Westminster Seminary California clark

r. scott clark
Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

Lecture 6: Covenant and Apologetics

Introduction
1. The Idea of a Weltanschauung
2. The Construction of a Christian World-View
3. Every Thought Captive (2 Cor 10.5)
Christ and the Academy
1. Faith and Reason
2. Philosophy and Theology
  1. Acts 17.18
  2. 1 Cor 1.17-31
  3. Col 2.8
Dogmatic Theology
1. Man Gave Names to the Animals: Thinking God's Thoughts After Him
  1. Analogical Thinking
    1. Univocal Speech
    2. Equivocal Speech
2. Archetypal/Ectypal Theology
The Transcendental Argument: Presuppositionalism
1. The Necessity of Presuppositions
  1. Finitude
  2. Presuppositionalism
    1. Circular Reasoning
    2. Vicious Circles
2. The Power of Presuppositions
  1. A Believing Filter
  2. An Unbelieving Filter
Apologetics: Our Engagement with Unbelief
1. Definition
2. Necessity
3. Purposes
  1. Evangelism
  2. Edification of the Church
  3. Silence Unbelief
4. Methods
  1. Rationalism
  2. Fideism
  3. Evidentialism
  4. Presuppositionalism/Transcendental Argument
    1. Analogical Thinking (again)
    2. Recognizing Authority
    3. Following Paul (Acts 17)
      1. Motive
      2. Method
      3. Point of Contact:
        
        Natural Revelation
        
        Rom 1.18-2.16
        
        Common Grace
        
        Restraint of Sin
        
        Restraint of Final Judgment
        
        Indiscriminate natural blessing
        
        A Stage for the Drama of Redemption
        
        Grounded in Creation
        
        Semen religionis
        
        Imago Dei
      4. God the Creator
      5. God the Judge (Law)
      6. God the Redeemer (Gospel)
      7. Mixed Results
    4. Manner: sauviter in modo, fortiter in re
The Essentials of Unbelief
1. Religious Rebellion (Eph 4.17-19)
2. Intellectual Revolutions: Scientific or Religious?
3. Borrowed Capital
4. Chance/Contingency
5. Blind Determinism
6. Rational/Irrational Dialectic
A Quick Critique of Unbelief
1. Predication
2. Incoherence
3. Ethics
The History of Apologetics
1. The Apologists
2. Maqhth"
  1. Via Negativa
  2. Via Postiva
    1. Evidences
    2. The Benefits of Christianity
  3. Analysis
3. Clement of Alexandria
4. Tertullian
5. Augustine
  1. Influences
  2. Epistemology
  3. The City of God and the City of Man
  4. Credes ut intelleges
6. Anselm
  1. Faith and Reason
  2. The Ontological Argument
  3. Gaunilo's Reply
  4. Anselm's Rejoinder
7. Thomas
  1. Aristotle and Plato
  2. Realism
  3. Nature and Grace
  4. Analogia entis
  5. Intellectualism
8. Via Moderna
9. Reformation Apologetics
10. Orthodoxy Confronts Modernity
  1. Hobbes
  2. Descartes
  3. Lord Herbert of Cherbury
  4. Locke
  5. Wolff
  6. Hume
  7. Kant
  8. Lessing
  9. Schleiermacher
11. 18th Century Evangelical Collapse
  1. Butler
  2. Edwards
12. 19th Century
  1. Hodges
  2. Warfield
13. 20th Century
  1. Fundamentalists
  2. Neo-Orthodoxy
  3. Neo-Evangelicals
    1. Lewis
    2. Carnell
    3. Montgomery
    4. McDowell
    5. Pinnock
    6. Schaffer
    7. Sproul
    8. Geisler
  4. "Reformed Epistemology"
    1. Plantinga
    2. Wolterstorff
  5. Others
    1. Mavrodes
    2. Helm
    3. Swinburne
  6. Reformed Apologetics
    1. Machen
    2. Kuyper
    3. Gordon Clark
Van Til's Defense of the Faith
1. Outline
  1. Part I: His Program
    1. Survey of Reformed Theology
    2. Christian Philos of Reality
    3. Christian Epistemology
    4. Christian Ethics
    5. Christian Apologetics
  2. Part 2: The Implications of His Program
    1. The Method of Christian Apologetics
    2. Authority and Reason
    3. Common Grace and Scholasticism
    4. The Transcendental Argument (Presuppositionalism)
    5. The Defense of Christianity
    6. Amsterdam and Old Princeton
2. Purpose
  1. Contra Traditional Apologetics
  2. CVT and Thomas
  3. Renewed Evangelical Rationalism
    1. Arminianism
    2. Inconsistent Reformed Apologetics (Warfield, Kuyper, Bavinck)
3. Ch. 2: Christian Philos of Reality
  1. Metaphysics and Ontology
  2. How do we Communicate Christianity and Christianly to Alie Unbeliever?
  3. We Must Do Christian Theology and Philosophy
  4. Rejecting Non-Christian Transcendence and Non-Christian Immanence
  5. Creator/creature Distinction
4. Eternal One and Many
  1. Stoics v Epicureans
  2. Parmenides and Heraclitus v Cynics
  3. The Christian Approach to One and Many
    1. God is Necessarily
    2. God is Absolute Personality
    3. In God the One and the Many are Equally Ultimate
    4. God is the Ground of One/Universal and the Many/Particular (concrete universal)
5. Analogy Between Created and Uncreated One and Many
  1. Created One and Many is Contingent
  2. Uncreated One and Many
6. Sin and Curse
  1. Christianity Added to Theism (CVT and the block-house?)
  2. Epistemic Problem of Sin
  3. Christ the Only Redeemer
  4. CVT and Kuyper's "One Square Inch" Program
    1. No Neutrality
    2. No Nature-Grace Bifurcation in Method (Unified Knowledge and Method)
    3. (Just as sin needs Gospel, apologetics denies neutrality)
7. Point of Contact
  1. Perspicuous General Revelation (Rom 1; Acts 17)
  2. Suppressed God-Consciousness (Rom 1.18)
  3. Imago Dei
8. Presupposition
  1. The Necessity of Presuppostions
  2. All Knowledge is Inescapably and Essentially Religious
  3. Anselm/Augustine v. Carnell (Credo ut v. Cogito ut...)
  4. Not Whether Authority but Which (v. Kant, Descartes, Hume)
  5. Creator-creature Distinction Requires Circularity (Finitum non capax infiniti)
  6. Goal: Remove the Pretense of Unbelief
    1. The futility of Unbelief (Man of H2O, ladder of H2O)
    2. To Silence Unbelief
    3. To show coherence of Christianity
    4. Necessity of Presuppositions
9. Objection: No Categorical Proof of the Truth of Christianity (to the critic on his own presuppositions)
  1. True, we can't satisfy Alice Unbeliever on Her Own Terms
  2. God Never Satisfies Autonomous Man
  3. There is an "absolutely valid argument" for the Existence of God and the Truth of Christianity.
  4. No One who Denies God or Christianity has Done Justice to the Evidence
10. Scripture
  1. Committed to Inerrancy
  2. Committed to the Defense of Christianity as a Whole
  3. Christian Apologetics Must Defend the Christian God adn Christian (i.e. redemptive) Religion
  4. SS establishes the Terms By Which All Reality Must Be Interpreted
  5. [CVT Misinterprets Thomas in the Light of Neo-Thomists and Bp Butler]
  6. Only in Reformed Theology has Christianity Has Come to Its Own
  7. Critique of the Block House Method
11. Review of Ch. 9: The Transcendental Method
  1. Definition: Transcendental means "beginning with God" or "from above." It also connotes "comprehensive" rather than "partial."
  2. Two General Presuppositions
    1. Submission to God
    2. Rebellion to God
  3. Christian Presuppositions
    1. The Whole of Christianity
      1. Not a Bar to Dialogue with Unbelievers
      2. To Talk with Unbelievers We Must Presuppose the God and Faith we Intend to Defend
      3. We Adopt the Unbeliever's Presuppositions for the sake of argument only.
      4. We Presuppose the God of Scripture, i.e. the ontological Trinity
      5. We Start with the Conviction that Humans are Sinful
      6. That Christ is the Savior
12. Apologetics
  1. Contra Thomas and Bp Butler
  2. Begins with Scripture and Its Authority
  3. Perspicuity of Natural Revelation
  4. Covenantal Revelation
  5. Wants to Use Theistic Proofs within a Biblical Covenantal-Framework
  6. Imago Dei as Point of Contact
  7. Engage in Reductio ad absurdam
13. Review of Ch. 10
  1. Spiritual Cosmic Warfare Between Seed of the Woman and the Seed of the Serpent
  2. Martial Terms Necessary (Machen, Christianity and Liberalism)
  3. Antithesis Between Belief and Unbelief
  4. Point of Contact Does Not Equal Common/Neutral Ground
  5. Goal: To Restore in Humans a Regenerate (prelapsarian) Consciousnes in Principle Not in Degree
  6. The Place of Reason
    1. Adam as Federal Head
    2. All Cognition is Covenantal (Either obedient or disobedient)
    3. We grant no Autonomy (No Brute Facts)
    4. We Reason and Proclaim (Contra Fideism and Rationalism)
    5. We Prosecute Unbelief By Showing the Bankruptcy of Unbelief by Reductio
14. Defending the Faith (Mr Black, Mr Gray and Mr White)
  1. Our Goal is Not to Win Mr Black to "Mere Christianity" but to Reformed Christinaity
  2. No Compromise with Roman Apologists
  3. Ditto Evangelicals and Arminians
  4. These are Not Ethical But Theological Judgements
  5. [Contra Kuyper and Bavinck]
  6. Roman Apologists
    1. They compromise Creator/creature Distinction
    2. They Concede Autonomy/Neutral Ground
15. Believer Meets Unbeliever
  1. Mr Black Has Problem Tooth and Only Reformed Apologetic is the Dentist
  2. Contrast to Mr Gray (Quadrilateral)
    1. Mr White Uses Scripture as Diagnostic
    2. Mr Gray Uses Experience, Logic, Bible in any order (triperspectivalism?)
  3. We Don't Correlate Scripture to Experience We Interpret Experience Via Scripture
  4. We Don't Define Man Relative to Free Will But Re: Image of God
    1. Mr. Gray Tends to Deny Total Depravity (incl. noetic)
    2. To Avoid Charge of Circularity Mr Gray Seeks Neutral Ground (confusing non-Christian autonomy with Biblical view of freedom)
16. Mr White's Approach
  1. Proper Analysis of Mr Black's Condition
    1. Outward/Civic Morality
    2. Internal Moral Corruption
    3. Personal Turmoil
    4. Suppression of the Truth/Conscience
    5. Exchange of Truth for Lie
17. CVT Prosecutes the Evangelicals
  1. We Don't Have Much in Common With the Evangelicals
    1. Atonement
    2. Free Will
    3. Universalism
  2. Evidentialism
    1. Appeals to Brute Facts
    2. Allows Mr Black to Make Autonomous Interpretation of Reality
    3. Mr. Black is Allowed to Appeal to Change/Contingency
    4. The Reformed Do Not Distinguish Between the Fact and Meaning of the Resurrection
18. The Authority of Scripture
  1. Mr. Gray Concedes that There is No Absolute Certainty re Christianity, Only Probability
  2. Mr Gray Concedes Ontic/Cosmic Randomness
  3. Mr G concedes Autonomy to Unbeliever on the Basis of Experience
  4. Mr G Allows Mr to B to Move Back and Forth on Rational/Irrational Dialectic
  5. Only Confessional Calvinism Demands Mr Black to Repent and Believe
19. Proofs for God's Existence
  1. Mr B Protests that the Demand to Surrender to the Authority of Scripture is Irrational
  2. When Mr W Gives Evidence, then He's Accused of Rationalism
  3. Should All Three Go to an Observatory, Mr G Calls Mr B to Repentance.
  4. Mr B Refuses. Why Should He Believe? He's Not Necessary Acc. to Mr Gray
  5. Mr Gray Appeals to the Five Ways
  6. Mr B Responds "This God is Utterly Transcendent and Unknowable"
  7. Mr B rejects Mr G's Evangelical Because He is Still Autonomous
  8. Mr White Realizes
    1. Cannot Concede Mr B's Presuppositions
    2. False Apologetics = False Evangelism
    3. Mr G was speaking consistently with his theology
    4. We should speak consistently with our theology
    5. The Traditional Method
      1. Compromises the Doctrine of God
      2. Compromises Biblical Authority
      3. Compromises Necessity of Special Revelation
      4. Compromises the Sufficiency of Scripture
      5. Compromises Biblical Anthropology

Disclaimer
The statements, views and opinions...more

Contact Information
Email Dr Clark: rsclark at wscal dot edu
760.480.8474
Office Hours: Wed 10:40 AM-12:40 PM

Personal Links
Prof. Clark's Home Page
Bio
Syllabi
Heidelblog
Audio and Video
On the Writing of Essays
Class Handouts
Historical Theology
Systematic Theology
FV and NPP
Reformed Confessions
Covenant Theology
Exegetical Theology
Reformed Worship
Publications
Curriculum Vitae
Reviews
Practica
Recursos Reformados

r. scott clark Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology

r. scott clark
Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology