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Contemporary Reformed Epistemology: the Epistemic Immediacy of Theistic Belief

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Contemporary Reformed Epistemology: the Epistemic Immediacy of Theistic Belief Dr. Michael Czapkay Sudduth June 27, 2001 Draft ABSTRACT: This chapter is part of a more detailed examination of the idea of immediate and non- inferential knowledge of God in the Reformed theological tradition. In the previous chapter I examined several prominent Reformed theological attempts to explain and defend the idea that the natural knowledge of God is immediate and not based on inference or argumentation. I concluded that such arguments at best establish a purely psychological thesis about the causal origin of belief in God which leaves open a variety of epistemic functions of inferential reasoning about God. In this chapter I consider some contemporary philosophical attempts to develop and defend the idea of immediate knowledge of God. Contemporary Reformed Epistemology: The Epistemic Immediacy of Theistic Belief Dr. Michael Sudduth The Reformed theologians examined in the previous chapter not only maintained that the source of belief in God is immediate, but that this psychologically basic theistic belief constitutes knowledge . The Reformed view of the natural knowledge of God is thus not merely a claim about psychological immediacy, but epistemic immediacy. Immediate knowledge of God has been denied by various epistemological traditions in Western philosophy, from medieval Aristotelianism to the janus-faced descendents of Enlightenment empiricism. I will refer to these epistemological traditions under the general rubric of classical evidentialism. 1[1] In 1[1] Here we need two important clarifications. First, evidentialism in the present sense should not be confused with what is commonly evidentialist apologetics . The latter advocates the use of theistic arguments to defend the faith and show that theism is reasonable. This is not the same as requiring evidence for one’s belief to be rational, justified, or constitute knowledge. For more on this distinction, see chapter eleven and my paper “Reformed Epistemology and Christian Apologetics” (Forthcoming, Religious Studies ). Secondly, I refer to the denial of immediate knowledge of God in long-standing epistemological tradition s (plural) because there are important distinctions between the sort of evidentialism one finds in medieval philosophy and the variety of evidentialisms proximately connected to the Enlightenment tradition. The sense in which medieval philosophers like Aquinas were evidentialists is closely connected to an understanding of knowledge as scientia , knowing the cause of a thing by way of a demonstrative syllogism. This is clearly compatible with affirming the immediate knowledge of God in other senses that have loomed large since the Enlightenment. Moreover, epistemological traditions that contrast to the Reformed position, classical evidentialism in its various has maintained that theistic belief is rational or constitutes knowledge only if a person bases his belief on evidence, has evidence for this belief, or at least that there is evidence available for it. But the tradition of evidentialism has come into sharp critical focus during the last 30 years or so, both in general epistemology and the philosophy of religion. Several prominent epistemologists have presented interesting and substantial challenges to evidentialism. In religious epistemology these challenges have come largely from Reformed epistemology ,2[2] the main representatives of which are William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga and Wolterstorff are both in the Reformed theological tradition, so their work establishes an important connection between contemporary epistemology and the Reformed theological tradition. In fact, both Plantinga and Wolterstorff have regarded their epistemological work as in some respects an attempt to develop with greater philosophical precision the insights of the Reformed thinkers we have examined in the previous chapter. Their critique of evidentialism has been closely tied to the defense of the proper basicality of belief in God, roughly, the idea that psychologically immediate theistic belief can be rational, justified, and even constitute knowledge, independent of whether there is any evidential case available for theism. draw on Enlightenment insights are thick with other epistemic concepts such as rationality and justification whose place in the medieval tradition is far from clear. So we should probably distinguish between pre-modern and modern evidentialism. The focus in this chapter will be on the latter with respect to rationality and knowledge. For views on the nature of evidentialism in relation to the medieval period, see Nicholas Wolterstorff, “The Migration of Theistic Arguments: From Natural Theology to Evidentialist Apologetics,” in Rationality, Religious Belief, and Moral Commitment: New Essays in the Philosophy of Religion , ed. Robert Audi and William Wainwright (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Arvin Vos, Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1985), chapter three; Anthony Kenny, What is Faith? Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 43; Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), chapter two; Norman Kretzmann, The Metaphysics of Theism (Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 1-53. 2[2] The designation "Reformed epistemology” stems from similarities between the philosophical thesis of immediate knowledge of God and ideas about belief in God in the Reformed theological tradition. Although Plantinga and Wolterstorff belong to this theological tradition, Alston and others who advocate the proper basicality of theistic belief do not. The designation "Reformed epistemology" (coined by Plantinga to described to contemporary movement in philosophy of religion) is perhaps an unhappy and misleading one, but it is no more problematic than popular alternatives like "theistic foundationalism" and "anti-evidentialism." For a comparison of the contemporary Reformed epistemology movement with the Reformed theological tradition, see John Frame, “The New Reformed Epistemology” in Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1987), pp. 382-400. As a first step toward a more thorough critical analysis of the epistemic immediacy thesis and its relationship to the role of natural theology, in this chapter I will develop the contrasting epistemologies of religious belief advocated by classical evidentialism on the one hand and Reformed epistemology on the other. More precisely, since Reformed epistemology developed largely as a critique of evidentialism, I will present the Reformed epistemology case against evidentialism. In the first two sections I’ll consider this in terms of the epistemic category of rationality or justification. In the remaining three sections, I’ll look at the idea of immediate knowledge of God. Although I will provide some periodic critical observations, I will reserve the following chapter for a thorough critical engagement of Reformed epistemology and evidentialism. I. Reformed Epistemology and the Critique of Classical Evidentialism Reformed epistemology initially developed as a critique of classical evidentialism. Roughly stated, evidentialism requires the possession or availability of adequate evidence for theistic belief to be rational, justified, or to constitute knowledge. 3[3] So, for instance, in one formulation the evidentialist position maintains that theistic belief is not rational unless it is based on adequate evidence. "Evidence" in this context is propositional evidence, reasons in the form of other (rational) beliefs or propositions that provide the right degree of support for the truth of theistic belief. The evidence must, of course, be theologically neutral (not presuppose theism), and it will be adequate evidence just if it either entails theism or makes theism probable. Given evidentialism, of course, natural theology has an important, indeed necessary, epistemic function. Reformed epistemology, however, attempts to show that evidentialism is crucially flawed and that theistic belief could possess certain positive epistemic statuses in the absence of evidence and argument, especially of the sort provided by natural theology. 3[3] Again, the focus here is modern and contemporary evidentialism: e.g., John Locke, David Hume, W.K. Clifford, Brand Blanshard, A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, Anthony Flew, J.L. Mackie. Some evidentialists are thesists; others are not. Moreover, as I will explain below, rationality (or justification ) is distinct from knowledge in several respects. The evidentialist requirement may be and has been imposed on both or only one of these epistemic desiderata. If the Reformed epistemology critique of evidentialism is correct then, it would seem that natural theology is unnecessary for theistic belief to be rational or constitute knowledge. 4[4] Although this objection does not entail that the theistic arguments are in themselves bad or inappropriate, it does imply that a primary motive for engaging in the project of natural theology is unsound, and that the role of natural theology must be substantially rethought. Not surprisingly, many philosophers, including theistic ones, are uncomfortable with this move. It appears to generate an important weakening of the grounds for natural theology. Put more generally, it might be argued that if theistic belief can constitute immediate knowledge, there is little place left for inference or argumentation; at least as far as securing the
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