The following are excerpts from the paper The Gordon Clark and Cornelius Van Til Controversy by Jared Moore [PDF/MP3] and give a good summary of the controversy:

Clark believed that man’s knowledge and God’s knowledge are quantitatively different but not qualitatively different. Instead of a two-fold theory of truth, he believed that truth is one. If man knows an item of truth, and both God and man know the identical item, then on this item God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge coincide. Yet, man can never know exhaustively and completely God’s knowledge of any truth in all its relationships and implications because man is not omniscient. Every truth has an infinite number of relationships and implications and these implications in turn have other infinite implications. Thus, man’s knowledge will forever remain quantitatively less than God’s knowledge, even in Heaven.

Furthermore, Clark believed that God is logic. His paraphrase of John : was, “In the beginning was Logic, and Logic was with God, and Logic was God. . . In Logic was life and the life was the light of men.” To Clark, “God and logic are one and the same first principle, for John wrote that Logic was God.” Thus, he held that Scripture is a part of God’s mind. And if God has spoken in Scripture, He has spoken logically in logical organization. Since man was made in God’s image, he can receive this logical knowledge of God because “human reason is not so much human as divine.” Clark believed that truth is the same for God and man. He wrote, “Naturally, we may not know the truth about some matters. But if we know anything at all, what we must know must be identical with what God knows. God knows all truth, and unless we know something God knows, our ideas are untrue. It is absolutely essential therefore to insist that there is an area of coincidence between God’s mind and our mind.” Thus, Clark believed that Van Til could never say he knows truth since he never knows anything as God knows it.

Van Til, on the other hand, believed that there is a Creator/creature distinction between God and man that makes God quantitatively and qualitatively incomprehensible to man. He argued that God’s knowledge of Himself is archetype knowledge. God also has an analogical knowledge of His archetype knowledge, which is God’s ectype knowledge. God has given man in His revelation, His Scripture, analogical knowledge of His ectype knowledge. Scripture is the ectype of the ectype knowledge of the archetype knowledge of God. Thus, man knows nothing of God’s archetype knowledge since he is not God. Man can never know anything as Creator; man can only know as creature. Nevertheless, because man’s knowledge of God as revealed in Scripture is analogous to or an interpretation of God’s ectype knowledge—which is analogous to or an interpretation of God’s archetype knowledge—Scripture is God’s truth revealed to man. Scripture is an accurate interpretation of God’s knowledge because God is the Interpreter. However, man’s knowledge of Scripture is always a creaturely knowledge. God’s knowledge and man’s knowledge are always qualitatively and quantitatively different. All revelation is anthropomorphic. If man knows as God knows, then man is God. Thus, Van Til saw a fatal flaw in Clark’s doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God.

The implications of Clark’s theology undermined the Reformed Faith when taken to their consistent end. When the Creator/creature distinction is compromised, and man believes he can eliminate Scriptural paradoxes and comprehend all Scripture logically, the consistent end is a denial of the Christology expressed in the Chalcedonian Creed and the Westminster Confession. … Clark’s eventual rejection of God the Son’s single personhood justified Van Til’s original concerns, for if Clark’s conclusions were taken to their consistent end in the OPC, the result would be a denial of orthodox Christology.

 

originally found here: http://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/38941/what-was-at-issue-in-the-clark-van-til-controversy