sign in sign up
<<
Home , Epistemology, Philosophical theology, Reformed epistemology

1

Foley- and the Neglected Dimension of Reformed

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 of . 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 is the most important development in the epistemology of religious in the last half-century. If we want to understand the implications of Foley’s epistemology for the , 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 . 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 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 , when most contemporary 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 of God: the of deity, which grants basic knowledge of God as Creator and Judge, and the internal testimony of the , 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 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 3 passages in the . 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- – 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 (Reidian) apologetic. The Scottish tradition also rejected the basicality thesis. and are, each in their own way, a kind of merging of the two traditions. 2 See Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of 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 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 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 is a disagreement over a , 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 , Kierkegaard’s passions, Dooyeweerd’s ground-motives, and Van

Til’s ) and they vary as to the 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 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 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 that apologetics was a tool in the hands of those influences which were hijacking Christian language in service of anti-Christian .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 as an inchoate rejection of classical is inadequate as it stands. There is more to Reformed worries about apologetics than that. See Daniel Johnson, “Kierkegaardian and Reformed Objections to ,” 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. That isn’t to say that it has completely fallen by the wayside, however. There are a number of echoes of the Perspectivist Thesis in the work of Plantinga and Wolterstorff.

Plantinga’s suggestion that the for God provided by the sense of deity and the internal testimony of the Spirit may be intrinsic defeater-defeaters (that they automatically override any potential defeaters) harkens back to the perspectivism of his Dutch forbears, as does his notion of

Augustinian science. Wolterstorff’s connection to the thesis is even more direct; Reason within the Bounds of Religion is a development of a nuanced and toned-down version of the thesis.

2. From Foley-Rationality to Reformed Perspectivism

So far I haven’t said what reason we might have for believing the Perspectivist Thesis. At least some of the perspectivists gave biblical for accepting the thesis, just as they did for the Basicality Thesis. Van Til regularly appealed to “antithesis” passages such as 1 Corinthians

1-3, and Kierkegaard made a big deal of the numerous New Testament passages referring to the offense that is caused by the .4 Another way that the perspectivists supported their position was by of particular theistic arguments and historical for Christian doctrines – they thought that each could be shown to either beg the question against the unbeliever or prove something far different from the biblical God.5 Perhaps the most important way that the perspectivists supported their position, though, was by developing philosophically motivated accounts of the nature of reasoning and arguing that such accounts supported the perspectivist thesis.

4 Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity. 5 This is Kierkegaard’s strategy in chapter 3 of Philosophical Fragments. 7

It is here that we finally come to Richard Foley’s part in the story. I’ll argue that if we accept Foley’s account of epistemic rationality, we can use it to support a version of the

Perspectivist Thesis – though it is a version that differs somewhat from many of the versions of the thesis espoused in the past. His view of epistemic rationality is that a belief of mine is epistemically rational just in case it fits with my deepest epistemic standards.6 I think we have a decent grasp on what makes an epistemic standard “deep” and what it is for a belief to “fit” those deep epistemic standards, but Foley offers us some help with some counterfactual claims about these notions: generally speaking, my belief fits my deepest epistemic standards just in case I would retain my belief after an idealized spent reflecting on the belief, and (presumably) my deepest epistemic standards are the ones that would survive if I were to discover upon reflection that they conflict with other epistemic commitments I have.7 (I would hesitate to identify these counterfactuals as analyses of the concepts which they characterize because of the notorious problems plaguing counterfactual analyses, but they do at least help us gain a firmer grasp of the concepts.) To be epistemically rational is to believe what it is reasonable by one’s own lights to believe given that one’s goal is true and comprehensive beliefs now, rather than some time in the future. Foley’s analysis of epistemic rationality is the centerpiece of a sprawling account of other sorts of egocentric rationality and of rationality from other perspectives than the egocentric perspective.8

The main feature of Foley’s account of rationality that makes it friendly to the Reformed perspectivist is that it makes epistemic justification relative to the deepest (epistemic)

6 Richard Foley, Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 39. 7 Ibid., 34. I added the second counterfactual, the one characterizing the “deepest” epistemic standards, as a plausible extension of what Foley says here. 8 See Richard Foley, “Justified Belief as Responsible Belief,” in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, ed. by Matthias Steup (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 313-326, and his Working Without a Net (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 8 commitments of the person – and those commitments can vary from person to person. The result is that different people may inhabit different perspectives by of possessing different deep epistemic commitments. They may therefore have disagreements that are not resolvable by reasoning, because there aren’t any standards deeper than their deepest epistemic standards (over which they differ) to which to appeal in order to resolve the disagreement. Much of the

Perspectivist Thesis is therefore established: reason (in this case, epistemic justification) is controlled by factors which reason does not determine (one’s deepest epistemic standards), and which may vary from person to person. This isn’t quite the Perspectivist Thesis, though. The

Perspectivist Thesis claims that these perspectives cut across religious lines – that those who are united by faith to Christ inhabit one perspective in which their faith governs their reasoning, while those who are not inhabit other, opposed perspectives. Why should we think this? I’ll argue for three claims, each of which establishes progressively stronger versions of the

Perspectivist Thesis.

First, these perspectives can cut across religious lines – that is, Christians can inhabit a perspective in which their faith governs their reasoning. Think of people for whom their commitment to God and Christ is their deepest commitment in life, including their deepest epistemic commitment. Whenever a piece of evidence – an experience or a belief – comes into conflict with their faith, they always make adjustments to their beliefs so as to preserve their faith, whether that means giving up the conflicting belief or adjusting the standards of evidence or of reasoning they accept. In other words, they always resolve the (the problem of what to adjust within a belief-system when tensions arise) in favor of their faith. Such a person need not be anti-intellectual. They may eagerly seek out new evidence and think deeply on it. They simply are always willing to change their beliefs or their standards 9 of evidence if they come into conflict with their faith. The possibility (and, I would say, the actuality) of such people shows that Christians can inhabit a perspective in which their faith governs their reasoning.

Second, these perspectives should cut across religious lines – that is, Christians should inhabit a perspective in which their faith governs their reasoning. This second claim makes for a far more sweeping and interesting perspectivist thesis, and gets closer to its historical strength.

My reason for thinking that Christians should look like the person I described in the last paragraph, the person for whom faith is the deepest epistemic standard, is that I think that their commitment to God and to Christ should be unconditional. I think this best capture’s the Bible’s picture of the life of faith – particularly the command that to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your and all your (Matthew 22: 37) and the unrelentingly negative view that the New Testament takes toward doubt directed at God or Christ.9 If Christians’ commitment to Christ is to be unconditional, then it should not be so fragile that they remain open to rejecting him should the preponderance of the evidence change. Therefore, faith should be their deepest epistemic standard – that by which they evaluate everything else. Now, I know that many would reject the picture of faith as (ideally, at least) involving unconditional commitment – notably, Robert Adams rejects it when Kierkegaard uses it in an argument against apologetics that doesn’t involve the perspectivist thesis – and I can’t at this point offer a decisive argument in its favor.10 But those who do think, as I do, that faith should involve unconditional commitment have a reason to think that Christians should inhabit an epistemic perspective in which their faith is their deepest epistemic commitment.

9 All the references to doubt listed in my concordance in the New Testament are very negative: Matt. 14:31 and 21:21, Mark 11:23, Luke 24:38, John 20:27, Romans 14:23, James 1:6, and Jude 1:22. 10 Robert M. Adams, “Kierkegaard’s Arguments Against Objective Reasoning in Religion,” in The Virtue of Faith and Other Essays in (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 10

Third, these perspectives do in fact cut across religious lines – that is, Christians do in fact inhabit a perspective in which their faith governs their reasoning. If we are allowed to assume the Calvinist soteriology of nearly all the proponents of the Perspectivist Thesis

(including Luther, though excluding Kierkegaard), then we can say that the Holy Spirit builds a bulwark around the hearts and of believers, such that no power in heaven or on earth may tear that believer away from the love of God and saving faith in Christ. In that case, every believer does in fact have as his or her very deepest epistemic standard a commitment to Christ – because this is the one thing the believer certainly never give up on reflection, by virtue of the power of the Holy Spirit.

So if we assume Foley’s account of epistemic rationality, Christians have reason to accept some version of the perspectivist thesis (namely, that every Christian at least should inhabit a perspective in which their faith is their deepest epistemic standard), and Calvinists have reason to accept a very strong version (that every Christian does in fact inhabit such a perspective). There are a couple of differences I’d like to point out, though, between this Foley- inspired Reformed perspectivism and some historical versions of the thesis. First, on Foley’s account, since it is actually epistemic rationality (and not just reasoning) which is relative to a perspective, unbelievers may well be epistemically rational in their unbelief. This may be compatible with the views of some of the historical perspectivists (maybe Kuyper and

Kierkegaard), but it is definitely not compatible with those of others (Van Til).

Second, and more interesting, Foley-inspired Reformed perspectivism gets you a form of the Reformed critique of apologetics, but not exactly the same critique. If we go with Foley, then apologetic arguments may not beg the question against the unbeliever or prove something other than the God of the Bible. There is no reason to think that the perspectives inhabited by 11 unbelievers will necessarily be hostile to theistic or Christian beliefs. However, that is not to say that their perspectives won’t be hostile to full-blooded Christian faith, which is after all more than mere belief. Conversion to Christian faith requires more than a change of beliefs; it also involves a change of one’s deepest commitments, including one’s epistemic commitments (if my arguments above are correct). Apologetic arguments won’t be able to achieve that, because they will of necessity have to appeal to one’s current deepest epistemic commitments in order to persuade, and so won’t be able to supplant those epistemic commitments with something deeper.11 If we all become Foley-style Reformed perspectivists, then, we’ll have to go looking for some other role for apologetic arguments than that of the ground of faith.

11 Thanks to Adam Pelser for helping me think through this point, and generally for help thinking about Foley’s relation to Reformed epistemology.