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Title: Christian View of Men and Things (3rd edition) by Gordon H. Clark ISBN: 1-891777-01-7 Publisher: Trinity Foundation Pub. Date: September, 1998 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $14.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Brilliant, logical, and consistency
Comment: Clark has done much for any person seeking truth. I am such an individual. I picked up A Christian View of Men and Things out of curiosity for I had never heard of him; and since then have bought 27 of his volumes. Now this is mainly because his works or most of them, deal with or at least start with epistemic foundations and methods of arriving at truth. He is concerned with method, presupposition, epistemic justification, regress of justification, etc. If our epistemic method is in error to begin with, all further deductions, implications, inferences, etc., will necessarily be wrong. His works are devastating for this very reason--he began his appraisals of various schools by determinig the value of their first principles or presuppositions. And his assertions are thereby, because of his epistemic eye, unanswerable. His arguments have force and finality. Thus, a philisophically minded person will do well to read one of his many volumes. A Christian View of Men and Things is a perfect place to start. Clark doesn't waste your time and he is a lucid writer despite the fact that the subject matter is complex.

He is considered one of the major philisophers and theologians of this century. And for good reason; he spent a lot of time considering what truth is and how men can arrive at it. He was interested in certainty. I have not read any other author who's remotely as clear and logical. It is sad that he has made such little impact despite the high level of his works. Give it a try.

Rating: 1
Summary: Still refuses to deal with the fundamental issues
Comment: As with other works written about the theories of theism or Christianity, this one still fails to deal with fundamental issues in physical reality and epistemology. The author of course wishes to reject rationalism, but the presupposition that he replaces them with fails to preserve intelligibility and thought. Once again, the question "How do we know what we claim to know?" destroys theistic philosophy. For more information, read the works of Massimo Pigliucci and Richard Dawkins. Until theists can justify their presuppositions, they are just building mythological castles in thin air.

Rating: 5
Summary: Classic Clarkian Philosophy
Comment: Gordon Clark's book, A Christian View of Men and Things, presents what is one of his best works in understanding his philosophical defense of Christianity. He begins his inquiry with the more broad philosophy of history, working further down through more specific fields such as politics, to ethics, to science, to religion, and to epistemology. What Clark has in mind is to show that the Christian worldview is the most plausible one based on the axioms we generally believe (e.g. truth exists), and that the other worldviews are not able to provide a good defense of each of the various fields he covers (noted earlier).

There are some really nice things about this book. Specifically, his argument from truth for the existence of God at the very end (Ronald Nash uses this in his book, Faith and Reason...I also thought his work on ethics, covering teleological and deontological ethics, was extremely helpful. Furthermore, his work on politics and history is just not found in many contemporary philosophical works. It was nice to see someone other than Hegel approach this.

On the other hand, there are some downsides to the book. For example, Clark treats teleological systems (ethical egoism and utilitarianism) too broadly. For example, when he covers utilitarianism, he focuses on Jeremy Bentham. Bentham was an act-utilitarian, and most act-utilitarians have moved into rule-utilitarianism or accepted some aspect of rule-utilitarianism (e.g. J.S. Mill or G.E. Moore). To clear up why I may sound contradictory; Clark was helpful in ripping Bentham apart, but he leaves most of the other types untouched.

Another downside to this book is that Clark argues, and not pervasively so, that science cannot tell us anything true. You can read his other book, The Philosophy of Science and Belief in God, for a fuller treatment. This point has come back to bite Clarkians.

Nevertheless, I think this is an excellent book to read despite my own personal philosophical disagreements with Clark. This book is great if you want to understand his thought and will help you in one way or another to approaching various issues in philosophy. Note, this book is old so there is much more contemporary work done; but there is much to learn from the man still.

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	Title: Religion, Reason and Revelation by Gordon H. Clark, John W. Robbins, unknown ISBN: 0940931869 Publisher: Trinity Foundation Pub. Date: 1995 List Price(USD): $10.95
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