SRR #41 | The Presbyterian Philosopher

I do a podcast.

I'm not interested in your podcast.

Folks, these are wolves. Truth be told, I oftentimes lay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get rid of wolves.

We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make, I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.

We are polemical and polarizing, Jesus style.

I would first say that to characterize what we do as fashion is itself fashion. It's not hate, it's history. It's not fashion, it's the Bible. Jesus said, Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness.

It is on. We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle.

Introducing Doug Dauma and the Authorized Clark Biography

Alright, thank you everybody for joining us. My name is Tim. This is Simple Riff around the radio. We have with us today well, myself and Carlos Montijo, our other co-host is in the house. And just to remind everybody, we are part of the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network.

I believe there's 10 other podcasts on there, so definitely check them out. I've been saying this every week, guys. Create a profile on the website and then join our group. Join whatever podcast group you like and you will receive email notifications with all the stuff that they do.

And with that, I really want to jump into what we've got going on this week. I'm really excited about this. I know a number of other people out there are probably excited about this as well because they've been asking me to do this for I don't know, a couple of months probably if I remember correctly.

And.

We have with us Doug Duma who is the author of one of my new favorite books, The Presbyterian Philosopher, the authorized biography of Gordon H. Clark. So let me give Carlos an opportunity to say hello.

Let me give Doug an opportunity to say hello. Doug, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? From what I understand, I think that you recently got married and you recently graduated from seminary.

Is that right? Two big life events that happened? Yeah, both of those.

Are correct. I got married in October. My wife Priscilla is here listening to me call her beautiful.

And.

You know what? We have this recorded so you should.

Play it back.

And I.

Graduated from seminary this past August at Sangre de Cristo Seminary which is a Reformed school despite its Spanish name. We're not a Catholic school. And it's a Reformed school in southern Colorado started actually in 1976 by Gordon Clark's son-in-law, Dwight Zeller.

And so it was quite interesting there to work with the family of Gordon Clark, his daughter there.

As well,.

And to have access to his personal papers and to get family information and stories, which did find their way into itself.

Awesome. Well, Carlos, I'm really glad that you're here today because I know that you understand Clark, I think, a lot better than I do. Carlos is actually the one who introduced me to Clark when I was a hardcore Ventilion and Bonsonite guy.

I remember back in the day, Carlos and I used to kind of butt heads because at the time, the church that we were going to, we were the only two guys that really had studied up on presuppositionalism and I was pretty dogmatic about my presuppositionalism.

And I remember Carlos and I used to butt heads a little bit and then he introduced me to the Trinity Foundation. He introduced me to Gordon Clark and from there, I started reading Clark for myself and one of the things that I had found was that I think a lot of the stuff that was out there about Clark was a lot of misinformation and a lot of people didn't understand his point of view and a lot of people had what I would say were little snippets of talking points that they would just spout off without really even understanding the whole controversy and everything that happened.

And once I started reading all the stuff, the back story, it really made me take a closer look at Clark himself and what he contributed to the Christian faith. That's really what I'm hoping that our listeners will get out of this episode is to really give Clark a chance.

We are.

Going to point out that there's a lot of misinformation but Doug, as I said before, your book is one of my favorite books and I've actually read all once, parts of it twice, and I'm probably going to finish it again and read it a third time because there's even some sections in here that I think just went over my head.

I'm going to have to.

Go for it. What I would recommend to you and to other readers is to read the footnotes because there's a lot of side stories or extra information in there that just didn't fit into the narrative itself.

Of the book.

Yeah.

Read everything.

Yeah, I'm with you on that man. Read footnotes. Footnotes are insightful and as a matter of fact, it's funny because I actually even have some footnotes highlighted.

Because.

Yeah, I'm pretty big on that but let me do this. There's been a lot of talk about your book and I want to quote some people talking about your book because I think it's important to point this out. The first quote I have is by Sean Garrity and he's a published author on the Trinity Foundation and he writes, he wrote this back in February 20th and this really got me excited about the book.

He says, I'm about two thirds through Doug's book and I have to say that he has done a masterful job. Must read. The section on the Clark Van Teel controversy and its fallout was excellent and corrects the record regarding some of the fairy tales that have come out of the Van Teel camp over the years.

I have to think that he's going to take some heat over this which you might. I think the work speaks for itself. He goes on to say, Clark and his supporters were treated sinfully and they continue to be treated that way.

See the OPC's treatment of the late Robert Raymond in trying to block his transfer anyway. If anyone hasn't ordered a copy yet, I encourage you to do so you won't regret it.

I mean.

I think Sean is really hitting on something that's true and that a lot of people don't understand the Clark Van Teel controversy and there's a lot of misinformation and I really second what he says. I think that your book is going to correct a lot of those misunderstandings, a lot of that false information.

I have another quote here. Carlos, I'm not really sure who this quote was by, the one that you sent me. Do you.

Know who this quote was by? Yeah, that's one.

That's a quote that.

I got from a former Westminster Theological Seminary student who had read my book. I believe he's been a minister for some years and we kept it anonymous because he basically.

To be anonymous. It's a.

Quote from someone had heard at least parts of this story back in the day. I think he was a seminary student in the 1970s or 80s at Westminster.

Yeah, and because yeah, he might take some heat for this, but let me read his quote. He says, I'm almost finished with the Kindle version of your book. I am dumbstruck. I am so grateful for your having written this and in bringing to light the real story of Dr. Clark's treatment and the powers at play in his OPC Philly Presbytery experience.

I have long wanted to know the whole story. As a student at Westminster Theological Seminary some years ago, I had conversations about the case with a few surviving members of the Presbytery who were opposed to Dr. Clark.

I never imagined what was really going on in the Clark case. It was shameful the way Clark was treated and as a graduate, I am saddened at complicity of some of the faculty of Westminster Theological Seminary at the time.

Obviously, this person wanted to remain anonymous, but I think that really speaks for itself. Carlos, you pulled up some quotes about Gordon Clark just to illustrate what these guys are talking about.

I'll let you talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, sure. Before I jump right in here,.

Doug,.

Congratulations, congratulations, and congratulations on your marriage, your graduation, and your awesome book. Sadly, I have not been able to read it all yet. I've been reading pictures of it from Tim's phone.

But I thank you for sending me a copy. We are also planning to review it on the Bible Flopping Winged Up website. We are going to do a review of it once I get to finish reading it. I really hope you can come back on the show with us again and again because I have so much that I want to talk about with you guys about the book.

I know we could do an entire episode on just each of the topics that we're going to try to cover. Another thing that I want our listeners to keep in mind is that this show is definitional for us because Gordon Clark is an extremely important part of who we are as Semper Firmanda Radio.

With.

Tim and I, when we met and we started to get to know each other, I actually first read... This is a funny story because the way I found out about Gordon Clark was because I was looking... I was a poor college student looking for scholarship money and I was looking online for scholarships and I found the Christian Worldview Essay Contest.

And so that's what drew me at first to the Trinity Foundation. There was basically a voluntary incentive there. It was on 2009 when they were doing the competition or the contest on God's Hammer, which is a compilation of essays by Gordon Clark about the inspiration, the authority, the reliability of the Bible and things like that.

And I fell in love with the book when I read it. It completely turned my Christianity upside down and it changed so much of the way that I see understand the Bible and it has helped me grow. The Trinity Foundation, Gordon Clark has helped me grow.

Probably.

One of the ministries that has most helped me to grow in my understanding as a Christian and equipped me.

And so.

That being... What Tim was talking about with respect to us going back and forth, it actually, it's funny because it actually wasn't that hard to convince him that Gordon Clark's method in theology was far superior than Vonson's or Van Til's or anybody of the other guys just because Clark was just so...

His thought and his theology and his philosophy is so cogent, is so clear, and it's so biblical that really it's... Once you actually read Clark and you get to taste some of his words, it's really not very difficult to see how much... how brilliant he was and how absolutely biblical and clear and systematic he was.

Talking about... There's a long history of Van Tilians misrepresenting the Clark case and misrepresenting Gordon Clark originating in large part with Van Til himself. Doug, I know in your book you cover that a lot.

But I wanted to mention I was looking through this in preparation for the interview I was so excited that I started to reread and read a bunch of source material. I reread the complaint against Clark and the answer to the complaint and also was reading some other secondary sources that were discussing the matter and so I read I stumbled...

This was a few years ago when I stumbled across this article by D .G. Hart. It's called After the Breakup Heartbreak Conservative Presbyterians Without a Common Foe and this was written in 2008 and I think it's from the Journal of Presbyterian History.

So on page 67 he says this.

About the.

Clark-Van Til controversy. He says. At the contested General Assemblies of 1945 1946 and 1947 the subject of the dispute over Clark was the knowledge of God and secondarily ordination procedures but the subtext was the denomination's identity and the last votes were tallied in 1947.

The OPC repudiated Clark's understanding of the knowledge of God rejected his candidacy for the office of minister and stood by the faculty at Westminster but these decisions came with a cost. Clark took a post at Butler University and transferred his membership to the United Presbyterian Church of North America.

Meanwhile, ministers such as Strong sought calls in the Presbyterian Church in the United States PCUS while some congregations left the OPC for the Bible Presbyterian Synod. So Doug, why don't you enlighten us and tell us is this accurate, what he said here?

This is supposed to be like the OPC church historian. He's written a bunch of books on the history of the OPC and stuff, so I mean did he get it right there? I mean it's just basic factual statements, right?

Yeah, I.

D .G. Hart teaches up at Hillsdale, I believe and I quite respect his work. I have his book on Machen a couple of his books and seen some of his writings. I don't really know what's going on with some of the things he's saying there.

There's a number of issues. Now the first one part of what he's saying, the first one being that in 47 that say Clark's views were repudiated or somehow gone against in the OPC. So there were study committees reports in the church and in a number of cases these were opposed to Clark.

They were never made official documents of the church, but I suppose I could go with him. But the next statement about Gordon Clark's ordination being he didn't use the word revoked. I forget what word you had there.

He said.

They repudiated Clark's understanding of the knowledge of God, rejected his candidacy for the office of minister and stood by the faculty at Westminster.

Yeah, that second one there is, I'm not sure where he's getting that because that's not true. I mean in 1944 he was ordained so the complaint came after his ordination. So he wasn't even a candidate. So he wasn't rejecting his candidacy.

He was already an ordained minister as of 1944 and so as the controversy plays out, it's a complaint against Clark's views and trying to sort of overturn that ordination perhaps if things were to go strongly against Clark but in fact they did not and the votes never went against Clark.

For a number of years the votes were in some cases within the Philadelphia Presbytery, in some cases within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church General Assembly. Sometimes the votes were like perfect ties and they'd have these stalemate conditions and things weren't clearing up.

But in no case was there ever a vote in which Clark was in the minority of these. And finally at the end Edmund Clowney who was a student at Westminster Seminary and later much later after the Clark controversy becomes the president at Westminster Seminary he actually leads the study committees and ultimately brings a report out and he takes the majority.

I believe it's a three to two sort of decision which is favorable to.

Clark.

Continuing his position of ordained minister. Clark's ordination is certainly never revoked, never rescinded and Clark leaves in 47 or Clark leaves in 48 because he's just kind of frustrated with all the situations going on in the OPC and he says, I think I can more effectively bring the gospel to people in other connections.

And he joins the United Presbyterian Church. But the mention there of 47 in Butler is odd to me because Clark actually took the job 1845.

While.

An ordained minister, while in great standing in the OPC. The complaint had arisen a few months prior. I think the answer to the complaint had sent back in with some help from his supporters in the Philadelphia Presbytery that was in the court but when Clark took the job at Butler there wasn't any to leave the OPC or anything.

He wasn't taking the job because he was trying to get out of the OPC, he was taking the job because he needed a job. He had been out of work ever since he had left Wheaton College where he had some run-ins with the faculty or run-ins with the administration in there.

So you can see in the biography how it's connected together. The Wheaton affair sort of leads to the ordination controversy within the OPC. But yeah, those series of errors there by D .G. Hart are unexplainable to me.

I didn't mention those in the biography. I mentioned a similar error by one of the I believe there's two or three Van Till biographies. William White wrote one of them and White says something similar that Clark lost his.

Case.

It's just like, I don't know where he's getting this. I think I call White wishful thinking or something.

Yeah, that's funny because I think the problem is that these guys aren't reading the sources for themselves. I think they're getting this from second-hand sources. Van Tillian sources specifically because, and this is nothing new.

John Robbins also.

Wrote.

A little pamphlet called Can the Orthodox Presbyterian Church be Saved? And he also, he criticizes numerous misrepresentations of Clark from the Van Tillians including another volume by D .G. Hart.

And.

John Muither. And it's funny because the reason Clark got kicked out of Wheaton was basically because he was too much of a Calvinist, right? I mean, he was just, his Calvinism was just getting in the way of the faculty there.

And so they kicked him out for being too strong a Calvinist. And ironically Robbins says.

That.

Hart and Muither. Is that how you say his name? John Muither?

I say Meather, but I'm not sure.

Meather, yeah. In their book, Fighting the Good Fight, A Brief History of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, they actually they basically misrepresent Clark's position.

There.

And trying to accuse him of being too broadly evangelical and not reformed enough. It's just very ironic how a lot of these very simple statements of fact that are not even accurate and so this is why we are extremely grateful and so glad that you've shown so much light with your biography.

People don't just read the footnotes, read everything. Read the content, read the appendices, read everything and use that as a springboard to read the rest of Clark's stuff and stuff from the Trinity Foundation.

It's just so important. And people think a lot of people think that what's the big deal? Why should we care? Why does this matter? I mean this is the OPC. It has what, like 30 ,000 members? That's nothing.

That's like a tiny fingerprint considered to the rest of the Christian world or whatever. And so why does it even matter? What is the big deal? And honestly, when you think about this, this is a massive implications for everybody, not just the OPC and not just for Presbyterians, not just for people who went to Westminster or whatever because these men were towering giants of the faith.

These guys were somebody to be reckoned with and they had huge their thought had huge consequences not just on Presbyterianism but on Evangelicalism as a whole. And so I don't know. Tim, did you want to get into something and to jump into something else right now?

Or how did you want to go about this?

I knew that having you on was going to be great, man because I think you guys could probably do this whole podcast by yourselves just talking about all the Clark stuff. But yeah, I totally agree with everything you guys are saying.

And Carlos, you said why does this matter? Well, because God has given the church, he's gifted the church with elders and you and I have talked about this so we shouldn't neglect or disregard the teachers that God has given to us now or before.

And when you have teaching as excellent as this you said it right, he's a giant in the faith. The way that he's talked about, it's.

Very,.

It upsets me to be honest with you. To hear the way that he's talked about and talking about why Clark left and all that stuff. I mean, Carlos, you and I have heard Dr. Scott Oliphant misrepresent Clark a number of times.

That's to put it mildly. Yeah, that's putting it mildly.

And Carlos is actually still in the process of writing an open letter to Dr. Scott Oliphant to correct a lot of his wrong statements about Clark. I'll just say it that way, wrong statements about Clark.

And so you see this coming out of the people who have the platform, who are in the position of authority at these places. They are misrepresenting Clark and so for ordinary guys like us, I mean, it takes a lot of work to just read Clark for yourself and then give him a fair treatment and come away and realize, why are these guys saying stuff like this?

Clark’s Background, Education, and Presbyterian Heritage

Let's go ahead and get into this. I want to ask Doug,.

What.

Introduced you to Clark? And then from what I understand, you know his family, you know his daughters. I mean, it says authorized biography. This was an intense labor and I really quickly just want to reference an article in the Trinity Foundation by the late John Robbins titled, An Introduction to Gordon Clark.

That's a great introduction, but what Doug has done is phenomenal. Doug has, you're going to learn a lot from this book. So Doug, tell us a little bit about how you got into Clark. And just so everybody knows, Doug, do you have kids?

Because Carlos and his wife have kids and I have kids with my wife, so you might hear some screaming. We're recording this around the time that we would normally be doing bedtime with our kids. So people might be hearing some protest screams in the background.

That's what that is.

No children over here, so the screams would be, would have to be my own, I suppose.

That's good. So Doug, tell us, how did you get into Clark? What made you undertake this project? What do you hope to accomplish from it?

All right. I will address that. I wanted to address a couple of the things mentioned previously because I think there's some interesting things that have been said, and then I'll get on to my interest into Gordon Clark.

You had mentioned just a minute ago his daughters, and if you see on the book, the foreword by Lois Zeller and Betsy Clark George, those are her daughters. They wrote the foreword, and I was able to call it the authorized biography because of the permission of his two daughters.

Dr. Clark had two daughters, no sons. I have a chapter I call Clark's Boys. Those are not his natural boys, but those are his students who were called his boys in a certain sense.

So.

You're right. Very much involvement with the Clark family really helped out. What we really wanted to do, so I was thinking, I'm 98

Favorable to.

That reform tradition. I'm 99 favorable to the Trinity Foundation, but I wanted to have this book be a third viewpoint. Someone coming in, not really with a dog in the fight, coming in, I'm doing this as a history.

I'm doing it from the.

Clark's.

Perspective, but with their involvement in trying to aggregate all these sources from, I appreciate the OPC historians. I think I got a lot of good information from their books, and I got a lot of personal input from Danny Ollinger, from John Mether.

I never did speak with D .G. Hart, but I spoke with a lot of people and they have been very helpful in this project. So when.

You.

Mentioned that quote from Sean Garrity that he expects that I will receive.

Heat for this book,.

I found that interesting because one of the people I spoke to a couple times during the process of writing the book was the well-known theologian John Frame. Frame was helpful. He's one of the endorsements in the book.

He gave me some of his recollections about him and.

Dr. Clark. I don't.

Know if much of that got into the book. The endorsement certainly is there. But when I asked John Frame, or when I brought up some of the theological questions from the controversy in the 1940s, Frame seemed just entirely worn out from it.

You could tell for the last 40, 50 years he's been going through these conversations. You want someone who's taken heat for their views to look no.

Further than John Frame.

According to one's perspective, you can say John Frame, Clark himself said, John Frame Van Till, or a Bonsonite or Van Tillian of a certain stripe might think of Frame as.

The same way, like.

Deviating from Van Till. Although others think Frame presents the best interpretation of Van Till. So, anyways, Frame received a lot of heat. I'm quite shocked. So far I haven't really got a lot of heat from the book.

I hope the book gets well read and we get more heat.

But.

I think it's unavoidable when you're discussing Clark and Van Till and some of these topics. You could write anything and you're going to get heat. So it's going to happen. Somebody's probably already writing a nasty piece against me somewhere.

So we'll wait for it to show up.

The thing I wanted to mention before.

I'll talk about my.

History here with Gordon Clark.

Is.

Carlos had mentioned the re-reading the complaint and the answer.

To an important document.

In the 1940s in the controversy. In the biography also I've included a previously unknown document to Unknown to the World of Gordon Clark's own writing during the controversy.

It's called.

Studies in the Doctrines of the Complaint. Written in it's listed on the top, winter 1946 -47. So sometime in that period is when he was working on it and wrote it. And it was a typed up document that he sent to some of the ministers.

I found it both in Dr. Clark's personal collection of papers and also in the Westminster Seminary Archives. There was another copy received by one of the ministers. That document will shed more light on the controversy and is one of the very important documents for a historian looking into the case.

That's why you need to read the appendix, read the appendices too. It's very important for you to read the whole book. I mean it is just full of good stuff.

Yes. I actually have the introduction highlighted so yes you need to read.

The whole book.

Tell us how you got involved with Clark studying his work. And then for those who may not be familiar with Clark tell us a little bit about who Clark was.

I came across Clark.

After.

A series of more and more aggressive readings for a stronger defense of the Christian faith. Reading through a lot of Elvin Plantinga as well as William Lane Craig, Hugh Roth's reading into libertarianism, a lot of Ron Paul, read just about everything of his, everything of Ayn Rand's.

And then after this period really didn't see a lot in secular philosophy that was of much interest and I was looking for a good Christian critique of Rand. And I came across Without a Prayer,.

A book by.

John Robbins, he subtitles it, Ayn Rand and the Clothes of Her System. He's borrowing a title from an old economics.

Book.

It was a critique of Karl Marx I believe. I can't remember who wrote it, was it Averk? I can't remember. Maybe you guys know.

I actually did not know that. That's very interesting.

Yeah, Robbins had studied the libertarians and the Austrian economists. He had studied under Hans Senholtz, the Christian economist of the Austrian school at Grove City. And I was very interested in the Austrian school of economics, which in fact has some similarities to Clark's thought, which is fascinating.

So I read John Robbins critique of Rand, and that pretty much said, okay, no more of that. Obviously that's a dead end, and I appreciated Robbins critique. And then at the end of his book, he has a little picture of Gordon Clark, and he writes in there, Calvinist philosopher Gordon Clark is the greatest man who has ever.

Lived.

It was.

Just overdone.

Heap of praise that Robbins.

Would do for Clark. And I said, okay, whatever.

Calvinism, that's.

Scary. I was a Lutheran. I grew up Lutheran. I was Lutheran at the time. I became a Presbyterian through Gordon Clark's work and through other Presbyterians. But at the time, I read that scary Calvinism, and you're overly praising this guy.

Just put it aside. Didn't think about it. And then maybe a year later, I was looking for Christian philosophy. And I came across Gordon Clark's Introduction to Christian Philosophy.

That book,.

Giving Him a Chance, because I'd heard his name once before from Robbins critique of Rand. And it was in that book, and I really didn't understand a lot of it the first time, but I realized something was going on there, because I wasn't getting this Alvin Plantinga type of defense of theism, which is essentially what Reformed epistemology is.

It's defense of theism. I was seeing something authentically Christian. Juggling some thoughts in my own mind that, where would I start? The Bible says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

If I was going to create some kind of axiom, that was what was going on in my mind. I was trying to develop some type of epistemology. And then finally, I ran into Clark, and I said, it's the truth of the Scriptures.

And so I grew more and more fascinated with his theory of knowledge, his epistemology, more aggressively, and over a period of four years, read all, or just about all, of Gordon Clark's books. He wrote over 40 books, and started thinking that.

A lot of the.

Books are critiques of other views, and only a short bit is his positive construction. At the end, he'll call it a Christian construction. And so I said, why don't we compile all these into one place, have a compendium of what he actually said on his Christian views, so people don't have to read 40 books?

Well, I started working on that, and it was just very soon that I realized the historic context is very important. I think a biography is going to be much more well-received, and will help explain the historical context of Gordon Clark's thought, which, it's his epistemology that fascinates me, and continues to this day to fascinate me, and I'm still working on related topics.

But he brought me into a world of the Westminster Confession, and that's by calling the book The Presbyterian Philosopher, and showing in there how Clark emphasizes the Westminster Confession, what I wanted to do, and showing that Clark was a theologian and a philosopher of the Presbyterian faith.

Not really coming up with anything new. I'm repeating what Augustine said, and what has been put together by the divines at Westminster. So maybe that answers your second question, too, is what is Gordon Clark's thought, or who is he?

Obviously, the Presbyterian.

Philosopher.

Clark’s Presuppositionalism, Epistemology, and Theological Contributions

Let's get into that. In your book, you write that there are two... Is it bedtime?

As you can tell, everybody in my house is excited about Gordon Clark, and about what we're doing here, so we're all just cheering it on. I'm also very glad that... I think it is getting bedtime. I'm very glad you made the decision to write the biography as well, because histiology is there.

If you want to see it, it's there. The Trinity Foundation has published the majority of it. It's already there, and I think this was something that really needed to get more exposure, and to really uncover all of the layers of misunderstandings and misrepresentations of.

The...

The decades of history that has been piled on top of it. I'm very glad that that was your decision to write this biography. It's already making a huge impact, so that's awesome.

The book is not without that, because you do get into its theology in the book, so I want everybody to know that.