"Christ’s person was deity, and the limitations of a twelve-year-old boy cannot possibly be elements that compose the Second Person of the Trinity. The Second Person, being eternal and immutable, did not change one little bit as a result of the Incarnation. This is particularly evident on Hodge's basic position, for he insists that there is only one Person, and he is God. How can a boy's effort to learn, no matter how brilliant, be an attribute or activity of the Godhead? Jesus was ignorant of many things when he questioned the Pharisees. But ignorance, to repeat, is not a divine attribute." Dr. Gordon H. Clark.
I am a big fan of ebooks and Kindle editions of books for the simple reason that searching for a quote or quoting from the book for blog posts is much easier. However, there can sometimes be discrepancies between the hard copy and the computer copy. Unfortunately I have found such an error in the ebook version of Dr. Gordon H. Clark's book, The Incarnation. (Trinity Foundation: Jefferson, 1988). You can view both editions here: The Incarnation.
I was unable to find my paperback edition of The Incarnation so I ordered the ebook edition. Later I did find my paperback. The trouble is that when I was reading the ebook version I came across this paragraph in chapter 5 on the nineteen century:
Coming closer to a description of the Incarnation Hodge on page 381 has, “He had a rational soul…a finite human intelligence…a perfect or complete human nature, which is thus proved to have entered into the composition of Christ’s person.” Now, it should, in my opinion, be more greatly emphasized than theologians are wont to do, that Jesus had a rational soul. How he astounded the learned teachers when he was only twelve years old! But does this prove, as Hodge says, that the complete human nature of Jesus “entered into the composition of Christ’s person?” Decidedly not. The Creed of Chalcedon says, “inconfusedly, unchangeably…the property of each nature being preserved.” Christ’s person was deity, and the limitations of a twelve-year-old boy cannot [ ] divine attribute.
Gordon H. Clark. The Incarnation (Kindle Locations 643-648). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition.
I have highlighted the problem sentence in bold. The problem is the last sentence makes no sense. But when I checked the paperback edition I discovered why it made no sense. It is because the sentence leaves out the end of the sentence and deletes several other sentences in the paragraph. I am leaving the bold of the above quote so that you can see what is missing between the bold text. The correct reading of the last part of the paragraph is:
Christ’s person was deity, and the limitations of a twelve-year-old boy cannot possibly be elements that compose the Second Person of the Trinity. The Second Person, being eternal and immutable, did not change one little bit as a result of the Incarnation. This is particularly evident on Hodge's basic position, for he insists that there is only one Person, and he is God. How can a boy's effort to learn, no matter how brilliant, be an attribute or activity of the Godhead? Jesus was ignorant of many things when he questioned the Pharisees. But ignorance, to repeat, is not a divine attribute.
Gordon H. Clark. The Incarnation. (Trinity Foundation: Jefferson, 1988). Pp. 42-43. Paperback edition.
This is most likely an unintentional error due to computer scanning or something. I do not think it was intentional.
I will make a few brief comments on the importance of this book. First of all, Dr. Clark was falsely accused of being a Nestorian. His basic axiom is always that Scripture alone is the Word of God. In fact, that view is the main doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith and also of the Protestant Reformation. For Dr. Clark Scripture must be logical and without any contradictions because God is Logic. (John 1:1). Therefore, the solutions to apparent paradoxes must be solved from Scripture, not from the consensus of neo-Calvinists who wish to compromise classical Calvinism for a moderate Calvinism that is not really Calvinism at all.
Clark did not reject the Westminster Confession of Faith but he did realize that the WCF followed the doctrinal creed we know as the Definition of Chalcedon of 451 A.D. Clark critically and rationally examined the logical consistency of the Definition and found that there were certain ambiguities inherent in the statement, particularly because the Definition never defined what a rational human soul is or what a person is. This is understandable because the theology and philosophy of that time had not advanced that far yet. How does one Person have two wills? How can one Person be both omniscient and ignorant at the same time?
These questions are still relevant today even though Clark wrote this book in 1988 just prior to his death. He was never able to finish the book. I must admit that I did not read the book as carefully as I should have the first time I read it because I was not that familiar with Clark's other writings. I have spent the last few years reading everything that I could find which Dr. Clark had written. It also helps to have an understanding of the history of philosophy and the history of liberal and conservative theology. Clark was extremely critical of liberal theology and modernism because of the damage it had done to the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the denomination in which he had grown up in. Both Clark's father and grandfather were ordained teaching elders in the PCUS, now the PCUSA. But Clark was also critical of the neo-orthodox theologians who were simply a new and improved liberalism of the postmodernist variety. This is the reason for the fallout between Clark and Dr. Cornelius Van Til because Clark criticized Van Til for compromising with neo-orthodoxy when Van Til said that all Scripture is paradoxical and all Scripture is apparently contradictory.
Interestingly, many Evangelicals of the Arminian variety today have gone down the path of the liberal doctrine of process theology. One of my favorite Reformed Baptists, Dr. James R. White, debated one of these Open Theists a year or two ago and during the debate James was pinned down on whether or not God changes. Inevitably the issue of the incarnation came up. Of course, James White defends the doctrine of the immutability of God over against Open Theism. But because White is not trained in philosophy or logic he made several egregious errors. In his diatribe in a second video, James White complained that the Open Theists do not understand that the one Person of Jesus Christ is both human and divine. White said that when Christ was ignorant, etc., that this was when Jesus was speaking out of his human nature and not his divine nature. But this asserts that the same Person is both ignorant and omniscient at the same time. This is an outright contradiction. This is why Dr. Clark's book is so important today. In fact, I would advise everyone to carefully read The Incarnation and also Clark's many other books. If we take White's view literally it would mean that the divine Logos replaced the human soul of Jesus and that the human nature was without personality, which is the heresy of Apollinarianism. It would also imply the kenosis view since apparently the second Person of the Trinity gave up his deity or his divine attributes for thirty-three and a half years during his earthly incarnation.
James White lost the debate with the Open Theists because the venue was biased against him. But he also lost the debate because Brother Jimmy is confused himself. Simply asserting pat answers to difficult theological and philosophical questions is no way to confront confused heretics.
I would also highly recommend that those interested in Clark's view of the incarnation should read his other book, The Trinity.
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