An Update on a 2/11/2011 Blog Post: The Incarnation

I made a few remarks to update my change of views over time.  In February of 2011, I had an online dispute with a polemical supporter of Dr. Gordon H. Clark's views.  His name is Sean Gerety.  After many years of carefully studying Dr. Clark's books and articles, I have come to a different conclusion.  I made the following remarks on the top of the post this morning:

[08/16/2026.   I do not delete old posts from my blog in order to show how my views have evolved over time.  In the case of the accusations of Gordon H. Clark being called a Nestorian, this is really nothing new since the Lutherans think that most all Presbyterians are guilty of Nestorianism due to the fact that Presbyterians deny that the resurrection body of Christ is ubiquitous or present in, with, and under the communion elements of bread and wine.  Also, perhaps there is misunderstanding of Clark's view because Dr. Clark defined a person as the propositions that he thinks.  Proverbs 23:7.  According to Clark, all three Persons of the Trinity are omniscient and all three Persons are the same God.  The three Persons all know the same infinite propositions possible to aseity and deity.  The difference is stated well in the Athanasian creed.  The Father is not the Son or the Spirit.  The Son is not the Father or the Spirit.  And the Spirit is not the Father or the Son.  If the personal distinctions are actual distinctions between the Personal subsistences, then obviously the three Persons cannot think that they are the other two persons.

In regards to the incarnation, the Definition of Chalceon, 451 A.D., Clark noted that the creed says that Jesus had a reasonable human soul.  For Clark, human personality is therefore limited in every way that every other human is limited and finite.  God, on the other hand, being immutable, is not finite or limited in what He can know.  Therefore, when the divine Logos became incarnate in the human person of Jesus Christ, He did not replace the human and reasonable soul of Jesus Christ.  If so, that would be the heresy of Apollinarianism.  For Jesus to be a completely human person he must have a soul like other humans. 

On the other hand, if the divine Logos gave up the "free" exercise of His divine attributes, as contended by Millard Erickson, the Baptist theologian, and as contended by certain Assemblies of God Pentecostal theologians, then the Trinity would be short one of the Persons of the Godhead.  In other words, if God is immutable and all three Persons are fully and truly God, then it is impossible that the second Person of the Trinity laid aside His divine and incommunicable attributes or even the "free" exercise of the divine attributes.  That would violate divine immutability.  This is the heresy called the "kenosis" or "sub-kenotic" view of the incarnation.  Pentecostals favor this because they believe in the continuation of the apostolic gifts or charismatic gifts and want to say that Jesus did His miracles by faith and that modern day Pentecostals can perform miracles by following Jesus's good example of faith.

In order for Jesus to be both God and man, both the human nature and the divine nature must be preserved without separating the two natures or confusing the two natures.  Dr.  Clark was able to do this because of his definition of Person.  I think a better term might have been "mind."  The human mind or soul is fully human and not divine.  The divine mind of the Logos, the second Person of the Trinity, is always fully omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.  So, there is no need for the Logos to change in order to become incarnate.  Jesus, the human person or human soul with a rational mind, had to grow in knowledge as every other human person or soul does.  How the two minds are united is through a spiritual union that violates neither of the two natures.  

When Clark denies the infinity of God in his final book, The Incarnation, he is not saying that God is not infinite in the way that David Engelsma thought he meant it.  What Clark meant was that there is nothing mysterious about what God knows.  For Clark, it is a moot point to argue that the archetypal knowledge of God is unknowable.  Both the Van Tilians and the Clarkians agree on that point.  The argument is rather over whether God knows exactly the same propositions that we know as humans in our finite ability to understand special revelation.  Of course God knows exactly what we know because by providence God controls our very thoughts.  While we cannot know everything God knows in His intuitive omniscience and timeless eternity, we can think God's thoughts after Him as He has revealed them to us on the discursive and temporal level.  Clark never uses the terms archetypal or ectypal; however Clark's distinction between God's intuitive knowledge and man's rational but discursive knowledge amounts to the same thing.

Personally, I think Van Til and Clark agreed on much more than the students of either apologist realize.  I am beginning to study Greg Bahnsen's views on apologetics.  I think Bahnsen, of all the students of Van Til, is probably the most logical.  Bahnsen emphasized logic as finite, but did not reject logic or propositional revelation in toto as some of the more extreme Van Tilians today do.  

At any rate, these are complex theological and philosophical issues.  I will try to comment more in the future.  I still think that Sean Gerety should show more charity to the Van Tilian side instead of being so polemical.  Perhaps the same humility should also apply to the more radical Van Tilians like R. Scott Clark of Westminster Seminary, California, and Scott Oliphant of Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.]

You can read the original post at:  Attempt At Reconciliation Is Rejected. 

For a serious of posts that I wrote on the issue of Clark's view of the Incarnation see:

Index of blog articles on Clark's view of the incarnation.

Although I mostly agree with Clark's biographer, Doug Douma, I think Douma is a bit off to say that the disagreement was about an impersonal nature of Christ.  Both sides of the issue agree that the human person of Christ was limited in the way that all humans are limited.  The Trinitarian view of God is that all three Persons of the Trinity are God, sharing the same divine nature.  So the divine nature is not impersonal.  It is tri-personal.  The Van Tilians emphasize the doctrine of perichoresis to show that all three Persons are the same God.  The same can be said about the incarnation.  The human nature of Christ is not impersonal because He has a genuine human soul that is rational.  Animals, not being the image of God, are not personal or rational beings, although animals do have some sort of soul and self-awareness.  You can read Douma's article here:  GHC Review 44: The Incarnation.

The problem I think that most Van Tilian critics have is that they have not taken the time to study Clark's view in detail.  To avoid making that same error, I have decided to take a year or more to study Van Til's works and the writings of those who studied under Van Til.  I think probably Greg Bahnsen and John Frame would qualify.  Scott Oliphant does not seem to be as objective as John Frame on Clark's views, although Frame gets things wrong as well.  I just bought a copy of Bahnsen's book, Van Til's Apologetics:  Readings and Analysis.  Hopefully, this will clarify the differences between Van Til and Clark.  It should be noted that several of those who studied under both Clark and Van Til agreed that in later years the two apologists reconciled, especially over the importance of the biblical doctrine of inerrancy.  One former student of Van and Clark reported that Clark was invited to speak at Van Til's retirement.