The False Dichotomy Of Head vs. Heart

. . . There is a widely prevalent theory, that truth may be of the feelings as well as of the intellect; that it may not only come thus from two independent sources, but may be contradictory so that what is true to the feelings may be false to the intellect and visa versa; and that as moral character and so Christian life are rooted in the voluntary nature, of which the feelings are an expression, the Christian life may be developed and, some say, would better be developed, without reference to such intellectual conceptions as doctrinal statements.

This theory is radically false. There is no knowledge of the heart. Feeling can give knowledge no more than can excitement. As Prof. Bowen has well said, “Feeling is a staate of mind consequent on the reception of some idea.” That is, it does not give knowledge; it presupposes it. There must be knowledge by the head before there can be feeling with the heart.

Once more you see the point. The religion of the heart and the theology of the head cannot be divorced. Unless the heart be disposed toward Christ, the head cannot, because it will not, discern the truth of Christ. As our Lord said, “It is only he who wills to obey God, whose heart is right toward Him, who shall know the doctrine whether it be of Him.” On the other hand, zeal in Christ’s cause will be strong and abiding in proportion as the faith from which it springs and by which it is nourished is intelligent. Zeal without knowledge is dangerous and short-lived.

William Brenton Greene, Jr.
“Broad Churchism and the Christian Life,” Princeton Theological Review, 4 (July 1906), pp. 311-13.

… the Scriptures make no distinction between the head and the heart, as if mathematics came from the head and faith from the heart. The Old Testament frequently contrasts the heart and the lips – sincerity versus hypocrisy – but the term heart, at least seventy-five percent of the time in the Old Testament, means the mind or intellect.

Gordon Haddon Clark
What Is Saving Faith — p. 55

The whole idea that, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing,” has been one of the most injurious wounds ever inflicted upon the Christian faith. How many times, as a Pastor, have I heard people tell me that they had to “follow their heart,” usually with the consequence that they have to break God’s standard in one area or another.

Of course to lift “the heart” up as a extra-sensory means of epistemological knowing is to denigrate and lower God’s Revelation in Scripture as our epistemological foundation. When we insist that there is a knowing which is uninformed by and even unrelated to sound Biblical doctrine we elevate, most usually, our experience or lust at the expense of God’s revelation being lowered. So, when we make “heart knowledge” a co-ordinate authority with head knowledge we end up exalting “heart-knowledge” at the expense of head-knowledge.

The advantage in heart knowledge is that the heart knower does not have to bother to study to show himself approved because what does the heart need with all that head knowledge? Also the advantage to the heart knower is that he or she can never be told they are wrong by the head knower because, after all, “the heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.”

Heart knowledge is another example of unmediated personal and individual experience being used to trump God’s revelation.

Having said all this I perfectly understand that their is a distinction between passion and cold calculated logic. However, even when passion is white hot it is white hot based on what someone is thinking.

Tomorrow’s Theology, way back in 1925

In this recent article,

http://www.thebanner.org/features/2013/05/tomorrow-s-theology

Edwin Walhout advocated his vision of “Tomorrow’s Theology.”

I don’t intend to completely deconstruct Walhout’s article. Mainly I just wanted to show that Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology,” has been advocated as “Tomorrow’s Theology” for at least several decades. My point is to try to take the shine off the idea that there is anything innovative in what Walhout is advocating. In point of fact what Walhout is really offering is “Yesterday’s Theology.” The fact that anybody could see Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology” as novel or futuristic is laughable. As far back as 1925 people were saying the same thing.

“The evolution of man from lower forms of life was in itself a new and startling fact, and one that broke upu the old theology. I and my contemporaries, however, accepted it as fact. The first and most obvious result of this acceptance was that we are compelled to regard the Biblical story of the Fall as not historic, as it had long been believed to be. We were compelled to regard that story as a primitive attempt to account for the presence of sin and evil in the world …. But now, in the light of the fact of evolution, the Fall, as a historic event, already questioned on other grounds, was excluded and denied by science.”

Charles E. Merriam
New Aspects of Politics, 3rd Edition — pp. 59-60

So 88 years after Merriam offered “Tomorrow’s Theology,” Walhout is still insisting that theology from 1925 remains “Tomorrow’s Theology.”

Of course what Rev. Walhout is giving us is just the archaic version of Modernism so aptly advocated for by men like Shailer Matthews in his various books. Like Matthews before him, Walhout’s Christianity is one where his god is the god of the process philosophers. Creation is a process and not an act. (Except possibly as an act that starts off the more important process.) Most commonly then this process philosophy god gives us a word of flux that is determined and regulated by humanistic historicism. Higher Criticism, in “Tomorrow’s Theology” legislated the meaning of Scripture for each “progressing” generation. Naturally, if the Modernist’s god is in process with his creation then so must any legislative word be in process with creation. Next, in the reasoning of “Tomorrow’s Theology,” — or is it “Yesterday’s Theology?” I get so confused on this point — one has to realize that as one has only an immanent god who is working in process with his creation, and who has no absolute legislative law word, therefore ethics are evolving as well. Joseph Fletcher’s “Situational Ethics,” comes to the fore and “right and wrong” are determined by whoever has the biggest and most advanced weaponry.

So, whether Walhout’s theology is “Tomorrow’s Theology” or “Yesterday’s Theology” it remains a Theology that reinterprets the faith once forever delivered to the saints through the anti-supernatural grid of humanistic process theology, where all is becoming (including god), where whirl is King, and where man loses his manishness at the same time as God loses His Godhood.

If you would like to see the consequences of Walhout’s “Tomorrow Theology,” — a theology where original sin is denied — the place to look is at the Soviet Gulags, the Cambodian Killing Fields, or the Cuban Psychiatric wards. If man has no original sin then we have no reason to think that man is basically sinful. If man is not basically sinful then man is either basically good, and only needs to discover his goodness, or man is neutral and needs to be socially engineered to achieve Utopian desires. Such has always been the reasoning of those promising to usher in the Kingdom of man. Of course, I say this fully conceding that Rev. Walhout finds all that 20th century ugliness abhorrent. Most people don’t have the capacity to trace out the consequences of their ideas.

So … beat the rush and reject “Tomorrow’s Theology” today.

Two Cosmologies

“I stand before you as a 40-year-old, single, celibate, and chaste yet openly gay man . . . no longer willing to be silent,” Bowman told the hushed delegates.

Saying he had been excommunicated from another church, Bowman added, “I want to thank this denomination for being affirming of somebody like me.”

Delegates gave him a standing ovation.

Journalist Report From CRC Synod 2013

“All the crosscurrents of present-day liberation struggles are subsumed in the gay struggle. The gay moment is in some ways similar to the moment that other communities have experienced in the nation’s past, but it is also something more, because sexual identity is in crisis throughout the population, and gay people—at once the most conspicuous subjects and objects of the crisis— have been forced to invent a complete cosmology to grasp it. No one says the changes will come easily. But it’s just possible that a small and despised sexual minority will change America forever.”

1993 Cover Story from “The Nation” magazine

Some observations cross correlating the two quotes.

It should be noted that the word “cosmology” in “The Nation” quote is largely synonymous with “Worldview,” and I am using it that way as well.

1.) In a Christian cosmology the main means of identifying one’s self is by the noun “Christian.” In a Christian cosmology one finds their identity in Christ. We are baptized into Christ. We are crucified with Christ. We are raised with Christ. We are even seated in the heavenlies with Christ. The Catechism reminds us that “we are not our own but belong to our faithful savior Jesus Christ.” ST. Paul even can say that “to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” All of this is what one expects to find in both the individual and the covenant community where a Christian cosmology is in the ascendancy. In a Christian cosmology Christians identify with Christ.

However, when sodomy comes to the fore a new cosmology has to be created in order that the chief identifying mark is not “Christian,” but rather “gay.” In a sodomite cosmology one finds their identity in their homosexuality. This is so true, that the sodomy identity even for the “sanctified Christian homosexual,” is “gay” and not “Christian.”

Now in a Christian cosmology there is understanding that all Christians struggle with what the Scripture call besetting sin and Christianity is sympathetic towards those who are constantly seeking to mortify the old man in order that the new man in Christ might be vivified. As such, in a Christian cosmology there might be those who would confess that they struggle against sin and who might even admit that they have been made a “eunuch for the Kingdom,” (Mt. 19:12) but they would not identify themselves — their persons — with their sinful inclinations. St. Paul reveals this kind of mindset in his letter to the Corinthians when he, speaking of those who have been redeemed from such sinful lifestyles,

9 Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,

10 Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.

11 And such some of you were [once]. But you were washed clean (purified by a complete atonement for sin and made free from the guilt of sin), and you were consecrated (set apart, hallowed), and you were justified [pronounced righteous, by trusting] in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the [Holy] Spirit of our God.

Note that their identity has changed. They no longer are foulmouthed revilers and slanderers or those who participate in homosexuality. They are now known simply as Christian. They once were the old man but now they are the new man.

In a Christian cosmology it is true that all the saints are sinners but it is also true that in a Christian cosmology no Christian, who is self conscious of their identity in Christ identifies themselves with that sin from which they’ve been delivered. They identify themselves with Christ because they’ve been washed.

2.) Another difference between the Christian cosmology and the sodomite cosmology, when it is played out to its fullest implication, is that in the Christian cosmology how people engage their sexuality cannot be divorced from their Christianity. In the Christian cosmology sexuality is disciplined and harnessed by the Christian faith. In the the sodomite cosmology absolute individual freedom of sexual expression is the center around which all other considerations must orbit. Note the distinction here between a Christian cosmology and a sodomite cosmology is that in the former there are sexuality prohibitions that are part and parcel of the Christian cosmology while in the sodomite cosmology, as it comes into its own, it is only sexuality prohibitions that are prohibited. In the Christian cosmology lust is sin and is to be confessed and denied. In the sodomite cosmology sexual repression is sin and is to be confessed and denied.

3.) In the historic Christian cosmology anthropology and sexuality are bound up together. Man without a helpmeet woman is incomplete (where he or she is not gifted with singleness) and man is not complete until woman is taken from him, fashioned anew, and returned to him in marital union. This historical imagery is so integral to the Christian cosmology that it is taken up in the New Testament with its testimony that the male female union relationship is a reflection of Christ’s relationship with the Church. In the Christian cosmology this male female relationship is fruitful and is to the end of glorifying God and raising faithful covenant children. Sodomy overturns all this cosmology and anthropology for a cosmology and anthropology that teaches that sexual intimacy is not unique to a male and a female and that sexual union is by definition sterile apart from technological contrivances.

4.) The cosmology of Christianity and the cosmology of sodomy are in antithesis and so are incompatible with one another. If there is an attempt to mix them together the end result will only be semantic deception. By semantic deception what is meant is that any mixing of these two antithetical cosmologies will result in the language of Christianity being retained but emptied of its historic orthodox Christian meaning in favor of meaning that is subservient to the cosmology of sodomy. The results will be a retention of Christian jargon but only as that jargon is emptied of its objective historic Christian meaning.

5.) The whole issue of sodomy is so important because it is not just about who is sleeping with whom. I really couldn’t care less about that. The whole issue of sodomy is so important because if the LGBT – sodomy agenda is to overthrow standard historic Christian cosmology then everything changes. If the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins the day it is not merely a matter of a slight alteration in our social order. No, if the cosmology of the LGBT crowd wins historic Christianity is thrown off completely and with the embrace of the new sodomite cultus a new culture and social order is born that is opposed to Christ and His Kingdom.

At this point it appears that the sodomite cosmology might win in the short term. It has been steamrolling since the enlightenment in one form or another. However, in the long term it can not win because it is a cosmology of death.

Iron Ink Archives Support Rev. Bayly’s Exposure Of R2K Spin

Over at the Bayly Blog

http://baylyblog.com/blog/2013/06/theological-critique-escondido-two-kingdoms-theology-viii-machen-was-culture-warrior

Rev. Bayly gets in the R2K boys’ Kitchen. Of course we have been writing the very same thing for years now. See excerpts below.

However, one key thing that needs to be taken from Rev. Bayly’s article and my own excerpts is that the R2K chaps are hack Historians when they try to claim Machen as “proto-R2K.” Machen wasn’t proto R2K and for Historian, Dr. D. G. Hart, and the rest of the “R2K Gang Who Can’t Shoot Straight” to suggest that Machen was R2K is worse then disinformation and propaganda. It is Libel of the dead.

Historians are supposed to deal with all the information on a person’s life and seek to either harmonize it or leave the contradictions exposed. Historians are not supposed to cut and paste someone’s life to fit their preconceived political agenda. (And R2K is a political agenda, despite its constant screaming that Churchmen shouldn’t be involved in disputes concerning political agendas.)

So, a hat tip to Rev. Bayly for exposing R2K again.

See below links and excerpted portions from Iron Ink previous engagements with R2K in years past for supplementary material that supports the Bayly Blog’s exposure of R2K.

October 18th 2011

This post title is “J. Gresham Machen … Does Not Know, Nor Has Ever Heard Of R2K”

Christianity and Culture – “Modern culture is a mighty force. It is either subservient to the Gospel or else it is the deadliest enemy of the Gospel. For making it subservient, religious emotion is not enough, intellectual labor is also necessary. And that labor is being neglected. The Church has turned to easier tasks. And now she is reaping the fruits of her indolence. Now she must battle for her life.”

J. Gresham Machen
1912 centennial commemorative lecture at Princeton Seminary

“Instead of obliterating the distinction between the Kingdom and the world, or on the other hand withdrawing from the world into a sort of modernized intellectual monasticism, let us go forth joyfully, enthusiastically to make the world subject to God.”

~J. Gresham Machen

June 30th 2009

This post title is “Cleaning Out The Outhouse”

Recently Steve Zrimec over at “The Confessional Outhouse” was bored enough to pay attention to something I wrote on Iron Ink. Steve Zrimec is, in many respects, the theological antithesis to myself. He is the Joker to my Batman … the Stalin to my Churchill … the ying to my yang.

I thought I would go ahead and respond to some of Steve’s prattling and so provide a service by cleaning the the Outhouse.

Steve started by quoting one of his heroes, and a sometime foil of mine, Dr. D. G. Hart. This quote comes from Hart’s book on Machen. (Which I have read.)

“Machen was indeed concerned about the dangers that “cultural modernism” posed to traditional faith. But he was even more worried about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. For Machen, the moves by Protestants to “modernize” the faith—and not the efforts of “cultural modernists” to move beyond Christianity—comprised the greatest danger to Christianity. For by refashioning Christianity mainline Protestants hoped to maintain the churches’ role as cultural guardian. But in the process, Machen believed, they had confused influence with faithfulness. In fact, he held that theological integrity and cultural authority were inversely related: a theology eager for public influence invariably compromised the Christian faith, while a principled theology could at best benefit society indirectly.”

The problem here for gentlemen like Hart and Zrimec is that they continue to be confused on the issue of culture. Hart speaks here of Machen being more concerned about the “modernism” of American Protestantism and the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested than he was over the dangers of cultural modernism. But what Hart misses is that these two concerns are not unrelated. The same alien theological premises that were driving cultural modernism were driving the cultural outlook upon which Protestantism reconstructions rested. Machen could inveigh against the dangers of both because the dangers were one at the root. The attempts by protestants to modernize grew out of the same soil that found cultural modernists attempting to move beyond Christianity. Zrimec and Hart can’t really believe that the anti-supernatural premises of the protestant modernists were unrelated to the anti-supernatural premises of those wanting to move beyond Christianity.

It is perfectly understandable that Machen was more concerned about the unfaithfulness in the Church over and above the unfaithfulness in the culture since a trained mind would understand that there would be no recalling the culture from its modernists assumptions if the Church became wrapped in those same modernist assumptions.

The only place I would correct Machen (or perhaps correct Hart’s conclusions on Machen) is on Hart’s final observation. The scripture is full of prophets who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read the major or minor prophets? History likewise is full of men who were eager for their theology to have public influence who did not compromise. Has Hart never read of Hus, or Wycliffe and the Lollards or Bunyan?

I would say instead that a theology eager for public influence invariably compromises the Christian faith, when the theology eager for public influence is willing to accommodate to the culture as the Protestant re-fashioners of Christianity were doing during the modernist controversy.

This quote from Hart by Zrimec does nothing to overthrow anything I said that was quoted at the Confessional Outhouse. Indeed, I would say this quote supports my analysis of the relationship of cult and culture that Zrimec cites dismissively.

“Machen’s cultural concerns, thus, made him in the 1920s a reluctant ally of secular intellectuals but in the 1930s would cost him the support of the fundamentalists. Like Machen, though for different reasons, cultural modernists also bristled under mainstream Protestantism’s moral code, rejected its cheery estimate of human nature and the universe, and opposed its bid to Christianize American society. The subtext of Machen’s theological critique of Protestant modernism—that the churches had no business meddling in society—was good news to the secularists who thought that America’s Protestant ethos impeded intellectual and cultural life. Fundamentalists, in contrast, were virtually deaf to Machen’s ideas about the relationship between Christianity and culture. To most conservatives throughout the 1920s, Machen was a champion of orthodoxy who had reestablished the theological foundations for Christian civilization in America. By the 1930s, however, his understanding of the church’s limited role in public life began to alienate fundamentalists. When Machen’s efforts to reform the Presbyterian Church were finally thwarted and he withdrew in 1936 to form a new denomination, his new church attracted few fundamentalists. They stayed away at least in part because they, unlike Machen, shared with modernizing Protestants the belief that Christian values constituted the bedrock of American society.”

D.G. Hart, Defending the Faith: J. Gresham Machen and the Crisis of Conservative Protestantism in Modern America

Machen’s conviction on the relationship between Christianity and culture had a strong flavor of the classical liberalism that Machen grew up under as a son of the South. Machen was as opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of Christianity as we was opposed to using the State to force a top down regime of pagansim. Any reading of Machen’s writings on education easily confirms this. The difference between Machen and the fundamentalists can more be accounted by Machen’s embrace of classical liberalism vs. the fundamentalists embrace of the idea of using the state to force their agenda. Machen, like any good theonomist today, desired men to turn to Christ and a Christian social ethic apart from any governmental coercion.

Machen understood, as Hart says above, that Christianity’s influence should be indirect. Indirect in the sense that people take up Christianity by the coercive will of God and not by the coercive will of the State. Indirect in the sense that a self governing Christian people will, by default, live out Christian principles as they move in the public square.

But all because Christian influence is indirect doesn’t mean it isn’t potent, real or substantial and neither does it mean that those who see no Christian influence in the broader culture shouldn’t decry the absence of that indirect influence or that Christians shouldn’t advocate the resurrection of that indirect influence, or that Christians shouldn’t complain that the current Church refuses to trace out what these indirect influences look like where a vibrant Christianity exists.

Steve Zrimec wrote in conclusion

“In other words, while natural religion is important to make the world go ‘round, Christianity serves another, more counter-intuitive purpose, namely the reconciliation of sinners to God. Arguably, this really was the supreme contribution Machen made: true religion has no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world; it is irrelevant to the traditions of men no matter how he conceives of them and no matter how important they may be to this present life; it does not make bad people (or their cultures) good or good people (or their cultures) better; while it certainly has one resident within it, Christianity is certainly not a way of life.”

All natural religions seek to reconcile sinners to god. The problem is that the god is an idol and the reconciliation to that false idol leaves one unreconciled to the God of the Bible. Steve seems to miss this idea.

Also note that Steve’s gnostic Christianity leaves the corporeal material realm where we do most of our living in the hands of some natural religion. Steve concedes that natural religion makes the world go around and by so doing implies that supernatural religion doesn’t accomplish that. In point of fact both natural religion and supernatural religion are both in the business of reconciliation and in making the world go around.

Steve also in the blockquote above completely rules out the power of the Holy Spirit to remake men increasingly in the image of God. Christianity, according to Steve, does not make bad people good and this despite the constant calls of Scripture to put off the old man and put on the new man created in the image of God.

True religion, “having no obvious implication for or direct bearing on the cares of this world,” does not have anything to say on how families raise their children, on what Marriage looks like, on how children should be educated, or on how a Christian people comport themselves in the public square. Steve’s eschatology is all “not yet” and is gnostically unrealized.

Steve finishes by throwing a Right hay maker,

“Not everyone seems convinced that Machen was onto something though. Contra Machen, the suggestion here is that Christianity creates culture and that good culture is dependent upon an unadulterated Christianity.

If this isn’t an example of “alienated fundamentalism” I’m hard-pressed to know what is.”

Steve’s theology takes us to cultural relativism. Since all of culture is driven by natural religion it makes little difference which of the natural religion is in the drivers seat. There is no way to adjudicate between good culture and not good culture since it is all natural religion driven.

If Steve’s theology isn’t an example of gnostic fundamentalism I’m hard pressed to know what is.

November 08, 2012

R2K Fundamentalism

Darryl Hart writes to one Doug Sowers,

You are doing what Machen’s critics did, assuming he was in favor or drunkenness because he opposed Prohibition.

This is why you are a fundamentalist. You only see one side of an issue. Gay marriage bad. But legislating gay marriage, or the church taking a stand on gay marriage involves laws and officers and members in a host of organizational relationships that go beyond the morality of homosexuality. But for you, it’s a black and white issue and you don’t care what comes with efforts to oppose it, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny.

Bret responds to Dr. D. Gnostic Hart,

1.) Notice how Dr. Hart has now embraced the position of Irons and Bordow who advocate theoretical Christians advancing the it is permissible for Homosexuality or Bestiality to be approvingly legislated for the public square even if they themselves (Bordow, Irons, and now Hart) don’t advocate it or believe it themselves. If this is not public square anti-nomianism then none exists.

2.) Notice how Dr. Hart places politically active “Christians” in the public square, who advance the permissibility of a social order that allows and gives place for deviancy and perversion (as defined by Scripture), under the umbrella of “Liberty.” Of course this is to redefine liberty as license.

3.) Dr. Hart invokes Machen but Hart is comparing apples and sodomites here when he compares Machen’s opposition to Prohibition and Biblical Christians opposition to other Christians advocating the permissibility of perversion in the public square (even if those same Christians personally oppose such perversion). The reason this is a apple and sodomite comparison is that Machen’s position was that he could not oppose something that God’s word permitted. God’s word does not forbid the usage of alcohol and therefore Machen knew he could not support prohibiting what God allowed. Darryl is trying to advance a position where it is wrong to oppose, in the public square, a prohibition that God details in His word. It is not the same thing for Machen to oppose supporting (Prohibition) what God didn’t prohibit and Biblical Christians opposing for the public square what God opposes. As I said, Darryl’s comparison is Apples and Sodomites.

4.) Of course it is Dr. D. Gnostic Hart who is the Fundamentalist here. Darryl is a Gnostic Fundamentalist. He is only seeing the Gnostic side of the issue. The implication of what Darryl is invoking is the idea that it is perfectly acceptable for a Christian Doctor to preform Abortions if he is “in a host of organizational relationships” (such as a Hospital that does abortions) “that go beyond the morality of abortion.” For Darryl this is a White and Gray issue. White — Personally and individually these things bad. Gray — In the Public square these things require “liberty.” Darryl doesn’t care what comes with efforts to oppose perversion, even if it means instituting some kind of political or ecclesiastical tyranny that forces Christians to accept these perversions in the public square and forces them to accept people who accept the acceptability of these perversions in the Church (even if those people don’t themselves approve them personally and individually).

Prolegomena — The Beginnings Of A Reformed Weltanschauung

Prolegomena — The Beginnings Of A Reformed Weltanschauung

This course of study is intended to begin building the framework that will be the basis upon which the Lion’s share of the rest of the curriculum will based. It will spend a great deal of considering issues of Epistemology. Because it is foundational there will be additional reading then what you will find in your subsequent courses.

Main Texts

1.) A Christian View Of Men & Things — Gordon H. Clark
2.) Van Til’s Apologetic; Reading and Analysis — Greg Bahnsen

Required Reading

1.) Thales to Dewey — Gordon H. Clark
2.) Introduction to Philosophy — Gordon H. Clark
3.) Three Types of Religious Philosophy — Gordon H. Clark
4.) Reason, Religion, and Revelation — Gordon H. Clark
5.) God’s Hammer — Gordon H. Clark
6.) Historiography; Secular or Religious — Gordon H. Clark
7.) The Meaning of History — Ronald Nash
8.) The Word of God and the Mind of Man — Ronald Nash
9.) The Light of the Mind — St. Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge — Ronald Nash
10.) Language and Theology — Gordon H. Clark
11.) The Philosophy of Science and the Belief in God — Gordon H. Clark
12.) From Rationality to Irrationalism — C. Greg Singer
13) Essays on Ethics and Politics — Gordon H. Clark
14.) The Clark – Van Til Controversy — Herman Hoeksema
15.) Classical Apologetics by John H. Gerstner, Arthur W. Lindsley and R.C. Sproul

1.) Read the main Text books and write chapter summaries. Identify where you find differences between Clark and Van Til.

2.) Read the rest of the Required Reading and write a paper on the following Subject Matter

A.) A Christian View of Epistemology
B.) A Christian View of History
C.) A Christian View of Language
D.) A Christian View of Science
E.) A Christian View Of Ethics
F.) A Christian View of Politics
G.) A Christian View of Education

3.) Write a paper critiquing the methodology of S.L.u G. (book #15).

4.) Write a paper detailing the foundation and authority of and for a Biblical World and Life View

5.) Interact 1 hour weekly with the Instructor regarding points of interest in the book that you are currently reading.

6.) Be prepared for pop quizzes or short essay requirements.