Rusted Memories

G.L.W. Johnson is the senior pastor at Church of the Redeemer in Mesa, Arizona, and the editor of B. B. Warfield: Essays on His Life and Thought. Recently, Johnson has been busy at Lane Keister’s Greenbaggins blog offering up a series of reviews of John Muether’s new biography, Cornelius Van Til: Reformed Apologist and Churchman. In his latest installment Johnson provides some homey recollections of time he spent with both with Gordon Clark and the man he most admires, Cornelius Van Til.

Before getting into the substance of Johnson’s reminiscence, I should point out that this is the same Pastor Johnson who, when asked to consider John Robbins’ dispute with Muether examined in Can the Orthodox Presbyterian Church be Saved? , or perhaps even giving him a call to get his side on Muether’s questionable take on the Clark controversy, said he “wouldn’t give Robbins the time of day.” He then went on to justify his snide, sinful and unprovoked attack on his brother in Christ by saying: “Anyone who claims to be ‘Reformed’ and yet describes both Bavinck and Vos as the two ’sinister’ figures behind Van Til would merit only Warfield’s contempt.”

Ouch!

Now, admittedly, I couldn’t find any instances where Dr. Robbins’ described either Bavinck or Vos as “sinister” or that they were somehow the “puppet masters” behind Van Til. Maybe I missed something or maybe this is a good reason for Johnson not to trust his memory. Robbins does cite some short incoherent babble from Bavinck that very much tracks the later anti-intellectual and incoherent babble repeated by Van Til. So I asked Johnson was Robbins wrong for doing so? Johnson didn’t say. Robbins has also been very critical of the entire biblical theological movement that has both jettisoned logic and usurped systematics in any number of Presbyterian and Reformed circles and seminaries. Again, I fail to see the problem.

As for how Warfield might or might not view Robbins, I have no idea how pastor Johnson could possibly know this since Warfield died in 1921 more than twenty years before the Clark/Van Til controversy and well before Dr. Robbins was even born. I guess because Johnson edited a book on Warfield that it now qualifies him as some sort of clairvoyant mystically channeling the thoughts of Warfield. Of course, it’s always possible that if Warfield were alive today that he would be on Keister’s blog rebuking Johnson along with Muether and Keister for defending Van Til’s bankrupt and antichristian epistemology along with his sordid attack on Clark. I confess, I don’t know, but then I don’t claim to speak for the dead.

Getting back to plumbing Johnson’s memories, he begins by recounting a charming story of how he had the opportunity to drive Van Til to Faith Theological Seminary in his old faded blue 1966 Peugeot with rusted out floorboards so that they could both hear Clark lecture on Empiricism. It should be noted at the time of this little road trip, both Van Til and Clark were now in their eighties, which, for Johnson, means that his little road trip was more than twenty years ago. Johnson goes on to note how friendly and cordial both men were toward each other following the lecture. It evidently impressed Johnson that Clark exemplified what it means to be a Christian and held no grudges against his former adversary. Then, later that week, while Clark was visiting Johnson’s home and after enjoying a pleasant dinner with his family, Johnson claims that Clark dropped a bomb by telling him that Ned Stonehouse, and not Van Til, “was the guy in the black hat” in the whole controversy.

This latest expanded version of events, complete with faded blue ‘66 Peugeot with rusted out floorboards all drawn from Johnson’s decades old memory, is intended to support his earlier claim that “[Van Til] was enlisted as the one to actually argue the case . . .” but that it was Stonehouse who “led the opposition to [Clark] in the OPC.”

Admittedly, if true this would certainly be news. After all, both defenders of Van Til and Gordon Clark have universally understood the controversy in the 1940’s as a clash between two Reformed giants and one that pitted Van Til against Clark in a major battle between two competing and mutually exclusive epistemologies. Now, according to Johnson, the real fight was between Gordon Clark and Ned Stonehouse, a man not known as a particularly original thinker, certainly not anywhere near the caliber of either Clark or Van Til even on a good day.

When asked to corroborate this story, perhaps by providing something from Clark’s many letters, articles, or books, or even something Van Til may have wrote, Johnson’s reply to me was: “God is witness between us.”

While God might be Johnson’s witness, this certainly doesn’t help Lane Keister who also stated his own version of events. Keister said that according to Muether, and the book Johnson is supposed to be reviewing, that “[John] Murray was the primary one pressing charges.” Keister added that not only was Van Til not the one pressing charges but that Van Til even “sharply disagreed” with them. Of course, even here it is a little difficult to see how Van Til might have “sharply disagreed” with the charges since he not only signed the complaint against Clark, but according to the Presbytery’s minutes of the case, he made an impassioned “plea for a serious consideration of the Complaint.” Hardly the actions of a man who “sharply disagreed.” I’d hate to imagine what Van Til might have done if he actually agreed with the charges.

Further, if Van Til “sharply disagreed” with the Complaint, then why would Muether write in Van Til the Controversialist that in the “larger context of Reformed ecclesiology, Van Til’s role in the Clark controversy, far from being an embarrassment, becomes one of his finest moments.” If this is to be considered one of Van Til’s “finest moments,” then why would he and Keister now be trying to paint Murray as controversy’s chief architect and mover, whereas Johnson tried to hand the ball to Stonehouse?

These men need to get their stories straight.

Of course, one would have thought that in the larger context of Reformed ecclesiology the scurrilous attack on Clark would have been a notable low point regardless of who is left holding the ball. And rather than defending Reformed ecclesiology, and as Dr. Robbins observed, “The WTS faction opposed Reformed ecclesiology and defended the independent, parachurch status of Westminster Seminary, which was its power base in controlling the OPC.” Anyone interested in seeing how this very un-Reformed ecclesiology operates needs to read O. Palmer Robertson’s historical account of the Shepherd controversy as it raged for seven years at WTS.

So, according to these latest revisionist, the Clark/Van Til controversy is either the Clark/Stonehouse or the Clark/Murray controversy. Consequently, not only did both sides have it wrong for all these years, but thanks to Johnson, Keister and Muether, Van Til is now recast as an unwilling participant and even someone who “sharply disagreed” with the attack on Clark. Again, this is all news to me.

I’ll have to wait to see how Keister and Muether backup their claim that Murray was the man and Van Til was somehow a reluctant and unwilling participant who “sharply disagreed” with the charges. In the meantime, where is the substantiation of Johnson’s claim that Stonehouse was the primary figure in the attack against Clark and that Van Til was somehow dragged into or simply “enlisted” into the controversy rather than being a willing participant, much less the prime mover and intellectual force behind the Complaint? I can only think Johnson has never noticed the many references to Van Til throughout Clark’s works – precisely as it relates to the central questions raised in the case – not to mention the direct mention of the case itself? Or, Van Til’s many references to Clark referring to Clark as a man deeply entrenched in the “sin” of “rationalism” who was busy advancing a dangerous and antichristian theory of knowledge? Of course, and at the very least, Clark most certainly was familiar with Herman Hoeksema’s editorials in The Standard Bearer all written during the height of the controversy and later compiled and published by the Trinity Foundation, all identifying Van Til as the intellectual and driving force behind the attack. Did either Clark or Van Til publish anything anywhere that controverts Hoeksema’s reporting of the major players in the whole affair? Funny, I can’t find even a mention of Stonehouse as being the primary instigator and architect of the controversy in any of Clark’s works or in Hoeksema’s account of the events as they unfolded. I haven’t found anything yet in Van Til’s works either. Perhaps there is something buried in that massive CDROM of his sitting on my shelf and I just missed it?

Was Ned Stonehouse very much involved in this orchestrated and well crafted hit on Dr. Clark? Of course he was. So was that “Christian gentleman” John Murray. The record speaks for itself. It was the Clark/Van Til controversy and not the Clark/Stonehouse or the Clark/Murray controversy. After all, whose philosophies were on the table and on the line in that debate? Ned Stonehouse’s? John Murray’s? Give me a break.

It was Van Til’s doctrines, primarily those centering around his analogous view of truth and love of biblical paradox, the very heart of Van Til’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility, that made up the central issues in the Complaint. To now try to minimize his role, even to the point of removing him completely as a willing participant in a vain attempt to magically exempt him from any culpability in the attack, seems, well, disingenuous and very ungentlemanly.

Besides, if Johnson’s memories of what Clark may have said some twenty plus years ago during a private dinner conversation at his home are correct, and have not been distorted by time like the old rusted out floorboards in his faded blue ’66 Peugeot, how then can he explain Clark naming Van Til as the “guy in the black hat” even as late as in his final book – a book Clark arranged to be published posthumously so he could answer his critics one last time and from the grave? Clark wrote:

“Cornelius Van Til . . . furnished the basic content of A Complaint. “

As mentioned, Stonehouse was a major player in the controversy. As was John Murray, R.B. Kuiper and almost a dozen lesser men who made up the WTS faction aligned against Clark. Could it be that Stonehouse was particularly vicious if not downright personal in his attacks against Clark and that this explains why Clark would identify him as “the man in the black hat?” Perhaps? Who knows? Have historians up until now been wrong in identifying the WTS faction that launched an unprovoked attack against Clark with Van Til? I have to think this would require a little more than just some personal old and faded memories from a private dinner conversation that happened more than twenty years ago. Just like the holes in Johnson’s floorboards, it appears there are more than a few holes in this story as well.

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