Classical Apologetics, Natural Theology, Philosophical Theology

Is Belief in God Properly Basic? Part Two

by Dave Seng

Philosophy is the knowledge of all things in their first principles or causes as seen by the natural light of reason — Daniel J. Sullivan

In part one, I indicated some questions and concerns I developed when I was a Reformed epistemologist. (Reformed epistemology being an anti-evidentialist and somewhat Calvinist view which holds that belief in God is a properly basic belief requiring no rational justification.) I must be honest, again, and say that I’ve moved away from epistemology as the starting point of philosophy, in general, and have moved on to metaphysics and the study of being. So even though metaphysics will always have an epistemic side to it, I am not an epistemologist, although I have given some thought to it. Nonetheless, as we discussed last time, Reformed epistemology (RE) is very broad and vague. I want to unpack and clarify some of these concerns a little more here.

One reason I say that RE is vague is that even though Alvin Plantinga claims to be a Reidian foundationalist, so too, did the Old Princetonians who were Reformed as well. And yet, the positions of the old Princetonian common sense realists are very different from Plantinga’s conceptual scheme. As indicated in the last post, the Reformed scholastics and Old Princeton theologians had a very strong sense of natural theology and espoused a high regard for the use of evidence and reason in presenting Christian truth. Having become Lutheran, I will admit to becoming a little rusty on the Reformed tradition. Nonetheless, the Lutheran scholastics, on the issues of faith and reason, are not that far apart from the classical Reformed in their use of natural theology, logical reasoning, and use of evidence (here I am thinking only in terms of philosophical theology or natural theology, not theology proper). I do not want to be too repetitive but I would encourage everyone to read Luther (as far as he approved the cosmological argument), Melanchthon, and the Lutheran scholastic theologians J. Musaeus, and Milton Valentine who were realists, foundationalists, and, unlike Plantinga, held to a robust and thoroughgoing natural theology. But why would we see such a philosophical similarity here between such different traditions as the Reformed and Lutheran? The answer is that many of the Lutheran and Reformed scholastics were Aristotelian in their approach to philosophical questions. And what was first seen by Aristotle to be the way things are, is still the way things are, for the structure of reality does not change from generation to generation (Sullivan, 278). Our understanding, of course, deepens as we can make greater metaphysical insights but the order of reality does not change.

What does this have to do with Plantinga and RE? First, I think, Plantinga is coming from a different strain of Reformed thought, one that disregards natural philosophy or at least downplays its significance (many on the Calvinist side will claim there is no such thing as natural theology). I merely want to point out that the “reformers” he appeals to, and the Protestant scholastic tradition generally, may not have really understood his concept of properly basic belief. Further, Plantinga’s system of thought is a departure from classical Protestant scholasticism and orthodoxy.

Another way RE is vague is its theory of knowledge. Some representatives of RE hold to foundationalism (the belief that all knowledge rests ultimately on fundamental truths which are themselves not subject to any proof and are the foundations of other truths, ironically a very Aristotelian idea.) A quick survey of a few practitioners of RE demonstrates this. Kelly James Clark is a personalist and subjectivist following the trajectory of Kierkegaard and Pascal (although Clark does seem to espouse a kind of broad foundationalism in his book Return to Reason). William Alston is a reliabilist and holds to the correspondence theory of truth. And Nicholas Woltersdorff is a coherentist, while Randal Rauser is a moderate foundationalist. Alvin Plantinga is a functionalist (although he would most likely hold to a broad foundationalism). To understand RE, as a school of thought is very difficult. The best way to understand this method is to understand that it is very broad and some thinkers will probably disagree with others on certain points (not very surprising as anyone knows who has investigated any school of philosophy). But as an epistemology, which the methodology claims to be, it is problematic and confusing due to its lack of clarity. Apparently, a variety of epistemologies can be included in the term “Reformed epistemology”. The only common theme is that it is a kind of foundationalism and a type (unique perhaps) of evidentialism. 

I do not want to do much more criticism at this point. From a classical perspective, RE contains elements of truth and error. It might be more helpful to illustrate how RE actually lead me to the classical apologetic method. In part three, I’ll discuss some problems with intuitionism and the error of making epistemology drive one’s philosophy (in short, one’s theory of knowledge is a separate issue from the question of reality itself). 

Back when I was reading everything I could about RE, I realized it suffered from the same criticisms as other methodologies. How does the concept of God, as a properly basic belief which requires no other evidence, account for the Christian God? Could not my Hindu friend’s conception of Shiva be just as properly basic? In other words, the best that RE could do is attain to a kind of generic theism. But how exactly are two different and contradictory properly basic beliefs to be adjudicated? Many practitioners of RE claim one needs to appeal to external evidence, a properly functioning cognitive structure, and human reason. The truth is, at some point, we have to deal with external reality and utilize some method of verification and many representatives of Reformed epistemology acknowledge this. It does not seem to be helpful to provide reasons and evidence why no reasons or evidence are needed to be rational or justified in one’s belief in God.  

What I learned from Reformed epistemology is that enlightenment empiricism and narrow foundationalism is a difficult position to defend. The worry, for those who hold to RE, is that after the enlightenment, we are all now narrow empiricists. Plantinga and others are correct to point out this epistemological error. I think Reformed epistemologists are correct to argue for a broad foundationalism. The interesting thing I discovered is that the perennial and classical method of Aristotle and Aquinas never held to such a narrow epistemology. It is a mistake for Reformed epistemologists to charge the classical theist with an epistemology he or she does not hold to. 

In order to avoid fideism, and I think they narrowly escape the charge, Reformed epistemologists have to give reasons and evidence for their position. They do embrace a form of foundationalism, in order to make sense out of their methodology. This is what lead me back to the classical method. Because Reformed epistemologists hold to a type of epistemic evidential foundationalism, it just made the most sense to be intellectually honest and adopt the stronger position developed from natural theology known as classical apologetics. Protestant and Lutheran scholasticism supports this move. Although it is possible that I have missed something, I have never encountered a representative of classical apologetics who held to an enlightenment epistemology, at least the way Clark or Plantinga claims. At least from the Lutheran side, classical apologetics is in full agreement with the subjective and objective aspects of knowing and understands the significant distinction of the ministerial and magisterial use of reason. I have not seen Reformed epistemologists address these issues. I also believe that the Aristotelian and Thomist categories of human capacities and potentialities in the reasoning process and the thinking individual composed of both form and matter (hylomorphism) avoid the narrow evidential charge by a long-shot! 

Finally, I understand that some Thomists have adopted Reformed epistemology as an epistemology. One does not have to be Reformed to adopt Reformed epistemology. I once attended a lecture given by the Catholic philosopher Francis Beckwith who used Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology to argue for the existence of God. This makes sense because it is an epistemology (theory of knowledge) that makes use of reason and evidence. But Reformed epistemology is just that, an epistemology. It is important to go on to develop reasons and use evidence for one’s position. Reformed epistemology is not the entire story. In part three I will discuss other concerns I have about RE such as why we do not want to start with epistemology, and why metaphysics is the strongest and most concrete point of departure.

Works cited.

Sullivan, Daniel. An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition. TAN Books, 2009.

For further reading:  Norman Kretzmann, “Evidence Against Anti-Evidentialism,” in the book Our Knowledge of God: Essays on Natural and Philosophical Theology, ed. Kelly James Clark.

Classical Apologetics, Philosophical Theology, Uncategorized

Is Belief In God Properly Basic? Part One

by Dave Seng

Unless the philosopher solves problems by laying adequate analytical foundations for demonstration and, in the light thereof, by proving conclusions from self-evident premises, he does nothing. – Mortimer J. Adler

I still remember when Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed Epistemology became popular. For me, it was when I was an undergrad in the mid-1990s. I know that Dr. Plantinga was working on his theory well before the 1990s but that was the time that I was introduced to it. At first, I will admit to having been taken with some of its ideas, so much so that I wrote my senior thesis on the topic (I attended a small liberal arts college which required a written thesis from its seniors) in which I attempted to show the connection between Reformed epistemology and St. Augustine’s religious conceptual scheme. I still have much respect for the contributions Alvin Plantinga has made to philosophical theology and his careful reflection on the big issues of God and how one might know Him made a powerful and positive impact in my intellectual journey.

Since then, I have moved away from Reformed epistemology, due to a more complete reading of St. Augustine and other thinkers. To make St. Augustine a Reformed epistemologist might be a stretch1. That said, I still have a deep respect for St. Augustine (I just do not think he was the intuitionist that some Reformed thinkers have made him out to be) and I still believe it is very good advice to read him thoroughly before going on to read St. Thomas Aquinas and others in the Western Christian tradition.

This will be the first in a series of posts evaluating Reformed epistemology from the standpoint of classical realism and classical apologetics. In short, I do not think it is a very good apologetic methodology (but I am not sure it ever was intended for Christian apologetics because its focus is on religious epistemology and many of its key proponents have said as much2). On the other hand, I do not think it is a complete failure. I think it is important to account for intuitions and the nonrational side of human existence in religious knowledge. It broadens foundationalism (the belief that all knowledge rests ultimately on fundamental truths which are themselves not subject to any proof and are the foundations of all other truth) against Enlightenment evidentialism and strict empiricism (and, as will be developed, it helps us define these terms). It reminds all of us that whatever position we end up taking, some kind of account needs to be made for the nonrational and immediate knowledge we have of the world around us inherently. I think one difference is that I am coming from a Thomistic stance which emphasizes the common sense data that we all have and Reformed epistemology emphasizes a kind of Platonic rationalism which falls very close to the idea that all genuine truth comes independently of sense experience, through reason and logical thinking alone (you would not be wrong, either, to sense traces of Kant here and religious personalism). I hope to illuminate these important themes and address other concerns such as fideism as we go along. I also hope to show how Reformed epistemology drove me to classical apologetics as the correct methodology.

Before we get to criticism, however. Let’s understand what Reformed epistemology is first.

The best summary of Reformed epistemology I have found is in Ed Miller’s textbook, Questions that Matter. From Miller: Some recent philosophers (primarily Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Kelly James Clark, and others) have introduced what they call “reformed epistemology” and have argued that belief in God is a “properly basic” belief, that is, a belief that may be accepted immediately, without evidence, as with “2 + 2 = 4,” “the world has existed for longer than five minutes,” “I had breakfast this morning,” and “it is wrong to kill people for the fun of it.” This of course does not mean that belief in God can be arbitrary or unjustified anymore than any other properly basic beliefs. These thinkers find in the sixteenth-century Protestant reformer John Calvin an account of a possible and appropriate ground for the properly basic belief in God:

“There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. … God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. … men one and all perceive that there is a God and that he is their maker” (Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Battles edition, Westminster Press, I, 43-44).

Dr. Plantinga also draws on Aquinas’s conception of the “sensus divinitatis” (sense of the divine) from which Calvin makes his claim that a knowledge of God is implanted in everyone. Reformed epistemologists also think that Romans 2:15 support this idea, “So they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts either accusing or defending them …” In general, reformed epistemology teaches that an understanding of God is already intuitively and immediately understood because it is written on the heart of every person. They go so far as to say that belief in God is reasonable without evidence because it is “properly basic.” Belief in God may be embraced apart from rational evidence, and at the same time be justified as a natural disposition implanted in the soul by God himself (Miller, 280).

In Reason and Belief in God, Plantinga makes this statement, “What the Reformers meant to hold is that it is entirely right, rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at all; in this respect belief in God resembles belief in the past, in the existence of other persons, and in the existence of material objects” (17). 

Now, this is a very odd claim. Who are the Reformers Plantinga is appealing to? Luther and Calvin never held such a position and neither did the Lutheran and Reformed scholastics. Although very different in their theological perspectives, both Luther and Calvin had a place for natural theology. Luther, in fact, approved of the cosmological argument. On the Reformed side, there is a tradition that values natural theology, common-sense perception, empiricism, and facts. They, too, claim Calvin as a primary influence. The Reformed scholastics such as Zacharias Ursinus, Francis Turretin, and the Old Princetonians (Alexander, Hodge, Warfield, and Machen, who were common sense realists) would not have adopted such a claim (and neither would modern reformed thinkers such as RC Sproul, and John Gerstner). On the Lutheran side, Melanchton, Chemnitz, and Gerhard would equally have rejected such a universal statement. Either Dr. Plantinga is overstating his case here, or he is unaware that the “Reformers” to which he refers, and the Reformed and Lutheran traditions, generally, are certainly not monochrome in this regard.

A further worry, here, is that Reformed epistemology is a type of fideism–The idea that human reason has no part in Christian faith and rejects any knowledge of God that comes through natural reason and natural revelation. For example, theologians influenced by Kant’s epistemology are often fideists, due to their rejection of natural reason. Plantinga of course, may not be a fideist in the strict sense because he has put a lot of work into what justifies a properly basic belief. Nonetheless, his argument seems to fall under the broad category of fideism at least to the degree in which “it is entirely right, rational, reasonable, and proper to believe in God without any evidence or argument at all”. In other words, his argument is fideistic although he may not be a fideist.

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, I have a very strong appreciation for Alvin Plantinga and the intellectual support I received from studying Reformed epistemology was a genuine gift. I understand Dr. Plantinga now has some health concerns and I pray for him. As I will develop in future posts, I just do not think that Reformed epistemology is the complete story or provides the full picture of human knowing or the relationship between faith and reason.

1Augustine, for example, lays a basic foundation for natural theology in his Confessions, Book VII chapters 14 – 17. In Chapter 17 he quotes Romans 1:20 twice–For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. Plantinga has a non-traditional view of natural theology and comes from a strain of Calvinist thinkers who down-play or deny natural theology.

2In a couple of places, one of Plantinga’s students, Kelly James Clark has indicated that Reformed epistemology is applicable to many different apologetic methodologies.