Do you think it correct to base your faith in antimony or fact? What good is presuppostional hermenuetics that are founded on admitted paradox and the unexplainable?
To the extent that Till does that, it isn't valid. The rational cannot be predicated on the contradictory.
His presuppositional argument for the existence of God is not predicated on the Calvinist version of God but merely on the existence of God and the nature of logic.
Wrong. Clark champions logic and dispels reverting to antimony, ever.
It isn't wrong...
According to Gordon Clark, the issue of biblical paradox is totally subjective. What may be paradoxical to one may not be to another (The Atonement, 32). He says that a Biblical paradox is nothing more than “a charley-horse between the ears that can be eliminated by rational massage.” (The Philosophy of Gordon Clark, edited by Ronald Nash, 78).
I have a whole collection of articles about and by Gordon Clark and have quoted him extensively on this forum for several years. I know what he teaches because I've actually read many of his writings. I am not wrong.
Hardly. Clark stood for Logos versus paradox, in the face of losing his office and standing in the OPC.
I didn't suggest otherwise. In fact, I said as much and give him credit for being the most intellectually consistent Calvinist that the world has ever produced. But if you think that because he stated a belief that there are no paradoxes in the bible that he rejected all the paradoxes in his theology, you'd be flatly wrong. He did not do that. He simply conceded that there was something we humans didn't understand, about that aspect of God. That there was missing information, not a contradiction. And that's where he and a lot of otherwise well meaning Christians go astray. They are willing to accept doctrine with or within reason. If the doctrine is rational that's great but if it isn't they'll rationalize in some fashion to make it work. Gordon held that Clavinism is true and that logic works. Were those two truths collided, he held to the doctrine and proclaimed that there was no real contradiction and that the deficit was not in scripture but in our understanding of it, yet without the willingness to alter his understanding.
Yes, which it always is . . .
That's a fine thing to say but Calvinists use it as a broad sword that they swing at anything that contradicts their doctrine, not the plain reading of scripture! It is to their doctrine that Calvinists are true, not the scripture.
Why would he alter his doctrine, upon the grounds of doctrine presuppostionally grounded in paradox and antinomy?
Clark was not the presupositionalist, Van Til was. Gordon wanted things to be rational but did not consistently allow the rational conclusions to sway his doctrinal beliefs.
No . . Clark stood his ground on the presupposition that Godly Truth is revealed to man, according to that same Truth. No mystery. All light. All reasonable truths of God, given to men in the form that is intellectually understood by them by the powers of enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.
It was lip service, Nang! But admittedly not to the degree that is true of average Calvinists like yourself. Clark I think actually tried to find rational arguments but when none could be found he did not alter his doctrine, he simply wrote it off as unexplainable due to a lack of information or intelligence or whatever.
How many Clarkian works have you read?
I have a whole collection of various article and have read lots of those. I've read his textbook on logic and I've read portions of The Philosophy of Gordon Clark which is not a book by him but rather a book that includes essays that he gave. So, there's more of what he wrote that I haven't read than what I have but I've read enough to be familiar with what he taught and how he thought. Practically the whole of Calvinism's establishment types bent over backward to get the guy discredited and removed from his professorship because they were afraid of his adherence to rational thought and so its sort of a dangerous thing for you to even be citing him. He was barely a Calvinist and wouldn't have been one at all had he been just 1% more corragious than he was and allowed his keen mind to persuadge him that a just God cannot predestine people to Hell.
That is the M.O. of the neo-Calvininists, such as R.C. Sproul and company.
Every single Calvinist does it. You do it, AMR does it. Dr. Lamerson does it, Clark did it, Van Til did it, R.C Sproul does it, every Baptist minister I've ever met does it. They all do it. They have to or else their doctrine cannot work.
Sovereign, for example, does not mean meticulous control of everything that happens. Sovereign simply means "highest authority". There isn't a Calvinist anywhere that would accept that definition even though it's completely accurate and true.
You spout your own erroneous presuppositions, and attempt, but cannot succeed, to pass them off as being the beliefs and fault of all Calvinists, in any way, shape, or form.
Any exception would only serve to prove the rule, Nang.
And my position on God giving us a choice is not a presupposition its just the plain reading of Scripture. The bible explicitly states that God sets before us life and death and pleads with us to choose life. It's not a presupposition when the bible explicitly states it. I am presupposing that the bible means it when it says it, is that what you meant? You, on the other hand, presuppose that we have no ability to choose and understand that the passage means the opposite of what it says. That when God says to choose life, it means that we don't have a choice because we've been predestined to heaven or hell, life or death and that it had nothing to do with anything we did or didn't do. God predestined it because He wanted to and for no other reason. And so Deuteronomy 30:19 is either meaningless or an antinomy or both or Calvinism is false. You are, in fact, that trapped by one single bible verse.
You can keep accusing Reformers of this, but many of us (Clarkians) know better, and can defend ourselves from your false claims.
But you never ever do. :think:
Go ahead and do it, if you can, Nang!
Make the argument that shows how a belief that a just God can predestine someone to Hell before He ever created them and for no reason at all that had anything to do with the person's actions.
“God is moved to mercy for no other reason but that he wills to be merciful.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 8)
“… predestination to glory is the cause of predestination to grace, rather than the converse.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 9)
“Therefore, those whom God passes over, he condemns; and this he does for no other reason than that he wills to exclude them from the inheritance which he predestines for his own children.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christia/n Religion, Book 3, Chapter 23, Paragraph 1)
“We cannot assign any reason for his bestowing mercy on his people, but just as it so pleases him, neither can we have any reason for his reprobating others but his will.” (John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 22, Paragraph 11)
Show me the argument, Nang! How can such a God be just?
The only way you can do it is to redefine the word "just", which is exactly what Calvinists have done for 400 years.
You are really just wasting your time, trying to sell your Open Theology views, and put down Reformers, who hold to a higher standard of reasonable thought, even higher than your own.
Right, the standard you've got is...
"Truth cannot be understood or made any sense of by us mere humans. It's not for us to understand everything but to accept what we are taught by faith. To accept Calvinism is to accept Christianity and to reject one is to reject the other. Calvinism is the Christian faith, everything else is a lie which, if you accept it, its because God predestined you to Hell fire and you couldn't have believed Calvinism if you had wanted to."
Resting in Him,
Clete