Recently I was in a used book store and stumbled across Christianity and Neo-Liberalism by Paul Elliott (published by the Trinity Foundation in 2005). Some will immediately know this is a book connected to the followers of Gordon Clark (1902-1985), a controversial figure within Reformed circles in general and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) in particular.
I already knew of Paul Elliott, having stumbled on some of his sermons years ago. In that context he was critical of Evangelical culture and seemed to be promoting almost a kind of Fundamentalist Separatism. It was actually kind of refreshing but I could tell there was something 'off'. Then I looked in to him and found out that he was indeed connected to the Clarkian movement and had connections to the OPC.
I thought at first given the title, it might be a book dealing with the form of revisionist capitalism that emerged in the 1970's - something the Clarkian camp certainly champions.
No, it was basically a critique of the OPC and Westminster Seminary in light of several scandals Elliott attempts to string together. Basically it's the Norman Shepherd scandal of the late 1970's and early 1980's wherein the professor in question was charged with denying Justification by Faith Alone. He was exonerated but ended up leaving Westminster Seminary - migrating over into Dutch Reformed circles in Michigan. Elliott also attacks Richard Gaffin, Redemptive-Historical (or Biblical) Theology, and touches on another scandal that took place in the late 1990's and early 2000's connected to an OP congregation near Philadelphia and an elder named John Kinnaird who died in 2021. I remember the latter scandal as I had a friend who had been part of that OP congregation during the upheaval. Kinnaird was also exonerated and this led to some (Elliott I would presume) leaving the OPC.
I was a bit puzzled over Elliott's charge of theological liberalism and attempts to connect these issues with the Auburn Affirmation of 1924 - which marks the PCUSA's formal embrace of theological modernism as well as a rejection of its confessional heritage. The two issues don't seem related and I don't believe Elliott makes a convincing case at all.
Now, I'm not a fan of the OPC though I spent quite a few years in those circles and though I too would offer many criticisms, I wouldn't accuse them of theological liberalism. I had a feeling where Elliott would head with all this but I wanted to at least grasp the broad strokes of where the Clarkians were coming from on these points. That's why (for $1) I was willing to purchase the book and (though I knew it would be frustrating and even exasperating at times) push through it. It was about what I expected.
I will say this - the OPC and PCA are terrible when it comes to cover-ups. These Presbyterians do try and sweep things under the rug and it's difficult to find a proper accounting of these episodes. I knew Elliott's account would be terribly skewed and I was not disappointed but I was willing to at least follow his narrative and endure his commentary. For my part, I encountered the Shepherd Controversy back in 1998 as I and a friend were accused (informally) of holding to similar views - views we had come to while in Italy studying Calvin and other Reformed theology. In our isolated naivete (one might say) we had over the course of 1995 and 1996 come to these views as well as the soteriological and sacramental views later associated with the Federal Vision. Ironically we also became quite captivated with the so-called Mercersburg Theology of Schaff and Nevin.
Returning to the United States, this blew up in our face in the context of Reformed seminaries (we attended different ones) and we were encouraged to look into the Shepherd controversy. These were the early days of the Internet and I wasn't able to find much. My friend was put in touch with Peter Wallace (a student of Shepherd) and was able to garner quite a bit of information from him. It was interesting to say the least to watch the Shepherd issue re-emerge in the context of the Federal Vision controversy just a few years later. Many date the movement to 2002 with the controversy continuing through the 2000's and more or less winding down with Peter Leithart's 2011 exoneration in a PCA presbytery court. This led some disgruntled confessionally-minded people to start a new chapter of exodus from the PCA.
Thus it's noteworthy that Elliott's work was written (2005) right in the midst of the controversy - and again, the Federal Vision period of controversy (2002-2011) also rekindled debates over Shepherd and even Mercersburg to some extent. And again, the Kinnaird case was being adjudicated during the 2002-2003 period as well.
I know many books emerged from this period and I have read some of them. The one that I think is most often cited is The Auburn Avenue Theology Pros and Cons - Debating the Federal Vision which was published in 2004. The Auburn Avenue PCA of Monroe, Louisiana was the venue for Federal Vision's emergence on to the theological stage (as it were) and thus the movement is sometimes tagged with that 'Auburn Avenue Theology' label. Steve Wilkins led the congregation out of the PCA in 2008 and into the CREC.
The book is helpful in terms of its debate format and while I'm not really a fan of the Federal Vision movement (due to its Dominionism), or Calvin Beisner (the editor) in any capacity, I found the efforts of its detractors in the volume to be somewhat embarrassing. I still pull my copy off the shelf on occasion.
And yet Elliott takes such obtuse thinking and reasoning to another level.
Reading Christianity and Neo-Liberalism was like encountering a narrow and simplistic fundamentalist who took a philosophy class and yet falls into repeated fallacies. From straw man arguments to extreme examples of the slippery slope fallacy, the book is riddled with distortion, exaggeration, and repeated non sequitur. Again, it's only by taking a slippery slope path can one argue that the modern Reformed theologians that Elliott takes issue with are tantamount to those Modernists who signed the Auburn Affirmation in 1924 - with its explicit rejection of historic Christian doctrine.
Elliott promotes Gordon Clark's Scripturalism, which is a misnomer in that this view actually subjects revelation to the limitations of finite and fallen human logic. It is not only a completely inconsistent hermeneutic (thus failing its own coherency tests), but it fails to properly take into account the way in which the Scriptures use typology and metaphor - let alone the hermeneutics used by the apostles in interpreting the Old Testament. Contemporary Clarkians would call Peter, James, and Paul liberal heretics for the way they seemingly play fast and loose with Old Testament interpretation.
Opponents of the Clark-Robbins-Elliott thesis can justifiably argue it is they who have the low view of Scripture and the elevated view of man's fallen reason. It's highly ironic but we must conclude that the Clarkian view results from a low view of sin akin to what we find in both Thomistic and Enlightenment epistemology. They may not be modernists but they're further down that road than they realize.
In the end the entire work is guilty of petitio principii or begging the question. If one does not agree with Elliott on the basic questions of epistemology and the revelatory nature of Scripture - then all of his arguments quickly collapse. His entire analysis and indeed the entire discussion is a waste of time.
Now, Elliott insists the Clarkian view is the historic view and represents true Reformed theology. And yet this is also far from factual. The Reformed tradition has been dynamic - the theology of the 19th century is not the same as that of the 16th century. Both the forms and content are often different. The methods are different and theologians such as William Cunningham (1805-1861) and Charles Hodge (1797-1878) admitted this.
We can safely state that Elliott's views of the sacraments and questions of assurance are not even remotely the same as earlier Reformed theologians.
The Clarkian camp can be described as given over to hyper-solafideism or hyper-justificationism. By making this doctrine central they make shipwreck of many others and this is in addition to their distorted and reductionist understanding of saving faith.
We can also re-hash the Calvin vs. the Calvinists debate and the nature of Reformed Scholasticism, but given the homage paid to Aristotle by not a few of these theologians (who define the confessional period) - the Clarkians have a problem.
And so at best, they too represent a dissenting faction and as such have no claim to being the exclusive guardians of orthodoxy. They are but a faction making their claim.
And need we point out the Reformation 'elephant in the room'. Elliott excoriates and anathematizes views that he considers a betrayal to the Reformation and yet these are views universally held among Confessional Lutherans and many Anglicans. Are we going to say the Lutherans deny Justification by Faith Alone? And yet the Lutheran view on questions like the sacraments and assurance in connection to Sola Fide is completely at odds with Elliott's narrow understanding.
I continue to argue that the Clarkian camp exhibits a tendency toward hyper-Calvinism and this in turn often is close cousin to certain expressions of Baptistic theology. Not all hyper-Calvinists are Baptists - one thinks of the Protestant Reformed Church for example who are convinced paedobaptists. They are not Baptists but they are hyper-Calvinistic and seem to hold Clark in high standing and vice versa.
Hyper-Calvinism has no place for means and thus is already halfway to the Baptist position and thus it's no surprise that not a few Clarkians have left Presbyterianism for Baptistic circles and that a significant number of contemporary Clarkians are in fact Baptists. It's something of a package deal.
I also find it odd that the Clarkian sect heavily promotes the Christian America myth - that the nation was founded on Christian principles and the like. And yet how could this be when they are so quick to anathematize anyone who disagrees with them? None of the Founders or the people they celebrate, let alone the economic theorists they seem to esteem are on board with the narrow Clarkian interpretation of Christianity - if the Founders, philosophers, and economists in question can be called Christian at all.
Now I'm not a Confessionalist but I once was and was deeply entrenched in the theology and its tradition and I realized well over twenty-five years ago that the Clarkians represented a departure from the prolegomena and epistemological patterns of the Reformed, and are both doctrinally and biblically unsound. The Clarkian path leads to baptistic doctrine, hyper-Calvinism, and rationalism as I already argued - and none of these are confessional in terms of Presbyterianism or Reformed theology. I would further suggest that ultimately (and in time) it will lead to a rejection of Trinitarian theology. It will start by pushing modalism and end up Unitarian.
I could labour the Shepherd and Kinnaird cases and the many charges Elliott makes against the likes of Gaffin, Frame and Multiperspectivalism and I'm not even fully on board with these people either. It's not something I care to labour over.
But again, his basic epistemological flaws, his misunderstanding of Scripture and his narrow reading of these authors, and dare I say his seeming inability to grasp certain concepts makes a point by point engagement not only maddeningly tedious but basically unprofitable.
I'm
sure the lack of response coming from OPC/Westminster circles is to
the Clarkian sect I sign of their polemic prowess and they believe
they have cowed their opponents into silence. The truth is the people
from these circles will pick up a book like Elliott's and just sigh
and shake their heads. Where to begin? What's the point? In some ways
it reminds me of the people you encounter on Facebook that insist
they're 'Reformed' and they know the Five Points and then proceed to
make fools of themselves revealing that while they've grasped a few
basics, they largely don't know what they're talking about - even
while they call out and shout down anyone who even mildly dissents
from their particular (and often idiosyncratic) points. When someone
tries to question their framing of the questions at hand they are
attacked as Arminians (or maybe even Armenians!). In which case they
reveal that they don't understand what either actually are.
The
problem is foundational in the realm of prolegomena. There's a basic
difference in understanding epistemology and revelation - just what
the Bible is and represents. I would argue the Clarkian position is
actually closer to the liberal view at least on that trajectory in
which eventually Scriptural doctrines are flattened, dynamics and
nuance are reasoned away, eventually resulting in a pairing down and
distortion of doctrine. This same kind of Enlightenment-driven
mentality led Calvinist churches in places like New England to
eventually fall into man-centred thinking, anti-supernaturalism, and
Unitarianism. If you doubt me, just look at what was happening with
Clark and the Incarnation - his final and incomplete work. He was
redefining terms and dismissing classical categories (which indeed
may be somewhat flawed) as nonsense.
Under Clarkianism, man (and his reason) is the measure of all things. It's just humanism by another name. It starts at a different point and embraces certain axioms, but it's methodology enshrines fallen human reason and thus it's doomed to degenerate and fall into the same perilous tracks of those that have gone before.
I sometimes speak of the Rationalist Full Circle. It's very much akin to what you see on the political spectrum with the Left-Right divide. Both extreme camps (historically) in the name of absolutizing their views end up embracing authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. When they both reach that point (on a practical level) the end result is the same. Functionally they are the same. They use different slogans but the functional day-to-day reality is the same whether one lives under Hitler, Stalin, or the Kim regime.
We find something similar when it comes to Hyper-Calvinism and Pelagianism. On the one hand like fascism and communism the two camps represent extremes that (while polar opposites) begin to look very similar. Both are deeply shaped by rationalism. One group focuses on things like experience and common sense while the other starts with certain axioms, but both heavily rely on humanistic framing and self-referential standards of coherence.
My late mother certainly qualified as a Hyper-Calvinist. She progressively turned her back on notions like the Free Offer of the Gospel as well as any kind of 'means' theology. Everything was about election and in the individual's reference to that question. She was a fan of Gordon Clark as well as Herman Hoeksema's Protestant Reformed Church. After shedding paedobaptism altogether, she eventually reached a point in which church itself was more or less optional. How can it benefit you? How can being part of the visible church be a source of grace? You're either elect or non-elect. The sacraments can't mean anything in terms of your salvation. You're either elect or non-elect. In the end, she simply stayed home and didn't bother with church. It was too irritating and bothersome. She cut herself off and (from my standpoint) lost her way.
Again, the problem was rationalism. She couldn't stand dynamics and tensions. There was almost a pragmatist streak to her thinking. She read her Bible on a daily basis but only saw what she wanted to see.
Of course the logical end of such thinking would be to eschew prayer as well. What good can it do? All is ordained, right? She never went that far but it seems inevitable. She certainly flirted with that narrow extremist version of Hyper-Calvinism wherein not only are Arminians lost - if you think Arminians can be saved at all, you're salvation is suspect too. She would have devoured Elliott's work with great gusto I am sure. It would have been right up her alley.
And ironically my father was a full-blown Pelagian. He was given to common sense frames of reference. If it doesn't make sense to me, then it can't be true. God can't elect people, that wouldn't be fair. We'd be robots. We must have complete autonomy to accept Christ or follow God's commands. We pretty much can do whatever we want in light of free grace - a point that actually represents a departure from the moralistic strictures of Pelagius. In other words my father being an antinomian was worse and it showed in his life. Free will and free grace were the non-negotiables and anything that either contradicted or even potentially clouded these axiomatic concepts was necessarily false.
He went to such an extreme that he came to doubt eternal punishment and believed that since he hadn't asked to be born - how could a just God issue such a sentence? I pointed him to Romans 9 but to no avail.
He too utterly rejected a theology of means. Salvation was all about your choice and so the idea that something might hinder or aid that in any capacity was necessarily false. This eternal security paradigm which emerged in the 20th century with its very misguided understanding of free grace (as well as the Carnal Christian paradigm) played into his thinking and again is at odds with historic Arminian and Pelagian thought. And it's still popular - David Jeremiah was recently on the radio preaching this heresy.
My father also reached a point in which he didn't bother with church any more. What difference could it possibly make? And as stated here and elsewhere, his 'Christian' life was also marked by gross sin and antinomianism. This coupled with sociopathic patterns of reasoning made him almost unreachable. I have no reason to hope he was a believer.
My parents went through a very hostile divorce when I was young so these issues were not something they discussed - they didn't talk at all. And both were convinced the other was utterly lost.
And ironically while my father was the theological polar opposite of Clark, when I read Elliott, the whole tone and tenor, the way of reasoning is very reminiscent of my father. This is a point which seems counter-intuitive but one a few people do understand - Hyper-Calvinism and Pelagianism are actually close cousins as I've already suggested. Members of both camps will tear their hair out and shout and rage at the suggestion, but it's absolutely true.
In addition while reading Elliott's analysis, I often felt like I was reading literature from the John Birch Society. As I already suggested, his work employs the same kind of slippery slope arguments and straw man fallacies that characterize that movement. Just like the Birchers, if you don't hold to their narrow, extreme, and simplistic view, and if you don't use their exact (almost code-like) words and way of expressing their truths - then you're suspect. In the Bircher world, it means you're a communist and thus that movement (piggy-backing on McCarthyism) identified figures like Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy as communists - a ridiculous assertion, but an ethos that lives on to the present and in fact is surging in popularity.
Clarkianism is the theological version of Bircherism and both Elliott and the late John Robbins (1948-2008) often play the role of McCarthyite Inquisitors in their works.
The great irony is that even as these people (in the name of Scripturalism) attack mystery, redemptive-historical hermeneutics, and demand an ultra-rationalist form of systematics, there is tendency toward esotericism.
Knowledge is math and logic is verbal math. You have to be initiated into the correct phraseology almost like Masonic passwords. If you don't get it exactly right, then you're inferior if not a heretic - and let's not forget the hubris that characterizes these people. If you doubt it, just listen to some John Robbins recordings - if you can stomach it for more than ten minutes. I played some for my son awhile back and before I explained who it was, his response was, "What's the matter with this guy?"
Clarkianism is like a form of rationalist gnosticism - though the charge would set their teeth on edge. Lost in the weeds of philosophy, revelation is merely propositional statements ascertainable by fallen finite minds as opposed to revealed mysteries apprehended by faith, but only the trained scholar (or initiate) can hope to unlock all the deductive secrets that are available to them - even to the point of dissecting the Incarnation and the Godhead.
In reality it is their movement that has re-cast the nature of theology, engaged in revisionist Church history, and the more I look, the more I want to turn away and counsel others to do the same. Their whole ethos is poison. I honestly wonder sometimes if their understanding of the God of Scripture falls within the bounds of Scriptural orthodoxy at all.
Elliott's work does possess a certain value, but not the one he intended. Despite its deep and fundamental flaws, it does contain some information that is of value if read with careful discernment. But generally speaking it is a work not recommended and depending on the reader - one to be utterly avoided.