To be sure, men may know what the Bible commands and still refuse to obey; but no one can

obey unless he has knowledge.

It is for such reasons as these that John Calvin said the understanding is the guide and governor
of the soul; and the intellect rules the will. Charles Hodge too, in explaining the original
condition of man as created in knowledge and righteousness after the image of God (Col. 3:10)
says, his reason was subject to God; his will was subject to his reason. It is thus that the bible
teaches the superior rank of the intellect over the will. And it is thus that we see that obedience is
not simply a matter of external action, but includes the less obvious, more quiet, but extremely
important matter of learning and understanding the Scriptures.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/elect-unto-obedience-by-gordon-h-clark/

Suppose next that someone should ask, Can God create a stone so heavy that He could not lift it?
Or, Can God construct a plane square with three lines? These words sound more meaningful than
the jabberwocky, but in fact they are just as meaningless. They make no sense because they
contain a self-contradiction. A Euclidean three-sided plane square is only a collection of words
that means nothing. It is not anything that God can do.
Similarly when it is said that God cannot lie, it does not follow that we must deny His
Omnipotence. Suppose God should say, Water freezes at forty degrees. Would this be a lie? Not
at all. It would be a reconstitution of the laws of nature so that the freezing point of water would
henceforth be different from what is has so far been. God simply cannot lie because as soon as
He says something is the truth. Truth is defined in terms of Gods pronouncements. He makes
things true by saying them. Therefore God can do all things, and he cannot lie.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/an-oft-misunderstood-verse-by-gordon-h-clark/

The basic principle of existentialism, says Sarte, is that existence precedes essence. This antiintellectualistic phrase means that the Aristotelian That precedes the Aristotelian What. For
example, if a carpenter wishes to make a cabinet, he must first know what a cabinet is and what
particular size and shape of a cabinet he intends to make. That the What precedes the That:
essence precedes existence. So, too, the Christian idea of God includes the notion that God knew
what he was going to create before he created it. The doctrine of Providence ascribes to God a
knowledge or plan of history that antedates the events.

Dependence on individual experience is the other side of rejection of logic and rationality. Barth
spoke of Paradox, Brunner asserts that God speaks in falsehoods, and numerous theologians
maintain that all language is metaphorical and has no intellectual content.
Doubtless few devout Christians would say that God speaks in falsehoods; but nevertheless there
is a tendency to disparage logic and mere human reason. Faith is frequently pictured as antiintellectual, orthodoxy is always dead, and theology is dry as dust. True religion is said to be a
matter of the heart and not of the head although nothing remotely resembling this contrast is to
be found in the Bible. It is thus that what have been apparently slight deviations from Christian
doctrine, what even has appeared to be profounder degrees of devotion, have furnished
Existentialism with an entrance into the Christian community.
This matter of logic is crucial. The power of the Gospel message depends on it. If faith can curb
logic, then Brunner can believe one pair of contradictories, I can accept another pair, and you can
curb logic in a third place. You cannot say that I am absurd, nor can I say that you are absurd,
since we both retain the right to contradict ourselves at any point we wish.
Here is relativism in all its viciousness. Nothing is absolutely true. Nothing is true for all people.
Everybody is free to create his own truth and value. Even orthodox Christianity can be true for a
few medieval minds! But if each individual makes his own truth by passion and emotion, free
decision and personal encounter, all becomes chaos and anarchy. Christ died and he did not die;
he rose and he did not rise; there is a life beyond the grave, and the grave is our final doom. This,
my Christian friends, is insanity.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/reformed-episcopal-seminary-graduation-speech-bygordon-h-clark/

OBJECTIONS TO HUMANISM
There are in fact two major, and to my mind, crushing objections to the humanistic theory. One
of them refers to the assertion of ideals, and its exposition will be postponed for the moment; the
other objection relates to the utilitarian calculus as a method, and with this part of the theory the
examination begins.
Lamont and Bentham fail, because the calculation of the total consequences of a proposed act is
impossible. One example must suffice. Suppose that I were a minor official in a large
corporation, and being ambitious to rise I consider undermining the reputation of an immediate
superior in order to be promoted to his position. The humanist would have me calculate the total
consequences. Aside from the consequences to the victim of my slander, I would have to foresee
whether I would be caught in my own trap. Would someone higher up detect the fraud and have
me discharged? Or, if I escaped discharge on this score, would my associates and inferiors detect
it and undermine in turn? In addition to these obvious questions there are more remote
consequences. It is at least possible that the loss of this position might lead to another where
promotion would be more rapid, and thus my slander would be beneficial in an unusual way.
Further, there would be social consequences of one sort or another to my family and my friends.
It should be evident therefore that the total consequences of my action are incalculable. I simply
cannot know what the results will be. And if this is unknown, the method of calculation cannot
solve ethical problems. It is a complete failure.
The humanist might reply that strict mathematical accuracy is not necessary, but that probability
will suffice; and, the humanist might continue, the probabilities are that slander will result in
evil. At this reply, however, a similar question reappears: How can probability be calculated? Are
the chances of being detected in slander one out of two, four out of five, or only one in a
hundred? Before such a probability could be calculated, it would be necessary to make the
original calculation many times over. Only after one knew that slander was successful in these
three instances and unsuccessful in these thirty-one or fifty-seven instances, could the fraction
expressing probability be determined. If the absolute truth is impossible at the start, probability,
shall we say, is even more impossible. It follows therefore that if ethical decisions are to be made
by calculation, a man can never have any reason for choosing one action rather than another. On
this theory ethical problems have become insoluble.
THE LACK OF A STANDARD
Let this suffice as a refutation of the humanistic method of solving particular ethical problems.
There is another objection relating to humanistic ideals. How does Lamont know that egoism is a
false ideal? How is it shown that we should establish a socialist world government for the
welfare of all mankind? How are ideals determined?
The difficulties of answering these questions on a humanistic basis are the same as those that
confront men like Edgar Sheffield Brightman, who, though rejecting humanism, are unwilling to
adopt a Christian position. Brightman in A Philosophy of Religion follows a contemporary
procedure of trying to establish ideals by the so-called scientific method. Apriori and
authoritative pronouncements are repudiated in favor of experience and empirical discovery.

Each person, Brightman argues, has certain likes and dislikes. These values are as much a part of
experience as is the sensation of green. Through long experience some of these values are found
to give more lasting satisfaction than others. The most stable of these values are ideals, and on
them ethics is based.
The two authors seem to rely on the hope that most people will accept their proposed values
without questioning them too much. And though socialism may be more acceptable in Boston or
New York than it is in Cincinnati or Indianapolis, it may be said that in general the values offered
are quite respectable in American communities. But there are other communities. Gorgias, in
Platos dialogue of the same name, and Polus were refuted because they were ashamed to
disagree with the accepted values, but Callicles boldly said what he thought and by doing so
tested the logic of Platos argument. Today there are millions who advocate brutality and murder.
There are millions, both Roman Catholic and Communists, who believe that totalitarianism is
valuable. The respectable virtues of Boston are seriously questioned and deliberately rejected.
How can the so-called scientific ethics answer this challenge?
It seems to me that scientific ethics has no answer. Brightman begins with the values that he as
an individual likes. But there is no logical connection between what he likes and what you, I, or
the communists like. Even if he finds certain values more pleasing to him as he grows older, it
does not follow that you or I will have the same experience. And nothing based on experience
will serve as a norm to govern anyone else.
Brightmans argument and all forms of so-called scientific ethics are based on a logical
oversight. The premises of these theories are always descriptive statements, such as: I like this,
or my friends like this. Science is a matter of observation and description, but scientific ethics
depends on empirical observation for its premises. And if the premises are descriptive
statements, the conclusions cannot be logically anything else than descriptive. Yet for ethics there
must be normative conclusions. It will not suffice to say that you, or I, or Brightman likes this.
What is required is a statement that you and I and Brightman ought to like this, and that everyone
ought to like this, even though as a descriptive fact nobody likes it. The premises of science are
always descriptive propositions; the conclusions of ethics must be normative. And it is a logical
blunder to insert terms in the conclusion that did not appear in the premises. Any theory of ethics
therefore that attempts to support ideals on observation, experience, or scientific method rests on
a fallacy.
CHRISTIANITY AVOIDS THESE OBJECTIONS
On the contrary and in opposition to humanistic and scientific ethics, a theistic and revelational
theory recommends itself by avoiding these two objections. If there is a God, as Lamont denies,
and if God has revealed the Ten Commandments. as Brightman denies, then objective ideals rest
on divine sanctions. It is no longer a matter of the subjective preferences of one man or the actual
conduct of another; it is a matter of a divine command imposed on all men. Thus Christian ethics
can, as humanistic ethics cannot, give a reason for opposing the brutal but satisfying ideals of
Stalin. Independent of descriptive empiricism, theistic ethics begins with normative propositions
and escapes the fallacy of introducing terms into its conclusions that were not present in the
premises.

Similarly the first objection, relative to the impossibility of calculating the total consequences of
a proposed action, does not apply to revelational ethics. With the Ten Commandments before us,
we shall not need to calculate consequences in order to decide whether or not to engage in
slander. 1f we know, as we say, that the consequences of immoral action will. be disastrous, we
know it, not by calculation, but because God has told us that he will administer the
consequences. Accordingly, Christian ethics determines the means as well as the ideals.
To conclude: humanistic or scientific ethics depends on an impossible calculus and uses
fallacious syllogisms. Revelational ethics avoids both troubles.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/the-achilles-heel-of-humanism-by-gordon-h-clark/

perhaps Hamilton has overreacted to Tillich. In his opposition to the System, does he mean to
disparage system? (p. 48) In his opposition to Hegelianism, does he deny that truth must mirror
the order of being and contribute to that order (p. 55)?
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/review-of-the-system-and-the-gospel-by-gordon-h-clark/

The distinction between substance and attribute is not a particularly enlightening one. Originally
the concept of substance was derived from the attempt to discover what really existed. The world
of flux was supposed to be unreal, or at most, only half real. [an appearance or modification of
some permanent substratum] According to Plato, the immutable ideas alone were real. Only
ideas existed.
This implies that men and horses and trees do not truly exist because they are not permanent. All
visible objects change and therefore cannot exist. Existence presupposed permanence.
For modern common sense it seems ridiculous to deny existence to men and horses and trees.
Therefore, let the argument begin with the assumption that visible things exist. This implies,
however, that existence does not connote permanence, for obviously no visible thing is
permanent. But, if this is so, distinctions between substance and attribute based on the antithesis
between permanence and change disappear. Further, in this common sense view, brown and
yellow, bitter and sweet, heavy and light, exist just as really as do men and horses. Dreams also
exist, and so do mirages.
Dreams are real: they are real dreams. Justice, love, anger, power, jealousy, knowledge, and
ignorance exist. But these, so well as brown and yellow, are usually considered attributes, rather
than substances. Therefore neither permanence nor existence can be taken as the criterion of
substance in distinction to attribute.
If now it be said that brown cannot exist by itself, but must attach to a horse or a man, whereas a
horse or a man can exist independently, one will find that this attempt likewise fails.
Brown admittedly can exist apart from this particular horse. It can be another horse that is brown.
But even so it seems that brown cannot exist apart from some horse or brown things. Yet the
horse is no more independent than brown. Of course this horse does not have to be brown: it may
be black. However, no horse cannot exist independently of some color, just as color cannot exist
without some horse or other brown thing. Neither is independent, and this criterion of substance
versus attribute fails.
Similarly, in theology omnipotence cannot exist without God, and neither can God exist without
omnipotence. Hence independent existence cannot be the criterion of substance in opposition of
attributes.
Unity, also used as a criterion of substance is no better than existence and permanence. For every
so-called attribute is a unit, and in many cases more of a unit than the substance to which it is
attached.
If furthermore God is as abs. simple as some say, he cannot have attributes, i.e. his substance and
his attributes are identical.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/distinction-between-substance-and-attribute-by-gordon-hclark/

The miracles which are the stumbling blocks for so many are those which apparently break the
laws of nature. To meet such objections to Christianity, one must grasp clearly what is meant by
a law of nature. That we may avoid misunderstanding, the phrase could well be changed to a
law of physics. The reason is that no one can suppose a miracle to break a law unless the law in
question be known, and the only laws which are known or are thought to be known are the
definite results of modern science.
In the next place, before we can compare miracles and laws we ought to know how a scientist
comes by his laws. Now, without becoming too technical, let it be stated that the empirical data
with which the physicist works, the observations which he actually makes, are inexact. His
readings always include a variable error. This means that while empirical observation always
fixes limits between which the law must be made, empirical observation never discovers any one
law. The observations set limits, but the actual, definite, mathematical law depends on the choice
of the scientist. He may choose a law for personal, or aesthetic, or moral reasons, but he chooses
the law rather than discovers it.
In the next place, the miracles which the Christian is interested in defending, lie outside the range
of experiment. They do not directly concern the motions of hypothetical point-centers of force.
Rather they are events of history, just as the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. Science has just as
much and just as little to do with miracles as with Napoleon. No event of history satisfies the
artificial conditions of a physics laboratory.
Finally, therefore, we suggest that in addition to experiment in a laboratory, the scientist in
choosing which law he wants should first consult history and after determining by historical
evidences what has happened should then choose his laws within the limits of historic actuality.
The non-Christian scientist, so it seems to me, proceeds by a reverse and absurd method. He
chooses his law to suit himself and then rewrites history to suit his law. I must say that I do not
believe that physical science is so advanced as to be able to reconstruct history from laboratory
observations.
Even in the case of more ordinary occurrences, the laws of physics do not describe what
common opinion considers to be nature itself. The law of the pendulum assumes that the mass of
the pendulum is concentrated at a mathematical point and that it swings on a tensionless string
from a frictionless point. No such pendulum has ever existed in the visible world. If then the
swinging of the pendulum of a grandfathers clock occurs without being invalidated by a law
physics, a law well known and mathematically exact, why should the Resurrection of Christ be
adjudged impossible through a law entirely unknown and never even approximated. Rather, just
as the law of the pendulum has its limits set by real occurrences, so this supposed universal law
of physics, if it ever be formulated, will have its limits set by the historical fact of Christs
Resurrection.
The question of miracles therefore is not so much a scientific question as it is an historical
question.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/miracles-and-history-by-gordon-h-clark/

According to the Neo-orthodox a religion that must almost daily adjust itself to the shifting
results of historical criticism is not a firm enough faith to support modern men engulfed as they
are in world wide calamities. Any religion that depends on history is a relativism. What is true
today becomes false tomorrow. Even a belief in God cannot survive in this state of mind. Now,
the Neo-orthodox profess a firm belief in a transcendent God. Therefore they must find a
revelation that is not subject to historical investigation. A religion completely divorced from all
historical connections can indeed be found. It would take the form of a set of abstract truths or
universal principles, similar to a system of Geometry or to Hegelian Idealism. Such a
philosophical system could contain the laws of science and the laws of morality too. But it would
contain no dates, no places, no historical events. Such a religion, however, would not be the
Christian religion. Yet the Neo-orthodox want to be Christian. This confronts them with a
difficult problem. The problem they face is this: How can a revelation, centering in Jesus Christ
so as to be a Christian revelation, come from God to man and be applicable to us in our daily
lives, without being vitiated by the relativism of historical flux? That is to say, if Jesus Christ
actually lived at a certain date in history, and if Christianity is essentially dependent on Jesus
Christ, Neo-orthodoxy in its attempt to escape history faces a great problem in trying to show
that it is really Christian.

In any theology, Augustines or Aquinas, Kierkegaards or Schleiermachers, Barths or Ferres,

method determines the results. Though there may be some value in discussing details, the prior
and dominating question is always the question of method.
The traditional method of Christian theology has been the acceptance of the Scriptures as the
Word of God. God breathed out His message to the prophets and caused them to write it down;
we study their words because God put His words into their mouths. This method Dr. Ferre
decisively rejects. The use of the Bible as the final authority for Christian truth is idolatry. He
then continues, Vehemently Jesus opposed Scribism and Pharisaism because in circumscribing
religious authority to the Scriptures and the traditions, they throttled living religion.
Here again we note the distortion previously mentioned. Jesus no doubt opposed Pharisaism, but
it was not because they circumscribed religious authority to the Scriptures. Dr. Ferre here joins
together what God has put asunder: tradition and Scripture. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because
they transgressed the commandment of God by their tradition and made the commandment of
God of none effect by your tradition, ye hypocrites. Jesus himself maintained that the Scripture
cannot be broken; and though it might be said that Moses words were insufficient, (in the sense
that Jesus and the Apostles gave us a fuller revelation, not in the sense that the Old Testament
message was insufficient for salvation), Dr. Ferre gives the wrong impression by claiming that
Jesus met frantic opposition as soon as he outspokenly proclaimed that Moses words were
wrong or insufficient. Did not Jesus say, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me,
for he wrote of me; but if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

Let us now examine this concept of God and the method that Dr. Ferre uses. First, any definition
or characterization of God requires some opportunity for coming to know God. Where can a man
discover anything about Gods nature? Christians have historically held that this information is to
be found in the Bible. But Dr. Ferre rules out the Bible, even for determining the meaning of
Agape. Where then did Dr. Ferre get his information that God is indiscriminate, universal love?
One cannot discover this information in experience. Nature and history may treat all men
indiscriminately, but they do not treat all men with kindness. The lives of some persons and some
nations are harsh and tragic, while other people live comfortably. Experience therefore does not
tell us that God is indiscriminate universal kindness. Where then did Dr. Ferre obtain his
information?
I do not think Dr. Ferre can give an intelligible answer to that question. But even if he could, this
information would not suffice to construct a view of theology. It would not suffice to give us a
set of doctrines.

At best Barth will accept the main assertions of the Bible, but not other assertions that are
either false, trivial, irrelevant, or inconsistent. This view of the Bible, however, poses an
insoluble problem for Neo-orthodoxy. We who believe that the Bible is the Word of God and
therefore inerrant in the autographs do not face this problem. But Neo-orthodoxy cannot avoid it.
The problem is this: how can one distinguish between a main assertion which we must accept
and a trivial or irrelevant passage which we need not accept? Or, the question may be reworded:
if two passages in the Bible are inconsistent with each other, which is the one that demands our
credence?
For example, Barth appeals to Col. 1:19 to support his contention that salvation is universal and
that there is no hell. Col. 1:19 therefore must be one of the main assertions in the Bible. But then
it obviously follows that the dozen or so statements in which Jesus himself tells us that there
really is a hell cannot be main assertions of Scripture.
Furthermore, if there are contradictions in Scripture, if Jesus teaches hell and Paul denies hell,
why should we believe Paul and discredit Jesus rather than believe Jesus and ignore Paul? This
difficulty needs a little more emphasis. Obviously the Bible is not itself authoritative for the man
who accepts some of it and rejects the rest. When a person decides that the Bible is wrong, either
on a major doctrinal matter or on a trivial geographical detail, he is using some criterion or
authority other than the Bible itself. Similarly in accepting some doctrine, for example,
justification by faith, such a person cannot accept it on the Bibles own authority, for he must use
another criterion by which to conclude that in this particular the Bible happens to be right. But he
can never accept anything on the Bibles own say-so. Then the question arises, How could
anyone know that this external criterion is correct?
Those who disbelieve the Bible hardly ever try to state the criterion by which they condemn it.
Or, perhaps, they vaguely refer to science or archaeology. Or, in the case of Barth, Brunner, and

others, they may blandly declare that Christianity requires us to believe both sides of a
contradiction.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/ferre-barth-and-neo-orthodoxy-by-gordon-h-clark/

the conclusion to the section in the Methodology of Philosophy (p. 52) states There is not just
one method of doing philosophy; there are many. It is obvious that some methods are better
adapted to certain kinds of truth-seeking, as other methods are to other kinds. If this were
merely an historical statement that various philosophers have use various methods and the first
of these two sentences could be so taken yet few philosophers would accept the second
sentence as obvious. Instead of making such an assertion so dogmatically one who favors
unsystematic eclecticism ought to produce reasons for using Platonism here, Aristotelianism
there, and Pragmatism somewhere else. Perhaps the authors think that the immediately following
sentences are such reasons. In the opinion of the reviewer these sentences fall far short of
showing that It seems clearly wrong to insist that there is one and only one method by which
one can discover all [sorts?] of truth.

On page 139, discussing the external world against subjective idealism, the authors say,
Descartes claimed that ideas must resemble their causes or objects because God is a most
perfect being, and thus not a liar. Early in Meditation III Descartes makes man the cause of his
idea of a hippogriff, but does not make man resemble a hippogriff. Perhaps the authors would
consider this a trivial response to their assertion. But far from trivial is Meditation VI. There
Descartes not only gives examples of perceived qualities unlike the things to which uneducated
people attribute them, but further insists the failure to perceive qualities does not prove that one
is looking at empty space. Neither of these instances imply that God deceives me, or is a liar, for
God did not give me a sensory apparition for the purpose of knowing the world: the purpose of
sensation [as Augustine had previously held] is to warn me against harmful situations. This
warning does not require a knowledge of the nature of the harmful thing. Besides all this,
Descartes explicitly absolves God of deceitfulness in allowing us to be deceived of secondary
qualities, on the ground of the primary or geometrical qualities are really in them.

Thomas Aquinas has a Theory of Knowledge of God by analogy. It is a denial of univocal

predication. An objection to this theory is that an analogy must have a univocal basis. Unless
there is a similarity between the two parts, unless somewhere a predicate can be attributed
univocally to both, no analogy can be constructed. The authors try to demolish these critics by
distinguishing between the univocity of a predicate itself and the univocity of the proposition as
a whole. This distinction, I believe, comes from an interpretation of Aquinas sponsored by
Loyola University, and is different from the interpretation of Etienne Gilson in his intellectually
heavy volume on The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. A review, while no place to discuss the
details of this intricate matter, is nonetheless justified in pointing it out. In any case, it seems to
me, neither interpretation avoids the force of the refutation.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/review-of-geisler-and-feinbergs-introduction-tophilosophy-by-gordon-h-clark/

even an unintelligent reader can hardly miss my rejections of natural theology. They are found
in nearly every one of my publications. I shall cite only one: Thales to Dewey, (pp. 274-278)

I do not want to put words in Carl Henrys mouth. Nothing I say binds him. But there are at least
two serious misunderstandings in Rogers material. To quote the first: Henry following Clark
contends that the human mind was not essentially harmed by the fall into sin.
What does Rogers mean by essentially? The word is ambiguous. If harmed essentially
means a demotion of Adam from a human status to that of an irrational animal, I am willing to
say that they did not happen. Adam remained human. Frequently the word essential refers to a
definition. John Doe, even if one of his legs were amputated, would remain essentially human
because he would still satisfy the definition of a human being. Similarly the doctrine of total
depravity does not mean that man was totally divested of the divine image. If Rogers believes the
doctrine of total depravity, he cannot consistently object to saying that the fall did not essentially
harm mans mind, unless he means something other than definitionally. But he gives no
explanation of what he means. The result is that when someone objects to Rogers, Rogers can
always reply, But I didnt mean that by my word essentially. Since the word has no clear
meaning in Rogers sentence, the following remarks are forced to ignore it.

But in addition to discussing the divine image in general I have identified a few of the noetic
effects of sin. There are other effects, not usually called noetic: these are beside the point here.
The noetic effects include mistakes in arithmetic when trying to balance ones bank account as
also the various fallacies one falls into when trying to argue. Had there been no fall, man may not
have invented calculus, but all his additions would have been correct. More generally,
misunderstandings and confusion are noetic effects of sin.

First, for God is eternal, since he never learned anything, since he is supertemporal, his thinking
is not a temporal process. The way God knows is often called intuitional. I do not object to the
word. Maybe instantaneously would be a better word. Probably the best word is eternal. At any
rate, ones way of thinking is temporally we need time to draw inferences; we often forget and
then remember. Hence Dr. Rogers blunders badly when he says, Clark asserts that unless we can
know central things in exactly the way God knows them, we can have no knowledge at all. This
blunder is in keeping with the previously noted confusion. Now, second, since God is
omniscient, since he knows all truth, since indeed the Bible, which I hold to be inerrant in
epistemology as in all also, says, O Lord God of truth (Psa. 31:5), the Spirit of truth (I John
5:6), and since the Westminster Confession says, God, who is truth itself, (I, iv,) since all this,
it is clear that God knows everything without exception. Hence if we know anything, we must
know something God knows. Unless we know something God knows, we know nothing, for
there is nothing else to be known. Our way of knowing is different from Gods, whose knowing

is not a temporal process at all, but the object known is identical. If we know something God
does not know, we have neither knowledge nor truth.
There are more than these two obvious misunderstandings in Rogers criticism. I shall speak only
of one more. Clark and Henry want something from the Bible certain, systematic, scientific
knowledge. Clearly Mr. Rogers hasnt read my mimeograph The Philosophy of Science and
Belief in God. In it I analyze the laboratory methods used in physics. Far from supposing that the
Bible provides us with any of the laws of physics where in the Bible is there a differential
equation? Where in the Bible are there premises from which a law of physics can be deduced?
I argue that no law of physics describes natural motions. If any did, Einstein would never have
discarded Newton. Science is tentative and changing. The laws used today will soon be dropped,
just as the laws I was taught in my university physics courses have now been replaced by others.
In Horizons of Science (ed. Carl Henry, p. 268) I quote Einstein: We know nothing about it at
all. Our knowledge is but the knowledge of school- children, we shall know a little more than
we do now. But the real nature of things that we shall never know, never.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/reaction-to-a-review-published-in-sojourners-by-gordonh-clark/

God did not create mans mind a blank. At the very least the human mind is intrinsically
organized by logical forms. We can also understand that God possibly works immediately on

such a mind. Under these conditions the knowledge is rational and not sensory, and thus it might
be intuitive rather than deductive. All this is possible. But if so, why does Paul mention the
things that have been made? Presumably these things are trees and rocks. But any knowledge of
divine attributes or divine wrath must be deductive, if it comes by means of sensory experience.
It cannot be an innate intuition. That sensory experience is intended, one may gather from Psalm
8.
a superficial reading of Romans gives the idea that everyone has the knowledge, even without
the proofs. Yet it may just be possible that only the external trees and rocks are seen, and there
are no proofs to be tested. If a man is very confused and contradicts himself often enough, it is
almost certain that some of the things he says are true. Only a completely consistent thinker has
any chance of being totally mistaken.
whether or not [Paul] speaks of such a natural knowledge of God is a question that ought to be
answered, yes or no. There need be no misunderstanding of Paul, whether the answer be yes or
no. What is needed are clear cut definitions. If Thomas definition of natural theology is used,
the present writer would answer, No. But if a vague religious sense be meant, if natural religion
were conceived as a set of rites and beliefs impressed by the customs of the tribe, or something
else still more vague, the answer would be a vague yes. Paul explicitly refers to various forms of
idolatry.
Slightly aside from the main issue of natural theology, Nygren makes an interesting remark about
the phrases, so that they are without excuse. He admits that this translation is grammatically
possible; but equally grammatical, and even more so, the eis clause is better rendered in order
that they might be without excuse. It was the purpose, not merely the result, of Gods revelation
to render them inexcusable. This is not altogether aside from the main issue, for it adds emphasis
to the knowledge the heathen have, and bears on the translation of the ambiguous katechonton.
Nygren finds support for his interpretation in Romans 3:19.
There is a difference between the idea of an intelligent natural man who deliberately investigates
the alleged truth of theism, and the idea of a natural knowledge of God possessed by our
Australian aborigines. There is also a difference between the natural mans finding his way to
God in a soteriological sense, and his having or finding some notion of eternal power and deity.
The latter seems to be Pauls concern, for he emphasizes responsibility. Even though Nygren also
emphasizes responsibility he seems to have soteriology in mind and not some natural knowledge
of power and deity; for he continues, What is the result when the man who has turned away
from God would be pious and God-fearing? Paul answers that such a man searches creation and
turns to the worship of idols. Paul never says that the natural man finds the marks of God in
nature. That idea imposed on his words by natural theology, is quite opposed to his meaning.
But a superficial reading of Romans suggests the precise opposite. The text says that Gods
invisible [attributes] being understood by means of his works, are clearly seen, namely his
eternal power and deity. It is not so much that a love of natural theology has forced this
interpretation on some students, but that this interpretation of Paul has forced them into natural
theology. Can we really accept Nygrens assertion, Paul never says that the natural man finds

the marks of God in nature? Were not his finding these marks the basis for holding the natural
man inexcusable?
Now, are there marks of God, or tracks, in nature, or are there not? Does God reveal himself in
his works, or does he not? If Nygren wishes to escape the charge of contradiction, he would have
to reply, There are indeed marks and traces, but no one sees them. But this escape runs counter
to Pauls words clearly seen, being understood by means of his works. Let it be granted that
the Thomistic type of natural theology, which Nygren describes by the phrases via causalitatis,
via negationis, and via eminentiae, is demonstrably fallacious and even deistic. If that is all
Nygren means, well and good. But he seems to mean more and to have other forms of natural
theology in mind also, for he applies his argument to the heathen in general, heathen who never
had the ability to follow Thomas syllogisms.
The first point for consideration is the wrath of God. That which is known of God, later referred
to as his eternal power and deity, includes his wrath, for verse 18 says so; and Nygren is correct,
I believe, in making the last clause in verse 20 a purpose clause. God revealed himself for the
purpose of making men inexcusable. Power and deity therefore include wrath. This wrath is
revealed from heaven, but we must ask, what form of wrath and what form of revelation? Hodge
takes the reference to mean that God revealed his intention to punish sin by death, as verse 32
indicates. If this is eternal death, the sense is eschatological. But even if it be physical death, the
revelation refers to something future to the time of the revelations reception. The revelation
itself comes in or by the created universe. But how can man see in the stars and stones the
proposition that he is worthy of death, or even that death is the result of sin? This is not so easily
explained. But if stones do not make very good theological instructors, there is, happily, a better
or at least an additional interpretation. Perhaps, though it is Gods intention, as the purpose
clause shows, Paul does not say that God reveals his intention to punish at a future time, either at
our death or at the judgment day. Rather God reveals his wrath in actual punishments imposed
now. Of course this does not preclude future punishments as elsewhere explained in the Bible.
But the supposition that Paul in this passage has present penalties in mind can be supposed by
verses 24-31. Verse 32, however, may weaken this interpretation, for it gives the impression that
the heathen accept the theological proposition that the sins mentioned are worthy of death. But to
know this normative proposition is not only different from knowing that men die; as normative,
it cannot be deduced from non-normative, descriptive propositions, such as there is a stone, and
men die. Hence if verse 18 is made easier, the difficulty reappears at the end of the chapter. How
can all men have learned that eternal punishment is a future reality and that it is just?
But does verse 18, and therefore verse 32, say that all men have this knowledge? This is indeed
the common opinion, but the text does not really say so. The phrase who hold the truth
modifies the noun men. The text does not say that all human beings hold, or hold down, the
truth. It says that the wrath of God is revealed upon the sins of men who hold or have the truth.
There may be some who do not have the truth, to whom therefore this verse does not apply.
Who might these human beings be? In any ordinary sense of the verbs, know, suppress, or hold,
infants do not have the truth. They have not even seen stars and stones, much less the effects of
sin in disease and death. There may be others than infants too. The catalogue of vices, such as the
worshipping of reptiles and the sin of homosexuality, are not common to all adults. Bertrand

Russell did not worship reptiles, and although he approved of adultery, he does not seem to have
been a homosexual. We may say that he, or at least some scientists, have examined stones and
stars without finding evidence of divine wrath in astronomy or geology. And one must note that
the temporal punishments of sin, while obvious, do not convince all people that these results of
debauch are divine punishments. Many regard them as merely natural consequences. At any rate,
Pauls text does not explicitly refer to all human beings.
The next difficulty is the choice in translating the verb Katecho. It requires no extensive
knowledge of Greek to look at a lexicon and see that it means either hold fast or hold down, i.e.,
suppress. Further investigation will show that the meaning suppress is less usual. Ordinarily
Katecho means hold or hold fast. An example is Luke 8:15, they are the ones who have heard
the words in an honest and good heart and hold it fast. Which of these two meanings did Paul
have in mind? If Paul was chiefly interested in stressing the responsibility of these men, then
hold, hold fast, possess, fit the context better. The clearer their knowledge and the verb clearly
seen comes in the next verse the more clearly they are inexcusable. Verse 28, on the other hand,
indicates that they deliberately suppressed the truth they had. Nevertheless they must have had it
before they could suppress it. Furthermore, verses 19-21 stress the clarity of their knowledge. It
was this that made them inexcusable. Accordingly, what is probably the majority opinion among
commentators does not commend itself.
Verse 19 gives the reason why we know that Gods wrath is revealed from heaven, not in any
special revelation as Hodge acknowledges, but in sickness, misery, and physical death. The
reason is that what they know of God is clearly evident in their minds. Unless the word evident is
stressed, the phrase is somewhat tautological, for what is known must be known. It would not
have been tautological if it had said, What may be known was known. Commentators, however,
with the exception of what might have been a slip of the pen by Godet, quoted above, What can
be known, reject this interpretation, both on the ground of Greek translation and on the ground
of sense. It is incongruous to suppose that any group of men, or any man, knows all that may be
known of God. What is known seems here to be restricted to wrath, omnipotence and deity.
Now, if the wrath of God is revealed because it is known its being known is the proof of its
having been revealed what is known is evident because God made it evident to them. And how
do we know that God made it evident? The reason is that Gods invisible attributes, eternal
power and deity, are clearly seen and understood by mans observation [?] of created objects, in
order that men may be held inexcusable.
The text does not explicitly attribute this knowledge to all mankind. At the minimum infants are
excluded. What would be the maximum permitted by the text? Could it be that all who have not
heard the gospel are excluded? Do Pauls words apply only to those who have heard the
proclamation? In verse 17 the righteousness of God is said to be revealed in the gospel. Of
course it does not follow by the strict laws of validity that Gods righteousness is not revealed
elsewhere also. The reign of Pericles is revealed in Grotes History of Greece but this does not
prevent Bury from mentioning it also. Cannot righteousness be revealed both in the gospel and in
nature? Nevertheless the Bible as a whole teaches that the righteousness here envisaged is
revealed only in the gospel. Hence no one ignorant of the gospel and the gospel includes the
book of Habakkuk can have learned about this righteousness. If now this is true of

righteousness, it may also be true of wrath. That is to say, Paul is addressing the Roman
Christians, who had already heard the gospel. Other Romans had heard the gospel, had received
the revelation, from the mouth of Peter or other disciples, and had clearly understood the
preaching, for God made it clear to them; but they refused to believe and so continued in the sins
described in the remainder of the chapter. This would successfully exclude all notions of natural
theology from this passage, for on this view Paul has in mind only people who have heard the
gospel. Let it be clearly admitted that this interpretation is not a necessary conclusion from the
text. But is its falsity a necessary conclusion? Is it not a possibility to be considered?
One must compare interpretation with interpretation. There are numerous verses and passages
whose exact meaning is difficult to determine. Before rejecting, the above out of hand, let us
examine a more widely held view. It is that all men we shall not press the case of infants by
observing stars and stones have a clear understanding of Gods wrath, omnipotence, and deity.
There is a modification of this view that better survives analysis, but one may take this form first.
This first form means that an observation of stones gives us knowledge of divine omnipotence,
and an observation of the lamentable results of drug addiction gives us a knowledge of Gods
wrath. But no one has ever shown how this could be possible. Stones are heavy, therefore God
will punish sin is already an invalid inference.
The second form of appeal to the things that are made makes a normative conclusion more
plausible. The expressions mostly used up to this point have designated visible objects, stones,
and stars, as examples of the things that are made. Many commentaries take this for granted. But
Godet, and with greater clarity Shedd, mention an internal as well as an external revelation. That
is to say, the human mind is one of the things that God made; and while Godet and Shedd do not
quite say so, this mind may turn out to be of such greater importance that stars and stones can be
disregarded. Godet mentions mans conscience and understanding, even though he puts the
emphasis on physical nature; and Shedd speaks of conscience consciousness rational not
sensuous perception, intuitive and not deductive. Perhaps if we submerge the empirical
elements these commentators retain, their more or less defective apriorism may lead to a better
understanding of Pauls meaning.
In other words, we discover the divine attributes by introspection of the constitution of the mind.
The a priori forms of logic presuppose the power, wrath, and deity of their maker. Augustine
rejected stones and trees because, even if such an argument be possible, it must pass through the
mind; therefore he believed that one might as well save himself the trouble and start with the
mind right off. Calvin, however, did not agree. He opens his Institutes by asking whether the first
object known is God or ourselves. In spite of the plausibility of starting with ourselves, he
nonetheless concludes that we cannot know ourselves without knowing God first. Our stubborn
aborigine certainly does not know himself, and if we are honest we will admit it of ourselves
also.
Even if we adopt the possible though suspicious suggestion that Paul is not speaking of all men,
but only of those heathen who have heard the gospel in Rome, the verbal symbols used in
preaching require an a priori intellectual equipment for their understanding as much as physical
objects do. Strictly speaking, the alleged vibrations in the air, by which we supposedly hear, are
as physical as stones and stars. The impulses on the ear drums and whatever reactions there may

be in the nerves are all physiochemical processes, in which nothing intellectual, intelligible, or
meaningful is present. Not only Pauls argument, but the whole Bible assumes a mental or
spiritual reality. In fact, while Paul is undoubtedly concerned with men, the same things could be
said of incorporeal angels and demons.

In the second sentence quoted, the first remark on verse 19, the truth of God, or the true
knowledge of God, so designated in the previous sentence includes all that refers to the
showing forth of the glory of the Lord. These phrases give the impression of a very extensive
knowledge, even though we cannot fully comprehend God in his greatness and there are
certain limits within which men ought to confine themselves. Beyond these limits is the
essence of God, which only fools seek to know. If the word essence means the definition of
God, Calvin is saying that we cannot know what God is, but perhaps know only that God is. Yet
Calvin and Paul both indicate a more extensive knowledge than a mere that.
Extensive or not, this knowledge is engraved on his own heart. This knowledge, Calvin says
later, accompanied by an ungodly presumptuous attitude, is not learned in the philosophical
schools, but is innate, and accompanies us, so to speak, from the womb. But if this knowledge
as well as the depravity is innate, it is learned neither in the schools nor in sensory experience.
What is engraved on the heart from the womb is not the result of empirical observation. Yet the
Thomists make a very plausible case for sensation. And so does Calvin; for immediately after
mentioning the engraving he says that man was formed to be a spectator of the created world
endowed with eyes for the purpose of being led to God himself by contemplating so
magnificent an image. Yet, we ask, how can the knowledge of God be innate and at the same
time the results of a spectators observation of nature? This observational knowledge is again
immediately emphasized in the comment on verse twenty: since his majesty shines forth in all
his works men ought to have acknowledged him in these [stones and stars] for they clearly
demonstrate their Creator.
Presumably the word demonstrate here does not mean Thomistic or logical demonstration. If it
does, and a number of contemporary apologetes want to rehabilitate the cosmological argument,
that demonstration should be written out complete so that anyone can look at it and test the
validity of each of its syllogisms. These contemporary evidentialists uniformly ignore this
challenge. If, on the other hand, the word demonstrate does not mean valid syllogisms, we
should be informed how one passes from the leaf of a plant to a knowledge of eternal deity.
Climbing up an eminence in Capitol Reef National Monument, I saw, through a microscope, the
amazingly intricate geometry of the filaments on the underside of a leaf no bigger than my
thumbnail. With my acceptance of Scripture I could take this as Gods handiwork, and even infer
that God knew a good bit about geometry. The (supposedly) atheistic ranger, though he could see
the geometry as well as I, would never recognize it as a display of divine wisdom. But Paul
wants to emphasize, not a knowledge of geometry or botany, but of God. Does Paul teach that
the ranger actually understood God? By looking through a microscope? Yet Calvin intimates by
his work that divinity can only exist when accompanied by all the attributes of God, since they

are all included in that divinity, not only an extensive knowledge, but even one so extensive that
it is the knowledge of Gods essence. Do we not know the essence of an object when we know
all its characteristics?
Yet again a phrase seems to suggest that an unbeliever, no matter how strong his microscope,
cannot attain a knowledge of God; The apostle in Heb. 11:3 ascribes to faith the light by which
a man can gain real knowledge of God from the work of creation. Hence a faithless ranger or
aborigine can have no real knowledge, really no knowledge, at all.
It is obvious that Calvin wishes to make a sharp distinction between whatever knowledge the
reprobate have and the knowledge that brings salvation. These two should indeed be
distinguished. But Calvins concentration on this point leads him to neglect a clear exposition of
the reprobates knowledge. This alternate focus occurs in contemporary debate. Some apologetes
stress the alleged distinction between the Greek concept of knowledge and the Hebrew concept.
They point out that in Hebrew the word includes obedience to the commandments, and is not
limited to mere speculation. The Bible, so they say, emphasizes, doing the truth. They also
remark that in Hebrew the verb know can mean sexual intercourse, as when Adam knew his
wife. They seem totally ignorant of the fact that this is a Greek usage too. Then, more
fundamentally, knowledge in the Old Testament includes a knowledge of the dukes of Edom, a
knowledge of a list of king, kings of Israel and kings of Judah, a knowledge of battles and how
one king was accidentally shot between the joints in his armor, as well as details of geography
and the social or legal custom of taking off a shoe to seal a contract. All this is Scriptural
knowledge too. And if there is knowledge of God, non-soteric, obtainable by sensory
observation, a contemptuous dismissal of the Greek concept of knowledge is a meretricious
subterfuge.
Without in the least minimizing the supreme importance of saving knowledge, the present
discussion focuses on the knowledge of God which a reprobate or an elect person not yet
regenerate may have. The question is, Do the unregenerate have any knowledge at all? Do they
believe any true propositions about God? If they do so believe, are these beliefs well founded or
are they thoughtlessly adopted from common opinion? Do these people, can they, discover the
divine attributes in a leaf or a grain of sand? If they can, someone ought to explain how.
We have been talking about the Australian aborigines, the African savages, the contemporary
American reprobates. This is a mere literary device to attract attention to the problem. But the
problem is really worse. Instead of some primitive savages, can a devout and intelligent Christian
obtain a knowledge of God from observed objects? Thomas tried his best to show how; but his
arguments are all fallacies. Is there someone else who can produce a better argument? Put down
at the top of a piece of paper, I see filaments on this leaf. At the bottom of the paper write,
God is omnipotent, plus a few other attributes. Then fill in the missing intermediate lines.
Unfortunately Calvin did not do so. Most unfortunately Calvin asserted some theses which are
far from being obviously true. His comments on verse twenty-one, second paragraph, include the
words His justice is evident in his government of the world because he punishes the guilty and
defends the innocent. Now, Calvin did not live to witness the massacre of the Huguenots in
1572, but he had seen earlier persecutions. As for ourselves, even if Hitler had to commit suicide,
Stalin, who massacred many more than Hitler ever did, lived out his days unpunished. Mao

murdered thirty or forty million Chinese and exterminated the Tibetans. Can we honestly say that
Gods justice is evident?

Warfield begins his first article by summarizing Calvins position, to the effect that; the elements
of Calvins thought are an innate knowledge of God, developed by a manifestation of God in
nature, which nevertheless fails of its proper effect because of sin, thus making necessary both a
special written revelation and a subjective regeneration by the Holy Spirit. In a little more detail
Warfield sys that The Knowledge of God is given in the very same act by which we know self
(p. 31). This is really misleading. True enough, Warfield notes that a knowledge of self requires
as an ingredient a knowledge of our imperfection, and therefore a knowledge of superhuman
perfection. This idea was more fully expressed by Descartes in his Third Meditation. But
Warfield hesitates to say that the knowledge of God precedes the knowledge of self. Calvin says
this more clearly. Warfield may have hesitated because he was more empirical and less favorable
to a priori knowledge.
However, no doubt following Calvin, Warfield asserts that sin has dulled mans innate
knowledge. How innate knowledge can be dulled (p. 32) is somewhat of a mystery. If it means
that sin prevents one from deducing the correct conclusions from axioms, or causes us to make
mistakes in arithmetic, at least Warfield does not explain. Rather he immediately proceeds to the
testimony of the Holy Ghost which convinces the sinner of the truth of the Bible. Hence the
actual knowledge that sinners have, presumably derived from the created universe, without any
soteric regeneration, remains unexplained.
Since, however, these two pages have been only a short summary, the next page renews our hope
by the subtitle, Natural Revelation. Warfield notes that Calvin in the Institutes (I. i. 3) makes
the knowledge of God innate. Calvin calls it a sense of Deity. Of course, Calvin does not mean
a sensation. There are five senses, and seven if touch is really three. Calvin must have meant a
concept or notion. Yet a vague concept of some sort of deity or other fits neither Calvins other
remarks nor Pauls phraseology in Romans. It must be a concept of eternal power, or a
proposition that omnipotence controls the universe, plus an extensive set of propositions on all
the attributes of God, including the idea of justice. As quoted above, Calvin had said that all the
attributes are included in that divinity. This is surely more than a vague sensus deitatis. And if
this indelible as Warfield and Calvin say, it must remain in men in their fallen estate.

Warfield enters upon what I must consider a misinterpretation of chapter one of the Institutes. He
asserts that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of oneself are the same act of knowledge
and are so interrelated that it is impossible to assign priority to either (p. 35).
This is not what Calvin says. He does indeed say that the two are intimately connected, but he
does not say they are one and the same act or that it is impossible to assign the priority to the one
rather than to the other.

Calvin opens his Institutes with the Augustinian thesis that wisdom consists principally of the
knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. He calls these, not one, but two parts of
wisdom or two branches of knowledge. He acknowledges that it is difficult to discover which is
prior to the other. But he does not say that it is impossible. The difficulty of assigning priority
lies in the fact that our very existence is nothing but a subsistence in God alone. He then
quickly speaks of Gods blessings to mankind, but more at length of human sinfulness. With a
reference to Adams fall, a sense of depravity and corruption, both made clearer by a contrast
with the divine array of which he has been despoiled, the paragraph seems to describe a man
who has been impressed with some proclamation of the Scripture, rather than one who has never
heard of Adam and original righteousness. Yet Calvin indeed says that because of this
knowledge, everyone, not merely those who have heard the gospel, must arrive at some
knowledge of God.
Calvin, however, continues: On the other hand, it is plain that no man can arrive at the true
knowledge of himself without having first [ital. added] contemplated the divine character and
then [ital. added] descended to the consideration of his own. He indicates quite clearly that we
cannot judge ourselves depraved unless we have a prior criterion of judgment. And he uses up
half a page to show mans falsely optimistic view of himself when he does not use such a
criterion. Hence I conclude that Calvin definitely assigned priority to our knowledge of God.

I, v, 4. With vile ingratitude men, who ought to be praising God for his wonderful skill, are only
inflated with pride. They are constrained to know, willingly or not, that these works are proofs of
Gods divinity, yet they suppress this knowledge. They substitute nature in the place of God. But
nature cannot explain how food and drink becomes flesh, hair, and bones.
In the twentieth century, this argument, if it is an argument, has been derided by scientists, and
by devout Christians has been eschewed as making God The God of the gaps. Many natural
processes that could not be scientifically explained in Calvins day have now been explained at
least as well as science can explain anything. In honor to Calvin, we would like to say that this is
not intended as a valid argument. Rather these four sections enumerate evidences or instances of
Gods work and we would like to understand his word proofs in this sense. If the word proof be
understood as a valid argument, according to Warfield, then the force of the argument diminishes
with every scientific advance. Calvin surely did not think that the force of whatever-you-call-it
could diminish.

Assuming that head means intellect, and that heart means something different (for what else
could the contrast be), the theologian comes into conflict with both the Old Testament and the
New Testament. For example, Mark 2: 6, 7, 8; Luke 3: 15 and 5: 22 have the phrase
dialogizomenoi en tais kardias. Dialogizomai means to argue, to debate, to reason. Reasoning is
an intellectual exercise. But it is the heart that does the reasoning. Heart and intellect are not
contrasted but are indistinguishable. In the Old Testament there is a frequent contrast between
heart and lips; but none between heart and mind. Psalm 49:3 says, My mouth shall speak of

wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding. Meditation surely is

thinking: wisdom and understanding are certainly intellectual; and this is asserted to be the
activity of the heart. Not all thinking is wise or correct thinking. The fool hath said in his heart,
there is no God. Incorrect as this is, it is still thinking; and it is the heart that thinks. I Samuel
2:35 identifies heart and mind. These few verses are not the best known verses in the Bible; but
perhaps that gives them added force. There are many others better known.1
For this reason any argument that fails to equate the heart and the mind or intellect and makes the
heart the emotions or something else unspecified is a misinterpretation of Scripture. Such articles
or volumes may contain many truths, but taken in their entirety they are a confusion.
There is now another difficulty in the idea; the completely true idea, that Calvin wrote with the
needs of souls in mind rather than from any abstract scientific impulse. The difficulty is this:
Warfield and presumably Calvin wish to point out the complete harmony between the
revelation of God in nature and the Scriptural revelation. Calvin reminds his readers of all he
had formerly said about the nature and attributes of God on the basis of natural revelation. This
suggests that there is an extensive revelation in nature, and that Calvin, however practical in his
ultimate aims, nevertheless engaged in some abstract scientific speculation. We must therefore
ask, What are the details of this extra-biblical or natural theology, and how are they derived from
an observation of plants and planets?
Unfortunately it is doubtful that Warfield or Calvin ever answered these two questions.

As for Romans, the verb kathoratai does not have to mean clearly seen. According to Liddell
and Scott this is a rather rare meaning. Arndt and Gingrich do not even mention this meaning.
Therefore, it is better taken as ordinary perception, even superficial perception. Similarly
nooumena can mean consider or take note of, instead of a thorough understanding.
These weaker meanings make better sense than an exegesis that requires a valid cosmological
argument.
In conformity with this, one may note that nobody can recognize a flower as Gods handiwork,
unless he has a prior knowledge of God. As Calvin said, the knowledge of God is the first
knowledge a person has. It is innate; not derived from experience.
Hence the passage in Romans should be taken as similar to those phrases in the Psalms, such as,
the heavens declare the glory of God. There is no valid argument. Only his works are visible.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/nooumena-kathoratai-by-gordon-h-clark/
Plato was a pagan. He knew nothing of Moses, nor, of course, of Christ. Plato was also a great
philosopherperhaps the most brilliant man that has ever lived. His extensive knowledge
included a clear understanding of the course of history.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/god-or-tyranny-by-gordon-h-clark/

while the orchestra is undoubtedly enjoyable, there is, apart from listening to music, a
relationship worthy of investigation between music and literature. And to expand one more
degree, there are relations holding among aesthetics, religion, sociology, and all the arts and
sciences.

The study of these relationships is philosophy and, when rightly undertaken, it is at least as
engrossing and as legitimate as any particular art or science. The specific sciences and
philosophy both have their dangers as well as their advantages. Science without philosophy is
narrow; philosophy without specific knowledge is superficial. But just as the scientist is justified
in running the risk of narrowness, the philosopher is justified in facing his danger, superficiality.
And civilization may profit even from the poorer men who succumb to their dangers. Certainly it
will profit from the better men who do not succumb.
As we come better to understand the scope of philosophy, we come to see also that a man never
decides whether he will philosophize or not; he decides only to philosophize ill or well. The
artist, the historian, the scientist, is driven irresistibly to consider the relation of his particular
field to the next. The reflective mathematician or linguist must examine his basic principles and
consider their derivation. He must philosophize. If he continues, and, if the vast scope of
philosophy emerges in distinctness, he faces a magnificent panorama, including the harmony of
an orchestra and the harmony of the spheres
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/philosophy-as-a-hobby-by-gordon-h-clark/

The schools of education have long discussed the aims of education, and while most of their
work concerns elementary education it is instructive to note that they generally speak of aims in
the plural rather than of the aim of education. This is a tacit admission of failure to find any one
comprehensive aim. It is a failure to provide any criterion by which one subject should be
included and another excluded.

If a Christian university should commit itself to the proposition that the triune, sovereign God,
the creator and preserver of the universe, is the source of all truth, that as revealed in the
Scriptures he directs the course of history to its determined end, and that the chief end of man is
to glorify him, together with further implications, and if such a university could apply these
fundamental principles to education, then confusion would be replaced by the philosophy of that
institution. Many colleges originally founded on Christian principles have proved untrue to their
trust. Others in varying degrees still preserve the aroma of Christian ideals. The cause of these
declensions may have been omissions or lack of clarity in the statement of these principles; more
often the betrayal of trust came from the failure to apply the principles to the details of the
curriculum. And thus one may see in the so-called Christian colleges today the same confusion
that permeates secular institutions. A Sunday religion that is ignored on week-days is justly
repellent; so too, a Christian philosophy that is taught in the Bible course but is ignored in
physics and sociology does not make an education Christian. Only a unified world-view applied
in detail can remove confusion from a faculty; only so can the student be provided with a mind
that is not divided against itself; only so can there be an aim of education.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/philosophy-of-the-modern-university-by-gordon-h-clark/

The empirical method in axiology can only begin with the discovery in experience of so-called
values. Art and friendship, health and material comfort, are frequently so identified. The precise
identification, however, is not the crucial point. These so-called values are all descriptive facts.
Burtt discovers in his experience a preference for art and friendship. Someone else may not value
art at all. Similarly personal preference varies between monogamy and adultery. And Stalin
shows a preference for murder. As Gardner Williams of the University of Toledo, in his volume,
Humanistic Ethics (p. 6), says Selfish ambition, or the will to power, when successful, is

intrinsically satisfactory. Thus murder, as much as friendship, is a value because it has been
discovered as a value in experience. How then can a theory which restricts itself to descriptive
facts provide grounds for normative prescriptions? If the premise of an argument is the
descriptive fact that someone likes something, by what logic could one arrive at the conclusion
that other people ought to like the same thing? Any syllogism with a normative conclusion
requires a normative premise.

In an empirical, descriptive philosophy, one may find the verb is; but the verb ought has no
logical standing.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/can-we-have-moral-education-without-god-by-gordon-hclark/

Although there seems to be little use in speculating about the degree of Pilates philosophic
profundity when he asked, What is truth? a Christian does well to consider Christs prior
statement, I am the truth, together with other Scriptural passages that might throw light on the
nature of truth. Since Protestants, in contradistinction to Romanists, reject a literalism in the
words, This is my body, and since other phrases of Christ, e.g. I am the door, are obviously
figurative, one must not immediately assume that I am the truth, is true literally or that the
nature of truth is personal and therefore non-propositional and non-logical. At least other views
should be considered; and here three theories will be briefly examined.

The first of these three views, for want of a better name, will be called the empirical view of
truth. That the view to be described is empirical, no one can deny; though there may be
empiricists who would not accept all the description. Whether it is possible to have a consistent
empiricism without one or another of these elements, everyone must consider for himself.
This empiricism professes to discover truth in sensory experience. The two ideas to be noted are
discovery and experience. Truth is said to be discovered or given, not constructed or
reconstructed with the aid of a priori forms of the mind. Reliance is placed on sense data. The
idea of a tree is a sense datum, not the work of the productive imagination, and so is a cloud and
a mountain. Thus things are found in or by sensation alone. This view does not necessarily entail
Lockes analysis of experience into the simple ideas of white, bitter, soft, and so on; but even if
the data are wholes after the manner of Gestalt psychology, it is essential that they be given in
their entirety, in a single experience of receptivity, and that truth consists of these perceptions
with their legitimate combinations.
The Christian proponents of this empiricism see in it at least three advantages. First, it conforms
to common sense. No uneducated person would ever suspect that his image or idea of a tree or a
mountain is other than a sense datum. To ordinary consciousness there seems to be no
intellectual operation involved. Second, a Christian in particular can easily believe that this view
is extremely favorable to, not to say necessary for, a proper use of Christian evidences. Do not
the arguments from miracles, fulfilled prophecy, and especially from the resurrection of Christ
demand an empirical epistemology? And third, since the history of philosophy furnishes
examples of views which imply omniscience to avoid skepticism and skepticism to avoid
omniscience, empiricism appears to steer precisely between this Scylla and Charybdis.
However, as epistemological problems are extremely complex, so that an assured adherence to a
detailed view borders on rashness, it is not surprising that empiricism has had to face serious
difficulties. The history of British empiricism from Locke to Hume is prima facie evidence of its
skeptical implications. Nor does the connection between empiricism and skepticism depend on
Lockes enumeration of simple ideas. Not only have the later and more radical empiricisms of
James, Schiller, and Dewey tended toward skepticism, but even Hume himself made little use of
Lockes analysis. A second difficulty, though perhaps not so evident a one, concerns the
existence of sense data. With all of Kants efforts to avoid the skepticism of Hume he still
insisted on a sensory given, and the development from Kant to Hegel contained as one of its
most important phases a search for this given. The search was unsuccessful. A contemporary
Hegelian, Brand Blanshard, in his The Nature of Thought, is still troubled by the same difficulty.
And if it be supposed that this is not the lesson a Christian should take from Hegelianism, it
might be recalled that St. Augustine also was unable to find a sensory given existing apart from
an intellectual operation.
These two difficulties concern the function of the human mid in its obtaining truth, and may
therefore be called subjective. One should also distinguish certain objective considerations, for
the two questions, What is truth? and How do we know?, although related, are not identical.
Further use of this distinction will be made later; so far as empiricism goes, the objective
difficulty reduces to the question whether the unity of truth can be preserved or whether data,

precisely because they are data, must be disconnected and unsystematic. A mere mention of this
objective difficulty must suffice at this point in view of the contention that the subjective
difficulties with empiricism seem to be insuperable.
If some empiricists, whatever they think of the objections, refuse to accept all the elements of the
description above, a second theory of truth, or group of theories, is still more difficult to
characterize or even name. Perhaps the term mysticism will be appropriate, for the antiintellectualism of several of our contemporaries, such as Barth, Brunner, and certain writers of
Dutch extraction, is in some ways reminiscent of the later medieval mystics. Negatively they can
be said to agree in that they reject empiricism, but a positive statement without many
qualifications might prove impossible to formulate. However, one does not distort history too
greatly by affirming that they all stress the unity of the truth and react against epistemological
atomism. They also stress the contribution of the human mind to the resultant knowledge; not,
however, as Kant did in using categories for the formation of judgments; but rather by
introducing non-logical factors. They might thus be more included to understand Christs claim,
I am the truth, literally, and they might say that truth is not propositional but personal. The
more recent of these writers in their stress on the person emphasize the noetic effects of sin; for if
sin contaminates the whole man as a unitary person and thus vitiates his intellectual processes, it
follows that the truth he has constructed or reconstructed by his intellectual operations cannot be
pure or uncontaminated.
Inclined as they are to mysticism with its reliance on analogies, they might describe the
epistemological situation by the view from this widow. Here in Luzern today one can look down
on the Vierwaldstttersee and up to Mount Pilatus. But it is rainy and very cloudy. Instead of
seeing one tree or crag distinctly, the mystic tourist sees the whole confusedly. The trees, the
mountains, and the clouds merge in dim shapes. That is to say, no human being can see or know
any single, pure, distinct truth, but he may have a cloudy perception of all truth as a whole. This
analogy is supposed to be consistent, not only with the noetic effects of sin, but also with the
infinite glory of God. Around about God are clouds and thick darkness that human eyes cannot
pierce. Of him Bonaventura says we have a global representation for which the intuition is
lacking. And if God is truth, literally and without qualification, obviously man cannot have the
truth.
Emil Brunner states explicitly and accepts an implication of this position, which others have
missed, or have not seen so clearly, or even try to repudiate. Since on the mystical view
intellectual distinctions are inadequate to the existential situation and logic cannot cope with life,
it follows that if God can speak to man, the revelation may consist of false propositions. The
sentences in the Bible may be both revelatory and false. In fact, Brunner might even have
concluded that all propositional revelation must be false, for in his Divine-Human Encounter he
says that not merely the words but their intellectual content itself is a mere framework or
receptacle and not the real thing. And there are professing Christians who have said publicly that
the human mind simply cannot grasp truth at all.
On the subjective side of the epistemological problem these objections out to be clear. When the
unity of truth and personality is so stressed that one must be omniscient in order to know
anything, the theory for all its superficial piety is as skeptical as Humes. But the difficulty on the

objective side is perhaps not so obvious and may require further explanation. It is that this view
provides no clear definition of truth. Naturally, if nothing is clear and all is cloudy, the meaning
of truth is equally obscure. Not only is it impossible to distinguish between a mountain and a
cloud, for only in virtue of the clear and distinct perceptions on a sunny day can one believe that
there are mountains among those cloudy shapes, but what is worse, the human mind does not
know the meaning of mountain and cloud, i.e. of truth and falsity. These meanings must also be
clear and distinct items of pure knowledge which the theory makes impossible. This may explain
the appeal to unintelligible paradoxes, silent traces, or voluble analogies.
There is a third view of truth that attempts to escape these difficulties. It might be called
apriorism, presuppositionalism, or intellectualism, if these terms are not too definitely connected
with earlier, specific systems. The subjective aspect of this theory requires a body of apriori
forms or truths as a guarantee against skepticism. In empiricism the mind begins as a blank sheet
of paper, and to use Aristotles phrase, it is actually nothing before it thinks. Then sensation
furnishes data. But the apriorists find themselves unable to understand how universal and
immutable truth can be constructed out of constantly changing particulars. How can the laws of
logic, which are not sense data, be constructed from bits of experience when these bits must first
be connected by the laws of logic? How can alleged data bear any meaning apart from
presupposed logical forms? The classification of data or even of one datum can be made
legitimately only through the use of universal principles not contained in momentary particulars.
A Christian who adopts this view does not find that it lacks Scriptural support. The Reformed
doctrine of the image of God in man attributes to mans mind or soul characteristics which come
directly from the act of creation and not from sensory experience. Mans original endowment
contained both knowledge and righteousness. Scripture does not describe the soul, either before
or after the fall, as blank or actually nothing. So ineradicable is this original knowledge that even
when a depraved sinner wishes to extrude God from his mind, he cannot do so, but retains some
recognition of the divine majesty and the moral law written on his heart.
It is in this way that apriorism avoids the deadly dilemma of omniscience or skepticism. Instead
of beginning with nothing and failing to arrive at universal propositions through sensation, and
instead of beginning with everything and failing to explain our present extensive ignorance,
apriorism allows a body of primary principles on which further knowledge may be built up.
On the objective side of the problem also, apriorism or intellectualism would seem to offer less
difficulty than the competing views. The unity of truth is preserved without sacrificing the clarity
and distinctness of several truths because truth is conceived as a system of truths. While a person
may know this or that proposition without knowing its place in the system, the proposition itself
is objectively a part of a logical whole. It derives its meaning from the system although the
person in question may not know the derivation. At this point a short exposition encounters a
formidable obstacle. One may hastily assume that when two persons write or speak on the same
words, they have expressed the same proposition. This is not always so, and after a long and
confusing philosophic interchange it may seem never to be so. At any rate, certain terms and
sentences which are verbally identical, in Riemannian and Euclidean geometry for example, do
not express the same truth. Their message depend on the systems from which they are taken. The
result can be subjective confusion, but objectively the unity and diversity of truth is maintained.

This distinction between the subjective and objective aspects of the question also enables the
Christian apriorist to do justice to the noetic effects of sin. In the philosophy of paradox
knowledge is so conditioned by the human mind that the result can never be pure or true. If God
speaks to us, what we hear must be false. On this third view the objective truth of a proposition is
not affected by sin. Sin and its guilt attaches to persons, not propositions. The power and result
of sin is found I the subjective confusion of philosophic discussion, in some thought not all
instances of ignorance, in all errors of logic, and of course in the ordinary moral or practical use
to which propositions are put. It would seem that these spheres suffice for the noetic effects of
sin; but if something has been omitted, it cannot be the truth of the propositions themselves on
pain of denying the clear and distinct truth that sin has noetic effects.
In conclusion, the empirical view of knowledge seems to entail skepticism. Mysticism attempts
to combine omniscience, ignorance, paradox, and a false revelation. Intellectualism, though it
will require more elaboration before one can enjoy great assurance, hopes to escape these
pitfalls.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/the-nature-of-truth-by-gordon-h-clark/

Aristotle is difficult. Anyone who has attempted the study knows that. The difficulty lies in a
strange confusion, a confusion which Aristotle himself points out I reference to knowing a
concrete object like this desk lamp before me as against knowing some abstract metaphysical
principle. The thing which by its nature is most knowable is in fact hardest to understand, as the
metaphysical principle for it is exact and authoritative. But the desk lamp is by nature less
knowable for it is not exact, yet in a sense a child can know it. In a similar manner Aristotles
discussions contain the apparently complex but really simple along with the apparently simple
but really complex.

That he discusses what is apparently complex but really simple, in the sense that a first principle
is simple, is denied by no one who has found him difficult to understand. But the apparently
simple element, which can be known as easily as this desk lamp, is not at first so obvious. Along
with his profound thinking there goes a nave acceptance of the world as it appears. And our
scientific sophistication obscures the import of what must have been for his pupils the most
obvious of implications. His technical phraseology half conceals half discloses concrete
illustrations. The former is the larger half. But in places we see his mind at work. There is one
passage where he is laboring to explain the many ways in which things may differ, as opposed to
Democritus who limited differences to three. One of the illustrations is the wind, which he says
differs in place. Wind qua wind is of course the same, but the north wind differs from the east,
south or west wind in place, since the north is where it resides.
This illustration not only shows the concrete meanings he had in mind, but also leads to another
introductory remark which is important to consider in reading Aristotle. He clung tenaciously to
the common opinions of men. It is a banality to draw attention to the fact that in order to
understand a system one must understand the preceding systems out of which it grew and the
succeeding systems which it caused. But an element sometimes forgotten and especially
prominent in Aristotle is the substratum of common opinion, language and customs which a man
must use even though he try to free himself from them. Aristotle rather than trying to free
himself, strove merely to bring out their essential truth. Thus when you ask the ordinary man
what things are truly real, he will answer, this desk lamp, this pen. So Aristotle in opposition to
Plato whom he constantly attacks will by virtue of the answer of the ordinary man cling to the
reality of the individual sense object; nor will a subtle argument about Matter or Form or Idea
attempting to define what is meant by reality and sense object, drive him from the conclusion
that this lamp is real.
Destructive Work.
Before constructing his system, Aristotle must clear the ground of Platos. Aristotle may have
misunderstood Plato, again he may have not; for he was no novice incapable of contemplating
philosophic belief, nor was he a stranger whose information was unreliable. No one had a better
opportunity to understand Plato than he unless he was unqualified by disposition. At any rate,
Aristotle uncompromisingly attacks what he thought was Platos doctrine. A complete analysis of
the attack is unnecessary, but a summary of the arguments use may not be out of place.
1. The arguments for Platos Ideas do not prove their independent existence.
2. If they did, they would prove too much.
3. The Ideas are a purposeless duplication of things; for they are not the cause of motion, nor the
cause of the existence of things, nor the cause of our knowledge of things.
4. If the Ideas is the essence of the thing, it cannot exist apart from it.
5. Participation, a necessary part of the theory, is a mere figure of speech.

6. The common property of the thing and the Idea requires a higher Ideas and so on to infinity.
7. The reduction of Ideas to number is still more preposterous.
To balance this destructive criticism is the constructive element that nevertheless the concept or
idea in a non-Platonic sense has objective reality. This is dictated by epistemological
considerations, for if the concept is purely subjective how can an object be known? It also
involves ontology since reality is that which exists. Thus, not too strictly, the explanation of how
the concept has objective reality may be said to constitute his system of philosophy.
Presuppositions of a Science of Ontology
This desk lamp is green; also it is heavy; and again it is useful in shedding light on what I am
writing. Thus the word is and therefore the existent have many meanings, nevertheless the
investigation of them belongs to one science, for the various meanings have a common element I
that they are all related in one way or another to reality.
In pursuing the study of existent we must state two axioms, which though they cannot be
demonstrated in the strict sense of demonstration must be established in some manner. The first
axiom is the law of contradiction, which may be established by refuting its opponents thru a
reductio ad absurdum. This is done in two ways, and .
. First, Lamp must signify a single thing both in the real world and in consciousness. If it
signify a definite number of things such as a piece of furniture, an ornament or a paper-weight, a
special name may be given to each signification and so each name would signify one thing. But
if the signification be infinite, as those who deny this axiom must hold, then this lamp is also not
a lamp, and since not a lamp is a calendar and also not a calendar, as well as both a book and not
book. That is to say, since it designates nothing in particular, it designates nothing at all.
Second, Further implications may be urged against rejecting this axiom. For instance all
statements regarding my lamp would be accidental and the underlying reality would not be there
for the accidents to attach to. Again, if my lamp is not a lamp, it is also neither lamp nor not
lamp. That is, he who rejects the law of contradiction must also reject the law of excluded
middle, which we will discuss presently. The result is that all judgments become purely
subjective and man is the measurer of all things. Everything then is true, and that everything
includes our axioms. Of course the opponents with their usual insistence on the laws of logic
might call the above reasoning a petitio principii.
. We may find another method of establishing our axiom I seeing how some are led to
deny it by virtue of their physics. This leads to a discussion of subjective idealism and
sensationalism. That truth is determined by the senses, which makes everything true, is deduced
from two false doctrines. First, that only sensible objects exist, and second no statement made of
them is true for they are constantly changing.
Some have arrived at this first doctrine by identifying the judgment of the intellect with sense
impression. But if this is logically followed out, it will result in waving good-bye to philosophic

discourse as was the case with Kratylus. Now sense perception proper, free from all
interpretation is infallible. It is an awareness of something not itself. The object of the awareness
is a of a real subject, . The object of sensation, i.e. the greenness or he
hardness, the distinct from the perception is dependent on the perceiver as well as on the real
thing. For if either the percipient or the real thing changes, a different sensum is produced. That
is to say, if ink splashes on my lamp I will no longer see green but blue, or if I become color
blind I will no longer see green either. The mistake is to make a judgment about the thing, but the
perception per se, that I see green, is infallible. Yet because the sensum depends on me as well as
on the lamp, it does not follow that the thing does not exist, nor that man is the measurer of all
things, for I have not chosen to see green, or have any perception. It is stimulated without me by
something without, and although the stimulator, the lamp, and the stimulated, myself, are relative
terms, it does not prove that the lamp is non-existent when I no longer perceive it.
And even if sensible objects are continuously changing, the very continuous change implies an
existent of which a portion changes and of which a portion does not. If in the literary zeal which
produces this paper, my ink splashes on the desk lamp so that it becomes blue rather than green,
the lamp throughout the change possesses something of the quality which is being lost. When it
no longer possesses any of that quality, the change has ceased. Then too, all during the change it
has some of the quality it is acquiring. If not, the change would not have been begun. Thus on the
lamp we distinguish a portion which has and a portion which has not changed. Both exist.
Again the change itself requires a cause. The blue lamp will be caused by the splashing of ink,
and this by the literary zeal, which may have another cause, but the series cannot be infinite.
Besides, qualitative changes are not continuous. The portion of the lamp becomes blue so
immediately, and if the final result is a still deeper shade of blue, it is attained by discontinuous
splashes. If those who hold he theories we are refuting reply that in nature the deepening blue
sky of evening is continuous, in opposition to our illustration, we say the case is the same and the
degree of instantaneous change is the minimum perceptible.
Lastly, if nothing but presentations to consciousness exist, then the existence of the lamp depends
on that of myself. But on what does my existence depend? For my sensations are not the objects
of themselves; rather, they imply the existence of something prior which is not mere sensation.
Conclusion. Therefore both by logical and physical analyses it has been shown that the law of
contradiction is the most indisputable of all beliefs; from which follows the truth that
contradictory attributes cannot attach to the same subject.
The second axiom which is prerequisite for a science of ontology is the Law of Exclude Middle.
As long as judgments are true or false, the axiom holds, and to make it clearer there may be
adduced the following considerations.
If there were a logical intermediate between x and x, (let x be precisely not x) it would be either
homogeneous or heterogeneous. (We notice that the discussion cannot take place without
assuming the law in question.) If the second alternative be chosen and one say lamp is
intermediate between calendar and writer, it is simply not an intermediate in the logical sense.

On the other hand if the intermediate be homogeneous, as grey between white and not-white,
then there could be a change to white from something that was not-white and everyone agrees
that this could never be. Therefore grey cannot be a logical intermediate between white and notwhite.
But I nevertheless, this were maintained, there would be an intermediate for every pair, existent,
and non-existent, genesis and dissolution etc., and the intermediate in turn would require another
intermediate with each extreme and so on to infinity.
Finally the denial of the law of excluded middle implies that all things are false. Therefore the
denial itself is false. Or if the denial alone be excepted and called true, then one true statement
implies an infinity of truths.
Having thus established his axioms, and before going on with the study of the existent, Aristotle
adds a final conclusion with reference to the nature of the universe. In the dialogue Sophists
Plato, possibly spurred so by the insistences of his obstreperous pupil, finds that the World of
Ideas cannot be immutable in every sense of the word. He argues that since knowing is a form of
action and being known therefore a form of passion, since Reality or Being can be known it
suffers passion. Therefore the totality of existents (or perfect Being = ) is not
entirely devoid of motion, life, soul and thought. On the other hand if everything moves, intellect
is impossible, for it requires a permanence which in turn requires rest. Therefore the All is
neither all immutable nor entirely mutable. Here Aristotle draws the same conclusion. If all
things are at rest, the statement, this lamp is green, will always be true, for no ink will splash. If
everything is in motion all statements will be false and knowledge will be impossible. Nor can
this be interpreted to mean that each thing is sometimes at rest and sometimes in motion. For the
First Mover must be unmoved.
The Objects of First Philosophy
Metaphysics, or what Aristotle calls First Philosophy, has undisputed possession of its field; both
because other sciences will have nothing to with this sort of investigation and because,
especially, of the nature of the subjects involved. Science is divided like all Gaul, there are
cognitive, the poietio and the practio sciences. The last two, since they contain subjective
determinations are inferior to the cognitive sciences, the objects of which are certain orders of
the existent objectively determined.
Cognitive science also is similar to the land of Caesar. It comprises Physics, mathematics, and
third science, which unlike Physics does not investigate the mutable and unlike mathematics
does not investigate that which is dependent on matter. This third science is First Philosophy or
Theology. It may be called theology because the independent and immutable must be divine if
anything is, and because, it investigates the highest objects in the rank of existents of which God
is the very highest.
God, and the other existents, which First Philosophy considers, are both objectively existent and
also the highest universals. They are universals because they are first in the scale of existents, not
first because universal.

Just how a science can be first because it investigates the highest rank of existent and because it
investigates the highest universals is not quite clear, unless we assume that the highest universals
are concepts in the mind of the highest Being. Plato does this explicitly. But Aristotle hardly
gives so much as a vague hint.
There are four possible divisions of the existent. We may say, this lamp is a paper-weight. The
use of is here is accidental. But the accidental is not an object of any science and really does
not exists, for the statement is true, it is also true that this lamp is not a paper weight. Second, we
may say, this lamp is perfectly useless, illustrating the True or False. This so-called division of
the existent belongs strictly to judgments and not to things. Since then it attaches to thought, it
does not constitute an order of the objectively existent. The third may be termed, the existents
corresponding to the designations, or for short, the categorical existents. The lamp is green, it is
metal, it weighs six pounds, it is low. To these various meanings of the word is which we call
the categories, there correspond various kinds of existents. It is obvious that some of these
meanings are dependent and that one is probably first. This first we will call Reality, and our
problem is now, What is Reality? After examining this we will return to the fourth kind of
existent, the Potential and the Actual.
We do no say, Green is the lamp, or metal is the lamp. Evidently then without much
consideration we see first that the reality must be the subject of which other things or attributes
are predicated. But this is an insufficient account of reality, for if we suppose that reality is
identical with matter, which the above permits, it fails to give reality any positive content, for to
get matter, all positive qualities must be abstracted. Now since matter is not a particular thing nor
a certain quantity, reality cannot be identical with matter, for second, everyone is agreed that
independence and individuality are chief traits of reality. These qualifications permit form to be
reality. We tacitly omit the possibility that reality is form plus matter, for though what is
composite is individual and independent, it is posterior and reality must be prior. Since then
form, or what is the same thing, the conceptual being, seems to have a prima facie claim to
reality, let us first consider this solution.
Our first method will be , i.e. by examining the usages of speech. By conceptual being or
form, we mean that phrase or concept which can form a judgment of identity with the name of
the thing. Let the exact definition of lamp be, furniture for lighting. This then will be the
conceptual being of lamp for it is what we mean by the word lamp. But what sort of things can
have a conceptual being or exact definition? Strictly speaking, and we must speak strictly, all
accidents are barred. Therefore nothing but species have a conceptual being. And still more
strictly only the first category, existent qua existent, has a conceptual being and may be said to
be. Therefore only realities can have a conceptual being of definition.
Next we must ask, is the conceptual being identical with the thing? Here too exclude accidents,
and use words in their strictest sense as above indicated. As a preliminary observation, we point
out that the common tacit opinion is that they are identical, and moreover the identity seems to
be implied in the statement of the definition, for we say the lamp is so and so. We maintain in
opposition to Plato that this identity must be asserted, for otherwise knowledge would be
impossible and nothing would exist.

It is obvious that what applies to one conceptual being holds for all. Thus if the conceptual being
of Goodness is not an attribute of a good thing, or if the things being good is not an attribute of
the conceptual being of goodness, then the conceptual being of the existent is not an existent
thing. i.e. it does not exist, and if one conceptual being does not exist, neither does any other.
To deny this identity makes knowledge impossible, for we know a thing only when we know its
conceptual being. Whether you are asked to prove that you know this lamp, or the conceptual
being of this lamp, your answer must be the same, namely furniture or illumination. So we are
forced to assert the identity of the thing and its conceptual being, or accept the consequences that
knowledge is impossible and stop talking which no one cares to do.
But here arises a peculiarly interesting problem. This real and individual object before me is
defined as desk-lamp, and lamp is furniture for illumination. It is one object, yet it has several
elements in its definition. Now if reality is the same as conceptual being, will the parts of the
latter correspond to part of the thing? For surely the whole is the sum of the parts. At first glance
it seems to in some cases and in others not. The circle does not contain the definition of its arcs,
but rather vice versa. Yet on the other hand, the definition of a given syllable does contain the
letters. Now we know that a definition is not merely the enumeration of the parts, but it would
have to be if part of the conceptual being corresponded to a part of the thing. The base of this
lamp is indeed a part of the lamp, but it is not a base until there is a lamp of which it is the base.
We mean, as also in the case of circle above, that the parts are defined by the whole, and that the
wholes can exist without the parts, but not vice versa.
Besides, the problem is really illusory, for part is ambiguous. It may mean a unit of measure or
a constituent part, which again may be either matter or form. Strictly speaking the definition
refers only to the form and does not contain the parts of the matter.
So far we have said,
1. Reality and conceptual being are identical.
2. In a secondary sense, the composite is reality.
3. In the case of ultimate realities, the conceptual being is the thing.
4. In composites the conceptual being is not the thing.
But really we left unsolved the problem of parts and wholes. For the form is a single unitary
whole, yet the definition implies parts. How then can the genus lamp and the differences
desk blend into the logical, unity of the species, desk-lamp? Certainly they cannot be
blended ab initio. For what is true in one case must be true in all. Then lamp would have to be
blended ab initio both with desk and with floor. Whence it would follow that two contraries, desk
and floor, would coexist in the same species and every desk-lamp would be a floor-lamp.

Nor can a series of descending differences blend, as furniture, lamp, desk; for these too are
logically distinct. Yet the definition of form is unitary and must have a unitary object.
Let us examine the question by taking a definition with two terms as desk lamp. One term then
must refer to the genus and one must be the difference. Now the genus lamp has no existence
apart from the species, and is related to species as matter is to form. Then since the definition
refers only to the form and the last difference is the form of any species, we have a unitary
definition of a unitary form. Thus the problem has proved an illusion.
Need it be mentioned that it is Aristotles solution that is the illusion, or delusion. He himself
recognizes this, for in other places he gives three more solutions to the same question.
In our search after reality we have now examined the subject, and the conceptual being. Let us
turn to the universal. Now if anything in the world is real, these things around us are. Since then
reality in its primary sense is peculiar to an individual, and the universal is common to many
things at once, and is therefore no more the reality of one of them than of all, the universal
cannot be reality. Besides we have shown that reality is never a predicate but that to which all
predicates are attached. The universal however is always a predicate. If the universal term lamp
is the reality of this objects before me, and the reality of lamp a higher genus, the higher genus
will be the reality of many things. But if the individual is the reality the universal cannot be; for
it is a mere quality. Similarly since reality is individual it cannot have other realities as
components, for then it would not be one. But this brings us to another difficulty. If reality has no
components and is an individual it cannot be defined, although we agreed that nothing but
realities can be defined.
No individuals can be defined. For all components of matter and form suffer genesis and
dissolution, but no definition does. This lamp now exists, but owing to the labor of illumination
this rather dark paper it may collapse and no longer be a lamp. Since then any concrete object is
contingent and uncertain it cannot be the object of definition or demonstration. For the object of
demonstration is necessary and a definition conveys true knowledge. Yet a so-called definition of
an individual object will soon become false.
Again there is a still deeper criticism which applies to necessary individuals as well as to
concretes. The words of a definition express universals, as desk and lamp or circle and man. Nor
could, one coin a new word to express the individual for such a word of unique meaning would
be unintelligible. Nor does the combination of two, or any number of, universals as desk plus
lamp and so on designate an individual.
Further in our search for reality we must concede that most of what goes by that name is not true
reality, but merely a power or function. Illustrations are the organs of animals and the four
elements.
Neither is existence nor unity reality. For though they may be said to have better claims to reality
than other attributes, yet the same criticisms hold here as against universals.
Since beginning our discussion on parts and wholes we have shown that

1. No universal is reality.
2. No reality consists of realities.
But these two conclusions conflict with the four points of the preceding summary. We must
therefore undertake to harmonize them.
This can be done, thinks Aristotle, by pointing out a reality which is independent of sensible
realities. The Cause is Reality.
For in asking why these pieces of metal before me are a single lamp, why these bricks are a
house, we seek the cause. Now the cause, when expressed in logical terminology is none other
than the conceptual being or formal cause, though it may also be the final cause or the efficient
cause accidentally. The latter, efficient cause, explains only genesis and dissolution, but the first
two, formal and final causes, explain existence as well.
The final cause is the purpose anything serves, and appears to be Aristotles substitute for the
Idea of the Good in Plato. The formal cause is sometimes the same as the final. The final of this
lamp is to give light, but this was also the formal cause in the mind of the maker. Or, the final
cause of this boy is to be a man, but man is his formal cause, viz. His father. By products, such as
using this lamp as a paper weight, have no final cause and are explained mechanically by
reference to a moving cause. Even that which is due to a final cause is also due to a mechanical
cause. For the lamp has both purpose and manufacturer.
Let x and y be the components of an object. Then the form is not identical with the components,
for these may be resolved and still exist though the form would be not. Therefore form is a
distinct something. If the form is a component of the object so that Objects = x+y+F, the same
argument which inserted the F will insert F and so on ad inf. If the form itself is a compound,
then it is similar to the object and has components as p+q which require an F and so on ad inf.
Therefore this form is not an element of the object nor composed of elements, but is the cause,
the reason why these elements make a unity. It alone is the reality for it is the proximate cause of
the being of the thing.
Indeed the only true realities are dynamic forces, so Aristotle seems to imply. The highest reality
must be that which is the ultimate cause of all. Lower realities descend then in rank.
Let us now consider the whole question from a different viewpoint. We shall ask what makes an
individual reality, is it matter or form, since in sensible realities we distinguish beside the
composite these two. This discussion in Aristotle is rather unsatisfactory for it is nowhere wholly
treated in systematic fashion but bits of the matter are in one place and bits of the form in
another.
Sometimes, says Aristotle, the distinction between form and matter is obvious, as is the case with
this lamp for the form of lamp may be imposed not only on the matter bronze as here but on
many other kinds of matter. But when a form always occurs connected with the same matter, as
is the case with the form man on the matter flesh, the distinction is difficult to make. In one sense

the form man includes the matter, for it implies the notion of parts of a definite kind capable of
producing the functions the form requires. Everything but pure form has that kind of matter
which is capable of locomotion; other kinds of change are change in quality, in quantity, genesis
and dissolution. These last three cannot exist without the first, though in the case of the heavenly
spheres the first exists without the others.
Usually however when we say matter we do not mean the primary matter but rather the
proximate matter appropriate to the object in question. So, loosely speaking there may be many
matters of any one thing, each underlying the succeeding one. Descending from the matter
bronze of this lamp, thru the matter of which bronze is but the form, to the primary matter, we
find that this too is further resolvable, mentally at least if not objectively. We will call it
intelligible matter as distinct from primary matter which is yet capable of locomotion. We arrive
at it by abstraction for it has no separate existence. To quote, 1036a9
. , ,
, .
This gradation in existents implies the abolition of any real ultimate distinction between matter
and form. The intelligible matter he again mentions in K 1059b15 and calls it the matter of the
objects of mathematics. If we are to insist literally on his statement in Z 1036a9 that intelligible
matter is present in sensible objects but not qua sensible, and consider it to be space as it seems it
might be, then empty space would be a contradiction, and if there were a distance between two
proximate bodies there would be a space in which there was no space. Yet Aristotle differs from
Plato who in Tim.50c-52a says that a race is the stuff or matter things are made of.
The lamp and the other one on the counter which I did not buy have the same form but are
differentiated by matter. CF.1034a5-8 and 1035b30,31. But if matter is principle of individuation
in composites, what differentiates forms? If one form be distinct from another, that is, if each be
individual, they must possess unique differentiae and each will be a sole member of a lowest
species. But though in fact it may be the sole member of that class, how may it be distinguished
from other thinkable members of that same class? It can be by neither matter nor form. The
problem is difficult enough with composites, for we have rested on that which is unknowable.
1036A8. Then that which we have said to be the most real of all objects, namely this concrete
thing, is unknowable. In other words we arrive at the same difficulty mentioned in the preceding
search after reality individuals cannot be defined. Since Aristotle is forced to omit definitional
knowledge of individuals, he must give us something to take its place. This is intuitive thought or
perception. 1036A2-8. And this applies to the unitary form as well as to the composite of matter
and form. The nature of the individual is grasped by a single not.
Neither matter nor form passes thru the process of genesis and dissolution. If then matter is
eternal, is form also? In a sense, yes; but sometimes not. Form is like a point or a contact. It
either exists or does not, and the change from one state to the other is not a process but occurs
instantaneously. Form never exists apart from the individual. Therefore it is eternal in the sense
that there are always some individuals which have that form. It is the composite of matter and
form which has gone thru the process of genesis or dissolution. But to explain why the composite
is so requires a knowledge of the causes. And a cause is also individual, for universal causes do
not exist. Man general is the cause of the universal man to be sure, but then the universal man

does not exist. The individual is always the cause of the individual. Therefore as he will say later,
the prime cause of the universe is not a general principle but as individual spirit.
Potentiality and Actuality.
Bosanquet in his History of Aesthetic begins one section with the sentence, It is difficult to get a
net result out of Hegel. This might also be said without impropriety of Aristotles discussion of
potentiality and actuality.
This or some other principle has been necessary. Throughout the preceding discussions he has
been referring to a solution which would solve all the difficulties he has raised. Form and matter
are not sufficient; these distinctions hold of an object at a given moment in time. But in
considering that which is relatively formed or unformed; that is, things in the process of
manufacture, a distinction between potentiality and actuality becomes necessary.
But the difficulties attending may be sense when it is known that the only word which is more
ambiguous than potentiality is actuality. The two meanings of potentiality with which we have to
deal are 1) a power to do something or to produce a change in another thing, 2) the power to be
changed.
My friend and I come to this desk. Neither of us sees anything for it is dark. I push the button
and light my lamp. Then I see the desk, but he does not for he is blind. Though there was
apparently no difference between us in the dark, in that neither could see, the fact that later I see
but he does not, indicates that in the preceding state appearances were deceitful. In other words, I
had a potentiality which he had not. But potentiality is not the sole explanation. To us another
illustration; to say this bronze metal was potentiality a lamp does not entirely explain why it is
now an actual lamp. There must be a cause which initiates the change, and this cause must be an
actuality. We cannot define actuality, but we can show what it is by means of a mathematical
proportion. As he who is awake is to him who is asleep; and as he who is seeing is to him whose
eyes are shut, (but not blind); and as that which is wrought is to that which is unwrought, so is
actuality to potentiality. Therefore, logically and temporally as well, actuality is prior to
potentiality. The chicken is prior to the egg. It is prior in definition, for the potential or power is
defined by the actual or the activity. It is prior in time, for the potential is preceded by something
exerting the same kind of activity, though this actuality is in another individual. But most
important of all, actuality is prior to potentiality in reality. For it has been shown that things
posterior in genesis are prior in form and reality; that is, the completely manufactured lamp,
which is the last step in the genesis process, is the form which preceded the process of
manufacture, it was in the makers mind before he began his work.
Permit me to state that this section, especially 1050a3-1050b1, is somewhat overburdened with
contradictions, which do not render material assistance in interpreting it. But the conclusion is
that actuality is prior to potentiality is reality.
Analogous to primary matter, there is also a first actuality which is prior to all others. Each
actuality is preceded by a cause which is also actual and since this regress cannot continue for
ever we end in an eternal first mover. This first mover will for similar reasons be prior in reality

to all others. For the eternal is prior to the perishable. Nothing is eternal by virtue of potentiality.
Therefore God is pure actuality and has no unrealized potentiality. Form is also actual. No
specific form ever passes thru genesis, but only is actualized again in new individuals. Even
matter which in one sense is pure potentiality is actual in that it is incapable of not existing, and
so eternally existent.
Book chapter 10, at which we have now arrived, presents peculiar difficulties. Beginning
Book E, Aristotle sketched his problem of the existent and named the four uses of the word. He
has now about completed discussing the fourth, potential and actual. The first two meanings of
existent were accidental and true and false, both of which he discarded as being figures of speech
and not real existents. But here he seems to introduce a fifth sense of the existent which he calls
. This strictest sense of existent appears to be truth and falsity, the same which he
rejected in Book E. True he does not discuss it very fully in E, true he says he will discuss it later
(in ) but he does say, . . . .
And he also calls this existent lower in the scale than the existent in things. In other words there
seems to me to be a [blatant] contradiction between E 4 and 10.
In this letter book he calls truth and falsity existent I the strictest sense. In the case of things this
consists in conjunction or disjunction, so that he is true who thinks the disjoined to be disjoined
and the conjoined to be conjoined. This does not mean that this lamp is green because I truly
think so, but I truly think so because it is green. Since then some things are eternally conjoined
and sometimes disjoined, their existence is: their conjunction their non-existence their
disjunction. If the connection be contingent the judgment will sometimes be true and sometimes
false; if the connection be necessary the same judgment will always be true or always false.
So much then for those things which are conjoined or compounded, but what of the simple and
non-compounded? In what does their existence consist? In this case, truth consists in touching
or uttering them. This is true of the simple rational elements and non-compounded realities. They
all exist in actuality and not potentiality. And it is impossible to be in error about them, one may
only think them or not think them. To think them is truth, no to think them is not falsity but
merely ignorance.
In spite of the dense fog, this chapter is very important as a necessary step to his theology. His is
trying to show that existence in actuality is existence in consciousness. Is problem is to get from
a mechanical to an intelligent first cause and this is accomplished thru the ambiguity of .
If the first cause is the highest existent and therefore the highest actuality, and the highest
actuality is existence in consciousness, Aristotle has found an intelligent first cause. But in my
opinion, in showing that existence is existence in thought, he is somewhat inferior to Berkeley.
Aristotles Theology.
Bits of Aristotles theology are found in E 1026 and 1064. But the most important section is
Book and of this book especially chapter six to ten. The first five chapters rehearse some of the
important conclusions on reality, matter and form, actuality and potentiality. Chapter six begins
that proof for the existence of God the main points of which neither Kant nor anyone else so
far as I can see has shown to be invalid. The argument as Aristotle puts it is as follows.

There must be some sort of eternal immutable reality, for of all the existents reality is the first. If
all realities were destructible, all things would be destructible. But it is impossible that motion be
either generated or destroyed for it always was. Similarly time must be eternal. Motion in the
same manner as time is continuous. For time is motion, or at least an attribute of it. The only
continuous change is locomotion, and that circular. (Circular it must be, because Aristotle believe
that space was finite and a circle of finite radius was the only possible path for continuous eternal
motion.) But if that which is capable of producing motion is not functioning there will be no
motion. This is the trouble with Platos Ideas. They are indeed eternal realities but they cannot
produce motion. But even if it does function, it is not enough, for perhaps its nature is mere
potentiality. Then motion would not be eternal, for that which exists potentially may possibly not
be. There must be therefore such a principle existing in actuality. Moreover these realities (he
here uses the plural, later he will show that there is more than one) must be immaterial.
Early philosophers had only potential causes. Leucippus and Plato however introduce eternal
motion. But they do not sufficiently explain it, they do not tell its cause. For nothing moves by
chance. All motion requires a cause. So far, Anaxagoras has given the best solution by
introducing mind, which is an actual cause.
Chaos has not always existed, but rather the world process is an eternal succession of cycles, or
something on that order. But if the same things always exist, going thru the changes of cycles,
there must be something constant which always acts in the same way. Yet genesis and dissolution
requires a cause which acts in different ways, that is, it must act by its nature and in another way
due to something else. This something else may be a tertium quid or the first cause. As a matter
of fact, it is the first cause. These two principles are necessary and also sufficient to explain the
universe. One is the cause of eternal motion, one of variety; both together cause eternal variety.
Study the stars and the truth of this explanation will be evident. ;
In passing note that this sufficient explanation of the universe is a purely mechanical one,
depending on the cog-wheel arrangement of the orbits of the planets and stars. No mind or
purpose is yet evident. Briefly the argument so far is; If all realities are perishable, all things are
perishable. Change and time are not perishable but eternal; therefore there must be an eternal
reality capable of producing motion.
There is then something moves unceasingly in a circle. This is true both in theory and in fact.
Merely look up and see the stars revolving about the earth. The first heaven therefore is eternal.
And something must cause this motion. This something, which must be eternal reality and
actuality, must cause change without changing. There are any number of such causes, motionless
causes of motion, viz, any object of desire, they all so act on the thinker.
We have seen how Aristotle posited two mechanical principles which he said were sufficient to
explain the universe. And such a mechanical explanation seems to be in harmony with the
general tone of the Metaphysic. But, for what reasons we do not know, whether it be because he
had not fully emancipated himself from Platos influence and common opinion, and therefore
could not give up the idea of God, or whether it be because he was forced into a mechanistic
conception of the universe which he would have preferred to explain away in favor of a theistic

conception; he felt himself compelled to introduce thought and goodness into the being of the
Unmoved Mover.
The line of argument is not logically continuous from beginning to end, I mean, it is fallacious.
We have mentioned the ambiguity of ; further gaps in the reasoning appear here. And for
this reason it is quite difficult to follow the argument unless one have clearly in mind the purpose
of the author.
We had followed to the point where it was pointed out how a thing could cause motion without
moving.; be being the object of thought or desire. If we reduce the objects of thought and desire
we find that they ultimately coincide. That which seems good is the object of desire; that which
is good is the object of will. For we desire a thing because it seems good to us, not vice versa.
Therefore an intellectual apprehension is the first principle.
Now mind is moved by the thing though, but thinkable things are found in the positive column of
opposites, in which reality, in all its purity and actuality, stands first. Therefore such causes are
actual.
The good and that which is intrinsically preferable are in the positive column also and therefore
the first member of this column is the best, or absolute good, since the good is a subsidiary to it.
We have shown that the end or aim is something motionless, though there is a sense in which the
end of final cause is not motionless, for it has two meanings. It is either someones sin and
therefore relative to the actor, in which case it is not motionless; or it is the thing aimed at; I
which case it is motionless for it is independent of the actor.
This final cause then causes motion by being loved, and the objects which it immediately causes
to move in turn cause other things to move.
Whatever changes, might be otherwise than as it is. Locomotion is the first of all changes.
Therefore in respect to place at least the first heaven changes. But the Unmoved Mover, an
existent actuality, since it does not itself have, but only produced locomotion, is absolutely
immutable.
This mover exists of necessity, and in so far as necessary, it exists . And thus it is a first
principle.
So far we have shown that the Immutable Mover which causes motion by being the object of
thought is absolutely actual, intrinsically preferable, the absolute good and necessarily existent.
Aristotle now wishes to discuss the consciousness of God. But the Greek language furnished him
with no such term. So he uses words like = course of life, = perception,
= thinking. We shall translate the combination by consciousness.
Man attains to a certain state of consciousness which he calls the highest for a short time only.
But God is always in such a state. Man sleeps and is unconscious or even in waking hours loses

himself. But God always thinks is always alert, and this actuality is pleasure, for consciousness is
the most pleasurable of states. And the more worthy the object toward which thought is directed,
the more pleasurable is that state.
Mind minds itself by participating in the thing thought, for by the act of thinking the mind itself
becomes an object of thought. Thus mind and the thing thought are the same. For mind only is
capable of receiving the object of thought and its reality and when mind has this object it is
functioning. The mere capability of reception is not, while the functioning or actuality is, the
divine element in mind. With us contemplation is most pleasant and best. Now if God were a
being who was always contemplating it would be wonderful, but in fact he contemplates no only
always, but in a way so superior to ours that he is transcendent. Moreover God is living for the
actuality of thought is life and God is that actuality, and that actuality in the sense of being life
most good and eternal. We define God therefore as a perfect eternal being who possesses life and
continuous duration. .
1072 b 29, 30.

But let us return to the more important question of the nature of divine consciousness. First why
is thought regarded as the most divine thing we know? If mind thinks nothing it might be called
unconscious, and if it thinks something then the object of thought is superior to it. For in this
case its reality would be a potentiality, i.e. the power to think if an object be presented to it, and
not, as the most divine thing must be, an actuality.
But (Gods) mind must think that which is most divine and most honorable, nor can it suffer and
change. For if that which is best changes, it is for the worse, and change is motion but the divine
mind cannot move. The reality of the divine mind cannot be a potency, for then continuous
thinking would tire it. Thus the object would be superior to the potency, and thinking an object of
higher rank would be better than thinking a mean object, in which case it is not the thinking per
se but the object which is highest. Therefore it must be itself that the divine mind thinks, which
means that its thinking is a thinking about thinking.
.
But usually cognition has some foreign object and itself only incidentally. And again thinking
and being thought are different; which causes the good to attach to thought? To the first objection
we reply that I the case of the productive sciences, abstracting the matter, the reality and the
conceptual being is the object of thought, and in the case of the theoretical sciences the definition
and the thinking is the object of thought. Aside from matter the object and the mind are the same
and in the divine mind we need not consider matter.
Finally is the object of thought a composite? If it were, the divine mind would change in passing
from one part to another. But it is impossible that the divine mind change at all. As human
thought at a given moment when it is in a state of unitary apprehension, so is the divine mind
throughout eternity.

Book , the theology, is concluded with a chapter on the highest good of the universe. Is the
good of the universe something separate from it, or is it simply the order of the parts, or is it
both, as in the case with an army where both the general and the discipline are said to be good?
The universe is similar to the army, though it must be noted that in the army the general is more
strictly the good than the order, for the order depends on him and not vice versa. But we must
here point out that Aristotles God whom we have been discussing is in no sense a general of the
universe. This section is quite inconsistent with the rest. Perhaps it was part of an early
discussion which was left among his notes and when he died the editors published along with the
other notes. But before discussing Aristotles God it is right to mention that the chapter ends with
a brief critique of all rival systems. This critique is and must be identical with the attitude of
every honest philosopher: all other theories are mistaken, I alone have found the truth, (For if one
does not believe this, why write?)
But one cannot pass over Aristotles theology with a mere exposition. Anyone who is the least
interested is forced to make some criticism.
The first set of criticism is directed against Gods knowledge. That God is immaterial and his
activity therefore mental and mental without requiring a process such as a syllogism i.e. it must
be direct and intuitive knowledge, cannot be objected to; but that mid has no character of its own
and is therefore characterized by what it knows at the moment, leaves the divine mind which
knows only itself quite characterless.
Then since the sole object of Gods knowledge is itself he is ignorant of the universe. Aristotles
God is not omniscient. When Aristotle says that God must either know himself or something else
and rejects the something else he implicitly denies to God a knowledge of things. Explicitly he
states that there are some things which it is incredible that God should know. 1074 b 25-32.
Thus God has a knowledge which is not a knowledge of the universe. He has an influence on the
world that does not proceed from his knowledge Indeed his influence on the world can hardly
be called an activity at all for any inanimate object could exert this influence on a person as a
statue does on an admirer.
This leads to the criticism that Aristotles God is in no sense theistic. First there is no creation.
This is expressly stated. Of course one might say that matter though not created is eternally
sustained by and dependent on God, but Aristotle does no say so, and besides there are other
gods uncreated and independent. The movers of the celestial spheres are beings of the same kind
as the first mover. Though inferior in rank, Aristotle never shows their dependence on the
Supreme Being. God then is transcendent and deistic, but not immanent, except in that last
section of Book . If the god is God and God exists both separate from and within the whole
then he is also immanent. This section, even if not an early draft and therefore to be discarded,
does teach the immanence of the good but there is no reason given for identifying the good with
God. God, according to Aristotle, is the first cause which introduces order into the world by
sitting apart and letting things love him. He has as little to do with the world as possible.
Second, God is not theistic because there is no providence in Aristotle. There is teleology a
plenty. Everything has an end, but in what sense is one thing an end for another? Is history the

fulfillment of a divine plan, or is the conscious working of individuals, or is it a blind

unconscious tendency? The first possibility is decidedly out of keeping with the whole tone of
Aristotles philosophy. It is a decidedly religious viewpoint and Aristotle never betrays being
burdened by religion. Aristotle has no providence of God, no definite belief I rewards or
punishments, no interest in justifying the ways of God to man.
The second interpretation of teleology, that of the conscious working of individuals, is ruled out
because teleology in nature is opposed to the workings of thought. (Phys. 119 b 26) And so the
third us the only one left, unconscious purpose. To me this is well nigh meaningless. If an action
is to be viewed as not merely producing a result but aiming at it, there surely must be conscious
purpose.
[this following paragraph is crossed out in Gordon Clarks original manuscript]
Dr. Edgar A. Singer Jr. does not feel the force of this criticism and says he is quite willing to bear
the onus of supporting unconscious teleology and so be in the class with Aristotle and Leibniz.
The average common result of an action, as a statistical method for determining unconscious
purpose, appears to me to be a failure, for what is to prevent a number of average common
results to the same action. Why should the production of an apple tree be the purpose of the apple
any more than the production of apple sauce? The average common result determines the use, to
be sure, but to call use purpose is to run the risk of ambiguity.
To me the purpose of no mind is no purpose. If we hesitate to say that the apple has a mind and
consciously aims at producing apple trees, then we must say it has no purpose at all except in a
metaphorical sense and the purpose we attribute to it is the purpose of a transcendent
immanent, omniscient God. Such is the God of Abraham but not of Aristotle.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/aristotle-in-the-light-of-a-lamp-by-gordon-h-clark/
Christianity not only depends upon history but it also depends on a philosophy of history. It
depends on an explanation of the events that occurred. And the great difference between the
event of Christs death and the equally historical even of Pilates death of the pharisees deaths is
the significance and explanation of that death. And in the verses given as the title for this
morning we have a brief statement of the explanation of that event. Christ died for our sins. And
to indicate that there is more to it than just those few words the verse goes on to say according
to the scriptures, showing that there is a very detailed explanation of the meaning of Christs
death. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. Now it is very advantageous for
Christians to have the support of archaeology with reference to many of the historical statements
both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. But you could dig into the sands of
antiquity and uncover barrels of sherds and other artifacts and you would never have any
archaeological confirmation of the fact that Christ died for our sins. This theological explanation
is not amenable to archaeological evidence. They personally admit the events and yet deny the
explanation given in the scriptures.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/christ-died-for-our-sins-by-gordon-h-clark/

Knowledge and its definition have concerned philosophers for centuries, and many different
theories of knowledge have been created. There are various aspects of the attempt to define
knowledge, and Plato has examined several of them in his dialogues. Eventually Plato
formulated his theory of Idea, believing that Ideas are the true objects of knowledge.
Before studying the world of Ideas, Plato examines in the Theaetetus the world of appearance
which the senses reveal. He discusses the claim of the sense world to yield knowledge, a claim
which Protagoras extended to meaning that it yields the only knowledge we can ever have. Plato
refutes Protagoras theory that man, through his constantly changing perception, which is
knowledge, is the measure of all things. Protagoras theory was influenced by Heraclitus
assumption of universal flux. The Heraclitean philosophy was opposed by Parmenides doctrine
that all motion and change is an illusion.
In the Theaetetus, which deals with the sensible world, Plato defines what he will and will not
accept from Heraclitus doctrine which applies to the sense world, and he does the same with
Parmenides denial of change in the Sophist where the world of unchanging reality is considered.
The Theaetetus discusses the claim of the senses to yield knowledge, and it proves that if one
only considers the world of appearance and ignores the world of true being, knowledge cannot be

extracted from sensible objects. The dialogue leads to the conclusion that true knowledge must
have different objects, not sensible things, but Ideas and truths about them. The Theaetetus is an
unsuccessful attempt to define knowledge.
At the beginning of the Theaetetus, Plato asks the question with which most of the dialogue is
concerned: What is knowledge? The dialogue begins with the common sense answer to the
question, that knowledge comes to us externally through the senses. Plato considers this
perception to be the lowest form of cognition. From this common sense view he works upward
toward the world of intelligible rather than sensible objects in order to determine whether
knowledge can be found at these lower levels without having to continue upward to the
intelligible world.
Following this pattern, the young Theaetetus tries to answer Socrates question on the definition
of knowledge by identifying knowledge with perception. Socrates begins a dialectical treatment
of Theaetetus idea.
dialectic means a co-operative inquiry carried on in conversation between two or more minds
that are equally bent, not on getting the better of the argument, but on arriving at the truth.1
A hypothesis is made by one speaker, and it is corrected and improved until its complete
meaning is clear. Criticism may then result in rejection of the hypothesis or in a new idea which
should be closer to the truth. In this dialogue three suggestions are made and all rejected.
Plato first tries to reveal the full meaning of the assertion that perception is knowledge.
Theaetetus identification of perception with knowledge parallels Heraclitus theory that all
things are in motion and Protagoras doctrine that man is the measure of all things. Plato shows
how a complete, sensualistic theory of knowledge that everything that is perceptible changes
constantly from one state of being to another can be derived from these two theories.
Plato accepts some of the elements from these doctrines as true when they have the necessary
qualifications. Later he shows what he will not accept from the theories. Plato agrees with
Protagoras that perception is infallible and that what appears to a person in perception is true for
him, although Plato and Protagoras may have interpreted this assumption differently. Heraclitus
claims that everything is in motion. Plato agrees that all sensible objects are in constant flux, but
to him sensible objects are not all things. Plato, Heraclitus, and Protagoras all agree that no
contrary can exist if it is separated from its own contrary.
Heraclitean doctrine states that everything is always in the process of becoming, it never is, as
a result of constant motion. Plato alters this claim that perception is what is in the process of
becoming. He interprets the statement, What I perceive becomes for me, as meaning that the
quantity perceived becomes at the instant it is perceived and only for one percipient. The quality
has no independent existence in the physical object at other times.
This is an extension of the Protagorean doctrine. No one else can perceive the object in the same
way, and the same person cannot perceive it the same way twice. The change in an object occurs

between the object and the sense organ and not within time. The sense organ is no more constant
than the object.
Plato now gives what he thinks is a true account of the objects of perception.
Plato intends to refute the claim of perception (in spite of its infallibility) to be knowledge on the
ground that its objects have no real being, but are always becoming and changing and therefore
cannot be known.2
Plato elaborates on the theory of the nature of sense perception. The objects that are perceived
through the senses become perceptible through their motion. Even the perceiving objects
produce motion when in the process of perception.
There are two kinds of motion; one is change of place, the motion of the object, and the other is
change of quality, the motion of the perceiving subject. These motions come from opposite
sources and meet and influence each other. The percipient becomes aware of the effects of
friction of these motions, and it experiences a sense quality and the perception of this quality,
such as coldness. The constantly changing object meets constant change in the subject and
becomes cold or some other quality in the momentary perception of the subject. Two different
subjects can never perceive the same qualities in an object, and a subject cannot have two
identical perceptions of an object. Theaetetus accepts this account of perception which he has
identified with knowledge.
Plato has interpreted Protagoras assertion that what appears to each man is to him as meaning
that what he perceives has meaning for him and that his perception is infallible. Platos theory of
perception now claims that the object does not have being apart from the percipient and
interprets is to him as meaning becomes for him. Perception is infallible.
Plato then begins to question whether perception as it has been described possesses all the
characteristics of knowledge. He also criticizes the aspects of the Heraclitean and Protagorean
doctrines which go beyond what he has accepted. Two objections are made against Protagoras
man-measure theory. One is: Why is man the measure of all things? Why not some other animal,
since man has no privileged position with regard to mere sensation? Second, if what everyone
believes as the result of perception is true for him, how can any person be wiser than another?
The simple identification of perceiving and knowing is criticized. These criticisms take the
meaning of perception in its narrowest form, and although they take Theaetetus statement more
literally than he meant, they point out the various meanings of the word know. Perception must
include awareness of memory objects or the identification of perception with knowledge
becomes ridiculous. If a man sees and acquires knowledge of what he has seen and then closes
his eyes, he remembers the thing but does not see it. But if he does not see it, he does not know it
since he does not perceive it. So a man who has come to know something and remembers it does
not know it because he does not see it. This is absurd. I know must have other meanings than
I am perceiving.

In order to make the argument more fair, Socrates attempts to defend Protagoras theory as he
probably would have done himself. Protagoras replies to the objection that a person can know
and not know the same thing if he remembers it but does not see it. He claims that the memory
image is not the same thing as a present sense-impression. Therefore it is not true that a person
can know (remember) and not know (see) the same thing. The objection merely determined that
the meaning of perception must be expanded to include awareness of memory images.
Another objection was that if sense-perception and knowledge are identical, a person, who looks
at an object with one eye while he has the other shut, knows the object and does not know it.
Protagoras can reply to this by saying that the person, who has the conflicting states of
consciousness, changes with every sense impression he experiences. Since a person is different
with every experience, there is no conflict.
The main objection against his position was that if each man is the measure of his own
judgments or beliefs, how can one man be wiser than another? Although every opinion is true,
since man is the measure of all things, Protagoras believed that some opinions are better than
others, and that his responsibility as an educator was to substitute better opinions for worse ones.
He cannot substitute truer beliefs for less true ones, but only sounder ones. Sounder beliefs are
those that will produce better results in the future, results which will seem better to the person in
the future.
Protagoras doctrine, Heraclitean flux, and Theaetetus claim that perception is identical to
knowledge still have not been seriously criticized. First, Protagoras doctrine, every judgment is
true for him who makes it, is refuted. Secondly, the Heraclitean theory, all things are in motion,
is refuted as fatal to all communication. Finally, the identification of perception with knowledge
is denounced.
Plato attacks the doctrine that man is the measure, beyond immediate perception, of all
judgments. By Protagoras claim that a wiser man has better opinions than another man, the
measure of wisdom or ignorance is the result of existing or insufficient knowledge of the useful.
There may be momentary difference of opinion whether a thing is useful or harmful. Later the
issue is decided unanimously by the consequences which have occurred in the meantime. The
wise man can foresee what will happen later with reference to all judgments in the future. The
foolish man is one who cannot predict what will happen. When there is a prediction that one plan
will produce better effects than another, it is a matter of opinion whether this prediction is true
until the results occur.
Protagoras surely thought that his educational methods were truer predictions of the future than
those of other teachers. He assumes that his opinion is better than that of others. Most people
believe that Protagoras theory is false, and, since he concedes that their opinion is true (because
all opinions are true), he admits that his theory is false. Although he admits that their opinion is
true, if only for them, they do not admit that his theory is true, even for him. Since all opinion is
not even true for him, Protagoras is contradicting himself. Plato shows that not all judgments can
be true.

[At this point, there is a section of missing material dealing with Platos objections to Heraclitus.
This lost section contains the references of endnotes 3 and 4. P. McW.]
Plato does not discuss in the dialogue the doctrine of Parmenides that all motion and change is an
illusion, which is at the other extreme from the Heraclitean principle. The criticism of
Parmenides is included in the Sophist where the world of unchanging reality appears.
The elements in Protagoras doctrine and in Heracliteanism which Plato will not accept have
been eliminated. The ones that he accepts and has included in his theory of the nature of
perception remain. He now considers Theaetetus claim that perception is knowledge, which
means that it is the whole of knowledge. He argues that perception cannot be the whole of
knowledge because much of what is always called knowledge includes truths involving terms
which are not objects of perception. In addition to the separate sense organs there must be a mind
which receives their reports and makes judgments on them.
In making these judgments the thinking mind uses terms like exists, is the same as, is
different from, which are not objects of perception reaching the mind through the channel of
any special sense, but are common to all the objects of sense. The mind gains its acquaintance
with the meaning of such terms through its own instrumentality, not by the commerce between
bodily organs and objects.5
Plato concludes that perception is not the whole of knowledge. His second conclusion is that
even within its own sphere, perception is not knowledge at all. The objects of perception do not
have the true reality which the objects of knowledge must have. Although perception is infallible,
which is the first characteristic of knowledge, it cannot apprehend existence and truth, the second
mark of knowledge. The simplest judgment is beyond the scope of perception.
The advance to knowledge is a gradual recovery of clear vision, possible only by a training in
dialectic.6
Knowledge, to Plato, has the real for its objects, and the objects of perception do not have true
and permanent being. Plato has disproved the claim that perception is knowledge.
Since it has been concluded that knowledge is not perception, Theaetetus suggests that
knowledge be defined as true judgment or right opinion. He has realized that knowledge must be
above the level of mere sensation; thinking or judgment must be involved. Judgments can be true
or false, and he claims that any true judgment is knowledge.
Socrates then asks how false judgment is possible. If we agree that anything is either known or
unknown to us, it is difficult to see how we can ever think that one thing, whether we know it or
not, can be another thing, whether we know it or not, in other words, mistake one thing for
another. As long as the question of false judgment is restricted to these narrow limits, it cannot be
explained.
Socrates also objects to identifying false judgment as thinking the thing that is not. When a man
thinks, he thinks something, a thing that is. To think what is not is to think nothing, which is the

same as not to think at all. Therefore it is impossible to think what is not. Thinking what is not is
something different from thinking falsely. False judgment cannot be defined along these lines.
In the dialogue Plato equates the act of mistaking one thing for another with making the silent
statement that one thing is the other. If we have both things clearly before our minds, we never
judge that one thing is another. The idea of mistaking one thing for another does not explain how
we can make a false judgment, if it is assumed that the things must either be known (present to
the mind) or unknown (absent from the mind).
To avoid this objection, the contents of the memory are introduced into the argument. The
memory is represented as a wax tablet on which impressions of the sense stimuli and the
consideration of the stimuli are made. If the impressions are not clear or become distorted when
new impressions are made on the tablet, it is possible to mistake them or to read them
incorrectly. Error comes, not in the act of perception, but in judgments made about what is
perceived. Only a small number of false judgments can be defined as misfitting perception to
thought. This is not a definition of false judgment in general; it does not include cases where
perception is not involved.
In order to illustrate such cases, the memory is compared to a bird-cage in which all our ideas are
confined. The birds flying around in the cage are like pieces of knowledge. A person can possess
knowledge without having it around him. It is impossible to possess what one does not possess,
so a man cannot know what he does not know. He can get hold of a false judgment about
something by catching a different piece of knowledge as he might catch a wrong kind of bird.
When he gets hold of the right piece about it, he thinks what is true and has a true judgment
about it. False judgment is the interchange of pieces of knowledge.
However it is difficult to explain how a person can fail to recognize a false belief as false and
mistake it for a true belief which is stored in his mind. Socrates arguments result in the question,
How can I know what I know? How can I recognize knowledge when I have it and be sure that it
is knowledge?7
The term knowledge is very ambiguous, and, until all its meanings have been revealed, false
judgment cannot really be explained. Socrates discussion has pointed out some of its meaning.
Platos analysis of false judgment is included in the Sophist when the Forms have been
introduced.
The pieces of knowledge stored in the mind are no more than true beliefs. Our attitude toward
a false belief is the same as it is toward a true one. Our confidence in belief is not based on
reason. Socrates contrasts a jurys second-hand belief when convinced of the facts to the direct
knowledge of the eye-witness who has seen the fact. Even if the jury finds the right verdict, they
are still judging without knowledge, only belief. If true belief and knowledge were the same, a
juryman could never have a correct belief without knowledge. Therefore, knowledge cannot be
defined as true belief.

True belief lacked something which was necessary in order to call it knowledge. So Theaetetus
suggests that knowledge is true belief accompanied by an account or explanation. Plato considers
the various possible meanings of account and finally rejects the suggestion. The account is not
enough to raise correct opinion to the level of knowledge.
Socrates considers a theory that he has heard which claims that there are certain elements, the
fundamentals of nature, and all other things are complexes of these elements. We have the simple
direct perception of the elements, but we do not have knowledge of them. At first we have a true
notion without an account of the complex. When we have enumerated the elements of the
complex, we have given an account of it and know it. The only things the theory considers as the
objects of cognition are concrete individual things. If we enumerate the parts of a complex thing,
we reach the elements which cannot be explained and therefore cannot be known. The process of
acquiring knowledge is the process of analyzing a complex which is not known into its parts
which cannot be known.
However if the letters of a word are considered to be the elements of a syllable, our knowledge
of the elements or letters is usually clearer than our knowledge of syllables. The theory, though,
regards our perception of elements as inferior to the knowledge we supposedly gain by giving an
account of the complex.
Then, if we are to argue from our own experience of elements and complexes to other cases, we
shall conclude that elements in general yield knowledge that is much clearer than knowledge of
the complex and more effective for a complete grasp of anything we seek to know. If anyone
tells us that the complex is by its nature knowable, while the elements unknowable, we shall
suppose that, whether he intends it or not, he is playing with us.8
There are three possible meanings of account, and none of them succeeds in converting belief
into knowledge. It is still assumed that the only things that can be known are concrete individual
things and that knowledge is the result of giving an account of such things.
One of the possible meanings of account is the expression of thought in speech. Anyone who is
not deaf or mute can speak, and therefore anyone who has a correct notion can express it in
speech, in other words, can give an account of it. So there can be no correct notion apart from
knowledge.
The second possible meaning is the enumeration of the elementary parts. This meaning is
considered without believing that the element must be unknowable. We may have a correct belief
about every letter in a name and write it correctly, but not have the assured knowledge that would
prevent us from writing it incorrectly another time. If we do not understand it, although we have
a correct belief about its parts, we do not know it.
The third possible meaning of account is the statement of a distinguishing mark. When we grasp
how an object differs from all other things, we gain knowledge of what we previously had a true
notion about. However, Socrates says this means that when we have a right notion of the way
things are different from other things, we are to add a correct notion of the way they differ from
other things, which is ridiculous. If having an account of something means we must know the
differences rather than just having a notion of it, the knowledge is correct belief with a

knowledge of differentness, which is absurd. We cannot gain knowledge which is believed to be

superior to beliefs, by adding an account in any of the senses that have been considered. All these
attempts to define knowledge have failed.
The necessary conclusion from the dialogues discussion is that true knowledge has a different
kind of things as its objects. It is Platos view that
the objects of which knowledge must give an account are not concrete individuals but objects
of thought, and that the simpler terms in which the account must be stated are not material parts
but higher concepts.9
The objects of knowledge are not sensible things, but Ideas and truths about them. These objects,
which are not discussed in the Theaetetus, do not change in any respect; they had no beginning
and will have no end. Therefore it is possible for us to know them. The Theaetetus leads to the
conclusion that reality must be incorporeal by illustrating the failure of all attempts to gain
knowledge from sensible objects. The dialogue has been an unsuccessful attempt to define
knowledge.
________________________
1 Cornford, Francis M., Platos Theory of Knowledge, 30.
2 Ibid., 49.
3 Ibid., 92.
4 Ibid., 99.
5 Ibid., 105.
6 Ibid., 108.
7 Ibid., 140.
8 Ibid., 154.
9 Ibid.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/platos-theory-of-knowledge-by-gordon-h-clark/
Other Foundation can no men lay that this is laid which is Jesus Christ. I Cor. 3:11
or, to change the picture slightly Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone Eph. 2:20
and also The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner.
{Psa. 118:22, Mt. 21:42, I Peter 21:42, Acts 4:11}
The question of I Peter occurs in a text where Christians themselves are described as stones,
indeed living stone, in Gods building.
The picture of the building and the stones, in addition to the idea of solidarity and sturdiness,
implies a careful method of building.
What is the Christians method of building? In I Peter again, a negative statement is made. It
speaks of some stones that can not be used in the building, viz: those people who stumble at the
world. Positively therefore the stones useful in building are people who accept the word.

The same idea can be derived from Eph 3:20, where it speaks of the prophets and apostles as
foundation stones next to the corner stone.
But how did the apostles found the church? What did they do? Obviously they preached the
word.
i.e. the word of Christ. Neo-orthodoxy says the Bible is not the revelation: Christ is Gods
revelation and the Bible is only a witness to the revelation. But Christ does not so separate
himself from his word. N.B. he rebuked the Pharisees for rejecting the words of Moses: Had ye
believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me [so far believing Moses =
believing what he wrote] and to continue But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe
my words? Jn. 5:46- 47.
I Peter [again] 2.2 is addressed to new converts and says as newborn babes, desire the sincere
milk of the word, and ye may grow thereby.
Literally: desire the logical milk.
But the milk is the word because of Hebrews 5:12-13.
For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be
the first principles of the oracles of God; and are becoming such as have need of milk, and not of
strong meat. For everyone that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness, for he is a
babe.
Both the milk and the meat represent the word.
And this is buttressed in I Cor. 3:2 explains that the Corinthians were babes and needed milk,
because they could not yet eat meat.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/the-church-and-our-church-by-gordon-h-clark/

Chapter eight begins with an all too brief but excellent account of Abraham Kuyper. Two
sentences, in particular the second, give the basic idea: It is absurd to suggest that the natural
knowledge of God without enrichment by the special, could ever effect a satisfying result.
The crucial point in Kuypers theology is that fallen man can perceive Gods general revelation
only through the superadded light of special revelation. (p. 137). The reviewer commends the
author for his very accurate resume of Kuypers main position, but deplores his rejection of it. I
acknowledge the authors strictures on persuasive definitions, but his argument that Kuyper
cannot explain human guilt can, I believe, be satisfactorily answered. Also the author does not
seem to realize that while man sees the stars of heaven with perfect clarity, he cannot deduce the
proposition that God created them. Only after a man has some knowledge of God can he
interpret the nightly display as a work of a supernatural creator.

Going on then to Van Til the author repeatedly appeals to Romans 1:20 as an unanswerable
objection to all presuppositionalism. But though he says that men get some understanding of God
from viewing the stars quite apart from Scripture, he never shows how this can occur. The best

attempt was that of the Aristotelian Aquinas. Most modern non-Lutheran Protestants refuse to
make the attempt. And if any does, he is not likely to improve on Thomas.
If anyone wishes to object to Van Til, it would be better to show, not that he allows the
unregenerate no knowledge at all, but rather to show that he denies the regenerate mind any
knowledge at all. Van Tils words are, the knowledge God has and the knowledge possible to
man do not coincide at any single point. Hence since God knows all truth, man knows nothing.

Under the following subhead, Intuitional Knowledge of God (p. 228), where he seems to use
some of the persuasive language he defined on p. 140, the author in his clear reference to the
Logos, and in his explicit rejection of empiricism (p. 229) seems to this reviewer to remove all
reason for his high evaluation of sensory experience and any invalid inference based upon it.
Taken by themselves which better could be said than the minds intuitive consciousness of God
logically precedes and ground all reasoning about God from the observable world. For unless the
term God is invested with meaning through the religious apriori, all God-talk is not only
meaningless, but impossible. (p. 229)
And in spite of his previous misuse of causation (as I interpret him) he adds unless man
acknowledges God in and of Himself [capital H] in his [lower case] mind, all predication about
God on the basis of causation or order lacks significations. Perhaps he and I differ as to the
meaning of the terms religious apriori and effable intuition, but the quotations just given and
their context seem to me to suppose the presuppositionalism he elsewhere rejects.
But then he returns to the invalid cosmological theme. no person of sound mind can behold the
size, energy, heat, and luminosity of the sun without being reminded of the great Creator-God
(p. 236). But, first, here we have the persuasive words sound mind. If we point to someone
whom astronomy does not remind of God, the author can reply, but he is not of sound mind. It
was not the sun but Halleys comet that I saw in 1912. I remember distinctly what I thought:
Haleys comet will return in 1984 Ill have to live to age 82 to see it again. Now, Victor Hugo
when Jtais seul prs des flots, par une nuit dtoiles. Pas un nuage aux cieux, sur les mers pas
de voiles thought of le Seigneur Dieu. But not many people are Victor Hugo. If the author
means that every man thinks of God when he sees the heat, the energy, and the luminosity of the
sun, a single atheistic astronomer refutes his assertion. Do all who study the sun on Kitt Peak
believe in God?
The authors attempt (p. 239) to distinguish between two kinds of Theotes, and between essence
and qualities, indicates the need of an alternate exegesis and a more precise theology. The
challenge is thus: If by reflecting on the visible data of the cosmos man rationally infers further
feature of Gods character (p. 240), then this rational inference should be written out in a series
of valid syllogisms. Aquinas tried it and failed. Even the author in the very next paragraph admits
that there is no strictly logical deduction, and adds that the existence of God needs no
proof. Then he returns to his previous idea that the arguments for Gods existence
undoubtedly are useful apologetic tools by which a rationally significant case for Biblical theism
can be advanced.

The author stresses such empirical knowledge by repeating, several times, What may be known
of God is manifest in them. But obviously men may know that God justifies his elect by means
of faith. Yes the Romans and many of todays scientists do not know it. The author tries to evade
this rebuttal by adopting Godets alteration of Pauls text: What can be known of God without
the help of extraordinary revelation. But this is Godet, not Paul.
No wonder that the author lists me (p. 244) with Kuyper and Van Til, but I judge that the other
two, as well as I, are not particularly happy to be listed with others who do not believe the Bible.
Or, more accurately, we do not care to have them listed with us.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/review-of-general-revelation-by-bruce-a-demarest-bygordon-h-clark/

But there are two points which vitiate Cullmans construction. The first has already been stated.
To defend history by denying the Biblical explanation of the events destroys Christian faith as
much as existentialism does. The explanation includes the doctrine of the Trinity, the eternal
decree, and a complex of doctrines which, though not themselves historical, underly the events.
Were the arbitrary, ingenious, and subjective explanations of every theologian and critic brought
into court on an equal footing, the result would be that no meaning could authoritatively be
assigned to any event, and that non-authoritatively every meaning could be assigned.
But orthodox Christianity has always asserted the Biblical explanations of these events.
Revelation is not confined to the events as such; they reveal almost nothing. Revelation must
include, in a very real sense revelation must be a verbal communication of truth.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/excursus-on-cullman-by-gordon-h-clark/

I Definition
The fundamental idea of Natural Law, writes Ernest Baker, is the idea that there is a natural
justice, based on the reason of man, which lies behind all positive law. According to Jacques
Maritain, there is, by very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason
can discover and according to which the human will must act in order to attune itself to the
necessary ends of the human being. The unwritten law, or Natural Law, is nothing more than
that.
Implicit in all definitions of the Natural Law concept is the idea that there is a law written in the
heart of man which is in harmony with something similarly written into the universe. If this is so,
the universe is not merely brute fact, nor is it limited to that order of things which we can see,
touch or otherwise contact by means of our senses. The implication is that there is another order
of reality which we can know by reason, intuition or revelation.

Platonic philosophy presents us with a transcendent realm of Forms or Ideas which somehow
interpenetrate and influence this natural world. God, for Plato, is the measure of all things and
holds all things in His Hand.

Aristotle, Platos pupil and critic, for centuries provided the philosophical foundation for Natural
Law doctrine. During the Middle Ages, Aristotle was The Philosopher. In the philosophy of
Plato, the Forms or Ideas were manifested in individuals but their abode was elsewhere; for
Aristotle, the Form or Idea was immanent in the individual as a potency to be realized in and
through the individuals life. What each thing is when fully developed, he wrote, we call its
nature, whether we are speaking of a man, a horse, or a family. The ethical imperative which
emerges from this position may be simply stated as follows: Realize your nature, conceived as
the ultimate end or purpose of your life, by cooperating with the Idea within you which drives
toward completion. It follows that whatever thwarts this development is repugnant to nature,
and hence bad; whatever enhances this development cooperates with nature, and is good.
Ernest Barker puts the matter into more technical language, as follows: In Aristotles general
terminology the word nature, as applied to man and human things, has three senses. It is
something which is immanent in the primordial constitution of man, as a potentiality of
development. Again it is something which has developed with his development something
which is a growth of his potentiality; but a growth in which his art, or creative mind (which is
part of his constitution), has cooperated with the promptings of what we may roughly call his
instinct, or immanent impulse. Finally, it is something which is inherent in the final development
of man, and part of his final cause or purpose.

Far reaching changes in mans outlook attended the waning of the Middle Ages and the birth of
the modern world roughly the period comprised in the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.
Perhaps one of the first indications of the impending revolution in human life occurred even
earlier with the thinking of William of Occam, a Franciscan monk who died c. 1349. William
engaged in the Realist- Nominalist controversy as to whether universals are real or are mere
signs by which the mind represents reality to itself. William took the Nominalist position that
only individual particles objects of sense are real. Abstractions, general ideas objects of
thought or intuition are mere names.
The medieval period was tired; the vitality of its leading ideas had lessened. People wanted to get
down to earth after the strain of other-worldliness. It was time for another of those gigantic
pendulum swings which mark history. William of Occam did not consider himself a
revolutionary, far from it. But he released an idea which has been spelling itself out from that day
to this. Richard Weaver has brilliantly traced this development in his book, Ideas Have
Consequences. The basic idea of the modern period, the past several centuries, has been the
growing assurance that man can organize his own life and that of his societies without reference
to any order of reality than that supplied by sensory experience. In the terminology of religion,

secularism is the blanket term for a number of ideologies which are premised on the belief that
man can organize his life apart from God.
This development reaches its logical conclusion in Marxism. A 1950 publication of the British
Communist Party puts the case bluntly: The materialists assert that the material world is real,
and that the mind is a product of matter at a late stage of development (when the bran has
developed.
In opposition to idealism, materialism maintains: that there is only one world, the material
world, and thought is a product of matter; there can be no thinking without a brain.
As was indicated early (p. 1) the traditional belief of Christendom, a belief shared by almost
every other developed culture of record, is that reality is complex. In addition to the realm of
nature where things change, decay and perish, things we can see, taste, touch and smell, there is
an order of supernature with which we are in touch via thought and intuition. The basic premise
of religion is the existence of this latter realm. But if it is assumed that the only avenue to reality
is by way of experience and experiment, then a supersensible realm is denied by this first
premise.

The 19th century witnessed the triumph of secularism in its various forms; positivism,
materialism, mechanism, scientism. Men, by employing the scientific method in limited areas
continued to put more and more of nature under their control. In our own time they gained the
key to the forces resident in the atom. Science deals expressly with the measurable and
quantitative aspects of things, but its successes in these areas laid the ground for a claim to
universal validity.
If it be granted that the methods of science are the only avenues to reality, then whatever cannot
be rendered accessible by these methods must perforce be unreal. This would be the case when it
came to judging the things of religion. God, if He exists, does not exist as does a material object.
The methods for finding out about material objects is therefore unsuitable for finding God. But if
all methods for getting at the truth but one, the scientific, are discounted in advance then the fact
that the scientific method does not reveal God must mean that He does not exist. Similar
fallacious reasoning disposed of all intangible or spiritual reality.

It is important to note that the Natural Law philosophy declined, not because of any logical or
structural weakness of its own, but because of the discarding of the king of the world view within
which the Natural Law concept is plausible. Statutory law is on the books where it can be seen; it
can be enforced and infractions of it punished. All this takes place within the material, natural,
human worlds. The Natural Law philosophy, on the other hand, takes as its first premise that
there is a realm beyond the material, natural and human worlds. If there is such a realm, it is
outside the province of science according to sciences own first premise.

For their own limited purposes and as a matter of operational procedure, the sciences work on
the basic assumption that the world of physical nature acts like a closed system whose
constituent parts are bound together by cause and effect relationships something like the
mechanism of a clock. As an operating hypothesis, this is a legitimate assumption. Purely as a
matter of operational procedure or methodology the sciences exclude the supernatural, and this
exclusion is justified by the results obtained. This point is the origin of much error.
The initial premise of the scientific method which, as I have said, excludes the supernatural as a
matter of operational procedure, also involves religion, because religion is rooted in the
conviction that there is a supernatural order. Such concepts as eternity, the spiritual world, the
realm of ultimate values, and God, are things which, if they are real, have their abode in some
realm other than that of physical nature. These things may be real, but that is beside the present
point. I merely want to point out that, contrary to much popular belief, these things have not been
proved unreal by the methods of science or by any of its discoveries. Science starts with the
premise that these things are not within its province. Within its own terms, it does not deal with
them at all.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/perspective-on-natural-law-by-gordon-h-clark/

The theme which will underlie and connect the discussion of these men in this paper is spiritual
idealism. By idealism we mean a philosophy whose principles are based on mind rather than on
matter. For instance, modern idealism is of the Platonic type, based on intellect, not on
imagination or emotion or volition, though these might possibly generate types of idealism. By
spiritualism we mean that the ultimate basis of the universe is spirit which is neither identical
with mind nor matter, but mind and matter are manifestations of spirit, the only reality. The word
spirit comes from the Latin spiritus which is the translation of the Greek word , a
gentle wind or breeze, a breath or moving air. This word was first used by the Stoics who
also employed the phrase a manufacturing fire, intelligent. Or we might use
which is the same as . To put this in modern terms, we are speaking of a hot intelligent
luminous gas operating under great pressure. The conceptions of spirit were never entirely free
from materialism, though the tendency was toward absolute idealism. The attributes of spirit are
all mental, yet they, the spirits, shine and are like light. These then are systems which have tried
to figure out Gods relationship to the material universe and mans relation to God. So we call
them spiritualistic and speak of spiritual idealism where the ideal of spirit is the dominant note.

No mean contribution did Plato make to the concept of spirit. It had been the common opinion of
those who preceded him that the world of sense was all. But that this is not so the Sophists had
demonstrated. But in so doing they had practically destroyed all reality. Everyone was both right
and wrong. At first Plato, under this influence, accepted the teaching. But listening to Socrates he
discovered a reality of which these men knew nothing. An act of virtue may be an object of
sense, but Virtue is not. Yet virtue is a real something, it is a . If so where does it exist? Not in
this world because this world is a world of sense, Virtue is not an object of sense. It exists
therefore in the super-sensible world, in which the soul existed before birth, and to which it will
return after death. In this super-sensible world exist the Ideas, Virtue is one of them. This then is
the second kind of reality, a rational or spiritual reality, and it is the cause of the reality of the
world of sense.
Plato is the first man to conceive of spirit as reality. He denies that spirit or mind has any
material attributes. Mind and matter not merely different, they are contrasted. One is visible, one
is not. Matter is tangible, mind is not. Spirit is unitary and unextended, matter is not. This mental
entity is power and energy. In the middle period of Platos thought, soul is to be identified with
the intellect. Later, soul means consciousness. The spiritual universe is also modified in the later
period. At first it is a universe of concepts existing eternally and independently, it is an intellect,
it is God. But later he conceives of the highest being having these concepts which are not now
unchangeable. They are not God, but God has them and their attributes as well. The concepts
change as God thinks for they are elements in a process of thinking, they are the mind of God.

As a point of departure we will start with his idea of intuition. Apprehending a concept is
intuition, and may be potential or actual. But Aristotle is not clear on what a concept is. Is it
identical with the thing perceived? Thought can perceive distinctions which it cannot analyze.
Potentiality is the cause which produces actuality. The state of being a baby is that of a potential
geometrician. A sleeping geometrician is a hexis. A man geometrizing is actuality. These three
are different. The soul exists in hexis when asleep. Hexis is actuality in essence.
The concept is like sympathetic ink after being brought out. Before the ink is developed there is
potentiality but no concept.
Intuition is the unifying power. Things may be identical, partially identical or connected in
thought only. For instance, man is white. That is a . The act of conjunction is
performed by intuition. The grasping of an extended thing with an infinity of parts as a unity, is
an act of intuition. The unity is in the object, but is put there by the thinking mind. Yet concepts
are not unities themselves. The concept man is composed of qualities and differences. Speaking
of qualities and differences Aristotle says there is no summum genus, since being is not a genus.
Privative conceptions require explanation. The concept not man is certainly not man but one
cannot think not man without thinking man. This is done by intuition. Though we think
man and the vacancy of what is left, we know we are thinking one thing and not two.
Aristotle made God identical with intellect and intuition. Reasoning, or the , has
no content. It is a power but not a mind. The world is created as a cinema picture on the screen

by a beam of 1ight. There is no picture in the light, but when it strikes anything, a whole world
appears.
The proof for the existence of God is a difficulty which Aristotle as well as all others must face.
What is the relation between the idea in consciousness and das Ding an sich? Aristotle slides
over the ambiguity, for instance in the word , which he sometimes uses in the sense of
activity, and sometimes as actuality. The Independent, the Immutable and the Eternal, is the
object of the First Philosophy, which is first because it contains the greatest number of
generalizations. God alone possesses all First Philosophy for First Philosophy is the knowledge
of God. Gods self-knowledge of himself is First Philosophy complete. This makes the divine
mind an aggregate of concepts.
First Philosophy deals with concepts abstracted from and independent of matter, pure
conceptions. First Philosophy is identical with theology for the Independent, Eternal and
Immutable must be divine. These concepts, as well as any others, must be in a mind. Therefore,
as stated in the Metaphysics, Book E ch.1, God is an aggregate of pure concepts isolated from
matter. Do these concepts exist as existents or are they merely universals in rebus? Aristotle says
both. There exists as immutable reality first in rank in the scale of existence, universal because
it is first, not first because it is universal. But this is pure Platonism.
In 8, reality in form is actuality. There exists a first actuality prior all others. Every actuality is
preceded by another which is its cause. This goes on in a regression to the Eternal First Mover.
Nothing potential is eternal, therefore the Unmoved Mover is actual. This actuality is not the
world of Ideas, which contradicts 1. The Ideas are the potentialities of these things, they are the
concepts of the First Mover. Mental reality is not actual until it is created in the material world.
Again this contradicts E 1, where he says mental is the only reality.
In 6 Aristotle argues that there must be an Eternal Uncaused Reality. This first Reality is
Absolute Actuality. Because it is immaterial it is mental. It is immaterial because eternal, for
nothing material can be eternal. This is the Motionless Mover.
You think of a cake and walk toward it, or you think of a girl and run after her. Within the
confines of this sentence then, she is a motionless mover. The cake and the girl draw you because
you think of them. The idea of the Good is a motionless mover, for when you think of Good, it
draws you. And this Motionless Mover is God. God is an object of desire, and therefore
something in consciousness. God by existing causes motion which in turn causes other motion.
But directly God only causes the circular motion of the external celestial sphere. It is love of God
which makes the sphere move, and this love makes the world not God, a conscious being. But
Aristotle thinks it proves that God is conscious also. The object of desire, however, is not
necessarily a conscious mind.
In 7, 1072 b 28, Aristotle says, ,
.
Why should intuition necessarily be divine? Intuition is unchanging actuality, not a power but
just absolute actuality. It apprehends itself, an intuition of intuition. But how can intuition be

intuition of itself? The object is the cognition itself. Yet everything immaterial is indivisible.
Just as the human intuition, at all events, that which is perceiving complexes, is at a given time,
(for its good is not found in this or that, but its best is in a kind of a whole, since it is something
different) so is the intuition of self through all eternity. Thus the divine mind is as aggregate of
concepts; while God is something above the concepts.
God is , which in Plato means unmeasured duration. It is not exactly eternity. It is unmarked,
therefore it is not time. Was is and shall be being modes of time, are wrongly ascribed to
God.
in Aristotle is more precise. Neither place, void, nor time is outside the universe. Any being
outside external sphere is not affected by place, body or time. Therefore the word means merely
no time. Moving things constitute time, but outside the universe there is no motion.

In the first epistle of John it seems that some have seceded from the church on the issue that the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, 1 John 2:18 ff. The heretics are claiming that they
possess the Father though they deny the Son. 1 John 4:1-6 indicates that they had no revelation
but derived their knowledge from the world. Their Spirit is a lying spirit, but we worship the
Spirit of Truth whom the world cannot receive.
http://thegordonhclarkfoundation.com/files/2014/11/Unpublished-32.-The-Development-Of-TheConcept-Of-Spirit-In-The-Philosophy-Of-The-Later-Age-typed.pdf