Pages

Friday, February 12, 2016

Inspiration, evidentialism, and harmonization

1. Lydia McGrew posted a critique of how Michael Licona approaches the issue of Gospel harmonization. I posted a response. She commented on my response. 

It challenging to find an entry point into this discussion, because it's so complicated. There's the specific question of Michael Licona's position.

Then there's the question of how inerrantist Bible scholars harmonize the Gospels. I have in mind representative scholars like Poythress, Stein, Block, and Blomberg–although Blomberg is less reliable than he used to be. Of late he's been exploring loopholes. 

2. Then there's Lydia's own position regarding what's a permissible or impermissible harmonization. That's illustrated by stock examples, viz. was Jesus crucified on Passover?, the anointing of Jesus, the temple cleansing, the centurion's servant, cursing the fig tree, raising Jairus's daughter.  

I have a problem with her set-up. She draws a number of significant conceptual distinctions. She deploys her distinctions to say there's a crucial difference between Matthew doing X with Mark and Matthew doing Y with Mark. X is acceptable but Y is not. Same thing with John doing something to Mark, or Luke doing something to Mark.

But that's too abstract and premature. It attempts to predetermine what they could or couldn't do before we even crack open the pages of Scripture to see what in fact they did. That's the wrong starting-point.

For me, we need to begin by looking at what they actually did. What's the most plausible interpretation?  

3. Lydia uses evidentialism as a frame of reference, in contrast to Licona's position. That's an old debate, and there are different ways to block this out.

i) Historically, Aquinas represents a tradition in which you stress the role of proof. Certain beliefs are demonstrable. Knowledge or scientia is grounded in what you can prove. 

But for Aquinas, that high standard already begins to break down at the very point where you'd like it to hold. Although the truths of natural revelation are said to be demonstrable, the "mysteries of faith" are strictly indemonstrable. 

ii) Writers like Thomas Reid, Bishop Butler, and John Locke represent a different tradition, a different paradigm. They lower the bar. For them, it's not about proving Christianity, but the rationality of Christian faith. Providing reasonable grounds for faith, rather than demonstrative arguments. To recast this in modern terms, what kind of evidence is necessary for justified or warranted belief. 

iii) Writers like Calvin and Owen represent yet another tradition or paradigm. For them, it's not primarily about criteria or corroborative evidence, but self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit. 

4. Another way to block this out is to evoke Chisolm's distinction between methodism and particularism. I think Lydia's evidentialism is clearly in the methodist corner. On this view, you begin with criteria, which you use to sort out true religious claimants from false religious claimants. In one respect, this is a top-down approach. It begins with criteria rather than phenomena or experience. 

By contrast, the approach of Calvin, Owen et al. represents particularism, by taking paradigm-cases (Scripture) and paradigm examples of religious experience (the witness of the Spirit) as the starting-point. That's a bottom-up approach in the sense that it begins with particular instances rather than general criteria. But in a different respect, it's a top-down approach by treating the Bible as the criterion. On this view, inspiration is a presupposition rather than a conclusion. 

5. This goes to another distinction. Evidentialism tends to treat the Bible as a source of information about supernatural events, whereas writers like Calvin and Owen regard the Bible as a supernatural event in its own right. Are the Scriptures a supernatural product? 

6. Let's begin with a crude version of evidentialism. Initially, we should approach the NT documents as primary source materials. Historical sources. 

At this stage of the argument, we don't treat them as inspired sources. Rather, we assess them like we'd assess any ostensible historical testimony. 

Using criteria which historians typically use, we judge the NT documents, or a subset thereof (e.g. Gospels, Acts, 1 Corinthians), to be generally reliable.

On that basis, we conclude that the Resurrection probably happened. If so, that has far-reaching implications. To some degree, that circles back around to retroactively validate other core historical events in the life of Christ.

One objection to this approach is that reported miracles greatly lower the likelihood that the account is true. By definition, miracles are highly improbable events. 

The McGrews are aware of this objection. So they supplement evidentialism with a case for miracles.

In addition, although a miracle presumes the existence of God, it doesn't presume belief in God. It isn't necessary to prove God's existence before you can credit the occurrence of a miracle. 

Lydia can correct me if that's inaccurate. 

7. How should we assess these competing paradigms? Are they contradictory or complementary?

Apologetics, especially offensive apologetics, is undeniably methodist. It uses criteria and rules of evidence to broker religious claims and historical claims. To be persuasive, to avoid begging the question, it seeks common ground in methods and assumptions which Christians and reasonable unbelievers share in common. 

This also has some value in defensive apologetics. Believers can benefit from having evidence they can point to, and reasons they can give. 

8. However, evidentialism has weaknesses:

i) There's a circular relationship between your criteria and your worldview. What you think is possible or probable is contingent on the kind of world you think we inhabit. Whether a rule of evideence is reasonable or unreasonable is contingent on what you think reality is like. They need to match up.

ii) Most Christians, at most times and places, lack the intellectual aptitude or access to corroborative evidence to make a philosophically solid case for what they believe. But if, in fact, Christianity is true, that means the truth of Christianity must be accessible at a different level.

This doesn't necessarily mean reason and evidence are dispensable. It might still be important say that, at least in principle, the Christian faith is rationally defensible. Moreover, that some Christians have risen to the challenge. 

iii) Another problem is that I don't see where inspiration figures in Lydia's position. If the Bible is inerrant (or infallible), that's the result of plenary, verbal inspiration. If the Bible is fallible, that's because it's uninspired, or intermittently inspired.

I don't see where inspiration has a role to play in evidentialism. Where does it come into the argument? Where does it ever merge with the traffic? I don't see a logical place for inspiration to break into the flow of argument. 

9. What about the alternative?

i) On the face of it, it might seem like the position of Calvin, Owen et al. is specially pleading. An ad hoc position to preempt appeal to ecclesiastical authority. 

Another complication is the relationship between self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit. Are these two different principles? How do they interact? 

ii) I don't Calvin's appeal is just a makeshift apologetic maneuver. He describes self-authenticating Scripture and the witness of the Spirit in very autobiographical terms, as if that's how he did, in fact, experience Scripture. 

iii) We should treat things the way they are. If the Bible is the word of God, then that's how it ought to be treated. It should not be treated as something it is not. Something less or lesser than what it truly is. 

iv) I'd say there are affinities between Calvin's epistemology and Newman's illative sense and Polanyi's tacit knowledge. It's not an idiosyncratic position, but reflects a model of knowledge that's more subliminal. 

Take voice recognition. For most of us, that's intuitive. We simply recognize the person on the other end of the receiver. It's not something we could prove.

On the other hand, that's not purely subjective. Every voice has a distinctive timbre. That's subject to scientific analysis. 

On this view, regeneration restores our native ability to perceive religious truth. It doesn't add new evidence, or add a new faculty. Rather, the repairs a natural faculty. 

10. But even if the Bible is self-authenticating, where do we break into that charmed circle? After all, there are rival revelatory claimants.

i) It depends. If you experience the Bible in a certain way, then it's direct. An immediate, veridical experience. 

Moreover, this isn't just subjective, for many Christians have the same experience. So you have that intersubjectival confirmation. 

Even sensory perception has an ineluctably private dimension. I don't know what's going on in your mind when you see a tree. I can't tap into your experience. I can't tap into your mental state. 

We can compare notes. You can tell me what you perceive, and I can tell you what I perceive. Same thing with intellectual apprehension. 


ii) However, this doesn't preclude appeal to external evidence. These are not in tension. It can be complemented by theistic proofs, the argument from prophecy, the argument from miracles, answered prayer, historical evidence, &c. 

22 comments:

  1. I've long thought that the biggest weakness for a purely evidentialist approach to apologetics is that the best one can muster at the end of the argument is i.) there's probably a God, and ii.) that probable God is best approximated by the God of the Bible.

    That's something, but it's far less than what the Bible sets forth. I think at base it's a matter of ultimate authority. Is it man or God? Everything tends back to this basic idea that still echoes from Eden.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "In addition, although a miracle presumes the existence of God, it doesn't presume belief in God. It isn't necessary to prove God's existence before you can credit the occurrence of a miracle.

    Lydia can correct me if that's inaccurate. "

    Not entirely sure I understand you, but I certainly agree that you don't have to believe in the existence of God _before_ investigating the case for a given miracle, though it might not be a bad idea to look into the arguments of natural theology first. But it isn't necessary. The claim that a miracle has happened by the act of God acts as an hypothesis. So a skeptic can in principle come to believe in the existence of God at the very same time that he comes to believe that a miracle has occurred, and by means of the same argument. In very rough terms. "Oh, looks like there was a miracle here. I guess God exists after all."

    "She deploys her distinctions to say there's a crucial difference between Matthew doing X with Mark and Matthew doing Y with Mark. X is acceptable but Y is not. Same thing with John doing something to Mark, or Luke doing something to Mark."

    I definitely want to correct this: I have never been talking per se about what Matthew or John "does with Mark." Indeed, some of the material in question isn't even found in Mark. (For example, the statement that it was Mary the sister of Lazarus who anointed Jesus' feet.) I think that John the Son of Zebedee wrote the gospel of John. To a very large degree, he isn't (as far as I can tell) "doing things with Mark" at all. He's telling things to a large degree based on his own memory. What I have a major problem is his *doing x with the facts as he believes them to be*.

    Though there is a stronger case for some degree of literary dependence between Matthew and Mark (though of course it's a matter of great controversy exactly how much, etc., and Matthean priority should be kept open as a live option IMO), to my mind the issue _still_ isn't Matthew's "doing things with Mark." It's possible that one of the ways that Matthew knew what happened or gathered his own thoughts together about what happened was by reading Mark. But since I think the case is good that the gospel really was written by Matthew the tax collector, he may have remembered some of the events himself. He and the other disciples may have talked them over and recollected them together. Etc. I don't really care too much where Matthew got his ideas about what happened. What I have a major problem with, again, is Matthew's deliberately changing something from what he *believed to be true* to something he *believed to be false*, and writing down the latter, deliberately giving the impression of the latter, instead of the former for some reason or other--literary, theological, convenience, whatever. It's not "doing x with Mark." It's "doing x with the facts."

    And I maintain that there is zero good evidence that Matthew did anything like that. It's a pure conjecture, and a poor one to boot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Not entirely sure I understand you, but I certainly agree that you don't have to believe in the existence of God _before_ investigating the case for a given miracle, though it might not be a bad idea to look into the arguments of natural theology first."

      My statement was broader. I summarized my understanding of evidentialism. Is that summary correct?

      "I definitely want to correct this: I have never been talking per se about what Matthew or John 'does with Mark.' Indeed, some of the material in question isn't even found in Mark. (For example, the statement that it was Mary the sister of Lazarus who anointed Jesus' feet.)"

      You were talking about things like whether John changed the day of the crucifixion, or relocated the cleansing of the temple, or how Matthew may have redacted Mark's account of the centurion's servant, and the cursing of the fig tree, &c.

      Delete
    2. I'm talking about the relevant passages in Matthew and John, but those don't need to assume that these were uses *of Mark*. If Licona himself means these to be "uses of Mark," he doesn't say so explicitly in the lecture I was criticizing, and my concern is not to say that they shouldn't or wouldn't have "used Mark" in such-and-such a way but that they would not have altered the facts. It's not important to my point whether they were using Mark or not. Regardless of whether they were getting their version of the facts (at the time they wrote) from Mark, from memories, or whatever.

      As far as your summary of evidentialism, I'm just not sure what you mean by "a miracle presumes the existence of God." One can (and probably should) define "miracle" so that actual occurrence of a miracle entails the existence of God. "It isn't necessary to prove God's existence before you can credit the occurrence of a miracle. " I would say that that sentence is an accurate statement of a position that is part of my own evidentialism, as explained in my earlier comment about coming to believe that God exists by way of coming to believe that a miracle has occurred. Perhaps that means that your entire summary is, as you intended it, accurate.

      Delete
    3. And I maintain that there is zero good evidence that Matthew did anything like that. It's a pure conjecture, and a poor one to boot.

      What about Matthew's version of the Man with the Withered Hand? Among other things, it seems to include a case of transferral. In Mark and Luke it's Jesus who asks a question along the lines of "I ask you, is it lawful on the sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?" Whereas in Matthew it's the Jews who ask, "Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?" Licona goes into fuller details in another video HERE (already cued up).

      I too haven't ruled out Matthean Priority. However, I'd be interested in how you would deal with this problem if it were posed by a skeptic or atheist who's convinced of Markan Priority. Though, if it'll take away time from a discussion between you and Steve I understand if you skip addressing it. I think the interaction between you and Steve would be more instructive to the readers of this blog (including myself).

      Delete
    4. By "summary of evidentialism," I'm referring to the entire section under point #6. I begin with a crude (but popular) version, then add refinements.

      Delete
    5. I would tend to object to the phrase "supplement evidentialism with a case for miracles." To my mind an evidential approach to Christianity, particularly one focused on the historical case, *is centrally* the making of a case for specific miracles (most notably the resurrection). I would not think of this as supplementing evidentialism but rather as intrinsically bound up with the evidentialist approach.

      I certainly agree with the idea of pointing out that one who is not convinced already of Christianity can follow the argument by looking at the gospels, Acts, etc., as data--as putatively historic documents--and seeing what that evidence supports.

      Delete
    6. Annoyed, I find it extremely difficult to see why one would think this to be a good argument for transferral in the sense that Licona has defined it in the other lecture. (I'll just assume he's using the same definition here and isn't repudiating it or changing it.) Please remember that the hypothesis of transferral is that Matthew _knew_ (or believed) that Jesus spoke to them, that they _didn't_ originate the exchange, but that he _changed_ what happened _deliberately_ by changing what happened to something different from what he believed really happened! This is quite a complex hypothesis. It involves Matthew's remembering it one way (or believing that Mark is reporting it in such a way as not to leave anything out) and deliberately changing it.

      Why think a thing like that?

      Notice what Licona does. He exaggerates the differences between the accounts and makes it appear that "in Mark and in Luke they don't say anything." Mark and Luke don't say that. Licona _asserts_ that Matthew "takes this and changes it." But all he is arguing from is the existence of the differences! This is far, far from evidence for such a deliberate change on the part of Matthew from what he believed to have been the case!

      Here are several alternative hypotheses that are a good deal _simpler_ than the hypothesis that Matthew _changed_ what was stated.

      1) Matthew had his own memory of what happened, having been present, that was slightly different from the memory represented in Mark's and Luke's account. Whether or not he happened to have Mark in front of him at the time (and there are real questions as to the practicality of working with another document in the editorial way that is easy for us with tables, books rather than scrolls, etc.) or had recently read Mark, he just wrote his own account based on the way he happened to remember it, which had this minor difference. This kind of thing happens _all the time_ in human testimony. It is _far_ more probable than the deliberate change hypothesis.

      2) Matthew had a slightly different account in mind of how it went based on conversation with someone else who was there. Again, a quite simple hypothesis that arises from normal human activities and interactions.

      3) Both were said. (Again, Licona makes it sound like the accounts are in conflict, but he is exaggerating this beyond what is found in the texts.) It is entirely possible that they were "stalking" Jesus to see what he would do and that one of them actually spoke out, baiting him. Stalking in this way is not incompatible with throwing out a question, and questions and answers to a rabbi, especially on a matter of Jewish law and the application of it, were very common in Jewish culture and come up all the time in the gospels. Notice that what Jesus says would actually *make sense* as an answer to such a question. They ask if it's lawful to heal on the Sabbath. He has the man stand up and asks whether it's lawful on the Sabbath to do good or evil, etc. He answers them forcefully. They are expressly said in Mark to be silent _after_ Jesus' words, but it does not follow that they were silent before. Luke's statement that Jesus knew their thoughts does not have to mean that they never said a word (though Luke may not have _known_ that they said anything, he does not assert that they did not). Jesus presumably knew their thoughts before they ever spoke, and knew the agreement in opposition to himself of those in the group who did not speak but merely watched to try to catch him. This hypothesis is compatible with either of the first two and, again, is _far_ more typical of normal witness testimony--different witnesses remember different parts of what happened. #1 and #2 simply do not go into the question of why Matthew had a slightly different version in his own memory bank. This is one way it could have come about. (cont.)

      Delete
    7. (cont.)
      Every single one of these, or some combination thereof, is more probable than the hypothesis that Matthew was making a deliberate change. Licona's "argument," as I have said to you before, consists of ignoring alternative, more probable hypotheses and simply *telling* the listener that "Matthew changes this." This is a really poor way to proceed. A scholar should consider alternative hypotheses and give an argument that shows his hypothesis to be better.

      Bare assertion of an implausible hypothesis is not argument.

      As for your question about Matthean priority, I do _not_ think that Markan priority should be conflated (though many skeptics and liberal NT scholars, and even some conservative ones, do conflate it) with the idea that Matthew did not have independent knowledge of the events and merely redacted or developed from Mark. Markan priority should just mean that Mark happened to write first and that Matthew had some dependence on Mark; that's it. So skeptics should have no stake in asserting one or the other. The reason that skeptics press what _they_ call "Markan priority" is that they treat it as a package deal with a lot of other assumptions about Matthew, redaction, etc., that calls the reliability of Matthew as an independent source into question. The two must be taken as distinct.

      If anything, the differences between these two accounts argue that Matthew is somewhat independent of Mark. They scarcely support some sort of thesis that Matthew is heavily dependent on Mark and just redacts him. Why should it? But if one is interested in the mere question of which came first, there's nothing about this story in particular that shows either account to be later. What could there be? Indeed, Licona himself doesn't try to say why he thinks Matthew changed Mark as opposed to Mark's changing Matthew. (And of course I think any hypothesis that one deliberately _changed_ the other is poor.) If it's sheerly a matter of counting noses, Luke probably came later than either and had access to both, so it's not as though we just decide that, since Luke's account is more like Mark's, Mark must have come first, must be "the way it really happened" as *opposed* to Matthew, or anything of the kind.

      Notice too that Licona's discussion at the beginning about compositional textbooks is pretty poor as an analogy for the gospels. These are historians and memoir-writers. They aren't schoolboys doing little exercises, using some history passage as a jumping-off point for practicing writing! That's an _unbelievably_ poor argument for his take on Matthew. I'm a home schooling mother myself. I can well imagine setting the kind of exercises he describes for my kids, even having them write imaginative dialogue using some history book passage. This would have *nothing whatsoever* to do with teaching them that it's okay when writing their _own_ history of something that happened to _change the facts_ in what they write! I can't believe he uses such an argument. It's...wild. Notice, too, the tacit treatment of Matthew as not having any independent access to the facts, as *simply* redacting Mark, like a schoolboy rewriting a passage of someone else's book.

      Delete
    8. Another point, Annoyed: It's only Luke who says, "But Jesus knew their thoughts." A fourth hypothesis is that Luke read Mark and went beyond what Mark said to conclude that they did not speak. He did not, in fact, assert this in the text, but any hint of implication that one takes from "But he knew their thoughts" that Jesus was _merely_ reading their minds and that they did not speak may arise from an erroneous interpretation of Mark on Luke's part. I do not know if this would be incompatible with your own version of inerrancy or not, since it is, at most, a theory about what may have motivated Luke's terminology. This, also, is far more plausible than Matthew's deliberately changing the wording (for no discernible reason, I might add--because he thought it would make a better story? because he thought it flowed better as dialogue?)

      Delete
    9. Really good points. I do agree with you that Licona dismisses too quickly harmonization. That was my independent impression when I watched the TacticalFaith video when it first came out. I hope you'll review his book on this topic that's coming out soon in order to balance any truth or correct any errors in the book.

      Delete
    10. Annoyed, thank you, that's really encouraging. I don't know what I will write about the book itself. I can be rather easily discouraged, and on the last occasion when I poured many hours into reviewing books (John H. Walton's), there seemed to be a fairly meager return of those who were in any way influenced or helped by it, especially in ratio to those who brushed it off.

      Oh, I thought of one more hypothesis (that will perhaps be congenial to you). :-)

      5) Both the Jews and Jesus spoke, but Matthew didn't have any purely human access to the fact that the Jews spoke. (Suppose he wasn't there that time and had only Mark available to him as an account.) The Holy Spirit wanted to have a complementary account that mentioned that the Jews spoke and inspired Matthew to write it. I myself wouldn't normally bring this up, because I prefer sticking to human hypotheses. (And I note that Licona does _not_ bring inspiration into his discussions but speaks of these alterations in terms of literary phenomena.) I bring it up here because you had mentioned inspiration on the other thread. If we're going to conjecture that the Holy Spirit inspired Matthew to add a detail to which he had no human access, it seems much sounder to conjecture that the H.S. inspired Matthew to add a _true_ detail, perhaps even giving him some experiential feeling that it was true (we don't know what it would be like to be inspired to write) rather than hypothesizing that the H.S. inspired Matthew to add a detail that was _incorrect_.

      Delete
    11. Lydia McGrew:

      "I'm talking about the relevant passages in Matthew and John, but those don't need to assume that these were uses *of Mark*. If Licona himself means these to be 'uses of Mark,' he doesn't say so explicitly in the lecture I was criticizing, and my concern is not to say that they shouldn't or wouldn't have 'used Mark' in such-and-such a way but that they would not have altered the facts."

      There are two distinct issues here: your own position and the position you're opposing. If Licona's examples are instances in which he thinks Matthew and Luke redacted Mark or Luke redacted the Synoptics, then that would be your target. If that's what he's referring to, then that's what you're referring to (at least in part), in opposition to his position. So that's what I meant by:

      "She deploys her distinctions to say there's a crucial difference between Matthew doing X with Mark and Matthew doing Y with Mark. X is acceptable but Y is not. Same thing with John doing something to Mark, or Luke doing something to Mark."

      Delete
    12. ...there seemed to be a fairly meager return of those who were in any way influenced or helped by it, especially in ratio to those who brushed it off.

      I think your influence is much wider than you realize. Also, if your criticisms of Licona are as serious as you claim, then the harm he could potentially inflict is much greater than a John H. Walton since Licona is much more visible in the Evangelical movement. Though, I understand that with limited time we all have to choose which battles are strategically worthy to fight and which are not. And you've already written a long blogpost on the topic (including comments there and here at Triablogue).

      Delete
  3. "i.) there's probably a God, and ii.) that probable God is best approximated by the God of the Bible."

    CR, I can't help thinking that perhaps you are thinking of a more "natural theology" approach to evidentialism here. A robustly historical evidentialism says something much stronger. If Jesus' teaching is true, for example, we have a boatload of theology. I would never use a phrase like "God is best approximated by the God of the Bible." This makes it sound like one starts out with some more minimal God, perhaps based on some thin concept derived from natural theology, and then one adds biblical attributes as optional accessories or something. The God for whose existence I argue evidentially _is_ the God of the Bible.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "This makes it sound like one starts out with some more minimal God, perhaps based on some thin concept derived from natural theology, and then one adds biblical attributes as optional accessories or something."

    I admit to a significant degree of ignorance about your (and your husband's) particular evidentialist apologetic approach. I was painting with a broad brush.

    But you've accurately pinpointed the important question - where does one start?

    ReplyDelete
  5. With the evidence one has. :-)

    And then, if the evidence one has is significantly less than the evidence available (which for most people it is), go out and get a lot more. Especially about the historical argument for the deity of Jesus Christ via God's vindicating him by raising him from the dead.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sorry but it's not immediately clear to me how that approach differs signicantly from the one you seemed to repudiate in my initial comment, nor can I see how its endpoint can be anything more than a bare probability of the existence of the God of the Bible.

      It seems too much ground to surrender to fallen, sinful man's delusional sense of autonomy.

      Delete
    2. Probabilities are not so bare. :-) Probabilities are how you know your hands exist. Or your mother, wife, and all other loved ones. That is, very, very high values of probabilities. You may find this post at least of some interest.

      http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2014/11/what_evidentialism_is_not.html

      Delete
    3. ...if the evidence one has is significantly less than the evidence available (which for most people it is), go out and get a lot more.

      I'm all for getting more evidence. However, I agree with W.L. Craig on some of the weaknesses of evidentialism. One of which is that the vicissitudes of history and the accidents of geography and time results in shifting sands of evidence. Not only that but not everyone has the aptitude, time, financial resources or learning/schooling/training to shift through all the evidence.

      For example, we can think of an illiterate Christian in the Middle Ages who is faced with the objections of a village atheist. Even if he could read he doesn't have access to a Bible or to modern libraries, archaeology, science, history books, lexicons, Biblical and patristic manuscripts (etc.) along with the refined arguments for Christianity developed in the 21th century. Craig points out that the Holy Spirit makes us all contemporaries (so to speak) of Jesus and His original disciples because we can have warranted knowledge immediately available to us through the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. It's not mediated by external evidence. Craig goes on to say that while apologetics is VERY useful, it's not absolutely necessary. All this is also consistent with Van Tillian presuppositionalism (of which I subscribe).

      Delete
    4. Thanks for the link, Lydia. It was instructive and I think shed light on some of your epistemological precommittments.

      Your inner web appears to be woven quite differently from mine, so it's no surprise the outer edges are so divergent.

      Delete
    5. Annoyed, I just said to get a lot more because it _is_ available now, not because I"m saying one can't know stuff without doing this. Craig is just wrong about that criticism of evidentialism.

      Here are a couple of relevant links:

      http://www.whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2014/11/what_evidentialism_is_not.html

      http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/12/does_the_evidentialist_have_to.html

      And, concerning the "illiterate peasant," see this particular comment of mine in answer to a commentator:

      http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2015/12/does_the_evidentialist_have_to.html#comment-304216

      Delete