Gordon Clark: What Do Presbyterians Believe?

[RamistThomist]

This book really warmed my heart, yet I didn't think it would. It has few of the distinctives that would later mark the more controversial aspects of the Trinity Foundation. I listened to the mp3 version of the book, courtesy of the Trinity Foundation.

Clark is exceptionally strong on soteriology, ecclesiology, and ethics. He is somewhat weaker on the doctrines of God and Christ.

This book marks the best of old-timey American Reformed religion.

Some cautions:
1) Clark's unique view of faith as assent.
2) He is a premillennialist.

 

[greenbaggins]

My father was Gordon Clark's best friend in his later years, and you'll see him referenced about 5-6 times, I think (his name is Dr. J.C. Keister). Dad taught math, physics, logic, and judo for fourteen years at Covenant College. He and Dr. Clark played a lot of chess over the phone. Dr. Clark encouraged Dad to find all the basic postulates of mathematics in the Bible, which he did.

 

[Dachaser]

This book really warmed my heart, yet I didn't think it would. It has few of the distinctives that would later mark the more controversial aspects of the Trinity Foundation. I listened to the mp3 version of the book, courtesy of the Trinity Foundation.

Clark is exceptionally strong on soteriology, ecclesiology, and ethics. He is somewhat weaker on the doctrines of God and Christ.

This book marks the best of old-timey American Reformed religion.

Some cautions:
1) Clark's unique view of faith as assent.
2) He is a premillennialist.

What aspects of God and Christ though are he weak on, as the person and Nature of the trinity is the very heart of our faith.

 

[RamistThomist]

What aspects of God and Christ though are he weak on, as the person and Nature of the trinity is the very heart of our faith.

I shouldn't have said weak. More like, underdeveloped and dated given current controversies. But he was writing at a time when liberal scholarship simply said, "Jesus not real, of if he is he was just a tenured professor like me." And so Clark didn't get into things like the relationship between the two natures, etc.

 

[Dachaser]

I shouldn't have said weak. More like, underdeveloped and dated given current controversies. But he was writing at a time when liberal scholarship simply said, "Jesus not real, of if he is he was just a tenured professor like me." And so Clark didn't get into things like the relationship between the two natures, etc.

So would be accurate to say that he held to the classic viewpoints concerning God and Christ, but did not get really into elaborating on them?

 

[RamistThomist]

So would be accurate to say that he held to the classic viewpoints concerning God and Christ, but did not get really into elaborating on them?

As far as that book goes, yes. His later posthumous works on Christology veered close to Nestorianism, but it's also possible that he never intended to publish them.

 

[Dachaser]

As far as that book goes, yes. His later posthumous works on Christology veered close to Nestorianism, but it's also possible that he never intended to publish them.

Good thing that he did not publish that theological view regarding Jesus then.