The Clark/Van Til Controversy: The Text of a Complaint

The Text of a Complaint

Against Actions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia

In the Matter of the Licensure and Ordination of Dr. Gordon H. Clark

[Note: I am typing the full text of this article by hand from a PDF file posted at the God's Hammer blog by Sean Gerety regarding the Clark/Van Til controversy. I am providing a link to the original document file. After I complete the text of the complaint made by Dr. Cornelius Van Til and his supporters, I will be doing the same for the answer to the complaint given by Dr. Clark and his supporters. Note: When reading the PDF file for the answer given by Dr.. Clark right click on the page and rotate clockwise several times until you get it in the landscape orientation. I am posting what I have typed so far and will be making more posts as time permits. If you wish to read the entire document you are free to click on the links above. Charlie.]

The following is the full text of a complaint signed by a minority in the Presbytery of Philadelphia of The Orthodox Presbyterian Church against the action of that presbytery in the matter of the licensure and ordination of the Rev. Gordon H. Clark, Ph.D. The complaint was presented and read on the floor of presbytery at its meeting on November 20, 1944.

To John P. Galbraith, Stated Clerk of The Presbytery of Philadelphia:

And now, this sixth day of October, A.D. 1944, come under the undersigned and complain against the action of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in holding a “special meeting” of the Presbytery on July 7, 1944 and against several actions and decisions taken at that meeting, to wit:

1. The decision to find the call for the meeting in order;

2. The decision to sustain the examination in theology of Dr. Gordon H. Clark;

3. The decision to waive the requirement of two years of study in a theological seminary;

4. The decision to proceed to license Candidate Gordon H. Clark to preach the gospel;

5. The action of licensing Dr. Gordon H. Clark;

6. The decision to deem the examination for licensure sufficient for ordination; and

7. The decision to ordain Dr. Gordon H. Clark at a subsequent meeting of the Presbytery called for that purpose.

In support of the complaint against the decision to find the call for the meeting in order the following considerations are set forth:

The special meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia held at the Mediator Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia on July 7, 1944 was an illegal meeting. In support of this conclusion the following evidence is cited:

1. a. The Form of the Government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church read, “The presbytery shall meet on its own adjournment; and when any emergency shall require a meeting sooner than the time to which it stands adjourned, the moderator, or, in case of his absence, death, or inability to act, the stated clerk, shall, with the concurrence or at the request of two ministers and two elders, the elders being of different congregations, call a special meeting” (Chapter X, section 9).

b. The Form of Government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church reads, “And in the case of the moderator of the presbytery, he shall likewise be empowered, on any extraordinary emergency, to convene the judicatory by a circular letter before the ordinary time of meeting” (Chapter XIX, section 2).

c. The moderator of the Presbytery of Philadelphia when requested at the meeting of July 7, 1944 to state the nature of the emergency which provided the occasion for the special meeting offered no evidence of the existence of an emergency, extraordinary or otherwise. Rather, the moderator stated that the meeting was justified because it suited the convenience of Dr. Gordon H. Clark and declared that other special meetings constituted a precedence for this meeting. Nor has any other evidence of the existence of an emergency been presented to the presbytery or the complainants.

d. Thus the meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia on July 7, 1944 was called, and held, in violation of the Form of Government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

2. a. The provision of the Form of Government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church quoted above are taken verbatim from the Form of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., except that in the second quotation the word “a” is a substitute for the word “his”. These provisions have stood in the Form of Government since its adoption by the Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1788, preparatory to the convening of the first General Assembly in the following year.

Prior to 1788, the Synod of New York and Philadelphia, the parent of the General Assembly, and the highest judicatory then existing, had been governed by the action in 1729 of the Synod of Philadelphia in declaring that they judge the directory for worship, discipline, and government of the church, commonly annexed to the Westminster Confession, to be agreeable in substance to the word of God, and founded thereupon, and therefore do earnestly recommend the same to all their members, to be by them observed as near as circumstances will allow, and Christian prudence direct” (Records of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Philadelphia, (904, p. 95). Since that directory made no specific provision concerning special meetings, the question arose, in the course of time, as to the calling of special meetings, and a query on the subject was brought in to the Synod of New York and Philadelphia in 1760, which query read as follows:

“How many ministers are necessary to request the moderator of the commission of the Synod, or of any of our Presbyteries, to oblige the moderator to call any of these judicatures to do occasional business?” The Synod replied to the query:

“The Synod judge, that meetings of judicatures, pro re nata, can only be necessary on account of important occurrences unknown at their last meeting, and which cannot be safely deferred till their stated meeting, such as scandal raised on a minister's character, tending to destroy his usefulness, and bring reproach on religion; or feuds in a congregation threatening its dissolution; or some dangerous error, or heresy broached; but not for matters judicially deferred by the judicature, except some unforeseen circumstance occurs, which makes it appear that some principal things on which the judgment depends may then be had, and cannot be obtained if it is deferred till their stated meeting; nor, for any matters that ordinarily come in at their stated meetings” (op. cit., p. 305).

This action constituted a precedent for the Form of Government when it was adopted in 1788 and illuminates its meaning. Furthermore the action was printed in Samuel J. Baird: A Collection of the Acts, Deliverances, and Testimonies of The Supreme Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church, from its Origin in America to the Present Time, the ancestor of the Presbyterian Digest, when it first appeared in 1856. It was reprinted in the second edition. It was carried over into The Presbyterian Digest by William E. Moore and still appears in the latest edition of the Digest, that of 1938. It constitutes an unbroken tradition.

b. The special meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia of July 7, 1944 falls under the direct condemnation of this precedent, since it did not deal with an occurrence unknown at the last meeting, nor with a judicial matter, but did deal with a matter that ordinarily “comes in” at a stated meeting.

3. a. The term “pro re nata” was used in connection with special meetings by the Synod of 1760. It has been an historical usage of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. since that time, perhaps before it, in application to special meetings. J. Aspinwall Hodge uses it in his What is Presbyterian Courts? (Philadelphia, 1882).

The definition of “pro re nata” in the Oxford English Dictionary reads, “'for the affair born, i.e. arisen'; for some contingency arising unexpectedly or without being provided for; for an occasion as it arises” (vol. VIII, p. 1398). J. Aspinwall Hodge, in the work just mentioned, says:

“When may 'pro re nata' meetings be called?

“They may be called 'on account of important occurrences unknown at their last meeting, and which cannot be safely deferred till their stated meeting'” (p. 228).

b. The meeting of July 7, 1944 thus violates not only the Form of Government of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and the historical precedence and tradition of the Presbyterian church but the very definition of a pro re nata meeting.

4. a. It has been argued that the Presbytery of Philadelphia has occasionally met in special sessions when no emergency was present and that precedent was thus established for such procedure. But that is only to say that Presbytery has at times erred in this respect. It goes without saying that one error does not justify another. However, the complainants hold that there is no evidence that, as a matter of fact, the Presbytery of Philadelphia has in other instances transgressed the provisions of the constitution concerned. The minutes of the Presbytery of Philadelphia contained in the record books of the Presbytery in August, 1944 record twenty-one special meetings, as distinct from regular or adjourned meetings, whose minutes have been approved to date.

Of that number, nineteen were concerned entirely with the approval of the sending of calls, the reception of churches, the installation of pastors, the dismissal of members, the erasure of the names of members, the dissolution of pastoral relationships, the notifying sessions of dissolutions, the declaring of pulpits vacant, the acceptance of resignations from offices in this connection, the granting of permission to reside without the bounds of presbytery and the ordination of candidates without further examination. In short, they dealt either with changes of pastoral or ecclesiastical status which had arisen in the interval between stated meetings or were for the purpose of ordaining candidates without further examination.

Of the two remaining meetings, one was called in answer to a special request from the Redeemer Church and appointed a committee to confer with the congregation of that church; and the other was called to deal with the report of a committee to prepare an answer to the request of the Presbytery of Ohio and was called in accordance with the direction of the previous regular meeting ordering the committee to present its recommendations at the “earliest possible moment”.

b. The minutes of the Presbytery therefore indicate that in the past the Presbytery has held special meetings only when matters concerning pastoral relationships or the ordination of men already examined were concerned, where a new matter had suddenly arisen, or where the presbytery itself had directed action at the “earliest possible moment”. No special meeting comparable to the meeting of July 7, 1944 has ever been held by the Presbytery of Philadelphia.

We conclude therefore that the meeting of July 7^th was unconstitutional. It was clearly illegal in the light of the specific requirements of the Form of Government that the calling of special meetings is justified only when an emergency exists. It also stands condemned in the light of historic precedent.

In the light of the foregoing considerations the complainants request that the meeting of the Presbytery of Philadelphia held on July 7, 1944 be found to have been illegally convened and that its acts and decisions and the acts and decisions issuing therefrom be declared null and void.

In support of the complaint against the actions and decisions numbered 2 to 7 the following considerations are set forth:

I. The Christian doctrine of the knowledge of God is distinguished as well by its affirmation of the incomprehensibility of God as by its assertion of his knowability. The point does not need to be labored that the knowability of God lies at the very foundation of Christianity. That God can be known, and that he has given a knowledge of himself through his works and words, is pervasively taught in the Scriptures. The possibility and actuality of true religion depend upon the light and truth which God communicates to men. Skepticism and agnosticism are thoroughly anti-Christian.

In avoiding skepticism and agnosticism, however, Christianity has been insistent that the knowledge of God which is possible for men, possible because of the fact of divine revelation, is not and can never become comprehension of God. The doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God is as ultimate and foundational as the doctrine of his knowability. The doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God is not a mere qualification of his knowability; it is not the doctrine that God can be known only if he makes himself known and in so far as he makes himself known. It is rather the doctrine that God because of his very nature must remain incomprehensible to man. The question of the power of God to reveal himself to man does not enter into the elements of this doctrine. Because of his very nature as infinite and absolute the knowledge which God possesses of himself and of all things must remain a mystery which the infinite mind of man cannot penetrate. "The divine knowledge as human, even when that human knowledge is a knowledge communicated by God.”

The sentence should read:

“The divine knowledge as divine, transcends human knowledge as human, even when that human knowledge is a knowledge communicated by God.”

I'm hoping maybe Hugh might be willing to proof these, but once I can get these proofed we should be good to go. Man may possess true knowledge as he thinks God's thoughts after him. But because God is God, the creator,, and man is man, the creature, the difference between the divine knowledge and the knowledge possible to man may never be conceived of merely in quantitative terms, as a difference in degree rather than a difference in kind. Otherwise the Creator-creature relationship is broken down at a most crucial point, and there is an assault upon the majesty of God.

The doctrine of the divine incomprehensibility is not a specifically Reformed doctrine. In view, however, of the peculiar emphasis of the Reformed theology upon the divine sovereignty and transcendence, it is not surprising that it has been most careful to state and expound it. As indicative of the place occupied by this doctrine in Reformed thought mention may be made of the fact that in the monumental work of Bavinck, the first subject treated under the doctrine of God is his incomprehensibility, and that, only after devoting 28 pages to this subject, does he proceed to deal with the knowability of God.

A few quotations from Reformed writers will serve to set forth more adequately the classic doctrine of incomprehensibility. Calvin's teaching, because of the unique place which his thought occupies in the history of Reformed thought, is of special interest. Calvin says that the divine essence is incomprehensible, that his majesty is not to be perceived by the human senses, that what God is in himself we cannot know, that from the nature of the case we may learn from his divine activities only what he is to us, that it would be presumptuous curiosity to attempt to examine into his essence, that rather we must be content to adore, to fear and to reverence him (Institutes, v. 1, 9; ii. 2; x. 2; cf. Warfield, Calvin and Calvinism, pp. 150ff.).

Charnock sets forth the incomprehensibility of God both in his discourse entitled, “On God's Being a Spirit” and in that entitled, “On God's Knowledge”:

“God is therefore a Spirit incapable of being seen, and infinitely incapable of being understood. . . . There is such a disproportion between an infinite object and a finite sense and understanding, that it is utterly impossible either to behold or comprehend him.” (Discourses on the Existence and Attributes of God, New York, 1886, pp. 184f.).

“We cannot have an adequate or suitable conception of God: He dwells in inaccessible light; inaccessible to the acuteness of our fancy, as well as the weakness of our sense. If we could have thoughts of him as high and excellent as his nature, our conceptions must be as infinite as his nature. All our imaginations of him cannot represent him, because every created species is finite; it cannot therefore represent to us a full and substantial notion of an infinite Being. . . . Yet God in his word is pleased to below his own excellency, and point us to those excellencies in his works, whereby we may ascend to the knowledge of those excellencies which are in his nature. But the creatures, whence we draw our lessons, being finite, it is utterly impossible to have a notion of God commensurate to the immensitiy and spirituality of his being” (idem, p. 196. See also pp. 183, 451, 358).

J. H. Thornwell in his lecture on “The Nature and Limits of our Knowledge of God” (Collected Writings, Vol. I, Richmond, 1871) also clearly draws a qualitative distinction between the divine knowledge and the knowledge that is possible to man. While the whole discussion on pp. 104-142 is pertinent a few quotations must suffice here:

“His infinite perfections are veiled under finite symbols. It is only the shadow of them that falls upon the human understanding” (p. 118).

“Again the difference betwixt Divine and human knowledge is not only simply of degree. It is a difference in kind. God's knowledge is not like ours, and therefore we are utterly unable to think it as it is in Him. We can only think it under the analogy of ours in the sense of a similarity of relations” (pp. 121f.).

“This protest is only a series of negations—it affirms simply what God is not, but by no means enables us to conceive what He really and positively is. It is the infinite and absolute applied to the attributes which we are striving to represent. Still these negative notions are of immense importance. They are clear and pregnant confessions that there is a transcendent reality beyond all that we are able to conceive or think in comparison with which our feeble thoughts are but darkening counsel by words without knowledge” (p. 122).

“Most heresies have risen from believing the serpent's lie, that our faculties were a competent measure of universal truth. We reason about God as if we possessed an absolute knowledge. The consequence is, we are lost in confusion and error. . . . It is so easy to slide into the habit of regarding the infinite and the finite as only different degrees of the same thing, and to reason from one to the other with the same confidence with which, in other cases, we reason from the less to the greater, that the caution cannot be too much insisted upon that God's thoughts are not our thoughts, nor God's ways our ways” (pp. 140f.).

“Our ignorance of the Infinite is the true solution of the most perplexing problems which encounter us at every step in the study of Divine truth. We have gained a great point when we have found that they are truly insoluble—that they contain one element which we cannot understand, and without which the whole must remain an inexplicable mystery. The doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, of the Prescience of God and the Liberty of Man, the Permission of the Fall, the Propagation of Original Sin, the Workings of Efficacious Grace, all these are facts which are clearly taught; as facts they can be readily accepted, but they defy all efforts to reduce them to science. . . . Our wisdom is to believe and adore” (pp. 141f.).

Although Charles Hodge's particular treatment of the doctrine of incomprehensibility is brief, it is to the point, and likewise bases the doctrine upon the distinction in nature between the Almighty and the creature:

"When it is said that God can be known, it is not meant that He can be comprehended. To comprehend is to have a complete and exhaustive knowledge of an object. It is to understand its nature and its relations. . . . God is past finding out. We cannot understand the Almighty to perfection. . . . Such knowledge is clearly impossible in a creature, either of itself or of anything outside of itself” (Systematic Theology, I, p. 337).

“It is included in what has been said, that our knowledge of God is partial and inadequate. There is infinitely more in God than we can have any idea of; and what we do know, we know imperfectly” (ibid.).

Shedd is also worth hearing. He says:

“Man knows the nature of finite spirit through his own self-consciousness, but he knows that of the Infinite spirit only analogically. Hence some of the characteristics of the Divine nature cannot be known by a finite intelligence. For example, how God can be independent of the limitations of time and have an eternal mode of consciousness that is without succession, including all events simultaneously in one omniscient intuition, is inscrutable to man, because he himself has no such consciousness” (Dogmatic Theology, I, p. 152).

“Although God is an inscrutable mystery, he is yet an object of thought” (idem, p. 156).

Finally, a few sentences from Bavinck.

“This doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God and of the unknowability of his essence becomes also the point of departure and the founational thought of Christian theology. God is not exhausted in his revelation, whether in creation or re-creation. He cannot fully communicate himself to his creatures because they would then themselves have to be God. There is therefore no adequate knowledge of God” (Gereformeerde Dogmatiek, II, p. 10).

“There is no knowledge of God as he is in himself. We are men and he is the Lord our God. . . . He is infinitely far exalted above our conception, our thought, our language. He is not to be compared with any creature. . . . He can be apprehended, not comprehended. --Thus speaks the whole of Scripture and the whole of Christian theology. And when a superficial nationalism has thought an adequate knowledge of God possible, Christian theology has always fought it most strenuously” (p. 23).

“The knowledge that we possess of God is altogether distinctive. It can be called a positive knowledge in so far as through it we recognize a being who is infinitely different from all finite creatures. It is, on the other hand, negative because we cannot ascribe a single predicate to God as we conceive of such a predicate in his creatures. And it is therefore analogical because it is the knowledge of a being who in himself is unknowable but nevertheless can make something of himself known to his creatures” (p. 24).

“Christian theology beholds here an adorable mystery. It is completely incomprehensible for us that and how God can reveal himself and to an extent make himself known in the creature, the eternal in time, the immeasurable in space, the infinite in the finite, the unchangeable in change, being in becoming, that which is already as if it existed in that which does not exist. This mystery is not to be comprehended, it can alone be gratefully acknowledged” (pp. 24f.)

“Mystery is the element in which theology lives” (p. 1).

That this doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God as expounded by Reformed theology is the doctrine of the Confession of Faith, II, 1, and of the Larger Catechism, 7, cannot be doubted. In the nature of the case the doctrinal standards do not expound the meaning of the word “incomprehensible” where it is employed. Nevertheless, its meaning does not remain uncertain because of its uniform significance in the history of Christian thought which constitutes the background of the formulation of these standards. The context provided by the standards themselves, moreover, serves to confirm this conclusion. In describing God as “infinite in being and perfection” and as “most absolute” (II, 1) and as having “all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself” and as being “alone in and unto himself all-sufficient” (II, 2) the Confession clearly conceives of the nature and attributes of God as beingg infinitely exalted above the nature and qualities of the creature whether in this life or in the life to come. More specifically, when it speaks of the knowledge of God as infinite (II, 2) that knowledge of God is evidently thought of as differing from the knowledge possible to the creature in a qualitative sense, and not merely in degree. And nothing is more obvious than that in characterizing God as “incomprehensible”, the Confession does not mean merely that God is unknown unless he reveals himself. God does not become less incomprehensible through the historical process of revelation. Rather his incomprehensibility is viewed as an attribute of God as he is in himself, without which he would not be God, as absolute and unalterable as his immutability, his omnipotence and the other attributes referred to in the same sentence (II, 1). Now since God is incomprehensible, his revelation of himself cannot have the purpose of providing an adequate or exhaustive knowledge of himself; the revelation is directed to the needs of men (Confession I, 1). Nor does the doctrine of the plainness of Scripture (I, 7) mean that the revelation which God has been pleased to give of himself is meant to be exhaustively understood. It is indeed inherently perspicuous, and it is plain to man in the sense that man “may attain unto a sufficient understanding” of “those things which are necessry to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation”, but this is far from implying that there are not mysteries set forth in the divine revelation that are quite beyond the powers of the finite mind to comprehend.

That this doctrine of the divine incomprehensibility is the teaching of the Scriptures does not require any elaborate proof. The doctrine is taught in many passages and is implicit in the doctrine of the divine transcendence which is everywhere taught or presupposed in Scripture. A few of the most explicit passages may be passed in review. The proof-text supplied with the reference in the Confession is Psalm 145:3. “His greatness is unsearchable.” Isaiah 40:28 also states that “there is no searching of his understanding” while Job 11:7 f. asks, “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? It is high as heaven: what canst thou do? Deeper than Sheol; what canst thou know?” In these passages far more is taught than that man is dependent upon the divine revelation for knowledge of God; there is a reverent acknowledging of the exceeding greatness of God and of his knowledge which man as a creature cannot know in any adequate way. Even more clearly perhaps, the gulf which separates the divine knowledge from human knowledge is set forth in Isaiah 55:8, 9. “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith Jehovah. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” In I Timothy 6:16 the Lord of Lords is described as “dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man hath seen or can see”, thus indicating not merely that God is invisible because of his spirituality but also that the light in which God dwells is so glorious that man the creature may never trespass or even draw near to contemplate God as he is in himself. Only the divine Son has that adequate knowledge of God which makes a revelation of God possible (John 1:18; 6:46). Only the Son has a knowledge of the Father that is on a level with the Father's knowledge of the Son; only the Son's knowledge of the Father is exhaustive knowledge; the knowledge which men may come to possess of the Father and of the Son is knowledge on a lower level, apprehension but not comprehension, for otherwise mere men would have to be accorded a place alongside of Christ who alone “knows the Father” (Mt. 11:27; Luke 10:22. Cf. Also Romans 11:33; Deuteronomy 29:29).

[Click here to see Part Two].

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