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Foley-Rationality and the Neglected Dimension of Reformed Epistemology

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Foley-Rationality and the Neglected Dimension of Reformed Epistemology 1 Foley-Rationality and the Neglected Dimension of Reformed Epistemology By Daniel M. Johnson Our assignment in the sessions we’ve been having on the epistemology of Richard Foley has been to discern some of the relationships between Foley’s complex and fascinating epistemology and the epistemological topics that come under the heading of philosophy of religion. One obvious point of connection is the epistemology of disagreement; questions about the epistemic significance of disagreement arose originally (at least for the contemporary discussion) for religious disagreements, and I daresay that the problem of religious disagreement lurks in the background of discussion over the epistemology of disagreement even when it isn’t explicitly mentioned. So far we’ve heard more than one treatment of that issue, however, and so I’ll be concerning myself with different issue: the relationship between Foley’s epistemology and Reformed epistemology. The rise of Reformed epistemology is the most important development in the epistemology of religious belief in the last half-century. If we want to understand the implications of Foley’s epistemology for the philosophy of religion, then, we should want to understand as best we can its consequences for Reformed epistemology. Foley’s epistemology bears most directly and perhaps most interestingly, though, on a neglected dimension of Reformed epistemology. It is this neglected dimension which I hope to highlight in the following discussion. In the first half of the paper I’ll be discussing this dimension of Reformed epistemology, which we might call Reformed perspectivism. In the second half I’ll discuss the connection between Foley’s account of epistemic rationality and Reformed perspectivism. I’ll argue that 2 Foley’s view of epistemic rationality provides some support for something very close to Reformed perspectivism, though that support is limited in some ways. 1. Reformed Perspectivism Reformed epistemology historically has been made up of two dimensions, two distinct and yet interrelated theses. The first of these is the Basicality Thesis: belief in God is properly basic. There is no more fundamental belief on which it is based or from which it is inferred. Calvin is the source of this view, and it has prevailed most commonly (though certainly not universally) in the Reformed tradition of which he is the main fountainhead. It is this thesis which lies at the center of the recent philosophical upswing of Reformed epistemology. In fact, when most contemporary philosophers refer to Reformed epistemology, they mean to refer to this thesis. Most of the epistemological work of the major proponents in the contemporary philosophical development of Reformed epistemology (Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Alston) has been in the service of the Basicality Thesis, defending or developing it. The main arguments given in the Reformed tradition for the Basicality Thesis are biblical in character. In keeping with its biblical sources, Reformed epistemology has traditionally identified two distinct sources for the basic knowledge of God: the sense of deity, which grants basic knowledge of God as Creator and Judge, and the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit, which grants basic knowledge of God as Savior in Christ, particularly as described in Scripture (that it, the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit is traditionally taken to be testimony to the truth of the word of God proclaimed in Scripture). The first and to a lesser extent the second chapter of Romans is the main traditional source for exegetical arguments in favor of the sense of deity, and the argument in favor of the internal testimony of the Spirit is drawn from a number of other 3 passages in the New Testament. In recent years, the philosophical proponents of Reformed epistemology have adduced other arguments in favor of the Basicality Thesis – including parity arguments from analogies between religious beliefs and other basic beliefs such as those derived from sense-experience – and some have drifted from the traditional Reformed two-source model of basic knowledge of God. Even those who have kept the traditional two-source model have departed in some important ways from traditional Reformed emphases. For example, Plantinga’s primary intent in developing his accounts of the sense of deity and internal testimony of the Spirit has been to explain the positive warrant that attaches to Christian and theistic belief. Calvin shares this emphasis with respect to the internal testimony of the Spirit, but, following Paul in Romans 1, he mainly uses the sense of deity as a device not for explaining the positive warrant of theistic belief but for explaining the blameworthiness of those who reject the true God and chase after idols. Nevertheless, contemporary philosophical Reformed epistemology is recognizably a development of the traditional Reformed Basicality Thesis. The second dimension of Reformed epistemology, the Perspectivist Thesis, is not obviously found in Calvin. Instead, it is most closely associated with the Dutch stream of the Reformed tradition.1 Abraham Kuyper is the biggest name associated with the Perspectivist Thesis, and to his name we might add those of Herman Bavinck, Herman Dooyeweerd and Cornelius Van Til. Luther and Kierkegaard also both endorsed versions of the thesis, which may make it as much Lutheran as it is Calvinist.2 1 The perspectivist thesis was opposed by the Scottish stream of the Reformed tradition, embodied in Princeton seminary before 1929, with its Scottish Common Sense (Reidian) apologetic. The Scottish tradition also rejected the basicality thesis. Alvin Plantinga and Cornelius Van Til are, each in their own way, a kind of merging of the two traditions. 2 See Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, 106-108. 4 The Perspectivist Thesis says that reason is controlled by factors not determined by reason itself, and those factors are not neutral between believer and unbeliever – that is, the factors are themselves tied to faith or to unbelief. Therefore, what counts as reasonable is relative to one’s perspective, and reasoning is not capable of adjudicating between the perspectives – there are no neutral criteria to which to appeal in order to resolve disputes. Three points in this statement remain crucially ambiguous, and the perspectivist thesis can take different forms depending on how they are specified: what is meant by “reason?” What are the controlling factors of reason? And what exactly does it mean to say that these factors “control” reason? The various proponents of the perspectivist thesis often vary amongst themselves in how they answer these questions. As to the first question, some of the perspectivists (perhaps Kierkegaard and Kuyper) may think that epistemic justification itself varies amongst perspectives, such that unbelievers are epistemically justified in their unbelief and believers are epistemically justified in their belief, while other perspectivists (Van Til) vigorously reject the notion that unbelief can be epistemically justified and claim instead that it is reasoning rather than epistemic justification which must be relative to a perspective – disagreement over theism is a disagreement over a basic belief, and so cannot be resolved by argument, though one side may have properly basic beliefs and the other have improperly basic (and thus unjustified) beliefs. As to the second and third questions, each perspectivist has his own characterization of the controlling factors of reason (Kuyper’s principles, Kierkegaard’s passions, Dooyeweerd’s ground-motives, and Van Til’s presuppositions) and they vary as to the nature and extent of control that these factors exert over reason. All this is just to say that there are many possibilities for the development and specification of the Perspectivist Thesis. 5 The two dimensions – the basicality thesis and the perspectivist thesis – complement one another, and generate a picture of religious knowledge according to which the knowledge of God comes not from reasoning or argument but controls reasoning or argument. Faith is therefore the most fundamental commitment of the person, and doesn’t rest on any more fundamental beliefs. Van Til expresses this by saying that faith is the most certain thing of all; Kierkegaard expresses it by saying that faith is an objective uncertainty held fast in the passion of inwardness, and so involves an infinite “risk.” Though they appear diametrically opposed to one another, these are really just two ways of saying the same thing: that faith is not held on the basis of any more fundamental commitment, but forms the perspective from which the believer judges everything else. One main use to which the Dutch Reformed (and Kierkegaard) put the perspectivist thesis was to criticize and often dismiss apologetics. They argued that since the most fundamental standards of reason are not neutral between believer and unbeliever, arguments for God or Christianity must either appeal to faithful standards of reason and therefore be circular or appeal to unfaithful standards of reason and therefore inevitably compromise the faith by making it fit standards of reason intrinsically hostile to it. It was the second prospect that was particularly terrifying and that gave rise to some rather vicious condemnations of apologetics by Kuyper and Kierkegaard. They thought that apologetics was a tool in the hands of those influences which were hijacking Christian language in service of anti-Christian worldviews.3 The Perspectivist Thesis is the neglected dimension of Reformed epistemology. Contemporary philosophical defenders of Reformed epistemology have put by far the most effort 3 By the way, this means that Plantinga’s identification of “the” Reformed objection to natural theology as an inchoate rejection of classical foundationalism is inadequate as it stands. There is more to Reformed worries about apologetics than that. See Daniel Johnson, “Kierkegaardian and Reformed Objections to Natural Theology,” unpublished paper. 6 into developing and defending the Basicality Thesis, and many aren’t even aware of the Perspectivist Thesis’s historical pedigree as the second major dimension of Reformed epistemology.
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