Search Results

In Ch. 6, I presented a model (the Aquinas/Calvin, or A/C, model), which illustrates how belief in God could have the three varieties of positive epistemic status with which we have been concerned: justification, rationality, and warrant. My main aim in this chapter is to extend the A/C model to cover full‐blooded Christian belief (e.g., belief not just in God, but in trinity, incarnation, atonement, salvation, Christ's resurrection, etc.); this model (the extended A/C model) illustrates how Christian belief can be justified, rational, and warranted. The central elements of the extended A/C model are the Bible, the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, and faith; I begin the chapter with a quick overview of these three elements. I then look more carefully at faith, which is, in part, belief in the central teachings of the gospel that results from the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit, and show how Christian belief can be justified, rational, and warranted, according to the model. In the final four sections of the chapter, I (1) explore and defend the claim that Christian belief is properly basic, (2) show why the supernaturally inspired writings (the Bible) and the individual action of the Holy Spirit, which are part of the model are so important (and here I scrutinize one popular approach to Christian apologetics), and (3) argue that if Christian belief is true, then very likely it does have warrant in the way suggested by the extended A/C model, or in some similar way.

Continuing an examination of proposed defeaters for Christian belief, I turn in this chapter to postmodernism and religious pluralism. Some of the claims that can be plausibly labeled “postmodern” are claims that conflict with Christian belief; in the first section of this chapter, I examine some of these claims. Among other things, I inquire as to whether Christian belief is defeated by (1) an argument from the historically conditioned character of religious and philosophical belief, or by (2) the view, often associated with Richard Rorty, that human beings construct the truth. After arguing that neither (1) nor (2) provide a defeater for Christian belief, I examine the question of whether a defeater for Christian belief can be found in the fact of religious pluralism, the fact that the world displays a bewildering and kaleidoscopic variety of religious and antireligious ways of thinking, all pursued by people of great intelligence and seriousness. I then consider and respond to two such proposed defeaters, the second of which involves the charge that there is a sort of egoism, arrogance, or arbitrariness in accepting Christian belief given the fact of religious pluralism; in doing so, I look in some detail at an argument Gary Gutting gives for this charge.

Among objections to Christian belief, we can distinguish between de facto objections and de jure objections, i.e., between those that claim that Christian belief is false (de facto objections) and those that claim that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or in some other way rationally unacceptable (de jure objections). In this chapter, I ask whether there is a viable de jure objection to Christian belief formulated in terms of rationality, i.e., I ask whether the objection that Christian belief is not rational is a strong one. In order to assess this sort of objection, we must be clear on what is meant by the term “rational,” and so I distinguish several senses of that term: (1) Aristotelian rationality, (2) rationality as proper function, (3) rationality as within or conforming to the deliverances of reason, (4) means–end rationality, (5) deontological rationality, and (6) William Alston's practical rationality. I conclude that there is no viable de jure objection to Christian belief in terms of any of these senses of rationality, with a possible exception of the second – rationality as proper function. In the next chapter (Ch. 5), I begin to explore this remaining possibility and take up the question of the relation between proper function, warrant, and de jure objections to Christian belief.

The extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model of the last three chapters is intended to show how specifically Christian belief can have justification, internal and external rationality, and warrant. In this chapter, I do two things; first, I consider some of the arguments for the conclusions that theistic and/or Christian belief lacks warrant, and, second, I consider objections to my arguments and claims about the way in which Christian belief can have warrant. I first consider the objection that religious belief can derive warrant from religious experience only if there is a good (noncircular) argument from premises reporting the occurrence of such experience to the existence of God; I rebut this objection by pointing out that it is surely possible for religious belief to derive warrant from religious experience directly, in a basic way, just as perceptual and memory beliefs derive warrant from perceptual and memorial experience in a basic way and not by virtue of inference or argument. After considering a second objection, concerning the alleged incapacity of experience to account for the specificity of religious belief, I reply to an objection due to Richard Gale, according to which it is impossible to have a veridical perceptual experience of God. I then examine and reply to (1) a number of objections to my claim that theistic and Christian belief can receive warrant in the basic way, including the so‐called Great Pumpkin objection and descendants of it, and (2) the objection that there is something circular in my account.

This chapter discusses Christianity. There was a range of Christian beliefs and a gamut of understandings of what was encouraged, what was acceptable, and what was forbidden by church leaders for Christians to do and to believe. When Arab conquerors rode into the Middle East in the 630s and 640s, the Christianity they would have encountered would have included that of all these people, and others as well. The spectrum of what was acceptable and what was not for a Christian could be person relative and depending on the issue, different Christian authorities might have divergent standards. As such, there was also a broad spectrum of beliefs held by Christians. This spectrum extended well beyond the Christologically based doctrinal typologies carefully laid out in modern patristic manuals and theological textbooks.

Since the Enlightenment, most discussions of the rational justifiability of religious belief have assumed the truth of evidentialism, the view that religious belief is rationally justifiable or acceptable only if there is good evidence for it, where good evidence usually means good propositional evidence. But what is this rational justification, and why does it require propositional evidence, and why did everyone just take for granted this connection between justification and propositional evidence? In order to address these questions I turn first to the thought of John Locke, and then to an examination of the classical picture (or classical package) comprised of evidentialism, deontologism, and classical foundationalism – a picture of which Locke is a main source. After briefly indicating the great extent to which the classical picture is still with us in contemporary discussions of religious belief, I point out some of the crippling problems the classical picture faces, and then consider contemporary analogical extensions of the various elements of the classical picture to see whether any of them supports evidentialism. I conclude that in fact there is no reason at all to think that Christian belief requires argument or propositional evidence if it is to be justified; Christians can be justified even if they don’t hold their beliefs on the basis of arguments or evidence, even if they aren’t aware of any good arguments for their beliefs, and even if, indeed, there aren’t any such arguments.

Continuing an examination of proposed defeaters for Christian belief, I turn in this chapter to some of the issues raised by contemporary historical biblical criticism, arguing that contemporary historical biblical criticism does not serve as a defeater for Christian belief. After a brief discussion of the divine inspiration of Scripture, I distinguish and examine two different kinds of Scripture scholarship: (1) traditional biblical commentary and (2) historical biblical criticism (also called “higher criticism,” “historical criticism,” “biblical criticism,” and “historical critical scholarship”). Historical biblical criticism (HBC) is an effort to look at and understand the biblical books from a standpoint that relies on reason alone (not faith), i.e., it is an effort to determine from the standpoint of reason alone what the scriptural teachings are and whether they are true. I discuss three different types of HBC and briefly point out some of the tensions between HBC and traditional Christianity: as Van Harvey remarks, “So far as the biblical historian is concerned. . .there is scarcely a popularly held traditional belief about Jesus that is not regarded with considerable skepticism.” I then argue that none of the varieties of HBC provides a defeater for Christian belief, either because (a) they begin with unsupported assumptions that are contrary to Christian belief, or because (b) they ignore sources of warranted belief that Christians believe they have (like faith and the interior instigation of the Holy Spirit) and fail to give good arguments that Christians do not have such sources of warranted belief.

Continuing an examination of proposed defeaters for Christian belief, I consider in this chapter the question of whether knowledge of the facts of evil (i.e., knowledge of the amount, variety, and distribution of suffering and evil in the world) constitutes a defeater for theistic and Christian belief. In the first section of the chapter, I focus on versions of the evidential argument from evil, which claims not that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically incompatible, but only that the facts of evil offer powerful evidence against the existence of God. I first examine two such arguments due to William Rowe and then turn to one due to Paul Draper; I argue that all three fail. In the second section, I consider what we might call a nonargumentative defeater based on suffering and evil; essentially, the claim at issue here is that one who is properly sensitive and properly aware of the sheer horror of the evil displayed in the world will simply see that no being of the sort God is alleged to be could possibly permit it. After exploring and responding to this claim, I close with a brief look at some relevant themes in the Book of Job.

This chapter discusses what or how religious people (specifically Christians) should think about socio-biology or evolutionary psychology, given the conflict between the theories and beliefs of these disciplines. It starts with evolutionary psychology, and examples of theories that seem to be deeply problematic from a Christian perspective. It continues by presenting answers on why scientists come up with theories that conflict with Christian belief, why they are considered as defeaters for Christian belief, and what they should do in order to compensate for these happenings.

In Ch. 6, I presented a model (the Aquinas/Calvin model, or A/C model), which illustrates how belief in God could have warrant; my aim in the next four chapters (7–10) is to extend the model of Ch. 6 to specifically include Christian belief, and to show how it can be that Christians can be justified, rational, and warranted in holding full‐blooded Christian belief. Now, one important difference between bare theism and Christianity has to do with sin and the divine remedy proposed for it; in the present chapter, therefore, I explore the nature of sin and its noetic effects. After providing an initial statement of the extended A/C model, I turn to an examination of the nature of sin, focusing especially on original sin, a condition affecting both will and intellect. According to the extended A/C model, the noetic effects of sin are concentrated with respect to our knowledge of others, ourselves, and God; most importantly, the sensus divinitatis has been damaged by sin. After exploring this basic noetic consequence of sin, I return to an issue from Ch. 12 of Warrant and Proper Function, and take the opportunity to make some corrections, simplifications, and additions to the arguments I offered there (especially to the argument I offered for the conclusion that an ordinary naturalist has a defeater for any belief she holds, including ordinary naturalism itself).

Among objections to Christian belief, we can distinguish between de facto objections and de jure objections, i.e., between those that claim that Christian belief is false (de facto objections) and those that claim that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or in some other way rationally unacceptable (de jure objections). In Chs. 3 and 4, I argued (roughly) that no viable de jure objection to Christian belief can be developed in terms of justification or rationality (in most of the senses of that term); in this chapter, I turn to the objections offered by Freud and Marx, objections best understood in terms of warrant. At the heart of the criticism of religious belief due to Freud and Marx is the claim that religious belief is not produced by cognitive faculties that are functioning properly and aimed at truth: according to Freud, religious belief arises from the psychological mechanism of wish fulfillment (a cognitive faculty or process not aimed at truth), while according to Marx, religious belief is produced by cognitive faculties malfunctioning due to a perversion in the social structure. After an initial examination of these objections, I briefly recapitulate the account of warrant I proposed in Warrant: The Current Debate and Warrant and Proper Function (and also take the opportunity to make a correction or supplementation to my account of warrant, a supplementation relating to Gettier problems and cognitive minienvironments). I then point out that the criticisms of Freud and Marx amount to the objection that religious belief lacks warrant; in the next chapter, I evaluate this objection.

Chapter 5 showed that some scientific theories or claims—theories or claims taken from evolutionary psychology and historical Biblical criticism—do indeed conflict with Christian (and Muslim and Jewish) belief. This chapter addresses the following question: Suppose you are a serious Christian and you come to recognize that Simonian science endorses conclusions incompatible with certain Christian beliefs; and suppose you also hold science in high regard. Do you, as a result, acquire a defeater for those beliefs? Simonian science specifies how things look from a given perspective or evidence base, a perspective characterized by methodological naturalism. It is argued that the fact that Simonian science comes to conclusions incompatible with Christian belief does not provide the believer with a defeater for her belief.

This chapter looks at the ease with which the ancient pagan culture was adopted and adapted to fit into a Christian world (without in many cases being actually Christianized) during the Early Middle Ages. In writing which was not strictly theological or philosophical, early medieval scholars used ancient models and language freely within a Christian context. They took the compatibility of pagan culture and Christian belief so much for granted that the Problem of Paganism did not arise; and the same is true for their predecessors in the sixth and seventh centuries as for some tenth- and eleventh-century writing. This broad, unproblematic acceptance of classical culture set what would remain the mainstream view throughout the Middle Ages. The chapter also looks at how Christian Europe came about only as the result of a long process.

In this and the next three chapters, I deal with proposed defeaters for Christian belief. In this chapter, I begin with a brief examination of the nature of defeaters. I then turn to projective theories of religious belief, such as those of Freud, Marx, and Durkheim, which propose to explain theistic and other religious beliefs in terms of our projecting into the heavens something like an idealized father. I argue that such theories do not in fact constitute a defeater for Christian belief, and, in so doing, examine and respond to some suggestions to the contrary due to Philip Quinn.

From the beginning Christian theologians have explored some of the connexions, contrasts, and oppositions between their Christian outlook and the principles of moral philosophy. Though Christianity is not primarily a system of morality, and though its moral principles are not all peculiarly Christian, it expresses a distinct point of view about morality. However, in some cases — including Clement, Origen, and Augustine of Hippo — the Christian theologian and the moral philosopher have been the same person arguing in two different directions from different premises. This attempt to use moral philosophy and Christian theology to support each other is pursued in most detail by Thomas Aquinas. The influence of Christian belief is neither uniform nor straightforward; nor does it always lead a moral philosopher in one definite direction. On the contrary; Christian belief is not a source of uniformity, but a source of new directions and options in moral philosophy.

In the areas of evolutionary psychology and scientific scripture scholarship (also known as historical Biblical criticism) there are claims and assertions incompatible with theistic or Christian belief. This chapter argues that even though Christians are committed to a high view of science, and even if these disciplines do constitute science or good science, these developments in evolutionary psychology and historical Biblical criticism do not offer, or even threaten to offer, defeaters for Christian or theistic belief. Hence there is conflict, but it is merely superficial.

This chapter details how the tale of Francesco Spiera represents a crack in the facade of Reformation belief and an early warning sign that belief could not support the vast new weight that both Catholics and Protestants had placed upon it. The crisis of belief that beset Europe in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the harvest of what the confessional project of belief had sowed. Protestants and Catholics alike had conspired to make belief hard. Rebelling against the debased epistemology of the world, they determined that only particular doctrines, and only particular ways of holding those doctrines, and only particular sources of assurance of those doctrines, constituted Christian belief.

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the contribution of Theodore Beza to the debate concerning the relation between faith and knowledge. It states that even after Beza's appointment as rector of the Genevan Academie in Switzerland, he remained true to the Reformed tradition even though he fortified the objective aspect of Christian belief. He has also balanced the subjective and objective elements of Christian belief, and highlighted the evidential arguments for Scripture in response to the constraints of the Pyrrhonic Counter-Reformation polemics.

Many contemporary theologians hold that there are profound problems in the very idea that we can refer to and think about a being characterized in the way Christians characterize God; in this chapter, I consider the claims of two such thinkers, Gordon Kaufman and John Hick. Roughly, Kaufman's position (in his early work) appears to be the following: the term “God” may or may not have a real referent, but if so this real referent transcends our experience and hence is something to which our concepts don’t apply; the term “God” does, however, have an available referent, which is a human construction. I examine and reject this view, as well as some of Kaufman's claims about the function and utility of religious language. I then examine and attempt to clarify John Hick's position that there is an unlimited and transcendent being, the Real, which is “the noumenal ground of the encountered gods and experienced absolutes witnessed to by the religious traditions,” and which is such that only our formal concepts and our negative concepts apply to it. I argue that although this position (or one close to it) may manage to avoid incoherence, Hick gives us no good reason to think that we cannot predicate of God such positive, nonformal properties as wisdom, knowledge, love, and the rest.