by Benjamin Wong
Original: Friday, July 29, 2016
Last updated: Thursday, February 9, 2017
Outline
A. Introduction (section 1)
B. Theses of a Clarkian Theory of Knowledge (section 2)
C. The Main Disagreement with Frame Stated (section 3)
D. Mental Content and Objects of Knowledge (sections 4-5)
E. Frame and Clark on the Objects of Knowledge (sections 6-7)
F. Introducing the Clark-Van Til Controversy (sections 8-9)
G. Criticisms of Frame's Discontinuities (sections 10-24)
H. Criticisms of Frame's Continuities (sections 25-35)
I. Criticisms of Frame's Problem Areas (sections 36-44)
J. Summary (section 45)
A. Introduction
John M. Frame : The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987)
1. The purpose of these notes is to criticize the theory of knowledge of John M. Frame in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987).
There are many claims in Frame's epistemology that I disagree with, but these notes will be limited to section 1.B.(1) of his book titled "Knowability and Incomprehensibility".
In this section, John Frame commented extensively on the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
"Knowablity and Incomprehensibility" is a section in Chapter 1 of Part One of the book.
Part One is titled "The Objects of Knowledge".
I like the title because I think the underlying epistemological disagreement between Gordon H. Clark and Cornelius Van Til is about the objects of knowledge.
Since the point about the objects of knowledge is general, the Clark-Van Til Controversy not only has ramifications for theology but for philosophy also.
The focus of these notes will therefore, in agreement with John Frame, be on the objects of knowledge.
*** The term "objects of knowledge" is used as a technical term in these notes.
*** The readers are warned not to confuse this technical use with the term's colloquial meaning.
B. Theses of a Clarkian Theory of Knowledge
2. My criticisms of John Frame will be from the point of view that is sympathetic to the epistemology of Gordon Clark broadly considered.
So instead of engaging in an internal critique, the criticisms will be an external one and will be make from an alternative theory of knowledge.
Although I find many faults with his theory, I like to express my appreciation for John Frame for his attempts to develop an epistemology that is consistent with the Bible.
In criticizing John Frame, my purpose is not to put him down but to come up with better theories.
The following theses are labelled a Clarkian Theory but not Clark's Theory because although they are sympathetic to Gordon Clark's viewpoint, many are not his personal views.
Some theses of a Clarkian Theory of Knowledge are:
What are the objects of Knowledge?
Thesis 1 : The objects of knowledge are truths.
Thesis 2 : The only known bearers of truth and falsity are propositions.
Thesis 3 : The objects of knowledge are propositions.
Thesis 4 : Percepts (or objects of perception) are neither true nor false and therefore are not objects of knowledge.
Are truths relative to conceptual schemes and perspectives?
Thesis 5 : Propositions are the bearers of both truth and meaning.
Thesis 6 : Truths are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.
(i.e. The truth or falsity of propositions are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.)
Thesis 7 : A proposition is individuated by its meaning.
Thesis 8 : The meaning of a proposition is dependent on the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which it is expressed.
Thesis 9 : A change in meaning implies that a different proposition is being individuated.
Thesis 10 : Percepts (or objects of perception) are bearers of meanings but not of truth and falsity.
Thesis 11 : The meanings of percepts are the propositions use to interpret the percepts.
Thesis 12 : An interpretation of a percept is true if the meaning of the interpreting proposition is part of the meanings of the corresponding percept.
What is the nature of truth?
Thesis 13 : Truths or propositions exist eternally and necessarily as the objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
Thesis 14 : Necessary truths are truths that refer to God-in-Himself.
Thesis 15 : Necessary truths do not depend on the Will of God but on the nature of His being.
Thesis 16 : Contingent truths are truths that refer to God and His creation.
Thesis 17 : Contingent truths depend on the Will of God as to what He decrees to create.
Thesis 18 : The necessity of God's mind lies in that all propositions exist eternally and necessarily as objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
(i.e. A necessary proposition is necessarily necessary; a contingent proposition is necessarily contingent.)
Thesis 19 : The freedom of God's mind lies in that which among all the maximally consistent sets of propositions He will bring about as the actual world is determined by His will.
What is the relationship between truths and creation?
Thesis 20 : God creates the world according to His plan.
Thesis 21 : God's plan for creation is His Eternal Decree which is consisted of the contingently true propositions He has determined to be true.
Thesis 22 : In creating, God brings about contingent actual states of affairs from the contingently true propositions He has determined to be true.
Thesis 23 : Contingent truths are grounded in the Eternal Decree of God and their truth-markers are the actual states of affairs of Creation.
Thesis 24 : Truth interprets creation because creation is created out of truth.
C. The Main Disagreement with Frame Stated
3. John Frame's The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987) is consisted of 3 parts in 11 chapters with 10 appendixes labelled A to J.
The three parts are:
(a) Part One: The Objects of Knowledge (chapters 1-3);
(b) Part Two: The Justification of Knowledge (chapters 4-5); and
(c) Part Three: The Methods of Knowledge (chapters 6-11).
The Introduction to Part One begins with (Frame 1987, 9): "What is the 'object' of the knowledge of God? In knowing God, what do we know? Well, God, of course! So what remains to be said? Much."
The claim "the object of knowledge of God in knowing God is God" is false.
The objects of knowledge are truths.
The objects of knowledge in knowing God are truths about God; we know truths about God.
When use colloquially, the term "objects of knowledge" refers to the ontological objects of knowledge.
When use in these notes, the technical term "objects of knowledge" refers to the epistemological objects of knowledge.
There is no disagreement with John Frame about the ontological objects of knowledge.
The disagreement with Frame is about what are the epistemological objects of knowledge.
D. Mental Content and Objects of Knowledge
4. There are basically two types of mental content:
(a) Percepts; and
(b) Concepts.
Percepts (or objects of perception) are such things as visual images, sounds, touches, and tastes.
Concepts (or objects of conception) are such things as properties, relations, kinds, and propositions.
The mental content of experiences or perceptual thoughts are percepts.
Percepts are neither true nor false.
The mental content of conceptual thoughts are concepts.
Among concepts are propositions which are the bearers of truth and falsity.
Concepts can be think about but cannot be experienced.
In these notes, as determined by the context and usage, "perception" and "experience" maybe use to denote either an act or the content of an act, or both.
5. There are two basic candidates for the objects of knowledge:
(a) Percepts : Objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences.
(b) Concepts : Truths, the only known bearers which are propositions.
Experiences are also of two basic types:
(a) Sense-experiences; and
(b) Non-sensory experiences.
Sense-experiences are experiences whose proximate origins are the senses of our bodies or spirits.
(Disembodied spirits have senses too!)
Examples of sense-experiences are seeing a tree in the garden or tasting the cereal for breakfast.
Non-sensory experiences are experiences whose proximate origins are *not* the senses of our bodies or spirits.
Examples of non-sensory experiences are visions and mystical experiences.
An instance of a vision is when God talked with Abram in a vision (see Genesis 15).
It is especially interesting that in an episode, God talked with Abram while Abram was in a deep sleep but conscious (Genesis 15:12-16).
When discussing experiences, these notes will be limited to sense-experiences only.
The mental content of experiences are percepts whether the experiences are sense-experiences or non-sensory experiences.
A person cannot experience concepts but can think about them.
E. Frame and Clark on the Objects of Knowledge
6. (Frame 1987, 9): "What is the 'object' of the knowledge of God? In knowing God, what do we know? Well, God, of course! So what remains to be said? Much."
Although John Frame is discussing specifically about God, I understand his point is meant to be general:
The object of knowledge of X in knowing X is X.
But Frame has eschewed discussing how X is presented to our minds.
In eschew discussing the how-question, Frame has left his book ambiguous, misleading and very unsatisfying.
For how do we know God as an object of knowledge?
Empiricism says all knowledge begins with sensory information called sensations which are then process by the mind into percepts, and the mind further processes the percepts through abstraction into concepts.
The empiricists know God by having sense-experiences about God.
In this John Frame's position?
If not, then what is Frame's position?
7. Gordon Clark, on the other hand, has always insisted the objects of knowledge are truths and all truths are propositional.
According to Clark, we know God by believing truths about God.
The two views:
(a) The objects of knowledge are objects present to our minds through conscious experiences; and
(b) The objects of knowledge are truths our minds think as true;
are mutually exclusive because (i) experiences are neither true nor false and (ii) truths cannot be experienced.
The mental content of conscious experiences are percepts which are neither true nor false.
The mental content of thinking truths are propositions which cannot be experienced.
John Frame, in eschewing discussing these two views, oscillates between them and makes his epistemology confusing.
F. Introducing the Clark-Van Til Controversy
8. The Clark-Van Til Controversy occurred in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church between 1944 and 1948.
The main protagonists were Gordon H. Clark and Cornelius Van Til.
The Controversy was started by Van Til and his colleagues at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
In 1944, Gordon Clark was ordained as a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
Van Til and his colleagues filed a complaint against Clark's ordination.
Besides the philosophical and theological issues, there were undercurrents of church politics to the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
Leaving the church politics aside, the main epistemological issue was the incomprehensibility of God.
The doctrine of the Knowability of God is the claim that human persons can know some truths about God.
The doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God is the claim that human persons cannot know all truths about God.
Combining knowability and incomprehensibility, the epistemological claim in discussion was that human persons can know some, but not all, truths about God.
9. John Frame attended Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia in the 1960s and was a student of Cornelius Van Til.
Frame was a successor to Van Til and has taught apologetics at both Westminster Theological Seminary and Westminster Seminary California.
John Frame is currently the J. D. Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando.
Frame is probably the best interpreter of Van Til living.
Section 1.B.(1) of his book titled "Knowability and Incomprehensibility" is one of John Frame's several contributions to the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
(Frame 1987, 22): "My contribution to this discussion will be to offer the reader a list of discontinuities between God's thoughts and ours that I believe can be substantiated from Scripture, a list of continuities between the two that ought to be acknowledged, and a list of alleged relations between the two that seem to me to be stated ambiguously and that therefore are capable of being affirmed in one sense and denied in another."
So Frame's contributions fall under three headings:
(a) Discontinuities
(b) Continuities
(c) Problem Areas
G. Criticisms of Frame's Discontinuities
10. (Frame 1987, 21): "For those reasons, theologians have spoken of God's 'incomprehensibility.' Incomprehensibility is not inapprehensibility (i.e., unknowability), because incomprehensibility presupposes that God is known. To say that God is incomprehensible is to say that our knowledge is never equivalent to God's own knowledge, that we never know Him precisely as He knows himself."
John Frame has characterized "incomprehensibility" incorrectly.
The doctrine of the Knowability of God claims that human persons can know some truths about God.
But according to logic, "some" excludes "none" but not "all".
There are infinitely many truths about God but we as finite creatures with finite cognitive capacities can only know some of them.
In order to exclude the "all", the doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God claims that we cannot know all the truths about God.
The doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God is about the "scope" of our knowledge about God, not about equivalency or precision between God's and human's knowledge.
Combining knowability and incomprehensibility: we know some, but not all, truths about God.
Our knowledge are partial but true.
11. (Frame 1987, 21-22): "In the 1940s there was a debate within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church about the concept of God's incomprehensibility. The major opponents were Cornelius Van Til and Gordon H. Clark. Neither man was at his best in this discussion; each seriously misunderstood the other, as we will see. Both, however, had valid concerns. Van Til wished to preserve the Creator-creature distinction in the realm of knowledge, and Clark wished to prevent any skeptical deductions from the doctrine of incomprehensibility, to insist that we really do know God on the basis of revelation. Van Til, therefore, insisted that even when God and man were thinking of the same thing (a particular rose, for example), their thoughts about it were never identical -- God's were the thoughts of the Creator, man's of the creature. Such language made Clark fear skepticism. It seemed to him that if there was some discrepancy between man's 'This is a rose' and God's (concerning the same rose), then the human assertion must somehow fall short of the truth, since the very nature of truth is identity with God's mind. Thus if there is a necessary discrepancy between God's mind and man's at every point, it would seem that man could know nothing truly; skepticism would result. Thus the discussion of incomprehensibility -- essentially a doctrine about the relation of man's thoughts to God's being -- turned in this debate more narrowly into a discussion of the relation between man's thoughts and God's thoughts. To say that God is incomprehensible came to mean that there is some discontinuity (much deeper in Van Til's view than in Clark's) between our thoughts of God (and hence of creation) and God's own thoughts of himself (and of creation)."
Having read some of the documents relating to the Clark-Van Til Controversy and now John Frame's The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987), I have concluded that the underlying epistemological issue between Clark and Van Til is their disagreement about the objects of knowledge.
For Cornelius Van Til and John Frame, the object of knowledge of God in knowing God is God.
Similarly, the object of knowledge of a rose in knowing a rose is a rose.
A Rose
How do we come into epistemological contact with a rose?
How does the rose comes to be presented as an object in our minds?
Through sense-experiences by perceiving visual images of the rose, touching the rose, or smelling the rose.
Gordon Clark takes a mutually exclusive position.
The objects of knowledge are truths and all truths are propositional.
Percepts cannot be objects of knowledge because percepts are neither true nor false.
When we know, we know truths about the rose but not percepts of the rose.
The following are example propositions about the rose:
(a) The rose is pink.
(b) The rose is on the end of a stem.
(c) The rose smells pleasant.
John Frame wrote: "Van Til, therefore, insisted that even when God and man were thinking of the same thing (a particular rose, for example), their thoughts about it were never identical -- God's were the thoughts of the Creator, man's of the creature."
The claim by Van Til makes sense only if the thoughts in question were perceptual thoughts (i.e. the mental content of the thoughts are percepts).
But Gordon Clark has never affirmed that God and human persons have the same or identical perceptual thoughts.
Clark has never denied that the perceptual thoughts of God and human persons are different.
But for Clark, the objects of knowledge are truths or propositions.
As Gordon Clark has pointed out, God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind
The claim by Clark makes sense only if the thoughts in question were conceptual thoughts (i.e. the mental content of the thoughts are propositions which is a kind of concepts.)
So there is an ambiguity about what are the mental content of the objects of knowledge:
(a) Van Til and Frame's view is that the object of knowledge of a rose in knowing a rose is a rose; the rose is presented to our minds as percepts of the rose.
(b) Clark's view is that the objects of knowledge of a rose are truths about the rose; the mental content of the rose in our minds are the propositions about the rose.
Gordon Clark has always insisted that the objects of knowledge are truth.
Although the official position of Cornelius Van Til and John Frame is that the object of knowledge of God in knowing God is God, their writings contain many examples where they also say we know truths about God.
The oscillation between truths and percepts as the objects of knowledge makes reading Van Til and Frame very frustrating and confusing.
I do not believe there is anything deep about Van Til's view of the discontinuity between our thoughts of God and God's own thoughts of Himself.
What Frame takes to be deepness in Van Til, I take to be signs of confusion.
How does the rose comes to be presented as an object in our minds?
Through sense-experiences by perceiving visual images of the rose, touching the rose, or smelling the rose.
Gordon Clark takes a mutually exclusive position.
The objects of knowledge are truths and all truths are propositional.
Percepts cannot be objects of knowledge because percepts are neither true nor false.
When we know, we know truths about the rose but not percepts of the rose.
The following are example propositions about the rose:
(a) The rose is pink.
(b) The rose is on the end of a stem.
(c) The rose smells pleasant.
John Frame wrote: "Van Til, therefore, insisted that even when God and man were thinking of the same thing (a particular rose, for example), their thoughts about it were never identical -- God's were the thoughts of the Creator, man's of the creature."
The claim by Van Til makes sense only if the thoughts in question were perceptual thoughts (i.e. the mental content of the thoughts are percepts).
But Gordon Clark has never affirmed that God and human persons have the same or identical perceptual thoughts.
Clark has never denied that the perceptual thoughts of God and human persons are different.
But for Clark, the objects of knowledge are truths or propositions.
As Gordon Clark has pointed out, God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind
The claim by Clark makes sense only if the thoughts in question were conceptual thoughts (i.e. the mental content of the thoughts are propositions which is a kind of concepts.)
So there is an ambiguity about what are the mental content of the objects of knowledge:
(a) Van Til and Frame's view is that the object of knowledge of a rose in knowing a rose is a rose; the rose is presented to our minds as percepts of the rose.
(b) Clark's view is that the objects of knowledge of a rose are truths about the rose; the mental content of the rose in our minds are the propositions about the rose.
Gordon Clark has always insisted that the objects of knowledge are truth.
Although the official position of Cornelius Van Til and John Frame is that the object of knowledge of God in knowing God is God, their writings contain many examples where they also say we know truths about God.
The oscillation between truths and percepts as the objects of knowledge makes reading Van Til and Frame very frustrating and confusing.
I do not believe there is anything deep about Van Til's view of the discontinuity between our thoughts of God and God's own thoughts of Himself.
What Frame takes to be deepness in Van Til, I take to be signs of confusion.
12. A further criticism of the generalized view that:
The object of knowledge of X in knowing X is X
where X denotes an object.
Let X be a specific rose.
What is it that God knows before God creates this specific rose?
If the object of knowledge of X in knowing X is X, then God cannot know this specific rose before He creates it.
Does this not compromise the omniscience of God?
To remedy this situation, the defender of this generalized view has to enter Meinong's jungle and develop a very complicated ontology and epistemology.
Gordon Clark's view, on the other hand, does not have any problems with respect to created objects.
The objects of knowledge are truths.
Before creation, the truths about this rose exist as propositions in God's mind.
The states of affairs corresponding to this rose are non-actual.
After creation, the truths about this rose are the identical propositions in God's mind.
The states of affairs corresponding to this rose has become actual.
In creating, God brings about contingent states of affairs from the contingent truths He has determined to be true.
The object of knowledge of X in knowing X is X
where X denotes an object.
Let X be a specific rose.
What is it that God knows before God creates this specific rose?
If the object of knowledge of X in knowing X is X, then God cannot know this specific rose before He creates it.
Does this not compromise the omniscience of God?
To remedy this situation, the defender of this generalized view has to enter Meinong's jungle and develop a very complicated ontology and epistemology.
Gordon Clark's view, on the other hand, does not have any problems with respect to created objects.
The objects of knowledge are truths.
Before creation, the truths about this rose exist as propositions in God's mind.
The states of affairs corresponding to this rose are non-actual.
After creation, the truths about this rose are the identical propositions in God's mind.
The states of affairs corresponding to this rose has become actual.
In creating, God brings about contingent states of affairs from the contingent truths He has determined to be true.
13. (Frame 1987, 22): "1. God's thoughts are uncreated and eternal; ours are created and limited by time."
This statement by John Frame betrays empiricists influence -- the objects of knowledge are percetions or experiences.
There are two kinds of thoughts: perceptual and conceptual.
Truths or propositions are objects of conceptual thoughts.
Propositions exist uncreated and eternally as the objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind.
God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
The propositions we know must be identical to the propositions God knows which are uncreated and eternal.
Thus, it is false that the objects of our thoughts which are also the objects of knowledge are created and limited by time.
On the other hand, our perceptions, which are also objects of thought but not objects of knowledge, are created and limited by time.
Frame's claim about our thoughts is only true of our perceptual thoughts.
This is an example where confusion arises when Frame does not limit the objects of knowledge to truths but oscillates between truths and experiences.
This statement by John Frame betrays empiricists influence -- the objects of knowledge are percetions or experiences.
There are two kinds of thoughts: perceptual and conceptual.
Truths or propositions are objects of conceptual thoughts.
Propositions exist uncreated and eternally as the objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind.
God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
The propositions we know must be identical to the propositions God knows which are uncreated and eternal.
Thus, it is false that the objects of our thoughts which are also the objects of knowledge are created and limited by time.
On the other hand, our perceptions, which are also objects of thought but not objects of knowledge, are created and limited by time.
Frame's claim about our thoughts is only true of our perceptual thoughts.
This is an example where confusion arises when Frame does not limit the objects of knowledge to truths but oscillates between truths and experiences.
14. (Frame 1987, 22): "2. God's thoughts ultimately determine, or decree, what comes to pass. God's thoughts cause the truths that they contemplate; ours do not. This is the lordship attribute of control in the realm of knowledge."
It is God's will, not God's thoughts, that determines what comes to pass.
God thinks the uncreated and eternal propositions that He thinks.
As God's thoughts, not only are propositions uncreated and eternal, but God also necessarily thinks all the propositions He thinks.
This is because, as Gordon Clark has pointed out, God's mind is immutable.
All propositions (whether true or false, necessary or contingent) exist eternally and necessarily as the objects of God's conceptual thought.
Propositions are God's thoughts and since they are uncreated, they are part of the mind of God and are Divine as such.
So it is false that "God's thoughts cause the truths that they contemplate".
It is God's will that determines which contingent propositions will be true and which will be false.
God created the world by bringing about as actual states of affairs from the contingently true propositions He has determined to be true.
In a Christian philosophy, contingent truths are grounded in the doctrine of the Eternal Decree of God and their truth-markers are the actual states of affairs of Creation.
The necessity of God's mind lies in that all proposition exists eternally and necessarily as objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
The freedom of God's mind lies in that which among all the maximally consistent sets of propositions God will bring about as the actual world is determined by His will.
It is God's will, not God's thoughts, that determines what comes to pass.
God thinks the uncreated and eternal propositions that He thinks.
As God's thoughts, not only are propositions uncreated and eternal, but God also necessarily thinks all the propositions He thinks.
This is because, as Gordon Clark has pointed out, God's mind is immutable.
All propositions (whether true or false, necessary or contingent) exist eternally and necessarily as the objects of God's conceptual thought.
Propositions are God's thoughts and since they are uncreated, they are part of the mind of God and are Divine as such.
So it is false that "God's thoughts cause the truths that they contemplate".
It is God's will that determines which contingent propositions will be true and which will be false.
God created the world by bringing about as actual states of affairs from the contingently true propositions He has determined to be true.
In a Christian philosophy, contingent truths are grounded in the doctrine of the Eternal Decree of God and their truth-markers are the actual states of affairs of Creation.
The necessity of God's mind lies in that all proposition exists eternally and necessarily as objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
The freedom of God's mind lies in that which among all the maximally consistent sets of propositions God will bring about as the actual world is determined by His will.
15. (Frame 1987, 22): "3. God's thoughts, therefore, are self-validating; they serve as their own criteria of truth. God's thoughts are true simply because they are His. None of us can claim to have such self-attesting thoughts. Our thoughts are not necessarily true, and when they are true, it is because they agree with the thoughts of someone else, namely God, who furnishes the criteria for our thinking. This is the lordship attribute of authority in the area of knowledge."
I find Frame's phrases "God's thoughts, therefore, are self-validating" and "they serve as their own criteria of truth" confusing.
God not only know truths as true, God also knows falsehoods as false.
Following Frame's chain of reasoning, should we say that God's thoughts also serve as their own criteria of falsehood?
But that sounds very awkward.
(1 Samuel 23:9-13 ESV): “David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, ‘Bring the ephod here.’ Then David said, ‘O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.’ And the Lord said, ‘He will come down.’ Then David said, ‘Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?’ And the Lord said, ‘They will surrender you.’ Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition.”
For example, God knows that the following possible but non-actual state of affairs to be non-actual: The men of Keilah will surrender David to Saul had David stayed in Keilah and Saul came down to Keilah.
How does God knows that this conjunctive non-actual states of affairs to be non-actual?
God knows by knowing the false proposition "David will stayed in Keilah" is false.
How does God knows this false proposition is false?
By knowing what He himself has decreed.
So it is false as Frame claims, "God's thoughts are true simply because they are His."
Some of God's thoughts are true and some of God's thoughts are false.
The contingent truths are true because God has determined the truth-value of those contingent propositions to be true.
The contingent falsehoods are false because God has determined the truth-value of those contingent propositions to be false.
God knows the truths as true and the falsehoods as false.
God creates or brings about actual contingent states of affairs by determining which contingent propositions to be true and which to be false.
God knows about His creation by knowing what He has decreed to create.
I find Frame's phrases "God's thoughts, therefore, are self-validating" and "they serve as their own criteria of truth" confusing.
God not only know truths as true, God also knows falsehoods as false.
Following Frame's chain of reasoning, should we say that God's thoughts also serve as their own criteria of falsehood?
But that sounds very awkward.
(1 Samuel 23:9-13 ESV): “David knew that Saul was plotting harm against him. And he said to Abiathar the priest, ‘Bring the ephod here.’ Then David said, ‘O Lord, the God of Israel, your servant has surely heard that Saul seeks to come to Keilah, to destroy the city on my account. Will the men of Keilah surrender me into his hand? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, the God of Israel, please tell your servant.’ And the Lord said, ‘He will come down.’ Then David said, ‘Will the men of Keilah surrender me and my men into the hand of Saul?’ And the Lord said, ‘They will surrender you.’ Then David and his men, who were about six hundred, arose and departed from Keilah, and they went wherever they could go. When Saul was told that David had escaped from Keilah, he gave up the expedition.”
For example, God knows that the following possible but non-actual state of affairs to be non-actual: The men of Keilah will surrender David to Saul had David stayed in Keilah and Saul came down to Keilah.
How does God knows that this conjunctive non-actual states of affairs to be non-actual?
God knows by knowing the false proposition "David will stayed in Keilah" is false.
How does God knows this false proposition is false?
By knowing what He himself has decreed.
So it is false as Frame claims, "God's thoughts are true simply because they are His."
Some of God's thoughts are true and some of God's thoughts are false.
The contingent truths are true because God has determined the truth-value of those contingent propositions to be true.
The contingent falsehoods are false because God has determined the truth-value of those contingent propositions to be false.
God knows the truths as true and the falsehoods as false.
God creates or brings about actual contingent states of affairs by determining which contingent propositions to be true and which to be false.
God knows about His creation by knowing what He has decreed to create.
16. (Frame 1987, 22-23): "4. God's thoughts always bring glory and honor to Him because God is always 'present in blessing' to himself. Because God is 'simple,' His thoughts are always self-expressions. Our thoughts are blessed only by virtue of God's covenantal presence with us. This is the lordship attribute of presence as applied to knowledge. Note that in 1-4, 'incomprehensibility' is an aspect of God's lordship. All the divine attributes can be understood as manifestations of God's lordship, as applications of divine lordship to different areas of human life."
God's thoughts are His self-expression not because God is simple.
God's thoughts are His self-expression because which contingent propositions are true and which contingent propositions are false are determined by His will.
God's thoughts are His self-expression not because God is simple.
God's thoughts are His self-expression because which contingent propositions are true and which contingent propositions are false are determined by His will.
17. (Frame 1987, 23): "5. God's thoughts are the originals of which ours, at best, are only copies, images. Our thoughts, therefore, would not exist apart from God's covenantal presence (see 4 above)."
This is Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge, which following Gordon Clark I believe will ultimately leads to skepticism.
To repeat: Propositions exist uncreated and eternally as the objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind.
God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
It is only the misapplication of the ontological Creator-creation Distinction to the objects of knowledge that leads to the Van Tilian ideas of analogical knowledge, ectype knowledge, derivative knowledge, and now Frames's copies and images.
This is Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge, which following Gordon Clark I believe will ultimately leads to skepticism.
To repeat: Propositions exist uncreated and eternally as the objects of God's conceptual thoughts.
When we know, we think the identical propositions in God's mind.
God knows all truths and if we do not know some of the truths that God knows, then we do not know at all.
It is only the misapplication of the ontological Creator-creation Distinction to the objects of knowledge that leads to the Van Tilian ideas of analogical knowledge, ectype knowledge, derivative knowledge, and now Frames's copies and images.
18. (Frame 1987, 23): "6. God does not need to have anything 'revealed' to Him; He knows what He knows simply by virtue of who He is and what He does. He knows, then, at His own initiative. But all of our knowledge is based on revelation. When we know something, it is because God decided to let us know it, either by Scripture or by nature. Our knowledge, then, is initiated by another. Our knowledge is a result of grace. This is another manifestation of the lordship attribute of 'control.' "
By way of comparison and contrasts:
(a) Gordon Clark limits what human persons can know to special revelation: the propositions assert by the Bible as true and their logical consequences.
(b) John Frame's view is that human persons can know both special and general revelation: Scripture and nature.
By way of comparison and contrasts:
(a) Gordon Clark limits what human persons can know to special revelation: the propositions assert by the Bible as true and their logical consequences.
(b) John Frame's view is that human persons can know both special and general revelation: Scripture and nature.
19. (Frame 1987, 23): "7. God has not chosen to reveal all truth to us. For example, we do not know the future, beyond what Scripture teaches. We do not know all the facts about God or even about creation. In the OPC debate, the difference between God's knowledge and ours was called a 'quantitative difference' -- God knows more facts than we do."
The Quantitative Difference Theory claims that the difference between God's knowledge and human knowledge is the number of propositions known by each: God knows all truths, but human persons know only some but not all truths.
The Quantitative Difference Theory was advocated by Gordon Clark during the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
I like to commend John Frame for trying to be fair in stating Clark's view.
A correction: Gordon Clark would have balked at "God knows more facts than we do."
Clark's view is that the objects of knowledge are truths.
If Frame has read Clark's Historiography Secular and Religious ([1971] 1994), he would have found out that Clark did not have too many kind words to say about "facts".
Notice the "God has not chosen to reveal all truth to us."
Another example of John Frame oscillating between truths and experiences as objects of knowledge.
The Quantitative Difference Theory claims that the difference between God's knowledge and human knowledge is the number of propositions known by each: God knows all truths, but human persons know only some but not all truths.
The Quantitative Difference Theory was advocated by Gordon Clark during the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
I like to commend John Frame for trying to be fair in stating Clark's view.
A correction: Gordon Clark would have balked at "God knows more facts than we do."
Clark's view is that the objects of knowledge are truths.
If Frame has read Clark's Historiography Secular and Religious ([1971] 1994), he would have found out that Clark did not have too many kind words to say about "facts".
Notice the "God has not chosen to reveal all truth to us."
Another example of John Frame oscillating between truths and experiences as objects of knowledge.
20. (Frame 1987, 23): "8. God possesses knowledge in a different way from us. He is immaterial and therefore does not gain knowledge from organs of sense perception. Nor does He carry on 'processes of reasoning,' understood as temporal sets of actions. Nor is God's knowledge limited by the fallibilities of memory or of foresight. Some have characterized His knowledge as an 'eternal intuition,' and however we may describe it, it clearly is something quite different from our methods of knowing. In the OPC debate, this discontinuity was called a difference in the 'mode' of knowledge."
"Eternal intuition" and "mode of knowing" were ideas of Gordon Clark's during the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
Again, I commend John Frame for trying to be fair in stating Clark's view.
"Eternal intuition" and "mode of knowing" were ideas of Gordon Clark's during the Clark-Van Til Controversy.
Again, I commend John Frame for trying to be fair in stating Clark's view.
21. (Frame 1987, 24): "9. What God does reveal to us, He reveals in a creaturely form. Revelation does not come to us in the form in which it exists in God's mind. Scripture, for example, is in human, not divine, language. It is 'accommodated,' that is, adapted in some measure to our ability to understand, though it is not exhaustively understandable to us even in that accommodated form."
I agree with John Frame that the Bible is in human language and not Divine language.
I disagree with Frame's conclusion that "revelation does not come to us in the form in which it exists in God's mind."
When God reveals truths to us, He reveals the truths in His mind to us.
There are *not* two kinds of truths:
(a) Uncreated propositions that exist in God's mind as God's truths; and
(b) Created propositions that exist in human minds as human's truths.
When we understand truths or propositions express in human languages, we think the uncreated and eternal propositions in God's mind.
Indeed there are "accommodations": For example, there are propositions whose complexities are such that they are beyond human persons with finite cognitive capacities to grasp.
So God reveals in the Bible only what human persons are able to understand; but it does not follow that the truths revealed are not truths that exist in God's mind.
Subsequent to the Clark-Van Til Controversy, Gordon Clark (1980, 152) has developed a "tagging" theory which can be extended to propositions.
The Tagging Theory claims that human minds use human languages to tag thoughts in God's mind.
The tagging-relation is a many-to-one relation between sentences in human languages and propositions.
For example, the following three sentences in three different human languages tag the same proposition in God's mind:
(a) English: "Snow is white."
(b) French: "La neige est blanche."
(c) Chinese: "雪是白的。"
That human persons can think thoughts in God's mind also nicely explain why there can be more than one human languages and human can translate between the different languages:
The different syntactical and semantical structures of human languages are used to tag thoughts in God's mind, which provide the meanings common to the different human languages.
Continuing, we do not have to "exhaustively understand" all the logical implications of a proposition in order to understand it adequately.
Our knowledge can be partial but true.
I agree with John Frame that the Bible is in human language and not Divine language.
I disagree with Frame's conclusion that "revelation does not come to us in the form in which it exists in God's mind."
When God reveals truths to us, He reveals the truths in His mind to us.
There are *not* two kinds of truths:
(a) Uncreated propositions that exist in God's mind as God's truths; and
(b) Created propositions that exist in human minds as human's truths.
When we understand truths or propositions express in human languages, we think the uncreated and eternal propositions in God's mind.
Indeed there are "accommodations": For example, there are propositions whose complexities are such that they are beyond human persons with finite cognitive capacities to grasp.
So God reveals in the Bible only what human persons are able to understand; but it does not follow that the truths revealed are not truths that exist in God's mind.
Subsequent to the Clark-Van Til Controversy, Gordon Clark (1980, 152) has developed a "tagging" theory which can be extended to propositions.
The Tagging Theory claims that human minds use human languages to tag thoughts in God's mind.
The tagging-relation is a many-to-one relation between sentences in human languages and propositions.
For example, the following three sentences in three different human languages tag the same proposition in God's mind:
(a) English: "Snow is white."
(b) French: "La neige est blanche."
(c) Chinese: "雪是白的。"
That human persons can think thoughts in God's mind also nicely explain why there can be more than one human languages and human can translate between the different languages:
The different syntactical and semantical structures of human languages are used to tag thoughts in God's mind, which provide the meanings common to the different human languages.
Continuing, we do not have to "exhaustively understand" all the logical implications of a proposition in order to understand it adequately.
Our knowledge can be partial but true.
22. (Frame 1987, 24): "10. God's thoughts, when taken together, constitute a perfect wisdom; they are not chaotic but agree with one another. His decrees constitute a wise plan. God's thoughts are coherent; divine thinking agrees with divine logic. That is not always true of our thoughts, and we have no reason to suppose that even as we deal with revelation we may not run into truth that our logic cannot systematize, that it cannot relate coherently with other truth. Therefore we may find in revelation what Van Til calls 'apparent contradictions.' "
Firstly, the contrast is between the Van Tilian ideas of "Divine logic" versus "human logic".
A logic is a set of propositions that is closed under some rules of inference that are truth-preserving.
A question I have yet to come across an unambiguous answer from Van Tilians:
Are there two kinds of propositions?
(a) One kind of propositions being uncreated and eternal that are the objects of God's conceptual thoughts;
(b) The other kind of propositions being created and temporal that are the objects of human's conceptual thoughts?
If there are two kinds of propositions, then there are two kinds of logic.
Divine logic is for God's propositions and human logics are for human propositions.
If there are not two kinds of propositions but one only, viz. all propositions are God's thoughts, then there are not two kinds of logic but one kind only:
All human logics are subsets of one Divine logic.
Secondly, Van Tilian "apparent contradictions" are epistemological nightmares.
A contradiction is a logical relation between two propositions when they could not both be true and could not both be false.
For a contradictory pair of propositions, one must be true and the other must be false.
That we do not understand how some propositions cohere with each other does not imply that they are contradictory.
The defects may be in our understanding.
That we do not understand how some propositions cohere with each other now does not imply that we will not understand it in the future either.
But the Van Tilian idea of "apparent contradictions" is based on Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge, which understandably Frame is reluctant to bring up at this juncture.
One implication of the Van Tilian idea of "apparent contradictions" is that they are in the nature of human knowledge.
One long-standing criticism of "apparent contradictions" is that there is no criteria to distinguish an "apparent contradiction" from a "real contradiction".
A consequence of a lack of criteria is that what is "apparent" maybe "real", and what is "real" maybe "apparent".
If we cannot distinguish "real" from "apparent" and vice versa, then we cannot distinguish truth from falsity -- a catastrophic consequence.
Firstly, the contrast is between the Van Tilian ideas of "Divine logic" versus "human logic".
A logic is a set of propositions that is closed under some rules of inference that are truth-preserving.
A question I have yet to come across an unambiguous answer from Van Tilians:
Are there two kinds of propositions?
(a) One kind of propositions being uncreated and eternal that are the objects of God's conceptual thoughts;
(b) The other kind of propositions being created and temporal that are the objects of human's conceptual thoughts?
If there are two kinds of propositions, then there are two kinds of logic.
Divine logic is for God's propositions and human logics are for human propositions.
If there are not two kinds of propositions but one only, viz. all propositions are God's thoughts, then there are not two kinds of logic but one kind only:
All human logics are subsets of one Divine logic.
Secondly, Van Tilian "apparent contradictions" are epistemological nightmares.
A contradiction is a logical relation between two propositions when they could not both be true and could not both be false.
For a contradictory pair of propositions, one must be true and the other must be false.
That we do not understand how some propositions cohere with each other does not imply that they are contradictory.
The defects may be in our understanding.
That we do not understand how some propositions cohere with each other now does not imply that we will not understand it in the future either.
But the Van Tilian idea of "apparent contradictions" is based on Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge, which understandably Frame is reluctant to bring up at this juncture.
One implication of the Van Tilian idea of "apparent contradictions" is that they are in the nature of human knowledge.
One long-standing criticism of "apparent contradictions" is that there is no criteria to distinguish an "apparent contradiction" from a "real contradiction".
A consequence of a lack of criteria is that what is "apparent" maybe "real", and what is "real" maybe "apparent".
If we cannot distinguish "real" from "apparent" and vice versa, then we cannot distinguish truth from falsity -- a catastrophic consequence.
23. (Frame 1987, 24-25): "11. Discontinuity 7 is affected by the progress of revelation: the more God reveals, the more facts we know, though we never reach the point where we know as many facts as God. The other discontinuities, however, are not at all affected by revelation. No matter how much of himself God reveals, there always remains an 'essential disproportion between the infinite fullness of the being and knowledge of God and the capacity and intelligence of the finite creature.' Thus even what God has revealed is in important senses beyond our comprehension (cf. Judg. 13:18; Neh. 9:5; Pss. 139:6; 147:5; Isa. 9:6; 55:8f.). According to these passages, there is not merely a realm of the unknown beyond our competence, but what is within our competence, what we know, leads us to worship in awe. The hymn of wonder in Romans 11:33-36 expresses amazement not at what is unrevealed but precisely at what is revealed, at what has been described in great detail by the apostle. The more we know, the more our sense of wonder ought to increase, because increased knowledge brings us into greater contact with the incomprehensibility of God. It was this 'essential disproportion' between Creator and creature that sometimes in the OPC controversy was described as a 'qualitative difference' between divine and human knowledge, as distinguished from the 'quantitative difference' described above in 7."
A comment and a criticism.
The word "comprehend" has a special meaning in theology.
In contemporary usage, "comprehend" and "understand" are near synonym.
In theology, especially the older ones, to comprehend is to understand fully or completely.
It is a concept about the scope of knowledge.
Van Tilians often mean by "comprehend" to understand exhaustively.
Thus, to Van Tilians, "incomprehensible" means not able to understand or know exhaustively.
In this technical usage, one can understand without comprehend, for one can understand adequately without understanding exhaustively.
Knowledge requires understanding but not comprehension.
To the criticism.
John Frame is engaging in historical revisions when he writes: "It was this 'essential disproportion' between Creator and creature that sometimes in the OPC controversy was described as a 'qualitative difference' between divine and human knowledge, as distinguished from the 'quantitative difference' described above in 7."
If John Frame says that he proposes a new usage for the term "qualitative difference" and mean by it that there is an essential disproportion between the knowledge of God and humans, then I would have no objection.
If John Frame claims that "essential disproportion" was what Cornelius Van Til and the Van Tilians meant by "qualitative difference" during the Clark-Van Til Controversy, then he is engaging in historical revisions.
The original documents are available in this Blog:
http://notes-on-gordon-h-clark.blogspot.ca/p/documents.html
[1944] The Text of a Complaint Against Actions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in the Matter of the Licensure and Ordination of Dr. Gordon H. Clark; and
[1944] The Answer to a Complaint Against Several Actions and Decisions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia Taken in a Special Meeting Held on July 7, 1944.
I have written a blog post explaining in details my understanding of what "qualitative difference" meant during the Clark-Van Til Controversy:
http://notes-on-gordon-h-clark.blogspot.ca/2014/07/notes-when-black-becomes-white-on-some.html
"Quantitative difference" means a difference in numbers and magnitude.
"Qualitative difference" means a difference in kinds.
According to Clark's theory, the quantitative difference between God's and human's knowledge is also essentially disproportionate:
God necessarily knows more propositions than human persons.
So contrary to John Frame, essential disproportion does not characterize the difference between "Quantitative difference" and "Qualitative difference"
A comment and a criticism.
The word "comprehend" has a special meaning in theology.
In contemporary usage, "comprehend" and "understand" are near synonym.
In theology, especially the older ones, to comprehend is to understand fully or completely.
It is a concept about the scope of knowledge.
Van Tilians often mean by "comprehend" to understand exhaustively.
Thus, to Van Tilians, "incomprehensible" means not able to understand or know exhaustively.
In this technical usage, one can understand without comprehend, for one can understand adequately without understanding exhaustively.
Knowledge requires understanding but not comprehension.
To the criticism.
John Frame is engaging in historical revisions when he writes: "It was this 'essential disproportion' between Creator and creature that sometimes in the OPC controversy was described as a 'qualitative difference' between divine and human knowledge, as distinguished from the 'quantitative difference' described above in 7."
If John Frame says that he proposes a new usage for the term "qualitative difference" and mean by it that there is an essential disproportion between the knowledge of God and humans, then I would have no objection.
If John Frame claims that "essential disproportion" was what Cornelius Van Til and the Van Tilians meant by "qualitative difference" during the Clark-Van Til Controversy, then he is engaging in historical revisions.
The original documents are available in this Blog:
http://notes-on-gordon-h-clark.blogspot.ca/p/documents.html
[1944] The Text of a Complaint Against Actions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia in the Matter of the Licensure and Ordination of Dr. Gordon H. Clark; and
[1944] The Answer to a Complaint Against Several Actions and Decisions of the Presbytery of Philadelphia Taken in a Special Meeting Held on July 7, 1944.
I have written a blog post explaining in details my understanding of what "qualitative difference" meant during the Clark-Van Til Controversy:
http://notes-on-gordon-h-clark.blogspot.ca/2014/07/notes-when-black-becomes-white-on-some.html
"Quantitative difference" means a difference in numbers and magnitude.
"Qualitative difference" means a difference in kinds.
According to Clark's theory, the quantitative difference between God's and human's knowledge is also essentially disproportionate:
God necessarily knows more propositions than human persons.
So contrary to John Frame, essential disproportion does not characterize the difference between "Quantitative difference" and "Qualitative difference"
24. (Frame 1987, 25): "12. And doubtless, there is much more; we cannot exhaustively describe the differences between God's mind and ours -- if we could, we would be divine. Thus we must add an 'et cetera' to the eleven differences that we have already enumerated. This 'et cetera' seems to have been another part of what was meant in the OPC controversy by the phrase 'qualitative difference.' At one point in that controversy, the Clark party challenged the Van Til party to 'state clearly' what the qualitative difference was between God's thoughts and man's. The Van Til group replied that to accept that challenge would be to retract their whole position; if we could 'state clearly' this qualitative difference, the difference would no longer exist. Again, I think, there was some mutual misunderstanding. At one level, it is possible (and necessary) to state clearly the nature of the difference. The difference is the difference between Creator and creature in the world of thought; it is a difference between divine thinking and human thinking, between the thoughts of the ultimate Lord and the thoughts of His servants. The implications of this basic difference can also be spelled out to some extent, as I have sought to do above. Insofar as they were asking for that kind of information, the demand of the Clark group was legitimate. But we must remember that the concept of incomprehensibility is self-referential, that is, if God is incomprehensible, then even His incomprehensibility is incomprehensible. We can no more give an exhaustive explanation of God's incomprehensibility than we can give of God's eternity, infinity, righteousness, or love."
I am glad that John Frame thinks the Van Tilians owe us an explanation for their "Qualitative Difference Theory of the Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God".
But Frame is dodging the question.
For human persons, not only do we *not* have exhaustive knowledge of God, we do not have exhaustive knowledge of anything.
Who knows exhaustively about anyone such as his father and mother, siblings, wife and offsprings?
Who knows exhaustively about a circle or a square in all their logical relations and implications?
To humans, everything is incomprehensible in that human beings do not have exhaustive knowledge of anything.
So the issue is not whether the concept of incomprehensibility is self-referential.
The issue is for Cornelius Van Til and his followers to give an "adequate" explanation by providing a theory that "adequately" explains incomprehensibility.
We are asking for "adequate" explanation, not "exhaustive" explanation.
Gordon Clark also believes in the doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God.
Clark's theory maybe call the "Quantitative Difference Theory of the Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God" and explains incomprehensibility of God in terms of the number of propositions known: God knows all truths while humans know some, but not all, truths.
I am glad that John Frame thinks the Van Tilians owe us an explanation for their "Qualitative Difference Theory of the Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God".
But Frame is dodging the question.
For human persons, not only do we *not* have exhaustive knowledge of God, we do not have exhaustive knowledge of anything.
Who knows exhaustively about anyone such as his father and mother, siblings, wife and offsprings?
Who knows exhaustively about a circle or a square in all their logical relations and implications?
To humans, everything is incomprehensible in that human beings do not have exhaustive knowledge of anything.
So the issue is not whether the concept of incomprehensibility is self-referential.
The issue is for Cornelius Van Til and his followers to give an "adequate" explanation by providing a theory that "adequately" explains incomprehensibility.
We are asking for "adequate" explanation, not "exhaustive" explanation.
Gordon Clark also believes in the doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God.
Clark's theory maybe call the "Quantitative Difference Theory of the Doctrine of the Incomprehensibility of God" and explains incomprehensibility of God in terms of the number of propositions known: God knows all truths while humans know some, but not all, truths.
H. Criticisms of Frame's Continuities
25. (Frame 1987, 25-26): "(ii) Continuities. Scripture teaches the following continuities (the ways that divine and human thought are alike) between God's thought and ours. Failure to consider this side of the truth will lead us into skepticism. If knowledge of any sort is to be possible, there must be some sense(s) in which man's thought can "agree" with God's, in which we can think God's thoughts after Him."
In Gordon Clark's theory of knowledge, the sense in which man's thought "agree" with God's thought in knowing is straight-forward: Identity.
The propositions known by humans are identical to some of the propositions in God's mind.
Let A be the set of all true propositions God thinks is true.
Man can only know some of the propositions in the set A.
We have epistemic access to some of the propositions in set A because the Bible is the Word of God and God has revealed some of His truths to us in the Bible.
25. (Frame 1987, 25-26): "(ii) Continuities. Scripture teaches the following continuities (the ways that divine and human thought are alike) between God's thought and ours. Failure to consider this side of the truth will lead us into skepticism. If knowledge of any sort is to be possible, there must be some sense(s) in which man's thought can "agree" with God's, in which we can think God's thoughts after Him."
In Gordon Clark's theory of knowledge, the sense in which man's thought "agree" with God's thought in knowing is straight-forward: Identity.
The propositions known by humans are identical to some of the propositions in God's mind.
Let A be the set of all true propositions God thinks is true.
Man can only know some of the propositions in the set A.
We have epistemic access to some of the propositions in set A because the Bible is the Word of God and God has revealed some of His truths to us in the Bible.
26. (Frame 1987, 26): "1. Divine and human thought are bound to the same standard of truth. As Van Til puts it, 'The Reformed faith teaches that the reference point for any proposition is the same for God and for man.' I prefer the term 'standard' to the more ambiguous 'reference point.' God's thoughts are self-validating; man's are validated by God's. Thus they are both validated by reference to the same standard, divine thought. Man's thoughts are true insofar as they conform to God's norms for human thinking. 'For human thinking,' of course, reminds us of those discontinuities we discussed earlier. And it must also be emphasized that our thought is subject to the norm, not identical with it, as is God's. Yet both divine and human thinking must accord with norms, and in both cases those norms are divine."
Why is John Frame struggling with "standard of truth", "validation", "conformity", "norms", "discontinuities", "accord"?
It is because according to Frame, in knowing, man's thoughts are not identical with God's thoughts.
Assuming God's knowledge and man's knowledge are of the same kind, there are two possibilities:
(a) The propositions God knows are eternal and uncreated but the propositions man knows are temporal and created; this is the Theory of Two-Fold Truths.
(b) The objects of knowledge for both God and man are the percepts of the object as presented in their minds; but God's perception are different from man's perception.
Both require some sort of comparison to determine if man's thoughts are alike enough with God's thoughts to validate them as true.
I am not aware of any Van Tilians who explicitly endorse the Theory of Two-Fold Truths, so I will consider (b) only; but the difficulties are the same.
For specificity, let’s consider again the object as being a rose.
Firstly, the comparison cannot get off the ground for the simple reason that we do not have epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind.
Without epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind, there cannot be any comparison.
Frame can say all he will about "standard of truth", "validation", "conformity", "norms", "discontinuities", and "accord", but no actual comparison can be done.
We are, in effect, agnostic about whether our percepts are alike with those of God's.
Secondly, the comparing admits of degree.
To what degree the percepts in man's mind must conform to the percepts in God's mind will Frame validate the percepts in man's mind as true?
Let’s consider the percepts as being a visual image of a rose and let’s assume the percepts can be evaluated by different dimensions such as color, resolution, intensity etc.
To what degree of conformity in each of these dimensions must man's percepts conform to God's percepts will Frame validate the percepts in man's mind as true?
70 percent? 80 percent? 90 percent? 99 percent?
It is not possible to test against a non-existing standard.
Why is John Frame struggling with "standard of truth", "validation", "conformity", "norms", "discontinuities", "accord"?
It is because according to Frame, in knowing, man's thoughts are not identical with God's thoughts.
Assuming God's knowledge and man's knowledge are of the same kind, there are two possibilities:
(a) The propositions God knows are eternal and uncreated but the propositions man knows are temporal and created; this is the Theory of Two-Fold Truths.
(b) The objects of knowledge for both God and man are the percepts of the object as presented in their minds; but God's perception are different from man's perception.
Both require some sort of comparison to determine if man's thoughts are alike enough with God's thoughts to validate them as true.
I am not aware of any Van Tilians who explicitly endorse the Theory of Two-Fold Truths, so I will consider (b) only; but the difficulties are the same.
For specificity, let’s consider again the object as being a rose.
Firstly, the comparison cannot get off the ground for the simple reason that we do not have epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind.
Without epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind, there cannot be any comparison.
Frame can say all he will about "standard of truth", "validation", "conformity", "norms", "discontinuities", and "accord", but no actual comparison can be done.
We are, in effect, agnostic about whether our percepts are alike with those of God's.
Secondly, the comparing admits of degree.
To what degree the percepts in man's mind must conform to the percepts in God's mind will Frame validate the percepts in man's mind as true?
Let’s consider the percepts as being a visual image of a rose and let’s assume the percepts can be evaluated by different dimensions such as color, resolution, intensity etc.
To what degree of conformity in each of these dimensions must man's percepts conform to God's percepts will Frame validate the percepts in man's mind as true?
70 percent? 80 percent? 90 percent? 99 percent?
It is not possible to test against a non-existing standard.
27. (Frame 1987, 26): "2. Divine and human thought may be about the same things, or as philosophers say, they may have the same 'objects.' When a man thinks about a particular rose and when God thinks about it (He is always thinking about it, of course, since He is always eternally omniscient), they are thinking about the same thing. Sometimes those objects are 'propositions,' assertions of fact. Van Til says, 'That two times two are [sic) four is a well known fact. God knows it. Man knows it.' Paul believed Christ was risen; God believes the same thing. Now of course we must keep our discontinuities in mind. God's belief in the Resurrection is the belief of the Creator, the Lord. It is not the same as Paul's belief, therefore, in every respect. But it has the same object; it affirms the same truth. To deny this is to render impossible any talk of 'agreement' between God and man. If God and man cannot think about the same things, how can they agree about them? Furthermore, denying this leads to manifest absurdity. For example, if I believe in the Resurrection, then God must not believe in it."
This is another example of John Frame oscillating between percepts and truths.
In the first two sentences, Frame talks about objects such as a rose as objects of thought -- these are perceptual thoughts.
Then the rest of the paragraph are about propositions as objects of thought -- a kind of conceptual thoughts.
But can both kinds of thoughts be objects of knowledge?
Gordon Clark says "no" but Van Til and Frame oscillate between the two.
By the way, when God is eternally thinking about the rose in question, He is thinking truths about the rose, not the rose as a perceptual object.
Omniscient requires God to know all truths but a perceptual object is neither true nor false.
This is another example of John Frame oscillating between percepts and truths.
In the first two sentences, Frame talks about objects such as a rose as objects of thought -- these are perceptual thoughts.
Then the rest of the paragraph are about propositions as objects of thought -- a kind of conceptual thoughts.
But can both kinds of thoughts be objects of knowledge?
Gordon Clark says "no" but Van Til and Frame oscillate between the two.
By the way, when God is eternally thinking about the rose in question, He is thinking truths about the rose, not the rose as a perceptual object.
Omniscient requires God to know all truths but a perceptual object is neither true nor false.
28. (Frame 1987, 26-27): "3. It is possible for man's beliefs, as well as God's, to be true. A true belief is a belief that will not mislead. God's beliefs do not mislead Him, and true human beliefs do not mislead human beings. But there is a difference: a belief adequate to direct or lead a human life will not be adequate for God. God's life, however, is sufficiently like its image, human life, so that both God's beliefs and man's may be meaningfully described as true. A proposition that is true for humans plays a role in human life similar to the roles that propositions that are true for God play in His life. If there is no truth, or if man's truth is 'wholly different,' wholly disanalogous, from God's, then knowledge is impossible."
Why John Frame places this paragraph in this juncture of his book totally puzzles me.
A belief is a proposition such that some persons think it is true.
The object of belief is a proposition.
The attitude the person has towards the proposition is "think it is true" or "think it as true".
This paragraph by Frame reminds me of Bertrand Russell's criticisms of William James's and John Dewey's Pragmatic Theory of Truth.
Is John Frame offering us a Will Not Mislead Theory of Truth such that a belief is true for a person if and only if it will not mislead the person in his thoughts and actions?
Is Frame proposing to evaluate whether a belief is true or false by evaluating the pragmatic consequences the belief has on a person?
Puzzling.
Why John Frame places this paragraph in this juncture of his book totally puzzles me.
A belief is a proposition such that some persons think it is true.
The object of belief is a proposition.
The attitude the person has towards the proposition is "think it is true" or "think it as true".
This paragraph by Frame reminds me of Bertrand Russell's criticisms of William James's and John Dewey's Pragmatic Theory of Truth.
Is John Frame offering us a Will Not Mislead Theory of Truth such that a belief is true for a person if and only if it will not mislead the person in his thoughts and actions?
Is Frame proposing to evaluate whether a belief is true or false by evaluating the pragmatic consequences the belief has on a person?
Puzzling.
29. (Frame 1987, 27): "4. Just as God is omniscient, so man's knowledge in a certain sense is universal. Van Til says, 'Man knows something about everything.' Because we know God, we know that everything in the universe is created, subject to His authority, and filled with His presence. Because all things are known to God, He can reveal knowledge to us about anything. Therefore all things are potentially knowable, though nothing can be known by us precisely as God knows it."
The scope of certain propositions are universal because those propositions make universal claims or has universal implications.
The universality has to do with the scope of the quantifiers or the scope of implications of a proposition.
The sense is not uncertain so there is no need for "in a certain sense".
The scope of certain propositions are universal because those propositions make universal claims or has universal implications.
The universality has to do with the scope of the quantifiers or the scope of implications of a proposition.
The sense is not uncertain so there is no need for "in a certain sense".
30. (Frame 1987, 27): "5. God knows all things by knowing himself, that is, He knows what He knows by knowing His own nature and plan. As we said earlier (discontinuity 6, above), God does not need to have anything 'revealed' from outside of himself. Our thinking, as we noted, is very different in this respect, yet in a certain sense it is also similar. We, too, gain our knowledge by knowing ourselves -- by knowing our own sensations, thoughts, actions, and so forth. Everything 'from outside' must enter our minds if we are to know it. In a sense, then, all knowledge is self-knowledge. Unlike God's, our knowledge does not originate from within, though its inward character bears a significant resemblance to the inwardness of God's knowledge."
We have here on display the subjective tendencies of John Frame's epistemology when it takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences.
Frame: "We, too, gain our knowledge by knowing ourselves ..." and "In a sense, then, all knowledge is self-knowledge."
In contrast, Gordon Clark's epistemology is objective in that the objects of knowledge are the truths or propositions in God's mind.
According to Clark, in the act of knowing, our minds think the propositions in God's mind.
Metaphorically speaking, our minds reach outside of themselves and reach into God's mind.
We have here on display the subjective tendencies of John Frame's epistemology when it takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences.
Frame: "We, too, gain our knowledge by knowing ourselves ..." and "In a sense, then, all knowledge is self-knowledge."
In contrast, Gordon Clark's epistemology is objective in that the objects of knowledge are the truths or propositions in God's mind.
According to Clark, in the act of knowing, our minds think the propositions in God's mind.
Metaphorically speaking, our minds reach outside of themselves and reach into God's mind.
31. (Frame 1987, 27): "6. God's knowledge is self-validating, self-attesting, as we have seen (discontinuity 4, above); ours is not. Because we are God's image, however, there is some reflection in us of God's self-attestation. Because everything we know must enter our consciousness (see 5, above), even the norms by which we think must be adopted by us if we are to use them. We think on the basis of norms that we have chosen but that does not make us autonomous. The norms originate in God and proclaim His ultimate authority (not ours), and we are obligated to choose the ones that are truly authoritative. Thus the norms that we obey on any occasion will be the ones that we have chosen."
In John Frame's epistemology, the objects of knowledge are objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences.
The mental content of these conscious experiences are percepts.
The criticisms of section 26 apply here also:
(a) No application of any norms are possible because we do not have epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind.
(b) There are no God given authoritative norms as to what degree the percepts in man's mind must conform to the percepts in God's mind will the percepts in man's mind be validated as true.
In John Frame's epistemology, the objects of knowledge are objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences.
The mental content of these conscious experiences are percepts.
The criticisms of section 26 apply here also:
(a) No application of any norms are possible because we do not have epistemic access to the percepts in God's mind.
(b) There are no God given authoritative norms as to what degree the percepts in man's mind must conform to the percepts in God's mind will the percepts in man's mind be validated as true.
32. (Frame 1987, 27): "7. God's thoughts are ultimate creators. They cause the truths that they contemplate, but ours do not (discontinuity 2, above). ..."
It is God, not God's thoughts, that is the Creator.
Agency is a property of a person but not thoughts, which are causally inert.
In creating, God brings about contingent actual states of affairs according to the contingent propositions He has determined to be true at the actual world.
The truth or falsity of contingent propositions at the actual world is determined by the Will of God.
It is God, not God's thoughts, that is the Creator.
Agency is a property of a person but not thoughts, which are causally inert.
In creating, God brings about contingent actual states of affairs according to the contingent propositions He has determined to be true at the actual world.
The truth or falsity of contingent propositions at the actual world is determined by the Will of God.
33. (Frame 1987, 28): "Fallen man lives as if this were not God's world; he lives as if the world were his own ultimate creation. And having abandoned the criteria furnished by revelation, the only criteria by which he can distinguish truth and falsehood, he has no way of correcting his mistake."
It seems the revelation written about here by John Frame is verbal revelation.
The Bible is the verbal revelation of God some of which are propositional truth-claims.
The truth-claims made by God in the Bible are true; any propositions inconsistent with the Biblical truth-claims are false.
Thus, the Bible serves as a criteria to distinguish truth and falsehood.
It seems the revelation written about here by John Frame is verbal revelation.
The Bible is the verbal revelation of God some of which are propositional truth-claims.
The truth-claims made by God in the Bible are true; any propositions inconsistent with the Biblical truth-claims are false.
Thus, the Bible serves as a criteria to distinguish truth and falsehood.
34. (Frame 1987, 28): "Why speak of 'creation' here? Why not merely say that men 'interpret' the data of creation in different ways? Certainly it is true that this activity can be characterized as 'interpretation.' But if we leave the matter there, we may falsely suggest that believer and unbeliever are merely organizing or analyzing data that in themselves are neutral, that their analyses or interpretations can be compared with data that in themselves are uninterpreted and capable of being understood either way. That supposition, however, is false. The facts of creation are not raw data or brute facts that are subject to mutually contrary interpretations. They are preinterpreted by God. As Van Til says, 'God's interpretation logically precedes ... all facts.' ..."
Both Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til agree that there are no brute or uninterpreted facts.
This is part of their Reformed theological heritage that God created the world according to His plan.
God's plan for creation is His Eternal Decree which are the contingent propositions He has determined to be true at the actual world.
Propositions are bearers of both truth and meaning.
God's plan for creation are the meanings of creation in whole and in parts.
Creation consists of contingent actual states of affairs God brings about from the contingent propositions He has determined to be true.
All truths are propositional and let’s stipulate "fact" as shorthand for "actual states of affairs".
For God's creation: truths interpret facts because facts are brought about from truths.
Both Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til agree that there are no brute or uninterpreted facts.
This is part of their Reformed theological heritage that God created the world according to His plan.
God's plan for creation is His Eternal Decree which are the contingent propositions He has determined to be true at the actual world.
Propositions are bearers of both truth and meaning.
God's plan for creation are the meanings of creation in whole and in parts.
Creation consists of contingent actual states of affairs God brings about from the contingent propositions He has determined to be true.
All truths are propositional and let’s stipulate "fact" as shorthand for "actual states of affairs".
For God's creation: truths interpret facts because facts are brought about from truths.
35. (Frame 1987, 28): "Therefore human interpretation is never merely the interpretation of facts; it is always also a reinterpretation of God's interpretation. To deny God's interpretation is not merely to adopt an alternative but equally valid interpretation; it is to reject the facts as they truly are; it is to reject reality. There is no such thing as 'brute fact' by which fallen man can seek to validate his interpretation over against God's. Fallen man can only reject the facts and seek to live in a world of his own making. Similarly, the believer, in working out a faithful interpretation of the facts, is not merely 'interpreting' data but is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is."
The phrase "reinterpretation of God's interpretation" is part of the Van Tilian vocabulary which suggests that God's interpretation and man's interpretation can never be identical; the phrase is part and parcel of Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge.
I do not believe there are "reinterpretations" in this Van Tilian sense.
An interpretation of a state of affairs is true if it is identical to God's interpretation of that same state of affairs.
The phrase "reinterpretation of God's interpretation" is part of the Van Tilian vocabulary which suggests that God's interpretation and man's interpretation can never be identical; the phrase is part and parcel of Cornelius Van Til's theory of Analogical Knowledge.
I do not believe there are "reinterpretations" in this Van Tilian sense.
An interpretation of a state of affairs is true if it is identical to God's interpretation of that same state of affairs.
I. Criticisms of Frame's Problem Areas
36. (Frame 1987, 30): "2. Do we know the 'essence' of God? It has been common in theology to deny that we do. Thus Bavinck says, 'Calvin deemed it vain speculation to attempt "an examination of God's essence." It is sufficient for us to become acquainted with His character and to know what is conformable to His nature'."
Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was an important Dutch Reformed theologian.
Per Alvin Plantinga (1974, v): An essence of an object is a property that is essential and essentially unique to that object.
Since an essence is a property, it cannot be perceive through sense-experiences.
Thus, those whose epistemology is empirical, such as Herman Bavinck, and take the objects of knowledge as objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences, cannot know the essences of God.
(An object may have more than one essence.)
(Any property that is essential and essentially unique to God is an essence of God.)
36. (Frame 1987, 30): "2. Do we know the 'essence' of God? It has been common in theology to deny that we do. Thus Bavinck says, 'Calvin deemed it vain speculation to attempt "an examination of God's essence." It is sufficient for us to become acquainted with His character and to know what is conformable to His nature'."
Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) was an important Dutch Reformed theologian.
Per Alvin Plantinga (1974, v): An essence of an object is a property that is essential and essentially unique to that object.
Since an essence is a property, it cannot be perceive through sense-experiences.
Thus, those whose epistemology is empirical, such as Herman Bavinck, and take the objects of knowledge as objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences, cannot know the essences of God.
(An object may have more than one essence.)
(Any property that is essential and essentially unique to God is an essence of God.)
37. (Frame 1987, 30): "Van Til, however, says that we know something about everything, including the essence of God, though we cannot comprehend it. Thus Van Til teaches that with regard to knowledge of God's 'essence,' we are basically in the same position that we are in with regard to all of our other knowledge of God. There is no special problem in knowing God's 'essence.' "
There is no special problem in knowing God's essences if the objects of knowledge are truths.
The property "omniscience" is an essence of God in that omniscience is essential and essentially unique to God.
(This is contrary to the claim of Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, whom also claims omniscience!)
We can know that "omniscience" is an essence of God by knowing the true proposition "Omniscience is a property that is essential and essentially unique to God".
John Frame has given us another example of Cornelius Van Til oscillating between truths and experiences as objects of knowledge.
There is no special problem in knowing God's essences if the objects of knowledge are truths.
The property "omniscience" is an essence of God in that omniscience is essential and essentially unique to God.
(This is contrary to the claim of Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, whom also claims omniscience!)
We can know that "omniscience" is an essence of God by knowing the true proposition "Omniscience is a property that is essential and essentially unique to God".
John Frame has given us another example of Cornelius Van Til oscillating between truths and experiences as objects of knowledge.
38. (Frame 1987, 32): "3. Do we know 'God in himself' or only 'God in relation to us'? Theologians are often terribly adamant in denying that we know 'God in himself.' Unfortunately, they often fail to clarify the meaning of that rather ambiguous phrase. Even Bavinck, one of the greatest Reformed theologians, is confusing on this matter. On page 32 of The Doctrine of God he says, 'There is no knowledge of God as he is in himself,' but on page 337 he announces, 'Thus far we have dealt with God's being as it exists in itself,' and on page 152 he tells us that God does not change, though His relations to creatures change -- thus assuming that we have some knowledge of God's change -- ability apart from His relations to us."
"Thing-in-itself" is terminology of the philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).
The problem of "thing-in-itself" is intrinsic to an empirical epistemology that takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences:
The problem of "thing-in-itself" is intrinsic to an empirical epistemology that takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences:
How can one know that object present in our minds by percepts truly present the object as it is?
Or:
How can one know that the object represent in our minds by percepts truly represent the object as it is?
The answer, based on an empirical or Kantian epistemology, is we don't know and cannot know.
In contrast, if the objects of knowledge are truths, the problem of "thing-in-itself" does not even arise.
In a Clarkian theory:
(a) About God: God tells us truths about Himself (i.e. truths about God-in-Himself) in the Bible.
(b) About creation: God brings about actual states of affairs from the contingent truths He has determined to be true at the actual world.
The contingent truths are the "thing-in-itself" of created states of affairs.
Herman Bavinck has problems with both knowing essences of God and knowing God-in-Himself because of his empirical epistemology.
Or:
How can one know that the object represent in our minds by percepts truly represent the object as it is?
The answer, based on an empirical or Kantian epistemology, is we don't know and cannot know.
In contrast, if the objects of knowledge are truths, the problem of "thing-in-itself" does not even arise.
In a Clarkian theory:
(a) About God: God tells us truths about Himself (i.e. truths about God-in-Himself) in the Bible.
(b) About creation: God brings about actual states of affairs from the contingent truths He has determined to be true at the actual world.
The contingent truths are the "thing-in-itself" of created states of affairs.
Herman Bavinck has problems with both knowing essences of God and knowing God-in-Himself because of his empirical epistemology.
39. (Frame 1987, 32-33): "(g) Knowing facts about God (e.g., His eternality), which would be true even if He had not created the world. In that sense we can know "God in himself." We know these facts because Scripture reveals them. That is what Bavinck had in mind on page 337. (h) Knowing God as He really is. Yes! Although modem theologians have sometimes used Calvin's statement in I, x, 2 to encourage a denial of God's knowability, such a thought never crossed Calvin's mind. Scripture, at any rate, is clear: God is both knowable and known. He is known truly, known as He really is. Some people have argued that because our knowledge of God comes through revelation and then through our senses, reason, and imagination, it cannot be a knowledge of God as He really is but only of how He appears to us. It is certainly true that we know God as He appears to us, but must we therefore assume that these appearances are false, that they do not tell us the truth? We would assume that only if we were to buy the Kantian presupposition that truth is always relativized when it enters our consciousness, that reality is forever hidden from us. But that is an unscriptural concept. In Scripture, reality (God in particular) is known, and our senses, reason, and imagination are not barriers to this knowledge; they do not necessarily distort it. Rather, our senses, reason, and imagination are themselves revelations of God -- means that God uses to drive His truth home to us. God is Lord; He will not be shut out of His world."
Notice that John Frame has oscillated to truths as objects of knowledge in this quotation.
The reason is because we cannot know God-in-Himself in an empirical epistemology.
An epistemology that takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences cannot reach behind the presentation to the "thing-in-itself".
I think Gordon Clark's tagging theory has, in principle, solved the problems of human perceptions and human languages:
(a) Perceptions are interpreted by truths and the human mind interprets perceptions by thinking truths in God's mind.
(b) The human mind interprets certain percepts as language structures which are means to tag thoughts in God's mind.
The details of this tagging theory have yet to be worked out.
Notice that John Frame has oscillated to truths as objects of knowledge in this quotation.
The reason is because we cannot know God-in-Himself in an empirical epistemology.
An epistemology that takes as objects of knowledge objects presented to our minds through conscious experiences cannot reach behind the presentation to the "thing-in-itself".
I think Gordon Clark's tagging theory has, in principle, solved the problems of human perceptions and human languages:
(a) Perceptions are interpreted by truths and the human mind interprets perceptions by thinking truths in God's mind.
(b) The human mind interprets certain percepts as language structures which are means to tag thoughts in God's mind.
The details of this tagging theory have yet to be worked out.
40. (Frame 1987, 33): "4. Does a piece of human language have the same 'meaning' for God that it has for man? For Clark, it was important to say, for example, that the statement '2 + 2 = 4' has the same meaning for God that it has for man. The alternative, he argued, was skepticism: 'Thou shalt not kill' might mean to God 'Thou shalt plant radishes,' that is, divine-human communication would be impossible. His point is persuasive, but some clarifications are needed about the meaning of meaning (a topic that I will address later). The meaning of meaning has been the subject of much controversy in our century. I believe that meaning is best employed to designate that use of language that is authorized by God."
I am glad that John Frame finds Gordon Clark's point persuasive.
But then Frame tries to blunt Clark's point by going off in a tangent with the Use Theory of Meaning.
Why was Clark concerned that the proposition "2 + 2 = 4" must have the same meaning for God as it has for man?
The reason is because a truth or proposition is individuated by its meaning.
(By the way, one standard technique to test whether two sentences have the same meaning on the occasions of their uses is to test whether they have the same truth-conditions.)
(Two sentences with different truth-conditions on occasions of their uses imply that their meanings are different and that they individuated different propositions.)
If "2 + 2 = 4" does not have the same meaning for God as it has for man, then they cannot know the same truth.
And if God knows all truth and man does not know some of the truths that God knows, then man does not know -- skepticism results.
A Clarkian theory of the relations between truth and meaning:
(a) Propositions are the bearers of both truth and meaning.
(b) Truths are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.
(i.e. The truth or falsity of propositions are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.)
(c) A proposition is individuated by its meaning.
(d) The meaning of a proposition is dependent on the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which it is expressed.
(e) A change in meaning implies that a different proposition is being individuated.
(f) Percepts (or objects of perception) are the bearer of meaning but not of truth and falsity.
(g) The meanings of percepts are the propositions use to interpret the percepts.
(h) An interpretation of a percept is true if the meaning of the interpreting proposition is part of the meanings of the corresponding percept.
For example, an interpretation of the perceptual object:
G-o-d---i-s---g-o-o-d---t-o---m-e
is the proposition that God is good to me.
I am glad that John Frame finds Gordon Clark's point persuasive.
But then Frame tries to blunt Clark's point by going off in a tangent with the Use Theory of Meaning.
Why was Clark concerned that the proposition "2 + 2 = 4" must have the same meaning for God as it has for man?
The reason is because a truth or proposition is individuated by its meaning.
(By the way, one standard technique to test whether two sentences have the same meaning on the occasions of their uses is to test whether they have the same truth-conditions.)
(Two sentences with different truth-conditions on occasions of their uses imply that their meanings are different and that they individuated different propositions.)
If "2 + 2 = 4" does not have the same meaning for God as it has for man, then they cannot know the same truth.
And if God knows all truth and man does not know some of the truths that God knows, then man does not know -- skepticism results.
A Clarkian theory of the relations between truth and meaning:
(a) Propositions are the bearers of both truth and meaning.
(b) Truths are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.
(i.e. The truth or falsity of propositions are invariant with respect to the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which they are expressed.)
(c) A proposition is individuated by its meaning.
(d) The meaning of a proposition is dependent on the conceptual schemes and perspectives in which it is expressed.
(e) A change in meaning implies that a different proposition is being individuated.
(f) Percepts (or objects of perception) are the bearer of meaning but not of truth and falsity.
(g) The meanings of percepts are the propositions use to interpret the percepts.
(h) An interpretation of a percept is true if the meaning of the interpreting proposition is part of the meanings of the corresponding percept.
For example, an interpretation of the perceptual object:
G-o-d---i-s---g-o-o-d---t-o---m-e
is the proposition that God is good to me.
41. (Frame 1987, 34): "And of course, at a deeper level, we must say that God's knowledge of our language is different from our own knowledge of it because His is the knowledge of the Creator, the Lord of language (cf. the discontinuities discussed earlier)."
After some tangents with the Use Theory of Meaning, we are back to Gordon Clark's "quantitative difference" versus Cornelius Van Til and John Frame's "qualitative difference".
After some tangents with the Use Theory of Meaning, we are back to Gordon Clark's "quantitative difference" versus Cornelius Van Til and John Frame's "qualitative difference".
42. (Frame 1987, 34): "Van Til's basic concern in the context of the incomprehensibility of God is with our understanding of Scripture. Can we say that we have 'fully' understood a passage when we have exegeted it correctly? Van Til says No for essentially the reasons that I noted above. God's knowledge, even of human language, is of a fundamentally different order from ours."
We are repeating ourselves:
We can understand adequately without understanding exhaustively.
Knowledge requires adequate understanding but not exhaustive understanding.
Knowledge can be partial but true.
So I too agree with John Frame and Cornelius Van Til that:
We cannot say we have "fully" (exhaustively?) understood a passage of the Bible when we have exegeted it correctly.
But I agree with the statement for reasons other than theirs.
We are repeating ourselves:
We can understand adequately without understanding exhaustively.
Knowledge requires adequate understanding but not exhaustive understanding.
Knowledge can be partial but true.
So I too agree with John Frame and Cornelius Van Til that:
We cannot say we have "fully" (exhaustively?) understood a passage of the Bible when we have exegeted it correctly.
But I agree with the statement for reasons other than theirs.
43. (Frame 1987, 37) : "6. Does God's 'thought-content' always differ from man's? Content played a crucial role in the OPC controversy. Van Til's followers insisted that when a man thinks about a particular rose, for example, the 'content' in his mind always differs from the 'content' in God's mind when He thinks about the same rose. It would be a mistake for us to assume that thought-content has a perfectly clear meaning and then to leap on one bandwagon or another. In my booklet Van Til the Theologian, I argue that the idea of 'thought-content' is ambiguous. In some senses, I would argue, Van Til is right; in others, Clark."
John Frame makes an elementary point and a good one: in studying a problem or answering a question, the key terms must be defined.
John Frame (1987, 37-38) then goes on to list six possible candidates for "thought-content":
(a) Content can refer to mental images.
(b) Content can refer to the objects of thought.
(c) Thought-content could refer to beliefs or judgments of truth.
(d) Content could also refer to the meanings associated with words in the mind.
(e) Content can refer to the fullness of one's understanding.
(f) Finally, content can refer to all of the attributes of the thought under
consideration.
Yet the problem situation in this instance in not as ambiguous as Frame makes it out to be.
In the Clark-Van Til Controversy, the problem under consideration was:
What is our thought-content when we know an object of knowledge?
Recall (Frame 1987, 9): "What is the 'object' of the knowledge of God? In knowing God, what do we know? Well, God, of course! So what remains to be said? Much."
Gordon Clark said it was truths or propositions.
Cornelius Van Til and John Frame official position were the percepts of the object as presented in our minds.
In practice, Van Til and Frame oscillate between truths and percepts.
John Frame makes an elementary point and a good one: in studying a problem or answering a question, the key terms must be defined.
John Frame (1987, 37-38) then goes on to list six possible candidates for "thought-content":
(a) Content can refer to mental images.
(b) Content can refer to the objects of thought.
(c) Thought-content could refer to beliefs or judgments of truth.
(d) Content could also refer to the meanings associated with words in the mind.
(e) Content can refer to the fullness of one's understanding.
(f) Finally, content can refer to all of the attributes of the thought under
consideration.
Yet the problem situation in this instance in not as ambiguous as Frame makes it out to be.
In the Clark-Van Til Controversy, the problem under consideration was:
What is our thought-content when we know an object of knowledge?
Recall (Frame 1987, 9): "What is the 'object' of the knowledge of God? In knowing God, what do we know? Well, God, of course! So what remains to be said? Much."
Gordon Clark said it was truths or propositions.
Cornelius Van Til and John Frame official position were the percepts of the object as presented in our minds.
In practice, Van Til and Frame oscillate between truths and percepts.
44. (Frame 1987, 38-39): "7. Is there a 'qualitative difference' between God's thoughts and ours? Qualitative difference was the great rallying cry of the Van Til forces against the Clark party. On the one hand, Clark (we are told) held that there was only a 'quantitative difference' between God's thoughts and ours, that is, that God knew more facts than we do. On the other hand, Van Til believed that the difference was 'qualitative.' I am willing to affirm that there is a qualitative difference between God's thoughts and ours, but I am not convinced of the value of the phrase in the present controversy. What is a 'qualitative difference'? Most simply defined, it is a difference in quality. Thus a difference between blue and green could be a 'qualitative difference.' Such a usage, of course, is totally inadequate to do justice to the Creator-creature distinction, which the Van Til forces were trying to do. In fairness, however, we should also recognize that in English qualitative difference generally refers to very large differences in quality, not differences like that between blue and green. We tend to speak of 'qualitative differences' where the differences are not capable of quantitative measurement. But even on such a maximal definition, the phrase still denotes differences within creation; it does not uniquely define the Creator-creature distinction. I therefore tend to avoid the phrase, though I have no objection to it. Although it is appropriate to use a superlative term like this to describe the Creator-creature relation, we should cure ourselves of the notion that qualitative automatically takes us outside of the sphere of intracreational relations and that no other terms may be substituted for it in such a context. Rather than using qualitative difference, I prefer to use terms that are more directly related to the covenantal terminology of Scripture, for example differences between Creator and creature, Lord and servant, Father and son, original and derivative, self-attesting and attested by another. In some contexts, those terms can also designate intracreational relations; all terms in human language can apply to something or other within creation. But when they refer to the divine-human difference, they are no less clear than qualitative difference, and in most respects, they are clearer. The suggestion that qualitative difference somehow designates a larger difference than these other terms or that it is more appropriate than the biblical terms to denote the difference in view is entirely groundless. It was most unfortunate that qualitative difference became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the OPC controversy. For such work the phrase is entirely unsuited."
It is indeed unfortunate that "qualitative difference" became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the Clark-Van Til Controversy for the Van Til faction.
But why "qualitative difference" was used is understandable: Cornelius Van Til took as objects of knowledge the percepts of the objects as presented in our minds.
Assuming that God also have perceptions, the percepts in God’s mind must be "qualitative different" from the percepts in our minds.
So the reason why it is "unfortunate" is not because of the meandering reasons John Frame gives in this long paragraph.
The reason why it is "unfortunate" is because of the defective empirical epistemology Cornelius Van Til assumed in the Clark-Van Til Controversy: the objects of knowledge are the percepts of the objects as presented in our minds.
It is indeed unfortunate that "qualitative difference" became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the Clark-Van Til Controversy for the Van Til faction.
But why "qualitative difference" was used is understandable: Cornelius Van Til took as objects of knowledge the percepts of the objects as presented in our minds.
Assuming that God also have perceptions, the percepts in God’s mind must be "qualitative different" from the percepts in our minds.
So the reason why it is "unfortunate" is not because of the meandering reasons John Frame gives in this long paragraph.
The reason why it is "unfortunate" is because of the defective empirical epistemology Cornelius Van Til assumed in the Clark-Van Til Controversy: the objects of knowledge are the percepts of the objects as presented in our minds.
J. Summary
45. The purpose of these notes is to criticize John Frame's theory of knowledge as expressed in his comments on the Clark-Van Til Controversy in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987).
The criticisms are made from Gordon Clark's viewpoint.
Although I think John Frame is correct in identifying the underlying epistemological issue, he has not delineated the problem clearly.
The underlying epistemological issue is:
45. The purpose of these notes is to criticize John Frame's theory of knowledge as expressed in his comments on the Clark-Van Til Controversy in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (1987).
The criticisms are made from Gordon Clark's viewpoint.
Although I think John Frame is correct in identifying the underlying epistemological issue, he has not delineated the problem clearly.
The underlying epistemological issue is:
What is our thought-content when we know an object of knowledge?
The reason John Frame has not delineated the problem clearly is because like Cornelius Van Til, Frame oscillates between experiences and truths as objects of knowledge.
I have illustrated this oscillation with many quotations in these notes.
Gordon Clark has insisted that the objects of knowledge are truths or propositions.
In criticizing John Frame, I have outlined an alternative theory called a Clarkian Theory.
References:
Clark, Gordon H. 1980. Language and Theology. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Clark, Gordon H. [1971] 1994. Historiography: Secular and Religious. 2nd ed. Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation.
Frame, John M. 1987. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
End.
I have illustrated this oscillation with many quotations in these notes.
Gordon Clark has insisted that the objects of knowledge are truths or propositions.
In criticizing John Frame, I have outlined an alternative theory called a Clarkian Theory.
References:
Clark, Gordon H. 1980. Language and Theology. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Clark, Gordon H. [1971] 1994. Historiography: Secular and Religious. 2nd ed. Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation.
Frame, John M. 1987. The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God. Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company.
Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature of Necessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
End.
