One Point: Van Tilian Political Correctness, Logic, and the Priesthood of Believers

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said,`You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1 NKJ)"The bottom line here is that the Van Tilians are the ones who agree with Satan.  They ask the same question that the serpent asked in the garden:  "Hath God really said?"--  Charlie J. Ray


For a heads up, I want to let my readers know that this article will be an editorial opinion and not necessarily exegetical or systematic theology.  That being said from the get go, I want to issue a complaint against the ivory towers of Van Tilianism, neo-legalism, and various other miscreant theological aberrations within the general umbrella of what is generally known as Calvinism.  

First of all, I want to admit up front that I am not omniscient nor have I ever claimed to be omniscient.  I operate within my own limitations as an individual person who thinks propositionally.  In fact, my thinking is often subject to mistakes and logical errors.  I have never been trained formally in logic or philosophy other than a few classes in college and seminary; so I do make mistakes.  I am often forgetful and lose a train of thought.

But since all men are subject to these noetic effects of sin, even theologians whose professional occupation is teaching and writing theology and biblical exegesis are in the same situation.  This is why I wonder why people like R. Scott Clark and Mike Horton think that their opinion trumps the priesthood of believers.  The last I checked the Protestant Reformation does not teach the Anabaptist principle of subjective leadings to an ever changing truth.  The Reformers also did not teach lone ranger views of the priesthood of believers.  They outright rejected solipsism or any view of the liberty of conscience that made the individual the center of authority in matters of biblical interpretation.  Solo scriptura is therefore out. 

But where does that leave us?  Sola scriptura rejects the church as an infallible magisterium or interpreter of Scripture; thus the papist view that the pope and the church have an equal authority with Scripture is out.  Moreover, the Protestant Reformers certainly believed in scholarship.  The Reformation did not begin as a grass roots movement.  It began with humanist scholars who began to read the biblical texts for themselves.  Using logic and consistently critical methods they saw that Rome's views on doctrinal issue were not biblical but had been derived instead from human traditions.  Furthermore, the Latin Vulgate was shown to be an unreliable translation from the original Greek and Hebrew majority texts available to the Reformers.

The Reformers were out to educate the public.  The first thing they did was to translate the Bible into the vernacular languages of the people.  That's because the Reformers believed that even a common man, a plow boy could read the Bible for himself and see that Rome's traditions were wrong.  That's because the Bible is a logical revelation and logical propositions can be logically arranged to fit into a logical system that fits together into a whole system of theology (John 10:35).  The Scriptures cannot be broken.  Out of that grew the conviction that the system of theology in the Bible should be summarized into an extended creedal statement.  The Westminster divines were so committed to this principle that Scripture is perspicuous, plain, and logical that a culmination of that effort was the Westminster Assembly and the the documents we know as the Westminster Standards (Confession of Faith, Larger and Shorter Catechism).  But notice carefully that the Westminster Assembly of 1647 did not reject the priesthood of believers.  Their goal was to put the Bible in the hands of the common man.  The Bible alone is the Word of God in their view.  (2 Timothy 3:16).  Even a child or a redneck plowboy can understand the plain and perspicuous Scriptures and be saved (2 Timothy 3:15).  That is because Scripture is logical and the God who inspired Scripture is Logic (John 1:1).  Man is the image of God (John 1:9; Genesis 1:26-27).

What is amazing to me today, however, is that modern Reformed scholars in the Van Tilian camp are now directly challenging the doctrine of the perspicuity of Scripture, that Scripture is so plain that even a child can read and understand the essential and plain passages of the text and be saved (2 Timothy 3:15; 2 Peter 1:19-21).  Instead, the Van Tilians claim that all Scripture is apparently contradictory.  This is nothing more than neo-orthodoxy, of course.  The Bible is not really the word of God because at no single point does the Christian know anything that God knows.  This, of course, begs the question:  why would God reveal anything at all if it is impossible to know anything God knows?  The Van Tilian out for this question is analogical knowledge.  We don't know anything God knows except analogically.  So God didn't really reveal logical and propositional truth.  He only revealed glimmerings of irrational truths that don't make sense in the human mind.  To try to understand God's Word is really just a form of Arminian rationalism, according to the Van Tilians.  So why have seminaries or train men to think if it is all just rationalism to try to understand God's Word logically?  Without logic there can be no communication whatsoever.  That's because the law of contradiction is absolutely necessary for communication and understanding.   Van Tilians know this because they are always contradicting the views of the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  However, an analogy is not a logical proposition.  Dr. Clark rightly pointed out that unless an analogy or metaphor has a logical proposition behind it, then it is conveys nothing meaningful or understandable.

Van Til's views are therefore a direct repudiation of the inerrancy, infallibility, perspicuity, and reliability of Scripture.  In its place, Van Til places the authority of church synods that have a higher authority than Scripture.  After all, without the minister the lay man cannot read and understand the Bible.  For Van Til and his followers the priesthood of believers is subject to Van Til's final authority.  In short, disagree with the papal authority of Van Til and you are politically incorrect and black listed.  The name of Gordon H. Clark is anathema in the Reformed world today.  Dare to disagree with R. Scott Clark and you will be permanently banned from commenting on his blog or elsewhere. Dare to disagree with Westminster Seminary East or West or any other Reformed seminary promoting Van Tilian paradox and you are immediately unemployable as a minister in any of those churches.  In fact, I wonder why any orthodox Reformed minister would want to be ordained in a denomination where the theology of irrationalism prevails?

I am not rejecting confessional theology.  Obviously, Dr. Clark did not do that either.  He held that the Westminster Confession of Faith is the best summary of the propositional revelation in the bible that has ever been produced.  But I am saying that even a lowly lay person can study and read the Bible and use the Westminster Standards as a guide to understanding the system of theology that has been expositionally and exegetically drawn from the clear warrant of the Holy Scriptures.

In short, the Van Tilians have no authority over classical Calvinists.  The Bible is the final authority, not R. Scott Clark or Mike Horton.  They will ridicule and use the abusive ad hominem fallacy, of course.   They falsely accused Dr. Clark of hyper-Calvinism, rationalism and other things.  The bottom line, however, is that Scripture alone is the Word of God.  When a theological tradition bases its theology on an axiom other than Scripture, namely the Van Tilian axiom that "all Scripture is apparently paradoxical," the end result is skepticism, neo-orthodoxy, theonomy, the Federal Vision, the Auburn Avenue error, etc.  Most of this originated with Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Gerhardus Vos, and other Reformed theologians whose theology logically culminated in the Auburn Affirmation, which ironically led to the formation of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the first place.

Sean Gerety asked a question his book, Can the Presbyterian Church in America Be Saved?  He pointed out the conflict between logical contradictions and the Van Tilian view that all Scripture is apparently contradictory.  This leaves the Van Tilians free to read the equivocations of the Federal Visionists with charity.  Lane Keister of the Green Baggins blog could not bring himself to say that Doug Wilson is an enemy of the Gospel.  The same thing is true of R. Scott Clark and Mike Horton.  Their commitment to irrationalism is so great that even though they disagree with the neo-legalism of Richard Gaffin, Jr. and the Federal Visionists, their commitment to a false charity given to false teachers is greater than their commitment to the Bible.  Furthermore, since neither Horton nor R. S. Clark actually believes the Bible is unequivocally and univocally the very words of God, they leave themselves open to skepticism.   To Horton the Bible is an inspired myth that is factual and R. S. Clark says that to say Scripture is the very words of God and univocally God's logical and propositional revelation is to promote a quest for an illegitimate intellectual certainty (QIRI).  (See:  Religious Uncertainty: Recovering the Reformed Confession and A Critical Review of Pilgrims on the Way).  In short, truth is subsumed under the rubric of loyalty to a seminary or a denomination rather than loyalty to the system of theology revealed in Holy Scripture and summarized by the Westminster Standards. 

According to R. Scott Clark, the temptation of Adam and Eve was not about believing God's logical command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of the knowledge of good and evil.  It was about a quest to know things just as God knows them:

QIRC is an acronym: Quest for Illegitimate Religious Certainty. It has at least two aspects. The first is the ancient, sinful desire to know what God knows, the way he knows it. That is what the Evil One offered to us in the garden (Gen 3). He suggested to us that our kind, holy, and righteous Creator God was was afraid of us, that, if we would only trust him, the devil, we could know what God knows the way he knows it. As you may know, that sale went horribly wrong because it was horribly wrong from the beginning. It was a lie and when we signed that contract with our own blood.   (From: The QIRC-er Must Be Right, by R. Scott Clark.

The problem with R.S. Clark's premise is that it is flat wrong.  The problem is not a quest for illegitimate knowledge.  Did Adam know God's command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?  Or was the command somehow apparently contradictory?   Did God issue a command in the form of logic that would require the law of contradiction to be properly understood?  And did Adam know God's words just as God understood these words?

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, "Has God indeed said,`You shall not eat of every tree of the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1 NKJ)

The problem is not that the serpent was tempting Eve with knowledge.  He tempted her to reject the plain teaching of God's Word.  The Word was not yet written but it was nevertheless the very words of God told her by Adam.  And it is even likely that God Himself instructed Eve since both Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:8).  Of course, the promise that you can be like God is a continuing problem in the cults.  But that is certainly not what the Westminster Confession teaches, contra R. Scott Clark.  (See:  Westminster Confession of Faith 1.6).

Furthermore, is it an illegitimate quest for knowledge to believe that the Bible is univocally the same words God knows?  Of course, we only know what is revealed (Deuteronomy 29:29; Romans 16:25-26).  But is it illegitimate to know God's special revelation in Scripture?  According to R. Scott Clark, it is illegitimate to know anything God knows, therefore ruling out special revelation.  We can only analogically guess what God knows--even when God reveals His thoughts in the Bible.  By Van Tilian reasoning it is illegitimate to question anyone's interpretation of the text because to inquire into the meaning of the text is to seek to know what God knows just as God knows it.  So Scott Clark is the one agreeing with the devil, not the Scripturalist.  The Scripturalist agrees with the commands of God because those commands are univocally the same commands in the mind of God and in the mind of the man who hears or reads God's revelation in spoken words:

Chapter I

Of the Holy Scripture

I. Although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men unexcusable;[1] yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God, and of His will, which is necessary unto salvation.[2] Therefore it pleased the Lord, at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal Himself, and to declare that His will unto His Church;[3] and afterwards for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing;[4] which makes the Holy Scripture to be most necessary;[5] those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.[6]

Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.1.

In light of these compromises regarding the authority, inspiration and authority of Scripture, I would like to ask Dr. R. Scott Clark how he can with a straight face oppose the Federal Vision if it is not a logical contradiction to the system of theology logically and univocally revealed in Scripture and summarized on a warrant from Scripture in the Reformed confessions we know as the Westminster Standards, the Three Forms of Unity, and the Anglican Formularies?  After all, Scripture is inherently and apparently paradoxical, according to R.S. Clark.  These apparent contradictions are only resolved in God's mind and it is a violation of the creature/Creator distinction to say that Doug Wilson is a false teacher or that Richard Gaffin, Jr. or Norman Shepherd have contradicted the Gospel in any way whatsoever, right?

The bottom line here is that the Van Tilians are the ones who agree with Satan.  They ask the same question that the serpent asked in the garden:  "Hath God really said?"

Just asking.


Charlie

Top Post from 2013: Mike Horton's Ontological Mess

Jack Kilcrease and wife.

Jack Kilcrease, a Lutheran theologian, made a few comments about Mike Horton's systematic theology.  I wrote a brief comment on that entry at Theologia Crucis with a link to my review of Horton's book, The Christian Faith:  A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.  You can read my comments on Kilcrease's blog article Theologia Crucis:  Mike Horton's Ontological Mess.

Theologia Crucis: Mike Horton's Ontological Mess

"I wish to affirm that a satisfactory theory of revelation must involve a realistic epistemology. By realism in this connection, I mean a theory that the human mind possesses some truth – not an analogy of the truth, not a representation of or correspondence to the truth, not a mere hint of the truth, not a meaningless verbalism about a new species of truth, but the truth itself."  -- Dr. Gordon H. Clark

It is truly ironic when an irrationalist Lutheran calls Mike Horton's view an ontological mess.  But at least this demonstrates my point that Horton is incredibly confused and contradicts himself many times over in his systematic theology,  The Christian Faith:  A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.  Dr. Jack Kilcrease is no Lutheran lightweight.  Although he is a layman, he is an adjunct professor of theology at the Institute for Lutheran Theology and Aquinas College.  The lead in of his article is compelling:

Michael Horton (a Reformed theologian and frequent guest on Issues, etc.) has written a systematic theology a while back that received a lot of attention. I read it about a year ago and had some initial technical problems with it (for one thing, it was one of the worst edited books I've ever read. The first footnotes in one chapter read "Ibid."). Through my research into the history of Western and Eastern Christian theology, I've come to appreciate how Horton's basic way of construing human knowledge of God is a complete mess. What he attempts to do is combine Western scholastic approach to the knowledge of God with an Eastern distinction between "essence" and "energies." These are completely contradictory approaches to ontology and the knowledge of God. Below, I will flesh out some of my criticisms. 

-- Jack Kilcrease, theologia crucis: Michael Horton's Theological-Ontological Mess

I happen to concur completely with this thesis.  Eastern Orthodoxy is blatantly pelagian through and through, yet Horton tries to reconcile the contradiction by way of Van Til's theology of paradox.  Ironic, is it not?  It should not be surprising to those who follow the theology of Gordon H. Clark to find Van Tilians who are enamored with the mysticism of Eastern Orthodoxy.  Dr. Kilcrease makes an excellent point here in that regard:

Gregory of Nyssa emphasized that one couldn't treat the divine essence like this. It was mysterious and essentially unknowable. In his Life of Moses, Gregory described the Christian life metaphorically as being like the ascension of Moses up Mt. Sinai. One enters farther and farther into the darkness of the mountain of God, without ever reaching a knowledge of the divine being in itself. Of course, this certainly served the polemical situation, but the fact of the matter is that it simply created another problem: how do we know anything about God if he is incomprehensible? 

Kilcrease

Unfortunately, modern Lutherans have fallen into the same trap as the Van Tilians when they deny that Scripture is a logical and a rational revelation from God and that Scripture is univocally the very words of God.  Kilcrease has more in common with Horton than would at first appear:

This has epistemological implications: Since God is these things properly and creatures are these things in a derivative manner by similitude to God, God is conceptually knowable by analogy. 

Ibid.

Even more unfortunately, Kilcrease sides with Aquinas rather than Augustine's view that Scripture is a reasonable revelation of God and fully comprehensible.  Aquinas begins with reason and tries to prove God's existence, and Aquinas is the originator of the theology of Scripture as analogy rather than the very words of God.  So it would appear that the rationalism of Aquinas does lead to irrationalism and skepticism just as the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark contended.  Of course, Dr. Clark's own theology, often described as presuppositional Scripturalism, also included a healthy dose of Augustinian realism.

For the late Dr. Gordon H. Clark the idea that reason apart from revelation can lead to faith, or that analogy can explain what Scripture teaches, was anathema.  His thesis is that rationalism, represented by Thomas Aquinas, leads to skepticism and irrationalism.  And judging from the evolution of philosophy from Immanuel Kant to Kierkegaard and the existentialists, this is not a wrong assessment.  Even worse, the neo-orthodox theologians thrived on the theology of paradox which they further developed from Kierkegaard and others.  Surely those who side with irrationalism should reconsider the words of the late Gordon H. Clark:

In conclusion, I wish to affirm that a satisfactory theory of revelation must involve a realistic epistemology. By realism in this connection, I mean a theory that the human mind possesses some truth – not an analogy of the truth, not a representation of or correspondence to the truth, not a mere hint of the truth, not a meaningless verbalism about a new species of truth, but the truth itself. God has spoken his Word in words, and these words are adequate symbols of the conceptual content. The conceptual content is literally true, and it is the univocal, identical point of coincidence in the knowledge of God and man.

Gordon Clark (2011-07-02T18:48:21+00:00). God's Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics (Gordon Clark) (Kindle Locations 774-779). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition.

Charles Hodge Rebukes Mike Horton On Inspiration

[See also review of The Christian Faith, Part One].

Although Mike Horton exalts the "metanarrative" above the propositional truth claims of Holy Scripture and rejects the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration indirectly, [Horton says that those who interpret Scripture as basically systematic expositions of propositional truth and that those who do so advocate both univocal knowledge and inspiration as mechanical dictation] the fact is that the classical reformed view is that what the Bible says God says:

On this subject the common doctrine of the Church is, and ever has been, that inspiration was an influence of the Holy Spirit on the minds of certain select men, which rendered them the organs of God for the infallible communication of his mind and will. They were in such a sense the organs of God, that what they said God said. 

Hodge, Charles (2011-10-20). Systematic Theology (With Active Table of Contents) (Kindle Locations 3449-3454). Kindle Edition.

According to this definition Horton must accuse Hodge of advocating the mechanical dictation view along with Gordon H. Clark and Carl F. H. Henry, those darned "fundamentalists!"

Furthermore, Hodge says that "knowledge" is what is communicated in revelation--NOT metanarratives, stories, dramatic recounting of salvation history, sagas, or "factual" myths!

    C. Distinction between Revelation and Inspiration.    Second. The above definition assumes a difference between revelation and inspiration. They differ, first, as to their object. The object of revelation is the communication of knowledge. The object or design of inspiration is to secure infallibility in teaching. Consequently they differ, secondly, in their effects. The effect of revelation was to render its recipient wiser. The effect of inspiration was to preserve him from error in teaching. These two gifts were often enjoyed by the same person at the same time. That is, the Spirit often imparted knowledge, and controlled [it] in its communication orally or in writing to others. This was no doubt the case with the Psalmists, and often with the Prophets and Apostles. Often, however, the revelations were made at one time, and were subsequently, under the guidance of the Spirit, committed to writing. Thus the Apostle Paul tells us that he received his knowledge of the gospel not from man, but by revelation from Jesus Christ; and this knowledge he communicated from time to time in his discourses and epistles.

Hodge, Charles (2011-10-20). Systematic Theology (With Active Table of Contents) (Kindle Locations 3468-3477). Kindle Edition.

Unfortunately, Hodge opens a door that should not be opened when he distinguishes between direct revelation from God and the inspired historical narratives which were also recorded in Scripture.  Although  Hodge is correct to make this distinction, he is wrong not to identify the whole body of the Scriptures as divine revelation.  He implies by this distinction that the Bible is inspired but only parts of the Bible are divine revelation.  The whole Bible is a revelation from God and is completely inspired or "breathed out by God."  

Moreover, everything we know about the history of Israel that is binding  upon us in regards to Christian doctrine and propositional truth is recorded in the inspired and inerrant Bible.  Hodge's view implies that some sections of Scripture are more important than others because one part conveys direct revelation from God in the form of knowledge and another merely conveys historical facts.  What Hodge overlooks is that historical facts are knowledge as well and this knowledge has profound impact on the doctrines of grace.  Hodge does, however, acknowledge that inspiration is for "teaching."

Futhermore, the proposition that "David was the king of Israel" is a propositional truth claim and it is an historical fact as well.  These historical events are given propositional meaning even when they are not given by direct revelation and are incorporated into the text from uninspired sources by the inspired writer.  Even quotes from pagan poets, philosophers and apocryphal books take on the nature of revelation as they are quoted for specific propositional and theological points by the inspired writers.  That would include places where Paul quotes pagan poets for a particular theological point (Acts 17:28) and where Jude quotes an apocryphal book, namely Enoch, in support of his theological point in the inspired text (Jude 1:14, 15).

To suggest, as Horton does, that these quotes are not inspired even when propositionally interpreted by the human authors and therefore not God's divine revelation is to create a canon within the canon:

Ascribing inspiration to Luke's acccount of Paul's speech in Athens in no way entails that the writings of pagan philosopher Epimenides or poet Aratus (the latter, in a hymn to Zeus) were inspired, even though Paul quoted them in Acts 17:28.  Nor does it mean that their words were inspired, but only that Paul's interpretation--his use of their words--shared in this inspired speech.  Whatever these speakers intended, God's intention was to use these lines in the script of his unfolding drama, although these pagan sources are not treated as normative.  Therefore, it is impossible to treat every word as normative, much less as the direct utterance of God.  Yet the Bible as a whole is God's inspired script for the drama of redemption.  Michael Horton.  The Christian Faith.  (Grand Rapids:  Zondervon, 2011), p. 162.

Any idea that some parts of Scripture are more inspired than other parts or that some conceptual knowledge in the Bible is more revelatory than other parts is to create a false distinction and an unnecessary one since Scripture interprets Scripture.  God's written words are logically consistent and God never contradicts Himself.  The axiom of the Apostle Paul stands firm here:  "All Scripture is inspired of God."  (2 Timothy 3:16).  No one denies that the sources, from which these quotes are drawn, are not inspired.  The issue here is that the quotes occur within the inspired Scriptures and therefore, even though the words are drawn from extrabiblical sources, the inspired record is infallible; therefore, in that sense every word in Scripture is an infallible record of what God intended for us to know.  Even natural revelation given to pagan poets is inspired of God when it is included in the verbally and plenarily inspired Scriptures and when such quotes are given propositional interpretation.  As Paul said, "All Scripture is inspired of God."  The proposition that "we live and move and have our being" because of God's sovereignty is certainly a true proposition, even when it is said by someone who is not an apostle or prophet (Acts 17:28).

Of considerable concern is Horton's animosity to Scripturalism and propositional truth, especially in regards to Gordon H. Clark. Alarmingly, Horton's biases cause him to endorse Donald Bloesch's neo-evangelical barthian theology.  In fairness to Horton, he does occasionally contradict himself and his emphasis on story and drama at certain points.  Although he fails to see the relative affinity between his own view and that of Bloesch, Horton does seem to uphold propositional truth when it suits his purposes:

There have been valiant attempts to reconcile Barth's doctrine of Scripture with the church's traditional view, among which that of Donald Bloesh is especially notable.  (104)  He allows that Barth's formulation too sharply separated the Word from the words, yet argues that "in his emphasis on the revealing work of the Spirit [Barth] is closer to the intention of the Reformers than is modern fundamentalism in this regard." (105)  Bloesch realizes that Protestant orthodoxy "sought to maintain a tendency to deny its human aspect.  (106)  He correctly observes the correlation between fundamentalism's mechanical view and belief in "the univocal language of Scripture concerning God, which contravenes the position of most theological luminaries of the past who held that human knowledge concerning God is either metaphorical or at the most analogical." (107)

Nevertheless, Bloesch repeats the prevalent caricature of Warfield's position when he suggests that the latter "is reluctant and often unwilling to affirm" the humanity of Scripture, including its "marks of historical conditioning." (108)  More problematic is Bloesch's own attempt at reconciliation.  On one hand, he writes, "Revelation includes both the events of divine self-disclosure in biblical history and their prophetic and apostolic interpretation."  On the other hand, he adds, "At the same time we must not infer that the propositional statements in the Bible are themselves revealed, since this makes the Bible the same kind of book as the Koran, which purports to be exclusively divine." (109)  It is unclear to me how the inclusion of propositions among other speech acts as part of revelation necessarily entails an "exclusively divine" dictation, as Islam considers the Qur'an to be.  How can we maintain coherently that Scripture is inspired--including "prophetic and apostolic interpretation" of divine acts--if we exclude propositional statements?  If Scripture cannot be reduced to propositions, it is just as arbitrary to exclude such statements.  (Horton, pp. 183-184).

Unfortunately, Horton cannot resist the temptation to throw in that last self-contradictory slam that propositional truths are not the focus of Scripture because that would "reduce" Scripture to propositions.  What is arbitrary is Horton's vacillation between propositional truth and the metanarratives of postmodernism.  Horton has clearly been influenced by neo-orthodoxy and by higher critical views of Scripture.

Charlie