Classical Apologetics, Intellectual History, Natural Theology, Philosophical Theology

Spinoza’s Philosophical Method and Augustine’s Natural Theology: Part One

by Dave Seng

[Note some of this is a further development of the post about Descartes’ rational presuppositionalism. You can find that post here. This series will move on to explore a similar version of presuppositionalism as it is found in the theoretical thought of Baruch Spinoza.]

One of the human race’s great metaphysical questions is whether or not God exists. This question divides many authors in the Western intellectual tradition. Some think that God does not exist. Nietzsche, Hobbes, and Hume, for example, fall into this category, while others such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Spinoza think that a god or the Christian God does exist. Among those who believe that God exists, there is a division between them about how to correctly reason or argue for the existence of God. On one side, Descartes and Spinoza think that God should rationally be assumed or presupposed in any argument for God’s existence. Others, such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas think that arguing from the nature of existence, or being itself, is the best way to make a case for God’s existence. The difference between these two groups is one of methodology. Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position can be called rational presuppositionalism, while thinkers such as Aristotle, Augustine, and Aquinas hold the position known as natural theology (or natural philosophical theology). The next couple of posts will critically explore the philosophical differences between the approach of Descartes and Spinoza (rational presuppositionalism) and the natural theology of Augustine and Aquinas.

The concept of natural theology will be developed further in the upcoming posts. However, in brief, natural theology is a philosophical and theological way of reasoning to the existence of God which starts with the reality of being and becoming, or the fact of reality as it is, and uses the natural laws of logic, which are properties of being, including the principle of causality to conclude that God exists necessarily, eternally, and transcendently. Both Augustine and Aquinas utilize this general form of natural theology. Presuppositional rationalism, on the other hand, is the position that God’s existence must be presupposed and reasons from that point. With presuppositional rationalism—primarily in regards to Descartes’s and Spinoza’s position—God is presupposed because God is conceived as a “Perfect Being” and existence necessarily applies to a Perfect Being. It is also a form of rationalism because it holds that all genuine knowledge comes from rational thought apart from sense experience, or any appeal to concrete reality or Being. In this context, Spinoza puts forward three ideas worthy of careful reflection. They are his philosophical presupposition that God exists (that is, God must be presupposed in any argument about God’s existence), pantheism (God and the universe are the same thing), and his conception that the universe is the cause of itself (self-creation or self-causation).

Spinoza’s description of God is helpful at this point. In rational geometric fashion, Spinoza presents definitions and axioms which he uses to explain his conception of God. He defines God as “Being”—not the transcendent cause of Being—but an imminent Being with infinite substance, “By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence” (589). God, as a kind of substance, is “that which is in itself and conceived through itself,” (591), and is the “cause of itself” (590). For Spinoza, God and natural substance are one. God is a self-caused substance.

In many ways, Spinoza follows Descartes’s presuppositional rational methodology, so it is helpful to briefly understand Descartes’s line of reasoning. Both Descartes and Spinoza believe that God exists because God is a “Perfect Being.” Perfection must be a property of existence and because God is thought, or conceived to be, perfect, God necessarily exists. This is a form of thinking which argues that if God is the greatest being that can be conceived, God necessarily exists because existence is a property of Being (what is called the ontological argument for God’s existence). Both Spinoza and Descartes hold to this conceptual scheme of God’s existence. Descartes explicitly connects his presuppositional approach with God as a “Perfect Being.” When trying to overcome the question of how to prove external reality or whether or not one can trust their thoughts, Descartes offers this line of reasoning,

And though the wisest minds may study the matter as much as they will, I do not believe that they will be able to give any sufficient reason for removing this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God. For to begin with, that which I have just taken as a rule that is to say, that all the things that we very clearly and very distinctly conceive of are true, is certain only because God is or exists and that He is a Perfect Being, and that all that is in us issues from Him. (277, emphasis added)

Notice what Descartes says here—one must presuppose God exists because God is a Perfect Being which must include existence. God exists because existence is a property of Being, and in order to be the most Perfect Being, such a Being must have the property of existence. Descartes calls this a “metaphysical certainty” (277). When thinking of God, according to presuppositional rationalism, one is simply presupposing God’s existence. In other words, according to this Cartesian approach, God is the perfect Being which must be assumed when arguing for the existence of God. The presuppositional character of Descartes’s argument further reasons that if our thoughts and things we conceive of are true, they are true because God exists.

Next time, we will go into the presuppositional method of Spinoza as he follows much, though not all, of Descartes’ approach. Finally, it is worth noting that presuppositional rational reasoning is not new and does not begin with Van Til, Bahnsen, or Frame. In fact, presuppositional thinking does have significant similarities to the approach of Descartes’, Kant, and Spinoza and includes the usual errors.

Works Cited

Descartes. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Classical Apologetics, Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology

The Presuppositionalism of René Descartes

by Dave Seng

Note: I discuss a few of these thoughts regarding the presuppositional method of apologetics here. In this post I will look at a 17th century version of presuppositionalism drawn from Rene Descartes, who is often considered the father of modern philosophy.

The more I read the great authors of the western intellectual tradition, the more I realize there really is nothing new. This occurred to me once again when I was reading through the works of René Descartes and discovered that he maintained a presuppositional bent in his argumentation for God’s existence. This experience took me back to the time when I first learned the basics of philosophical theology and apologetic method. Like most who begin exploring the field of Christian apologetics, I was introduced to the presuppositional school of apologetics. Mostly, I read Greg Bahnsen, Cornelius Van Til, Gordon Clark, and John Frame. I read other authors related to the presuppositional school but I never found the method to be conceptually coherent or rationally compelling. Interestingly enough, when I went back to re-read Descartes for my doctoral work, I discovered that presuppositional apologetic thinking is not new, certainly not just a twentieth or twenty-first century phenomenon, and the same problems with the method still apply.1 (In many ways the presuppositional school of apologetics closely corresponds to Kantian transcendental idealism and German idealism in general such as Kant, Hegel, Schelling, etc., but that is a topic for another post.) By “presuppositional method” I am referring to any apologetic approach that presupposes the truth of Christianity or the Christian God and then reasons from that point.

I especially enjoy reading the earlier thinkers who contribute to philosophy and theology because they often shed light on today’s intellectual issues and thinking in ways that might be overlooked or missed. I’ve read Descartes many times in my academic career and the presuppositional character of his work went unnoticed. Only recently did it stand out to me. That’s the great thing about reading a truly classic author. One can always learn something new.

To begin, Descartes was a rationalist. In contrast to other philosophers, who take the reality of Being as a fact and use that fact (derived from sense experience) as a point of philosophical departure, rationalists such as Descartes think that the truth about reality can be acquired by reason alone. This is an important point which explains why he thinks God must be presupposed when it comes to explaining the nature of reality.

Descartes presents a presuppositional argument for the existence of God based on the idea of God as a Perfect Being. To be fair, Descartes presents several different arguments for God’s existence in his writings. Here, I am mostly concerned with his presuppositional approach found in his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason, and Meditations on First Philosophy. All his arguments, however, are rational in nature (appealing to reason alone) and based on the idea of God, and establishing the existence of God based on geometrical argumentation. Descartes’s Perfect Being argument is similar to the ontological argument, a kind of proof for God’s existence: God must exist inasmuch as the attribute of existence or, in some forms, necessary existence, is part of his nature. Descartes version of the argument simply contends that a Perfect Being must exist because existence is property of perfection. Descartes attempts to demonstrate that God can be proved the same way one can rationally solve a geometrical equation, simply by following the rules of reason. While contemplating the axioms of geometry, Descartes applies the same rational mathematical reasoning to the existence of God,

For to take an example, I saw very well that if we suppose a triangle to be given, the three angles must certainly be equal to two right angles; but for all that I saw no reason to be assured that there was any such triangle in existence, while on the contrary, on reverting to the examination of the idea which I had of a Perfect Being, I found that in this case existence was implied in it in the same manner in which the equality of its three angles to two right angles is implied in the triangle; or in the idea of a sphere, that all the points on its surface are equidistant from its centre, or even more evidently still. Consequently it is at least as certain that God who is a Being so perfect, is, or exists, as any demonstration of geometry can be. (277)

Descartes Perfect Being exists the way a triangle exists—it must exist the way a triangle has two right angles. In other words, God must be presupposed the same way one presupposes the principles and axioms of mathematical truths. Descartes is aware that such a rational attempt may not be very convincing for some. Following his method of extreme doubt, Descartes shifts his approach and asks about the reliability of our thoughts during a dream. Can we doubt our thoughts and imagination the same way that we doubt our senses? Descartes provides this answer,

And though the wisest minds may study the matter as much as they will, I do not believe that they will be able to give any sufficient reason for removing this doubt, unless they presuppose the existence of God. For to begin with, that which I have just taken as a rule that is to say, that all the things that we very clearly and very distinctly conceive of are true, is certain only because God is or exists and that He is a Perfect Being, and that all that is in us issues from Him. (277, emphasis added)

Notice what Descartes is saying here—one must presuppose God exists because God is a Perfect Being which must include existence. In other words, God is (presupposition), therefore God exists (because a Perfect Being must exist). This is the heart of the presuppositional approach. And it is entirely circular in reasoning. But before we get to the analysis of Descartes approach and the presuppositional method, it is best to look at his basic points of departure.

To summarize, Descartes reasoning is as follows: one can not trust the senses because the senses can be wrong. However, as Descartes famously observes “I think therefore I am”, and he concludes that he can in fact trust his reasoning, because he has to exist in order to think (275, 276). Further, Descartes thinks that because he can think of a Perfect Being, God must exist. God must exist because existence is a property of Being and in order to be the most Perfect Being, such a Being must have the property of existence. Descartes calls this a “metaphysical certainty” (277). If one doubts such a metaphysical certainty, they should presuppose God exists because he reasons that God’s existence will solve the doubts one can experience from thoughts, dreams, imagination, or the senses. In other words, one must presuppose that God exists in order to make sense out of the reality of the world. Descartes makes this even more clear in his Meditation on First Philosophy,

And we must not object that it is in truth necessary for me to assert that God exists after having presupposed that He possesses every sort of perfection, since existence is one of these (320).

For Descartes, God exists because it is presupposed that God has perfection. It is worth pointing out that not every theist that holds to the ontological argument, or Perfect Being theology, is a presuppositionalist or must be a presuppositionalist in order to defend it. Here, I am merely pointing out that Descartes does make his presupposition of God’s existence a central point in his argument for God’s existence. Descartes needs to make this philosophical assertion because he can not start with the trust worthiness of Being or reality itself (for him, those things must be doubted). His argument must be purely rational because that is the only starting point that will provide certainty for him. Descartes philosophical theology is unique in the sense that he does not take Being as his starting point but focuses on rational geometrical proofs and the need to presuppose the existence of God as the foundation of his method. For Descartes, God is a Perfect Being which must be presupposed.

Now a few concluding thoughts about Descartes and presuppositionalism can be said. First, there is nothing inherently wrong with a pure rational argument for God’s existence. Plato would have have agreed with some of Descartes ideas. Many mathematicians have come to theistic conclusions based on the symmetry and principles of math itself. Many, I think, are valid. The problem is that starting with the existence of God and then arguing from that point is bad logic. The thing that always prevented me from taking the presuppositional school of apologetics seriously is the the circularity of the method. Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy which is formally called the petitio principii (begging of the question). This is an error that occurs when when the conclusion of an argument is already present, usually disguised or vague, in the premises. It is seen as circular because the conclusion is present in the premises, and no real progress is made. A more modern example of circular reasoning is this, “You can’t expect seventeen-year-olds to vote intelligently, because they are too young to have good judgment about the issues.” The conclusion of the argument is one of its premises. When the conclusion is one of the premises, the argument is circular and begs the question. Descartes reasoning that God must be presupposed to show that God exists is circular. Finally, it makes little practical sense to tell the non-theist that they must presuppose the existence of God when the existence of God is the central question.

There is another issue with rationalism more generally. Much of modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes begins with epistemology (how we know what we know). When one begins with how we know, and not the metaphysical givenness of reality, a pure rational epistemology can quickly go circular. Descartes gets things only half right here. Existence is a property of being. But there are different orders of being and different kinds of existence. My thought of a flying unicorn with laser beams shooting out its eyes has a very different kind of being than the tree in front of my house. Imagination presents a different mode of being than physical reality. Angels have a very different kind of being than I do. There are different orders to being and different kinds of existence. Descartes is making a rational or conceptual statement and applying it to concrete reality, when in fact, the question really is whether or not such a Perfect Being exists absolutely, not rationally or conceptually. The theist and non-theist can both have the same conception of a Perfect Being but the issue at stake is whether or not such a being actually exists. Starting with what-is and understanding the order of being (and order of knowing) is a far more fruitful project.

It is worth noting here that Benedict Spinoza assumes much of the Cartesian methodology and presuppositions. However, Spinoza was lead through his rational conception of Perfect Being theology that God and the world are one. For Spinoza, pantheism was the logical outcome based on his Cartesian rationalism and presuppositions. Presupposing the existence of God on strict rational grounds does not prevent one from becoming a pantheist. In other words, presupposing that God exists does not necessarily lead one to Christian theism.

As I will always try to explain, when one begins with epistemology, and make that one’s starting point, instead of metaphysical realism, or the givenness of Being, things go bad in philosophy and one’s approach to apologetics.

1Benedict Spinoza in his Ethics often assumes Descartes’s presuppositional outlook, but I hope to develop that later. Interestingly, the father of presuppositionalism, Van Til, developed his school of apologetics based on ethical concerns.

Works Cited

Descartes, Rene. Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza. Great Books of the Western World. Vol. 28. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1999.

Classical Apologetics, Philosophical Theology, Uncategorized

Is Belief in God Properly Basic? Part Three: Concluding Aristotelian Thoughts

by Dave Seng

“Now, among the inquiries that we must undertake concerning God in Himself, We must set down in the beginning that whereby His Existence is demonstrated, as the necessary foundation of the whole work. For, if we do not demonstrate that God exists, all consideration of divine things is necessarily suppressed” (Summa Contra Gentiles, I. 9, 5.).

Part one can be found here.

Part two can be found here.

As I have been thinking through some of the differences between Reformed epistemology and classical theism (generally, the perennial philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Christian Aristotelian tradition), I think I have found a couple ideas which sets these two positions apart. I think there are real differences between the two schools of thought but I also think there is some equivocation in terms that needs to be explored and clarified that might help bring understanding to the issue and point out where the differences really are. Once the terms are identified and properly understood it will be apparent why my journey to classical foundationalism was an easy and logical path to take. Keep in mind that although I primarily refer to Alvin Plantinga, I am just pointing out that he is the chief proponent of Reformed epistemology but often when I refer to Reformed epistemology, I am including such thinkers as Wolterstorff, Alston, Clark among others. I also understand that defining Reformed epistemology is a very difficult thing since many Reformed epistemologists hold to conflicting epistemologies (as pointed out previously, some are coherentists, some hold to a form of correspondence, and others are reliabilists).

First, I think I have two major positions that now separate me from Reformed epistemology. The first is classical realism, the other is the ontological priority of reality, and the resulting laws of logic and first principles. Both positions are related. The laws of logic are simply properties and reflections of being. So, one difference would be that I do not start with intuitions or moods about reality but take reality as a given (because to deny it would be absurd) and the fact that we concretely live in a world in which reality is the determinant of order, not existentially person relative impressions, nor notions – nor even our epistemology. The perennial philosophy of realism is the philosophy of being and is the reason I start with metaphysics.

Plantinga and other Reformed epistemologists believe that the nature of how we know things needs to be reworked. Plantinga’s position is an epistemology (theory of knowledge), not a metaphysical framework that starts from the nature of reality itself. At least for realists, one’s theory of knowledge acquisition is a different question from reality itself. To collapse or conflate the two positions is idealism. This actually happens a lot in the philosophy of science. The best book to read on this is Roger Trigg’s text, Beyond Matter. I am not suggesting that Plantinga is an idealist. I simply want to point out that if one starts with epistemology rather than with being itself and first principles, things can get weird and circular very quickly. Now, back to Plantinga.

He suggests that Reformed epistemology is reasonable because he thinks it is possible to be rational and believe in God without any evidence. In order to build his case, and avoid fideism, he must redefine the traditional philosophical terms of reason and evidence.

The central concern to Reformed epistemology is the worry over Enlightenment evidentialism and the definition used is attributed to W. K. Clifford, “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence” (Plantinga 25).

According to Reformed epistemologists, all evidentialists hold to this position since they generally collapse the distinction, or at least blur the relationship, between foundationalism and evidentialism.

As one who is interested in and regularly engages with classical writers such as Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, and others, I never really understood why Reformed epistemology calls such a strict definition of evidentialism “classical.” Aristotle, for example, never held such a position due to his conception of the potentiality of the human mind.

In fairness though, it should be kept in mind that Reformed epistemologists are generally concerned with undermining the legitimacy of Enlightenment rationalism, which is what they mean by classical foundationalism. Since some Enlightenment thinkers fantastically misread Aristotle, it would be a mistake to claim that the Enlightenment is the “classical” position. Aristotle was not a 17th-century empiricist. Although an empiricist in a loose sense, Aristotle held to the capacities and potentialities of the human mind which are closely connected to his hylomorphism, epistemology, and anthropology. (Aristotle never rejected the Forms of Plato, he just arrived at them by way of induction and abstraction, a different way than his teacher). Aristotle would not say the human mind was a “blank slate” or purely passive.

As Kretzmann correctly points out, Plantinga misreads Aristotle. In his Posterior Analytics, Aristotle is not attempting to provide a method that scientists are to use to discover knowledge. Rather, Aristotle is simply providing a way for scientists to categorize and classify their discoveries (Kretzmann 27). Finally, Aristotle does not attempt to claim that all knowledge must be subject to the scientific method.

Aristotle would definitely leave room for memory beliefs, beliefs about the past, and beliefs about the external world. These are simply the results of induction, abstraction, and common sense. He would also remind us that these rest in a matrix of metaphysical commitments grounded in the nature of being (reality). As A. N. Whitehead reminds us:

“Induction presupposes metaphysics. In other words, it rests upon an antecedent rationalism. You cannot have a rational justification for your appeal to history until your metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to appeal to; and likewise, your conjectures as to the future presuppose some basis of knowledge that there is a future already subjected to some determinations.” (Science and the Modern World, 55)

The irony to me regarding Reformed epistemology is that although it claims to be an anti-evidentialist argument it certainly provides a lot of evidence and reasons for its position. It simply broadens the scope of what kind of evidence is epistemically acceptable. There is no argument here, from the genuinely classical position of Aristotle.

Honestly, Reformed epistemology is a weird way to argue—one is rational, warranted, and justified in believing in God without evidence, and here are all the reasons and evidence why you do not need evidence. (I can hear the objector now … “So, you are saying I should use my reason to say I do not need reasons”? The circularity is starting to make my head hurt.)

In all seriousness, Reformed epistemologists are correct to point out the errors of Enlightenment rationalism. The Enlightenment was a time of very serious intellectual error. And the broad foundationalism that is argued for is correct, and on a closer investigation, it is not that different from true classical Aristotelian epistemology. However, it is how Reformed epistemologists redefine their terms that is not helpful.

Aristotle was among the first to point out the need for basic first principles upon which it would be folly to argue against. He believed it was the mark of a foolish person not to understand that. Classical Aristotelian evidentialists are foundationalists. Reformed epistemologists are simply arguing for a broad foundationalism. In my own trajectory, adopting a classical Aristotelian foundationalism based on first principles was the logical and more intellectually honest step from Reformed epistemology. Although, I’m not really sure how the sense of the divine qualifies as a first principle and some of Plantinga’s approach reminds a lot of Bergsonian intuitionism.

A few questions still remain, however.

It is not completely clear to classical Christian Aristotelian foundationalists, however, that the sensus divinitatus (a Calvinist idea which indicates the innate sense of divinity all humans are supposed to have) qualifies as a basic belief (a first principle?) or that it is helpful to the argument. How is it included in one’s foundational basic beliefs? If there is a sensus divinitatus, it was horribly disfigured and became self-centered rather than God-centered or other-centered due to the fall. It is not clear how that factors into one’s properly functioning cognitive structure.

Some concluding thoughts are in order. It is a mistake for Reformed epistemologists to call their critics wrong because they are holding to “classical foundationalism” when they are not using a definition that would apply to the classical Aristotelian foundationalist. It is important to avoid equivocation if one wants to have a clear and careful discussion.

There is a final, slight, but important difference between traditional Aristotelian foundationalists and Reformed epistemology. Christian Aristotelians hold to the first principles of reality. Among these first principles are the laws of logic (law of identity, law of noncontradiction, law of excluded middle). These first principles of reality are undeniable since they cannot be denied without employing them. They are properties of Being. It is uncertain whether or not the sensus divinitatus has these qualifications. Theism, therefore, is something that can be reasoned to. To reason from it, runs the risk of circularity.

Works Cited

Kretzmann, Norman. “Evidence Against Anti-Evidentialism.” Our Knowledge of God, edited by Kelly James Clark, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 17 – 38.

Plantinga, Alvin. Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. University of Notre Dame Press. 1983.

Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge University Press. 1929

For further reading:

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics. Crossway. While Dr. Craig is not a Reformed epistemologist, he believes elements of Reformed epistemology can be a valid source of confirmation for the Christian and it can work with external evidence for Christianity.

RC Sproul, John Girstner, Arthur Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics. Academie Books. One of the absolute best introductions to classical apologetics. Craig Parton (in his book, The Defense Never Rests) is in error when he says that Dr. Sproul is a presuppositionalist. Having worked with Dr. Sproul personally for six years, I can testify that he was never a presuppositionalist. Dr. Sproul was much closer to St. Thomas Aquinas and the Protestant Scholastics.

Daniel J. Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition. The single best introduction to general philosophy from a Thomistically inspired realist. The references and footnotes are fantastic.

Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics. Center for Thomistic Studies. The best volume on Christian metaphysics. Not always easy reading but well worth it if the reader actively engages with the text. I think it is slightly better than Clarke’s The One and the Many.

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.