The Forgotten Apologist – Edward John Carnell (Part Two) "Soul Sorrow and Systematic Consistency"
Carnell – A “Combinationalist”?
One of the earliest treatments of Carnell’s apologetic method came from Gordon Lewis, whose analysis is insightful. As noted previously, Lewis contends that Carnell’s method is a synthesis of the methodologies of Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, E. S. Brightman (an eminent philosopher from Boston University who focused on God’s dynamic relationship with the world), as well as a number of contemporary concerns shaped by Carnell’s doctoral studies of Niebuhr and Kierkegaard. Lewis explains:
From Cornelius Van Til at Westminster Theological Seminary [Carnell] took his starting point—the existence of the triune God of the Bible. However, this tenet is not an unquestioned presupposition for Carnell, but a hypothesis to be tested. His test is three-fold. At Wheaton College, in the classes of Gordon Clark, Carnell found the test of non-contradiction. The test of fitness with empirical fact was championed by Edgar S. Brightman, where Carnell earned his Ph.D. [Boston University]. The requirement of relevance to personal experience became prominent during Carnell’s Th.D. research at Harvard University in Søren Kierkegaard and Reinhold Niebuhr.[14]
Given these varied influences, Carnell is often considered a “combinationalist”—that is, one who combines various apologetic methodologies.[15] In Carnell’s apologetic, we can indeed find elements from the sources identified by Lewis, Sims, and Morley, but we should not think that Carnell merely borrowed from others and replicated their distinctive apologetic emphases. Rather, he synthesized these influences into a distinct apologetic method, much like Francis Schaeffer did. This becomes clear upon reading his An Introduction to Christian Apologetics, which, as Lewis describes, presents a “single picture,” or a consistent methodology.[16]
The Universal Human Experience of “Soul Sorrow”
Carnell begins with a compelling (though now somewhat dated) account of the universal human condition and experience, which he identifies as “soul sorrow.” This predicament arises from our awareness of human limitations—we are created as both body and soul (with the limitations of each), and we are certain to die. Awareness of this condition and the ills that accompany it precedes Carnell’s discussion of how to defend the Christian faith to those who are not believers.
Carnell contends that peace of mind is the highest form of human happiness. However, while our body-soul nature generates bodily pleasure, it also produces pain and misery. He describes the anguish of the soul “a malady more dreaded by man than physical discomfitures.”[17] Our bodies will die, yet we sense there is a spiritual existence after death. Thus, the inevitable human dilemma is self-preservation in a universe that dooms us to die.
Therefore, we find ourselves suspended between heaven and earth. We can dream of a better body and a better universe than what we currently experience. Our inability to unite the real with the ideal creates a sense of absurdity and futility. Says Carnell: we long for eternal life (the ideal), but we will soon die (the reality).[18] Life, then, becomes like a frustrating jigsaw puzzle, leading many to disappointment, desperation, and melancholy.[19] Ironically, this was Carnell’s own experience.
We know we are not what we ought to be, which creates friction and forces us to face the reality of death, generating further anxiety. Life, under these terms, forces us to confront our desire for self-preservation in the face of inevitable death. Ultimately, it is the fear of death that creates deep unease in every person. Carnell concludes that, for the person suffering from soul sorrow, humanity “appears to be but a grown-up germ sitting on a gear of a vast machine which is someday destined to cease functioning because of lack of power.”[20]
Carnell identifies four possible responses to this dilemma:
Suicide
Ignorance and apathy (choosing to ignore the problem)
Concluding that the universe is rational, though unfriendly to us (what Bertrand Russell calls “confident despair”)
Questioning the pessimism of the first three options.[21]
He suggests three remedies for soul sorrow:
Hope for personal immortality
Adoption of a rational view of the universe
Realization that truth is necessary to make sense of human existence[22]
Carnell concludes that without hope, nothing has meaning; without a rational universe, hope cannot be secured; and without knowledge of truth, a rational universe cannot be recognized.[23] He appeals to a paraphrase from the Hammerstein musical Show Boat: “We are weary of trying, we become weary of living, and we are all afraid of dying, but old man river just keeps rolling along.” So, we all look for the River Jordan.[24]
But, as Carnell points out, only Jesus Christ offers the ultimate and final solution to soul sorrow as promised in Matthew 11:28–30: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”[25]
The dilemma, Carnell concludes, is how we connect the statement of the problem with the God-given solution. His answer is laid out in his subsequent chapters on apologetic method.
Evaluation of Carnell’s “Soul Sorrow”
One thing to notice is that Carnell assumes all humans possess the imago Dei and have fallen in Adam. Yet he does not begin with human guilt before God—even though that is the root cause of soul sorrow. Nor does he begin by challenging the non-Christian’s anti-Christian presuppositions, though doing so is an important part of Carnell’s effort to test the hypothesis of Christianity’s truth. He begins with the soul sorrow universally experienced by a fallen race—a consequence of sin that people neither admit nor truly understand. Carnell sees human experience in God’s world as a form of non-neutral common ground.
Francis Schaeffer similarly urges that we begin any evangelistic or apologetic encounter by discerning where people are and approaching them accordingly. In assuming the reality of soul sorrow, Carnell suggests Christians should first understand the underlying issues non-Christians face, since they have no explanatory framework to make sense of this experience, nor any means of resolving it.
Regardless of the apologetic method used (more on that to come), keeping Carnell’s “soul sorrow” in mind prevents us from adopting a “press play” formulaic approach to defending the Christian faith. In personal encounters, we must discern where people are and approach them accordingly, rather than launching into a prepackaged spiel. We already know that behind every such encounter, Adam’s fall is the root cause of their ultimate soul sorrow. But surely, most people have not given these matters much thought.
Systematic Consistency
From these varied influences, Carnell developed an apologetic method grounded in what he identifies as “systematic consistency.”[26] He devotes significant time to discussing the problem of truth, explaining why most humanly devised tests for truth are ultimately self-defeating. Such tests cannot determine whether their judgments align with those of God, who is the source of all fact and meaning.[27]
Systematic consistency involves both a negative and a positive test for truth. For the negative test, Carnell identifies God as the very definition of consistency; any true hypothesis must not violate the law of non-contradiction. For the positive test, one must account for all the facts of experience, which constitute the content of our knowledge.[28] The hypothesis must align with both the facts of the external world and human experience, since God unifies all truth.
For Carnell, there is a temporal starting point grounded in nature—what is—but it fails to meet both the negative and positive tests he proposes.[29] The logical starting point, by contrast, is God.[30] The temporal starting point is where a person begins existentially—in nature and with their own needs and concerns. “Broadly speaking, experience is the only possible starting point for any philosophy, for thought does not operate in a vacuum; a man must be alive to think, and to think is to have experience. . . . It is common to all men.”[31] But Carnell notes that more precision is needed: experience “cancels out.” That is, by itself, experience cannot establish Christian theism.
The logical starting point is presuppositional: the Triune God of the Bible. Following Gordon Clark, Carnell argues that we must presuppose God’s existence, as this cannot be proven by inductive arguments that end in mere probability. But for this to be meaningful to the non-Christian, it must be presented not as an unverifiable presupposition (as in Clark and Van Til), but as a testable hypothesis evaluated by logic (coherence), facts of experience and history (correspondence), and personal relevance (moral certainty). Personal relevance means that truth must compel appropriate action.[32]
Carnell’s positive test for truth is “systematic consistency” because he insists we begin with a hypothesis—logically, the triune God of the Bible—and then apply a criterion to test that hypothesis. Lewis summarizes:
The criterion by which to distinguish true from false is twofold. A true hypothesis must be non-contradictory and must fit the facts of experience, both internal and external. Consider the first part of the test, non-contradiction. A contradiction is ‘our surest test for the absence of truth.’ . . . But Carnell’s test for truth requires more than consistency. It calls for systematic consistency. A ‘systematic’ hypothesis fits all the relevant facts of experience. . . . Our experience brings to us certain givens. These data cannot be irrelevant to our formulation of truth about the world. An acceptable truth-claim fits the facts it covers. All the facts are consistent with one another. The ‘world-viewish’ hypothesis cohering with the greatest number of facts with the fewest difficulties is most systematically coherent.[33]
Carnell explains the goal of this endeavor:
Since all we can find in history is probability, and all we can find in logic and mathematics is formal validity, we cannot have complete truth until we unite them. Truth is the properly construed meaning of all experience. Perfect coherence involves two elements: the law of contradiction to give formal validity, and concrete facts of history to give material validity. . . . The only proof he can offer—for both his philosophy and the actions flowing from it—is systematic coherence. Here, our theories of truth as coherence and as correspondence meet. The better our propositions hold together, the more truth we have. It is in this framework that the Christian offers proof for his system: it holds together. It can solve the problems of personal happiness, present a rational view of the universe, and provide a basis for truth. In one hypothesis—the existence of God who has revealed Himself in Scripture—the Christian can correlate time and eternity in one meaningful picture.[34]
This approach can be appealing, since it assumes common ground and provides a helpful method for addressing non-Christian claims and experience. Yet, as John Warwick Montgomery warns, systematic consistency is problematic at a critical point:
What happens if internal consistency is incompatible with the fitting of facts? This is not a merely theoretical concern when we consider Christian doctrines such as predestination and free will, or the Trinity. Christian doctrine isn’t ‘internally consistent’ at all points—at least not from a human perspective. Apologetics always speaks to fallen man from the human perspective, there being, presumably, no need for the discipline in heaven. Carnell never seemed to realize that if your truth test is multiple, you must have a higher truth-test to arbitrate when aspects of the test conflict. In the final analysis, one cannot stop with Carnell: either one must move to the fitting of facts as the ultimate test of a worldview, or conclude that what is consistent is therefore true. But the greatest of the world’s madmen have held the most consistent delusions.[35]
Presuppositional apologists such as Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen rejected Carnell’s approach. They opposed the idea of beginning with universal human experience as common ground, and they rejected the notion of treating Christianity as a hypothesis to be tested—even if Carnell insisted on presupposing God’s existence as necessary for verification. Van Til regarded presenting Christianity as a testable hypothesis as “blasphemous,”[36] believing it catered to human autonomy (“Mr. Natural Man”) rather than confronting it.[37] Greg Bahnsen saw Carnell’s method as evidence that he never truly understood Van Til’s call for a transcendental apologetic.[38] He too rejected Carnell’s approach.
Van Til’s harshest criticisms were often aimed at former students who did not adopt his methodology precisely. One might even say of Van Til: “Unless you presuppose the truth of Van Til’s apologetic methodology, Christianity has no defense at all.” It is unfortunate that so much energy has been spent criticizing fellow apologists rather than defending the faith in a world filled with soul sorrow. At some point, non-Christian presuppositions must be challenged—but that is probably not the only, or even the best, place to begin.
Next time, we will discuss Carnell’s views on common ground and his proposed “third way of knowing.”
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[14] Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims, 176.
[15] Morley, Mapping Apologetics, 147-184. Morley includes Gordon Lewis, Ronald Nash, and Francis Schaeffer in the “combinationalist” category.
[16] Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims, 176.
[17] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 19.
[18] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 24.
[19] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 24.
[20] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 21-22.
[21] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 24-25.
[22] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 25-27.
[23] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 27.
[24] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 28.
[25] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 28.
[26] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 56-62.
[27] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 46.
[28] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 61.
[29] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 122 ff.
[30] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 152 ff.
[31] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 123-124.
[32] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 116.
[33] Lewis, Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims, 184-185.
[34] Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, 106-107.
[35] John Warwick Montgomery, Faith Founded on Fact (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1978), 233.
[36] Jerusalem and Athens: Critical Discussions on the Philosophy and Apologetics of Cornelius Van Til, ed., E. R. Geehan, 1971), 358.
[37] Cited in Morley, Mapping Apologetics, 117.
[38] Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 547, n. 58.