Faith and Philosophy Podcast · Faith and Philosophy Podcast

Clark Carlton on the Essence and Energies of God

·1 hr 22 min·5 clips

Salvation is real union with God, but humans never penetrate God's innermost life.

The room is already a little odd. A monthly Franklin gathering of Christians, mostly men with a few women there, has shown up ready to argue about theology, politics, the arts, and economics. Carlton takes the floor. The lecture starts with the essence and energies of God, but he will not rush it into a tidy doctrinal shortcut. First, he clears the ground. Human beings have sense perception and discursive reason, the language-bound movement of thought that can form complete thoughts and logical relations. Fine, but not enough. Carlton contrasts the later Western European consensus with an older account of cognition, one that leaves room for knowing without symbols in the way. Mathematics gives him the cleanest example. Even mathematics, abstract as it is, still uses signs, marks, and conventions between the mind and what it knows. Then Plato walks in. Carlton turns to the Republic, where mathematics and language belong to a lower level than the direct vision of the good. He names that good as God. The detour matters because it keeps divine energies from becoming just another verbal puzzle to master. Hume and Wittgenstein sharpen the contrast. Hume narrows thought to matters of fact and relations of ideas. Wittgenstein becomes Carlton's emblem for the claim that thought happens in language. Carlton keeps pressing past that frame. Near the end, the lecture turns from concepts to practice: more prayer and spiritual discipline, less discussion and dialogue. He makes the limit personal. He does not glow in the dark when he prays, so he can only speak around these things, with caution and at an angle. The result stays deliberately unfinished, more an introduction and a circling than a settled answer, before the questions begin.

As heard by us

A dense but lucid theology talk for listeners who want doctrine with history attached.

Clark Carlton spends the evening in Franklin, Tennessee, with a talk on the essence and energies of God for an ecumenical Christian gathering.

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Why you'd press play

If you want theology that moves through philosophy and prayer, start here.

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