Pastoral Musings

Feb 13 2012, 08:39 AM

Ray,
Check out frame-poythress.org for some articles about Van Til. Frame does a good job of addressing Van Tilian thought.

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Clark never denied, in my view, the point that God's mind and man's were different in their metaphysical nature. Nor did Van Til deny that God and man could believe the same proposition. Therefore, in my view, the controversy was really unnecessary and largely based on misunderstanding. Van Til in my view was at his worst when he was debating with other Christian apologists.

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The logic of Van Til's analogical knowledge:

There are certain questions any epistemological theory must answer:

(a) What is the subject of knowledge? (That which knows.)

(b) What is the object of knowledge? (That which is known.)

(c) How does a subject acquire an object of knowledge?(The mechanism of knowledge acquisition.)

The logic of Van Til's analogical knowledge is rather simple:

The creator-creation distinction is an ontological distinction between God and his creation. Van Til's applies the creator-creation distinction to all three epistemological questions above. Thus, for Van Til:

(a) The creator-creation distinction implies that the subject of knowledge is ontologically different: God is uncreated Creator but human persons are created creatures.

(b) The creator-creation distinction implies that the object of knowledge is ontologically different between creator and creature: The object of God's knowledge is uncreated but the object of human's knowledge is created.

(c) The creator-creation distinction implies that the mechanism of knowledge acquisition is ontologically different between creator and creature: The mechanism of knowledge acquisition for God is uncreated but the mechanism of knowledge acquisition for human persons are created.

As a good Reformed believer, Van Til also believes that human persons are created in the image of God. As an image-bearer of God, human persons as knower reflect God as knower. How do human persons reflect God epistemologically? Van Til calls this relation "analogical." Analogical is meant to convey the idea that there are both similarities and differences between God as knower and human persons as knower. There are similarities because human persons are created in the image of God and therefore reflect God as knower. There are differences because human persons are created in the image of God and therefore there is an underlying ontological difference between the creator and creature as knower.

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Now Clark is an Augustinian. For an Augustinian, the object of knowledge is truth. Since Clark believes all truths are propositional, the object of knowledge is a proposition. For Clark, that the object of knowledge is a proposition is true of both God and human persons. For Clark, both God and human person knows the identical propositions.

But for Van Til, who applies the ontological creator-creation distinction to the object of knowledge, the proposition God knows must be ontologically different from the proposition human persons know. For Van Til, God and human persons knowing the identical propositions means violating the creator-creation distinction.

Clark and Van Til disagree with each other.

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What, then, is the exact point of difference?

According to the complainants (against Dr. Clark's ordination), it is this, that, while they hold that the difference between the contents of the knowledge of God and the contents of our knowledge is both qualitative and quantitative, Dr. Clark insists that it is only quantitative. And here the complaints mention three specific points of difference between Dr. Clark's view and their own:

1. According to Dr. Clark all truth, in God and in man, is propositional, i.e., assumes the form of propositions (God is good, man is mortal, two times two are four, the whole is greater than any of its parts, etc. – H.H.). The complaints deny this, at least with regard to God's knowledge.

2. Dr. Clark holds that man's knowledge of any proposition is identical with God's knowledge of the same proposition. Any proposition has the same meaning for God as for man. The complainants deny this. As an item of interest we may mention here that during the examination of Dr. Clark by the Presbytery of Philadelphia the question was asked him: "You would say then, that all that is revealed in the Scripture is capable of being comprehended by the mind of man?" And the answer was given by him: "Oh yes, that is what is given us for, to understand it."

3. Dr. Clark teaches that God's knowledge consists of an infinite number of propositions, while only a finite number can ever be revealed to man. And this shows that, according to him, the difference between God's knowledge and man's knowledge is only quantitative: God simply knows infinitely more than man. The complainants insist that it is also qualitative: It also concerns the question as to the nature and mode of Gods knowledge and ours.

The doctrine at issue is the incomprehensibility of God – the claim that human persons can know some, but not all, truths about God. Both Clark and Van Til formally subscribe to this doctrine, but they understand it very differently. Clark believes that "man's knowledge of any proposition is identical with God's knowledge of the same proposition. Any proposition has the same meaning for God as for man." Van Til denies this because Van Til applies the creator-creation distinction to the object of knowledge and concludes that the object of God's knowledge must be ontologically different from the object of human's knowledge. Since the objects of knowledge are propositions, the propositions human knows cannot be identical to the propositions God knows. The creator-creation distinction, according to Van Til, forbids this. The proposition man knows, according to Van Til, must be qualitatively different from the proposition God knows. The logic of Van Til position is simple and clear.

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Clark's answer was that Van Til's position would lead to scepticism.

Clark wrote in his response [The Answer] to the complaint, The view of the Complaint is that

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"God because of his very nature
must remain incomprehensible to man"; it is "not the doctrine that God can be known only if he makes himself known and in so far as he
makes himself known." Moreover, all knowledge which man can attain differs from the knowledge of God "in a qualitative sense and not merely in degree." Thus God's knowledge and man's knowledge do not "coincide at a single point." A proposition does not "have the
same meaning for man as for God." Man's knowledge is "analogical to the knowledge God possesses, but it can never be identified with
the knowledge" which God "possesses of the same proposition." "The divine knowledge as divine transcends human knowledge as human, even when that human knowledge is a knowledge communicated by God." "Because of his very nature as infinite and absolute the knowledge which God possesses of himself and of all things must remain a mystery which the finite mind cannot penetrate." This latter statement does not mean merely that man cannot penetrate this mystery unaided by revelation: It means that even revelation by God could not make man understand the mystery, for the preceding sentences assert that it is the nature of God that renders him incomprehensible, not the lack of a revelation about it. As the analysis proceeds, these quotations with the argument from which they are taken will be seen to imply two chief points. First, there is some truth that God cannot put into propositional form; this portion of truth cannot be expressed conceptually. Second, the portion of truth that God can express in propositional form never has the same meaning for man as it has for God. Every proposition that man knows has a qualitatively different meaning for God. Man can grasp only an analogy of the truth, which, because it is an analogy, is not the truth itself.

On the other hand, Dr. Clark contends that the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God as set forth in Scripture and in the Confession of Faith includes the following points:
1. The essence of God's being is incomprehensible to man except as God reveals truths concerning his own nature.
2. The manner of God's knowledge, an eternal intuition, is impossible for man.
3. Man can never know exhaustively and completely God's knowledge of any truth in all its relationships and implications; because every truth has an infinite number of relationships and implications and since each of these implications in turn has other infinite implications, these must ever, even in heaven, remain inexhaustible for man.
4. But, Dr. Clark maintains, the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God does not mean that a proposition, e.g. two times two are four, has one meaning for man and a tentatively different meaning for God, or that some truth is conceptual and other truth is non-conceptual in nature.

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Granting that there are non-propositional truths for the sake of argument, Clark's answer to Van Til was clear and unambiguous:

(a) If the portion of truth that God can express in propositional form never has the same meaning for man as it has for God,

(b) then every proposition that man knows has a qualitatively different meaning for God.

(c) Therefore, man can grasp only an analogy of the truth, which, because it is an analogy, is not the truth itself.

Since human persons cannot know the truth itself, man is reduced to scepticism. Applying the creator-creation distinction to the object of knowledge leads to scepticism.

Damian

Feb 13 2012, 04:22 PM

Also, (and I just briefly ran over some of your posts so forgive me if you already mentioned this...) I would put Van Til's concept of analogical knowledge very close to St. Thomas (much closer than most Van Tillians are willing to admit) and if taken to its logical conclusion leads to skepticism. In a word, an analogy of truth is not the truth.