Frame: History of Western Philosophy and Theology

[earl40]

You are going to have to clarify this...

I was responding to what I have a feeling Frame means when he say "that some accounts of archetypal/ectypal distinction posit a different God, or God behind God." I of course would like to see the context where he said what he did, and I suspect the basis of what he said may (I say may) be based on a faulty view of archeytypal theology.

When one says we cannot know God as He is, and that He is incomprehensible, I suspect many would take issue with such, and think one is posting about a "God behind a God". To assume one can know God, without accommodation to us creatures, is foreign to most Christians.

 

[earl40]

So which God do we worship? Sounds like you just posited two different Gods.

The God we worship is the one revealed in Jesus.

 

[RamistThomist]

The God we worship is the one revealed in Jesus.

Exactly. What I and Frame were getting at is there is no abstracted deity behind the back of Jesus to whom we do not have cognitive access.

 

[earl40]

Exactly. What I and Frame were getting at is there is no abstracted deity behind the back of Jesus to whom we do not have cognitive access.

So are you saying you have a cognitive idea of The Divine Essence?

 

[RamistThomist]

So are you saying you have a cognitive idea of The Divine Essence?

Sure. The essence is simple.

 

[earl40]

Sure. The essence is simple.

If you can comprehend this you are indeed divine.

 

[RamistThomist]

If you can comprehend this you are indeed divine.

You asked for a cognitive idea of the divine. I gave you one. Not sure how that is comprehending the divine essence.

 

[earl40]

You asked for a cognitive idea of the divine. I gave you one. Not sure how that is comprehending the divine essence.

The idea you and I have of the divine is ectypal is my point. I asked if you have cognitive idea of The Divine Essence? In other words, do you have thoughts after God's thoughts as He is or "operates".

 

[RamistThomist]

The idea you and I have of the divine is ectypal is my point. I asked if you have cognitive idea of The Divine Essence? In other words, do you have thoughts after God's thoughts as He is or "operates".

I think God's thoughts after him. I am not sure what you mean by "operates."

 

[earl40]

I think God's thoughts after him. I am not sure what you mean by "operates."

I did phrase my question poorly. Do you think like God "thinks" in any way shape or form?

 

[RamistThomist]

I did phrase my question poorly. Do you think like God "thinks" in any way shape or form?

Not in the way we do. Scholastically speaking, God knows all things in one instantaneous act of knowing.

 

[Justified]

7. Is there a "qualitative difference" between God's thoughts and ours? Qualitative difference was the great rallying cry of the Van Til forces against the Clark party. On the one hand, Clark (we are told) held that there was only a "quantitative difference" between God's thoughts and ours, that is, that God knew more facts than we do. On the other hand, Van Til believed that the difference was "qualitative." I am willing to affirm that there is a qualitative difference between God's thoughts and ours, but I am not convinced of the value of the phrase in the present controversy. What is a "qualitative difference"? Most simply defined, it is a difference in quality. Thus a difference between blue and green could be a "qualitative difference." Such a usage, of course, is totally inadequate to do justice to the Creator-creature distinction, which the Van Til forces were trying to do. In fairness, however, we should also recognize that in English qualitative difference generally refers to very large differences in quality, not differences like that between blue and green. We tend to speak of "qualitative differences" where the differences are not capable of quantitative measurement. But even on such a maximal definition, the phrase still denotes differences within creation; it does not uniquely define the Creator-creature distinction. I therefore tend to avoid the phrase, though I have no objection to it. Although it is appropriate to use a superlative term like this to describe the Creator-creature relation, we should cure ourselves of the notion that qualitative automatically takes us outside of the sphere of intracreational relations and that no other terms may be substituted for it in such a context.34 Rather than using qualitative difference, I prefer to use terms that are more directly related to the covenantal terminology of Scripture, for example differences between Creator and creature, Lord and servant, Father and son, original and derivative, self-attesting and attested by another. other. In some contexts, those terms can also designate intracreational relations; all terms in human language can apply to something or other within creation. But when they refer to the divine-human difference, they are no less clear than qualitative difference, and in most respects, they are clearer. The suggestion that qualitative difference somehow designates a larger difference than these other terms or that it is more appropriate than the biblical terms to denote the difference in view is entirely groundless. It was most unfortunate that qualitative difference became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the OPC controversy. For such work the phrase is entirely unsuited.

From the #34 footnote:
34. This notion seems to pervade Halsey's article. He continually suggests that since I do not speak of "qualitative differences," I must hold that the differences in view are merely "quantitative." That suggestion is entirely false.
{Nb: Frame here refers to Halsey, James S. "A Preliminary Critique of 'Van Til: the Theologian'." WTJ 39 (1976): 120-36.}

While the difference between blue and green is an example of a qualitative difference, it is hardly apposite or relevant to the question at hand. When we say God's knowledge is qualitatively different from our own, we are not saying that we are thinking about different things, as if the objects of our knowledge are different. The difference, as the Scholastics would say, is in the mode of the knower. Take my thinking about a rose. God and I can both have an idea of a rose. The difference lies in the mode of knowing. God knows it according to a simple, infinite, and intuitive mode of knowing, whereas for me the way I know things is according to a complex, finite, and otherwise creaturely way of knowing.

I'm not going to say much more as I don't think I've read enough Frame to be fair, but I am always weary of claims like "I prefer to be more critique, covenantal, concrete." You have to prove why these concepts are preferable to the traditional systematic philosophical categories. His example of Master-Slave etc., seems to have absolutely nothing to do with predication and thus provides no alternative to what has been offered.

 

[RamistThomist]

but I am always weary of claims like "I prefer to be more critique, covenantal, concrete." You have to prove why these concepts are preferable to the traditional systematic philosophical categories. His example of Master-Slave etc., seems to have absolutely nothing to do with predication and thus provides no alternative to what has been offered.

Horton is good on this point. Did Frame say "Master-Slave?" I can't remember. A more covenantal way of speaking would be:

1) Image-bearer
2) Suzerain-Vassal

Master-slave is literally Hegelian.

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Take my thinking about a rose. God and I can both have an idea of a rose. The difference lies in the mode of knowing. God knows it according to a simple, infinite, and intuitive mode of knowing, whereas for me the way I know things is according to a complex, finite, and otherwise creaturely way of knowing.

Frame, from his DOKG,

"In the 1940s there was a debate within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church about the concept of God's incomprehensibility. The major opponents were Cornelius Van Til and Gordon H. Clark. Neither man was at his best in this discussion; each seriously misunderstood the other, as we will see. Both, however, had valid concerns. Van Til wished to preserve the Creator-creature distinction in the realm of knowledge, and Clark wished to prevent any skeptical deductions from the doctrine of incomprehensibility, to insist that we really do know God on the basis of revelation. Van Til, therefore, insisted that even when God and man were thinking of the same thing (a particular rose, for example), their thoughts about it were never identical-God's were the thoughts of the Creator, man's of the creature. Such language made Clark fear skepticism. It seemed to him that if there was some discrepancy between man's "This is a rose" and God's (concerning the same rose), then the human assertion must somehow fall short of the truth, since the very nature of truth is identity with God's mind. Thus if there is a necessary discrepancy between God's mind and man's at every point, it would seem that man could know nothing truly; skepticism would result. Thus the discussion of incomprehensibility-essentially a doctrine about the relation of man's thoughts to God's being-turned in this debate more narrowly into a discussion of the relation between man's thoughts and God's thoughts. To say that God is incomprehensible came to mean that there is some discontinuity (much deeper in Van Til's view than in Clark's) between our thoughts of God (and hence of creation) and God's own thoughts of himself (and of creation)."

He then spends many pages teasing out the whys and wherefores behind the above, ending with this summary:

"Let us summarize our discussion of the incomprehensibility of God. The lordship of God must be recognized in the area of thought, as well as in all other aspects of human life. We must confess that God's thoughts are wholly sovereign and therefore sharply different from ours, which are the thoughts of servants. God's being, too, is quite beyond our comprehension, but we must not interpret God's incomprehensibility in such a way that we compromise the knowability of God or the involvement of God with us in the process of thinking and knowing. God is revealed, and we know Him truly, but it is in that revelation and because of that revelation that we stand in wonder. The "Clark Case" is a classic example of the hurt that can be done when people dogmatize over difficult theological issues without taking the trouble first to understand one another, to analyze ambiguities in their formulations, and to recognize more than one kind of theological danger to be avoided."

Src: John M. Frame. Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, The (A Theology of Lordship)

See also:
https://www.puritanboard.com/threads/analogical-knowledge.93949/#post-1147008

 

[earl40]

Not in the way we do. Scholastically speaking, God knows all things in one instantaneous act of knowing.

Speaking properly the difference between God and man is indeed qualitative, and no amount of analogy can bridge the difference. This is why I asked if Frame discusses archetype theology in his writings specifically. I have to thank Mr. Religion for the following....."The suggestion that qualitative difference somehow designates a larger difference than these other terms or that it is more appropriate than the biblical terms to denote the difference in view is entirely groundless. It was most unfortunate that qualitative difference became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the OPC controversy. For such work the phrase is entirely unsuited."

For our information the bible does use the reference of qualitative difference (contra Frame). "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

Speaking properly the difference between God and man is indeed qualitative, and no amount of analogy can bridge the difference. This is why I asked if Frame discusses archetype theology in his writings specifically. I have to thank Mr. Religion for the following....."The suggestion that qualitative difference somehow designates a larger difference than these other terms or that it is more appropriate than the biblical terms to denote the difference in view is entirely groundless. It was most unfortunate that qualitative difference became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the OPC controversy. For such work the phrase is entirely unsuited."

For our information the bible does use the reference of qualitative difference (contra Frame). "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."

Interestingly, Frame never once directly uses ectype, ectypal, archetype, or archetypal in his entire book on the knowledge of God. I do not know why he did not, or whether it was a purposeful omission to avoid some perceived baggage that the terms carry.

 

[earl40]

"Let us summarize our discussion of the incomprehensibility of God. The lordship of God must be recognized in the area of thought, as well as in all other aspects of human life. We must confess that God's thoughts are wholly sovereign and therefore sharply different from ours, which are the thoughts of servants. God's being, too, is quite beyond our comprehension, but we must not interpret God's incomprehensibility in such a way that we compromise the knowability of God or the involvement of God with us in the process of thinking and knowing. God is revealed, and we know Him truly, but it is in that revelation and because of that revelation that we stand in wonder.

It appears to me Professor Frame is mixing up ectypal and archetypal knowledge, and is compromising the distinction of The Creator from the creature. Personally I have read enough of Him here to avoid him. Number one being they way he writes, and number two being his basic unreformed fundamental philosophical presuppositions.

 

[earl40]

Interestingly, Frame never once directly uses ectype, ectypal, archetype, or archetypal in his entire book on the knowledge of God. I do not know why he did not, or whether it was a purposeful omission to avoid some perceived baggage that the terms carry.

Either interesting or because maybe he has not looked into such very deeply. Of course he may have written about such somewhere else.

 

[earl40]

For our edification from Pastor Winzer on the CVT Clark problems.

"CVT appealed to the incomprehensible nature of archetypal theology while he was speaking of ectypal theology. This confusion was the source of his paradox.
For Clark divine and human knowledge correspond. He did not work with anything like the archetypal-ectypal distinction."

 

[Ask Mr. Religion]

For our information the bible does use the reference of qualitative difference (contra Frame). "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."

Frame refers to these matters as discontinuities:

Spoiler

My contribution to this discussion will be to offer the reader a list of discontinuities between God's thoughts and ours that I believe can be substantiated from Scripture, a list of continuities between the two that ought to be acknowledged, and a list of alleged relations between the two that seem to me to be stated ambiguously and that therefore are capable of being affirmed in one sense and denied in another..

(i) Discontinuities. Scripture teaches the following discontinuities between God's thought and ours.
1. God's thoughts are uncreated and eternal; ours are created and limited by time.

2. God's thoughts ultimately determine, or decree, what comes to pass. God's thoughts cause the truths that they contemplate; ours do not. This is the lordship attribute of control in the realm of knowledge.

3. God's thoughts, therefore, are self-validating; they serve as their own criteria of truth. God's thoughts are true simply because they are His. None of us can claim to have such self-attesting thoughts. Our thoughts are not necessarily true, and when they are true, it is because they agree with the thoughts of someone else, namely God, who furnishes the criteria for our thinking. This is the lordship attribute of authority in the area of knowledge.

4. God's thoughts always bring glory and honor to Him because God is always "present in blessing" to himself. Because God is "simple," His thoughts are always self-expressions. Our thoughts are blessed only by virtrue of God's covenantal presence with us. This is the lordship attribute of presence as applied to knowledge. Note that in 1-4, "incomprehensibility" is an aspect of God's lordship. All the divine attributes can be understood as manifestations of God's lordship, as applications of divine lordship to different areas of human life.

5. God's thoughts are the originals of which ours, at best, are only copies, images. Our thoughts, therefore, would not exist apart from God's covenantal presence (see 4 above).

6. God does not need to have anything "revealed" to Him; He knows what He knows simply by virtue of who He is and what He does. He knows, then, at His own initiative. But all of our knowledge is based on revelation. When we know something, it is because God decided to let us know it, either by Scripture or by nature. Our knowledge, then, is initiated by another. Our knowledge is a result of grace. This is another manifestation festation of the lordship attribute of "control."'

7. God has not chosen to reveal all truth to us. For example, we do not know the future, beyond what Scripture teaches. We do not know all the facts about God or even about creation. In the OPC debate, the difference between God's knowledge and ours was called a "quantitative difference"-God knows more facts than we do.

8. God possesses knowledge in a different way from us. He is immaterial and therefore does not gain knowledge from organs of sense perception. Nor does He carry on "processes of reasoning," understood as temporal sets of actions. Nor is God's knowledge limited by the fallibilities of memory or of foresight. Some have characterized His knowledge as an "eternal intuition," and however we may describe it, it clearly is something quite different from our methods of knowing. In the OPC debate, this discontinuity was called a difference in the "mode" of knowledge.'

9. What God does reveal to us, He reveals in a creaturely form. Revelation tion does not come to us in the form in which it exists in God's mind. Scripture, for example, is in human, not divine, language. It is "accommodated," dated," that is, adapted in some measure to our ability to understand, though it is not exhaustively understandable to us even in that accommodated dated form.

10. God's thoughts, when taken together, constitute a perfect wisdom; they are not chaotic but agree with one another. His decrees constitute a wise plan. God's thoughts are coherent; divine thinking agrees with divine logic. That is not always true of our thoughts, and we have no reason to suppose that even as we deal with revelation we may not run into truth that our logic cannot systematize, that it cannot relate coherently with other truth. Therefore we may find in revelation what Van Til calls "apparent parent contradictions.""

11. Discontinuity 7 is affected by the progress of revelation: the more God reveals, the more facts we know, though we never reach the point where we know as many facts as God. The other discontinuities, however, are not at all affected by revelation. No matter how much of himself God reveals, there always remains an "essential disproportion between the infinite nite fullness of the being and knowledge of God and the capacity and intelligence telligence of the finite creature." Thus even what God has revealed is in important senses beyond our comprehension (cf. Judg. 13:18; Neh. 9:5; Pss. 139:6; 147:5; Isa. 9:6; 55:8f.). According to these passages, there is not merely a realm of the unknown beyond our competence, but what is within our competence, what we know, leads us to worship in awe. The hymn of wonder in Romans 11:33-36 expresses amazement not at what is unrevealed but precisely at what is revealed, at what has been described in great detail by the apostle. The more we know, the more our sense of wonder ought to increase, because increased knowledge brings us into greater contact with the incomprehensibility of God.13 It was this "essential disproportion" proportion" between Creator and creature that sometimes in the OPC controversy was described as a "qualitative difference" between divine and human knowledge, as distinguished from the "quantitative difference" described above in 7.

12. And doubtless, there is much more; we cannot exhaustively describe scribe the differences between God's mind and ours-if we could, we would be divine. Thus we must add an "et cetera" to the eleven differences that we have already enumerated. This "et cetera" seems to have been another part of what was meant in the OPC controversy by the phrase "qualitative difference." At one point in that controversy, the Clark party challenged the Van Til party to "state clearly" what the qualitative difference was between God's thoughts and man's. The Van Til group replied that to accept that challenge would be to retract their whole position; if we could "state clearly" this qualitative difference, the difference would no longer exist. Again, I think, there was some mutual misunderstanding. At one level, it is possible (and necessary) to state clearly the nature of the difference. The difference is the difference between Creator and creature in the world of thought; it is a difference between divine thinking and human thinking, between the thoughts of the ultimate Lord and the thoughts of His servants. The implications of this basic difference can also be spelled out to some extent, as I have sought to do above. Insofar far as they were asking for that kind of information, the demand of the Clark group was legitimate. But we must remember that the concept of incomprehensibility comprehensibility is self-referential, that is, if God is incomprehensible, then even His incomprehensibility is incomprehensible. We can no more give an exhaustive explanation of God's incomprehensibility than we can give of God's eternity, infinity, righteousness, or love.

 

[RamistThomist]

Speaking properly the difference between God and man is indeed qualitative, and no amount of analogy can bridge the difference. This is why I asked if Frame discusses archetype theology in his writings specifically. I have to thank Mr. Religion for the following....."The suggestion that qualitative difference somehow designates a larger difference than these other terms or that it is more appropriate than the biblical terms to denote the difference in view is entirely groundless. It was most unfortunate that qualitative difference became a kind of partisan rallying cry in the OPC controversy. For such work the phrase is entirely unsuited."

For our information the bible does use the reference of qualitative difference (contra Frame). "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord."

Frame doesn't reject qualitative difference. He is not a Clarkian, after all. His point was that some Van Tillians overused qualitative difference as a stick to beat Clarkians with.

 

[RamistThomist]

Either interesting or because maybe he has not looked into such very deeply. Of course he may have written about such somewhere else.

You yourself admitted you hadn't read much of Frame. When I try to point out what Frame, as a Van tillian, is saying in how he affirms this distinction, you brush it off. I'm not sure what else you want.

 

[earl40]

You yourself admitted you hadn't read much of Frame. When I try to point out what Frame, as a Van tillian, is saying in how he affirms this distinction, you brush it off. I'm not sure what else you want.

I have enough to know that he should have delved into the ET-AT in his Magnum Opus. He may not be Clarkian, even though it appears he brushes off the VT arguments with his understanding of that debate. "Insofar far as they (Van Tillians) were asking for that kind of information, the demand of the Clark group was legitimate." One cannot "demand" something that is indescribable.

 

[RamistThomist]

I have enough to know that he should have delved into the ET-AT in his Magnum Opus.

He did. Pages 218 and 219. He is very clear. Doctrine of God.

"As there are two different kinds of reality, so there are two different kinds of....knowledge" (218).

"God's knowledge is knowledge of the Creator...ours, the creature" (218).

"Or, as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck used to say, God's love (or knowledge) is the archetype, and ours is the ectype" (219).

 

[earl40]

He did. Pages 218 and 219. He is very clear. Doctrine of God.

"As there are two different kinds of reality, so there are two different kinds of....knowledge" (218).

"God's knowledge is knowledge of the Creator...ours, the creature" (218).

"Or, as Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck used to say, God's love (or knowledge) is the archetype, and ours is the ectype" (219).

I guess I may have to checkout this reference one day. Though I have read from Horton that Frame does blur archetypal-ectypal distinction. I have a tendency to trust Horton and the facility Westminster Seminary California on what Frame...frames.

Jacob and Patrick I thank you both for the discussion and references.

 

[RamistThomist]

I guess I may have to checkout this reference one day. Though I have read from Horton that Frame does blur archetypal-ectypal distinction. I have a tendency to trust Horton and the facility Westminster Seminary California on what Frame...frames.

Jacob and Patrick I thank you both for the discussion and references.

Horton's wrong on this one, though I heartily recommend his systematic theology. Horton also thinks that Turretin and Gregory Palamas can be reconciled on the divine energies, which is clearly false.

 

[earl40]

Horton's wrong on this one, though I heartily recommend his systematic theology. Horton also thinks that Turretin and Gregory Palamas can be reconciled on the divine energies, which is clearly false.

This quote is enough to see Horton is correct and that Frame is thinking in a Clarkian way and not dealing in the proper archtypal way of thinking....."But we must remember that the concept of incomprehensibility comprehensibility is self-referential, that is, if God is incomprehensible, then even His incomprehensibility is incomprehensible." Now the above is a pretty huge "if" and is in my opinion a denial of the WCF 2:1.

God (in se) is totally incomprehensible. I shall end here, and have a blessed weekend Jacob.