Inerrancy and evidentialism

I hesitate to do another post on the evidentialist/presuppositionalist debate because I don't wish to belabor the issue, but when I happen to be thinking about something, I tend to do a series of posts on the same topic because that's what I have on my mind. So here's one more post.

I recently said I like the evidentialist menu. In addition, evidentialists produce a lot of firstrate apologetic material. 

However, a fundamental problem with evidentialism is it's neutrality or noncommittal attitude about inerrancy. An evidentialist can affirm or deny inerrancy. Both positions are consistent with evidentialism.

But once you surrender inerrancy, you're free to surrender other biblical teachings. Anything that you feel is too awkward or inconvenient to defend. Anything that might be a stumbling block to people coming to the faith. Anything you yourself would like to get rid of.

The problem with that attitude is that evidentialism makes Christianity theologically unstable. It suffers from an identity crisis. There's no built-in limit on what biblical teachings you can jettison. It comes down to your personal assessment of what constitutes the core of Christianity. The underlying problem is that evidentialism fails to take seriously the nature of Christianity as a revealed religion.

By contrast, presuppositionalists don't treat biblical teachings as negotiable and expendable. Now we might ask if that's an implication of presuppositionalism or just a reflection of the religious culture in which presuppositionalists operate. 

I'd say it's an implication of presuppositionalism. Basically, evidentialists approach the Bible as historians while presuppositionalists approach the Bible as theologians. And presuppositionalists are right about that. Of course, that's not deny the historicity of Scripture. But Christianity is a religion. It's about God and God's relation to the world he made. 

And it's not as if the Bible is a secular record of sacred history. Bible writers are agents of sacred history. They have a divine vocation in redemptive history. They aren't just spectators of divine activity in redemptive history; rather, God acts in them and through them as divine spokesmen and witnesses. In that regard, presuppositionalism has a more holistic and integrated viewpoint. 

What is presuppositionalism getting at?

There are different aspects to the evidentialist/presuppositionalist debate. Some of these are tedious and superficial. 

One question is the role of transcendental arguments in Christian apologetics. Do these make a necessary contribution to Christian apologetics? I'd say they do.

Should they be the centerpiece of Christian apologetics? Here I'd demure. I think inductive arguments for the Resurrection, the canon of scripture, the argument from prophecy, the biographical accuracy of the Gospels, and the reliability of the Greek/Hebrew text of Scripture are more directly germane to the Christian faith than most transcendental arguments for God, so in that respect I think inductive arguments should be front and center. 

But to some extent this is a matter of expertise. In the age of modern logic, with modal logic, Bayesian probability theory and other suchlike, formulating philosophically rigorous arguments for Christianity becomes a very technical exercise, and so you have philosophers who specialize on particular kinds of arguments (e.g. Pruss on the contingency argument, Collins on the fine-turning argument, Maydole on ontological arguments). 

That said, presuppositionalism isn't primarily about apologetic methodology or even transcendental arguments. It runs much deeper than that. It's about the nature of God, reality, and God's relation to the world. What kinds of things rely on God for their existence? Is it confined to truths of fact and contingent entities, or does it include necessary truths, abstract objects, and moral realism? Are logic, numbers, and possible worlds independent of God or do they have their grounding in God? A God who's the source of these things is a more fundamental being than a God who is not. A greater being. So this is ultimately about theology. 

Is it improper to argue evidentially for the Resurrection?

A friend asked me to comment on an old article by the late Greg Bahnsen:

https://answersingenesis.org/apologetics/the-impropriety-of-evidentially-arguing-for-the-resurrection/

However, a serious difficulty arises when the epistemological significance of the resurrection is separated from its soteriological function. It is correct to hold that God’s raising of Jesus from the dead saves us both from sin and agnosticism, but it would be mistaken to understand by this that the epistemological problem could be handled independently of the (broader) moral problem which is at its base. It is with regret that one notices neo-evangelicals severing the justifying efficacy of Christ’s resurrection from its truth-accrediting function. In reality, the latter is dependent upon the former. Only as Christ’s resurrection (with its ensuing regeneration by the Holy Spirit of Christ) saves a sinner from his rebellion against God and God’s Word, can it properly function to exhibit evidence for God’s truthfulness.

i) The significance of the Resurrection is multifaceted, so it's a question of which facet it is deployed to prove. It has an soteriological value but also evidential value. By raising Jesus from the dead, the Father vindicates the mission of Jesus, confirming who he claims to be. If Jesus was a false prophet, God would leave him to rot in the grave.

ii) The reversal of death is an overwhelming phenomenon, in addition to the implicit promise of immortality. 

Evangelicals are often prone to generate inductive arguments for the veracity of Christianity based on the historical resurrection of Christ, and such arguments occupy central importance in this apologetic. It is felt that if a man would simply consider the “facts” presented and use his common reasoning sense he would be rationally compelled to believe the truth of Scripture. In such a case the evidences for Christ’s resurrection are foundational to apologetical witnessing, whereas their only proper place is confirmatory of the believer’s presupposed faith. There is a certain impropriety about attempting to move an opponent from his own circle into the circle of Christian belief by appealing to evidence for the resurrection, and there are many reasons why the evidentialist’s building a case for Christianity upon neutral ground with the unbeliever ought to be avoided.

i) Bahnsen never says what he means by "neutral ground." Presumably the point of contrast is "All facts are created facts which can be properly understood only when given the interpretation the Creator intends"

ii) Due to common grace, some unbelievers are more reasonable than others. They retain more common sense. 

Adopting classical/evidentialist arguments

An issue in apologetic methodology is whether it's consistent for a presuppositionalist to adopt arguments from classical or evidential apologetics. That depends in part on whether we define presuppositionalism as an apologetic methodology that only deploys transcendental arguments. I think that's an unduly narrow. One role of presuppositionalism is to take advantage of what had been a neglected type of argument for theism: transcendental arguments. But that doesn't mean other types of arguments should be excluded.

One issue is whether criteria are worldview dependent or worldview independent. Classical and evidential apologists accuse presuppositionalists of vicious circularity. Classical and evidential apologists try to isolate and identify a set of general criteria that can be used to evaluate any competing worldview. 

If, however, there's only one God and one reality, then ultimately our criteria derive from that reality. Criteria must match reality. At that level, criteria are bound to a particular worldview–the true worldview.

A Christian apologist can't just play the rules of the atheist (or Buddhist). Those may be arbitrarily restrictive and slanted. Sometimes a Christian must challenge the criteria of the atheist. Or explain that his criteria require a more robust worldview that's at odds with naturalism and physicalism. It isn't necessarily possible for Christians and atheists to arrive at a common set of rules. 

This also goes to the question of how much is riding on God's existence. In addition to contingent facts, presuppositionalists think logic, mathematical truths, moral realism, and possible worlds are grounded in God's existence. If so, our criteria can't be independent of God's existence because they derive from God's existence. (According to natural law theory, there's a sense in which moral realism is a contingent fact, based on God's design for human creatures.)

However, that's viciously circular only if there's no way to demonstrate the claim. If, though, it's possible to formulate arguments which demonstrate that logic, morality, modality, and math require God's existence, then it's not viciously circular. By process of elimination we rule out naturalistic explanations. But that's philosophically demanding, painstaking process. A work in progress. 

It's consistent for a presuppositionalist to adopt arguments from classical and evidential apologetics so long as we acknowledge that those are worldview dependent.  

Should a Christian debater bracket his beliefs?

A recent exchange I had with a fellow Christian apologist:

Rob

It is, of course, possible that one or more of the Gospels is mistaken in this matter. 

Hays

Have the two positions evolved and diverged to the point where presuppositionalism is defined in part by commitment to inerrancy while evidentialism is now defined in part by lack of commitment to inerrancy?

Rob

When I say that it is "possible," I am speaking hypothetically and not about my own view. 

That having been said, if we are to engage skeptical views of the Bible honestly, we must be ready to acknowledge that in some instances there might be a plausible argument for an error in Scripture. As an evangelical, I maintain that if we knew enough about what was going on in problematic passages we would see that there are no errors, but that's different from claiming that we always have enough such information to show decisively that there are no errors.

Hays

i) It's true that inerrancy doesn't require us to have a solution at hand for every difficulty. I think some inerrantists try too hard to explain how apparent errors/contradictions aren't really erroneous or contradictory. The effort can backfire if it the explanation looks strained, ad hoc, and desperate.

Much better to say it's unreasonable to expect that we should have an explanation for every obscurity in Scripture, given our distance from the events. 

ii) That said, I'm somewhat unclear on how your statements go together. On the one hand you indicate that as an inerrantist, you don't actually think it's possible that one (or more) of the Gospels is mistaken on this point.

On the other hand, when you tell the skeptic that, hypothetically, it's possible that one (or more) of the Gospels is mistaken on this point, as a persuasive apologetic strategy (assuming that's what you mean), it suggests that you yourself think is wrong. But presumably the job of a Christian apologist is to defend and promote what he thinks is really the case. Our beliefs should map onto reality. We don't want to offer the skeptic an alternative that's not really the case, do we? We don't want to propose, as a fallback position, a falsehood as a substitute for reality. If the Bible, as the word of God, shares in God's infallibility, then our job is to defend that reality, and not an unreal substitution.

Rob

It is a perfectly understandable feature of rational discourse to state that something is 'possible' that one happens not to think is actually the case."=

Hays

But inerrancy derives from a doctrine of plenary verbal inspiration. While the dictionary definition of "inerrancy" is without error, the actual concept is infallibility, by virtue of inspiration. I think "inerrancy" has edged out "infallibility" in common usage because it has fewer syllables, which makes it easier to say. But the traditional orthodox concept is to be without possibility of error.

Rob

When speaking in the context of discussing the historical reliability of the text of an historical narrative in Scripture, where other participants in the discussion do not accept the divine inspiration of Scripture (and certainly not its inerrancy), to say that it is "possible" that a text is in error is to be understood in that context in which no commitment is being assumed with regard to the inerrancy of the text. I'm just not going to be so pedantic as to repeat "If we don't assume biblical inerrancy" before every comment on an apparent problem in Scripture.

Hays

i) Even when–or especially when–dealing with skeptics, it's important for them to understand what the Christian position represents. An apologist is a Christian spokesman, explaining the Christian position. An apologist ought to have a commitment to orthodox Christian theology. That's a given. That's understood. Skeptics should expect that from a Christian apologist.

ii) Of course, that's not their own viewpoint, but that doesn't mean he should accommodate their viewpoint. Rather, he should argue for his own viewpoint. No commitment should be assumed in the sense that he can't expect them to grant inerrancy. And he can't merely assert it to be the case. Likewise, inerrancy/inspiration needn't be the first stage of the argument. Rather, it can be the goal of the argument. The final stage he's aiming for and working towards. 

iii) It's not begging the question for a Christian apologist to operate with that presumptive commitment–inasmuch as he does have reasons for that commitment. It's not a bare or sheer assumption, but a well-grounded commitment.

Rob

Even if my immediate purpose is to defend the inerrancy of the Bible, doing so in a way that precludes a priori even considering the possibility of an error is unlikely to be a persuasive strategy. We will come across as refusing to consider any potential contrary evidence to our dogma. I don't think that's a winning approach.

Hays

i) The primary obligation of a Christian apologist should be to uphold and defend theological reality. He ought do his best to make a rational case, but representing and defending Christianity can't be hostage to the plausibility structure of the unbeliever. By definition, the unbeliever is unreasonable to some degree. In many cases, intransigently unreasonable.

ii) The standard of comparison must always be reality–including theological reality–and not what the unbeliever is prepared to accept. In a debate with a Hindu or Buddhist philosopher, is a Christian apologist suppose to bracket empirical evidence just because an Indian philosopher may regard the sensible world or physical universe as illusory or delusive (Maya)? No, you have to stand your ground and defend reality rather than offering him a substitute for reality, an option that doesn't square with what the real world is like. 

Consider a debate with an eliminative materialist. Is no commitment to be assumed with regard to consciousness in a debate between a dualist and an eliminative materialist? Hardly. The dualist will argue for his side of the position. He won't bracket consciousness to accommodate the eliminative materialist.

iii) We can acknowledge prima facie evidence against our position. But that in itself doesn't concede the possibility of error. After all, many things are true that may appear to be false. So that by itself creates no presumption that something is false.

Inerrancy and evidentialism

It's not uncommon for competing theological traditions to evolve and become increasingly divergent over time. For instance, there are now options in "evangelical" freewill theism that used to be considered liberal or out-of-bounds in the past, viz. purgatory, annihilationism, open theism, evolution, universalism, inclusivism, homosexuality. 

We may be seeing the same development in apologetics. There's an emerging pattern where, as evidentialism and prepositionalism continue to evolve and diverge, presuppositionalism is defined in part by commitment to inerrancy while evidentialism and classical apologetics are now defined in part by a noncommittal position on inerrancy. To some degree this seems to reflect a generational shift from old-guard evidentialism/classical theism. 

I wonder how characteristic this will become moving forward. Will presuppositionalists be the only defenders of inerrancy as a matter of principle, while the rival schools regard that as expendable or a drag factor we're better off without?

I am struck by the casual way in which traditional evangelical commitment to inerrancy is being sidelined, as though revelation and inspiration are unimportant to the nature of the Christian faith.

A priori inerrancy

Lydia McGrew continues to do presentations and interviews on her recent book The Mirror or the Mask:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMdIENUFTGM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmAjVeGCG78

In the webinar, Lydia draws a distinction between two different approaches to inerrancy: a priori and inductive (1:41-42 min.)

She rejects both, but she's more sympathetic to the inductive approach. That's consistent with her evidentialist epistemology. I think it's safe to say that if she was an inerrantist, she'd be an inductive inerrantist rather than an a prior inerrantist. She draws a similar distinction in The Mirror and the Mask:

Most of the time the term "inerrancy" refers to an a priori approach in which one assumes for theological reasons related to the doctrine of inspiration that the biblical documents are inerrant (in their original MSS). That certainly doesn't describe me. I think we have to see whether or not there are errors by investigation (52). 

What's striking, though, is that she's not opposed to a priori inerrancy in principle. In her interview with Phil Fernandes, she says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrek9fQnx1w

I don't think Jesus was mistaken about anything. Jesus was God, so I never say Jesus just made a mistake (1:15-16 min).

So here she takes the position that Jesus is inerrant by virtue of his deity. But that's a priori inerrancy, which assumes for theological reasons related to Christology that the teaching of Christ is inerrant. 

Yet that raises the question of why a priori inerrancy is consistent with evidentialist epistemology when indexed to the person of Christ but inconsistent when indexed to Scripture. Why does the deity of Christ entail or warrant a priori inerrancy but divine inspiration does not? 

It's true, of course, that God uses human agents in the process of inspiration, but by the same token, God uses human agency in the Incarnation. In both cases there's a human medium, as well as divine agency behind the human medium, operating through the human medium. 

Knowing more than we can prove

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:

http://www.craigkeener.com/epistemology-and-historical-arguments-a-few-thoughts/

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?

The inner testimony of the Spirit

1. Appeal to the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit (hereafter the "witness of the Spirit," to simplify) figures in some apologetic encounters or schools of thought. It was important in early Protestant theology. It's a fixture of Reformed theology. It's clearly a big deal in charismatic theology. It's an element of folk theology, often abused, but there are philosophical theologians like Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig who also champion the principle. 

For Catholic theologians, this might seem to be an ad hoc appeal, concocted out of thin air to short-circuit debate. However, the principle has some basis in Scripture. The classic passages are Rom 8:16 & Gal 4:6. At least the wording of the phrase is based on the Pauline prooftexts. And these have a counterpart in Jn 10:27 & 1 Jn 2:20,27.

2. The witness of the Spirit is an aspect of defensive apologetics rather than offensive apologetics. It appeals to the experience of insiders, Christians, rather than outsiders, unbelievers. In my observation, the witness of the Spirit is invoked in three or four distinct, but related contexts, to prove:

• Christianity

• the Bible

• the canon

• salvation

3. In terms of the Pauline prooftexts, these have immediate reference to personal consciousness of salvation. A supernatural self-awareness that the individual is saved. As such, the claim is narrower than the truth of Christianity in general, or the Bible in general.

At this same time, it has logical implications for larger claims. Christian salvation is only meaningful in a larger Christian paradigm of sin, the condition of the lost, damnation, forgiveness, and redemption. So the witness of the Spirit does have implications for the truth of the Gospel and Christianity in general. But can that be extended to adjudicate every theological dispute? No.

3. Then we have the related, but somewhat enigmatic passages in Jn 10:27 & 1 Jn 2:20,27. The scope of these passages seems to be broader than the Pauline prooftexts. 

How do the sheep recognize the voice of Jesus? It doesn't say. 

1 Jn 2:20,27 posit an anointing. Anointing with olive oil was a religious rite that became a picturesque metaphor for a "charism" of the Holy Spirit. In 1 John, the point of contrast are heretic who rebel against John's apostolic teaching and disfellowship the churches he pastored or supervised. 

The anointing is not an alternative to apostolic teaching. To treat the anointing as a substitute for apostolic teaching would moot John writing in the first place! Rather, John seems to attribute to the anointing a supernatural ability to discern the truth of apostolic teaching, in contrast to the heretics. Not a revelation in terms of propositional information, but a revelation in the sense of the spiritual perception that apostolic teaching is true. And related to that, an ability to discriminate between the truth of apostolic teaching and the false teaching of the heretics. 

The heretics may well have included false prophets who said the Spirit spoke to them and gave them the true message. If so, John is countering that. 

It's unclear how far we can take this appeal because these are tersely worded promises. I think these are open to different models. So we might explore different models, consistent with, but underdetermined by the text. 

4. Apropos (3), the witness of the Spirit might be classified under the argument from religious experience. Most Christians lack the aptitude and training to make a philosophically rigorous case for Christianity. In addition, you have Christians in closed countries where Christianity is illegal, who lack access to the apologetic resources available to American Christians. They do well just to have a Bible. 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. That can takes many forms. A recognizable answer to prayer. An arresting special providence. A miracle. 

Those are external signs. But Paul and John are referring to a psychological experience. Let's approach this from the opposite end of the spectrum. Suppose God tells me to lay hands on someone in a wheelchair and pray for their healing. I hear an audible voice. Sentences. And this message carries with it the conviction that if I do so, God will hear my prayer. I do so and the invalid is miraculously healed. 

That scenario involves private revelation in the form of explicit information in addition to conviction. Let's vary the hypothetical. Suppose I see someone in a wheelchair. I suddenly feel that I should go over and pray for them. An overwhelming sense that I'm supposed to do this. And it carries the conviction that if I do so, they will be healed. 

Not just the sense that I should go over and introduce myself and ask permission to pray for them, as a matter of Christian charity. But a sense of compulsion, as if God is commanding me to do it, even though there is no audible verbal command. I do it, and they are miraculously healed. 

In that scenario, I wasn't given any information. It wasn't a propositional revelation. I felt compelled to do it. Something I was supposed to do. I was convinced that if I did so, the invalid would be miraculously healed. And that's what happened.

So my conviction turned out to be true. And not accidentally true. Not a stroke of luck. Rather, God impelled me to take that action. 

Did my conviction amount to knowledge? Did I know the invalid was going to be healed? It was a nonpropositional revelation. There was no promise or prediction. Yet the outcome corresponded to the conviction. And did so by divine design.

So that might be analogous to supernatural discernment that Christianity is true, even though it doesn't involve any new or additional information. Rather, a supernatural recognition that the information you already have is true.

Take another illustration. I'm booked to fly out of town tomorrow. The night before, God tells me not to board that plane. An audible voice. A verbal prohibition. So I cancel my flight and reschedule.

Now let's vary the illustration. I have a very vivid dream the night before that after I'm aboard and the plane takes off, it catches fire in midair. 

After I wake up I ponder whether that's a premonition. Maybe it's just a dream. Maybe I should take my chances. I shrug it off. But the next day, as I'm walking through the terminal to my gate, it looks exactly like my dream, even though I've never been to this airport before. So I skip my flight. And the plane explodes in midair. 

Now that's revelatory, but it's a visionary rather than a verbal revelation. I don't receive any information in the propositional sense. There's no explicit warning or prohibition. But it does provide evidence about the future. And the revelation corresponds to what happens. So there's a match between my conviction and reality. Moreover, that's not just a coincidence. 

Let's vary the illustration one more time. I have the dream. This time I don't see the airport terminal in my dream. I just see myself inside the plane when it catches on fire, passengers screaming. 

I go to the airport, but change my mind at the last minute. I'm spooked by the dream. I have nothing of consequence to lose if I miss my flight but everything to lose if it's a premonition. I take this to be a possible divine warning. And, in fact, the plane explodes. 

This is a case of something I was shown rather than told. And it didn't rise to the level of a strong conviction. Instead, it gave me a sense of foreboding. And as I got closer to the gate, the sense of dread intensified. As it turned out, my apprehension was justified. A divine-induced, future-oriented attitude. 

Now the prooftexts suggest certitude or something close to certitude. This example is weaker. It is, however, a hypothetical example of nonpropositional revelatory discernment. A mental state warranted both by the supernatural cause and the corresponding circumstances.  

Color-coded Bible

My post

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2019/11/faith-without-floor.html

provoked a conversation in the combox which I'm posting separately because it offers a high-level comparison and contrast between the respective positions:

Lydia McGrew

I would say that evidentialism per se doesn't tell us anything about any of those specific things. If we imagine an evidentialist who is convinced of the most conservative position on all of those specific things, and thinks he has extremely strong evidence for them, then there is no reason to talk about a "floor" at all anymore, unless we assume that he's just missing some significant piece of evidence right now.

I would put the marriage analogy a little differently: Suppose that I say that I believe that my husband exists based upon evidence, not as a presupposition.

And suppose someone says, "Well, then, you could in theory become convinced that your husband doesn't exist? So it could go that low, there's no floor?"

How would one answer this? Presumably one would say, "Well, that's a crazy scenario. Are we imagining that I get some almost unimaginably bizarre influx of new evidence in which I become rationally convinced that my husband is really a robot inserted into our country by space aliens, or what?"

In other words, there are tons of things that we are so over-justified in believing by evidence that we can only envisage becoming convinced that they are false if we make up the wildest of future evidential scenarios, which we'd have to be crazy to lose sleep over.

Does that mean that we are "presuppositionalists" about those things? No, of course not. It means that our evidence is so mountainous and overwhelming that we have, by evidential means, a kind of "practical certainty" about them so that we would have to rip up huge amounts of our other justified beliefs (in this case, our justified confidence that space alien robots are not successfully impersonating humans over many decades, etc.) in order to change our minds about them.

In that trivial sense one can say that there is "no floor" on whether, in principle, one could abandon such a belief, as long as it isn't something known a priori. 1 + 1 = 2 is more justified than "I have a hand" or "My husband is not a robot." But that's not an argument against being an evidentialist about such propositions.

steve

A problem I have with that response is that while I used some picturesque metaphors to illustrate the principle, my primary examples aren't hypothetical, much less farfetched hypotheticals, but real-life examples, and not exceptional but commonplace. Lots of folks who used to be conservative Christians but over time the content of their faith atrophies along the pattern I describe. It's not so much that the bottom fell out of their faith, but that their faith had no bottom to begin with.

Lydia McGrew

Sure, but presumably presupps don't have particular positions on all of those things as part of their "floor." At least I wouldn't imagine that they do. There's nothing about being a presupp per se that means you have to have one particular position on the ages of the patriarchs or Noah's flood. I can easily imagine presupps disagreeing among themselves about those issues.

Nor is there anything especially friendly to "myth or legend" in the evidentialist position.

I can easily imagine a presupp who takes a more "liberal" position on those particular issues than an evidentialist. Or I can imagine a presupp. and an evidentialist having exactly the same set of things where they draw a line and say, "No, I'm not going to change my mind on that."

The meta-level positions don't really tell us where someone's "floor" is going to fall. I have a really strong position on the historical Adam. I can easily imagine a presupp. who would be more friendly than I am to theistic evolution for the body of man.

In practice, I suspect that both presupps and evidentialists have as their practical "floor" those things that they tacitly or explicitly believe are extremely strongly justified by the data, including the data of Scripture. The reason that a particular position on the deity of Christ is a non-negotiable is (in no small measure) because we all recognize that it is over-justified by the Scriptural data as a tenet of Christianity. But that's not the case on, e.g., a local vs. a universal flood.

I would instance here Paul Moser as a guy who is a sort of rabid neo-Barthian and hates evidentialism with the passion of a thousand burning suns. I'd be willing to bet a sum of money that his positions are far more liberal on all of those issues than mine and that he has a lower "floor" than mine on other issues as well.

steve

To generalize, presuppers have a more theological orientation whereas evidentialists have a more historical orientation. By that I mean, evidentialists approach the Bible as historians–in contrast to presuppers who approach the Bible as a religious document (as well as a historical document), so that, as a matter of principle, presuppers treat Christian theology and Bible narratives as a unit–rather than an assemblage of separable parts, to be individually reaffirmed or discarded. (Which doesn't mean presuppers, or at least the most intelligent representatives, are unconcerned with the value of corroborative evidence, where available.)

As long as we're toying with hypotheticals, here's another hypothetical way to frame the difference between presuppers and evidentialists:

i) Suppose the Book of Esther made demonstrably false historical claims. An evidentialist might say that just means we should dispense with inerrancy. The Book of Esther might still be a historically useful witness to an especially trying time in Jewish history, but it's not infallible. It's comparable to 1 Maccabees.

By contrast, a presupper might say in that case it's not that Scripture is fallible, but that Esther isn't Scripture. Scripture wasn't mistaken; rather, the canonization of Esther was mistaken. We don't dispense with inerrancy but with errant books. 

ii) Put another way, presuppers accept or reject books as a unit rather than accepting or rejecting parts of (the same) books. 

iii) That's because presuppers regard Scripture as a religious document (as well as a historical document). A supernatural rather than naturalistic product.

iv) BTW, this isn't a uniquely presuppositional approach to the Bible. I also approach the Koran, the Book of Mormon, and the Arcana Cœlestia (to cite three representatives examples) as religious documents. They purportedly originate in supernatural encounters, and that's how I evaluate them (although historical analysis is certainly pertinent, where possible). As such, I accept or reject them as a unit. I don't affirm parts of them while discarding other parts. Rather, I accept or reject them in toto.

Of course, the Koran does have some incidental historical and autobiographical value regarding the life and times of Muhammad. It's worthless on Bible history, but does shed light on a particular period in Middle Eastern history.

To illustrate the contrast from different, but related examples, here are some more comparisons:

i) As I presupper, I don't approach the Koran the same way I approach the Jewish Wars by Josephus. Josephus wrote a historical account, not a religious document. It doesn't claim to be Scripture or divine revelation. 

I can accept or reject parts of the Jewish Wars, if some parts are of dubious historicity. 

By contrast, the Koran is first and foremost a revelatory claimant. Considered on those terms, it reject it in toto. 

ii) Considered as a canonical candidate, I reject 1 Maccabees in toto. That's if I judge it on Catholic grounds.

iii) However, 1 Maccabees isn't a Catholic document. It was appropriated by the Catholic church, but it didn't originate in Catholicism. It's a pre-Catholic, pre-Christian document. A historical document about the Maccabean revolt. It doesn't claim to be Scripture. So at that level, I can accept parts of it and reject parts of it, if some parts are of dubious historicity. 

iv) Consider the scribal/apocryphal additions to Daniel, Mark, and John. I don't accept some parts of Daniel, Mark, and John while rejecting other parts. Rather, I don't regard the apocryphal additions to Daniel, or the scribal interpolations to Mark and John (the Long Ending of Mark, the Pericope Adulterae) to be parts of those books in the first place. They're not original to Daniel, Mark, and John. 

v) This is not to deny that the same document can be both historical and religious. But if a document puts itself forward as a candidate for Scripture, then I'll assess the status of the document on religious terms rather than historical terms. Of course, if the revelatory claimant makes blatantly false historical claims, that doesn't help its case!

Lydia McGrew

What I'm pushing back against here is the to my mind mistaken view that evidentialism says, "Never come to a strong conclusion about anything" or "always hold a lower-than-really-high probability for all religious propositions." There is nothing about evidentialism that says that. That's maybe a caricature that arises understandably from statements like, "Always follow the evidence," but my point is that you can follow the evidence and thereby come to an extremely high confidence in a proposition such that you don't envisage changing your mind on it ever. It's not like evidentialism puts some kind of artificial "ceiling" on the degree of confidence you can have in any religious proposition, like you have to hang around in a state of semi-uncertainty about the deity of Christ (or whatever) all your life so that you can prove to yourself that you're open-minded and ready to follow the evidence. I forget if it's GK Chesterton who has that famous quotation about how open-mindedness is fine so long as it doesn't prevent us from closing our minds upon the truth when we find it. An evidentialist can say "amen" to that at least as loudly as a presuppositionalist.

steve

There's the question of what motivates a reinterpretation. For instance, the reason people question or outright deny the longevity of the antediluvians is because they think that's unrealistic. Whereas a presupper would say it's realistic because that's attested in Scripture. 

Now, I agree with you that one can postulate hypothetical scenarios which create untenable dilemmas for presuppers. But like hypothetical moral dilemmas, that ultimately becomes a question of divine providence in real life. Will God allow believers to be confronted with untenable intellectual dilemmas? That also depends on how much control we think God has over world history. So the debate spills over into other theological commitments.

Lydia McGrew

Is it your position that presuppositionalism per se contains a position on the meaning of the ages of the antediluvians? Because I would bet there are presuppers who would disagree with you on that.

I was under the impression that presuppositionalism had various issues where various interpretations of Scripture's literalness was allowed in a generally evidential manner just as it is for evidentialists, not that presuppositionalism per se is committed to a more literal hermeneutic.

For example, I think there are presupp OECs as well as presupp YECs.

(I'm inclined to take the ages of the antediluvians as literal, btw.)

Maybe we should distinguish presuppers from "people who take some non-evidentialist approach to apologetics." Perhaps one wouldn't say William Lane Craig is a presupper. See my comment below. He's not an evidentialist, though. But evidently the "internal witness of the Holy Spirit" isn't telling him that Genesis 1-11 are not "mytho-history," even though the IWHS is telling him that the Bible as a whole is true!

So it's not just hypothetical but actual for someone to have a commitment, even what that person characterizes as a whole-book, non-evidentialist commitment, to the truth of the Bible as Scripture, and to reinterpret segments as non-historical in fairly radical ways just as you are bringing up here, even more so than a given evidentialist (like me) does. Again, this isn't just a hypothetical scenario.

steve

i) When I contrast presuppers with evidentialists, that doesn't mean I'm exempting classical apologists (e.g. Craig) from the contrast. I'm just using evidentialism as a representative point of contrast.

ii) Especially among the laity, some Christians appeal to the IWHS as a hermeneutical shortcut. The Holy Spirit gives Spirit-filled Christians the correct interpretation of Scripture.

However, that's just folk theology. The Bible itself never makes that promise. It's convenient for lay Christians who don't have access to academic Bible commentaries or the aptitude to process them. But the appeal is misguided. 

iii) In terms of historical theology, the IWHS wasn't used as a hermeneutical shortcut but to undergird the assurance of salvation and/or conviction that the Bible is the word of God.

On the one hand, the principle has some value, possibly indispensable, because most Christians lack the aptitude to justify their faith through rigorous argumentation, so they must have an alternate mode of access to ground their faith. For a fairly sophisticated formulation of the IWHS:

https://www.proginosko.com/2017/01/the-internal-testimony-of-the-holy-spirit/

iv) However, the IWHS, if valid as a general principle, is too coarse-grained to function as a criterion for the canonical candidates (or textual criticism). 

We might compare it to the argument from miracles, which eliminates conventional naturalism, and creates a presumption in favor of Christianity compared to non-Christian religions (because miracles cluster around Christianity), but is too indiscriminate to eliminate intra-Christian rivals. 

v) In principle, the IWHS isn't the only epistemological paradigm that could perform the role assigned to it. An alternative might be a providential paradigm where God instils Christian faith by arranging for people to be exposed to good religious conditioning, as well as miracles, special providences, or answered prayers.

vi) The IWHS could be expanded into the argument from religious experience.

vii) As you know, "reinterpreting" the Bible is sometimes a euphemism for "the Bible got it wrong", but it would be controversial to say that, so a reinterpretation is more politic. 

viii) As I said before, the primary issue isn't reinterpretation per se, but what motivates reinterpretation. If I question or reject a traditional interpretation, I didn't personally change my mind. That interpretation was around long before I was born. Every new Christian generation must assess traditional interpretations. Christians in different times and places may find themselves in different epistemic situations. A cliche example is geocentrism. 

ix) Moreover, it's not always a case of revising the interpretation under pressure from factual challenges. For instance, biblical archeology may provide new evidence that invites an alternative interpretation. 

x) My primary target is an approach to Scripture like the Jesus Seminar. A color-coded Bible in which we go through the Bible rating various statement as probably true, probably false, definitely false. 

And that also happens under the guise of "reinterpretation," where reinterpreting a passage of Scripture is functionally equivalent to saying it's wrong. The revised interpretation is face-saving device. 

This dovetails with your criticism of token inerrancy, where lip-service is paid to inerrancy but the affirmation is vacuous because it strips historicity out of inerrancy. Inerrancy becomes an empty suit.

Lydia McGrew

Just thought of this: Bill Craig has critiqued evidentialism and doesn't consider himself an evidentialist, and he's out there saying that Gen. 1-11 is "mytho-history." I don't know if you just think WLC is an outlier or something, but he really is an example of someone who both a) has distanced himself explicitly from evidentialism (I guess he'd be more of a Plantingian in certain ways) and b) has engaged in reinterpretation in exactly the way you are talking about and, I would say, for the same motives, though perhaps he would dispute the motive claim.

I don't really think he's all that unusual among non-evidentialists and anti-evidentialists. But perhaps you're just making generalizations about presuppositionalists more narrowly conceived and saying that those in that group are more inclined to stick with a more literal hermeneutic and not to engage in reinterpretation based on outside evidence or judgements of probability than self-styled evidentialists.