Christ the Reason

NOTICE:
This is an outdated and unofficial item. The article was released as a draft/preview to Captive to Reason. For the current and official version of the article, please download the book from the online library.

(The following is an edited email correspondence.)

I came across today a letter written by Bahnsen regarding some issues he had with John Robbins.

Why does Bahnsen say the following in regards to Clark? "Who can forget his exegetically atrocious rendition of John 1:1 ("In the beginning was Logic")?" Does Bahnsen not think that "In the beginning was the Logic" is a valid translation? If so, why?

I thought you, Clark, Bahnsen, and Robbins were all on the same page with respect to that verse. Anyway, any help you can offer to clear that up would be helpful….

Bahnsen's disagreement is with translating "Logos" as "Logic." Here Clark is right and Bahnsen is wrong. Depending on the context, "logos" can be translated by a number of English words, such as "word," "speech," "proposition," "sentence," "reason," "logic," and several others.

In John 1:1, the verse is declaring the pre-existence of Christ the Logos and his relation to God (the Father) and to creation. In its historical context, John is declaring that Christ is the fulfillment of the Logos of Greek philosophy — that is, the principle of Reason that structures and regulates the whole universe. Of course, John is not saying that Christ and the Greek Logos are the same thing, but he takes the word/concept and fills it with Christian meaning.

Given this context, I think that "Word" is probably an inferior translation to "Reason" and "Logic." At the least, we can say that "Reason" and "Logic" are not wrong. Even without the historical context, the immediate context of the passage should also allow this translation. Also consider the relevance of the personified "Wisdom" in Proverbs.

Sometimes I refer to "Reason" with a capital "R" in my books and articles. This is what I have in mind. I am speaking of Christ, who is Reason personified — to reject him is to reject all rationality.

There is no legitimate exegetical reason to forbid translating "logos" as "Reason" or "Logic" in John 1:1. People shrink back from it probably due to an anti-intellectual prejudice.

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Some of my readers (of both my books and this blog) closely follow Bahnsen, so I will add a word about this here. The question was asked in the context of Bahnsen’s disagreement with Clark, so that’s the context in which I answered it. This is nothing personal against Bahnsen, nor do I believe something just because Clark believed it. I would affirm the above position even if Clark had rejected it.

Then, since I will probably never devote a blog entry especially on the book, I might as well include a brief statement about Bahnsen’s Van Til’s Apologetic, in which he made a number of criticisms against Clark.

I agree with several of Bahnsen’s criticisms — he quotes several statements from Clark’s writings that I in fact reject. However, in most of those cases, I nevertheless do not adopt Bahnsen’s alternative. In other words, in most of those cases where I think Bahnsen correctly criticizes Clark, I reject both Bahnsen and Clark, and hold my own position on the subject.

But then, the rest (that is, the majority) of Bahnsen’s criticisms against Clark are outrageously wrong. While I expect a Van Tilian to misunderstand and/or misrepresent Clark on some points, I was astounded at how poorly Bahnsen had misunderstood and/or misrepresented Clark in most of his criticisms. Those portions of his book reflect far inferior scholarship than what I believe Bahnsen was capable of. If I were to misrepresent Bahnsen or Van Til in a similar way, I would probably never get away with it. The problem is that most readers of Bahnsen might never look up the corresponding references in Clark’s works, and thus they will come away with an impression of Clark that is way, way, way, way off.

Moreover, even in cases where Bahnsen correctly represents Clark’s position in this book, his objections are extraordinarily feeble and irrational. And in many of these instances, it seems that Bahnsen has no logical refutation or rational alternative at all; rather, it appears that he rejects Clark’s position just because he doesn’t like it.

These lapses in scholarly judgment and rationality on Bahnsen’s part might be due to an inherited anti-Clarkian prejudice — a prejudice that never received a proper rational justification. Whether this is the true reason or how much it explains, I cannot say for sure.

My suggestion is that readers should ignore all the criticisms of Clark in Bahnsen’s book until they actually look up those quotations from Clark, and read them in their full contexts.

Recommended:

Gordon Clark, The Johannine Logos