[INTRODUCTION ON THE AUDIOTAPE]: The fllowing lecture by Dr. Gordon H. Clark is entitled
❝John Frame and Cornelius Van Til❞.
[CLARK]: Well, I have this material... from a paper which John Frame wrote...
The title is ❝The Problem of Theological Paradox❞ — that's the title of Frame's paper.
And you will find it in Foundations of Christian Scholarship,
edited by Gary North... published by Ross House Books.
Now, here is the trouble, I hope you won't be confused,
but I'm pretty sure you'll be confused somewhat.
As you know, Van Til has written a number of books.
Well, then Frame comes along
and explains certain important points in Van Til.
So we have Van Til and then we have Frame's interpretation of Van Til.
And then there are my remarks about Frame.
And if you can keep the three people separate,
you may be able to get through this.
But, well, anyhow we'll begin.
I think, if you listen, you can tell when I quote Van Til,
and when I quote Frame, and when I give my own opinions.
Remember there are three people in view.
Frame, near the beginning of his paper, remarks that
❝Van Til does not merely paraphrase Dutch theologians,
his apologetic position is unique
and has been a substantial importance.❞
Now, that's Frame's opinion of Van Til, a commendatory opinion.
And he says that Van Til has added things to the
Dutch views and these are of substantial importance.
Now a quotation from Frame:
❝His major complaints...❞ — by ❛his❜ Frame means Van Til —
❝His major complaints against competing apologetic methods are
that they compromise the incomprehensibility of God.❞
I'll make a little remark there.
As you know, there has been a little rather theological upheaval at
Westminster in the recent past over Professor Shepherd.
And I have read some of the published material
and the actual doctrine which is under discussion with
Dr. Shepherd is the doctrine of justification by faith.
But those who are opposing him have tried to tie this
in with the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God.
I think this is one of their pet themes at Westminster,
and they drag it in whenever they think they can
even though it doesn't have much bearing on the subject matter.
And Frame reports what Van Til says, and it's very accurate.
His major complaint against competing apologetic methods are
that they compromise the incomprehensibility of God.
Now, when you get into a discussion — I was going to say a brawl, like this —
please remember that I always insist on your defining your terms.
Van Til doesn't always do so, and Frame does it less.
You ought to realize that what Van Til means by ❛incomprehensibility❜
is not what Charles Hodge means by ❛incomprehensibility❜.
There are two very different views, different definitions.
Though, I hate to say two different definitions,
because the Westminster people really don't define
❛incomprehensibility❜ but they do explicitly reject Hodge's view.
They don't use the term Hodge,
but they give his definition and say it is no good.
So...
There are complications, if you want to learn the subject
you have to learn the complications, that is what the subject is.
And if you don't want to learn the subject,
go out and play golf.
I don't know why anyone would want to do so,
but apparently some do.
His major complaints against competing apologetic methods are
that they compromise the incomprehensibility of God.
Continuing the quotation from Frame:
❝The difference between the two...❞
— between that is apologetics and theology,
because the context here indicates that —
❝The difference between apologetics and theology in practice then
becomes a difference in emphasis rather than in subject matter.❞
I think you will found out as we go on,
that my opinion is that Frame dilutes Van Til.
He seems not to grasp Van Til's exact position,
and he sort of trivialises it.
Well that's my opinion, you don't have to take it,
but at least it will help you understand the way I develop this.
Well, to go on with the next page of Frame:
❝The logic of his position...❞ — that is Van Til's position —
❝The logic of his position requires us to go beyond
his explicit teachings to say more than he himself says.❞
End of quote.
And Frame proceeds to do so in one way or another.
Since Van Til's theology is basically
that of the Reformed Tradition,
Frame will mainly discuss his distinctives.
Incidentally, Van Til's theology,
I suppose you could say mainly or basically,
that it is Reformed, but not all is quite the same thing.
He has a view of the Trinity that no theologian that I know,
no orthodox theologian I know of, has ever come up with at all.
He holds that God is not only three persons in one substance —
to use that horrible Latin word that doesn't mean anything —
he holds that God is both three persons and one person.
And he explicitly denounces the usual apologetic defending
the doctrine of the Trinity which is that God is three in one sense,
and one in another sense, and hence there is no contradiction because
there are lots of things that are three in one sense and one in another.
You can get all sorts of examples.
The easiest one to think of is
a business corporation that has three officers:
The president, vice president, and secretary treasurer.
And here the corporation is one corporation but three officers.
And you can have one godhead and three persons.
Or all sorts of combinations where you have three in one,
but in different senses.
And that is the standard orthodox position all the way back from Athanasius.
Van Til denounces this.
And says that the Trinity is both one person and three persons.
And he calls this a paradox — which is putting it mildly.
[question from audience]
[CLARK]: You'll have to read some other book I wrote to find the reference.
[Audience]
[CLARK]: I can't remember what book I wrote what in.
After all, I published some 25 books.
And they are just one blooming, buzzing confusion in my mind.
But you do agree with that don't you?
[audience]
[CLARK]: If you will look at something I had published
in the last three or four years, you'll find it somewhere.
I can't remember.
[CLARK]: Well, Frame says, since Van Til's theology
is basically that of the Reformed tradition,
Frame will mainly discuss his distinctives.
And this is the relation between unity and diversity.
In fact, Frame says:
❝The relation between unity and diversity is —
as he puts this in italics,
Van Til's most distinctive contribution to theology.
And in doing this, discussing unity and diversity,
at times Van Til appears unequivocally to endorse the idea of system
(which I emphasize too)
while at other times he seems to attack it.❞
❝In favor of system...❞ —
and you may remember I emphasize system
over and over again in my introductory lecture way back,
was it three or four months ago we started this course,
or three or four years ago, it seems so long —
❝In favor of system is his view
that God himself is exhaustively comprehensible to himself.❞
Alright, alright, fine.
I'm sure God's mind is systematic, perfectly logical and so on.
And Frame continues to quote Van Til:
❝God's knowledge is systematic.
There must be in God an absolute system of knowledge.❞
That is Frame's words with reference to Van Til,
and he further goes on:
❝"We see then that our knowledge of the universe must be true
since we are creatures of God
who has made both us and the universe.❞
Let me read that sentence again.
That is Frame's sentence representing Van Til's view.
Listen to it again:
❝We see then that our knowledge of the universe must be true
since we are creatures of God
who has made both us and the universe.❞
Well, now if you can't guess what I'm going to say about that,
you haven't been in the course very much.
Or you've been asleep all the time.
In the first place, that is an invalid inference.
It's bad logic.
God may have made us and yet our ideas may be false.
In fact a lot of our ideas are false.
They often are.
Of course, if we have knowledge, it is true.
But this is a mere tautology.
For example, Einstein says we have no knowledge of the universe.
And so did Hume.
And I'll read Van Til's sentence... Frame's sentence again:
❝Our knowledge of the universe must be true since
we are creatures of God who has made both us and the universe.❞
Can you figure anything crazier than that?
That is ridiculous!
Some more quotes:
❝With regard to the existence of God
and the truth of Christian theism,
there is absolutely certain proof.
There is a cogent theistic proof.❞
End of quote.
Now, Frame's statement there is quite true,
Van Til has said this over and over again.
He doesn't accept Thomas' proof or any other proof
But he insists that there is an absolutely certain proof.
A cogent theistic proof.
And he indicates he means
the cosmological proof, not the ontological proof.
And for some forty years now,
I've been bugging him to show me the proof,
so I can see whether it is valid or not.
He hasn't accommodated me as yet.
Well now the next page of Frame.
These paragraphs sorta summarize,
each paragraph summarizes about one page of Frame's article.
Quote from Frame:
❝The Trinity is the heart of Christianity,
and the doctrine of analogical knowledge is a corollary
from the doctrine of the Trinity.
Man's knowledge is true because (not in spite of)
the fact that it is analogical.❞
And then he winds up on a better note:
❝All doctrines are interdependent.
The parts depend on the whole.
The whole depends on the parts.❞
Which is a good assertion that Christianity is a system.
But what are you going to make of the statement:
❝Man's knowledge is true because (not in spite of)
the fact that it is analogical.❞
And remember for Van Til,
a statement that is analogical has no univocal element in it whatever.
And to repeat what I've already said three or four times.
You cannot have an analogy unless
there is at least one univocal point of similarity.
And I gave you Aristotle's example of the medical man,
the medical book, and medical instrument and so on.
Now, Frame quotes this — he has spent several pages explaining this.
From page 296 to say page 304.
You remember, he began by saying that
there are things in Van Til which indicate that
he is in favor of a system.
He better be because his ordination vow says that
he accepted the system of
doctrine expounded in the Westminster Confession.
Every minister in the OPC and in the PCA and in the RPCES...
... takes an ordination vow that he accepts the system
of doctrine in the Westminster Confession.
And so Van Til accepts the system.
There are lots of things in Van Til that go contrary to that.
There are portions of these work that are sorta antisystematic.
Van Til denies that Christianity is a deductive system.
And to support this assertion, Frame quotes this from...
well I'm quoting from Frame,
❝Our knowledge is analogical therefore must be paradoxical.
All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory.❞
❝All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory.❞
Let me ask you:
Was it somewhere said in the Old Testament that David was King of Israel?
Is that apparently contradictory?
And yet, Frame quotes Van Til as saying:
❝All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory.❞
And the reason is that
❝Our knowledge is analogical therefore must be paradoxical.❞
Of course, he hasn't shown yet that we have any knowledge.
That's one trouble.
Quote:
❝Van Til denies that the paradox of the three and one
can be resolved by the formula
❛one in essence and three in person❜.
Rather we do assert that God,
that is the whole Godhead, is one person.❞
If you will get Frame's article,
you will find the reference in Van Til,
which I don't have on this sheet of paper.
So I'm not the only one who insists that
Van Til said God is one person and three persons.
Frame admits that he says that.
Now, this section of Frame is a section that picks out of
Van Til those places where he seems to oppose the idea of system.
And on page 307 Frame says this:
❝The necessity and freedom of God's will are also paradoxically related.
If God's will is directed by His intelligence,
then His free acts, creating the world for example, become necessary.
God had to create.
If, on the other hand, God's free acts are truly free,
then it would seem that they must be unconnected with
His intelligence and therefore random.❞
I'll read quotation again.
This is Frame summarizing Van Til's position.
This is not a quotation from Van Til,
though I rather suppose from what I know that
some of these phrases are Van Til's words,
but he's putting them together.
This is what he says:
❝The necessity and freedom of God's will
are also paradoxically related.
If God's will is directed by His intelligence,
then His free acts,
creating the world for example, become necessary.
God had to create.
If, on the other hand God's free acts are truly free,
then it would seem that they must be unconnected with
His intelligence and therefore random.❞
The trouble with this paragraph which
I've read a couple of times is that neither Frame nor Van Til
define ❛necessity❜, nor ❛freedom❜, nor certainly the phrase ❛truly free❜.
And therefore what is said here really is not intelligible.
[Audience]
[CLARK]: I beg your pardon?
[Audience]
[CLARK]: Well, I'll try to.
In the first place, there are various kinds of freedom.
We agree don't we that in this discussion
we are not talking about political freedom.
That's another kind.
The Arminian doctrine of free will
means that God cannot control our wills,
we make our decisions quite apart from any influence that God has on us.
Or I'll define this way — and I'm talking about human free will:
❛Free will❜ is the equal ability to choose
either of two exclusive processes or acts...
under any given circumstance.
And in saying this,
I think I represent very accurately the position of the Arminians.
That is their notion of freedom, and it is, I think, recognizable,
the equal ability to choose either of two
incompatible lines of action under one set of circumstances.
Now, another kind of freedom,
which you find discussed in the Middle Ages,
is the freedom of the will from the intellect.
Now this is different from the Arminian point of view.
They may overlap some but it different than the Arminian point of view.
The freedom of the will from the intellect.
That is, you are... able to do what you...
or you are able to act in opposition to what you know,
what you really believe.
[Audience]
[CLARK]: I'm not sure, he nowhere defines freedom.
[Audience]
[CLARK]: Now, the absence of freedom, in this sense,
would be indicated by Luther's volume on ❛The Bondage of the Will❜.
You remember Erasmus wrote a treatise on the ❛Freedom of the Will❜.
And Luther at first thought it was such a trivial affair that
it wasn't worth paying any attention to.
And then Erasmus' friends circulated
the rumor that Luther had been defeated — he couldn't answer Erasmus.
This disturbed Luther's friends more than it disturbed Luther,
but they finally persuaded him that he had to answer Erasmus.
And so he wrote one of the masterpieces of Christian philosophy,
which I hope you all read, ❛The Bondage of the Will❜.
And of course he and Calvin were absolutely in agreement on this.
Now then, if you talk about freedom of God,
I suppose what a person ought to mean is that
there is nothing external to God that controls Him.
But that doesn't seem to be what is meant here.
Here, the idea that God's will is independent of His intelligence
And this would make God schizophrenic!
And... I don't think we want to say that.
So here are several definitions of freedom
and the quotation and so far as I know any else
Van Til has written really does not define freedom.
This sort of thing occurs in the controversy which
Van Til and I engaged in for some years.
He would say that I make logic superior to God.
Well, that's sorta nonsense.
Logic is the way God thinks.
And God's thinking isn't superior to Him, that's the way He is.
And so these words are not defined.
And you see, Frame falls into embarrassing language
because after he talks about God's freedom
then he has to enforce it a little bit by saying ❛truly free❜.
Well, now that doesn't add anything.
That simply shows that the man is embarrassed.
Now, I must make this statement with a little hesitation because
I'm not quite sure of it.
But so far as I know,
the last philosopher who tried to keep God's will
and God's intellect distinct was Descartes,
who lived in the seventeenth century.
And this attempt on his part seems to have failed.
And well, maybe some Arminians have tried to do it, I don't know.
But at any rate, I don't know
That is the last attempt that I know to distinguish between
God's will and God's intellect.
So if you insist on a very unified personality...
... you don't have that duality.
Well, I'll read some more, these are very interesting things.
If we're going to get over this, it's... it's only ten pages.
But I've already taken an hour have I?
I'm only up to page 4.
Just an hour, four pages an hour, I am a speed reader.
Now, coming back to Frame.
Does, this is a question he asks when he wants to give Van Til's answer.
Does God's plan include evil?
And Frame answers for Van Til.
Does God's plan include evil?
❛Yes and no.❜
He doesn't explain why he says ❛no❜.
The ❛yes❜ is correct of course, God's plan includes everything.
And you will see in Isaiah in the 45th chapter and the 7th verse
that God creates evil, and why anybody should say ❛no❜ can
only be explained on the basis that he pays no attention to the Scriptures.
The original edition of the Scofield Bible...
... had a note on Isaiah 45:7.
The note said this:
❝The Hebrew word ❛rah❜... is never translated ❛sin❜.❞
He was referring of course to the King James Version.
❝The Hebrew word ❛rah❜... is never translated ❛sin❜.❞
Now the remarkable point about that note
is that it is absolutely true.
Now, how would a person know that
the Hebrew word ❛rah❜ is never translated ❛sin❜?
In the Old Testament.
How would you get to know that?
[Audience]
[CLARK]: How much of the Hebrew text?
And of course all of the text of King James version too.
So you couldn't make that statement unless
you had examined every case, wouldn't you?
[Audience]
[CLARK]: Well, any case, however you do it.
Of course the concordance has done most of the work for you.
Now then, if Scofield examined every case of ❛rah❜ in the Old Testament,
he must have known that ❛rah❜ means
murder, adultery, theft, lying, and all sorts of sins.
And yet he said it is never translated ❛sin❜.
That's right, it isn't.
But it refers to murder, adultery, theft, false witness, covetousness.
All kinds.
[Audience]
[CLARK]: I am making the linguistic assertion that
the word ❛rah❜ refers to all sorts of sins.
And... as for some suggestion you make,
if you continue with the verses in Isaiah,
you will find that the following verse refers to peace.
And if you look to the context,
it isn't peace between say Israel and Syria or something like that,
it is peace with God.
And so if evil and peace are contrasted,
and if peace means spiritual peace with God,
then ❛rah❜ means ❛sin❜.
But Scofield didn't want to say that.
So he said something that was perfectly true
and completely misleading.
Another example of Van Til's rejection of systematic theology.
The image of God in man is both lost and retained.
To quote,
❝The image is lost in some sense, and also remains in some sense.❞
Incidentally this is a verbatim quotation.
I'm not summarizing it all, these are Frame's own words,
including the little parenthesis ❛in some sense❜
❝The image is lost in some sense and also remains in some sense.❞
❝Since the precise senses...❞ — and this is still Frame's wording —
❝Since the precise senses are not specified,
we are left with a paradoxical formulation.❞
Let me read that over again.
The image, that is the image of God,
and really you shouldn't talk about the image of God in man,
the Scripture says man IS the image of God.
The image of God isn't something that
happens to be in man with a lot of other things.
Man himself is the image of God.
Well I'll read this:
❝The image is lost in some sense, but also remains in some sense.
Since the precise senses are not specified,
we are left with a paradoxical formulation.❞
And furthermore, not only is there no paradox,
contrary to what Frame says,
but the senses are specified.
He says they're not.
Well, the Scriptures specify the senses in which image,
well I wouldn't say the image is lost,
and most of the Reformed theologians do not say the image is lost,
they say it is deformed.
And point out very clearly that it is not lost.
So, a person who says they are not specified is a little arrogant,
I think, for he implies that if he does not see it in Scripture,
no one else can.
And some very humble people are terribly arrogant.
Now, so far,
Frame has shown certain places in Van Til where he seems to assert system
and some places in Van Til where he appears to reject system.
Now then Frame wants somehow to tie these together.
And one of his subheads,
the third subhead is ❛the analogical system❜.
The apparent contradictions require an analogical system.
❝Analogous reasoning is reasoning which
presupposes as its ultimate basis the reality of the Biblical God.❞
Let me read this definition of analogical reasoning again.
❝Analogous reasoning is reasoning which
presupposes as its ultimate basis the reality of the Biblical God.❞
Well, I don't know why insisting on the reality of the
Biblical God makes your reasoning analogical,
but that's what he says.
Well, to go on:
❝God is both the source and the interpreter of all facts.❞
Quote:
❝Man does not ultimately determine the nature
and meaning of the world.❞
End of quote.
Which is a very trivial statement to make.
Nobody denies it.
❝Man does not ultimately determine the nature
and meaning of the world.❞
❝We think God's thoughts after Him.❞
And he also says we ❝reinterpret❞,
we don't interpret the world on our own,
we ❛reinterpret❜ it.
And he says ❝we think God's thoughts after Him.❞
The question here, if that is so,
how do we know that our reinterpretation is correct?
Since God is Omniscient,
I suppose every theologian who is even halfway orthodox...
would say that our thinking must conform to God's thought,
if it is to be true.
But how do we know our reinterpretation conforms to God's thought?
Well, Frame goes on with something that amuses me a little bit.
You'll find this on page 313 of this little booklet.
It's the ❛Problem of Theological Paradox❜,
chapter 11 in Foundation of Christian Scholarship, edited by Gary North.
And so he continues:
❝This precipitated the Clark case.❞
I'm the Clark, of course,
if any of you don't know it, I was ordained in the OPC in 1944,
and a certain group of Westminster people
filed a complaint in general assembly trying to
have my ordination revoked.
And this controversy took about five years, and I won.
But... that's the Clark case.
❝This precipitated the Clark case.❞
It had to do with Van Til's statement that
there is no identity of content between what
God has in mind and what man has in mind.
Now those words come from Frame.
The actual words, Van Til's words,
and Kuschke's and well several others who signed The Complaint,
the exact words are:
❝God's knowledge...❞ —
or maybe it's the knowledge God has something like that —
❝God's knowledge and the knowledge possible to man
do not coincide at any single point.❞
❝God's knowledge and the knowledge possible to man
do not coincide at any single point.❞
Now Frame continues:
❝God's concept of a rose is different in content from man's
because God's concept is the original and ours is derivative.❞
But the word ❛content❜ in this sentence is considerably ambiguous.
And, in fact, Frame himself lists
six different meanings of the word content.
Frame does not repeat the charges that were made in the Clark case.
He doesn't repeat the...
any of the reply, but at any rate he does not repeat the
main sentence in The Complaint.
❛The Complaint❜ was a document complaining against my ordination.
He doesn't repeat this sentence, which is the key sentence.
❝The knowledge of God and the knowledge possible to man
do not coincide at any single point.❞
Therefore, Frame cannot urge that Van Til
means only one or two of the six meanings of ❛content❜,
and does not mean the others.
Van Til said at any single point.
And if Frame comes along and
says there are six meanings of ❛content❜,
and maybe man's knowledge and God's knowledge
coincide in one or two of these six, but not the others,
that is ruled out by Van Til,
he said not at any single point.
And has issues for Van Til to say
the word ❛content❜ has six different meanings.
Well, going on from that
he comes to a subsection on ❝analogy and revelation❞.
Quote:
❝Van Til rather affirms that we can have no knowledge of God
unless He voluntarily reveals Himself.❞
That does not require our concept to differ from God's.
It simply means that God reveals His knowledge to us
and we have His knowledge.
Frame insists that we can derive knowledge from
an observation of nature.
And the quotation is ❝extra scriptural information to interpret Scripture❞.
As we need, or as we use
❝extra scriptural information to interpret Scripture❞.
But neither he nor Van Til explain how this is possible.
This is a big gap in their theory.
But Frame insists, ❝Thus we can use such data fearlessly and thankfully❞.
That is we can use extrascriptural information fearlessly and thankfully.
Does that mean that we should hold the discarded theory of gravitation?
Does it mean that we should hold to Newton's idea
that motion proceeds in a straight line?
Does it mean that we must accept Einstein who says that
motion never proceeds in a straight line?
And that there is no gravitation?
Are space and time independent frameworks as Newton said,
or are they not independent as Einstein says?
And who knows what the Science will be a year from now!...
Now Frame admits that man's knowledge of nature is distorted by sin.
Quote:
❝Man's normal activity of interpreting the universe
has been distorted by sin.❞
Well, in that case, how can we use it ❝fearlessly and thankfully❞?
But... I am not particularly interested
in the distortion of knowledge by sin.
I do admit noetic effects of sin, however.
But, my theory is that even Adam before he fell
could never have arrived at any laws of nature whatever because
our physical abilities do not allow us to do that,
and laboratories experimentation is imposition of mathematical choices
on observations that do not compel any particular proposition.
Continuing to quote from Frame:
❝Even when we use extrascriptural information, as we must...❞
— that's part of his wording —
❝Even when we use extrascriptural information, as we must,
to understand Scripture, we must hold loosely to this information.❞
Oh, I thought he said on the previous page,
we can use it ❝fearlessly and thankfully❞!
Now he says we have to use it loosely.
And if we use it loosely, then, even loosely,
then we must reject the principle that Scripture must be
interpreted by Scripture, which I think is the Reformed position.
And of course, this matter of loosely,
that just wrecks Frame's whole scheme.
Now, further on page 321.
Quote:
❝Our knowledge is limited both by our created status and
by God's sovereign limitation of revelation
therefore we can expect to find paradox also in Scripture.❞
Let me read this remarkable example of logic again,
❝Our knowledge is limited both by
our created status and by God's sovereign limitation of revelation.❞
Well, I have no objection to that sentence,
but look what he implies, what he infers from it:
❝Therefore, we can expect paradox also in Scripture.❞
Now that's perfectly fallacious!
The ❛therefore❜ doesn't hold at all!
❝Now, it is no doubt true that
there are apparent contradictions in Scripture.
But only apparent ones.
We have to ask, apparent to whom?
They appear ultimately irreconcilable to unbelievers,
because unbelievers have a false view of the foundations of logic.
But the apparent contradictions are also
apparent to all men, believers and unbelievers.❞
Well, wait a minute, wait till I get the...
I better do this all over again.
This was all quotation.
I think maybe you thought I was speaking for myself.
These are Frame's words, I'll go through them.
❝There are apparent contradictions in Scripture.
But only apparent ones.
Apparent to whom?
They appear ultimately irreconcilable to unbelievers,
because unbelievers have a false view of the foundations of logic.
But the apparent contradictions are also apparent to all men,
believers and unbelievers alike because of their finitude.❞
End of quote.
Well, many unbelievers will admit consistency
in places where Frame finds paradoxes.
This is more often the case with believers.
A paradox — in my opinion at any rate —
a paradox is simply a confusion in one's mind.
And hence what is paradoxical to one man
is not paradoxical to another.
And my standard example of this is the physics laboratory,
an elementary laboratory,
where the professor will tell you that the weight of water
in this container is half the weight of the water in this container.
And yet the pressure with the lesser water is
twice the pressure of the greater amount of water.
And that sounds queer to some people.
They ask, some of the students,
how can water which is half of the weight of other water have
twice the pressure on the bottom?
This is a paradox.
This is one which is very easily solved.
Do any of you know the solution, have you had Physics?
[Audience]
[CLARK]: Exactly, pressure is a function of height, not of weight.
But most people make a mistake in this,
it is a function of the weight.
And, but, two of us here don't see any paradox anymore.
Now Van Til... this is a footnote that Frame has,
❝Van Til suggests that the contradiction appears only at first sight.
Elsewhere he seems to argue that
it is irresolvable by any created intellect.❞
That is, there are paradoxes in the Bible
that we can't possibly untangle.
Van Til sometimes uses deduction, sometimes forbids,
but never explains when one rather than the other is the case.
Of course that is just the trouble with Van Til, isn't it.
❝Omnipotence is not paradoxical, for nothing in Scripture contradicts it.
God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are paradoxical and
to remove that contradiction would be to compromise
either God's sovereignty or man's responsibility.❞
Let me read this over again,
I'll tell you where the quotation begins.
I have summarized a little bit before the quotation begins.
The summary is like this:
❝Omnipotence is not paradoxical, for nothing in Scripture contradicts it.❞
Although on another page he says everything in Scripture is paradoxical...
❝Omnipotence is not paradoxical, for nothing in Scripture contradicts it.
God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are paradoxical and
to remove that contradiction would be to compromise either
God's sovereignty or man's responsibility.❞
End of quote.
But if omnipotence (these are my words),
if omnipotence is not paradoxical as Frame said above,
what are we to make of his statement that
all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory?
Well that's Frame's statement about Van Til.
I would suppose that Van Til might say this,
but at any rate, that's the way Frame understands Van Til.
No, in fact this is a quotation from Van Til.
It is a double quotation here.
These two things mean Frame's statement.
What are we to make of his statement that
❝all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory❞?
Now, Van Til said that omnipotence is not selfcontradictory,
but... creation and responsibility are contradictory.
And also he said ❝all teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory❞.
Which would of course include the idea of omnipotence.
❝Our concepts are limiting concepts.❞
Now, here Van Til misuses languages for Kant means something quite different.
The term limiting concept arose with Kant and
it has a certain meaning.
Van Til takes the phrase but uses it in a different sense and
it is hard to know what he means.
It is something like this:
Limiting concept means merely that there are some things
we do not know about a tree for example.
It merely means that our knowledge is not exhaustive.
Well, that's not what anybody in philosophy meant by a limiting concept.
Any furthermore, here Van Til thinks of things, like a tree,
as being an object of knowledge.
His confusion vanishes if we take propositions to be the objects of knowledge.
❝"If in interpreting Scripture,
putting the two verses together produces an apparent contradiction,
then so be it.❞
End of quote.
You're doing some exegesis and
you come up upon an apparent contradiction.
All right, let it stand!
Don't examine your interpretation to see
what mistake you've have made.
Just let it stand!
Quote:
❝The doctrine of justification by faith
when fully explained in its relation to the rest of Scriptural truth
is just as paradoxical as divine sovereignty.
Even the omnipotence of God then shares with
other doctrines a paradoxical element.❞
And of course a few pages before he said it wasn't paradoxical.
And then we have the final statement, well near the final.
❝All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory.❞
❝All teaching of Scripture...❞ — that's verbatim —
❝All teaching of Scripture is apparently contradictory.❞
I might say that the statement ❝David was King of Israel❞
is not apparently contradictory to me.
Now sorta the conclusion:
❝Logic has made only small steps in this task.
Describing the conditions of intelligibility for a few keys terms
like ❛all❜, ❛if❜ ❛then❜, and so on.
Only in certain narrowly defined contexts.
For example, man has in one sense and
has not in another lost the image of God as the result of the fall.
Since the senses are not clearly specifiable,
we have an apparent contradiction.❞
End of quote.
Similar to what was said before.
And even, my remark is, and even if the sense were not specifiable,
there would not be an apparent contradiction anyway.
And further they are specifiable.
And then there is little paragraph that
winds it up nicely and that is the end.
[AUDIOTAPE]: This concludes Dr. Clark's lecture entitled
❝John frame and Cornelius Van Til❞.
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