I'm glad you asked-2

I. Epistemology

1. God-Talk

Both inside and outside the Church there is often felt to be a peculiar difficulty with religious language. This apparent problem has both an epistemic and ontological dimension. At the epistemic level, it is felt that if our knowledge derives from experience in general, and sensory perception in particular, and if God is not a sensible object, then whatever we may say or think or believe about God is a figurative extension of mundane concepts.

At the ontological level, it is felt that if God is in a class by himself and apart from the creative order, then all our statements about God are vitiated by a systematic equivocation inasmuch as there is no longer any common ground between the human subject and divine object of knowledge.

What are we to say to these considerations? Regarding the epistemic issue, the first thing to be said is that this assumes a particular theory of knowledge. So if this is a problem, it is not a problem peculiar to religious epistemology, but goes back to the ancient debates between empiricism and rationalism, nominalism and realism. If you are a Thomist, then this is a problem generated by your chosen theory of knowledge. But if, say, you are an Augustinian, then you don't believe that all knowledge derives from the senses. Abstract objects are objects of knowledge without being perceived by the senses—at least on an Augustinian theory of knowledge.

This does not, therefore, constitute a direct objection to God-talk. If such an objection is to be raised, it necessitates a preliminary and independent argument for radical empiricism. And this debate has been going on for 2500 years. So it seems unlikely that the critic of God-talk will be successful in mounting a compelling case on epistemic grounds alone.

In addition, a good case can be made for the view that human discourse is pervasively and incurably metaphorical. (Cf. G. Lakoff & M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By [Chicago, 2003].) So even if God-talk were figurative, that would not be distinctive to religious discourse, but would, rather, apply with equal force to ordinary language—as well as scientific nomenclature, which is refined from concrete usage.

Our knowledge of the sensible world is analogical, for the human mind does not enjoy direct access to the sensible world. Sense-data are a highly processed form of information that has undergone repeated encoding in order to reach our consciousness.

So, if anything, the venerable via negativa has the relation exactly backwards. The natural world is a material manifestation, in finite form, of God’s impalpable attributes (cf. Ps 19:1-7; Acts 14:17; Rom 1:18ff.; Eph 3:9-10). Metaphor is deeply embedded in human language inasmuch as nature is figural of God. So God-talk is the only kind of talk there is. Strictly speaking, God is the only object of literal predication whereas all mundane phenomena, as property-instances of divine properties, are objects of analogical predication. As one theologian has put it, "all virtues pertain first to God, then to the creature: God possesses these virtues 'in essence,' the creature 'through participation'…He allows us to speak of him in creaturely language because he himself has manifested his virtues and revealed them to us through the creature," H. Bavinck, The Doctrine of God (Banner of Trust, 1979), 94-95.

But even if we waive the epistemic objection, it may be felt that the ontological issue is, in any event, more fundamental. The real nub of the problem, it would be said, lies with the ontological wall separating subject and object. If God is wholly sui generis, then what is our shared frame of reference for knowing or saying anything about him? Aren't we reduced, not only to analogy, but the utter negation of our mental and mundane categories?

One of the problems with this objection is it equivocates over the conditions of equivocation. What, exactly, is the relevant point of similarity to form a sound analogy? A fork and fingers can both be used to consume food, yet they don't have a lot in common in terms of their constitution or configuration. The same thing could be said about doing math in your head, counting on your fingers, using an abacus or a computer. The same thing could also be said about telling time by a sundial, hourglass, atomic clock, analogue or digital watch. So the ontological objection has pretty fuzzy boundaries.

And this points up another issue. It is a category mistake to equate analogy and metaphor. All metaphors are analogies, but all analogies are not metaphors. Forks and fingers are analogous, but their relation is not figurative. Even if God were only known by his effects, an effect need not resemble its cause. What a Turner painting resembles is not the painter, but a Venetian sunset. Yet a Turner painting reveals a great deal about the painter.

A deeper issue is the relation between divine and mundane properties. According to the Augustinian tradition, to which Calvinism is heir, God is not merely the Maker of the world, but the exemplar of the world. On this view, time and space are limits which instance the illimitable being of God. Finite reason and natural design instance infinite reason. Natural examples of the one-over-many instance the supernatural symmetry of God's Trinitarian being. So such a position posits an internal relation between our knowledge of God and our knowledge of the world. (Cf. Calvin, Inst. 1.1.1-2.)

Let us apply these considerations to a couple of classic attacks on religious epistemology. Kant erected a phenomenal/noumenal wall and proceeded to put God on the noumenal side of the barrier. But Kant confounds a general theory of knowledge with a special theory of perception. Even if there were a radical hiatus between appearance and reality, that would be irrelevant to the status of God as an object of knowledge, for God is not a sensible object to begin with— just as you can know what the number five is without having a mental picture of the number five. Numbers are not that sort of object. You know by knowing the definition. An internal tension lies in the fact that Kantian epistemology must initially assume an objective standpoint in order to draw the phenomenal/noumenal hiatus that, in turn, denies such a standpoint.

Again, even if you bought into Kantian assumptions, the narrative history of God’s creative, redemptive and retributive deeds tracks at the phenomenal rather than noumenal level. The Exodus, Crucifixion, Resurrection and great assize are public, sensible events; their historicity and significance doesn’t turn on the topology of space, hyperfine structure of matter, Copernican Revolution, ontological status of phenomenal qualia or suchlike. You don’t need to be a direct realist to fully affirm whatever the Bible says about God, man and history.

Turning to Hume, his basic objection is that if we only know God by his effects, then we must proportion cause and effect and not overdraw the evidence. He also assumes that an argument from design is an argument from analogy, which is, in turn, an argument from experience.

But it is hard to take this objection seriously. A poet is greater than the poem, a painter than the painting. The Last Supper does not exhaust the imagination of Da Vinci. For one thing, the creative act is as much an act of omission as commission, of choosing what to put in and what to leave out, of not doing as well as doing. The range of possible variations is, in principle, nothing short of infinite.

Hume’s objection is directed against a Paley-style watchmaker argument. In Paley’s classic illustration, "In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for all I knew to the contrary it had lain there forever. But suppose I found a watch on the ground. I should hardly think of the answer I gave before."

Now Hume would say that this inference is fallacious because it is an argument from analogy, and the analogy derives from our prior knowledge of man-made artifacts. But is that a fair criticism?

To begin with, Paley’s distinction between a rock and a watch is somewhat artificial, for the same object can be both a natural object and a human artifact. A rock can be turned into a timepiece. For example, a rock, with suitable markings, can be converted into a starchart. Let’s rewrite Paley’s illustration with this in mind, "In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone. The stone bare a pitted surface. I made a rubbing and took it home. Although the distribution pattern was apparently random, and I couldn’t tell if the indentations were man-made or owing to erosion, yet I found, on further comparison, that they charted the first magnitude stars of the northern hemisphere."

Now we would all attribute this correspondence to design, even though the markings were indistinguishable from the effects of natural weathering. And yet this is not an argument from analogy or experience. The evidence of design is not inferred from other rocks, or the tooling, or the position of the stars or pattern of dots, both of which are asymmetrical, but in their studied relation.

But if Hume has misrepresented the teleological argument, then that invalidates his efforts to discredit the argument by invoking invidious analogies and disanalogies, as well as appealing to the limits of induction. It should be further noted that Christian apologetics was never prized on general revelation alone, but on the coordination of general and special revelation—like the aforesaid match between the stars and the starchart.

Hume, however, has a fallback, for he parades a whole host of fantastic variations on the faith: "Why not become a perfect anthropomorphite? Why not assert the Deity or Deities to be corporeal, and to have eyes, a nose, mouth, ears, &c.?…this world, for ought [we] know…was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity…[or else] the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated Deity," Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, N. Smith, ed., (Bobbs-Merrill, 1979), 168-69.

Yes, and for ought we know, lab rats are really hyperintelligent pandimensional beings who use the mousy disguise as a front to experiment on human beings—a la the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

As Hume would have it, unless a Christian chases down every decoy, he's failed to rout out the competition. But one of the problems with this stalling tactic is that it cuts both ways. It cuts against Hume as well as a Christian. For every belief held by Hume, a Christian could just as well propose a host of hypothetical alternatives. It keeps you from checkmating me and vice versa. The price for never losing is never winning. But if there’s no closing move, why bother with the opening gambit?

A believer is under no obligation to run down every rabbit trail and bag every hypothetical hare. Why rebut objections that the unbeliever doesn’t believe in himself, but only trots out to delay defeat? There is, as William James would say, a distinction between bare possibilities and live possibilities. In honest dialogue, both sides should confine themselves to what they really believe or believe to be realistic options.

2. Divine Silence

The objection here is that if God existed, he would make his existence more evident so that everyone would believe in him. This objection has been kicking around for some time, but there is now a burgeoning literature on the subject. By way of reply:

i) At one level, this is an argument from experience. It amounts to saying that many folks are unbelievers because they have had no experience of God’s presence. But this argument cuts both ways. What about all the folks who believe in God because they have felt the grace of God in their lives?

Now, the argument from religious experience has been widely criticized by unbelieving philosophers. But by the same token, believing philosophers could attack the argument from religious inexperience or irreligious experience. So this whole line of objection seems at least to be a wash.

Moreover, experience and inexperience do not enjoy epistemic parity. Experience is a positive form of evidence whereas inexperience is neutral on the existence of the object in question.

This objection also makes certain assumptions about what it would mean for God to be evident. Is the unbeliever saying that if there were a God, he should be as evident to me as a tree I see outside my kitchen window?

On this assumption, to be evident is to be evident to the senses. And it is true that, as a rule, God is inevident in that respect—leaving theophanies to one side. But is that a reasonable criterion? If God were a sensible object, then perhaps he ought to be evident to the senses. But seeing as that is not the doctrine of God, it is hardly inconsistent with the existence of God that he should be inevident to the senses.

Let us take a different comparison. How do I know that you are a person? Your body is evident to the senses, yet personality and corporeality are rather different things, for a corpse is not a person. What makes you a person—call it what you will, your mind, soul, consciousness—is inevident to the senses. So my knowledge of other persons is indirect, being mediated by words and gestures, sign language and facial expressions. Person-to-person communication may be at several removes from the immediacy of the personal subject—by books and letters, phone calls and email, art and music. If the existence of God is inevident in this intermediate sense, then that is not distinctive to God as an object of knowledge, but is a general feature of our knowledge of other persons.

The Bible itself speaks of a hidden aspect of God (Deut 29:29, especially in relation to sin, to life-crises, and unanswered prayer (Job 13:24; Ps 10:1,11; 13:1; 27:9; 30:7; 44:24; 55:1; 88:14; 89:46; 102:2; 104:29; 143:7; Isa 45:15; 58:7). So one reason the Bible gives for the apparent absence of God in our experience is that God withdraws his presence as a chastisement or judgment on sin.

The objection assumes that if there were a God, he would be generally evident. But the Bible regards that as a false expectation. For one consequence of the Fall is the general silence of God.

Now an unbeliever may object that this reply is question-begging. If we already knew that God were real, then this explanation would have its proper place; but when the very question of his existence is at issue, it is tendentious to offer a religious explanation.

But whether or not that is a valid criticism depends on both the nature of the initial objection and the purpose of the explanation. If the initial objection is that the inevidence of God is inconsistent with the existence of God, then it is valid to point out that the alleged inconsistency rests on a tendentious assumption. So the critic needs to justify his assumption. Again, the purpose of the explanation is not to offer positive evidence for the existence of God, or warrant our faith in God, but merely to counter the claim of an inconsistent relation between the existence and evidence of God.

The Bible would attribute unbelief, not to inevidence, but ill-will. The reprobate and unregenerate fear the judgment of God, and therefore suppress and supplant their knowledge of God.

An unbeliever would, of course, regard this claim as question-begging. Again, though, it is a valid reply to the charge of inconsistency. Moreover, it is a commonplace of the human experience that men will often resist an unwelcome truth. This applies in many walks of life. So it is not as though the Christian apologist were trumping up a special condition to justify his faith. And it must be said that the way in which many unbelievers have tried to squelch Christian expression and dissent confirms the charge.

In addition, the allegation of a Deus absconditus is, itself, a question-begging assumption, for many Christians would say that God has, in fact, left his fingerprints all over the natural world. And that is more than bare assertion, for Christian philosophers and theologians have turned this raw data into a broad range of theistic arguments. To be sure, the cogency of the theistic proofs is a bone of contention, both inside and outside the church. But the immediate point is that, in the face of philosophical theology and apologetics, the thesis of a Deus absconditus cannot be posited as an unquestioned datum—on which to hoist further conclusions.

What is more, God has broken his silence in the canon of Scripture. For the Christian, the allegation of divine silence is question-begging because it disregards the witness of Scripture. To be sure, this appeal assumes the revelatory status of Scripture, but Christians have advanced various arguments for that proposition as well. So the allegation of a hidden God must come to terms with Scripture and arguments for its inspiration.

It may be objected that God has not made himself known to everyone in his word, for his word is not accessible to everyone. And that's the sticking point: a benevolent and omnipotent God would want everyone to believe in him, and given that everyone does not believe in him, such a God does not exist.

Not only can this argument be stated in hypothetical terms, but the atheist can cite Arminian prooftexts to bolster his premise, viz., God loves the "world" and wants "everyone" to be saved.

This argument has some force against Arminian theology. An Arminian would parry the argument by appeal to freewill. But that suffers from a couple of problems. To begin with, it exposes a tension in Arminian theology: which is greater—the love of God or the freedom of man? In addition, there is no apparent infringement on freewill for God to make the Gospel more widely known. That would not remove freedom of choice, but enrich freedom of choice by enriching freedom of opportunity.

However, not being an Arminian, I'll leave that defense to the Arminian. I, as a Calvinist, would simply deny that God wants everyone to be saved. And this is not an ad hoc reply to the objection, for Reformed theology antedates this objection and has evolved independently of this objection.

I would say that God wants the elect to believe in him, and he fulfills his desire with respect to the elect. The love of God is like marital love (Isa 54:4-8; Eph 5:32): it is deep rather than wide, discriminate rather than indiscriminate.

If the objection is stated in hypothetical terms, then the burden is on the atheist rather than the Calvinist to prove the premise.

If the objection is stated in Scriptural terms, then the burden is to establish the internal coherence, but not the truth, of the Biblical data. For the charge is that the real world situation is inconsistent with the situation implicit in Scripture. In reply to the second version of the argument, I'll offer a few replies:

1. In both Johannine and Pauline usage, "cosmos" often carries a pejorative and partitive connotation (e.g. Jn 1:10; 14:17,22; 15:19; 17:14,16,25; 18:36; 1 Jn 2:16-17; 4:5; 5:19; 1 Cor 1:20f., 27; 2:12; 3:19; Gal 6:14; Col 2:20). The "world" is not a neutral synonym for "everyone." Rather, the "cosmos" personifies the fallen world order, in opposition to God. And it extends beyond fallen men to take in fallen angels—who were never the object of the atonement.

In addition, the world of unbelief is set over against the believer. One of the distinguishing marks of a believer is that he is not a worldling.

Therefore, the Arminian appeal disregards the semantic ambiguities and nuances in Johannine and Pauline usage.

2. A universal qualifier ("all," "every") denotes the members of a given class of individuals. But it doesn't specify the class in question. That must be supplied by context. "All" denotes all "that" belong to the class in question, but it doesn't identify "who" or "what" is covered by the quantifier. The referent remains to be filled in. In context, is it referring to Jews, to backsliders, to Jews and Gentiles? Is it comparing and contrasting one class with another.

3. We must also make allowance for synonymous parallelism, which is a feature of OT rhetoric (e.g., the Psalter, Proverbs), and carries over into NT usage. But to press a verbal symmetry into semantic identity suffers from a wooden handling of the conventions of a literary device.