Gordon H. Clark > Quotes

“Since God is truth, a contempt for truth is equally a contempt for God.”
― Gordon H. Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education

“Suppose the word mountain meant metaphor, and dog, and Bible, and the United States. Clearly, if a word meant everything, it would mean nothing. If, now, the law of contradiction is an arbitrary convention, and if our linguistic theorists choose some other convention, I challenge them to write a book in conformity with their principles. As a matter of fact it will not be hard for them to do so. Nothing more is necessary than to write the word metaphor sixty thousand times: Metaphor metaphor metaphor metaphor…. This means the dog ran up the mountain, for the word metaphor means dog, ran, and mountain. Unfortunately, the sentence “metaphor metaphor metaphor” also means, Next Christmas is Thanksgiving, for the word metaphor has these meanings as well.”
― Gordon H. Clark, God's Hammer: The Bible and Its Critics

“May there not be some subconscious jealousy that motivates our reactions to other people? Why do we eat chocolate sundaes when we know that we should reduce? Are we free from the influence of parental training? The Scriptures say, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Parental training and all education proceed on the assumption that the will is not free, but can be trained, motivated, and directed. Finally, beyond both physiology and psychology there is God. Can we be sure that he is not directing our choices? Do we know that we are free from his grace? The Psalm says, "Blessed is the man whom you choose and cause to approach you." Is it certain that God has not caused us to choose to approach him? Can we set a limit to God's power? Can we tell how far it extends and just where it ends? Are we outside his control?”
― Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation

“The direction in which the culture of an age develops is, humanly speaking, chosen by a few exceptionally intelligent men. The popular authors then pick up some of the main ideas, usually distorting and diluting them considerably, and finally fifty years or a century later the general viewpoint has seeped down to the whole populace.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation

“Here I stand, so help me God, I can do no other. With the greater consciousness of the issues involved comes a lesser assurance that an alternative is possible.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation

“There is either one Christ or there is none. If Jesus was not the eternal Son of God, equal in power and glory with the Father, then let's have done with all talk about Christianity. Let us admit honestly that we are Unitarians, Jews, Buddhists, or humanists. But not Christians. For the historical Jesus said, Upon this rock, of the deity of Christ, I will build my Church. Some other organization may call itself a church, but it is not his.”
― Gordon H. Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe?

“What distinguishes the arid ages from the period of the Reformation, when nations were moved as they had not been since Paul preached in Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, is the latter's fullness of knowledge of God's Word. To echo an early Reformation thought, when the ploughman and the garage attendant know the Bible as well as the theologian does, and know it better than some contemporary theologians, then the desired awakening shall have already occurred.”
― Gordon H. Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe?

“A rapidez com que as teorias científicas do passado recente foram inventadas, aceitas e descartadas nos serve de alerta de que a ciência não é uma verdade fixa e absoluta.”
― Gordon Haddon Clark, William James e John Dewey

“A theologian’s epistemology controls his interpretation of the Bible. If his epistemology is not Christian, his exegesis will be systematically distorted. If he has no epistemology at all, his exegesis will be unsystematically distorted.”
― Gordon H. Clark, The Incarnation

“If God did not arrange [the world] this way, then there must be an independent factor in the universe. And if there is such, one consequence and perhaps two follow. First, the doctrine of creation must be abandoned. A creation ex nihilo would be completely in God's control. Independent forces cannot be created forces, and created forces cannot be independent.

Then, second, if the universe is not God's creation, his knowledge of it--past and future--cannot depend on what he intends to do, but on his observation of how it works. In such a case, how could we be sure that God's observations are accurate? How could we be sure that these independent forces will not later show an unsuspected twist that will falsify God's predictions?

And, finally, on this view God's knowledge would be empirical, rather than an integral part of his essence, and thus he would be a dependent knower. These objections are insurmountable. We can consistently believe in creation, omnipotence, omniscience, and the divine decree. But we cannot retain sanity and combine any one of these with free will.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Religion, Reason, and Revelation

“For, however cautiously one proposes to control men's desires, the stark reality of the theory soon becomes shockingly plain. Dewey wants to manipulate men as completely as science manipulates physical nature. Certain manipulators will control the thoughts of the populace and make everybody desire what the manipulators want them to desire... The ideal is complete, inescapable control. No longer will it be possible for individuals to want those things they have heretofore wanted. Parents will not be able to want to teach their children their own religion; they will not be able to believe in inalienable rights.”
― Gordon H. Clark, William James and John Dewey

“No sistema aristotélico, a ética é um fator relativamente pouco importante. O cristianismo, entretanto, com a condenação do pecado e o apelo à retidão dá forte ênfase à moral. Não obstante, a ética não é a base do sistema cristão. A teologia é mais fundamental, pois a ética depende de Deus.”
― Gordon H. Clark, William James and John Dewey

“Mais explicitamente: sabedoria não é o conhecimento de algum deus pagão nem tampouco, digamos, do princípio primeiro de Espinosa. Ter sabedoria é ter Cristo. Cristo é a verdade; Cristo é a sabedoria de Deus. Uma razão para fazer da verdade o objetivo dos nossos esforços é que, se amamos o que pode ser perdido, não podemos ser felizes. Mas Deus, Cristo e a verdade são imutáveis, e se temos isso, nossa bem-aventurança é permanente.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Essays on Ethics and Politics

“O Sínodo de Dort em 1618 condenou Armínio como corruptor da fé, embora não tenha chegado ao patamar explícito da Assembleia de Westminster 30 anos depois. Essa última confissão é o marco do ápice do protestantismo. Nenhum outro credo é tão detalhado e tão fiel às Escrituras.”
― Gordon H. Clark, God and Evil: The Problem Solved

“Young men and women in large numbers choose to go to college. On Dewey's theory, only too well accepted by the students, the reason cannot be any intrinsic value in knowledge. To give such a reason would be to flee from reality and take refuge in the discredited Aristotelian ivory tower. For the young man, college is a means of getting a better job; for the young women, it is a means of getting a better man. But neither the family that marriage brings nor the food that the job supplies is to be chosen for any intrinsic quality.”
― Gordon H. Clark

“Outra consequência é que o homem é racional; não porque é uma centelha de uma divindade panteísta, mas porque Deus o criou à sua própria imagem e semelhança. Deus tem conhecimento e sabedoria, Cristo é o Logos ou Razão, e Deus fez o homem de forma parecida.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Essays on Ethics and Politics

“Does Logic deal with things, or is it a science of words? And the answer one gives to these questions has such far reaching implications that it controls every detail of the resulting system of philosophy.”
― Gordon H. Clark, Thales To Dewey