the contrary opinion of Richard Carrier.
Frankly, since the word “exists” can be predicated on everything from hallucinations to Klingons, I would argue that everything exists. Regardless, perhaps “Gordon Clark” was the nom de plume of some ghost writer. I honestly have no way of knowing. Seeing that Paul Manata has posted under the name Tom Bombadil, perhaps Bombadil is really Manata or perhaps both are Steve Hays? The Internet is a funny place. Yet, somehow men like Hays and Manata think that if I cannot account for the existence of a given person apart from Scripture and can’t “know” they exist in the sense of a justified true belief, then any opinion I may have of these men, even if true, is therefore moot.
Frankly, Sean can’t even “give an account” of how he knows Scripture. For Scripturalism, Scripture is like a safe with all the right answers on the inside. But we lack the combination to open the safe.
I have to wonder if these men while claiming to be Christians (something I also cannot know, but can only presume) would agree that Scripture does in fact prohibit false witness along with slander in many places including Colossians 3:8; “But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth.”
Agree on what grounds? Scripturalist grounds? On Scripturalist grounds, we can’t say that Scripture prohibits false witness or slander. We can’t know what Scripture says because we can’t “give an account” of how we know that–if Scripturalism is true. We can’t give an empirical account of how we know that since Scripture rejects sense knowledge. And we can’t give an intuitive account of how we know that since we’re not born with a knowledge of Scripture.
For all we know, a la Scripturalism, Scripture commends and commands slander and false witness.
So, the question is, does Manata and Hays think Gordon Clark and John Robbins are men? Notice, the question is not do they know they are men? This is important, because Hays is correct, if Manata really thinks Clark is a fictional character, then he can’t libel Clark anymore than he can libel Tinkerbell.
On the other hand, Manata has given no indication that he thinks Clark is a fictional character, therefore if Manata thinks Clark was a man he is under the command of Scripture not to slander Clark (libel being just slander in written form) and is therefore guilty of sin.
Bracketing, for the moment, the pesky fact that, by his own admission, Sean can’t possibly know what he’s talking about, does this consequence actually follow from Scripture?
Suppose that Manata bore false witness against Daffy Duck. And suppose Manata happens to believe that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky, person.
According to Scripture, has Manata sinned against Daffy Duck? Can you sin against a fictitious character?
Where does Scriptural explicitly or implicitly address the sin of slandering a fictitious character? Does a fictitious character have a reputation to protect?
In Scripture, bearing false witness is a judicial term. Would Scripture view Daffy Duck as a bona fide defendant in a court of law?
What if Manata compares Daffy Duck to a drug dealer? Is that a sin? Although Daffy Duck might regard that comparison as “dethpicable,” I don’t see that Biblical jurisprudence would convict Manata for defamation of animated characters.
However, I’ll grant you that Sean has opened my eyes to a very creative way of looking at Biblical jurisprudence. In future, I’ll be far more circumspect when I venture to opine about Tweety Bird or Pepé Le Pew.
I’d also add, in passing, that if Manata was actually under the impression that Daffy Duck is a real, albeit ducky person, then it seems to me that his delusion would be, at the very least, an extenuating circumstances if not, indeed, an exculpatory circumstance.
The argument would be simply:
Scripture teaches that slander/libel is sin
Manata slandered/libeled Clark
Manata sinned against Clark
Well, at the risk of being pedantic, there are three little problems with his three-step argument. Sean can’t prove the major premise. He can’t prove the minor premise. Hence, even if the conclusion follows from the premises, the argument is unsound.
But aside from the drab little fact that Sean’s three-step argument happens to be a misstep every step of the way, it’s a pretty impressive argument. Far be it from me to quibble over these niggling details.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Clark is a man or that he exists. If Manata thinks Clark is a man then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Clark.
Notice, it doesn’t matter if Manata or I know that Daffy Duck is a duck or that he exists. If Manata thinks Daffy is a duck then he is required by Scripture to admit he sinned against Daffy.
Either that or explain how painting Clark as the philosphical equivalent of a crank dealer looking to create a bunch of strung out Scripturalist tweekers isn’t libel?
i) Maybe because it’s a figurative analogy. Sean has yet to show how Manata’s figurative analogy is even mistaken, much less deliberately and maliciously false. It’s undoubtedly provocative, but the Bible itself is chock-full of provocative metaphors (e.g. the whore of Babylon).
ii) BTW, it’s not as if John Robbins was this lamb-like figure whose commentary on his theological opponents resembled a Hallmark greeting card. Indeed, some of his opponents would say that Robbins libeled them.
All men are sinners.
Michael Sudduth is a man.
Therefore, Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
There are two little problems with this syllogism:
i) It’s deceptive to cast the argument in terms of a categorical syllogism. That takes the major and minor premises for granted, as if these were true. But Scripturalism is in no position to affirm the truth of either premise.
Hence, if the argument were true to the tenets of Scripturalism, it ought to be cast in terms of a hypothetical syllogism:
If all men are sinners,
And Michael Sudduth is a man,
Then Michael Sudduth is a sinner.
ii) Which brings us to the next point. A valid argument is not a sound argument. Validity is a necessary, but insufficient, condition of a sound argument.
Unless a Scripturalist can demonstrate the truth of the major and minor premises, the validity of the argument is irrelevant. Take a comparison:
If all ducks are sinners,
And Daffy is a duck,
Then Daffy Duck is a sinner.
The syllogism is valid.
Do you deny that Michael Sudduth is a man? If so, you have a problem.
No, Scripturalism has a problem with that claim. Scripturalism can’t prove from Scripture that all men are sinners, since Scripturalism can’t know what Scripture teaches. And it can’t know anything about Michael Sudduth.
It matters not that Scripture nowhere says that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you think you are a man, you are required by the syllogism to think that you are a sinner.
The syllogism remains valid however you arrived at the conclusion that Michael Sudduth is a man. If you happen to think you are an angel, Christ came to save sinners, not the righteous. You have excluded yourself from salvation. It matters not whether you have knowledge or true belief of the minor premise. The conclusion follows. The syllogism is valid.
i) The syllogism about Daffy Duck (see above) is valid too. What if a man happens to think he’s Daffy Duck? Is he thereby required to think he’s a talking duck?
ii) Does the Bible require me to hold false beliefs as long as they are validly derived from false premises? Is it my epistemic duty to believe a false conclusion if it’s a valid conclusion?
Seems to me that, according to Scripture, it’s my epistemic duty to recant a false belief.
To do that, Hays or Manata would have to show that the Scriptures really do teach insoluble paradoxes that are forever beyond the bar of human reason. This would admittedly render the Scriptures, taken in and of themselves and as the axiom or starting point for the Christian faith, contradictory and self refuting because we would know then at least some of Scripture is false. That’s because one side of any given contradiction must be, and not may be, false.
Several issues:
i) That’s not my position. My position is that we shouldn’t come to Scripture with an extrascriptural presumption regarding the presence or absence of revealed paradoxes. Rather, we should find out what God has revealed. Our posture is to listen and learn. Not superimpose an extrascriptural presumption on the nature of what God is permitted to tell us.
ii) Ironically, Sean’s a priori opposition to Scriptural paradox is a violation of Scripturalism itself. He is assuming, apart from Scripture, what it is possible for Scripture to disclose. Fitting Scripture with an extrascriptural muzzle.
iii) Sean is resorting to the same methodology as a Catholic apologist. Stipulate an unacceptable consequence. Then confabulate a religious epistemology to avoid the stipulative consequence.
iv) I myself am not a big fan of theological paradox. That said, there’s no antecedent objection to theological paradox.
v) Apropos (iv), before we get to the question of what is possible as a matter of revelation, we ought to ask what is possible as a matter of reality. Revelation is a revelation about reality. If reality is paradoxical, then it wouldn’t be surprising if revelation is paradoxical.
vi) Apropos (v), paradox is a common feature of human experience in science, mathematics, and logic. It often requires great ingenuity to resolve a prima facie paradox, and some prima facie paradoxes remain unresolved despite the best efforts of the best minds.
This phenomenon figures in some very abstract disciplines, where pure reason reigns supreme.
vii) Apropos (vi), if reality confronts us with a variety of prima facie paradoxes, then there’s no prior expectation that revelation would be devoid of prima facie paradoxes since revelation is a revelation of reality–albeit a partial revelation thereof.
viii) The obvious reason for this impression is that reality is far more complex than the human mind. It seems to me that paradox is a predictable result of a finite mind that’s attempting to grasp an object of knowledge that’s far more complex than the subject of knowledge.
ix) By contrast, the mind of God is infinitely more complex than mundane reality, while abstract objects are isometric with his own mental complexity. Hence, what is paradoxical for the human mind would not be paradoxical for the divine mind.
x) This doesn’t begin to mean the paradoxical teachings of Scripture, if there are any, are false. Sean is equivocating. A prima facie paradox is not the same thing as an actual contradiction.
ix) Finally, even if, for the sake of argument, we grant the presence of insoluble, prima facie paradoxes in Scripture, what practical difficulty does that actually pose? Even if we can’t grasp how the relata interrelate, we can grasp and affirm each relatum. For example, we can know what it means for Jesus to have a human nature and a divine nature, even if we can’t exactly put the two together.
Perhaps if men like Manata, Anderson and Hays spent more time trying to solve any of the remaining the so-called “paradoxes of Scripture,” rather than attributing them to “an unarticulated equivocation on the part of the revealer,” they might actually contribute something worthwhile to Christ’s church.
A few more issues:
i) While it’s flattering to be classed with Anderson, I’m a Lilliputian to his Gulliver.
ii) As for Manata, it’s only a matter of time before he leaves me in the dust. In fact, I often have to dust off my windshield as I try to play catch up.
iii) I’ve actually spent a fair amount of time on alleged contradictions. Unlike Sean, I don’t talk about it–I do it.
iv) Sean is just a poseur. He plays the role of a Christian rationalist, yet something is missing: he’s long on rhetoric, but short on reasons.
Indeed, he’s the flipside of Hitchens and Dawkins. One is struck by the gaping chasm between the intellectual pretension and the intellectual performance. A wealth of rhetorical flourishes to camouflage the poverty of argumentation.
Sean keeps harping on Manata’s alleged slander because that’s a face-saving device. Since Sean can’t actually argue for his position, he covers his ignominious retreat with show of moral outrage.
If the traditional formulations need improvement then they should be revised in the light of Scripture.
To revise the confessions in light of Scripture, you’d have to be in a position to know both the confessions and the Scriptures. Scripturalism denies the possibility of knowing either.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Clarkian monophysitism
Some pages back a person was defined as a complex of propositions. A man is what he thinks, for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. G. Clark, The Incarnation, 64.
Accordingly the proposal is that a man is a congeries, a system, sometimes an agglomeration or miscellany, but at any rate a collection of thoughts. A man is what he thinks: and no two men are precisely the same combination. G. Clark, The Trinity, 106.
Several romantically inclined students, and a few professors as well, have complained that “this makes your wife merely a set of propositions.” Well, so it does. This suits me, for I am a set of propositions too. And those who complain are as they think. Is a person to be considered unconscious, mute substance? Why is he not conscious thoughts? Of course, one may just say “thoughts,” for thoughts cannot be unconscious. Ibid. 106.
i) Let us pause for a moment to consider the implications of this. If a man is a collection of thoughts, a set of propositions; if a man is identical with his thoughts, then a man is a purely mental entity.
At a minimum, this commits Gordon Clark to anthropological idealism. Now, perhaps Clark limits his idealistic ontology to God, angels, and men, while switching to dualism or physicalism for the subhuman order. But for man and above, metaphysical idealism is the reigning ontology.
ii) Clark’s idealistic anthropology in turn entails an idealistic Christology. According to his idealistic anthropology, men don’t have physical bodies. Their “bodies” are, at best, mental projections.
In that event, the Son never became incarnate, was never crucified, or resurrected.
At most, the hypostatic union would involve a union between the Son and a human soul. But on Clark’s idealistic anthropology, Jesus never had a physical body. You can’t square that with Clark’s proposition definition of a human being. On his view, a man is constituted by his thoughts.
Hence, the Gospels are reduced to allegories. Berkeleyan allegories.
iii) Another odd consequence of his claim is that no man can be asleep or be in a coma. For we are what we think, and thoughts are conscious. How he accounts for the illusion of unconscious states I can’t say.
iv) If you combine Clark’s idealism with his doctrine of creation, this would logically lead to pantheistic idealism. If God is the Creator, and man is a collection of thoughts, then man is a collection of divine thoughts.
v) For folks who pride themselves on their orthodoxy and rationality, it’s striking how readily the Clarkians succumb to the most glaring heresies and absurdities.
For all their affectations of rationality, they are blinded by the personality cult of Gordon Clark.
Accordingly the proposal is that a man is a congeries, a system, sometimes an agglomeration or miscellany, but at any rate a collection of thoughts. A man is what he thinks: and no two men are precisely the same combination. G. Clark, The Trinity, 106.
Several romantically inclined students, and a few professors as well, have complained that “this makes your wife merely a set of propositions.” Well, so it does. This suits me, for I am a set of propositions too. And those who complain are as they think. Is a person to be considered unconscious, mute substance? Why is he not conscious thoughts? Of course, one may just say “thoughts,” for thoughts cannot be unconscious. Ibid. 106.
i) Let us pause for a moment to consider the implications of this. If a man is a collection of thoughts, a set of propositions; if a man is identical with his thoughts, then a man is a purely mental entity.
At a minimum, this commits Gordon Clark to anthropological idealism. Now, perhaps Clark limits his idealistic ontology to God, angels, and men, while switching to dualism or physicalism for the subhuman order. But for man and above, metaphysical idealism is the reigning ontology.
ii) Clark’s idealistic anthropology in turn entails an idealistic Christology. According to his idealistic anthropology, men don’t have physical bodies. Their “bodies” are, at best, mental projections.
In that event, the Son never became incarnate, was never crucified, or resurrected.
At most, the hypostatic union would involve a union between the Son and a human soul. But on Clark’s idealistic anthropology, Jesus never had a physical body. You can’t square that with Clark’s proposition definition of a human being. On his view, a man is constituted by his thoughts.
Hence, the Gospels are reduced to allegories. Berkeleyan allegories.
iii) Another odd consequence of his claim is that no man can be asleep or be in a coma. For we are what we think, and thoughts are conscious. How he accounts for the illusion of unconscious states I can’t say.
iv) If you combine Clark’s idealism with his doctrine of creation, this would logically lead to pantheistic idealism. If God is the Creator, and man is a collection of thoughts, then man is a collection of divine thoughts.
v) For folks who pride themselves on their orthodoxy and rationality, it’s striking how readily the Clarkians succumb to the most glaring heresies and absurdities.
For all their affectations of rationality, they are blinded by the personality cult of Gordon Clark.
Friday, May 04, 2007
What You Don't Know CAN Hurt You
In the comments section of this post on Scripturalism an interlocutor going by the moniker "Carl" responded. Says Carl,
By way of response:
i) Carl suffers from the inability to read proceeding information which could save him embarrassment and us time. As I already mentioned, my critique was specifically aimed against contemporary Scripturalists. If Carl wants to say that, say, Dr. Robbins and Mr. Gerety don't understand Clark, all I can say is, watch out for the backlash. For me, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I can always use more people, especially Scripturalists, critiquing Scripturalists. Now, if I've pegged Scripturalism correctly, and those men do understand Clark, then I fail to see how I don't understand Clark.
ii) I never said or implied that anyone's "intention was to deduce everything from scripture." In fact, my post is predicated upon the assumption that there are millions of things Scripturalists cannot deduce from Scripture. I don't think that they think they can deduce these things. Therefore, I am not under the impression that Clark or his followers need to deduce "everything" from Scripture.
iii) Apropos (ii). My point is that they don't know their own position. My point is that if they don't offer us knowledge then what they offer is, in Gerety and Cheung's own words, "mere opinion." So, they are simply opining about the myriad issues they rant against. They say Van Til taught X, thus he's a heretic. But they don't know that he taught X. It's their unjustified opinion. They say that Clark is a respectable man, but they don't know that. They cut their drug with battery acid. The product is impure. That's my argument, and you've simply confirmed it.
iv) Unfortunately, Carl doesn't know how a reductio ad absurdum functions. That's to be expected since Carl doesn't know much of anything. He asks me to substantiate how I know things. But that's the beauty of a reductio! I only use premises my opponent accepts. So, my critique follows whether or not I can put forth any account of how I know.
v) Notice that Carl refuses to move past where we've been for the last while now. He assumes infallibilism with respects to knowledge. But he can't deduce infallibilism from Scripture. Hence it is only his mere unjustified opinion that knowledge must be infallible.
vi) That induction is deductively formally fallacious begs the question. Who said knowledge is to be had only by propositions necessarily following from deductive premises?
To accuse induction of a deductive fallacy is akin to accusing a running back for balking! To accuse a basketball player of roughing the passer. To accuse a base stealer of traveling.
To assume that knowledge cannot be probabilistic is to beg the question. Clark wouldn't appreciate your maneuvers.
vii) Since "the Scriptures," according to Carl, are the "only irrefutable truth," and since the proposition "Scripturalism is the case" is not found in Scripture then it's either not true, or it's refutable. Hence the irrefutable is refutable. Now, this seems like "Van Tillian doublespeak," to quote Gerety and Robbins.
viii) Clark rejected empiricism (which I don't hold to, by the way) because of his infallibilist constraint on knowledge and his rationalistic Cartesian categories he was operating with.
ix) Clark frequently asks for the reliability of the senses to be "demonstrated." How 'bout if I deny this? How 'bout if I take them as basic? As T. Reid says, "Why should I distrust my senses any more than my rational faculties? They both came out of the same shop, from the same maker, if one is radically defective as a means to knowledge, why think the other isn't?" That's a paraphrase.
x) Why was Clark et. al. (funny how he stands Clark next to Hume of all people!) wrong to deny knowledge by sensation, induction, and the like? They were wrong to do so because Scripture, for one, tells us that we know things by our senses. So, Scripturalism is anti-Scriptural.
xi) Funny how my epistemology reduces to skepticism. Does Carl know this? Can he deduce infallibilism, internalism, and a whole host of other epistemic assumptions from Scripture? No. Does he know that there are other human minds here on earth with him? No. Does he know that he is on earth? No. Does he know that he us saved? No. Does he know that he can have assurance of salvation? No. Does he know he is a male? No. Does he know that he is not Gordon Clark after Clark took a spill and lost his ability to reason well? No. Does he know that Clark should have been ordained? Clark could have been a woman. Is he married? Does he know his wife is a female? If not, does he know that he is not engaging in a homosexual relationship? No. And my position reduces to skepticism! Does he even know his own Scripturalist position? No. What positive epistemological status does Scripturalism have, then? And I'm reduced to skepticism? I'm only so reduced based on Carl's definition of what knowledge is and what one must do in order to be granted the honorary title. Well, I deny his constraints and deny he can deduce them from Scripture. So, Carl holds me accountable to his mere unjustified opinions on epistemology.
xii) So, the next time Carl wants to respond perhaps he can check his opinions at the door. If not, debating him, on his assumptions, is much like standing outside the ice cream parlor and debating a fellow about whether chocolate is better tasting than vanilla.
Paul, I see that your main objection seems to deal with the scripturalists incapability to rationalize everything. Did it ever occur to you that Clark's intention was not to deduce everything from scripture, but to remove the human tendency to rely upon rational belief?
In other words, I see no arguments for positive knowledge in this post. Can you really say that induction is knowledge when it is based upon a formal fallacy? If Clark is wrong and the scripture is not the only irrefutable truth, then you must provide us with the method for escaping his criticisms of empiricism and induction. Why did Clark reject empiricism? Why did he (and Hume) reject induction and the scientific method and why were they wrong to?
You see, if your criticisms of Clark are correct, which I do not think that you have read much of him, then you leave us with an epistemology that is philosophically reducible to scepticism. That, of course, is unacceptable.
By way of response:
i) Carl suffers from the inability to read proceeding information which could save him embarrassment and us time. As I already mentioned, my critique was specifically aimed against contemporary Scripturalists. If Carl wants to say that, say, Dr. Robbins and Mr. Gerety don't understand Clark, all I can say is, watch out for the backlash. For me, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I can always use more people, especially Scripturalists, critiquing Scripturalists. Now, if I've pegged Scripturalism correctly, and those men do understand Clark, then I fail to see how I don't understand Clark.
ii) I never said or implied that anyone's "intention was to deduce everything from scripture." In fact, my post is predicated upon the assumption that there are millions of things Scripturalists cannot deduce from Scripture. I don't think that they think they can deduce these things. Therefore, I am not under the impression that Clark or his followers need to deduce "everything" from Scripture.
iii) Apropos (ii). My point is that they don't know their own position. My point is that if they don't offer us knowledge then what they offer is, in Gerety and Cheung's own words, "mere opinion." So, they are simply opining about the myriad issues they rant against. They say Van Til taught X, thus he's a heretic. But they don't know that he taught X. It's their unjustified opinion. They say that Clark is a respectable man, but they don't know that. They cut their drug with battery acid. The product is impure. That's my argument, and you've simply confirmed it.
iv) Unfortunately, Carl doesn't know how a reductio ad absurdum functions. That's to be expected since Carl doesn't know much of anything. He asks me to substantiate how I know things. But that's the beauty of a reductio! I only use premises my opponent accepts. So, my critique follows whether or not I can put forth any account of how I know.
v) Notice that Carl refuses to move past where we've been for the last while now. He assumes infallibilism with respects to knowledge. But he can't deduce infallibilism from Scripture. Hence it is only his mere unjustified opinion that knowledge must be infallible.
vi) That induction is deductively formally fallacious begs the question. Who said knowledge is to be had only by propositions necessarily following from deductive premises?
To accuse induction of a deductive fallacy is akin to accusing a running back for balking! To accuse a basketball player of roughing the passer. To accuse a base stealer of traveling.
To assume that knowledge cannot be probabilistic is to beg the question. Clark wouldn't appreciate your maneuvers.
vii) Since "the Scriptures," according to Carl, are the "only irrefutable truth," and since the proposition "Scripturalism is the case" is not found in Scripture then it's either not true, or it's refutable. Hence the irrefutable is refutable. Now, this seems like "Van Tillian doublespeak," to quote Gerety and Robbins.
viii) Clark rejected empiricism (which I don't hold to, by the way) because of his infallibilist constraint on knowledge and his rationalistic Cartesian categories he was operating with.
ix) Clark frequently asks for the reliability of the senses to be "demonstrated." How 'bout if I deny this? How 'bout if I take them as basic? As T. Reid says, "Why should I distrust my senses any more than my rational faculties? They both came out of the same shop, from the same maker, if one is radically defective as a means to knowledge, why think the other isn't?" That's a paraphrase.
x) Why was Clark et. al. (funny how he stands Clark next to Hume of all people!) wrong to deny knowledge by sensation, induction, and the like? They were wrong to do so because Scripture, for one, tells us that we know things by our senses. So, Scripturalism is anti-Scriptural.
xi) Funny how my epistemology reduces to skepticism. Does Carl know this? Can he deduce infallibilism, internalism, and a whole host of other epistemic assumptions from Scripture? No. Does he know that there are other human minds here on earth with him? No. Does he know that he is on earth? No. Does he know that he us saved? No. Does he know that he can have assurance of salvation? No. Does he know he is a male? No. Does he know that he is not Gordon Clark after Clark took a spill and lost his ability to reason well? No. Does he know that Clark should have been ordained? Clark could have been a woman. Is he married? Does he know his wife is a female? If not, does he know that he is not engaging in a homosexual relationship? No. And my position reduces to skepticism! Does he even know his own Scripturalist position? No. What positive epistemological status does Scripturalism have, then? And I'm reduced to skepticism? I'm only so reduced based on Carl's definition of what knowledge is and what one must do in order to be granted the honorary title. Well, I deny his constraints and deny he can deduce them from Scripture. So, Carl holds me accountable to his mere unjustified opinions on epistemology.
xii) So, the next time Carl wants to respond perhaps he can check his opinions at the door. If not, debating him, on his assumptions, is much like standing outside the ice cream parlor and debating a fellow about whether chocolate is better tasting than vanilla.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
So who's afraid of da big bad wolf?
Sean Gerety has written another huffy-puffy post in reply to Manata and me:
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/vantilian-shadow-boxing-round-two/
Let’s see how he does:
“(For anyone interested in seeing a couple of heavyweights battle it out, and someone who presented a serious challenge to Clark’s Scripturalism, may I recommend, Revelation and Epistemology, by George Mavrodes, and, more importantly, Clark’s reply to Mavrodes).”
Why is Sean referring us to the writings of Clark and Mavrodes? Reading what they wrote would involve sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. If, therefore, we can’t know what they wrote by reading them, what’s the point of reading them?
“In the case of Manata, his entire attack consisted of arguing, in one form or another, that if I can’t know Manata is a man, since I cannot infer him from Scripture, then I can’t know Manata sinned against Clark and Robbins when he portrayed them as crank dealers on his blog.”
Manata didn’t portray them as crack dealers. Rather, he used a metaphorical analogy.
However, for all Gerety knows, Clark and Robbins really were crack dealers. By his own admission, Gerety’s beliefs about Clark and Robbins are reducible to opinion at best and ignorance at worse.
“As we’ve seen in the first round, Mananta’s argument has no weight as he continues to blindly ignore the biblical imperatives against false witness and slander... Yet, instead of submitting to the clear teaching of Scripture in his sin against Clark and Robbins…”
How does Sean know what Scripture teaches? He can’t know what Scripture teaches by reading Scripture, for sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. At best he can only opine what Scripture teaches.
He then quotes something from Robbins:
[Your] objection is of the same ilk as those who say, How can I obey the Ten Commandments if I don’t know who my wife is. Well, GHC [Gordon H. Clark] gave one answer to that question, and I gave another many years ago, but since Clark critics are reluctant to take the trouble to acquaint himself with what Clark or I have written, let me repeat myself.
The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture.
I distinguish–as the Bible and Plato do–between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Perhaps you do not so distinguish. But why would you not distinguish between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and ignorance? It seems to me that a refusal or failure to distinguish between these three states can lead only to greater confusion.
Knowledge is always true. One cannot know that 2 + 2 = 5. Opinions may be true or false. Ignorance is neither true nor false. What distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons. Sudduth dared me to provide any passage of Scripture that so defines knowledge. It seems to me that there are many. For example, “Be ready to give a reason….” “To the Law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to that Word, there is no light in them.” “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” All, not some. Hidden, not available to discovery by men. The Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge.
In the strict sense no one in the twentieth century knows that he is a man, for he has not deduced it from the Bible. (Now perhaps such a deduction is possible, and I would be open to an argument on that point.) It is an opinion we hold. You do not know that you are a man. Your opinion may be true, but unless you can show me the argument, it does not rise to the level of knowledge. If you claim to know that you are a man, please show me the argument. Please do not water down, dilute, or make ambiguous the definition of the word “knowledge.” Don’t blur it with opinion. Don’t bother citing immediate “self-knowledge” or some such notion, for the Scriptures explicitly say: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” What you take to be easily come by, the Scripture says is impossible. Why should anyone believe you rather than Scripture?
So if we have the opinion that we are men, then the syllogism I provided [all men are sinners, ___ is a man, therefore ____ is a sinner] is neither absurd nor irrelevant; it is right on target. We may or may not be correct in our opinion, but if we have that opinion, if you have that opinion, you are required to believe that you are a sinner.
There are several problems with this statement:
i) According to the Scripturalist, knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom. So where does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that a man can’t know who his wife is? Where does Scripture say or imply you can’t know that you’re a man?
A homosexual apologist like Mel White, Andrew Sullivan, or Barney Frank might find it very convenient to adopt a Scripturalist epistemology:
“In Rom 1, Paul says it’s wrong for a man to have sex with another man, or a woman to have sex with another woman. But that’s purely hypothetical since I can never know if I’m a man or a woman!”
Perhaps Gerety should join the staff of Soulforce.
ii) Sean/Robbins try to get around this by the following line of argument:
a) The injunctions of Scripture apply to all our beliefs
b) That includes true and false beliefs
c) The injunctions of Scripture apply to false beliefs
d) Therefore, even my false beliefs become divine imperatives.
Now that’s a fascinating claim. Suppose I’m high on LSD. In my hallucinogenic state I mistake my dog for my wife. Therefore, according to Robbins/Gerety, I’m required to have sex with my dog to discharge my conjugal duties.
iii) This is based on their appeal to 2 Cor 10:5: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Sean and Robbins take 2 Cor 10:5 to mean, not that we ought to correct our false beliefs in light of the Bible, but that we should simply plug our false beliefs into the injunctions of Scripture.
iv) Robbins says “what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons.”
But Robbins also says knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom.
Very well, then, let’s apply Robbins’ Scripturalist epistemology to Robbins’ definition of knowledge. Where does Scripture either say or imply that what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons? Did Robbins deduce that particular definition of knowledge from the Bible?
It’s incumbent on Sean to show us, by necessary implication from Scripture where Scripture limits knowledge to an opinion supplemented by an account thereof. Does Scripture say or imply that you can’t know anything unless you can give reasons for your beliefs?
v) And what about the syllogism? Validity is a logical concept. Inference is a logical process. Where did Robbins acquire his knowledge of logic? According to Scripturalism, Scripture is the only source of knowledge.
Did Robbins learn the laws of logic from Scripture? Did Sean learn the laws of logic from Scripture? According to Sean, the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.
But that’s not the same thing as learning deduction from Scripture. Rather, that’s a case of bringing your powers of deduction to Scripture. Unless you already knew how to draw inferences, you couldn’t recognize a necessary consequence of Scriptural teaching.
Does this mean that Sean’s knowledge of logic is innate? But if Sean has innate knowledge of logic, then Scripture is not the only source of knowledge. For in that event, Sean knows something he didn’t learn from Scripture. Ditto: Robbins.
vi) Finally, notice that Sean always trots out the same three or four quotes from Robbins. That’s his only fallback. He has nothing else in reserve. Once you shoot that down, he’s defenseless.
Sean then quotes a passage from Bahnsen:
We have already noted above that for someone to know a proposition, at least two conditions must be met: the person must believe the proposition in question, and the proposition must be true. However, even this is an inadequate analysis of knowledge. At first sight, it might seem that if we believe what is in fact true, then we have knowledge; but on further reflection, to define knowledge as true belief proves to be too broad … Beliefs that are arbitrarily adopted or based upon faulty grounds, even when they turn out to be true, do not qualify as instances of “knowledge.”
What is the additional ingredient, besides being correct, that a belief must have in order to count as knowledge? It must be substantiated, supported, or justified by evidence. Knowledge is true belief held on adequate grounds, rafter than held fallaciously or haphazardly. To put it traditionally, knowledge is justified, true belief.
It should be noted here that by “justified” we mean that the person actually has sound reasons (good evidence), not simply that he thinks his evidence is good or sufficient in light of the pool of information available to him.
Sean then says: “Both Van Til and Clark maintained that knowledge, for it to be properly given that name, needs to be accounted for; it needs to be justified.”
Needless to say, this interpretation is quite illiterate. In the passage that Sean just quoted, Bahnsen doesn’t say knowledge must be justified. Rather, Bahnsen says belief must be justified.
“While I’m certainly no expert on ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ and have only recently started to slug through Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.”
Why would Sean bother to read Plantinga’s book? The act of reading involves sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. So what’s the point?
“Now, compare the views of the above Reformed giants with the gnats on Triablogue. These men are not even remotely interested in epistemology in the sense that Van Til, Bahnsen and Clark understood the term. These men are interested in something exceedingly more paltry, but exceedingly easier to obtain. The game these men are playing is so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ which is neither particularly Reformed or even epistemological. Rather than defining knowledge as a justified true belief, what these men call knowledge is something called ‘warrant.’ Now, to what degree do sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays embrace the sophism of so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology’ I really can’t say.”
But if he really can’t say, then his prior claim that we are playing the game of Reformed Epistemology is an ignorant claim. Ignorant by his own admission.
“However, this is precisely how these men can claim to be ‘rational’ for believing the Scriptures contain insoluble paradoxes (a contradiction by any other name), that are hopefully, or so we are told, resolved in the Godhead.”
i) Once again, he hasn’t begun to show that my position on theological paradox is dependent on Reformed Epistemology.
ii) This is my actual position: It’s rational to believe whatever God reveals. The fact that God reveals something ipso facto makes that a rational object of belief. If God reveals a paradox, then it’s rational to believe the paradox–because it’s rational to believe whatever God reveals.
This doesn’t commitment me to the proposition that God reveals paradoxical truths. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. That’s not something we can know in advance of revelation. But if he did, it would be rational to believe them.
“Of course, if ‘warrant’ can be obtained for believing Van Til’s irrational and self-refuting doctrine of Scripture, which is just more sophistry, almost anything can obtain ‘warrant’ and be magically raised to the level of knowledge. Who needs the three noetic states of knowledge, opinion, and ignorance when ‘warrant’ can magically transform virtually any class of opinions or beliefs into knowledge.”
I don’t have a problem with distinguishing between knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Indeed, I’m more than happy to apply that threefold rubric to Scripturalism. If I wanted to illustrate opinion and ignorance in contradistinction to knowledge, I can’t think of a better object lesson than Sean Gerety.
“To their shame, sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays have abandoned the antithesis in the field of epistemology. Today everyone from Logical Postitivsts, Behaviorists, Evolutionists, Animists, Hindus, and Islamic Jihadists, Necromancers, and assorted Atheists can obtain ‘warrant,’ profess to be “rational,” and be said to possess “knowledge,” even if evidently Great Pumpkin worshipers might have a rougher go of it.”
Where did Sean deduce the existence of Hindus, Darwinians, jihadis, &c., from Scripture?
“Consider the following. I had wondered what really is Manata’s objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? That Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge? Wow, what horrible things for Christians to believe! “
Yes, that is a horrible thing for Christians to believe. If it were true that all knowledge is limited to Scripture, then you couldn’t know the Bible, and you couldn’t know the world to which the Bible refers.
“Admittedly, I have no idea what Hays means by ‘sense knowledge?’ It appears to be a contradiction in terms.”
The sentence that “sense knowledge appears to be a contradiction in terms” is, itself, a sensory object. It involves the use of visual markers (letters) to convey information. If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then Sean’s sensory statement that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms is, itself, a contradiction in terms. So his denial is self-refuting.
“As should be obvious, pressing Hays or even his tag-team buddy Manata to account for ‘sense knowledge,’ not to mention how they know they are men, or even that Manata is man — i.e., to ask them to account for the very things they’ve repeatedly challenged me to account for — would be pointless.”
i) Where does the Bible say that we must account for sense knowledge?
ii) I don’t have to explain how I know I’m a man. That was a minor premise in a syllogism by Robbins and Gerety. The burden of proof lies squarely on their shoulders to account for the minor premises of their own syllogism. Otherwise, even if the conclusion were valid, there’s no reason to believe the conclusion is true.
“Plantinga evidently did not heed Paul’s warning to Timothy: ‘O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”– which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith”’(1 Timothy 6:20,21).”
“So much for Peter’s argument in Acts 4:12; ‘And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.’ Peter must have been one of those first century xenophobic conservative Christians. After all, who needs the ‘sine qua non of faith,’ even the Lord Jesus Christ alone, when we have Tillich, some ancient Buddhist canon, and the Tao te Ching.”
Several problems:
i) Where did Sean deduce the existence of Tillich, the Buddhist canon, or the Tao te Ching” from Scripture?
ii) Sean likes to quote Scripture, but he fails to give an account of how he knows Scripture. Sean constantly talks about accounting for belief, but he never gets around to actually giving an account for his beliefs. Long on assertion, short on argumentation.
iii) I’ve already given some reasons for why a Scripturalist can’t know Scripture. Now I’ll give another reason. Sean quotes some statements by Peter and Paul from the English Bible. But that’s a problem for Scripturalism. Gordon Clark rejects representational theories of perception. For example:
“The ‘correspondence theory of knowledge’ faces the insuperable objection that it disallows any knowledge of reality at all. Whatever reality may be, whether individuals like trees and rocks, or Platonic Ideas, or whatever, this theory provides us only with pictures of them. The object of knowledge is therefore a representation and not the reality itself. Since the mind contains only the picture and never the ‘thing,’ there is no possibility of knowing whether the representation is similar to the object or not. To recognize a similarity between two things, they must be compared, and hence both must be in the mind. But if the reality is in the mind, the picture with its similarity is useless. If the reality is not in the mind, the picture, so far as we know, is a picture of nothing. There is hardly any objection to empiricism more fundamental than this one,” Language and Theology, 29.
How is that a problem for Scripturalism? Here’s the problem:
God inspired Peter and Paul to entertain certain true concepts. However, barring telepathy, we can’t read their minds.
Therefore, the only way for them to transmit their concepts is to communicate their concepts through the medium of inspired words. That’s a form of symbolic discourse–where words represent concepts.
But, of course, the reader can’t go back and compare the words to the concepts, since we lack direct access to the minds of Peter and Paul. All we have are the linguistic tokens of their concepts. According to Clark, we don’t know if the words match the concepts.
Moreover, Sean is quoting from the English Bible. In that case, the English words must correspond to the Greek words.
Perhaps Sean would say we can compare English versions with the original Greek and Hebrew. But that exercise doesn’t eliminate the representational element.
How did he learn Greek and Hebrew? By reading Greek–English or Hebrew–English grammars? But that only pushes the problem back a step.
Suppose he grew up in a home where Greek or Hebrew were his mother tongue. But he only learned Greek and Hebrew by associating certain vocables with certain ostensible objects. So we haven’t eliminated the representational component.
“Seeing that ‘warrant’ has freed Hays from having to justify virtually any knowledge claim, much less his claim to “sense knowledge, it’s not surprsing that he’s left punching the wind.”
Once again, this is simply illiterate. Did I say that knowledge-claims require no justification. No. I said that knowledge requires no justification. On the other hand, I also said that some knowledge-claims may need to be justified.
“Hays’ assertion notwithstanding, and all the RE prattle he might dress it up with, it seems to me that ‘sense knowledge’ would be quite impossible. Given that only propositions can be either true or false and sensations, whatever they may be, are non-propositional, I have no idea how anyone might advance the idea of ‘sense knowledge?’ Could Hays, like Van Til before him, appeal to the methods of science as a means for arriving at this ‘sense knowledge?’ He could, but then he would have to overcome the logical objections raised by Clark in his treatise, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, not to mention the objections of men like Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper and others.”
i) Notice how Sean begins the paragraph by denying that sense knowledge is possible. Then, in order to bolster his denial, he ends this paragraph by referring us to sensory objects: the writings of Clark, Popper, and Russell! For someone who prides himself on his rationality, Sean can’t even think straight.
ii) One can form propositional beliefs on the basis of sensory experience. Sean typed his post on computer keyboard. He has learned from experience that if he depresses a particular key, it will produce a particular letter. He has also learned that if he depresses certain keys in a certain order, it will produce a certain sequence of letters.
He also believes that this will happen because his computer keyboard was designed to operate that way.
Likewise, a Christian believes that God designed the world such that some things ordinarily correspond to other things.
“Now, admittedly, perhaps some Divines did hold to a belief in ‘sense knowledge’ as Hays claims, but it certainly didn’t carry any weight in comparison to the Scripture.”
Notice that he’s having to backpeddle from his original claim. The question at issue is not how the Westminster Divines rated the various sources of knowledge. Rather, the question at issue is whether the Westminster Divines limited all knowledge to the Bible. Sean is trying to change the subject to save face.
“I’m not sure if Hays’ ‘sense knowledge’ qualifies as a ‘new revelation of the Spirit’ or a ‘tradition of men’ or something else entirely, but they did stress that the whole counsel of God, and not just part, is either set down or deduced from Scripture and that this covers all things, and not just some things, pertaining to God’s glory, our salvation, the things we should believe (i.e., faith), and, quite frankly, life in general, so I have no idea what role would be left for Hays’ paltry and oxymoronic ‘sense knowledge’? I guess the Confession writers forgot to include Chapter XXXIV; On Superfluous Knowledge So Called.”
What role is left for sense knowledge? Let’s see:
i) The Bible contains various descriptions of the sensible world, including statements about how Christians should relate to the sensible world. For example, don’t commit adultery. Is it superfluous to the Decalogue whether or not you can know if the woman you’re having sex with is your wife or another man’s wife? Or maybe your dog?
ii) There is also the question of how the Bible itself can be an object of knowledge? If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then how do we know what the Bible teaches? Not from reading it or hearing it.
iii) On a related issue, if the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then our knowledge of logic must derive from Scripture alone. But how can we deduce anything from Scripture unless we have a working knowledge of logic?
“Evidently Hays seems to think the Confession writers were endorsing some sort of natural theology by their use of the phrase ‘light of nature.’ After all, Romans 1:19,20, a favorite passage of Evidentalists and natural theologians everywhere, is cited as a proof text for this portion of the Confession…Rather than a means to arrive at truth, Van Til makes clear that the light of nature, or man’s own natural endowment as God’s creature created in His image confronts man ‘within his own constitution.’ Rather than man coming to a knowledge of the truth by observing nature, man instead ‘concocts his scheme of things in order by means of it to suppress the truth,’ not come to know it. Consequently, it would seem Hays is very wrong about what the Confession is teaching here and wants to hang his entire sensate and empirical overcoat on a very slender nail.”
Is Sean really that dense? The question at issue is not what Van Til happened to think, but what the Westminster Divines happened to think. The question at issue is not the interpretation of Rom 1:19-20, but the interpretation of WCF 1:6.
“Again, notice the sophistry involved here. Hays provides no account demonstrating how he knows Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people’.”
i) I don’t need to since I didn’t accuse Manata of libeling Clark or Robbins. The onus lies on Sean, not me.
ii) Where does Scripture say or imply that I need to demonstrate how I know my father or mother or sister or brother or wife or son or daughter is a real person?
“Yet, as mentioned in Round One, it doesn’t matter whether or not I know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people.’ It doesn’t matter if Manata or Tom Bombadil or whoever he might be is a ‘real person.’ The question is, does Manata express any interest in complying with Biblical commands not to slander?”
i) How does Sean happen to know what the Bible commands? I’m waiting for him to give an account.
ii) Where does Scripture say that you can slander a fictitious person?
“He does not. Manata maintains he did not sin in writing his diatribe characterizing Clark as the Pablo Escobar of epistemology.”
i) Sean doesn’t know that. At best that’s an opinionated claim, and at worst that’s an ignorant claim.
ii) Moreover, Sean has no way to distinguish an opinionated claim from an ignorant claim. Sean can’t claim that some opinions are probably true, while others are probably false. For an opinion, as he defines it, falls short of knowledge. And as Gordon Clark once observed: “A proposition can be probable and known to be probable, only if it resembles or approximates the truth. A person who does not know what is true cannot know what approximates it,” Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 31.
Therefore, Sean’s allegation is not better than ignorance.
I said:
“To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?”
To which Gerety responds:
“Clearly, Hays’ knowledge is not to be trusted and if ‘warranted’ it merely demonstrates the uselessness of the entire RE enterprise. Both Clark and Robbins were ordained elders in Reformed denominations. Robbins was also ordained to preach in the PCA. Robbins left the PCA due to its failure to take any action against those Vantilians who continue to teach a false gospel of the Federal Vision in the PCA. You can read his reasons for leaving the PCA here. Robbins did what any Christian ought to do when they are part of a denomination that continues to permit the teaching of a false gospel along side the one true Gospel. So, in his ignorance, Hays joins Manata in his libel of his elder Dr. Robbins, this time falsely accusing him of being a ‘schismatic’.”
Several problems:
i) In responding to my statement (that Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system, which made him schismatic), Gerety admits that Robbins broke with the PCA. He also evades the question of whether Robbins then put himself under the care of another Reformed denomination. To what ecclesiastical body was Robbins answerable?
So how can Robbins be Manata’s ruling elder if Robbins is no longer in the chain-of-command?
iv) The PCA has church courts. An appellate process. It takes a while to adjudicate a controversy like the Federal Vision. In due time, the PCA ruled against the Federal Vision.
If Robbins was ordained (licensed?) to preach in the PCA, then he was a signatory to the PCA appellate process. It was therefore wrong of him not to let the process run its course. Had the PCA ruled in favor of the Federal Vision, then, and only then, would he be justified in leaving the PCA for another Reformed denomination.
iii) Moreover, there’s the little matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It’s not as if a ruling elder in one Presbyterian denomination automatically exercises authority over members of another Presbyterian denomination.
iii) Furthermore, there’s a logistical impediment: Robbins is dead. In what sense is a dead man Manata’s ruling elder? Is Sean advancing a necromantic theory of Presbyterian eldership? On his theory of Presbyterian polity, does the séance take the place of the session?
“As for Clark, he was a member of various Reformed denominations throughout his life. He was an ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church and later in the OPC, and was one of the OPC’s orignial founders along with Gresham Machen. After the Clark/Van Til Controversy in the OPC, and after Van Til and his associates refused to submit to the discipline of the church and repent of their unprovoked and unprecedented attack on Clark (see any pattern here), and after they launched similar attacks against Clark’s defenders, particularly Floyd Hamilton, Clark left for the United Presbyterian Church of North America and later to the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I guess in Hays’ mind Clark was a ‘schismatic’ too and not Van Til and his associates who continued to disrupt the peace of the church after their failed attempt to defrock Clark. Perhaps it would do Hays some good to get his facts straight before barking in the future.”
i) Notice that in my original comment I said nothing about Clark’s churchmanship. Instead, I confined myself to Robbins.
ii) For the record, I actually agree with the minority report, signed by William Young (among others).
iii) In what sense is Gordon Clark Manata’s ruling elder? Clark is dead. Moreover, he died in 1985. I seriously doubt that Manata was a communicant member of a Reformed denomination in 1985 or earlier. If so, he would have been a very precocious member! What is more, I seriously doubt that Manata was ever a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
How does Clark exercise his ruling eldership over Manata from beyond the grave? Is Gerety his medium? Does he light a votive candle to Gordon Clark or pray to Robbins to intercede for Manata?
Gerety is playing fast and loose with Presbyterian polity and ecclesiology.
“But, as Clark would say, a Biblcal paradox is nothing more than ‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage’.”
Yes, that’s what Clark would say. Why would a Scripturalist care what he said? Isn’t the important question what Scripture says? Where does Scripture say that a Biblical paradox is nothing more than “‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage”?
As always, Sean honors Scripturalism with his lips, but his heart is far from it.
“By contrast, if one accepts the irrationalism of Van Til and his followers, a Biblical paradox is a charley-horse between the ears that can never be eliminated and any attempt to do so is a sinful failure to ‘think in submission to Scripture’ and to acknowledge the Creator/creature distinction.”
I have never taken the position that any attempt to harmonize a Biblical paradox is sinful. I don’t think that’s Manata’s position either. Or Dr. Anderson’s.
“Despite his assurances to the contrary, Hays seems to take the typical Vantilian approach to paradox and insists that while the paradox remains insoluble for us (evidently due to God’s own equivocation), we are to have faith there is no paradox for God.”
I allow for the possibility of a humanly insoluble paradox. The human subject of knowledge is less complex than the extramental object of knowledge–God, reality as a whole.
http://godshammer.wordpress.com/2009/05/05/vantilian-shadow-boxing-round-two/
Let’s see how he does:
“(For anyone interested in seeing a couple of heavyweights battle it out, and someone who presented a serious challenge to Clark’s Scripturalism, may I recommend, Revelation and Epistemology, by George Mavrodes, and, more importantly, Clark’s reply to Mavrodes).”
Why is Sean referring us to the writings of Clark and Mavrodes? Reading what they wrote would involve sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. If, therefore, we can’t know what they wrote by reading them, what’s the point of reading them?
“In the case of Manata, his entire attack consisted of arguing, in one form or another, that if I can’t know Manata is a man, since I cannot infer him from Scripture, then I can’t know Manata sinned against Clark and Robbins when he portrayed them as crank dealers on his blog.”
Manata didn’t portray them as crack dealers. Rather, he used a metaphorical analogy.
However, for all Gerety knows, Clark and Robbins really were crack dealers. By his own admission, Gerety’s beliefs about Clark and Robbins are reducible to opinion at best and ignorance at worse.
“As we’ve seen in the first round, Mananta’s argument has no weight as he continues to blindly ignore the biblical imperatives against false witness and slander... Yet, instead of submitting to the clear teaching of Scripture in his sin against Clark and Robbins…”
How does Sean know what Scripture teaches? He can’t know what Scripture teaches by reading Scripture, for sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. At best he can only opine what Scripture teaches.
He then quotes something from Robbins:
[Your] objection is of the same ilk as those who say, How can I obey the Ten Commandments if I don’t know who my wife is. Well, GHC [Gordon H. Clark] gave one answer to that question, and I gave another many years ago, but since Clark critics are reluctant to take the trouble to acquaint himself with what Clark or I have written, let me repeat myself.
The statements and commands in Scripture apply to all our thoughts, whether they rise to the level of knowledge or not. We are to bring every thought into captivity to Christ, that is, into captivity to Scripture.
I distinguish–as the Bible and Plato do–between three noetic states: knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Perhaps you do not so distinguish. But why would you not distinguish between knowledge and opinion, or knowledge and ignorance? It seems to me that a refusal or failure to distinguish between these three states can lead only to greater confusion.
Knowledge is always true. One cannot know that 2 + 2 = 5. Opinions may be true or false. Ignorance is neither true nor false. What distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons. Sudduth dared me to provide any passage of Scripture that so defines knowledge. It seems to me that there are many. For example, “Be ready to give a reason….” “To the Law and to the testimony: If they speak not according to that Word, there is no light in them.” “In Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” All, not some. Hidden, not available to discovery by men. The Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge.
In the strict sense no one in the twentieth century knows that he is a man, for he has not deduced it from the Bible. (Now perhaps such a deduction is possible, and I would be open to an argument on that point.) It is an opinion we hold. You do not know that you are a man. Your opinion may be true, but unless you can show me the argument, it does not rise to the level of knowledge. If you claim to know that you are a man, please show me the argument. Please do not water down, dilute, or make ambiguous the definition of the word “knowledge.” Don’t blur it with opinion. Don’t bother citing immediate “self-knowledge” or some such notion, for the Scriptures explicitly say: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” What you take to be easily come by, the Scripture says is impossible. Why should anyone believe you rather than Scripture?
So if we have the opinion that we are men, then the syllogism I provided [all men are sinners, ___ is a man, therefore ____ is a sinner] is neither absurd nor irrelevant; it is right on target. We may or may not be correct in our opinion, but if we have that opinion, if you have that opinion, you are required to believe that you are a sinner.
There are several problems with this statement:
i) According to the Scripturalist, knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom. So where does Scripture explicitly or implicitly teach that a man can’t know who his wife is? Where does Scripture say or imply you can’t know that you’re a man?
A homosexual apologist like Mel White, Andrew Sullivan, or Barney Frank might find it very convenient to adopt a Scripturalist epistemology:
“In Rom 1, Paul says it’s wrong for a man to have sex with another man, or a woman to have sex with another woman. But that’s purely hypothetical since I can never know if I’m a man or a woman!”
Perhaps Gerety should join the staff of Soulforce.
ii) Sean/Robbins try to get around this by the following line of argument:
a) The injunctions of Scripture apply to all our beliefs
b) That includes true and false beliefs
c) The injunctions of Scripture apply to false beliefs
d) Therefore, even my false beliefs become divine imperatives.
Now that’s a fascinating claim. Suppose I’m high on LSD. In my hallucinogenic state I mistake my dog for my wife. Therefore, according to Robbins/Gerety, I’m required to have sex with my dog to discharge my conjugal duties.
iii) This is based on their appeal to 2 Cor 10:5: “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”
Sean and Robbins take 2 Cor 10:5 to mean, not that we ought to correct our false beliefs in light of the Bible, but that we should simply plug our false beliefs into the injunctions of Scripture.
iv) Robbins says “what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons.”
But Robbins also says knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom.
Very well, then, let’s apply Robbins’ Scripturalist epistemology to Robbins’ definition of knowledge. Where does Scripture either say or imply that what distinguishes a true opinion from knowledge is an account of that opinion: It is giving reasons? Did Robbins deduce that particular definition of knowledge from the Bible?
It’s incumbent on Sean to show us, by necessary implication from Scripture where Scripture limits knowledge to an opinion supplemented by an account thereof. Does Scripture say or imply that you can’t know anything unless you can give reasons for your beliefs?
v) And what about the syllogism? Validity is a logical concept. Inference is a logical process. Where did Robbins acquire his knowledge of logic? According to Scripturalism, Scripture is the only source of knowledge.
Did Robbins learn the laws of logic from Scripture? Did Sean learn the laws of logic from Scripture? According to Sean, the whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture.
But that’s not the same thing as learning deduction from Scripture. Rather, that’s a case of bringing your powers of deduction to Scripture. Unless you already knew how to draw inferences, you couldn’t recognize a necessary consequence of Scriptural teaching.
Does this mean that Sean’s knowledge of logic is innate? But if Sean has innate knowledge of logic, then Scripture is not the only source of knowledge. For in that event, Sean knows something he didn’t learn from Scripture. Ditto: Robbins.
vi) Finally, notice that Sean always trots out the same three or four quotes from Robbins. That’s his only fallback. He has nothing else in reserve. Once you shoot that down, he’s defenseless.
Sean then quotes a passage from Bahnsen:
We have already noted above that for someone to know a proposition, at least two conditions must be met: the person must believe the proposition in question, and the proposition must be true. However, even this is an inadequate analysis of knowledge. At first sight, it might seem that if we believe what is in fact true, then we have knowledge; but on further reflection, to define knowledge as true belief proves to be too broad … Beliefs that are arbitrarily adopted or based upon faulty grounds, even when they turn out to be true, do not qualify as instances of “knowledge.”
What is the additional ingredient, besides being correct, that a belief must have in order to count as knowledge? It must be substantiated, supported, or justified by evidence. Knowledge is true belief held on adequate grounds, rafter than held fallaciously or haphazardly. To put it traditionally, knowledge is justified, true belief.
It should be noted here that by “justified” we mean that the person actually has sound reasons (good evidence), not simply that he thinks his evidence is good or sufficient in light of the pool of information available to him.
Sean then says: “Both Van Til and Clark maintained that knowledge, for it to be properly given that name, needs to be accounted for; it needs to be justified.”
Needless to say, this interpretation is quite illiterate. In the passage that Sean just quoted, Bahnsen doesn’t say knowledge must be justified. Rather, Bahnsen says belief must be justified.
“While I’m certainly no expert on ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ and have only recently started to slug through Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief.”
Why would Sean bother to read Plantinga’s book? The act of reading involves sensory perception. But Sean assures us that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms. So what’s the point?
“Now, compare the views of the above Reformed giants with the gnats on Triablogue. These men are not even remotely interested in epistemology in the sense that Van Til, Bahnsen and Clark understood the term. These men are interested in something exceedingly more paltry, but exceedingly easier to obtain. The game these men are playing is so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology,’ which is neither particularly Reformed or even epistemological. Rather than defining knowledge as a justified true belief, what these men call knowledge is something called ‘warrant.’ Now, to what degree do sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays embrace the sophism of so-called ‘Reformed Epistemology’ I really can’t say.”
But if he really can’t say, then his prior claim that we are playing the game of Reformed Epistemology is an ignorant claim. Ignorant by his own admission.
“However, this is precisely how these men can claim to be ‘rational’ for believing the Scriptures contain insoluble paradoxes (a contradiction by any other name), that are hopefully, or so we are told, resolved in the Godhead.”
i) Once again, he hasn’t begun to show that my position on theological paradox is dependent on Reformed Epistemology.
ii) This is my actual position: It’s rational to believe whatever God reveals. The fact that God reveals something ipso facto makes that a rational object of belief. If God reveals a paradox, then it’s rational to believe the paradox–because it’s rational to believe whatever God reveals.
This doesn’t commitment me to the proposition that God reveals paradoxical truths. Maybe he does and maybe he doesn’t. That’s not something we can know in advance of revelation. But if he did, it would be rational to believe them.
“Of course, if ‘warrant’ can be obtained for believing Van Til’s irrational and self-refuting doctrine of Scripture, which is just more sophistry, almost anything can obtain ‘warrant’ and be magically raised to the level of knowledge. Who needs the three noetic states of knowledge, opinion, and ignorance when ‘warrant’ can magically transform virtually any class of opinions or beliefs into knowledge.”
I don’t have a problem with distinguishing between knowledge, opinion, and ignorance. Indeed, I’m more than happy to apply that threefold rubric to Scripturalism. If I wanted to illustrate opinion and ignorance in contradistinction to knowledge, I can’t think of a better object lesson than Sean Gerety.
“To their shame, sub-Vantilians like Manata and Hays have abandoned the antithesis in the field of epistemology. Today everyone from Logical Postitivsts, Behaviorists, Evolutionists, Animists, Hindus, and Islamic Jihadists, Necromancers, and assorted Atheists can obtain ‘warrant,’ profess to be “rational,” and be said to possess “knowledge,” even if evidently Great Pumpkin worshipers might have a rougher go of it.”
Where did Sean deduce the existence of Hindus, Darwinians, jihadis, &c., from Scripture?
“Consider the following. I had wondered what really is Manata’s objection to Scripturalism? That what we call knowledge is limited to those things either set down in Scripture or deduced therefrom? That Scripture is both the content and the account on knowledge? Wow, what horrible things for Christians to believe! “
Yes, that is a horrible thing for Christians to believe. If it were true that all knowledge is limited to Scripture, then you couldn’t know the Bible, and you couldn’t know the world to which the Bible refers.
“Admittedly, I have no idea what Hays means by ‘sense knowledge?’ It appears to be a contradiction in terms.”
The sentence that “sense knowledge appears to be a contradiction in terms” is, itself, a sensory object. It involves the use of visual markers (letters) to convey information. If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then Sean’s sensory statement that sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms is, itself, a contradiction in terms. So his denial is self-refuting.
“As should be obvious, pressing Hays or even his tag-team buddy Manata to account for ‘sense knowledge,’ not to mention how they know they are men, or even that Manata is man — i.e., to ask them to account for the very things they’ve repeatedly challenged me to account for — would be pointless.”
i) Where does the Bible say that we must account for sense knowledge?
ii) I don’t have to explain how I know I’m a man. That was a minor premise in a syllogism by Robbins and Gerety. The burden of proof lies squarely on their shoulders to account for the minor premises of their own syllogism. Otherwise, even if the conclusion were valid, there’s no reason to believe the conclusion is true.
“Plantinga evidently did not heed Paul’s warning to Timothy: ‘O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge”– which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith”’(1 Timothy 6:20,21).”
“So much for Peter’s argument in Acts 4:12; ‘And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.’ Peter must have been one of those first century xenophobic conservative Christians. After all, who needs the ‘sine qua non of faith,’ even the Lord Jesus Christ alone, when we have Tillich, some ancient Buddhist canon, and the Tao te Ching.”
Several problems:
i) Where did Sean deduce the existence of Tillich, the Buddhist canon, or the Tao te Ching” from Scripture?
ii) Sean likes to quote Scripture, but he fails to give an account of how he knows Scripture. Sean constantly talks about accounting for belief, but he never gets around to actually giving an account for his beliefs. Long on assertion, short on argumentation.
iii) I’ve already given some reasons for why a Scripturalist can’t know Scripture. Now I’ll give another reason. Sean quotes some statements by Peter and Paul from the English Bible. But that’s a problem for Scripturalism. Gordon Clark rejects representational theories of perception. For example:
“The ‘correspondence theory of knowledge’ faces the insuperable objection that it disallows any knowledge of reality at all. Whatever reality may be, whether individuals like trees and rocks, or Platonic Ideas, or whatever, this theory provides us only with pictures of them. The object of knowledge is therefore a representation and not the reality itself. Since the mind contains only the picture and never the ‘thing,’ there is no possibility of knowing whether the representation is similar to the object or not. To recognize a similarity between two things, they must be compared, and hence both must be in the mind. But if the reality is in the mind, the picture with its similarity is useless. If the reality is not in the mind, the picture, so far as we know, is a picture of nothing. There is hardly any objection to empiricism more fundamental than this one,” Language and Theology, 29.
How is that a problem for Scripturalism? Here’s the problem:
God inspired Peter and Paul to entertain certain true concepts. However, barring telepathy, we can’t read their minds.
Therefore, the only way for them to transmit their concepts is to communicate their concepts through the medium of inspired words. That’s a form of symbolic discourse–where words represent concepts.
But, of course, the reader can’t go back and compare the words to the concepts, since we lack direct access to the minds of Peter and Paul. All we have are the linguistic tokens of their concepts. According to Clark, we don’t know if the words match the concepts.
Moreover, Sean is quoting from the English Bible. In that case, the English words must correspond to the Greek words.
Perhaps Sean would say we can compare English versions with the original Greek and Hebrew. But that exercise doesn’t eliminate the representational element.
How did he learn Greek and Hebrew? By reading Greek–English or Hebrew–English grammars? But that only pushes the problem back a step.
Suppose he grew up in a home where Greek or Hebrew were his mother tongue. But he only learned Greek and Hebrew by associating certain vocables with certain ostensible objects. So we haven’t eliminated the representational component.
“Seeing that ‘warrant’ has freed Hays from having to justify virtually any knowledge claim, much less his claim to “sense knowledge, it’s not surprsing that he’s left punching the wind.”
Once again, this is simply illiterate. Did I say that knowledge-claims require no justification. No. I said that knowledge requires no justification. On the other hand, I also said that some knowledge-claims may need to be justified.
“Hays’ assertion notwithstanding, and all the RE prattle he might dress it up with, it seems to me that ‘sense knowledge’ would be quite impossible. Given that only propositions can be either true or false and sensations, whatever they may be, are non-propositional, I have no idea how anyone might advance the idea of ‘sense knowledge?’ Could Hays, like Van Til before him, appeal to the methods of science as a means for arriving at this ‘sense knowledge?’ He could, but then he would have to overcome the logical objections raised by Clark in his treatise, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, not to mention the objections of men like Bertrand Russell, Karl Popper and others.”
i) Notice how Sean begins the paragraph by denying that sense knowledge is possible. Then, in order to bolster his denial, he ends this paragraph by referring us to sensory objects: the writings of Clark, Popper, and Russell! For someone who prides himself on his rationality, Sean can’t even think straight.
ii) One can form propositional beliefs on the basis of sensory experience. Sean typed his post on computer keyboard. He has learned from experience that if he depresses a particular key, it will produce a particular letter. He has also learned that if he depresses certain keys in a certain order, it will produce a certain sequence of letters.
He also believes that this will happen because his computer keyboard was designed to operate that way.
Likewise, a Christian believes that God designed the world such that some things ordinarily correspond to other things.
“Now, admittedly, perhaps some Divines did hold to a belief in ‘sense knowledge’ as Hays claims, but it certainly didn’t carry any weight in comparison to the Scripture.”
Notice that he’s having to backpeddle from his original claim. The question at issue is not how the Westminster Divines rated the various sources of knowledge. Rather, the question at issue is whether the Westminster Divines limited all knowledge to the Bible. Sean is trying to change the subject to save face.
“I’m not sure if Hays’ ‘sense knowledge’ qualifies as a ‘new revelation of the Spirit’ or a ‘tradition of men’ or something else entirely, but they did stress that the whole counsel of God, and not just part, is either set down or deduced from Scripture and that this covers all things, and not just some things, pertaining to God’s glory, our salvation, the things we should believe (i.e., faith), and, quite frankly, life in general, so I have no idea what role would be left for Hays’ paltry and oxymoronic ‘sense knowledge’? I guess the Confession writers forgot to include Chapter XXXIV; On Superfluous Knowledge So Called.”
What role is left for sense knowledge? Let’s see:
i) The Bible contains various descriptions of the sensible world, including statements about how Christians should relate to the sensible world. For example, don’t commit adultery. Is it superfluous to the Decalogue whether or not you can know if the woman you’re having sex with is your wife or another man’s wife? Or maybe your dog?
ii) There is also the question of how the Bible itself can be an object of knowledge? If sense knowledge is a contradiction in terms, then how do we know what the Bible teaches? Not from reading it or hearing it.
iii) On a related issue, if the Bible is the only source of knowledge, then our knowledge of logic must derive from Scripture alone. But how can we deduce anything from Scripture unless we have a working knowledge of logic?
“Evidently Hays seems to think the Confession writers were endorsing some sort of natural theology by their use of the phrase ‘light of nature.’ After all, Romans 1:19,20, a favorite passage of Evidentalists and natural theologians everywhere, is cited as a proof text for this portion of the Confession…Rather than a means to arrive at truth, Van Til makes clear that the light of nature, or man’s own natural endowment as God’s creature created in His image confronts man ‘within his own constitution.’ Rather than man coming to a knowledge of the truth by observing nature, man instead ‘concocts his scheme of things in order by means of it to suppress the truth,’ not come to know it. Consequently, it would seem Hays is very wrong about what the Confession is teaching here and wants to hang his entire sensate and empirical overcoat on a very slender nail.”
Is Sean really that dense? The question at issue is not what Van Til happened to think, but what the Westminster Divines happened to think. The question at issue is not the interpretation of Rom 1:19-20, but the interpretation of WCF 1:6.
“Again, notice the sophistry involved here. Hays provides no account demonstrating how he knows Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people’.”
i) I don’t need to since I didn’t accuse Manata of libeling Clark or Robbins. The onus lies on Sean, not me.
ii) Where does Scripture say or imply that I need to demonstrate how I know my father or mother or sister or brother or wife or son or daughter is a real person?
“Yet, as mentioned in Round One, it doesn’t matter whether or not I know if Clark, Robbins, or Manata are ‘real people.’ It doesn’t matter if Manata or Tom Bombadil or whoever he might be is a ‘real person.’ The question is, does Manata express any interest in complying with Biblical commands not to slander?”
i) How does Sean happen to know what the Bible commands? I’m waiting for him to give an account.
ii) Where does Scripture say that you can slander a fictitious person?
“He does not. Manata maintains he did not sin in writing his diatribe characterizing Clark as the Pablo Escobar of epistemology.”
i) Sean doesn’t know that. At best that’s an opinionated claim, and at worst that’s an ignorant claim.
ii) Moreover, Sean has no way to distinguish an opinionated claim from an ignorant claim. Sean can’t claim that some opinions are probably true, while others are probably false. For an opinion, as he defines it, falls short of knowledge. And as Gordon Clark once observed: “A proposition can be probable and known to be probable, only if it resembles or approximates the truth. A person who does not know what is true cannot know what approximates it,” Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 31.
Therefore, Sean’s allegation is not better than ignorance.
I said:
“To my knowledge, Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system. Indeed, he was arguably schismatic. So in what sense was he, much less is he, Manata’s elder or superior?”
To which Gerety responds:
“Clearly, Hays’ knowledge is not to be trusted and if ‘warranted’ it merely demonstrates the uselessness of the entire RE enterprise. Both Clark and Robbins were ordained elders in Reformed denominations. Robbins was also ordained to preach in the PCA. Robbins left the PCA due to its failure to take any action against those Vantilians who continue to teach a false gospel of the Federal Vision in the PCA. You can read his reasons for leaving the PCA here. Robbins did what any Christian ought to do when they are part of a denomination that continues to permit the teaching of a false gospel along side the one true Gospel. So, in his ignorance, Hays joins Manata in his libel of his elder Dr. Robbins, this time falsely accusing him of being a ‘schismatic’.”
Several problems:
i) In responding to my statement (that Robbins avoided participation in a Presbyterian accountability system, which made him schismatic), Gerety admits that Robbins broke with the PCA. He also evades the question of whether Robbins then put himself under the care of another Reformed denomination. To what ecclesiastical body was Robbins answerable?
So how can Robbins be Manata’s ruling elder if Robbins is no longer in the chain-of-command?
iv) The PCA has church courts. An appellate process. It takes a while to adjudicate a controversy like the Federal Vision. In due time, the PCA ruled against the Federal Vision.
If Robbins was ordained (licensed?) to preach in the PCA, then he was a signatory to the PCA appellate process. It was therefore wrong of him not to let the process run its course. Had the PCA ruled in favor of the Federal Vision, then, and only then, would he be justified in leaving the PCA for another Reformed denomination.
iii) Moreover, there’s the little matter of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It’s not as if a ruling elder in one Presbyterian denomination automatically exercises authority over members of another Presbyterian denomination.
iii) Furthermore, there’s a logistical impediment: Robbins is dead. In what sense is a dead man Manata’s ruling elder? Is Sean advancing a necromantic theory of Presbyterian eldership? On his theory of Presbyterian polity, does the séance take the place of the session?
“As for Clark, he was a member of various Reformed denominations throughout his life. He was an ordained Minister in the Presbyterian Church and later in the OPC, and was one of the OPC’s orignial founders along with Gresham Machen. After the Clark/Van Til Controversy in the OPC, and after Van Til and his associates refused to submit to the discipline of the church and repent of their unprovoked and unprecedented attack on Clark (see any pattern here), and after they launched similar attacks against Clark’s defenders, particularly Floyd Hamilton, Clark left for the United Presbyterian Church of North America and later to the Reformed Presbyterian Church. I guess in Hays’ mind Clark was a ‘schismatic’ too and not Van Til and his associates who continued to disrupt the peace of the church after their failed attempt to defrock Clark. Perhaps it would do Hays some good to get his facts straight before barking in the future.”
i) Notice that in my original comment I said nothing about Clark’s churchmanship. Instead, I confined myself to Robbins.
ii) For the record, I actually agree with the minority report, signed by William Young (among others).
iii) In what sense is Gordon Clark Manata’s ruling elder? Clark is dead. Moreover, he died in 1985. I seriously doubt that Manata was a communicant member of a Reformed denomination in 1985 or earlier. If so, he would have been a very precocious member! What is more, I seriously doubt that Manata was ever a member of the Reformed Presbyterian Church.
How does Clark exercise his ruling eldership over Manata from beyond the grave? Is Gerety his medium? Does he light a votive candle to Gordon Clark or pray to Robbins to intercede for Manata?
Gerety is playing fast and loose with Presbyterian polity and ecclesiology.
“But, as Clark would say, a Biblcal paradox is nothing more than ‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage’.”
Yes, that’s what Clark would say. Why would a Scripturalist care what he said? Isn’t the important question what Scripture says? Where does Scripture say that a Biblical paradox is nothing more than “‘a charley-horse between the ears that can only be eliminated by vigorous rational massage”?
As always, Sean honors Scripturalism with his lips, but his heart is far from it.
“By contrast, if one accepts the irrationalism of Van Til and his followers, a Biblical paradox is a charley-horse between the ears that can never be eliminated and any attempt to do so is a sinful failure to ‘think in submission to Scripture’ and to acknowledge the Creator/creature distinction.”
I have never taken the position that any attempt to harmonize a Biblical paradox is sinful. I don’t think that’s Manata’s position either. Or Dr. Anderson’s.
“Despite his assurances to the contrary, Hays seems to take the typical Vantilian approach to paradox and insists that while the paradox remains insoluble for us (evidently due to God’s own equivocation), we are to have faith there is no paradox for God.”
I allow for the possibility of a humanly insoluble paradox. The human subject of knowledge is less complex than the extramental object of knowledge–God, reality as a whole.
Saturday, June 18, 2005
Gordon Clark-2
4.Rationalism.
If you deny sense knowledge, then you must deny special revelation, for the Bible cannot be a source of knowledge unless the Bible is an object of knowledge, and the Bible cannot be an object of knowledge if sense knowledge is denied. This holds at several levels:
i) A Bible is a concrete object, consisting of paper and ink or some other material medium, be it audio, electronic, Braille, &c.
ii) Although the Bible consists of thousands of abstract propositions, these propositions are encoded in the medium of concrete linguistic tokens.
iii) Our knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or the receptor language (e.g., Latin, English) is acquired by empirical means—reading, speaking, hearing.
iv) The Bible refers to the world. Unless the sensible, external world is an object of knowledge, we cannot know what the Bible is referring to.
v) The Bible is saturated with sensory verbs and nouns and imagery. Yef we deny the possibility of sense knowledge, then these must be stripped of their sensory content. But after they're drained of their sensory associations, what do they continue to mean or describe?
vi) Likewise, one mode of revelation consists of visions and auditions. While these may not entail an external simulus, the visions and auditions simulate actual sensory perception. But if sense knowledge is denied, we, once again, lose our frame of reference.
To deny that Scripture is a sensible object, both in form and content, logically commits Clark to some form of natural or general revelation as opposed to special revelation. He oscillates between the two:
***QUOTE***
Christian dogmatism therefore must be realistic. The real object of knowledge is itself present to the mind. One need not (one cannot) pass from an image to the truth. One knows the truth itself.
There are of course other thoughts, objects, or realities. Every Biblical proposition is one. These never change nor go out of existence, for they are constituents of God’s mind. Knowing them we know God. To know God, we do not pass from an unreal concept abstracted from sensory experience to a different reality. We know God directly for in him we live and move and have our being.
Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 123.
***END-QUOTE***
The problem here is that the Bible is an extramental object. The relation between the reader and the text is a subject/object relation. So we do have to pass from the image on the page or vocables in the air to the abstract concept. Once the concept is present in the mind, we know God, but the question is how the concept comes to be present in the mind. Given the concept, our knowledge is immediate, but the given is, itself, mediated by sensory information processing.
The only alternative is some form of ontologism or direct illumination. If that is what Clark has in mind in his allusion to Acts 17:28, this might work on its own level, but it would work as an alternative mode of knowledge--to the exclusion of sola Scriptura. This has always been a problem for Christian Platonism, from Clement, Origen, and Augustine through the Cambridge Platonists to Gordon Clark and other suchlike.
I’d at that this is not at all how Acts 17:28 functions in context. It is not a prooftext for a particular theory of knowledge. It is, rather, a paraphrase of Isa 42:5 on the subject of divine creation and providence.
Clark appears to shifting from epistemology to ontology, where the subject/object duality is dissolved by pantheistic idealism. Back to (1).
Even in this heretical sense, it is unclear how that solves the problem. For in that event, we would not know God. Rather, this would be a form of divine self-knowledge. God, as the subject of knowledge, would be taking himself as the object of knowledge—in a manner analogous to human introspection.
Clark has another strategy for dealing with common sense objections to his position:
***QUOTE***
When a nonempirical apologetic is present to them, they almost always reply with the boldest and most naïve petitio principii: “Don’t you read the Bible?”
A serious apologist cannot ask this question until after he has defined sensation and explained its relation to perception. Apologetics or Christian philosophy has the task of formulating a complete and consistent theory from beginning to—if not end, at least as far as one can go. But it must start at the beginning. When someone asks, “Don’t you read your Bible?” he is assuming that a Bible is certain sensations of black and white without combination, arrangement, or intellectual interpretation. Now, this is clearly not the case. The perception of a bible is somehow ordered and interpreted. The apologist must explain how.
Language & Theology, 131.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a number of quite serious problems with this reply:
i) In the course of his chapter, Clark rehearses a number of standard objections to empiricism. Now, whatever their independent value, he is going outside the Bible for his arguments. He is, therefore, invoking extra-Biblical objections to undercut sola Scriptura. And since Clark was a professed adherent of sola Scriptura, he is not entitled to use arguments which subvert his own stated rule of faith.
ii) It is simply not true that when we say the Bible is an object of sense knowledge, we are assuming that the Bible is an object of raw sensations, without combination, arrangement, or intellectual interpretation.
This is just a straw man argument. Belief in sense knowledge does not commit one to radical empiricism--to the belief that the senses are the only source and standard of knowledge. Neither does it commit one to a bundle theory of perception or personal identity.
Rather, from a Christian standpoint, it only assumes that God has created the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge in a state of mutual adaptation. God, in creation, providence, revelation, and inspiration, has set up a meaningful correspondence between the spoken or written word and our linguistic equipment, as well as a meaningful correspondence between the outward sign (linguistic token) and the abstract significate (extralinguistic type).
iii) Clark is also dead wrong to insist that we don’t know what we’re talking about unless we can define our terms or exclude every borderline case. The act of formal definition presupposes tacit knowledge, just as reflective knowledge presupposes prereflective knowledge. Otherwise, we’re at the mercy of a vicious regress. As Peter Geach points out:
***QUOTE***
This is not a demand that can always legitimately be made. If a definition is given in words, the demand might again be made that these words to defined—and there would be no end to it, or rather the discussion could never begin, never get under way.
It would really have served him right if one of his victims had retorted: “Come now, Socrates, please define ‘definition’!”
I certainly could not define either “oak-tree” or “elephant”; but this does not destroy my right to assert that no oak-tree is an elephant, nor will my readers find this thesis hard to understand or be likely to challenge it.
Reason & Argument (U of California 1976), 38-39.
***END-QUOTE***
We certainly do not need a complete theory of perception before we come to Scripture, before we can listen to the witness of Scripture.
Clark then offers an alternative to empiricism by saying that:
***QUOTE***
St. Augustine’s solution was, briefly, not that two minds had the same sensation, but that two minds have the same ideas. The ideas are common because Christ is the Logos that lighteth every man that comes into the world. “In him we live and move and have our being.” Malebranche…used the figurative phrase, “we see all things in God.”
Language & Theology, 142.
***END-QUOTE***
Several problems:
i) Once more, Clark manages to miss the point. How do two minds share the same idea? How does the idea find its way into the mind in the first place?
ii) The ideas in question are not universal truths of reason, but particular truths of fact regarding historical revelation and historical redemption. This isn’t instinctual know-how.
iii) Clark lifts Acts 17:28 out of context (see above).
iv) He also lifts Jn 1:9 out of context, where the setting is soteriological rather than cosmological. At this stage of redemptive history, saving revelation has now been extended to the Gentiles in the person of the Christ. What we have here is a literary allusion to the consummation of messianic hope and prophecy (Isa 9:2-6; 42:6-7; 60:1-11).
Clark then compares Jn 1:1 with 1 Jn 1:1 and asks, rhetorically:
***QUOTE***
This second person of the Trinity is the subject of John’s declaration. Can this eternal Wisdom be heard with the ears, seen with the eyes, and handled with the hands? Is the second person of the Trinity an object of sense?
Ibid., 145.
***END-QUOTE***
He returns to this same objection on p148.
It should be unnecessary to point out that John’s appeal is not to God qua God, but to God Incarnate--and to the communication of attributes, so that while what he saw and heard and handled was “flesh,” it was God-in-the-flesh. In that transitive sense God is, indeed, a “physical object” which could be “literally seen and handled.”
It’s amazing that Clark can cite 1 Jn 1:1 without registering the patent allusion to the Incarnational event. It’s amazing that C lark can cite Jn 1:1 without seeing how this pans into vv14 and 18.
You begin to wonder, when Clark writes a book on The Incarnation, if he’s using Scriptural and dogmatic terms as a code language to channel his idealistic ontology and epistemology--much as Bishop Berkeley explains away the witness of Scripture: “This, I am sure, is agreeable to Holy Scripture…I see no difficulty in conceiving a change of state, such as is vulgarly called death…”
Clark also runs through some figurative verses of Scripture in which “clearly the verb ‘to see’ does not always, perhaps not even usually, refer to sensation” (147). This is, of course, nothing to the point. It only shows that sensory verbs are sometimes used with a more abstract import--of intellectual apprehension--which no one denies. It has absolute no bearing on the occurrences in which the same verbs are used in their literal and concrete sense.
Clark forces the Christian to operate with a double-truth theory: there's what the Bible says, then there's what the Bible means. What the Bible says must be filtered through the interpretive grid of Clark's idealist epistemology, to find out what it really means. But what comes out the other end, after the screening process is complete, is anyone's guess.
5. Divine omniscience
There are yet other heretical consequences of Clark’s epistemology, such as his assertion that “if the theorems are infinite in number, neither God nor man could know them all, for with respect to infinity there is no ‘all’ to be known. Infinite has no last germ, and God’s knowledge would be as incomplete as man’s,” The Incarnation, 62.
This suffers from a pre-Cantorian definition of the infinite, according to which what is infinite is incomplete while what is complete is finite.
Clark simply disregards the arguments for an actual infinite as a given totality. Clark is letting himself get carried away with the picturesque and incidental implications of a numerical series. But numbers are not literally linear. The order is logical, not linear. The fact that we count from 1-100 says nothing about the ontology of an abstract object. An infinite set is a system of internal relations--inwhich each number is implicit in the others.
6. Divine omnipotence
Not only does Clark limit the knowledge of God, but the power of God as well:
***QUOTE***
It is not true that the Father could choose to create or choose not to create. God did not have, from eternity, a blank mind, undecided as to whether to create or not. God’s mind is, or better, includes the idea of this particular cosmos, with Abraham, David, and Jesus at particular points.
This is not the “best of all possible worlds,” Leibniz claimed: It is the only possible world, As Spinoza claimed. Since God’s mind is immutable, since his decree is eternal, it follows that no other world than this is possible or imaginable.
The Trinity, 111,118-119.
***END-QUOTE***
There are several problems with this claim:
i) The Bible is full of hypotheticals. Hence, a wide variety of possible alternatives is at least conceivable. And not all possibilities are compossible.
ii) Given, then a number of hypothetical scenarios, didn’t God have to make a choice? And didn’t God have the power to enact one or another—or none at all?
iii) The Spinozistic view also destroys the gratuity of grace. Mercy becomes mandatory. But that, too, is unscriptural.
iv) Clark gives two supporting reasons for his view. One wonders why he gives two? Is it that neither is sufficient of itself?
v) The first is that God did not have a blank mind. His mind included the idea of this particular world.
That is true, but it hardly yields the desired result. The question is whether his mind only included the idea of this particular world? Can God only have one idea of one world? Is his imagination so very narrow? Notice, once again, how this imposes a severe restriction on divine omniscience. And does the actual world exhaust all that God is capable of doing?
The doctrine of possible world does not posit a blank mind, but--to the contrary--a full mind.
vi) In addition, Clark claims that the Leibnizian view is incompatible with divine immutability. But this either proves too much or too little.
For if a timeless agent cannot choose to create or not to create, or choose what to create, from an array of bare possibilities, then a timeless agent cannot even create or not create.
Clark says that:
***QUOTE***
We are apt to think or subconsciously suppose that God makes decisions. He willed to create, he willed, after some deliberation, to save some, and so on…[It] pictures him as indecisive on the prior points, and assigns to him a relatively momentary act of choice. This makes God a temporal creature, or if not a creature, at least a temporal being.
The Atonement, 129.
***END-QUOTE***
But if that’s how he is going to frame the issue, then it would apply with equal force to the creative fiat. There was an instant before the Lord made the world--maybe an eternity before he made the world.
Yet if we reject the interjection of a temporal series into the mental act of making the world, we should likewise reject the interjection of a temporal series into the mental act of choosing the world.
The correct way of framing the issue is to say that just as there was never a time when God hadn’t made the world, there was never a time when God hadn’t chosen to make the world, or chosen to make this world rather than another.
Whenever we talk about God, we must make some allowance for the difference between a divine and a human mode of existence. In speaking of God, we need to bracket the incidental conditions of our finite existence. Ironically, Clark is concrete when he needs to be abstract, and abstract when he needs to be concrete.
6. Divine justice
In trying to exculpate God from the problem of evil, Clark says that:
***QUOTE***
Whatever God does is just and right. It is just and right simply in virtue of the fact that he does it…God is “Ex-lex.”
Religion, Reason & Revelation (Trinity 1986), 239-240.
***END-QUOTE***
It is true that whatever God does is just and right. But it hardly follows from this that whatever God didn’t do, but could have done, would be just and right simply in virtue of the counterfactual consideration that he could have done it.
The will of God is not a sheer, free-floating will, detached from his own nature or the nature of his creatures. God’s will is a wise will and a just will. God punishes the wicked, not the innocent.
And God’s laws are adapted to the nature of his creatures. For example, sodomy is sinful, not by arbitrary fiat, but by the way he has designed our sexual constitution. God could not merely make sodomy to be virtuous--by a sheer willpower. Rather, he could only change the nature of the moral law by changing the nature of the lawful object. God can do both, but only by doing both--in tandem.
Clark is isolated the will of God from the doctrine of creation as well as the doctrine of the fall. But these are also expressions of the divine will.
Clark wrote some very useful books: Ancient Philosophy; Thales to Dewey, God’s Hammer; Predestination; A Christian View of Men & Things; Historiography: Secular & Religious, but his later writings are increasing eccentric and unorthodox. These are best consigned to the flames.
If you deny sense knowledge, then you must deny special revelation, for the Bible cannot be a source of knowledge unless the Bible is an object of knowledge, and the Bible cannot be an object of knowledge if sense knowledge is denied. This holds at several levels:
i) A Bible is a concrete object, consisting of paper and ink or some other material medium, be it audio, electronic, Braille, &c.
ii) Although the Bible consists of thousands of abstract propositions, these propositions are encoded in the medium of concrete linguistic tokens.
iii) Our knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, or the receptor language (e.g., Latin, English) is acquired by empirical means—reading, speaking, hearing.
iv) The Bible refers to the world. Unless the sensible, external world is an object of knowledge, we cannot know what the Bible is referring to.
v) The Bible is saturated with sensory verbs and nouns and imagery. Yef we deny the possibility of sense knowledge, then these must be stripped of their sensory content. But after they're drained of their sensory associations, what do they continue to mean or describe?
vi) Likewise, one mode of revelation consists of visions and auditions. While these may not entail an external simulus, the visions and auditions simulate actual sensory perception. But if sense knowledge is denied, we, once again, lose our frame of reference.
To deny that Scripture is a sensible object, both in form and content, logically commits Clark to some form of natural or general revelation as opposed to special revelation. He oscillates between the two:
***QUOTE***
Christian dogmatism therefore must be realistic. The real object of knowledge is itself present to the mind. One need not (one cannot) pass from an image to the truth. One knows the truth itself.
There are of course other thoughts, objects, or realities. Every Biblical proposition is one. These never change nor go out of existence, for they are constituents of God’s mind. Knowing them we know God. To know God, we do not pass from an unreal concept abstracted from sensory experience to a different reality. We know God directly for in him we live and move and have our being.
Three Types of Religious Philosophy, 123.
***END-QUOTE***
The problem here is that the Bible is an extramental object. The relation between the reader and the text is a subject/object relation. So we do have to pass from the image on the page or vocables in the air to the abstract concept. Once the concept is present in the mind, we know God, but the question is how the concept comes to be present in the mind. Given the concept, our knowledge is immediate, but the given is, itself, mediated by sensory information processing.
The only alternative is some form of ontologism or direct illumination. If that is what Clark has in mind in his allusion to Acts 17:28, this might work on its own level, but it would work as an alternative mode of knowledge--to the exclusion of sola Scriptura. This has always been a problem for Christian Platonism, from Clement, Origen, and Augustine through the Cambridge Platonists to Gordon Clark and other suchlike.
I’d at that this is not at all how Acts 17:28 functions in context. It is not a prooftext for a particular theory of knowledge. It is, rather, a paraphrase of Isa 42:5 on the subject of divine creation and providence.
Clark appears to shifting from epistemology to ontology, where the subject/object duality is dissolved by pantheistic idealism. Back to (1).
Even in this heretical sense, it is unclear how that solves the problem. For in that event, we would not know God. Rather, this would be a form of divine self-knowledge. God, as the subject of knowledge, would be taking himself as the object of knowledge—in a manner analogous to human introspection.
Clark has another strategy for dealing with common sense objections to his position:
***QUOTE***
When a nonempirical apologetic is present to them, they almost always reply with the boldest and most naïve petitio principii: “Don’t you read the Bible?”
A serious apologist cannot ask this question until after he has defined sensation and explained its relation to perception. Apologetics or Christian philosophy has the task of formulating a complete and consistent theory from beginning to—if not end, at least as far as one can go. But it must start at the beginning. When someone asks, “Don’t you read your Bible?” he is assuming that a Bible is certain sensations of black and white without combination, arrangement, or intellectual interpretation. Now, this is clearly not the case. The perception of a bible is somehow ordered and interpreted. The apologist must explain how.
Language & Theology, 131.
***END-QUOTE***
There are a number of quite serious problems with this reply:
i) In the course of his chapter, Clark rehearses a number of standard objections to empiricism. Now, whatever their independent value, he is going outside the Bible for his arguments. He is, therefore, invoking extra-Biblical objections to undercut sola Scriptura. And since Clark was a professed adherent of sola Scriptura, he is not entitled to use arguments which subvert his own stated rule of faith.
ii) It is simply not true that when we say the Bible is an object of sense knowledge, we are assuming that the Bible is an object of raw sensations, without combination, arrangement, or intellectual interpretation.
This is just a straw man argument. Belief in sense knowledge does not commit one to radical empiricism--to the belief that the senses are the only source and standard of knowledge. Neither does it commit one to a bundle theory of perception or personal identity.
Rather, from a Christian standpoint, it only assumes that God has created the subject of knowledge and the object of knowledge in a state of mutual adaptation. God, in creation, providence, revelation, and inspiration, has set up a meaningful correspondence between the spoken or written word and our linguistic equipment, as well as a meaningful correspondence between the outward sign (linguistic token) and the abstract significate (extralinguistic type).
iii) Clark is also dead wrong to insist that we don’t know what we’re talking about unless we can define our terms or exclude every borderline case. The act of formal definition presupposes tacit knowledge, just as reflective knowledge presupposes prereflective knowledge. Otherwise, we’re at the mercy of a vicious regress. As Peter Geach points out:
***QUOTE***
This is not a demand that can always legitimately be made. If a definition is given in words, the demand might again be made that these words to defined—and there would be no end to it, or rather the discussion could never begin, never get under way.
It would really have served him right if one of his victims had retorted: “Come now, Socrates, please define ‘definition’!”
I certainly could not define either “oak-tree” or “elephant”; but this does not destroy my right to assert that no oak-tree is an elephant, nor will my readers find this thesis hard to understand or be likely to challenge it.
Reason & Argument (U of California 1976), 38-39.
***END-QUOTE***
We certainly do not need a complete theory of perception before we come to Scripture, before we can listen to the witness of Scripture.
Clark then offers an alternative to empiricism by saying that:
***QUOTE***
St. Augustine’s solution was, briefly, not that two minds had the same sensation, but that two minds have the same ideas. The ideas are common because Christ is the Logos that lighteth every man that comes into the world. “In him we live and move and have our being.” Malebranche…used the figurative phrase, “we see all things in God.”
Language & Theology, 142.
***END-QUOTE***
Several problems:
i) Once more, Clark manages to miss the point. How do two minds share the same idea? How does the idea find its way into the mind in the first place?
ii) The ideas in question are not universal truths of reason, but particular truths of fact regarding historical revelation and historical redemption. This isn’t instinctual know-how.
iii) Clark lifts Acts 17:28 out of context (see above).
iv) He also lifts Jn 1:9 out of context, where the setting is soteriological rather than cosmological. At this stage of redemptive history, saving revelation has now been extended to the Gentiles in the person of the Christ. What we have here is a literary allusion to the consummation of messianic hope and prophecy (Isa 9:2-6; 42:6-7; 60:1-11).
Clark then compares Jn 1:1 with 1 Jn 1:1 and asks, rhetorically:
***QUOTE***
This second person of the Trinity is the subject of John’s declaration. Can this eternal Wisdom be heard with the ears, seen with the eyes, and handled with the hands? Is the second person of the Trinity an object of sense?
Ibid., 145.
***END-QUOTE***
He returns to this same objection on p148.
It should be unnecessary to point out that John’s appeal is not to God qua God, but to God Incarnate--and to the communication of attributes, so that while what he saw and heard and handled was “flesh,” it was God-in-the-flesh. In that transitive sense God is, indeed, a “physical object” which could be “literally seen and handled.”
It’s amazing that Clark can cite 1 Jn 1:1 without registering the patent allusion to the Incarnational event. It’s amazing that C lark can cite Jn 1:1 without seeing how this pans into vv14 and 18.
You begin to wonder, when Clark writes a book on The Incarnation, if he’s using Scriptural and dogmatic terms as a code language to channel his idealistic ontology and epistemology--much as Bishop Berkeley explains away the witness of Scripture: “This, I am sure, is agreeable to Holy Scripture…I see no difficulty in conceiving a change of state, such as is vulgarly called death…”
Clark also runs through some figurative verses of Scripture in which “clearly the verb ‘to see’ does not always, perhaps not even usually, refer to sensation” (147). This is, of course, nothing to the point. It only shows that sensory verbs are sometimes used with a more abstract import--of intellectual apprehension--which no one denies. It has absolute no bearing on the occurrences in which the same verbs are used in their literal and concrete sense.
Clark forces the Christian to operate with a double-truth theory: there's what the Bible says, then there's what the Bible means. What the Bible says must be filtered through the interpretive grid of Clark's idealist epistemology, to find out what it really means. But what comes out the other end, after the screening process is complete, is anyone's guess.
5. Divine omniscience
There are yet other heretical consequences of Clark’s epistemology, such as his assertion that “if the theorems are infinite in number, neither God nor man could know them all, for with respect to infinity there is no ‘all’ to be known. Infinite has no last germ, and God’s knowledge would be as incomplete as man’s,” The Incarnation, 62.
This suffers from a pre-Cantorian definition of the infinite, according to which what is infinite is incomplete while what is complete is finite.
Clark simply disregards the arguments for an actual infinite as a given totality. Clark is letting himself get carried away with the picturesque and incidental implications of a numerical series. But numbers are not literally linear. The order is logical, not linear. The fact that we count from 1-100 says nothing about the ontology of an abstract object. An infinite set is a system of internal relations--inwhich each number is implicit in the others.
6. Divine omnipotence
Not only does Clark limit the knowledge of God, but the power of God as well:
***QUOTE***
It is not true that the Father could choose to create or choose not to create. God did not have, from eternity, a blank mind, undecided as to whether to create or not. God’s mind is, or better, includes the idea of this particular cosmos, with Abraham, David, and Jesus at particular points.
This is not the “best of all possible worlds,” Leibniz claimed: It is the only possible world, As Spinoza claimed. Since God’s mind is immutable, since his decree is eternal, it follows that no other world than this is possible or imaginable.
The Trinity, 111,118-119.
***END-QUOTE***
There are several problems with this claim:
i) The Bible is full of hypotheticals. Hence, a wide variety of possible alternatives is at least conceivable. And not all possibilities are compossible.
ii) Given, then a number of hypothetical scenarios, didn’t God have to make a choice? And didn’t God have the power to enact one or another—or none at all?
iii) The Spinozistic view also destroys the gratuity of grace. Mercy becomes mandatory. But that, too, is unscriptural.
iv) Clark gives two supporting reasons for his view. One wonders why he gives two? Is it that neither is sufficient of itself?
v) The first is that God did not have a blank mind. His mind included the idea of this particular world.
That is true, but it hardly yields the desired result. The question is whether his mind only included the idea of this particular world? Can God only have one idea of one world? Is his imagination so very narrow? Notice, once again, how this imposes a severe restriction on divine omniscience. And does the actual world exhaust all that God is capable of doing?
The doctrine of possible world does not posit a blank mind, but--to the contrary--a full mind.
vi) In addition, Clark claims that the Leibnizian view is incompatible with divine immutability. But this either proves too much or too little.
For if a timeless agent cannot choose to create or not to create, or choose what to create, from an array of bare possibilities, then a timeless agent cannot even create or not create.
Clark says that:
***QUOTE***
We are apt to think or subconsciously suppose that God makes decisions. He willed to create, he willed, after some deliberation, to save some, and so on…[It] pictures him as indecisive on the prior points, and assigns to him a relatively momentary act of choice. This makes God a temporal creature, or if not a creature, at least a temporal being.
The Atonement, 129.
***END-QUOTE***
But if that’s how he is going to frame the issue, then it would apply with equal force to the creative fiat. There was an instant before the Lord made the world--maybe an eternity before he made the world.
Yet if we reject the interjection of a temporal series into the mental act of making the world, we should likewise reject the interjection of a temporal series into the mental act of choosing the world.
The correct way of framing the issue is to say that just as there was never a time when God hadn’t made the world, there was never a time when God hadn’t chosen to make the world, or chosen to make this world rather than another.
Whenever we talk about God, we must make some allowance for the difference between a divine and a human mode of existence. In speaking of God, we need to bracket the incidental conditions of our finite existence. Ironically, Clark is concrete when he needs to be abstract, and abstract when he needs to be concrete.
6. Divine justice
In trying to exculpate God from the problem of evil, Clark says that:
***QUOTE***
Whatever God does is just and right. It is just and right simply in virtue of the fact that he does it…God is “Ex-lex.”
Religion, Reason & Revelation (Trinity 1986), 239-240.
***END-QUOTE***
It is true that whatever God does is just and right. But it hardly follows from this that whatever God didn’t do, but could have done, would be just and right simply in virtue of the counterfactual consideration that he could have done it.
The will of God is not a sheer, free-floating will, detached from his own nature or the nature of his creatures. God’s will is a wise will and a just will. God punishes the wicked, not the innocent.
And God’s laws are adapted to the nature of his creatures. For example, sodomy is sinful, not by arbitrary fiat, but by the way he has designed our sexual constitution. God could not merely make sodomy to be virtuous--by a sheer willpower. Rather, he could only change the nature of the moral law by changing the nature of the lawful object. God can do both, but only by doing both--in tandem.
Clark is isolated the will of God from the doctrine of creation as well as the doctrine of the fall. But these are also expressions of the divine will.
Clark wrote some very useful books: Ancient Philosophy; Thales to Dewey, God’s Hammer; Predestination; A Christian View of Men & Things; Historiography: Secular & Religious, but his later writings are increasing eccentric and unorthodox. These are best consigned to the flames.
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