Lux Lucet

Those coming to philosophy for the first time often find it at once interesting and frustrating. Clark likens philosophy to a puzzle that can, on the one hand, delight and amuse, and, on the other, frustrate and bewilder. Some people find it boring, thinking it has no practical value. Others find philosophy intimidating and try to ignore the subject altogether. But love it or hate it, one thing’s for certain: you cannot avoid it. The reason for this is simple, philosophy is the most basic of intellectual disciplines. It’s province is the world of men and things.

Clark provides an interesting quote from Blaise Pascal, a famous 17th century French mathematician and philosopher, in which Pascal states,

Man is but a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. It is not necessary that the entire universe arm itself to crush him. A vapor, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But though the universe should kill him, man would still be nobler than what kills him, because he knows that he dies; and the advantage that the universe has over him, the universe knows nothing of. Thus all our dignity consists in thought.

Pascal, as does Clark, distinguishes between men and things and holds than man is superior the inanimate universe. Anyone who has studied contemporary philosophy probably finds their view rather striking, inasmuch as a great deal of contemporary thought would subordinate man to nature. Several years ago there was a popular bumper sticker – popular at least in some circles – that read, “The earth does not belong to man, Man belongs to the earth.” For some people, this blatant paganism represented the very height of spirituality. Others, who were raised with some knowledge of Christianity and the Bible, perhaps found this statement absurd. But whether or not one agrees or disagrees with the notion put forth on the bumper sticker, that person must answer this question: How do you know?

I mention the matter of the bumper sticker, because it leads directly to a common objection to the study of philosophy: people believe that it has no practical value. Not only are many folks turned off from the study of philosophy because they think it is too complex, but also they believe that it is a waste of time. Much of this is the result of our contemporary educational system. Nearly all of us went to schools in which our studies were geared to train us to do some job or another, not to teach us how to think. In other words, we went to vocational school. And vocational schools have no time for philosophy. But think about it for a minute, if no one can provide an intellectually competent refutation of the bumper sticker blurb “The earth does not belong to man, Man belongs to the earth,” then there is no good reason not to follow the lead of the radical environmentalists and post haste put an end to modern civilization. This may result in many people no longer being able to practice the vocation for which they were trained.

To combat this notion that philosophy is of no practical value, Clark suggests that we first clarify the questions that philosophy asks. “When the questions are clearly put,” he states, “there is less likelihood that the answers will seem irrelevant to important issues.” Clark identifies some of the important questions in philosophy as,

• Which is the best kind of government?
  
• Where is history taking us?
  
• Is civilization on the verge of collapse?
  
• Has God revealed any answer?
  

These are hardly insignificant or impractical questions. In fact they’re some of the most important questions we can ask, and how we answer them will have a direct bearing on how we live our lives.

Since we’re in a presidential election years and the topic of politics is in the air, let us take a look at a few additional political questions raised by Clark. He writes,

“In studying the philosophy of history, and very obviously in the study of politics, it soon becomes evident that deeper problems are involved. Indisputable is the presence of ethical considerations. A declaration of war by Congress, a war launched without a formal declaration, the system of Communism based on the theory of the economic determination of history, and Stalin’s view of murder as a political instrument are not only matters of politics: They are matters of morality as well.

The totalitarian theory that the individual person exists only for the welfare of the state; the opinion that society is an organism in which a man is an expendable corpuscle of its blood stream; the denial of minority rights – or the assertion of minority rights; all these involve decisions concerning morality. They involve a theory of the value of life. Is life of so little value that an individual must be sacrificed for a group? If a high value is placed on life, is capital punishment wrong?

One important take away from the above quote is that political questions are dependent on prior ethical considerations. Ethics is one of the primary disciplines of philosophy. It answers the question, What should we do? In all there are four major disciplines in philosophy, and while Clark does not discuss them here, now is a good time to list them out. The four major philosophic disciplines are,

• Epistemology: Answer the question, How do you know?
  
• Metaphysics: Answers the question, What is the nature of reality?
  
• Ethics: Answers the question, What should we do?
  
• Politics: Answers the question, What form of government is best?
  

The most basic of all these disciplines is epistemology for the simple reason that if you cannot demonstrate how you know something, you have no basis for your knowledge claim. In the history of philosophy there have been two major schools of epistemology: rationalism and empiricism. Rationalism says that reason alone furnishes us with knowledge. The most famous proponent of this view is Plato. Empiricism holds that sense experience alone furnishes us with knowledge. Aristotle is history’s greatest empiricist. To shamefully short circuit the discussion for now, I will simply state that neither approach does what it claims to do: furnish us with knowledge. Gordon Clark’s greatest contribution to philosophy is that he proposed a Christian epistemology that does in fact furnish us with knowledge. It is this: revelation alone. And that revelation is found in the propositions – a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence such as “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” we say the meaning of a declarative sentence rather than simply the sentence itself because the same meaning can be expressed in different languages or in the same langue using different words – of the 66 books of the Bible together with their necessary implications.

Understanding Clark’s epistemology – all knowledge comes by revelation alone in the 66 books of the Bible – is the single most important step you can take toward mastering Clark’s philosophy. Grasp this one point and you are well on your way to understanding Clark’s system. More importantly, you are well on your way to grasping the mind of God on some of the most profound questions ever asked.