by Rev. William M. Brennan, TH.D.
Introduction
Gordon H. Clark is widely recognized for his rigorous defense of divine sovereignty, scriptural propositionalism, and a strongly voluntarist account of God’s will. His rejection of natural law, denial of a sincere or well-meant offer of the gospel, and emphasis on the ultimacy of divine volition were intended to safeguard God’s freedom and transcendence against what he perceived as rationalist or Thomistic intrusions into Reformed theology.
However, this essay argues that Clark’s theological system suffers from a deeper and more serious defect than is usually acknowledged. By radically disassociating divine volition from divine nature, Clark not only undermines the coherence of biblical moral revelation but also effectively denies the moral dimension of the image of God in humanity. The result is a depersonalized conception of God and a truncated anthropology that stands in tension with Scripture and the broader Reformed tradition.
I. Clark’s Doctrine of Divine Volition
At the center of Clark’s theology lies a robust form of divine voluntarism. God’s will, for Clark, is ultimate, non-necessitated, and unconstrained by any standard external to itself—including abstract moral principles or a rational order of goodness. Moral norms are good because God wills them; they are not willed because they are antecedently good.
Clark’s intent is clear: if God’s will were governed by His nature understood as a rational or moral standard, then divine freedom would be compromised. God would be reduced to acting “according to rules,” even if those rules were internal to His essence. Clark therefore insists that divine willing admits of no further explanation beyond the will itself.
Yet this move comes at a cost. By refusing to allow God’s nature to function as an explanatory ground for God’s commands, Clark renders divine volition opaque rather than revelatory. God’s will explains what is commanded, but not why it is fitting, good, or expressive of who God is.
II. The Disjunction Between Divine Will and Divine Character
Scripture consistently presents God’s commands as flowing from His character. Moral imperatives are grounded in divine self-disclosure: “Be holy, for I am holy”; “You shall love, for God is love.” In such texts, the force of the command depends precisely on the correspondence between divine nature and divine will.
Clark’s system cannot accommodate this biblical pattern without tension. If God’s commands do not express God’s moral nature but merely His sovereign authority, then obedience becomes compliance with power rather than participation in divine goodness. Commands disclose obligation, but not character.
This represents a form of theological depersonalization. God becomes intelligible primarily as a sovereign logician who issues true propositions and enforces decrees, rather than as a personal moral agent whose will expresses who He is. Ironically, in attempting to avoid subordinating God to reason, Clark produces a conception of God more abstract than that of the classical theists he criticizes.
III. The Denial of the Sincere Offer of the Gospel
Clark’s denial of a sincere or well-meant gospel offer follows logically from this voluntarism. The traditional Reformed account maintains that God may genuinely command all people to repent while decretively willing salvation only for the elect, without contradiction, because the command expresses God’s benevolent moral disposition even where salvation is not decreed.
Clark rejects this framework as incoherent. For him, God cannot will what He does not decree, and to attribute a universal salvific desire to God would imply frustrated or divided volition. Since divine will is simple and always efficacious, God cannot sincerely desire the salvation of the non-elect.
What is often overlooked is that this conclusion depends on Clark’s prior severing of will from character. If commands do not express divine benevolence or moral inclination, then there is no reason to suppose that God’s command to repent entails any corresponding desire for repentance. The gospel proclamation remains true in a propositional sense (“If you believe, you will be saved”), but it is no longer an expression of divine goodwill toward all hearers.
IV. Implications for the Image of God in Humanity
The anthropological consequences of Clark’s system are severe. Scripture teaches that human beings possess an innate moral awareness—a conscience—that reflects God’s law written on the heart. This moral knowledge presupposes a real analogy between divine goodness and human moral perception. Humanity images God not merely by possessing intellect, but by bearing a moral likeness that grounds accountability and culpability.
Clark effectively reduces the image of God to cognitive capacity, especially the ability to grasp propositions. Moral awareness, on his account, has no intrinsic authority; it is merely awareness of commands or sanctions. There is no stable divine moral character for conscience to reflect, because moral norms do not flow from God’s nature but from sheer volition.
As a result:
-
Conscience loses its theological grounding.
-
Moral responsibility becomes purely external.
-
Human beings no longer recognize the good as good, but only as commanded.
This stands in direct tension with Romans 2, with the biblical doctrine of conscience, and with the historic Reformed understanding of the imago Dei as including moral likeness, however marred by the Fall.
V. Comparison with the Reformed and Classical Traditions
The irony of Clark’s position is that the traditions he opposes—Thomistic, Augustinian, and Reformed orthodox—preserve a richer account of both divine freedom and moral intelligibility. Classical theology affirms that God’s will is not constrained by anything external, yet insists that God acts consistently with His own nature. Such “necessity” is not coercive but expressive of divine self-consistency.
Similarly, the Reformed tradition historically maintained that natural law and conscience are impaired but not erased by sin, precisely because they are grounded in God’s unchanging moral character. Clark’s system, by contrast, secures sovereignty at the expense of moral recognizability and personal communion.
Conclusion
Gordon Clark’s theology exhibits a striking internal coherence, but it does so by radically thinning key biblical doctrines. By isolating divine volition from divine nature, Clark undermines the moral intelligibility of God, dissolves the character-revelatory function of divine commands, denies the sincerity of the gospel offer, and effectively evacuates the moral dimension of the image of God in humanity.
The result is a conception of God who is sovereign and logically consistent, yet increasingly impersonal, and a conception of humanity that is accountable but no longer morally reflective of its Creator. In seeking to defend divine freedom against rationalism, Clark ultimately severs the very links between will, character, and moral knowledge that Scripture presents as essential to both divine revelation and human responsibility.
No comments:
Post a Comment