Apologetics to the Glory of God

Tag: Gordon Clark

  • Questioning Copan

    The Gospel Coalition is running a series on apologetics, and today’s entry was by Paul Copan, entitled “Questioning Presuppositionalism”. What struck me, while reading his take on the subject, was how superficial and inaccurate it was. He introduces Van Til, and then says that Gordon Clark supposedly “generally followed” his methodology, along with Bahnsen and Frame, and then called it “variegated”. Well, given that he’s simply wrong concerning Clark, and that Frame consciously departed from Van Til as well, I’d supposed that’s an assumption guaranteed to result in a certain conclusion, wouldn’t you? It is not the case that …

  • Dr. Oliphint And The Clark/Van Til Controversy. But Wait, There's More!

    Reformed Forum had Dr. Oliphint on to speak on the Clark/Van Til controversy which I found helpful as an introduction to the issues at hand. This seems like a good discussion to start out your perusal of this controversy if you are so inclined. However the more interesting part of this discussion for me were the following locations:

    • Minute 37 God and Logic – What is the relation? What about paradox?
    • Minute 43 Transcendental Arguments and the Impossibility of the Contrary (as a methodological approach) used in non-Christian Theism.

    In the time after minute 43 the answer Dr. Oliphint gives …

  • Wise Advice?

    Some readers will recall that when I briefly interacted with a post by Brandon Adams I was quick to add that, “One of the reasons I do not tend to engage in arguments against Clarkianism is that I am rather unfamiliar with the position.” Thus far this statement unfortunately remains true as I simply have not had the time to read through Gordon Clark’s work yet. I noted that a problem I saw with the aforementioned post is that, “there is not much by way of interaction with the position Van Til and Bahnsen actually held…In fact there are no …

  • WCF, LBC, and TAG

    A friend pointed me toward this post by Brandon Adams. From what I can tell Brandon is influenced a good bit by Gordon H. Clark and argues in his post that Van Tillian presuppositionalism and specifically TAG is inconsistent with the WCF and LBC. While I am not one to excitedly engage in the Van Til versus Clark debate there are a few areas where I believe Brandon is simply mistaken about Van Til and Bahnsen’s method. One of the reasons I do not tend to engage in arguments against Clarkianism is that I am rather unfamiliar with the position. …

  • Apologetics and the Arminian

    The purpose of this post is to address a response to the above presentation, wherein presuppositional apologetics seems to be misunderstood by the author. The author’s response can be found here, but I will address most of the post, if not all, in the following article.

    James White recently argued for presuppositional apologetics and against evidential apologetics. (link) He starts out with an analysis of Colossians 1:16-18, and Colossians 2:2-9, which focus on the Lordship of Christ. James White points out that the gospel is a radical claim, which unbelievers reject.

    If you watched the above video (or heard …