Propositional Revelation Versus Experiential Hermeneutics in Pentecostal/Charismatic Theology

WCF 1.1  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 maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary;5 those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now ceased.6 (WCF 1:1 WCS)

WCF 1.6  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: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.1 Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the word;2 and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature, and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed.3 (WCF 1:6 WCS)

As articulated, however, Purdie's position made the mistake of confusing the revelation of Jesus Christ and the church's records of that revelation,  . . .  Peter Althouse

There are voluminous scholarly articles on the problems of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, and, as my time is limited, it will only be possible to address a few of them in this brief article.  I work a full time job and do my research and writing in my free time.  I spent a number of years in the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement and did my bachelor of arts degree in pre-seminary at an Assemblies of God college in Lakeland, Florida.  I spent a considerable amount of time  reading the academic and scholarly articles of the movement during that time period.  I wanted to be able to be an academic apologist for the movement because I was fully dedicated to the Pentecostal theology and experience.

Unfortunately, that very endeavor led me in another direction which I could not have anticipated at that time.  Most Pentecostal scholars want to defend the movement from an intellectual perspective because the movement from the beginning was denigrated as anti-intellectual and prone to psychological manipulation of the naive such that the leaders took financial advantage of poor adherents who desperately needed answered prayers and miracles to meet their impoverished conditions.   

Those humble and early beginning of Pentecostalism around the turn of the century soon morphed into megachurches, including Angelus Temple, built in 1923 by Amy Semple McPherson.  But her moral failure soon ended her career as a female evangelist and pastor.  

There are many scholarly works recounting the history of the Pentecostal revival at Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles, California and how William J. Seymour, a black holiness preacher studied the theology of Charles Parham in  Houston, Texas and took the message back to his church on Azusa Street in 1906.  I will not go into all the details of that.  However, one of the ground breaking books that I highly recommend is The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, by Donald W. Dayton.  Dayton shows clearly how the Pentecostal theology evolved from and out of the Wesleyan holiness movement, which itself was a spin off from John Wesley's original doctrine of entire sanctification.  Phoebe Palmer, a Free Methodist pastor's wife, helped the evolution of the holiness movement when she advocated the view that entire sanctification could be claimed by faith rather than by years of tarrying and struggling against known sins.  Of course there were other precursors to the movement earlier, including the Edward Irving movement away from orthodox Scottish Presbyterianism.

In short, the Pentecostal movement was not necessarily a new apostolic movement supernaturally enabled by the Holy Spirit, but was instead an evolution out of several different strands of Evangelical Christianity and the Second Great Awakening.  There are ties to the Keswick higher life movement, which is a more Calvinistic emphasis on victory over sin advocated by Asa Mahon and others.

Today there are at least three distinctive but subjective divisions of the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, which some claim to number at least five hundred million worldwide.  The first of these is the original Pentecostal movement in 1906 at Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles.  The second is associated with the Latter Rain movement in the post-WWII era of the 1940s.  The so-called third wave began with an Episcopalian minister named Dennis Bennett in Van Nuys, California in the 1960s.  From there the movement spread to both liberal mainline Protestant denominations and to certain conservative Evangelical denominations.  (See:  "The Three Waves of Spiritual Renewal of the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement," by Emil Bartos.  Review of Ecumencial Studies Sibiu.  Volume 7, Issue 1.  25 June 2015.  Published online.)

Perhaps the most controversial issue with Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement is the emphasis on an exegetical method that incorporates the experimental religion of Wesleyanism via John Wesley's expansion of the Anglican trilateral of Scripture, tradition, and reason, to include as a fourth element, the spiritual experiences of Christians.  The Wesleyan quadrilateral allowed for the Christian to experience not only salvation but the experience of being entirely sanctified.  The early Pentecostal roots of the holiness movement included the baptism of fire in which the dross of sinful habits were burned away by the flames of the Holy Spirit and making the way for the the third work of grace, which was an empowerment for supernatural service called the baptism with the Holy Spirit; subsequently, it was then accompanied by the initial physical evidence of speaking in tongues.  The Wesleyan churches like the Pentecostal Holiness Church and the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee held to three works of grace:  1.  Salvation.  2.  Entire Sanctification.  3.  Baptism with the Holy Spirit.  The more baptistic Pentecostals, the Assemblies of God and the Foursquare Pentecostal Church, held to two definite works of grace:  1.  Salvation.  2.  Baptism with the Holy Spirit.  This is not to say that the baptistic Pentecostals did not believe in entire sanctification or the higher life view of victory over sin.  Rather the latter group conflated steps 2 and 3 of the Wesleyan churches into one final work of grace.  In other words, entire sanctification and the supernatural empowerment for service were one work of grace called the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  All classical Pentecostals believe in the initial physical evidence of speaking in tongues as the outward sign of Spirit baptism.  For Pentecostals speaking in tongues functions much like the sacramental signs for more Protestant views of the sacrament of the Lord's supper or for water baptism in that the outward sign of Spirit baptism for Protestants is water baptism, and the outward sign for the sacrament of the Lord's supper is bread and wine.  For Pentecostals the outward sign of Spirit baptism is the initial physical evidence of speaking in other tongues.

What was most problematic for me as a younger Pentecostal was the discovery that the modern Charismatic movement was even more diverse and inconsistent than even classical Pentecostalism.  The original Pentecostals apparently adopted a no creed but the Bible attitude and refused to officially adopt any doctrinal statements.  It was not until the New Issue of the Oneness or Apostolic Pentecostal movement that the Assemblies of God and the Wesleyan trinitarian Pentecostals began to formulate doctrinal statements to oppose the modalist Pentecostals.  The other issue for me was when I discovered that not only did the modern Pentecostals accept fellowship with modalist Pentecostals but they were also permeated with the Word of Faith, health and wealth prosperity Gospel.

One of my professors at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God in the late 1980s, Dr. Terris Neuman, introduced me to a book by Dr. D. R. McConnell called, A Different Gospel.  Reading this book opened my eyes to the fact that the Pentecostal movement was by and large infected with cultic theology tied to Christian Science and New Thought, both of which are not Christian at all.  My home church in Wauchula, Florida was filled with this doctrine because although the senior pastor was more of a classical Pentecostal and a graduate of Southeastern College, the associate pastor was not educated and was a full blown Word of Faith preacher.  I had noticed early on that there seemed to be similarities with Christian Science since I had read many articles about Christian Science in high school and in the years before going to college.  Needless to say this shook my Pentecostal beliefs to the core.

The other issue that breaks the camel's back is the issue of ecumenicalism.  But that would take too long to go into since I want to focus primarily on the experiential exegetical and hermeneutical methods of Pentecostals and Charismatics.  But suffice it to say that for the movement over all, despite their many theological differences, the main issue for Pentecostals and Charismatics in general is not biblical truth but the promotion of their signs and wonders movement.  For them the main cardinal doctrine is continuationism, not biblical truth as a whole.  For this reason they can legitimately reject orthodoxy in favor of their emphasis on charismata to the exclusion of all else.  As evidence of that I can quote from Ralph Del Colle's article in the Journal of Pentecostal Theology.  Del Colle was a Roman Catholic at the time he wrote the article but apparently prior to that he temporarily identified with a more "Anabaptist" and Oneness Pentecostal point of view:

I should like to be precise in my intentions for this paper.  I will not broach all the several issues which divide trinitarian Pentecostals from oneness Pentecostals, for example, the baptismal formula, definition of regeneration and its association with Spirit-baptism and water baptism, holiness standards, sectarianism etc.  I will deal only with their variant views on the nature of God; whether God is absolutely one or triune.  Although I am of one persuasion confessionally--I am a thoroughgoing trinitarian--I will not attempt to engage in what was once called controversial theology, that is, arguing on behalf of one position against the other.  The essay is doctrinally irenic and is intended to offer theological grounds for ecclesial unity between oneness and trinitarian Pentecostals as far as this issue is concerned.

One further preliminary is in order.  I reflect and write as an outsider.  I am not a Pentecostal but a Roman Catholic, an ecclesial communion in conversation with trinitarian Pentecostals but not with their oneness brethren.  But there is some personal history here as well as some significant theological interest.  I was once an independent charismatic quite involved in the enactment of an anabaptist ecclesiology and a restorationist sense of mission.  During that period I was (re)baptized by immersion with a trinitarian formula.  The pedigree of that act was not so much Oneness as it was Latter Rain which had adopted the formula but not always their corresponding doctrine of God.  For a short period of time I contemplated a oneness view of the Godhead and then a binitarian one.  For some years now I have owned my first baptism (trinitarian and infant-baptism at that!) in the Catholic Church.  But that is neither here nor there.  My present interest is more theological.  

. . . I have taken it as part and parcel of my own theological vocation to increase awareness . . . of the triune God . . .  Then what to do about oneness Pentecostals?

As might be surmised, one is left with something of a theological conundrum.  How is it that approximately 25 per cent of US Pentecostals whose heritage goes back to within a decade of Azusa Street are not trinitarian in doctrine?  While I am not one to assign the origin and development of doctrine solely to the explication of the religious affections (as in a simplistic version of Schleiermacher) I do consider the doxological expression of the people of God to be significant in the evaluation of doctrine; . . .Considering that Spirit-baptism in particular intensifies the believer's experience of the risen Christ and gives experimental knowledge of the Holy Spirit it would seem logical to presuppose that this common Pentecostal-charismatic witness would also unify the community in their doctrinal testimony to the truth of the gospel.  However, for the theologian no such naivete is allowed. 

Ralph Del Colle.  "Oneness and Trinity:  A Preliminary Proposal for Dialogue with Oneness Pentecostalism."  Journal of Pentecostal Theology.  Issue 10, 1997.  Pp. 85-86.

It is ironic that in the late 1980s the Assemblies of God was hit with a theological controversy between the more classical Pentecostal views of Reverend Jimmy Swaggart and the more charismatic views of the Reverend Karl Strader of Lakeland, Florida.  The controversy centered on the controversial signs and wonders movement that produced not only the Toronto Revival and the Vineyard movement, but also the Brownsville Assembly of God revival in the Florida panhandle.  Swaggart not only opposed the so-called third wave of the charismatic movement, but was also an outspoken critic of Roman Catholicism as a false church.

It would seem that these upper level compromises of Pentecostal scholarship with liberal theology and the larger ecumenical movement of liberal Protestants and liberal Roman Catholics are mostly unknown to the lay members of the classical Pentecostal denominations.  This is troubling on several levels; the Protestant Reformation has never been resolved for Pentecostals because they agree with the papists that there must be a continual reaffirmation of the doctrines of the Bible by means of ongoing charismatic gifts.  Like the papists, the Pentecostals insist that the Scriptures are insufficient for salvation and for the Christian life.  Something more is needed, namely prophetic utterances, words of knowledge, miracles, signs, wonders, and supernatural healings.  Furthermore, it seems to me that the emphasis on ecstatic religious experiences has caused Pentecostalism to move in more heretical directions on at least three points:  1.  Oneness Pentecostalism.  2. Liberal mainline Protestantism.  3.  Ecumenical relationships with charismatic Roman Catholicism.  A further problem is the classical Pentecostal compromise with the prosperity gospel message.

The main point of this blog post, however, is that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement is more concerned about an ecumenical cooperation between proponents of an experiential theology of charismata than about doctrinal purity.  Of course, there are some notable exceptions to this thesis including the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada, which were influenced by the Protestant and Evangelical Anglicans of Wycliffe College in Toronto.  Wycliffe was low church and opposed not only the high church Anglo-Catholic movement but also the higher critical views of theological liberalism and neo-orthodoxy.  Even the Canadian Pentecostals recognized that undermining the objective nature of Scripture and the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture held dangers for their Pentecostal theology.  However, Peter Althouse sides with the compromises of neo-orthodoxy and higher criticism and criticizes the conservatives as idolaters:

While the attempt to protect the doctrine of the authority and supremacy of Scripture was laudable, Hague and Purdie adopted an extreme biblicism which verged on an idolization of Scripture.  They seemed to miss the point that the Word of God was the revelation of Jesus Christ and that Scripture was the apostolic record of that revelation.  Though following Hague in doctrine, Purdie's statement that Scripture did not contain the Word of God but was the very Word of God was a sentiment possibly intended to safeguard Pentecostals from the subjectivistic assumptions in higher criticism.  Higher critics assumed that biblical authorship was rooted in the subjective religious experiences of the writers and excluded divine inspiration.  Possibly, Purdie wanted to highlight the objective nature of Pentecostal experience.  The danger was, presumably, that the subjective experiences of Pentecostals combined with the subjective assumptions in higher criticism could have led to an overemphasis on experience in Pentecostalism.  As articulated, however, Purdie's position made the mistake of confusing the revelation of Jesus Christ and the church's records of that revelation, but it was a position which followed in the footsteps of his theological mentor, Dyson Hague.

Peter Althouse.   "The Influence of Dr. J. E. Purdie's Reformed Anglican Theology on the Formation and Development of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada."  Pneuma:  The Journal for Pentecostal Studies.  Volume 19, No. 1, Spring 1996.

Althouse is obviously opposed to the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration, which the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada upheld due to their being influenced by the low church Reformed Anglican theology of Wycliffe College.  Althouse sees no problem with reading the Old Testament as inspired myth as the neo-orthodox theologians do.  This makes my point that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement leads to theological liberalism and ecumenical relationships with outright heretics like the Oneness Pentecostals and liberal Roman Catholics. 

Moving on to my critique of Pentecostal hermeneutics, the problem here is that from the onset of the Pentecostal movement Wesley's emphasis on Christian experience or experimental religion led to compromising the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration and propositional revelation.  For Calvinists the emphasis on sound and logical exegesis of Scripture meant preserving the church from being led astray by false signs and miracles such as those that the papists produced in the intervening 1900 years of church history.

The problem of religious experience is that everyone's experience is different.  The Pentecostal movement began when Charles F. Parham started a Bible study and asked for laypersons in his Bible institute to study the Scriptures from an experiential point of view and to tell him what the baptism with the Holy Spirit was.  The following is a good summary of the Pentecostal approach to biblical hermeneutics:

The reading of the Scripture is highly esteemed in Pentecostal tradition. Bible reading is interwoven with prayer. The Bible is read until it becomes part and parcel of the individuals thought system and daily expressions. It should however, be observed that the Bible is not studied as an academic work but as a devotional material. As Davies argues, Pentecostals utilize the Bible as a resource for divine encounter. They “read the Bible not to grasp it; but so that God can grasp them through it.”[12] The Bible is seen not only as the word of God but also as the full representation of the mind and plan of God. God is seen to be alive in the scriptures and thus an encounter with the scripture is regarded as an encounter with the living God himself.

The earliest form of Pentecostalism held this divine essence of the scripture to the point that they regarded the human authors of the Bible as passive instruments in the process of writing the scripture. They saw them only as instruments that recorded what God dictated. Such a view led to neglecting the context of the human authors when interpreting the Bible. However, the latter development of Pentecostal interpretation recognized human authorship as part of the process that God used to communicate his will to the people. This later development introduced an “incarnational” understanding of the Bible. The scriptures, like Christ Jesus, were seen to be fully divine and fully human and the two natures as inseparable.[13]

Michael Muoki Wambua.  "Pentecostal Hermeneutics:  Approach and Methodology."  The Pneuma Review:  Journal of Ministry Resources and Theology for Pentecostal and Charismatic Ministries & Leaders.  April 14, 2014.

Like the liberals and the neo-orthodox, the Pentecostals put more emphasis on their ecstatic experiences than the Scriptures.  While there are exceptions to this like the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada and some of the more conservative classical Pentecostals in the Assemblies of God and the Church of God in the United States, the clear trend overall is toward a more and more liberal point of view in regards to the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture.  The earliest Pentecostals were of a more fundamentalist bent, but the obvious biases of the current leadership in Pentecostal scholarship is toward curbing logic and denouncing any commitment to Scripture as the final authority in all matters of faith and practice as bibliolatry.  

Dyson Hague, best known for his contributions to The Fundamentals, held views similar to Sheraton's, though he may have been more fundamentalist in orientation.  Hague stated that the study of the literary structure of the books of the Bible was laudable, "But the work of the Higher Critic has not always been pursued in a reverent spirit nor in the spirit of scientific and Christian scholarship."  (18)  The conclusions of the higher critics were based largely upon their own "subjective conclusions," their reliance on fanciful German theories, and their "bias against the supernatural." (19)  Hague criticized the higher critics for their denial of the validity of miracles, the reality of prophecy, and the validity of revelation. (20)  He also opposed the higher critics' critique of Genesis as myth, for if Genesis were myth, it had no doctrinal value; it would not be authoritative, true, or reliable; and therefore it would not be inspired by God.  Hague refused to accept this position.  (21)  Generally, Hague held a more conservative position than Sheraton and seemed unwilling to accept any of the conclusions of higher criticism.  (Ibid.,  Althouse.  P. 7).

Of course, the more enlightened Pentecostals and Charismatics do not reject the conclusions of higher criticism because, after all, miracles are just human experiences, not necessarily literally supernatural events, right?  Quite frankly, I would much rather be called a fundamentalist than to join the broad way to ecumenical heresy. 

Now I would like to turn to a more Reformed methodology in regards to doing biblical exegesis and interpreting the Scriptures.  The most basic way of interpreting the Scriptures is to first of all recognize that the Bible is fully inspired by God in every single word.  While it is true that human writers wrote what God moved them to write, the words were not divinely dictated directly by God but each writer wrote in his own style.  Yet what they wrote could legitimately be said to be the very words of God, since God so controlled their psychological thinking and thought processes that what they wrote was exactly what God intended in every single word.  Since God is not irrational but logical, it follows that there are no contradictions in the Bible; all of the propositions in the Bible are logically consistent and in harmony with the whole scope of Scripture.

If everyone's experience is different, it follows that interpreting the Bible cannot be and must not be based on reader response or experiential theology.  There must be an objective way to read, understand and interpret the Bible.  That method of reading and understanding the Bible begins with propositional revelation.  The Scriptures are a logical and propositional revelation from God so that anyone who reads the Bible can rationally understand what it says in the plain passages.  Where there are difficult passages the reader can go to more plain passages of Scripture to interpret the more difficult passages.

The most obvious problem with experiential exegesis is precisely the problem that rejecting propositional revelation and orthodox doctrine in favor of a psychologized reading of Scripture leads to rejecting the Virgin Birth, the resurrection of Christ and a whole host of the fundamentals of the Christian faith. 

The influence of Immanuel Kant is also seen here. He had sought the contents of science in experience, in strictly sensory experience. But outside the sphere of knowledge, he also made a place for morality and a religion based on morality. Here Schleiermacher saw an opening for faith and a religion of non­sensory experience. With this he sought to do battle with the irreligion of the enlightenment.

Let us rephrase this a little bit. Previous Christianity had been too intellectual. Religion, Schleiermacher held, is essentially emotional. For Schleiermacher, religion originates in a feeling of absolute dependence. This feeling guarantees the value of religion. By analyzing this feeling of absolute dependence, one arrives at the doctrines of theology. For example, since the dependence is absolute, we may infer the existence of God. In general, Schleiermacher thought he was able to derive a great many Christian doctrines by psychological analysis. The doctrine of the Trinity, the miracle of the virgin birth, and the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper were all, more or less, obtainable in this way. But only more or less.

A superficial view may find a great number of Christian doctrines in Schleiermacher, but a more penetrating view will find each one altered. The basic reason all these doctrines are altered is that Schleiermacher has substituted religious experience for supernatural revelation. This is his decisive break with all previous Christian history. How this affects the several doctrines is easy to understand. For one thing, every doctrine become tentative. We cannot have confidence in the truth of a doctrine because either or both of two difficulties may intervene. First, we may not have been accurate in our analysis of experience. And second, religious experience itself may change. These two difficulties do not attach to supernatural revelation. But for Schleiermacher every doctrine must be tailored to fit human experience.

To show concretely how this deviates from previous Christianity, two or three doctrines may be used as examples. The Lord’s Supper perhaps can be defended as a particularly appropriate expression of our religious experience. No one could quarrel with the idea of having some sort of fraternal meal. [sic].  If, of course, the idea of a fraternal meal is a satisfactory definition of the Lord’s Supper. But whatever the case may be with the Lord’s Supper, it is obviously difficult to derive the doctrine of the Trinity by an analysis of one’s feelings. And it may be said, the virgin birth is surely impossible so to obtain. Indeed, even knowledge of God becomes impossible.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  The Decline of Theology in America.  Audio Transcript.  

Dr. Clark is perhaps one of the only consistent Calvinists and presuppositionalist apologists of the 20th century.  The problem as I see it is that the charismatic movement is simply an adaptation of liberal theology applied to Pentecostal experience; even when the classical Pentecostals tried to retain their commitments to Evangelical orthodoxy, they were attacked by the more progressive neo-orthodox and papist Charismatics as "fundamentalists."  The fact of the matter is that consistent cessationist Protestant Evangelicals do not reject the miracles of the Bible; instead, they are the only Evangelicals left today who believe that the miracles of the Bible are literally supernatural, not just a psychological experience in the line of Schleiermacher and other liberal theologians who kicked off the neo-orthodox movement.  

If we must suspend disbelief in third world miracle claims, then I suppose every superstitious miracle story is credible.  This is true from an orthodox and Protestant point of view that the miracles recorded in the Bible are literally true and literally supernatural, not just inspired myths.  For Pentecostals and Charismatics the Bible is only literally true from the point of view of their own personal experiences, not as an objective reality recorded in the Bible.  Furthermore, the Bible does not just contain the Word of God.  The Bible is literally the Holy Spirit inspired words of God, not just a record of revelation as Althouse contends above.  If the Bible is not the final authority, then the door is opened to all kinds of heretical movements within the Pentecostal/Charismatic movement, including the denial of the trinity by Oneness Pentecostals, and the Word of Faith movement, which has more in common with Christian Science than with biblical Christianity.  Without the Bible there is no knowledge of God possible.  None at all.

2 Timothy 3:16 (NKJV)

16 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness,

Michael Horton's Theological Contradictions and Weak Calvinism

Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. (Proverbs 30:5 KJV)

“The notion of analogy begins quite simply and innocently in Aristotle.”   Dr. Gordon H. Clark

"In no case does a prophet put his words forward as his own words. That he is a prophet at all is due not to choice on his own part, but to a call of God, obeyed often with reluctance; and he prophesies or forbears to prophesy, not according to his own will but as the Lord opens and shuts his mouth . . . and creates for him the fruit of the lips . . . In contrast with the false prophets, he strenuously asserts that he does not speak out of his own heart . . ., but all that he proclaims is the pure word of Jehovah."  Benjamin B. Warfield

Michael Horton’s Theological Contradictions and Weak Calvinism

Some years ago when I began listening to The White Horse Inn I will concede that I thought Mike Horton was a sincere Calvinist and that his stand for the doctrine of justification by faith alone was brilliant.  We are constantly told that the doctrine of justification by faith alone is the doctrine by which the true visible churches stand or fall.  I say “visible” churches because from a Calvinist perspective the invisible church is composed of only those elected from before the foundation of world.  (Matthew 25:34; Ephesians 1:4-5; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; Isaiah 53:11; Revelation 13:8).  But when Martin Luther wrote against Disiderus Erasmus of Rotterdam on the issue of libertarian free will, Luther did not say that justification by faith alone was the central issue.  He said that predestination was the central issue.  But I will return to this later in this blog post. 

Unfortunately, those who follow the theology and apologetics of the now deceased professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Cornelius Van Til, see almost everything in the Bible as apparently contradictory.  Because of Van Til’s adherence to idealism as his philosophical starting point, Van Til rejected the doctrine that logic and propositional revelation is how God lowers himself to our human level.  Instead, Van Ti contended that God is totally incomprehensible or beyond understanding to the human person, by which he meant that man can know nothing God knows except by analogy.  From this Van Til contended that the Bible is analogical revelation and not propositional revelation. 

The distinguishing characteristic between very non-Christian theory of knowledge on the one hand, and the Christian concept of knowledge on the other hand, is, therefore, that in all non-Christian theories men reason univocally, while in Christianity men reason analogically. By this distinction we mean that every non-Christian theory of method takes for granted, that time and eternity are aspects of one another, and that God and man must be thought of as being on the same plane. God and man must be thought of as correlative to one another. God and man work under a system of logic that is higher than both, and that exists in independence of both. The law of contradiction is thought of as existing somehow in independence of God and man or at least as operating in both God and man on the same level.

In contrast to this, Christianity holds that God existed alone before any time existence was brought forth. He existed as the self-conscious and self-consistent being. The law of contradiction, therefore, as we know it, is but the expression on a created level of the internal coherence of God’s nature. Christians should therefore never appeal to the law of contradiction as something that, as such, determines what can or cannot be true. . . .

Cornelius Van Til.  An Introduction to Systematic Theology. (The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company: Phillipsburg, NJ, 1979).  Chapter 2.A.2.  [Logos Bible Software edition.  The page numbers didn’t show when I copied the quote.]

Of course, Van Til is using a propositional statement and the law of contradiction to deny Gordon H. Clark's view of revelation as propositional and subject to the law of contradiction.  Worse, Van Til is essentially and explicitly denying that the Bible is true.  Whether this was his intention or not is not the issue.  The fact remains that Van Til has openly denied the Bible is the direct revelation of God in written form.  Secondly, Van Til misrepresented Clark's view since Clark held that God is in the simplicity of His being Logic itself.  The eternal Logos is the second Person of the Trinity.  The law of contradiction is not something external to God to which God is subject. (John 1:1).

It is often contended by the Van Tilian camp that univocalism is the doctrine of modernists who make logic a magisterial lord over the Scriptures.  While this is somewhat true because the modernists used rationalism to explain away the inspiration of the Bible, biblical inerrancy, and the supernatural miracles of the Bible—including the virgin birth and the deity of Christ in His incarnation as a human being--in regards to the Fundamentals of the faith it is a non sequitur.

If the Bible is not univocally the very words of God, the implication is obviously neo-orthodoxy, not Reformation Christianity.  But liberals do not accept the doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration or the doctrine of absolute biblical inerrancy.  For example, the modernists in the early part of the 20^th century rejected the virgin birth on the basis that miracles in the Bible do not make logical sense in regards to modern science and empirical observation.  So in the Auburn Affirmation the liberals in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America denied the fundamental doctrines of the Bible including the supernatural conception of Jesus Christ and his natural birth from the virgin Mary, his physical and bodily resurrection, and the absolute truth of the Bible because of the divine inspiration of the Scriptures.  Later the new modernists or the neo-orthodox liberals who followed the teachings of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Rudolf Bultmann and other irrationalists adopted a similar view when they said that the Bible only “contained” the word of God but was not the actual words of God.  

Dr. Gordon H. Clark, in contrast to Van Til and his followers, said that the Bible is literally the very words of God in written form and to deny this is to invite equivocation, ambiguity, and sophistry on the part of those who wish to hide their liberal leaning views.  Clark pointed this out in his remarks on the Auburn Affirmation in his book, What Do Presbyterians Believe?

With the introduction of modernism into our churches in the nineteenth century and with the coming of neo-orthodoxy in the twentieth, an appearance of loyalty to the Bible and to the Confession has been attempted by emphasizing certain words in the standards, by failing to mention others, and by misinterpreting the whole.  Thus unbelieving ministers made the double claims that they themselves accepted the Confession as originally intended, while the fundamentalists were inventing theories never before heard of.

Against the fundamentalists, who insisted on the inerrancy of the Bible, the modernists asserted that the Confession does not say the Bible is inerrant.  And today neo-orthodoxy loudly insists that the word of God is found in the Bible, perhaps only in the Bible, but that not everything in the Bible is true.  These modernists could appeal to the Shorter Catechism, Question 2:  “What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify God and enjoy him?  Answer:  The word of God, which contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.”  Does it not say that the word is contained in the Scriptures?  Somewhere, but not everywhere, between Genesis and Revelation, the word of God is to be found.  This is their contention.  But if now we wish to know whether or not this was the view of the Reformers, whether not this is the position of the Presbyterian standards, and whether or not it is the teaching of the Scriptures themselves, which the standards summarize, we need only read other parts of the Confession. . . .

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  (Trinity Foundation:  Unicoi, 1965). Pp. 15-16.

In fairness to Van Til, the doctrine of Scripture as analogical revelation is not exactly the same as the neo-orthodox view that not everything in the Bible is inerrant or inspired by God.  However, the practical result of denying propositional revelation and the law of contradiction is irrationalism.  If all Scripture is paradoxical or apparently contradictory, does it not follow that nothing in the Bible is rationally understandable and therefore cannot be systematically arranged into a dogmatic system that is logically consistent?  

I should also point out that the fundamentalists mentioned by Dr. Clark in the above quote were “B. B. Warfield, William G. Moorehead, E. Y. Mullins, and a score of others” who wrote articles in “twelve booklets called The Funamentals.”  (Clark, ibid.  P. 14).  Yet Dr. Michael Horton disparages “fundamentalists” in his writings, among whom Horton includes Dr. Carl F. H. Henry and Dr. Gordon H. Clark:

. . . We must recall that the Bible was generated in the context of a covenantal drama.  The script includes the speaking parts of unfaithful covenant servants, whose speech is nevertheless judged and corrected by the covenant Lord with the unfolding dialogue.   . . .

Similar to the early Christological heresy of Docetcism, which denied the reality of Christ’s full humanity, is a well-established historical tendency that one may discern in church history to downplay the humanity of Scripture.  Some ancient theologians spoke of the biblical writers as mere “flutes” on which the Spirit played or “secretaries” through whom he dictated his revelation.  Such analogies became literal theories in fundamentalism.  J. I. Packer refers to the comment of J.W. Burgon:  “Every book of it, every chapter of it, every word of it, every syllable of it, every letter of it, is the direct utterance of the Most High.” ¹⁶  W.A. Criswell expressed the same view:  “Each sentence was dictated by God’s Holy Spirit. . . .  Everywhere in the Bible we find God speaking.  It is God’s voice, not man’s.”¹⁷  Fundamentalism and Protestant orthodoxy are distinct traditions, and nowhere can this be more clearly seen than in their differing emphases concerning biblical inspiration.

Dr. Michael Horton.  The Christian Faith:  A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.  (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2011).  Pp. 161-162.

The first point to be noticed in Dr. Horton’s comments is on page 161 where in contending that there are erroneous human remarks recorded infallibly and by the inspiration of the Bible he asserts that the Bible is a covenantal “drama”.  This description leaves one wondering if Horton accepts plenary verbal inspiration, propositional revelation and absolute biblical inerrancy.  And in fact in his comments on page 162 he uses the same tactics as the liberals by accusing the “fundamentalists” of thinking that God did not inspire human authors as instrumental means of writing His very words.  In short, Horton is equivocating here since B. B. Warfield himself asserted that the Bible is literally the very words of God.  The doctrine of dictation does not mean that God literally took control of the minds and hearts of the biblical writers as if their personalities had no part in what was written.  Rather the doctrine of dictation means that the biblical writers were so superintended by the Holy Spirit that even though what they wrote was written in their personal style and their words, their words were also the very words of God.

When evaluating the relationship of God’s activity and that of creatures in the production of Scripture, the doctrine of analogy already proves its merits.  If agency is univocal (the same thing) for God and for creatures, then the question is raised:  Who acts more?  Is God the author of Romans or is Paul?  However, if agency is analogical, then God’s activity in producing these texts is qualitatively different from human agency. 

Horton, Ibid. P. 162.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark gave a thorough critique of Thomas Aquinas’s view of Scripture and revelation as analogical.  His examination of the Thomist view shows that the doctrine of analogy makes for a view that truth is two fold, not univocal.  If there is more than one truth or more than one logic, the door is opened wide for the abuses of equivocation, sophistry, and dissimulation because the obvious implication is that there is no such thing as absolute truth and if there is absolute truth God alone can know it.  Neither here on earth nor in heaven will a human being be able to understand or comprehend anything God knows at any single point because  God is the Creator and creatures,  according to the Van Tilian philosophy of idealism, can know nothing God knows at any single point.

The notion of analogy begins quite simply and innocently in Aristotle. He notes that when we call a book a medical book, and when we call an instrument a medical instrument, and when we call a man a medical man, the predicate medical does not bear exactly the same sense in the three instances. The term is not equivocal, as is the case when we call Argos the dog of Ulysses and when we call Sirius the dog in the sky; but on the other hand, the term is not strictly univocal. It is analogical. 

This simple distinction was elaborated by the Scholastics and the Neoscholastics into a complicated theory, in which, it would seem, the original situation no longer serves as a solid basis. The motivation and intricacies of the theory are seen most clearly in the arguments for the existence of God and our knowledge of him. God, according to the Thomists, is an absolutely simple being; but a simple, eternal, and immaterial being cannot constitute an object proportionate to our human understanding. Simplicity and eternity are not factors in our world of experience, and therefore we have no positive concept of them. To say that God is eternal means nothing more than that God is not temporal. What eternity positively means remains unknown to the human mind. What man has in this instance may be called negative knowledge. 

Similarly, when we call God wise and when we call a man wise, the term does not bear the same sense. God’s wisdom is not distinct from his essence or his being; but the wisdom of man is. In general, there is no affirmation whatever that can be made of God and of man in the same sense. The reason for this impossibility is not only that the predicates do not bear the same meaning in both cases, but that, far more radically, the copula is bears two different senses. In God essence and existence are identical: What God is and that God is are the same. In every case other than God this is not so. Accordingly, when we say God exists and when we say man or dog exists, the term exist does not mean the same thing. Therefore, no term, not even the copula, can be used univocally of God and man. 

Now, if the only alternative to univocal predication were equivocal predication, knowledge of God derived by abstraction from experience would be patently impossible. When words are used equivocally there is no definite relationship between the meanings, and knowledge of God would be in a state similar to a knowledge of Sirius that would be based on an experience of Ulysses’ dog. To avoid this fatal difficulty, the Thomists are forced to find some intermediate between univocal and equivocal predication, and they appeal to analogy. Between Argos and Sirius there is no resemblance, but in the case of God, man resembles God, they say, though God does not resemble man.¹⁷ This resemblance permits us to attach some meaning to the statement God is, so that we are neither in complete ignorance, nor limited to negative knowledge, but have an analogical if not a univocal knowledge. Thus empiricism in its Thomistic form attempts to escape the limits of experience.

Gordon H. Clark. A Christian View of Men and Things.  (Kindle Locations 4528-4550). The Trinity Foundation. Kindle Edition.

The problem with Van Tililans is that they not only reject experience but they also reject propostional revelation and the internal logical consistency of the biblical revelation.  Irrationality seems to predeominate and Horton’s refusal to define his terms or rationally harmonize his views with Scripture or define what he means by the term qualitative demonstrates adequately that he has no clear commitment to divine truth or divine revelation. 

Moreover, if there is a difference between God’s providence and the human agency involved in the writing of the Scriptures, would not that difference be an actual difference between the definition of God as an absolute and timeless being and the definition of a human being as limited to the realm of the created universe, created time, and discursive thinking?  Since God is timeless, omniscient and never learns anything new, how would God not know what the biblical writers would write?  Furthermore, since God can indeed control the minds, wills, thoughts and actions of humans without violating their psychological agency, intellect or volition, how does it follow that fundamentalists are advocating “mechanical dictation”?  (Proverbs 21:1).  B. B. Warfield said that the Scriptures are the very words of God but denied that this is mechanical dictation:

The process of revelation through the prophets was a process by which Jehovah put His words in the mouths of the prophets, and the prophets spoke precisely these words and no others. So the prophets themselves ever asserted. “Then Jehovah put forth his hand, and touched my mouth,” explains Jeremiah in his account of how he received his prophecies, “and Jehovah said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth” (Jer. 1:9; cf. 5:14; Isa. 51:16; 59:21; Num. 22:35; 23:5, 12, 16). Accordingly, the words “with which” they spoke were not their own but the Lord’s: “And he said unto me,” records Ezekiel, “Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them” (Ezk. 3:4). It is a process of nothing other than “dictation” which is thus described (2 S. 14:3, 19), though, of course, the question may remain open of the exact processes by which this dictation is accomplished. The fundamental passage which brings the central fact before us in the most vivid manner is, no doubt, the account of the commissioning of Moses and Aaron given in Ex. 4:10–17; 7:1–7. Here, in the most express words, Jehovah declares that He who made the mouth can be with it to teach it what to speak, and announces the precise function of a prophet to be that he is “a mouth of God,” who speaks not his own but God’s words. Accordingly, the Hebrew name for “prophet” (nābhīʾ), whatever may be its etymology, means throughout the Scriptures just “spokesman,” though not “spokesman” in general, but spokesman by way of eminence, that is, God’s spokesman; and the characteristic formula by which a prophetic declaration is announced is: “The word of Jehovah came to me,” or the brief “saith Jehovah” (נאם יהוה, neʾum Yahweh). In no case does a prophet put his words forward as his own words. That he is a prophet at all is due not to choice on his own part, but to a call of God, obeyed often with reluctance; and he prophesies or forbears to prophesy, not according to his own will but as the Lord opens and shuts his mouth (Ezk. 3:26 f.) and creates for him the fruit of the lips (Isa. 57:19; cf. 6:7; 50:4). In contrast with the false prophets, he strenuously asserts that he does not speak out of his own heart (“heart” in Biblical language includes the whole inner man), but all that he proclaims is the pure word of Jehovah.

Warfield, Benjamin B. The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Revelation and Inspiration. Vol. 1. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2008. Print.  Pp. 19-20.  Chapter I, Section  III.

While in other places, Horton speaks approvingly of Warfield, here Horton disparages Warfield as a fundamentalist by implication.  Horton seems to be outright denying that God is in absolute providential control of what was written in the Bible.  Can it not be that God can control human agency through secondary means without violating the human will yet what is spoken or written through the prophets is the very words of God?  Or is the Bible just a covenantal drama or an inspired story as the neo-orthodox theologians contend?  Is God the author of Scripture or is He not the author of Scripture?  

Basically it boils down to this.  Since all knowledge is propositional, it follows that the Bible is propositional revelation.  Propositional revelation, as the late D. Broughton Knox once said, is the only revelation there is.  Even Peter’s great confession that Jesus is the Son of the living God cannot be deduced or adduced from empirical experience.  His confession is divine revelation.  And so the argument is that we do not prove the Bible is true by empirical evidences, historical evidences, or by rationalism.  Rather we accept the Scriptures as the axiom.  Since everyone starts with unproven axioms—whether they admit it or not—we as Christians are on solid ground by basing the Christian worldview on the axiom of Scripture.   The apologetic approach is not demonstrating the truth of the Bible by reason, experience, or history but rather showing the absurdity of the many contradictions in other worldviews based on other axioms which cannot produce an epistemology that is internally logical, consistent, harmonious, and without contradictions.  Christianity is the best worldview precisely because it is divine revelation from God who is Logic.  (John 1:1, 9).  Van Til and his many followers have unwittingly opened the door to compromise, equivocation, and neo-orthodoxy.  

While it is true that some of Clark’s students—including Edward Carnell and Paul Jewett—later went into apostasy, the reasons were not that they continued in what they learned from Dr. Clark.  On the contrary, the reasons for their rejection of biblical authority were that they also rejected Dr. Clark’s rational and logical emphasis on the law of contradiction, propositional and systemic epistemology, and deducing from Scripture by good and necessary consequence all the doctrines of the Christian faith.  They rejected Dr. Clark’s view that all truth is innate in God’s eternal mind.  If we know any propositions that are true, God must know those same truths since He is omniscient.  This does not mean that we know everything God knows.  But if God knows that Jesus is the Son of the living God, we can univocally know that proposition on that single point even if we cannot know every single proposition that can be deduced from that one proposition.  (Matthew 16:15; Mark 8:29; Luke 9:20).  Holy Scripture is not an analogical revelation but a univocal revelation from God in propositional form.  Scripture is the Word of God.  (2 Timothy 3:16).

All the truth of the revelation of Scripture existed in God's mind before He ever created.  God predestined the Bible would be the way we could know Him and His will.  Not one word of it fails.

Sermon Video 2014 0126 David Knox

My friend, David Knox, delivered this sermon two weeks ago at Glory of God Anglican Church in Cocoa, Florida. David is the son of the late D. Broughton Knox, former principal of Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia.

To his credit, David reminds us of Pilgrim's Progress in this sermon. Dr. Gordon H. Clark highly recommended John Bunyan's Calvinist allegory of the Christian life. (To read Pilgrim's Progress online click here).

Although David and I have some serious disagreements in regards to his self-described Amyraldianism--he says he is a 4.5 point Calvinist--we are in substantial agreement on a host of other issues.  We are both solidly opposed to sacerdotalism, clericalism, and high church Anglo-Catholicism/Arminianism.  Of course, I am a Clarkian presuppositionalist and David is not.  However, it should be noted that D. Broughton Knox, although not perfect, did advocate the view that Scripture is propositional revelation, not analogical revelation:   The Nature of Revelation, Part I and The Nature of Revelation, Part II.  As far as I know, D. Broughton Knox is the only Anglican theologian who upheld a view that is in substantial agreement with Dr. Gordon H. Clark's adherence to the Scriptures as the logical and propositional revelation of God to man.

See Also: D. Broughton Knox quotes.

The Bible As Truth, by Dr. Gordon H. Clark

"Certainly, the burden of proof lies on those who deny the propositional construction of truth. Their burden is twofold. Not only must they give evidence for the existence of such truth, but first of all they must make clear what they mean by their words. It may be that the phrase nonpropositional truth is a phrase without meaning."  -- Dr. Gordon H. Clark

The following article is posted at the Trinity Foundation in The Trinity Review.

Editor’s note: “The Bible As Truth” was first published in Bibliotheca Sacra (April 1957) and reprinted in God’s Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics (1995). The Bible and its system of truth are still under attack today, even from so-called conservative theologians. The church needs to be brought back to its only authority–the Bible, for the Bible alone is the Word of God.

In a game of chess a player can become so engrossed in a complicated situation that, after examining several possibilities and projecting each one as far ahead as he is able, he finally sees a brilliant combination by which he may possibly win a pawn in five moves, only to discover that it would lose his queen. So, too, when theological investigations have been pursued through considerable time and in great detail, it is possible to overlook the obvious. In the present state of the discussions on revelation, it is my opinion that what needs most to be said is something obvious and elementary. This paper, therefore, is a defense of the simple thesis that the Bible is true.

This thesis, however, does not derive its main motivation from any attack on the historicity of the Bible narratives. The destructive criticism of the nineteenth century still has wide influence, but it has received a mortal wound at the hand of twentieth-century archaeology. A new form of unbelief, though it may be forced to accept the Bible as an exceptionally accurate account of ancient events, now denies on philosophical grounds that it is or could be a verbal revelation from God. So persuasive are the new arguments, not only supported by impressive reasoning but even making appeals to Scriptural principles, which every orthodox believer would admit, that professedly conservative theologians have accepted them more or less and have thus betrayed or vitiated the thesis that the Bible is true.

Because the discussion is philosophical rather than archaeological, and hence could be pursued to interminable lengths, some limits and some omissions must be accepted. Theories of truth are notoriously intricate, and yet to avoid considering the nature of truth altogether is impossible if we wish to know our meaning when we say that the Bible is true. For a start, let it be said that the truth of statements in the Bible is the same type of truth as is claimed for ordinary statements, such as: Columbus discovered America, two plus two are four, and a falling body accelerates at thirty-two feet per second per second. So far as the meaning of truth is concerned, the statement “Christ died for our sins” is on the same level as any ordinary, everyday assertion that happens to be true. These are examples, of course, and do not constitute a definition of truth. But embedded in the examples is the assumption that truth is a characteristic of propositions only. Nothing can be called true in the literal sense of the term except the attribution of a predicate to a subject. There are undoubtedly figurative uses, and one may legitimately speak of a man as a true gentleman or a true scholar. There has also been discussion as to which is the true church. But these uses, though legitimate are derivative and figurative. Now, the simple thesis of this paper is that the Bible is true in the literal sense of true. After a thorough understanding of the literal meaning is acquired, the various figurative meanings may be investigated; but it would be foolish to begin with figures of speech before the literal meaning is known.

This thesis that the Bible is literally true does not imply that the Bible is true literally. Figures of speech occur in the Bible, and they are not true literally. They are true figuratively. But they are literally true. The statements may be in figurative language, but when they are called true the term true is to be understood literally. This simple elementary thesis, however, would be practically meaningless without a companion thesis. If the true statements of the Bible could not be known by human minds, the idea of a verbal revelation would be worthless. If God should speak a truth, but speaks so that no one could possibly hear, that truth would not be a revelation. Hence the double thesis of this paper, double but still elementary, is that the Bible–aside from questions and commands–consists of true statements that men can know. In fact, this is so elementary that it might appear incredible that any conservative theologian would deny it. Yet there are some professed conservatives who deny it explicitly and others who, without denying it explicitly, undermine and vitiate it by other assertions. The first thing to be considered, then, will be the reasons, supposedly derived from the Bible, for denying or vitiating human knowledge of its truths.

The Effect of Sin on Man’s Knowledge

The doctrine of total depravity teaches that no part of human nature escapes the devastation of sin, and among the passages on which this doctrine is based are some which describe the effects of sin on human knowledge. For example, when Paul in 1 Timothy 4:2 says that certain apostates have their conscience seared with a hot iron, he must mean not only that they commit wicked acts but also that they think wicked thoughts. Their ability to distinguish right from wrong is impaired, and thus they give heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils. Therefore, without in the least denying that sin has affected their volition, it must be asserted that sin has also affected their intellect. And though Paul has in mind a particular class of people, no doubt more wicked than others, yet the similarity of human nature and the nature of sin force the conclusion that the minds of all men, though perhaps not to the same degree, are impaired. Again, Romans 1:21, 28 speak of Gentiles who become vain in their imaginations and whose foolish hearts were darkened; when they no longer wanted to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind. In Ephesians 4:17 Paul again refers to the vanity of mind and the darkened understanding of the Gentiles, who are alienated from the life of God through ignorance and blindness. That ignorance and blindness are not Gentile traits only but characterize the Jews also, and therefore the human race as a whole, can be seen in summary condemnation of all men in Romans 3:10-18, where Paul says that there is none who understands. And, of course, there are general statements in the Old Testament: “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9).

These noetic effects of sin have been used to support the conclusion that an unregenerate man cannot understand the meaning of any sentence in the Bible. From the assertion “there is none who understands,” it might seem to follow that when the Bible says, “David...took out a stone...and struck the Philistine in his forehead,” an unbeliever could not know what the words mean.

The first representative of this type of view, to be discussed here, are centered in the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Cornelius Van Til and some of his colleagues prepared and signed a document in which they repudiate a particular statement of the unregenerate man’s epistemological ability. A certain professor, they complain, “makes no absolute qualitative distinction between the knowledge of the unregenerate man and the knowledge of the regenerate man” (The Text of a Complaint, page 10, column 2). This statement not only implies that an unbeliever finds it less easy to understand that David smote the Philistine, but in asserting an absolute qualitative distinction between whatever knowledge he derives from that statement and the knowledge a regenerate man derives, the quotation also suggests that the unregenerate man simply cannot understand propositions revealed to man.

In another paper, two of Van Til’s associates declare that it is “erroneous” to hold that “regeneration...is not a change in the understanding of these words” (A. R. Kuschke, Jr., and Bradford, A Reply to Mr. Hamilton, 4). According to them, it is also erroneous to say, “when he is regenerated, his understanding of the proposition may undergo no change at all [but] that an unregenerate man may put exactly the same meaning on the words...as the regenerate man” (6). Since these are the positions they repudiate, their view must be precisely the contradictory; namely, an unregenerate man can never put exactly the same meaning on the words as a regenerate man, that regeneration necessarily and always changes the meaning of the words a man knows, and that the unregenerate and regenerate cannot possibly understand a sentence in the same sense. These gentlemen appeal to 2 Corinthians 4:3-6, where it is said that the Gospel is hidden to them that are lost, and to Matthew 13:3-23, where the multitudes hear the parable but do not understand it. These two passages from Scripture are supposed to prove that a Christian’s “understanding is never the same as that of the unregenerate man.”

As a brief reply, it may be noted that though the Gospel be hidden from the lost, the passage does not state that the lost are completely ignorant and know nothing at all. Similarly, the multitudes understood the literal meaning of the parable, though neither they nor the disciples understood what Christ was illustrating. Let us grant that the Holy Spirit by regeneration enlightens the mind and leads us gradually into more truth, but the Scripture surely does not teach that the Philistines could not understand that David had killed Goliath. Such a view has not been common among Reformed writers; just one, however, will be cited as an example. Abraham Kuyper, in his Encyclopedia of Sacred Theology (110-111), after specifying eight points at which we are subjected to error because of sin adds:

The darkening of the understanding...does not mean that we have lost the capacity of thinking logically, for so far as the impulse of its law of life is concerned, the logica has [sic] not [italics his] been impaired by sin. When this takes place, a condition of insanity ensues...sin has weakened the energy of thought...[but] the universal human consciousness is always able to overcome this sluggishness and to correct these mistakes in reasoning.

In thus defending the epistemological ability of sinful man, Kuyper may have even underestimated the noetic effects of sin. Perhaps the human consciousness is not always able to overcome the sluggishness and correct mistakes in reasoning. The point I wish to insist on is that this is sometimes possible. An unregenerate man can know some true propositions and can sometimes reason correctly.

To avoid doing an injustice to Van Til and his associates, it must be stated that sometimes they seem to make contradictory assertions. In the course of their papers, one can find a paragraph in which they seem to accept the position they are attacking, and then they proceed with the attack. What can the explanation be except that they are confused and are attempting to combine two incompatible positions? The objectionable one is in substantial harmony with Existentialism or Neo-orthodoxy. But the discussion of the noetic effects of sin in the unregenerate mind need not further be continued because a more serious matter usurps attention. The Neo-orthodox influence seems to produce the result that even the regenerate man cannot know the truth.

Man’s Epistemological Limitations

That the regenerate man as well as the unregenerate is subject to certain epistemological limitations, that these limitations are not altogether the result of sin but are inherent in the fact that man is a creature, and even in glory these limitations will not be removed, is either stated or implied in a number of Scriptural passages. What these limitations are bears directly on any theory of revelation, for they may be so insignificant that man is almost divine, or they may be so extensive that man can understand nothing about God. First, a few but not all of the Scriptural passages used in this debate will be listed: “Can you search out the deep things of God? Can you find out the limits of the Almighty?” (Job 11:7); “Behold, God is great, and we do not know him, nor can the number of his years be discovered” (Job 36:26); “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it” (Psalm 139:6); “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8-9); “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor?” (Romans 11:33-34); “Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11).

These verses are simply samples, and many similar verses are easily remembered. Several of them seem to say that it is impossible for man to know God. We cannot search him out; we know him not; I cannot attain this knowledge; God’s thoughts are not ours; no none knows the mind of the Lord; and no one knows the things of God. It could easily be concluded that man is totally ignorant and that no matter how diligently he searches the Scripture, he will never get the least glimmering of God’s thought. Of course, in the very passage which says that no man knows the things of God, there is the strongest assertion that what the eye of man has not seen and what the heart of man has never grasped has been revealed to us by God’s Spirit “that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” It will not be surprising, therefore, if some attempts to expound the Biblical position are as confused actually as the Biblical material seems to be. With many statements of such theologians we all ought to agree; but other statements, misinterpreting the Scripture in the interest of some esoteric view of truth, ought to be rejected.

Man’s Knowledge in Relation to God’s

The professors above referred to assert, “there is a qualitative difference between the contents of the knowledge of God and the contents of the knowledge possible to man” (The Text, 5:1). That there is a most important qualitative difference between the knowledge situation in the case of God and the knowledge situation for man cannot possibly be denied without repudiating all Christian theism. God is omniscient; his knowledge is not acquired, and his knowledge, according to common terminology, is intuitive while man’s is discursive. These are some of the differences and doubtless the list could be extended. But if both God and man know, there must with the difference be at least one point of similarity; for if there were no point of similarity, it would be inappropriate to use the one term knowledge in both cases. Whether this point of similarity is to be found in the contents of knowledge, or whether the contents differ, depends on what is meant by the term contents. Therefore, more specifically worded statements are needed.

The theory under discussion goes on to say: “We dare not maintain that his knowledge and our knowledge coincide at any single point” (The Text, 5:3). The authors repudiate another view on the same grounds that “a proposition would have to have the same meaning for God as for man” (7:3). These statements are by no means vague. The last one identifies content and meaning so that the content of God’s knowledge is not its intuitive character, for example, but the meaning of the propositions, such as David killed Goliath. Twice it is denied that a proposition can mean the same thing for God and man, and to make it unmistakable they say that God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge do not coincide at any single point. Here it will stand repetition to say that if there is not a single point of coincidence, it is meaningless to use the single term knowledge for both God and man. Spinoza in attacking Christianity argued that the term intellect as applied to God and as applied to man was completely equivocal, just as the term dog is applied to a four-legged animal that barks and to the star in the sky. In such a case, therefore–if knowledge be defined–either God knows and man cannot, or man knows and God cannot. If there is not a single point of coincidence, God and man cannot have the same thing, namely, knowledge.

After these five professors had signed this cooperative pronouncement, some of them published an explanation of it in which they said: “Man may and does know the same truth that is in the divine mind...[yet] when man says that God is eternal he cannot possibly have in mind a conception of eternity that is identical or that coincides with God’s own thought of eternity” (A Committee for the Complainants, The Incomprehensibility of God, 3). In this explanatory statement, it is asserted that the same truth may and does occur in man’s mind and in God’s. This of course means that there is at least one point of coincidence between God’s knowledge and ours. But while they seem to retract their former position in one line, they reassert it in what follows. It seems that when man says God is eternal, he cannot possibly have in mind what God means when God asserts his own eternity. Presumably the concept eternity is an example standing for all concepts, so that the general position would be that no concept can be predicated of a subject by man in the same sense in which it is predicated by God. But if a predicate does not mean the same thing to man as it does to God, then, if God’s meaning is the correct one, it follows that man’s meaning is incorrect and he is therefore ignorant of the truth that is in God’s mind.

This denial of univocal predication is not peculiar to the professors quoted, nor need it be considered particularly Neo-orthodox. Although the approach is different, the same result is found in Thomas Aquinas. This medieval scholar, whose philosophy has received the papal sanction, taught that no predicate can univocally be applied to God and created beings. Even the copula is cannot be used univocally in these two references. When therefore a man thinks that God is good or eternal or almighty, he not only means something different from what God means by good or eternal or almighty, but, worse (if anything can be worse) he means something different by saying that God is. Since as temporal creatures we cannot know the eternal essence of God, we cannot know what God means when he affirms his own existence. Between God’s meaning of existence and man’s meaning there is not a single point of coincidence.

The Scholastics and Neo-scholastics try to disguise the skepticism of this position by arguing that although the predicates are not univocal, neither are they equivocal, but they are analogical. The five professors also assert that man’s “knowledge must be analogical to the knowledge God possesses” (The Text, 5:3). However, an appeal to analogy–though it may disguise–does not remove the skepticism. Ordinary analogies are legitimate and useful, but they are so only because there is a univocal point of coincident meaning in the two parts. A paddle for a canoe may be said to be analogical to the paddles of a paddle-wheel steamer; the canoe paddle may be said to be analogous even to the screw propeller of an ocean liner; but it is so because of a univocal element. These three things–the canoe paddle, the paddle wheel, and the screw propeller–are univocally devices for applying force to move boats through water. With a univocal element, even a primitive savage, when told that a screw propeller is analogous to his canoe paddle, will have learned something. He may not have learned much about screw propellers and, compared with an engineer, he is almost completely ignorant–almost but not quite. He has some idea about propellers, and his idea may be literally true. The engineer and the savage have one small item of knowledge in common. But without even one item in common, they could not both be said to know. For both persons to know, the proposition must have the same meaning for both. And this holds equally between God and man.

If God has the truth and if man has only an analogy, it follows that he does not have the truth. An analogy of the truth is not the truth; even if man’s knowledge is not called an analogy of the truth but an analogical truth, the situation is no better. An analogical truth, except it contain a univocal point of coincident meaning, simply is not the truth at all. In particular (and the most crushing reply of all) if the human mind were limited to analogical truths, it could never know the univocal truth that it was limited to analogies. Even if it were true that such was the case; he could only have the analogy that his knowledge was analogical. This theory, therefore, whether found in Thomas Aquinas, Emil Brunner, or professed conservatives is unrelieved skepticism and is incompatible with the acceptance of a divine revelation of truth. This unrelieved skepticism is clearly indicated in a statement made in a public gathering and reported in a letter dated March 1, 1948, to the Directors of Covenant House. The statement was made, questioned, and reaffirmed by one of the writers mentioned above that the human mind is incapable of receiving any truth; the mind of man never gets any truth at all. Such skepticism must be completely repudiated if we wish to safeguard a doctrine of verbal revelation.

Truth Is Propositional

Verbal revelation–with the idea that revelation means the communication of truths, information, propositions–brings to light another factor in the discussion. The Bible is composed of words and sentences. Its declarative statements are propositions in the logical sense of the term. Furthermore, the knowledge that the Gentile possesses of an original revelation can be stated in words: “Those who practice such things are worthy of death.” The work of the law written on the hearts of the Gentiles results in thoughts, accusations, and excuses which can be and are expressed in words. The Bible nowhere suggests that there are any inexpressible truths. To be sure, there are truths which God has not expressed to man, for “the secret things belong to the Lord our God”; but this is not to say that God is ignorant of the subjects, predicates, copulas, and logical concatenations of these secret things. Once again we face the problem of equivocation. If there could be a truth inexpressible in logical, grammatical form, the word truth as applied to it would have no more in common with the usual meaning of truth than the Dog Star has in common with Fido. It would be another case of one word without a single point of coincidence between its two meanings. The five professors, on the contrary, assert, “we may not safely conclude that God’s knowledge is propositional in character.” And a doctoral dissertation of one of their students says: “It appears a tremendous assumption without warrant from Scripture and therefore fraught with dangerous speculation impinging upon the doctrine of God to aver that all truth in the mind of God is capable of being expressed in propositions.” To me, the tremendous assumption without warrant from Scripture is that God is incapable of expressing the truth he knows. And that his knowledge is a logical system seems required by three indisputable evidences: first, the information he has revealed is grammatical, propositional, and logical; second, the Old Testament talks about the wisdom of God and in the New Testament Christ is designated as the Logos in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge; and third, we are made in the image of God, Christ being the light that lights every man.

Certainly, the burden of proof lies on those who deny the propositional construction of truth. Their burden is twofold. Not only must they give evidence for the existence of such truth, but first of all they must make clear what they mean by their words. It may be that the phrase nonpropositional truth is a phrase without meaning.

What I apprehend to be this confusion as to the nature of truth has spread beyond the group criticized above. The thought of Edward J. Carnell would presumably not find favor with them, and yet on this point he seems to have adopted much the same position. Consider his argument in A Philosophy of the Christian Religion (450-453). He begins by distinguishing two species of truth: first, “the sum total of reality itself,” and second, “the systematic consistency or propositional correspondence to reality.” It is not irrelevant to the argument to consider the correspondence theory of truth, but it might lead to a discussion too extended for the immediate purpose. Suffice it to say that if the mind has something which only corresponds to reality, it does not have reality; and if it knows reality, there is no need for an extra something which corresponds to it. The correspondence theory, in brief, has all the disadvantages of analogy. Carnell illustrates the first species of truth by saying, “The trees in the yard are truly trees.” No doubt they are, but this does not convince one that a tree is a truth. To say that the trees are truly trees is merely to put literary emphasis on the proposition, the trees are trees. If one said the trees are not truly trees, or, the trees are falsely trees, the meaning would simply be, the trees are not trees. In such illustrations no truth is found that is not propositional, and no evidence for two species of truth is provided. Carnell then describes a student taking an examination in ethics. The student may know the answers, even though he himself is not moral. But the student’s mother wants him not so much to know the truth as to be the truth. Carnell insists that the student can be truth. Now, obviously the mother wants her son to be moral, but what meaning can be attached to the phrase that the mother wants the son to be the truth? Let it be that thinking is only preparatory to being moral, as Carnell says, not what can be meant by being the truth; that is, what more can be meant than being moral? The student could not be a tree. It seems therefore that Carnell is using figurative language rather than speaking literally. He then refers to Christ’s words, “I am...the truth.” Now, it would be ungenerous to conclude that when Christ says “I am...the truth,” and then the student may be said to be the truth, that Christ and the student are identified. But to avoid this identification, it is necessary to see what Christ means by his statement. As was said before, the Bible is literally true, but not every sentence in it is true literally. Christ said, “I am the door”; but he did not mean that he was made of wood. Christ also said, “This is my body.” Romanists think he spoke literally; Presbyterians take the sentence figuratively. Similarly the statement, “I am...the truth,” must be taken to mean, I am the source of truth; I am the wisdom and Logos of God; truths are established by my authority. But this could not be said of the student, so that to call a student the truth is either extremely figurative or altogether devoid of meaning.

Carnell also says: “Since their systems [the systems of thought of finite minds] are never complete, however, propositional truth can never pass beyond probability.” But if this is true, it itself is not true but only probable. And if this is true, the propositions in the Bible, such as David killed Goliath and Christ died for our sins, are only probable–they may be false. And to hold that the Bible may be false is obviously inconsistent with verbal revelation. Conversely, therefore, it must be maintained that whatever great ignorance may characterize the systems of human thought, such ignorance of many truths does not alter the few truths the mind possesses. There are many truths of mathematics, astronomy, Greek grammar, and Biblical theology that I do not know; but if I know anything at all, and especially if God has given me just one item of information, my extensive ignorance will have no effect on that one truth. Otherwise, we are all engulfed in a skepticism that makes argumentation a waste of time.

In the twentieth century it is not Thomas Aquinas but Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, the Neo-orthodox, and Existentialists who are the source of this skepticism to the detriment of revelation. Brunner writes:

Here it becomes unmistakably clear that what God wills to give us cannot be truly [eigentlich] given in words, but only by way of a hint [hinweisend].... Therefore because he [Jesus] is the Word of God, all words have a merely instrumental significance. Not only the linguistic vessel of words, but also the conceptual content is not the thing itself, but only its form, vessel, and means.

The utter skepticism of this position–in which not only verbal symbols but the conceptual content itself is not what God really wills to give us–is disguised in pious phrases about a personal truth, or Du-Wahrheit, distinct from the subject-predicate relation called Es-Wahrheit. God cannot be an object of thought; he cannot be a Gegenstand for the human mind. Truth, instead of being a matter of propositions, is a personal encounter. Whatever words God might speak, Brunner not only reduces to hints or pointers, but he also holds that God’s words may be false. “God can, if he wishes, speak his Word to man even through false doctrine.” This is the culmination, and the comment should be superfluous.

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.

- See more at:   The Bible As Truth

Nota Bene:

The original article was published here:   Gordon H. Clark, "The Bible As Truth," Bibliotheca Sacra 114.454 (April-June 1957): 157-170.