SRR #61 | Interview With Jason Peterson - Fellow Clarkian

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.

Introduction to the Show and the Guest

Alright, I want to welcome everybody to the show. This is Simple Riff around the radio and my name is Tim Shaughnessy. Not to be confused with Tim Hurd or Tim Kaufman, both very recognizable names on the Bible Thumping Wingnut Network.

I am going to be hosting an interview today and Carlos Montijo and Joe Lanza were supposed to be here. I don't know. We set a time. I don't know what has transpired. I can't get a hold of either of them.

I'm just letting you know they may pop in to participate in this interview slash discussion. If they do, that would be great. If they don't, then we'll just move forward. I'm very excited about today's guest.

We've known him for a long time. We've interacted with him for a long time. This is the first time that he's been on our show. He is a solid brother in the Lord. He's also a Clarkian. I'm very excited for that reason.

Let me just go ahead and give an opportunity for our guest to say hello. I want to welcome to the show Jason Peterson. Thanks.

I'm honored to be here.

Jason Peterson’s Ministries and Testimony

He has a ministry and I want to draw some attention to the ministry. Jason, you have a website. You write quite a bit for the website. I was actually looking at it right now. It looks like you've revamped the website.

It looks pretty good. I've got to say I like the format. It's rabidclarkian .com is the URL. The name of the website is the Rabid Clarkian blog. Jason, tell us a little bit about your ministry, what your focus is, what your area of expertise is, and what you try to put out on your website.

Sure. First off, I'd like to start off by giving my testimony because not everybody knows about it. Basically, I grew up in a Christian home. I grew up as a Southern Baptist and also went to an independent Baptist church as well.

My parents really pushed me to go into church. I prayed the sinner's prayer.

At the age of nine.

At that point, I felt assured of my salvation. Although now, I do not really condone the sinner's prayer because I think it brings about the danger of someone placing their faith in the prayer they said instead of in Christ himself.

But I did pray that prayer and that's whenever I started identifying myself as a Christian. I was raised and brought up on biblical principles by my parents. I was a very calm kid. I didn't get in a lot of trouble.

My sister has a different story, but I didn't get in a lot of trouble. I didn't ever get written up at school.

I rarely.

Got in trouble with my parents. It was even rarer that I got in big enough trouble with my parents to be grounded or something.

Like that.

I like to think that I behaved fairly well. When I got older, in my early 20s, I started drifting away from the faith a bit. I had a lot of doubts. A lot of it was due to how I saw Christians acting, people who identified as Christians, seeing how they acted.

I always knew deep down that the Christian God was real, but I tried to ignore him for a while. I even was still going to church, but deep down, I was playing the orchestra, but deep down I had a lot of doubts about my faith.

Well, this all turned around in 2010 whenever I was diagnosed with cancer. I had cancer in my eye. It was called ocular melanoma. I had no idea that it was even possible to have cancer in your eye up until that point.

Obviously, it was a pretty big shock to me. I wasn't exactly sure what was going to happen. I've known a lot of people who have died of cancer. The doctor did say that it is possible it did spread. He didn't know if it did spread, but he said it could spread, but commonly when it does spread, it spreads somewhere like to the brain.

It was a pretty scary thing. I went to UAB and had surgery on my eye by a doctor named Dr. Callahan. When I was in the waiting room for the first appointment, I was reading a book called Creationist Astronomy by Donald D. Young.

I was reading this stuff and I was just amazed. I was looking at this stuff already. When I was facing my mortality, I started thinking about the big questions in life. I started seeking answers for it.

I was reading this book and I thought, man, I'm facing my mortality and I know I have repented and I have come back to the flock. I knew that my salvation was assured,.

But.

There are other people that face my situation and they don't have the hope that I have. That was the first time I really considered going out and doing ministry and apologetics. I started getting into William Lane Craig.

I was very encouraged by the arguments he offered at the time. It just really helped bolster my faith even further. Then later on, I ran into an interview between Eric Cobb and Esaite Bruckencape. I was listening to them talk and he was talking about how some Christians put the Bible on trial.

I was like, yes, that's true. He was talking about how we need to stand on the authority of Scripture. I agreed with that emphatically. I sort of became a presuppositional apologist. Shortly thereafter, I became a Reformed Baptist.

Then I later became a Presbyterian. It kind of really led me towards a Reformed faith. At this point, of course, I and I have some disagreements, but we are friends. We do talk on occasion. We're both pretty busy people.

That's kind of how I got pushed into the destruction. In 2013, I started a ministry called Answers for Hope. Actually, the website, answersforhope .org, it is still there. It is a website. At first, it was a website I just posted.

It was like a blog. I posted something. Actually, I post it frequently. I post it every day. Later on, I started another website, which is the Rabbi Clarkian blog. Recently, I redid answersforhope .org and I made it to where it's a question and answer site only.

That means that right now, all I do is respond to questions that are sent to me via email, and I post it on there. I try and post once a week, but I don't always get to do so due to time constraints. The Rabbi Clarkian blog is more for me interacting with other people.

Also, it's for me ranting, and sometimes my sarcasm comes out in some of those articles whenever I'm talking about things like gender identity and what have you and politics. That one's more of an informal website where I just kind of say what's on my mind.

I have a third website called the Christians and Investors Club. The website is christianinvestorclub .org. I do post less frequently on that because it's not really a primary ministry. It's more of a secondary thing.

There, I teach Christians how to invest in investments that produce cash flow and how to handle their finances better. Those are right now. I have three ministries, and that is all three.

Questions, the Hypostatic Union, and Answering by Email

Well, that's awesome. I actually didn't know that you had the third ministry, and I wasn't sure if Answers for Hope was still active. Answers for Hope is the one where you tackle questions that people send you?

Yes, and actually I have some interesting questions coming up, answering such as how it's possible for Jesus to be both God and man. Questions about the Hypostatic Union, and that's been a big problem for the church.

Gordon Clark tried to address it, but unfortunately he didn't get to finish it before he passed away. I still think that there's still an issue with that that I plan to address in my dissertation whenever I finish my PhD at Whitfield.

I'm definitely looking forward to that. I know Carlos Montijo is actually also working through that, and it is a very complicated issue. Let me go ahead and do this. Let me draw some attention to that.

If our listeners want to send you a question, where do they send it?

On answersforhope .org I have a contact form. You'll see where it says ask a question. You can click on that. There's a form that you can fill out that will send an email directly to the ministry email address, which is answersforhope at gmail .com.

You can also email directly at answersforhope at gmail .com. I do occasionally get scoffers that try and email me, and then I'll decide whether I want to respond to it publicly, privately, or if I want to even respond at all.

But I do also get a lot of questions from Christians. There's a variety of issues that come up, and there's sometimes a question comes up, and I go, well, I haven't really thought of it. I recently had a question about whether there was a distinction between adultery and fornication.

I never really thought about it before, so I had to go and do it. I went, and I took about a month to study it before I answered the question. Sometimes, I don't know the answer, and I go, and I try and find out.

If I don't feel I can answer it after I do my research, I just tell them that I probably wouldn't be of much benefit if I did answer it, and maybe refer them to someone who's more of an expert on it. If I am able to answer it, then I'll go ahead and post it on the website.

I typically only post the first name of the person. I don't post their last name because I don't know if they really want everybody to know exactly who it is that's asking the question. As a result, sometimes I'll have a bunch of questions.

For instance, the question I had about adultery was from a guy named David. Now, I have another guy named David who's asking me different questions. Some people may be led to believe that a lot of these people are the same, but they're usually not.

I really appreciate the spirit in which you're wanting to address these issues because I think that a lot of times when we put ourselves out there, we're doing podcasts. There can be a temptation to want to be an expert in every area.

I think that we are supposed to be a part of the body of Christ. We are a part of the body of Christ, which is the Church, but we're supposed to interact in that way. There's a lot of areas that I'm not an expert in.

I have to defer to somebody else who might be an expert in that area. I definitely appreciate the attitude with which you're operating yourself in. I've got to ask you this. Rabid Clarkian. How did you come up with that name for your blog, Rabid Clarkian?

Sia jokingly called me a Rabid Clarkian repeatedly, and I disadopted it. It's kind of funny. Some people ask me, what do you mean by Rabid? I go, well, I guess I'm sarcastic. I'm very opinionated. That's what it means to be Rabid in that website.

I'm just opinionated and I'm sarcastic.

Reconciliation Over the Clarkian Conflict

Okay, so we've got to talk about something, and let's just get it out of the way. We've had a long history in the ether of Facebook and the internet, and I would like to just throw this out there, is that we've had our disagreements in the past, and we've been able to reconcile, obviously, by the grace of God.

We're friends. I would actually count you among friends, but let's just go ahead and bury the hatchet with regards to the conflict that we had. I'll give you an opportunity to give a little bit of a backstory.

I believe it was about a year and a half ago, and the reason that we need to bring this up is because we actually have written an article that had your name in it, and we referenced a disagreement that we had.

Let me give you an opportunity to give some of the backstory, and I'll just let you take it.

Sure. I'm a student of Dr. Talbot, and he's a former student. He was a student of Gordon Clark, and I also know quite a few of Dr. Clark's former students, Dr. Kaiser, Kaiser, for instance, and Dr. Bill Higgins.

I do know.

A few of those students. I have been in correspondence with Gary Crampton recently about an academic paper that I wrote. We've been going back and forth because we had some agreements, disagreements, and some things that he thought should be clarified.

So I have had correspondence with numerous people. Now, the way this started, and I'll be completely transparent here, the good and the bad and everything. I was a part of a group called the Gordon H. Clark Discussion Group on Facebook.

Anyone who isn't a part of the Good Dissention in Clark, I highly recommend you join it. There are a lot of really knowledgeable people there.

I don't agree with anyone there.

I don't agree with everybody's interpretation of Clark there, but if you want exposure to a lot of people who are interested in Gordon Clark, that is the best place on Facebook to go to. There is another group, too, called the Gordon Clark Discussion Group.

That one's not quite as busy, but there are knowledgeable people there as well that are not a part of the Gordon H. Clark Discussion Group for various reasons. We all have our preferences about how groups should be ran and everything.

This all started whenever I had blocked someone because they really got on my nerves. I just felt like they were wasting my time, and I felt like they were a nuisance. I blocked them. This was apparently against the rules of the group, and I refused to block them.

I threatened to leave multiple times, and I'm not saying I shouldn't have threatened, I should have just left. I shouldn't have made a big scene about it, but that's what I did. I made a big scene about it, and I made a final post saying that I'm leaving because I don't agree with this rule after everyone voted on it and decided to keep it.

I left the group. I thought it was the best thing to do because I didn't want to stay there and keep arguing with people about how the rules should be, especially when it's not my group in the first place.

I went and I started a group with Dr. Talbot and some other students at Gordon Clark called Clarkian Apologetics Group. I used the term Clarkian Apologetics for the group because there wasn't really a group that really had that title, so I thought it would be really easy for people to find.

I would imagine that anyone who tried to search for Clarkian Apologetics would use Clarkian Apologetics as a term that they look for. That's why I named the group that Dr. Talbot was in, and I had some other students in there.

I think Kenneth Gentry was in the group, too, although he's not Clarkian. I think he was a part of the group, though. The purpose of that group, as Dr. Talbot and I agreed on, was just to educate people on Gordon Clark.

The problem was that we kind of wanted it to be a place where people can come and ask questions. We didn't really want people going with us back and forth because we didn't really want to spend a lot of time arguing on social media.

I don't know how Dr. Talbot feels about this, but I don't think we handled it very well. We had people like Tian came on and had some disagreements. Luke Minor had some disagreements, and we responded by eventually banning them all.

I mean, any dissenter, basically, we kicked out of the group because we just thought it was rude if you're teaching in a classroom for somebody to come in and just start trying to take over the class.

That's how we felt about it at the time. I told Luke Minor that he was not a Clarkian. I shouldn't have said that because of his definition of knowledge. I didn't agree with it and some other things. It was a really nasty situation.

Really, it was stressful because I had so many people going at me, so I got really defensive. I talked back. I said some things I shouldn't have. I think the others on the other side, I'm not going into specifics because I don't want to start anything, but I think some other people that responded to me said some things they shouldn't have.

It was just a very terrible thing that happened.

I regret it.

I hate that I said those things. I hate that I keep them off the page. What we should have done was just let people give their opinion and just not respond to it and just let it stand. That's what we should have done, in my opinion.

There was a lot of people that were mad at the Gordon Clark group that were talking about our group. Maybe to them, it looked almost like a cult because we were kicking people out that disagreed with us.

It is our group. We have a right to do that. Looking back, they say hindsight is 20 -20. I don't agree at all with how I handled it before. I'm very regretful of that. I also brought up an issue in the group about Gordon Clark's definition of saving.

Faith.

This caused some disagreement. I also mentioned in the group that Dr. Robbins had edited Dr. Clark's book so the books that you get from the Trinity Foundation may not necessarily reflect what Gordon Clark actually wrote.

I will say this. From what I understand from Dr. Talbot, Gordon Clark, when he wrote, he was very technical in his.

Writings.

Dr. Robbins helped him. I'm not saying Dr. Robbins came and completely changed it, but he did help edit Clark's works. Clark trusted him and Dr. Robbins did edits Clark's works, having footnotes in and everything to clarify some things he said and things like that.

The way I said it and what I understand from Dr. Talbot's time was that Dr. Robbins had actually taken Clark's book on saving faith and rewrote it to where it agrees with him with Dr. Robbins' view because he had a little bit of a different view of justification than Clark did.

I said that and it turns out what I said was not really accurate. I misunderstood what Dr. Talbot said. Dr. Robbins did have a disagreement with Clark on saving faith, but he did not actually change what Dr. Clark said in the book to reflect his own position.

That was false and I've taken responsibility for that for being careless and not really asking enough questions before going and bringing a bombshell like that out there. That was one of the big disagreements and I think that was one of the most contentious disagreements that we all had was the issue of Dr. Robbins and the Trinity Foundation and I've expressed regret over that and I think we all have some regret about at least how the situation was handled.

There were some articles back and forth. There was a fairly lengthy article that Luke Minor and CJ wrote towards me. Tim and Carlos had written something towards me. Sean Jarrett made some comments.

And.

I looked at it and I was going to write a response to everything, but then I just finally said I'm just going to let it go because I just didn't feel like going back and forth with everybody. But later on as people cool off as time passes and.

Really there was.

A time, Tim, I think it was you and Carlos where I just hung up on you all during a conversation. I just hung up. I didn't even tell you guys that I hung up. I think you remember that.

Yeah, you hung up on me.

Yeah, so it was a very tense thing.

And it was over the comments with regards to John Robbins and I do remember, as a matter of fact, the reason that we stepped in was because you had said that Luke Minor wasn't a Clarkian and then that's when we stepped in and then with respect to the issues about the editing that John Robbins did and the Trinity Foundation.

I haven't talked to Dr. Talbot in years. I do remember that when I did speak to Dr. Talbot, he had told me that there's Clark and then there's Robbins' version of Clark and that I needed to be careful with the Trinity Foundation and I found that to be a little bit discouraging.

I don't know where he's at with that. I can't represent his views now or currently and my hope is that because he has said some disparaging things on Facebook with regards to Dr. Robbins. I don't know why there would be.

I.

Think that he probably didn't appreciate Robbins' polemics because Robbins was very polemical but I hope that whatever grievances he might have had with Robbins I hope that he's been able to resolve that.

The main thing that I want to get at here is that I think that we've been able to reconcile because like you said, enough time had passed. They say cooler heads prevail. I think that whenever we go to Clark, if we disagree about something that Clark had said we think that Clark meant this when another person thinks that we meant that.

I think that we can just come to the table as brothers and say this is what I see and this isn't something that we should divide over and I think that that's probably where you're at as well right now.

Am I correct in saying that?

Yes, even if we may have disagreements, I think that we all do enough good to where we should just focus on working together instead of trying to argue and just maybe state our positions and let other people figure out which one they want to take.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Just for clarity's sake, you no longer believe that Robbins edited Clark's work in a way that would misrepresent Clark or in a way that would change what Clark had initially written.

Am I correct?

Yes, you're correct on that. Like I said, I had misunderstood what Dr. Talbot said and that's why I had said what I said and I really stepped in it whenever I had said that so I spoke too soon without asking enough questions so that's how that got started.

Yeah, and that's actually the point when I got kicked out of the Clarkian group because I had actually challenged that and then you know, I don't remember if it was you that reached out to me or if it was me that reached out to you but all I can say is I'm grateful that we're now talking.

Things are good and so for the remainder of this podcast, what I want to do is I want to promote your book and say congratulations on actually publishing a book because I haven't done that. I'm hoping to in the future.

I hope that if I do in the future that people will read it and buy it but you recently published a book and it is geared towards Clarkian apologetics and it's apologetics made simple. Five keys to an unstoppable apologetic.

So, what inspired you to write this book and what is the main thrust of the book?

Apologetics Made Simple and the Goal of the Book

Well, God has blessed the church with a long line of gifted theologians and philosophers throughout the history of Christianity. I really believe that a lot that most of the objections to Christianity have been sufficiently.

Answered.

I think the only one that there could be any argument about is that maybe the church is not still quite as a whole still does not quite understand the hypostatic union.

I believe that.

It's resolvable. I actually do have a solution of mine. I'm not going to share it right now because it's in its infancy. If Carla speaks me to it, that would be great because it would be a lot less work for me.

That is a tough issue to tackle. There's a lot of terms that need to be defined and I think that's where the problem goes with the hypostatic union. It's just the terms that the church has used throughout its history.

I really felt that.

I haven't.

Been in very good health over the past couple of years. I really don't know how long I'm going to be here. If I'm going to publish something, I want it to be the most beneficial book that I can publish.

This is my first book. I made it short because I really wasn't sure about the editing and the formatting. I didn't want to deal with a 300-page book for the first time trying to get all that stuff done.

Fortunately for me, when I was working on the cover, Fred Beal saw what I was doing. Fred Beal is a Vantillian. Very good guy. We're very good friends. He actually helped design the cover of this book for me, even though I'm Clarkian.

He's a Vantillian. He actually helped me with this book. He helped format the book for me. He just really made the process easier for me. I definitely appreciate him for that. He's actually working on his own book on the Trinity and I'm really looking forward to reading that because I think Vantill had some good ideas and I am confident that Fred Beal will build on the good things that Vantill has said.

While.

Maybe filtering out some of the things that weren't so good. But that aside, what led me to write this book? There was a couple of things I took into consideration. The first one was how much of a benefit it would be if I were to not make it to next year or something.

Would I be leaving something behind that someone could use? One of the things I see whenever I watch debates between atheists and Christians and the average Christian, there are a lot of things at play in the discussion that goes unnoticed by both sides, such as definitions of terms.

For the Christian, when to walk away from a discussion instead of wasting your time beating your head against a brick wall. Systemizing the apologetic and the worldview that the Christian is constructing.

The philosophy of language is a big issue that I think a lot of people don't understand. I have found that a lot of people tend to take very uncharitable representations of the other position in order to make theirs look better.

You see this more on the atheist side than the Christian side in my opinion. I see a lot more coming from them. And then also being able to do apologetic in a way that is consistent with how Jesus Christ would have.

Done it.

This is what I had written about. I give five keys to how to engage in discussion. Now this book isn't really about responding to any particular argument. I think Christians have done a great job of addressing a lot of the arguments already.

So I'll wait and do my own version of those kind of books later. But what I really want to get out there is I want to teach the person how these five things that will really make defending the faith easier for them.

If you follow these things and if you really pay attention to them, you will find that atheists will have a significantly harder time dealing with you. People can listen to some of my more recent debates after I had become more seasoned and more in line with Clark's philosophy.

They can look at my writings. I utilize all these principles of my apologetic. And I am convinced that anyone who follows these principles, regardless of their apologetic methodology, will have an apologetic that is impossible to counter.

So some of the things I emphasize is first is dogmatism, which is basically what I cover is that there's no such thing as neutrality. You've heard Dr. Bonson. I think he has a great quote. There's two things you need to know about neutrality.

First, they aren't and you shouldn't be.

That's a great quote from Dr. Bonson. And I actually like that you did that. I like that you quoted Bonson favorably. In one of my recent articles on the scripturalist ad hominem reply, I quote Bonson favorably as well because while as a Clarkian, I do have disagreements with Bonson and I know that Bonson wrote against Clark and had some disagreements with Clark.

We would certainly want to where these guys said something good, let's acknowledge it. So I mean, I appreciate that. That was a really good point that Bonson made about neutrality. And as a matter of fact, I don't want to give away the whole book, but I wanted to, just for illustration, I wanted to ask you about dogmatism because I see what you're doing.

You're giving people a foundation for how they should approach the debate rather than just giving them here's an argument, here's a response. You're giving them the mindset that they should have with how to approach the debate.

And I thought that this was really important. I thought the chapter on dogmatism was actually very insightful. And let me say, the book is small, but I thought it was very well written and I thought it had some really good information.

So if you have an opportunity, I definitely would recommend our listeners to check it out because dogmatism, let's dive into that a little bit because I think that a lot of people out there have the view of Christians as your dogmatist, but we're not.

We come to the table like you said, neutral following the evidence wherever it leads. And one of the things that you have in here is everyone is a dogmatist. So I want to give you an opportunity to explain to our listeners what that means.

What do you mean by everybody's a dogmatist? Like how can a scientist who is coming to the table neutral, he's allowing the evidence to speak for itself, he's allowing the evidence to guide him and direct him, he's not a dogmatist.

The Christian is the dogmatist and they're stuck in their ways. You make the point that even he is a dogmatist. So I want to give you an opportunity to explain to our listeners what you mean and then that way it'll give them a little bit of insight into what the book contains.

Why Everyone Is a Dogmatist

Sure. So when you look at the history of philosophy, you will find that there are philosophers that come in and it's very clear that they have specific goals. And this is true for Christians and non-Christians.

For instance, Immanuel Kant wanted to save empiricism from the devastating critiques of David Hume. So anytime someone enters a discussion, it is impossible to enter a discussion unless you want to accomplish something.

Everybody has their goals that they want to accomplish and they will try in philosophy and they'll try and raise whatever arguments they can to reach that conclusion. No atheist goes into a debate with a Christian to actually challenge their beliefs without the intention of trying to show that they are correct.

So the atheist goes in, he already believes he's correct. The Christian goes in, he already believes.

That he's correct.

As people that are not omniscient, the view that we have of the world around us is affected by our assumptions.

And everybody,.

If you make any argument, it is absolutely necessary that you have to start with something. As Dr. Clark has said, if you haven't started, you haven't begun.

And to give.

An analogy, you can't finish a race unless you start it first.

Clark makes the point that every philosophy must have a first principle laid down dogmatically, which cannot be proven but must first be assumed. Every worldview must have its first principle or axiomatic starting point.

And when we say that every principle must be laid down dogmatically, is that what you mean by everybody at that point becomes a dogmatist?

Yes, that is what I mean. Everybody has to start with an assumption. It's impossible to argue without starting with one if you're not omniscient. You have to start somewhere and assume it. And if you think that you can prove your assumption, that means it's not an assumption.

There's another assumption that you're making in order to try and prove it. It is impossible to try and build a system of philosophy without starting with an axiom. Now, there is one thing that I want to cover to you about that.

The most common objection from atheists to Clarkian apologists is that an axiom is self-evidently true. And because a Bible is not self-evidently true, it cannot be an axiom. This goes into another part of my book, which I talk about the philosophy of language.

And really, the truth is that a definition is just a description of a term. It's basically language conveys propositional meaning. We can define terms any way we want to. And to say that we cannot define an axiom a certain way because there's a different definition, well, it makes the whole English language fall apart because it's not uncommon for an English word to have four or five different definitions.

The idea that we have to use only one definition of axiom whenever we articulate our philosophy is completely it's nothing more than a special pleading because there's no reason to say that we have to define an axiom a certain way as opposed to defining a tree a certain way.

There's multiple definitions of trees. We see them every day, and people use the term tree in different ways. So the most common objection to laying out our case for dogmatism, we talk about an axiom, a first principle that we must start with.