My Clarkian Friends. RE: Carl Henry

Ivanhoe · #1 (**permalink**) 10-08-2006, 02:28 PM

To my Clarkian friends, what do you think of Carl F. H. Henry and his six volume God, Revelation, and Authority?

He seems to quote from Clark. For the most part I have been encouraged by it. He wants an agressive Christian witness in the secular market and seems to believe that Christianity is capable of doing so. I got the following from Al Mohler's blog:

Quote:

Henry projected, articulated, and defended the reality of divine revelation. As he explained: "Divine revelation is the source of all truth, the truth of Christianity included; reason is the instrument for recognizing it; Scripture is its verifying principle; logical consistency of a negative test for truth and coherence a subordinate test. The task of Christian theology is to exhibit the content of biblical revelation as an orderly whole."

Jeff_Bartel · #2 (**permalink**) 10-08-2006, 05:03 PM

I am not familiar with Henry's work, but I do remember that Henry and Clark were friends, and I believe I remember reading that Henry had similar views as Clark.

Theogenes · #3 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 11:44 AM

I believe Carl Henry was a student of GHC at one time, but I could be wrong. I read Henry's 6 vol. book which you referred to and found it very interesting although sometimes too wordy. It reminded me of working through John Owen's works but on a smaller scale. Like climbing Mt. Everest!

Jim

tewilder · #4 (**permalink**) 10-10-2006, 01:17 PM

I remember Carl Henry speaking highly of Clark, and of having been able to review the manuscript of The Johanine Logos prior to publication, which Henry regarded as a privilege.

Magma2 · #5 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim Snyder

I believe Carl Henry was a student of GHC at one time, but I could be wrong. I read Henry's 6 vol. book which you referred to and found it very interesting although sometimes too wordy. It reminded me of working through John Owen's works but on a smaller scale. Like climbing Mt. Everest!

I would one day love to read Henry's 6 Vol set, but at $145 it will have to wait.

In the meantime, results from a quick google:

From American Evangelicalism and Carl F. H. Henry by Yun Jung Moon, 1999
http://people.bu.edu/wwildman/WeirdW..._820_henry.htm

Quote:

Like other evangelicals, he had also a typical conversion experience, which means he was "born again" on June 10, 1933. Typical conversion means the reception of the forgiveness of personal sin and Jesus Christ as his or her Savior, the commitment of personal life into God’s will, and the transcendence of denominational orientation. This conversion experience changed his life to devote to theology from journalism. Hence, Carl Henry entered Wheaton College in Illinois, where he was deeply impressed by its stress on the role of reason to faith and the resurrection as a historical event./4/ He studied philosophy under Gordon Haddon Clark, who was considered as an evangelical philosopher by Henry and whose insistence of logical consistency in defining and defending Christian faith rather than in personal relationship to God gave an influence to Henry’s thought. During the period at Wheaton, Henry had friendships with some future leaders of evangelical movement, such as Billy Graham. Henry received degrees of B.A. and M.A. from Wheaton College in 1938 and 1941, B.D. and Th.D. from Northern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1941 and 1942. After finishing his first doctorate, he became a faculty of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, and received the second doctorate, a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Boston University under Edgar Sheffield Brightman.

The most influential figures on Henry’s thought are Gordon Haddon Clark and Edgar Sheffield Brightman. Ronald Nash summarized Clark’s thought as following: (1) the epistemological bankruptcy of any form of philosophical or religious empiricism; (2) the indispensability of Divine revelation to human knowledge as a whole; (3) the shortcomings of any attempt to remove the cognitive and propositional element from the content of God’s revelation; (4) the importance of refusing to separate faith from reason whether this separation be a humanistic attack on faith, an existentialist critique of reason, or a Thomistic segregation of the two into different realms of human knowledge; (5) the continuing vitality and relevance of Calvinisitc theology as formulated, for example, in The Westminster Confession./5/ Carl Henry also comments on Clark’s thought that Clark sees God as a living, willing, speaking, acting Person whose sovereign purposes are accomplished in human affairs, and Who has revealed Himself authoritatively in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures./6/ According to Henry, Clark emphasizes that reality is fundamentally and basically intellectual rather than physical and that God revealed in the Bible decrees the human history and has created human beings in His image, therefore, human beings have a priori element to know God.

From Christianity Today 3/04:

Quote:

The most important intellectual influence on Henry was Gordon Clark, a Presbyterian theologian, who emphasized propositional truth and the rationality of belief in God.

From Joel Belz, World Magazine:

Quote:

I will always remember when philosopher Gordon H. Clark introduced Henry in a chapel service at Covenant College. For three or four minutes, Clark silently took book after book out of several cardboard boxes sitting near the lectern, carefully stacking them in two piles that each reached five or six feet in height. All were by Carl Henry. "Ladies and gentlemen," Clark finally said, "I present to you the most influential mind in the evangelical world in our generation."

Theogenes · #6 (**permalink**) 10-26-2006, 03:40 PM

Sean,
I got Henry's set for less than half of that price a few years ago.
It's worth the climb!
Jim