Clark and Van Til controversy

Anyone who is familiar with the life and work of Cornelius Van Til has probably heard about the Clark/Van Til controversy.  The typical way that this story has been told is that it really was a low point in Van Til's otherwise respectable career.  It may seem like an odd detour in his life where he was only being a controversialist wanting to engage in trivial arguments. John Muether, however, persuasively argues that not only was Van Til's arguments in this case of the greatest importance, but also that the whole scenario should be regarded as a high-point in his life. 

Gordon Clark was an OPC ruling elder and a popular philosophy professor at Wheaton College.  He and Van Til had mutual respect for one another and Clark even used Van Til's apologetics syllabus for his senior philosophy class.  Both were staunch Calvinists with regard to soteriology (so much so that Clark was ousted from Wheaton because of the school's Arminian leaning). 

The two men did have serious disagreements.  Basically, Clark espoused that the only difference between our knowledge of things and God's knowledge of things is quantitative. That is, we know things the same way that God knows them, except he knows a lot more. Van Til, along with the rest of the historically Reformed tradition, asserted that there is not only a quantitative difference between our knowledge and God's knowledge, but also a qualitative difference.  Because God is incomprehensible and because there is an infinitely vast Creator/creature distinction, we must not assume that we know things exactly the same way God does.  Van Til further described the way that God communicates with us his creatures by speaking of the doctrine of analogy. This is a development of Calvin's idea of God condescending to speak to us in "baby talk" so that we might understand.  Van Til taught that we must not assume a one-to-one correspondence between our language and God's ("univocal speech"), but also, on the other hand, we ought not assume that God's word is unreliable ("equivocal speech").  His revelation of himself is true and reliable, but this is done by way of analogy (of His choosing). For example, when the Bible says that God is loving, we ought not to assume that God's love is exactly the same as the love that we as humans experience.  Rather, we ought to believe that it is "like" the way we love (only perfect and infinite). Clark feared that this doctrine of analogy was nothing more than total skepticism.  He claimed that it robbed us as believers of any confidence in God's word and brought us to the same place as the modernists who questioned Scripture's reliability.  This, however, is a classic misunderstanding of a carefully stated doctrine.  We can be sure of God's word because he is the ultimate source of it and it is he who has chosen the analogies; it is not the opinions of man.

The actual controversy was sparked when the Presbytery of Philadelphia (of which Van Til was a member), ordained Gordon Clark in a somewhat hasty manner, even though he lacked any formal ministerial training. The 1945 General Assembly launched an investigation about whether Presbytery had made a procedural error as well as formed a study committee to discuss whether Clark's doctrine of divine and human knowledge really protected the Creator/creature distinction so clearly taught in Scripture.  It is important to note that Van Til WAS NOT a member of this committee.  Perhaps the most well known member of the committee (and also the reason why Van Til felt confident that he didn't even need to serve on it) was his colleague and close friend Dr. John Murray.  Nevertheless, the committee did use Van Til's arguments and terminology, thus it is typically called the Clark/Van Til debate.  The reason why things got so heated is mainly due to Clark's supporters who were in favor of turning the OPC in a different direction than where Van Til and others (like those at Westminster Seminary) had been taking it.  Those who sought to approve Clark's ordination did so, not necessarily because they agreed with him, but because they wanted the OPC to become more a broadly minded Evangelical body, compared to the more narrow, confessionally Reformed identity that it has maintained. Even though Clark kept his ordination, he and many who fought for him eventually left the OPC; being dissatisfied with the confessional Reformed identity that prevailed. In this way, while Van Til, Murray, and others may have lost the battle, but the war was one.