Dr. Gordon Clark
(1902-1985)
The following articles listed are summaries of Clark's most important
works. Having said that, it is also important to note that I do not
agree with everything Clark says. As a matter of fact, I agree with
about 75% of what he says and reject the rest. The purpose of this
section of the website is simply to give and overview of some of his
most well known works. These articles basically set forth what Clark
says on each of the topics listed.
Who is Dr. Gordon Clark?
Dr.
Gordon
Clark is not primarily an apologist for the Christian faith, but rather
a professional philosopher critiquing what secular philosophers have
said concerning ultimate reality. Through
rigorous logic, he continually sought to evaluate and expose the
weaknesses of secular philosophy, and to espouse Christian theism as
dominantly superior. Although
he touches on all areas of philosophy in his works, he is predominately
taken up with understanding and evaluating thoughts about epistemology
– how it is that men know, and how they know what they know.
Clark was influenced heavily
by the nature of the Reformation. He
believed that doctrine was best expounded by the Reformers and followed
their lead in exegesis while applying it in the realm of the
philosophical views in which he lived.
Clark was an American philosopher and Calvinist theologian. He was a
primary advocate for the idea of presuppositional apologetics and was
chairman of the Philosophy Department at Butler University for 28 years.
He was an expert in pre-Socratic and ancient philosophy and was noted
for his rigor in defending Platonic realism against all forms of
empiricism, in arguing that all truth is propositional and in applying
the laws of logic. His theory of knowledge is sometimes called
scripturalism. Clark was raised as a Christian and studied Calvinist thought from a
young age. In 1924, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania
with a bachelor's degree and earned his doctoral degree from the same
institution in 1929. The following year, he studied at the Sorbonne.
He began
teaching at the University of Pennsylvania after receiving his
bachelor's degree and also taught at Reformed Episcopal Seminary in
Philadelphia. In 1936, he accepted a professorship in philosophy at
Wheaton College, where he remained until 1944, when he accepted a
position at Butler University. In 1974, he left Butler and taught at
several institutions, including Covenant College in Lookout Mountain,
Georgia and Sangre de Cristo Seminary in Westcliffe, Colorado. In
1944, Clark was ordained as a minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian
Church. In the years that followed, Clark would change denominations
several times: first to the United Presbyterian Church of North America
in 1948 following the Clark-Van Til Controversy and then to the Reformed
Presbyterian Church of North America, General Synod in 1957, where Clark
was instrumental in arranging a merger with another Presybterian
denomination to form the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod
in 1965. When this last denomination merged with the Presbyterian Church
in America in 1983, Clark refused to join and instead entered the
Covenant Presbytery in 1984. He died in 1985 and was buried
in Westcliffe, Colorado.
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Apologetics Page
An
Introduction to Christian Philosophy
Religion,
Reason and Revelation
Three
Types of Religious Philosophy
A
Christian View of Men and Things
A
Philosophy of Science and Belief in God
A
Christian Philosophy of Education
Language
and Theology
Essays
on Ethics and Politics
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