I have read a fair amount of Gordon Clark, and because I agree with him as a rule, I very much enjoy disagreeing with him when he is wrong: his errors are generally intelligent and notable (see this article for an instance).¹ In this case, I can’t say Clark is entirely wrong. I hold, rather, that he stands in an incomplete framework which skews his analysis to miss the fullness of the truth. And by ‘this case,’ I mean the question of language’s relationship to symbolism.

Clark’s Circumstance

In Inspiration and Language, particularly on pages 188-208,² Clark deals with a set of non-Christian philosophers who claim ‘religious language’ or language in general is originally and basically figurative, lacking any literal meaning, being rather a sort of trajectory towards something, true or illusory, which the language itself is incapable of conveying, of more than alluding to. He rightly asserts that language must be “meaningful… and thoroughly intelligible” in order to have use at all. The difficulty arises with the implicit assertion that literal language is fundamentally more necessary than figurative language- and with his failure to bring into focus the fact that figurative, symbolic language is ultimately not differentiated from literal language in its relationship to the point and import of language, its meaning.

What Is Language?

Language is communication via arbitrary signs.

Arbitrary signs are signs which do not inherently resemble what they signify; they are made to correspond to what they signify by the person conceiving of them. As such, they can either be learned from another or devised and taught. If an arbitrary sign is not shared by two persons, they cannot use it to communicate except by sharing the significance of the symbol. Onomatopoeia is not a proof to the contrary, despite its use of inherently resemblant symbols. The addition of sounds-which-sound-like to language does not obviate its basically arbitrary nature, as more than adding scratch-n-sniff to the word ‘fart’ would. The two additions are actually much the same in principle.

(Arbitrary, here, means ‘chosen by an agent, rather than inherent to the constant structure of non-sapient creation,’ not ‘subjective’ or ‘without significance’ or ‘without weight or reason.’)

Communication, meanwhile, is for today’s purposes the copying of meaning from one mind to another.

Language v Meaning

Crucial to this structure is the distinction between language and meaning. When I communicate, language is an instrument of transmitting meaning, not the meaning itself. Such was already admitted in making language ‘symbolic.’ Language consists of symbols, and the symbols refer to meaning. The word ‘book’ is worthless in language except by it being the known symbol for a particular meaning.

This begs the question of how we come to have knowledge in the first place, a question already addressed in this other article. In short, we humans are born with a direct apprehension of God (Rom. 1:18-20) and thus of ourselves (Gen. 1:26). This apprehension provides us with the constituent meanings by which we understand the world and which we assemble into our worldview, into every bit of knowledge we come across, including the meaning (significance) of all sensory experiences. Language serves as a method of connecting, specifying, conceptualizing, and transmitting particular constructions of those meanings (those basic ideas).

The most basic form of meaning is not the simplest form of meaning. Propositions- ‘A is B’ and such statements of relationships- have a fair claim to be the simplest form of meaning, but so do single-concepts, like ‘A’. Yet single concepts have meaning as definitions- ‘A is B’- and thus single concepts are meaningful as propositions. Propositions, in turn, are meaningful only by the individual nature of each of their three elements (the two parties and the relationship), each of which is a single-concept, whose definition is in turn a proposition. Such perpetual reducibility signals that mere reduction is not the way to find the most basic form of meaning. We shouldn’t be surprised; reduction-to-the-smallest is a process looking in the wrong direction.

All meaning ultimately references God. We creatures bear an analogy to Him, our various parts resembling Him in various ways. Everything He created, to be blunt, insofar as it exists shares something with Him. Everything is made in the reflection of God (Gen. 1:26). Each part of creation, however complete or incomplete and in all its sub-elements, is qualitatively alike to God in some way (such as existence or moral agency or the like) and qualitatively different (such as being dependent rather than independent).³ (This paragraph, note, is something Clark very much disagreed with- not necessarily the ‘meaning’ but the assertion that it is analogical, qualitatively different from God’s meaning by virtue of being created or existing in created existences, rather than univocal, actually God’s Logos.)

The most basic form of meaning, therefore, is its completeness: all meaning. Particularly, it is all meaning in its unified form, prior to reflection and refraction, God Himself, the perspective of Him which we find visible in ‘meaning’ His creation. God, of course, is one, containing the completeness of all which we term ‘meaning,’ including the decree of creation, which exists eternally (atemporally) as the independent existence which specifically sustains the dependent existence of creation (remember, in speaking of a ‘part’ of God, we are distinguishing not a separate or differentiated element but rather a specific field of our conception and view, an accommodation to our finite perspective which, if pursued infinitely, reveals itself to be of a unity with all the rest of our true conceptions of God). God’s nature is the basis of meaning, and the awareness of that nature is the basic apprehension of Him and His creation, the complete form from which we assemble particular meanings.

(I know I sound a little Neo-Platonist here, all One and ‘the One spilling over into the world’ and such.⁴ A core difference, however, is between Neo-Platonist conception of the One-reality relationship and my conception of the God-creation relationship. Neo-Platonism conceives of non-One reality as a gradient from the One (existence) down to non-existence, with philosophy as a perception looking up the gradient towards the One, offering the possibility of joining it in complete, undifferentiated existence. I posit that creation exists (though sin is in fact a lack of existence where righteousness out to be), but it exists dependent upon God, whose existence is independent of everything else (aseity). Thus, meaning is real and existent, but it corresponds to and looks upward to the I AM (existence) who creates and sustains it.)

Literal v Figurative

Language, therefore, is a transmission of meaning. Literal and figurative language differ in how they transmit that meaning. Specifically, literal language provides a direct symbolism: the auditory/ visual (written) symbol corresponds directly to a particular meaning (we’re ignoring miscommunication, today, as its existence is no difficulty for anything averred). Figurative language, meanwhile, uses indirect symbolism: the auditory/visual symbol refers to a meaning (other language or non-linguistically encoded meaning, such as remembered sensory experience (the taste of sugar, for instance)) which symbolizes the intended meaning. Thus the difference between, ‘Christ died for our sins,’ and ‘Christ is the Lamb of God for man.’

The crucial point here which Clark does not seem to recognize is that in essence these two have the same goal and mechanism. Figurative language simply iterates the symbolism, usually (in comparison to literal language) reducing clarity or precision for the sake of increased meaning-density (less words for more meaning). Yes, figurative language generally has more prerequisites to its intelligibility; I must know what a ‘lamb’ is and what role it played in the Jewish rituals in order to understand the phrase ‘Lamb of God,’ as Clark points out. Yet in the end this is not conceptuality different from knowing the definitions which make literal language meaningful, except in magnitude. The definitions of ‘died’ and ‘lamb’ are equally necessary to the two statements, even if ‘lamb’ needs a more expansive, historically detailed definition.

Figurative and literal language accomplish the same end through different placements of the same mechanism. Individual circumstances, including at least the knowledge and mental structure of the person being communicated to, mean that in some cases figurative language is completely ineffective to convey certain meanings and in other cases figurative language is highly effective, possibly in a way literal language is not (particularly meanings related to emotion and experience). Probably literal language will be necessary or compellingly useful⁵ in conveying certain theological meanings (truths) to nearly every person, providing inductive proof of Clark’s position that literal language is necessary to faith. Yet because the two are not categorically different in their mechanism, only in how direct the application is, figurative language is a viable path for theological truth, particularly in cases where the meaning need not be as thoroughly intellectual, such as for a child. One who knows the process of sacrifice can receive the theological meaning of ‘Lamb of God’ without mediating it through literal language, if his thought-process is set up that way

Before leaving, though, we should acknowledge that while the most basic form of meaning is its most complete form, the basic form of language is its simplest element, the literal symbol. All figurative statements rely on some literal language eventually. We know this because all figurative language relies on a symbol corresponding to a meaning, at least in the first step from first symbol to the second symbol which corresponds to the figure’s final meaning, and ‘a symbol corresponding to a meaning’ is literal language, as per the definition. So literal language is the most basic form of language, though not necessarily more effective than figurative language, a basic-ness which does not necessitate that purely literal language be required for any particular application, contra Clark.

And on Clark….

To be quite honest, the inclusion of Gordon Clark in this article was less to directly respond to him than to frame the discussion and scratch the itch he gave me. I do disagree with him, but the point of this article is my substantive arguments, not that disagreement. I do recommend reading Clark, but you should read Greg Bahnsen⁶ and other Christian theologians/ philosophers (including me!) to counterbalance his weak-points, which, while relatively few, are occasionally near-catastrophic (particularly the complex error which is his view of the Image of God in man and the nature of knowledge (univocal, he thinks, not reflective/ analogical)).

And now, in homage to philosophers of old: That’s all, folks!⁷

God bless.

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Footnotes

1. I also come down far close to Van Til than Clark in the field of presuppositional apologetics. ↩︎
2. The Works of Gordon Haddon Clark, vol. 4. Published and sold by The Trinity Foundation. ↩︎
3. If you have a question, please leave a comment. I’ll see it within a few weeks. ↩︎
4. Mormonism, from what I’ve seen, has at least in some iterations a similar idea. Nothing new under the sun, apparently. ↩︎
5. Meaning that while figurative language could do the job, literal language does it much better. ↩︎
6. Bahnsen’s understanding and statement of presuppositional apologetics is remarkably good, both in clarity and correctness. I highly, highly recommend you check it out. I also recommend his writing on Christian civil government, what may be termed ‘theonomy’ or ‘general equity theonomy.’ ↩︎
7. Porky Pig, et al. “Merrie Melodies” & “Looney Tunes.” Warner Brothers, 19__. ↩︎