The non-Christian attack often comes to us on matters of historical, or other, detail. It comes to us in the form of objections to certain teachings of Scripture, say, with respect to creation, etc.[i]
And so we are engaged. Popular engagement is on the creation-evolution front. Behind this is the question of world view. For several hundred years the conflict between Christianity and naturalism has raged. Particular battles have been between Galileo and church authority, the Scopes trial, and so forth.
One of the conditions which accompanies a debate on world views is that no world view be “proven” in any deductive sense. Though the effort of many is to provide some seemingly deductive proof, there just is none.
The question of world view consistency can be raised with questions as to soundness, or internal consistency. The paganism of naturalism[ii], and it’s modern cousin Marxism, depend on a view of knowledge which pretends to be a priori but is in fact a posteriori. The erroneously-categorized claim is the eternality of the natural universe, independent of creation. But this assumes that such knowledge, which depends upon nature, is able to assess nature. “Reason” is then raised above nature while at the same time depends upon nature for its existence.
Though the Reformed view places the source for knowledge within the context of revelation (thus removing responsibility for creating truth from people), not all Christians hold to this theological method. Both Rome and the Arminians place some source for reason and truth within human capacity[iii]. It is for this reason that the Christian apologist, when fighting in defense of the faith, is always attacking the particulars, such as specific evolutionary errors. But the net is that this evidential approach is always a defensive approach.
Darwin understood this when he presented a challenge to those who opposed his naturalistic world view and mechanism. His challenge:
If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.[iv]
Darwin established a framework for naturalism but did not posit a challenge to the presupposition, but to the evidence. He knew how to use evidence better than today’s Christian evidentialist. He first framed the evidence within naturalism and then set that presupposition above criticism, leaving the foundation for evidence to sit as pawn in the battle. In chess, one does not win by capturing pawn but by capturing the king. Darwin’s naturalism is thus as pagan as the Marxist.
Alvin Plantinga likewise sees a priori knowledge in a fashion similar to the Roman and Arminian. He says[v]:
According to the Cartesian tradition, we have privileged epistemic access to these [knowledge of self] matters. Some say it is impossible to be mistaken about them; we have incorrigible knowledge of these matters, where S has incorrigible knowledge of a proposition p if and only if it is not possible that p be false and S believe it, and not possible that p be true and S believe –p. Other say, not that we have incorrigible knowledge here, but that we can have knowledge here by reflection alone; all you need to do to know whether you are in pain, for example, si think about it.
Here the tradition in question seems right. It is right, first, in holding that we have knowledge here.
Unfortunately Plantinga makes no reference to revelation as a source for knowledge. But he does take the positive step of showing that naturalism does not allow for a suitable knowledge of reality. Naturalism, he says, is incoherent because it cannot account for knowledge properly. While employing the methodology of analytic epistemology to analyze the epistemic products of naturalism, he concludes[vi], if naturalism is true, then (with respect to Dawkin’s blind watchmaker proposition):
Suppose you concur with Dawkins: can you then properly employ the notion of proper function in epistemology? If you can’t, you’ve got a problem; and you’ll have the same problem with much of contemporary science. For most of the disciplines falling under biology, psychology, sociology, economics, and the like essentially involve thoe functional generalizations of which we have spoken, and those generalizations, in turn, essentially involve the notions of proper function, damage, malfunction, purpose, design plan, and others in that family.
What Plantinga has done is none-the-less unique. He has attacked naturalism, not for its general incoherence as a world view as does VanTil, but for its particular incoherence failing as a world view. This leaves the evidence, evolution, floundering like a fish on the deck of a ship, waiting to be picked up and cast back into the sea as just so much flotsam.
If there were a weakness in Plantinga’s argument it would be his definitions of knowledge. But even so his position is a capable one, and adequate to accomplish the goal of attacking the foundation of naturalism, as VanTil has pursued.
[i] Van Til, Cornelius, An Introduction to Systematic Theology, Second Edition, 1974, R&R Publishing, p. 23.
[ii] “It should be clear, however, that although Marx was indeed an atheist, his theories all presuppose the non-dependence or self-existence of matter; physical matter, along with its innate law of dialectical development, is “just there.” Matter depends on nothing whatever, and all of reality is either identical with or depends on matter. For this reason, despite its protests to the contrary, Marx’s theory is based on a religious belief. And, what is more to the point, this religious belief is a typically pagan one since it takes something about the universe (matter and its dialectical law to be the self-existent segment of reality on which all depends.” Clouser, Roy, The Myth of Religious Neutrality, Notre Dame Press, p. 46
[iii] “The Arminian position is similar to that of the Romanist. Assuming with Romanism that many facts come to pass in history as the result of man independently of the plan of God, it is consistent for the Arminian position to argue with the nonbeliever about archaeology or miracles without bringing in the plan of God.” VanTil, p. 39.
[iv] Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species : By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, p. 232
[v] Plantinga, Alvin, Warrant and Proper Function, 1993, Oxford University Press, p. 49
[vi] Ibid, p. 197
January 13th, 2010 | 7:13 pm | #1
Father George Coyne, S.J., is a Jesuit priest, a formally trained astronomer and astrophysicist, and the former director of the Vatican Observatory:
We shouldn’t, therefore, look for God as part of the “mechanics” of nature, as though he enters in a fussy way alongside of other competing causes. In accounting for the emergence of a planet, for example, we wouldn’t appeal to the detritus of a star, hydrogen gas, God, and the gravitational force! God is, instead, the answer to a different kind of question, viz., “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
This is precisely why Fr. Coyne is impatient with the advocates of intelligent design, who hold that, at certain points in the evolutionary process, God intervened to fine-tune things. He feels that this is not only scientifically superfluous but finally insulting to God. It’s also why he disagrees with one of his colleagues, the Anglican priest-scientist, John Polkinghorne, who argues that the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics gives God “room to work” as he pushes, pulls, and influences the cosmos.
Once again, the problem is an interventionist construal of the God-universe relationship. For the same reason, he disagrees with the Christopher Hitchenses and Richard Dawkinses of the world who maintain that “science” disproves the existence of God by showing that he is not ingredient in the causal processes of nature. Both the “new” atheists and the advocates of intelligent design need to get a clearer sense of who God is.
January 13th, 2010 | 7:58 pm | #2
Collin:
Two observations. First, you write: “Both Rome and the Arminians place some source for reason and truth within human capacity.” And your citation for this is Cornelius Van Til! That’s like citing Hugh Hefner as a source for James Dobson’s views on human sexuality. :-)
I can’t speak for the Arminians, but I can tell you that Catholicism does not “place some source for reason and truth within human capacity.” For the Catholic, God is the source of reason and truth. Now, if you mean that Catholicism maintains that human beings, apart from special revelation, can acquire reason and truth, we plead guilty. In fact, I can’t believe anyone would deny it. For example, it seems to me that Aristotle knew where Athens was located and that Socrates’ finest pupil was Plato. Aristotle knew this without any assistance from Scripture.
But suppose you suggest that what you are saying is taught in Scripture. As you correctly note, many Christians–in fact, the vast majority–do not see that teaching in Scripture. But if you respond to this observation by suggesting that these Christians are wrong in their interpretation of Scripture, you are presupposing a normative notion that is logically prior to the exegesis of scripture: texts should be interpreted accurately. This, of course, is grounded in more primitive extra-scriptural notions: to accurately interpret a text one should do so fairly and honestly, and one should pursue the truth while interpreting texts. Both these normative guidelines are logically prior to, and thus not derived from, Scripture itself, for in order to extract truth from Scripture, obedience to these normative guidelines is a necessary condition. This means that the Vantillian, ironically, must rely on normative guidelines known apart from scripture in exegeting the scripture that he claims teaches that one cannot know truth or reason apart from Scripture.
Someone could argue that I am merely offering a hermeneutical principle (i.e., a rule of interpreta-tion). But I do not think that does the trick. For we think that a proper approach to texts is part of what it means to be a virtuous person. After all, if we discovered that an interpreter of Scripture had been negligent, uncharitable, or dishonest in his biblical exegesis, we would not only suspect error in his interpretation, but we would also attribute to him a lack of personal virtue. This judgment, therefore, would be at its root, moral. And this means that we can know something of morality apart from Scripture as well.
Second, Plantinga’s book–Warrant and Proper Function–is the second of trilogy of books, culminating in the 2000 volume Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford). In that volume he deals extensively with revelation including a devastating critique of contemporary biblical criticism.
You are indeed correct that worldviews make a difference in how we interpret the world. And for that insight I am grateful for the Reformed thinkers–like Roy Clouser–who have offered to us a clear and compelling defense of their point of view.
January 13th, 2010 | 8:27 pm | #3
Dr. Beckwith,
I may respond to the RC epistemological issue at another time.
But with regard to my view of Plantinga’s material, I attempted to interpret it by taking time into account. Yes, I’ve read the trilogy. There were a number of years between the two and his views clearly developed greatly between the two. As a result I did not want to interpret work #2 by work #3. That seemed to be inappropriate. In that light I did debate within myself as to how to approach that matter, and not going into his views in #3 seemed to be the most consistent approach.
January 13th, 2010 | 9:28 pm | #4
The idea that Calvinism somehow entails that God gave us no reasoning ability strikes me as completely crazy. The scriptures recognize all manner of abilities in those who are fallen (e.g. the recognition of the truth in pagan wisdom literature by its reappearance in the biblical canon is a strong testament to that).
The idea that God is incapable of using philosophical argumentation as part of his gracious means of bringing someone to the intellectual state of propositional belief that’s required for salvific faith requires a much more limited view of God’s ability than Calvinism should tolerate. I’ve never understood why any Calvinist could accept the view that God is unable to use philosophical arguments in the process of someone’s coming to faith, even if we ignore the many actual cases where God obviously has done exactly that.
As for Plantinga, I think his summary of his views in the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Religion chapter on Reformed Epistemology does include reading scripture in a list of activities that he considers part of the natural functioning of human capacity that he counts as the reliable belief-forming process that can provide warrant for belief in God. I don’t see any reason to think he doesn’t see that as part of the process anyway. Is there reason in WCB to think that he rejects what he wrote in WPF?
January 13th, 2010 | 10:10 pm | #5
Jeremy,
I didn’t see anything that would be classified as a rejection of previous statements, but that read as so much more fully developed that they could not have been part of the prior work.
At least that’s my observation.
January 14th, 2010 | 9:18 am | #6
I’m not sure that Arminians “place some source for reason and truth within human capacity.” Evidentialists might, but that doesn’t necessarily follow that this is a problem inherent in Arminianism.
January 14th, 2010 | 9:53 am | #7
Duns Scotus and William Ockham’s schools of thought came after Thomas Aquinas’ attempt of synthesis with Aristotle was mistakenly taken off the table by the bishop of Paris who thought (wrongly as it later turned out) that he was a heretic.
Good churchmen in the immediate aftermath of that decree though, had to assume that whatever it was Thomas attempted to do, wasn’t worth reading since he had been declared suspect of heresy.
So they went in the only two other directions: fideism and rationalism. Either all we know comes from revelation and the mind is incapable of truth on its own….or human reason alone without revelation is the means of truth.
But as fascinating as this is, it still doesn’t provide the ground for Calvin or any other ‘reformer’ to assume that the scriptures they had and considered divine where in fact revealed truth.
After all, other religions have books they claim to be Divinely revealed….the Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses for starters but also the Muslims. There must be some historical and evidentiary basis for accepting a book as inspired.
Now, what did Jesus do? He only wrote once and in the sand. He preached otherwise. But he did more than assert things, he did miracles as a “sign” of his authority to teach doctrine. So did Moses as a sign of HIS authority to teach doctrine as divinely revealed.
Both Moses and Jesus’ miracles were public and thus historical. People could put faith in them not just because of their words but because of their deeds – deeds which could not be accomplished but by the finger of God.
Reason thus works in conjunction with faith. It’s never either/or but both/and.
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