A reponse I left on Facebook
1. Most Christians aren't intellectuals (like most humans generally–including most atheists). They are not able to make a philosophically rigorous case for Christianity.
So if Christianity is true, God must have a way of making known to garden-variety Christians that this is something they are supposed to believe. And this typically involves certain kinds of religious experience. Growing up in Christian communities (e.g. church, Christian family). God cultivates faith in Christianity through sociological means (among other factors).
They may just find the Bible compelling. And the Bible does contain evidence for its own veracity, even if they lack the sophistication to tease that out.
There may be other aspects of religious experience like a recognizable answer to prayer, an uncanny auspicious providence, an overwhelming (albeit temporary) sense of God's presence, or in some cases a miracle, that undergirds their faith.
We need to distinguish between raw evidence and formal argument. In addition, the "internal witness of the Spirit" can be a label or placeholder for variations on religious experience, some of which are probative. Having good reasons for what you believe, and the ability to articulate your reasons, are not to be confused.
2. I assume that you are in part alluding to this post:
I generally agree with what Keener says in that post.
3. There's the question of what the "inner testimony of the Holy Spirit" meant in historical theology.
4. Speaking for myself, I'm not equipped with an internal detector that clues me into which reported biblical incidents are fictional or factual. I don't appeal to the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit in that sense.
5. I agree with the principle that one way to evaluate the historicity of particular reports is not based on direct evidence for each report, but corroborative evidence for the source. The cliche argument is that if the source is reliable in cases where we have corroborative evidence, then there's a presumption that it's reliable in cases where we don't have corroborative evidence. Especially for ancient documents where only a random sample of confirmatory evidence survives. We don't require corroboration for every individual report. We only require enough corroboration to demonstrate the document is generally trustworthy. As think that's a valid principle as far as it goes.
But while that provides warranted belief, it's weaker than what NT faith obligates. So it needs to be supplemented. Or perhaps that's a supplement to other things.
6. As you know, there are multiple lines of evidence for the Gospels. There's the kind of archeological evidence recently marshaled by Peter Williams. There's the argument from undesigned coincidences which the McGrews have refined and expanded. There's Lydia's more recent argument from unnecessary details. There's the argument from prophecy.
7. I also think the argument from religious experience is germane to the credibility of the Gospels. My personal experience and experience of other Christians I know. In other words, evidence that we live in the same kind of world as the world depicted in the Bible. Not just public evidence.
8. How do you understand and integrate passages like Rom 8:16, Gal 4:6, Jn 10:27, & 1 Jn 2:20,27 into your evidentialist epistemology?
Not able to answer all of these points today, but I wanted to say one or two things about Keener's post:
ReplyDeleteI don't think that Keener *merely* means that he relies on the Holy Spirit in order to believe as strongly as is required for biblical faith. I think he means that he has to rely on the H.S. in order to believe as strongly as is just required for historical affirmation. That is to say that, even tho' he acknowledges in passing the possibility of knowing something indirectly via confirmation of the source, when he emphasizes over and over (he also did this at the end of the Defenders Media panel discussion) that *in order to* believe in every incident in the Gospels he has to "go beyond the evidence," he is pretty clearly saying that this is necessary for historical affirmation, not merely for some ultra-strong "assent of faith." I think that a more straightforward non-evidentialist would say that the probabilistic args. that Keener does consider sufficient for *some* of the incidents are *also* not sufficient for the assent of faith. So I think that all his comments taken as a whole do indicate an insufficiency for historical confidence via evidence for some of the incidents in the Gospels as opposed to others, which doesn't seem to be the precise point you're making here.
Second (and I wrote to Dr. Keener about this directly and suggested he revise), *even by the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit*, Keener does *not* have high confidence in all of the incidents recorded in the Gospels--e.g., that Jesus historically breathed on his disciples or that Jesus healed two blind men twice as told in Matthew. His post gives the inaccurate impression that when one puts both sources together he affirms all incidents in the Gospels one way or another, but this is not, in fact, the case.
Some of those verses (e.g., Rom. 8:16, Gal. 4:6) I would interpret as speaking to the question of emotional assurance of salvation when one doubts one's salvation and/or ways to confirm that one is saved. This doesn't say anything about whether one needs strong evidence in order to be justified in believing the claims of the Gospel. Lewis used to emphasize that doubts often arise from non-rational sources, so this sort of assurance could be referring to the confidence that one gains to continue to believe with the evidence. Moreover, I am reminded of an alleged quote from Martin Luther (I've never looked it up to verify). Something like, "Do you doubt that you are saved? Then pray, and you will be sure that you are saved." Whether or not this is what Luther meant by it, I would use those sentences to mean that if one has doubts about one's salvation, one can look to the fact that one is oriented toward and committed to Christ as evidence thereof. Since the Holy Spirit helps us to pray, the fact that we turn to God in pray and cry out to him (including "Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!") is itself evidence of salvation at the time of the prayer, even if one does not accept a soteriology according to which it is impossible to lose one's salvation. (Also, Calvinists themselves I gather look for fruit that shows that one is in fact one of the elect, though they hold to perseverance of the elect.)
ReplyDeleteJohn 10:27 is fairly readily interpreted in terms of the fact that some love and follow Jesus while others don't, the former being his sheep. I John 2:20, 27 are probably the "spookiest" of the verses cited and may refer to some kind of sixth sense for heresy or special insight that the believer has to detect the difference between truth and error, but if so, it would not give one reason to believe in Christianity in the first place and would have to be integrated with other sources of evidence--e.g., sober interpretation of Scripture, etc.