In Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, Frame constructed a cogent argument against Charles Hodge’s claim that the task of a theologian was to arrange the facts of Scripture in their “proper” order, like a scientist. That was an important move to give us exodus from modernity.
But almost as important, perhaps just as important, was his passing remark of being puzzled why Dutch Reformed theologians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries spent so much effort arguing over the “place” of a doctrine within an “encyclopedia”–as if it really mattered.
This I think is actually more revealing. Modernity doesn’t so much need to be argued against. People just have to be willing to express how incredible and baseless the entire project now looks.
“Remind me: Why are we writing about this again? Or: “Why are we writing this way? How is it helpful?”
One question and the cards start falling.
Mark Ol’ buddie
I had that class with Frame in my PhD program at WTS. There were a number of us in that class that were not convinced and the discussions were at times very combative. I dragged Richard Muller’s contributions into the debate one day and things really got heated up. You might want to take a look at Paul Helm’s response to Kevin Vanhoozer( who openly acknowledges his debt to Frame) and their exchange over reading Hodge over at Ref21 awhile back.
Hmm, I read that exchange between Vanhoozer and Helm and thought Vanhoozer made much more sense than Helm. But I’ve found almost all of Helm’s forays into epistemology and related areas to be implausible and unhelpful.
garver
I’ll pass that along to Paul. We are finishing up a book together. I am sure he will be heart-broken
Sarcasm. Nice.
Epistemology is my area of expertise, so suffice it to say that I’ve got fairly well-worked views on it and probably have a higher than ordinary threshhold for finding other viewpoints persuasive.
Let me hasten to add that I find Hodge’s Systematic Theology an almost always useful and usually helpful resource (even when I disagree with his conclusions) and consult it regularly on theological topics.
I don’t find that (what seem to me) significant problems on the level of prolegomena and method undermine what Hodge often does in practice. But I’m not the sort of foundationalist who thinks getting one’s prolegomena and method correct is a necessary precondition for proper practice.
garver
Glad to hear it. I’ll sleep better tonight knowing this. Paul, however is hard at work trying to catch up.
But of course I did, why would you think otherwise? Hey, wait a minute, you’re not up to that old reverse psychology thing again, are you?
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