***QUOTE***
ANONYMOUS SAID:
I think to clarify my thinking to you I’d put it the following way:
1. There are self-evident truths (such as the fact that I exist) and there are logically necessary truths.
2. Logically necessary truths can be demonstrated by the rules of strict implication.
3. There is no logical proof for God’s existence that starts w/ premises that are indisputable (self-evident)to all.
4. If you believe in God, then either that knowledge is self-evident, or it is deduced from premises that are self-evident.
5. You can't argue for self-evident truths w/o circularity.
6. It, therefore, makes no sense to argue for self-evident truths with someone who doesn’t share them (or even someone who does, come to think of it)
7. The elect have been granted special, self-evident knowledge (Divine Revelation) by virtue of the work of the Spirit that brings them into a saving relationship with God.
8. By 6, it makes no sense for an apologist to attempt to argue for truths illumined by the Spirit.
I think apologetics (in any world view) is completely legitimate for talk within a system or even between systems if some common ground is found for those systems. But it seems pointless (and in the strictest sense, impossible) at the “foundational” level. It would be pointless, for instance, to try to prove to myself or someone else that I really exist. I’d say my existence is true but unprovable.
If you say your belief in the Bible is foundational, but then attempt to argue for it, then that belief must not be truly foundational (self-evident).
My sense is that sometimes apologists mix that which can be argued for and that which cannot and this leads to unwarranted frustration.
If someone were too dense or pig headed to grasp basic logic, I’d get frustrated too. On the other hand, if someone didn’t accept something I consider purely self-evident, or if they objected to an attempt to *argue* for it, it’d be unfair for me to express frustration, since, on my view, they’d be within their epistemic rights.
***END-QUOTE***
At the risk of horning into an ongoing exchange between Andrew and Paul, I’m going to run back through Andrew’s itemized list, pegging his enumeration.
1.I happen to agree with this. However, there are philosophers who would challenge both categories (self-evidence; logical necessity).
2.I agree with this up to a point. However, what we take to be logically compelling is ultimately an indemonstrable, intuitive judgment.
3.The problem here is that Andrew is framing the theistic proofs in terms of classical foundationalism, and making apodictic proof the standard of proof.
But as Plantinga pointed out a long time ago, since there are almost no non-trivial beliefs which rise to this standard, it’s quite unreasonable to hold theistic proofs to a higher standard than a variety of “secular” beliefs like our common sense belief in other minds, the external world, the reality of the past, &c.
4.This is simply mistaken. It fails to distinguish between reflective and prereflective knowledge.
Self-evidence is a property of propositions. But a man can have a non-propositional belief in God.
That is to say, a man can have a pretheoretical belief in God. He may form his belief in God at a subliminal level, just as he forms his belief in many other things at a subliminal level. Mere exposure to certain forms of experience may subconsciously trigger his belief in God.
Now, it may be quite possible for him to consciously convert his intuitive apprehension of God’s existence into a set of propositions about existence or nature of God. But even this exercise will retain a partial basis in his tacit knowledge of God.
This isn’t distinctive to religious epistemology. In many cases, our theoretical knowledge depends on our pretheoretical knowledge. Apart from pretheoretical knowledge, there would be nothing to analyze and formalize.
5.Not all circularity is vicious circularity. If a truth-condition is inescapable, then that is virtuously circular, and it can be useful to demonstrate that point.
6.This is vague. You can’t make someone see that a proposition is self-evident if he is unable to grasp its self-evident property.
But it may be possible to help him see its self-evident property by clearing away certain intellectual impediments.
Moreover, even if he fails to see that a given truth is a self-evident truth, you may still be able to show him that it’s true. Suppose he misperceives a self-evident truth as a merely evident truth analytic truth or a contingent truth. However it functions in the overall argument, it may still make a contribution to the overall argument.
7.This is also mistaken, or at least misleading.
i) Why assume that revelation is self-evidently true rather than evidently true?
The truth of special revelation may be recognizable due to the unity of truth—involving the interrelation between general revelation and special revelation.
ii) Although special revelation is a positive source of knowledge, regeneration merely opens the mind to the preexisting evidence.
8.You don’t need to be a regenerate believer to believe parts of the Bible. There are both internal as well as external lines of evidence for the veracity of Scripture.
These are susceptible to the unregenerate mind. It all depends on the level of common grace, which varies from one unbeliever to another.
There are nominal Christians who believe every word of Scripture, even though their belief is very precarious.
Regarding his conclusion:
i) When a Christian says that Scripture is “foundational” to his belief-system, that doesn’t commit him to “foundationalism” in the technical sense of an axiomatic system. He may simply be using “foundation” as an informal metaphor, synonymous with “basic, “ fundamental,” &c.
ii) Even if he does subscribe to some form of foundationalism, it is hardly “pointless,” much less “impossible,” to argue over the foundations.
a) You can still argue over what set of beliefs constitute the foundational set of beliefs.
b) You can also argue over what makes them foundational.
iii) Andrew seems to be taking classical foundationalism as his only model of foundationalism. But there are other versions.
Moving along:
***QUOTE***
11/11/2006 3:33 PM
ANONYMOUS SAID:
Christianity seems to have a built in system to keep one from questioning hard to understand doctrine and scripture. One is always warned not to loose trust, and the scriptures always keep ones conscience burdened because sin is an ever present reality, unless it's been justified in the persons mind. It's enough to keep a person on his knees night and day repenting and asking for stonger faith. One of the most damning things is for a person to start doubting his salvation altogether. This comes in with the salvation by faith alone that isn't alone. Ones sanctification can seem like a roller coaster and good works are the marks of a true believer, but what kind of good works? Can a person who thinks he's a true believer and atleast from the outside be performing good works, but is really deceiving himself?
Scripture is there to reassure the believer of his salvation, but when the interpretations are always changing, it's hard to see how they can be of much help at times.
It is true that opening ones mind or putting ones self in another's situation is definitley discouraged in Christianity. The guards are kept on. No compromise!
***END-QUOTE***
Several problems:
1.This is a classic, outsider analysis. He speculates about what is going on in the mental life of the average believer.
2.It is true that Scripture encourages faith and discourages doubt.
However, Scripture also encourages genuine faith while discouraging nominal faith or hypocrisy.
Doubting God is a sin, but this doesn’t mean that we should pretend to believe in something we don’t or affect a level of confidence which we lack.
Scripture does not encourage men and women to play the role of a believer. This isn’t an exercise in play-acting. Going through the motions. Paying lip-service to the creeds.
Scripture is deeply concerned with fostering true conviction.
What is more, Scripture is deeply concerned with fostering conviction in the truth. True belief.
The opposite error is pretending to doubt things you don't truly doubt. Affecting an artificial suspension of certainty.
3.There are examples throughout Scripture of true believers who were subject to religious doubts of one form or another, viz. Abraham, Asaph, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Job, Zechariah, John the Baptist, the disciples.
4.Are the interpretations of Scripture “always” changing?
When an unbeliever attacks the morality of Scripture, of alleges that Scripture contradicts itself, or alleges that Scripture is disproven by science or history, the unbeliever is operating with a particular interpretation of Scripture. Scripture can only be wrong if his interpretation is right, and his extrascriptural sources are right.
We get this same systematic incoherence in Babinski. On the one hand, he tries to disprove the Bible saying denying that Scripture has any fixed meaning. He plays up the disagreements among various believers.
On the other hand, he tries to disprove the Bible by saying that Scripture is immoral or self-contradictory, or at odds with extrascriptural sources of knowledge.
Well, Ed, which is it? Is the Bible an easy target? Or a moving target? Make up your mind.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I appreciate your taking the time to answer. I've added some replies and (hopefully) further clarification below.
**********************************
2.I agree with this up to a point. However, what we take to be logically compelling is ultimately an indemonstrable, intuitive judgment.
*********************************
But I’m talking about saving faith, not, say, my belief that there is a “logically compelling” case for the superiority of Capitalism vs. Communism (which I do, indeed, base on intuition and indemonstrable judgments). I’d like my beliefs regarding spiritual matters to be far more firm than that.
It would be nice to have immediate knowledge of God, but barring that, a logical proof starting from premises I’d be crazy to refute would be a close second. I contend that true believers have the former, not the latter.
**********************************
3.The problem here is that Andrew is framing the theistic proofs in terms of classical foundationalism, and making apodictic proof the standard of proof.
***********************************
I think you’re alluding to alternative standards which rely on intuition or something related, something like informal proofs. These are problematic for me because they can be falsified. But you wouldn’t claim that your faith can be falsified, would you? If so, what would cause you to reject it?
***********************************
But as Plantinga pointed out a long time ago, since there are almost no non-trivial beliefs which rise to this standard, it’s quite unreasonable to hold theistic proofs to a higher standard than a variety of “secular” beliefs like our common sense belief in other minds, the external world, the reality of the past, &c.
***********************************
Since there is so much on the line (Heaven vs. Hell), I disagree that we shouldn’t hold theistic proofs to a higher standard.
I think Plantinga is convinced, ultimately, not by a cumulative weight of the evidence, not because he feels his beliefs are, say, 99% likely to be true. His beliefs are compelled by the Spirit (or Grace or whatever you want to call it). He finds reasons, good reasons, but he can’t account for *why* he considers them good reasons (while someone else may not) w/o, eventually, appealing to something like divine illumination.
**********************************
4.This is simply mistaken. It fails to distinguish between reflective and prereflective knowledge.
**********************************
I think I’m viewing “self-evident” as broad enough to encompass prereflective and reflective knowledge.
For me, the analytical buck stops at the notion of “self-evident” because any attempt at further clarification leads to conjecture (i.e. metaphysics).
I’ll accept the metaphysics, when I accept the theology, which will happen as a result of Grace (or whatever it should be called). I’ll get into this a bit more below.
**********************************
Self-evidence is a property of propositions. But a man can have a non-propositional belief in God.
That is to say, a man can have a pretheoretical belief in God. He may form his belief in God at a subliminal level, just as he forms his belief in many other things at a subliminal level. Mere exposure to certain forms of experience may subconsciously trigger his belief in God.
Now, it may be quite possible for him to consciously convert his intuitive apprehension of God’s existence into a set of propositions about existence or nature of God. But even this exercise will retain a partial basis in his tacit knowledge of God.
This isn’t distinctive to religious epistemology. In many cases, our theoretical knowledge depends on our pretheoretical knowledge. Apart from pretheoretical knowledge, there would be nothing to analyze and formalize.
*********************************
You are getting into metaphysics here, so, to me, it doesn’t count against my conception of “self-evident” for the reasons I gave above. Anyway, my logical progression had a prototypical true Christian, like you, in view—that is, someone who has made the move to propositional beliefs.
But even so, I’d argue that it makes sense to say that God grants to the elect the correct pretheoretical beliefs and precipitates the movements to the correct propositional ones. Since the exact way this could happen is a mystery, we still have to invoke Grace (or *something* God endowed) as the irreducible starting point.
*********************************
5.Not all circularity is vicious circularity. If a truth-condition is inescapable, then that is virtuously circular, and it can be useful to demonstrate that point.
**********************************
I agree with this 100%. That was the point I was trying to make by pointing out my belief in my own existence. The proposition “I exist because I exist” makes perfect sense to me.
*********************************
6.This is vague. You can’t make someone see that a proposition is self-evident if he is unable to grasp its self-evident property.
But it may be possible to help him see its self-evident property by clearing away certain intellectual impediments.
Moreover, even if he fails to see that a given truth is a self-evident truth, you may still be able to show him that it’s true. Suppose he misperceives a self-evident truth as a merely evident truth analytic truth or a contingent truth. However it functions in the overall argument, it may still make a contribution to the overall argument.
***********************************
This is a description of conversion, isn’t it? You are just saying that the elect have a God given capacity to achieve self-evident knowledge of God.
Sure a believer cites reasons for their conversion/belief, but he can’t answer why those reasons are good enough for him but not good enough for someone else, at least not without recourse to concepts like Grace, or Divine Illumination. And these concepts can't be “explained”, they are experienced. They are True but not demonstrably so (in the analytical sense, not the experiential). Is that *not* a biblical way of viewing things?
**********************************
7.This is also mistaken, or at least misleading.
i) Why assume that revelation is self-evidently true rather than evidently true?
The truth of special revelation may be recognizable due to the unity of truth—involving the interrelation between general revelation and special revelation.
ii) Although special revelation is a positive source of knowledge, regeneration merely opens the mind to the preexisting evidence.
***********************************
Again, I consider this a metaphysical explanation that answers to theological propositions *you* consider true. It is valid *given* your commitments.
The mechanism by which conversion comes about remains a mystery, since it can’t be explained w/o appeals to concepts that must be rejected or accepted by means other than analysis/arguments.
One person believes based on the evidence, another does not. Why? My answer is that since there is no final objective criterion for establishing how much evidence is enough to compel belief; it must be that God endows the one with the capacity to believe but not the other.
With this in mind, I feel the distinction between self-evident and evident is superfluous. If plain old “evidence” of truth gives a Christian complete assurance of that truth, I’d argue that he as much as regards said truth as self-evident. I consider the fact of differing pathways to true belief as irrelevant to my point.
**********************************
8.You don’t need to be a regenerate believer to believe parts of the Bible. There are both internal as well as external lines of evidence for the veracity of Scripture.
These are susceptible to the unregenerate mind. It all depends on the level of common grace, which varies from one unbeliever to another.
There are nominal Christians who believe every word of Scripture, even though their belief is very precarious.
**********************************
I agree. I'd just point out that disagreement at a *foundational* level is to be expected and can't be overcome w/o divine intervention. I’m not saying that apologetics has no use in the practice of outreach. Clearly it works and therefore has its place. It is just that man does his part and God does his.
I guess what I object to is apologists claiming that Christianity is the only rational system. Fact is, there are non Christian views that are rational, yet, still, untrue (at least from a Christian perspective). They are rational in that they are internally consistent and logical, but untrue in that their most basic principles (which I'd say can't be argued for) are false.
**********************************
When a Christian says that Scripture is “foundational” to his belief-system, that doesn’t commit him to “foundationalism” in the technical sense of an axiomatic system. He may simply be using “foundation” as an informal metaphor, synonymous with “basic, “ fundamental,” &c.
**********************************
I don’t know how you differentiate among “foundational”, “basic”, "fundamental". I do realize that not all Christians use these words the same way.
*********************************
ii) Even if he does subscribe to some form of foundationalism, it is hardly “pointless,” much less “impossible,” to argue over the foundations.
**********************************
Arguing can’t take place w/o reference to some standard of argumentation that includes concepts and principles you consider foundational. The way I see it, if you’re arguing (citing evidence and so forth) for something you call “foundational”, then you’ve misidentified what you’re arguing for.
My sense is that you argue *from* your foundations, not *for* them.
*********************************
a) You can still argue over what set of beliefs constitute the foundational set of beliefs.
**********************************
How? By appealing to something more foundational? That doesn't make sense on my view. Maybe an example would help?
*********************************
b) You can also argue over what makes them foundational.
*********************************
That would mean to argue over what makes self-evident truths foundational. To me that is not a claim to be argued, it's a definition.
***********************************
iii) Andrew seems to be taking classical foundationalism as his only model of foundationalism. But there are other versions.
***********************************
I'm not quite sure what allowing for other models would do for me. I’d be interested to hear.
In a nutshell I guess what I'm claiming is that evidence and arguments underdetermine truth (at least for me), therefore God must intervene to bring about true and certain belief.
Thanks again...Andrew