Epistemic Justification of Christian Faith for Talbot School of Theology

Dr. Craig gives a virtual lecture for students at Talbot School of Theology on the Christian doctrine of faith and its rational justification.

Hello. This is William Lane Craig. Professor Craig Hazen has invited me to address the students in the MA program in apologetics at Talbot School of Theology out of my current research. So I'm going to be sharing some remarks today from my chapter on faith in my projected systematic philosophical theology.

Two principle questions arise when we consider the Christian doctrine of faith. One, what is the nature of faith? And, two, what rational justification can be given for faith? I've addressed the first question in my video lecture to students in the MA program in philosophy at Talbot. Today, I wish to address issues raised by the latter.

In dealing with the rational justification of Christian faith, philosophers have helpfully distinguished between practical justification and epistemic justification. Epistemic justification is concerned with the provision of truth-directed reasons, that is, reasons aimed at establishing the truth of the proposition in question that are sufficient for a rational person to believe the relevant proposition. Whereas practical justification is concerned with the provision of non-truth-directed reasons that are sufficient for a rational person to believe the relevant proposition.

Proponents of pragmatic arguments aim to show that we are sometimes within our rights in holding beliefs for which we lack epistemic justification. A common illustration is to believe on the part of someone suffering from stage four cancer that he will come through all right. Having such a belief may actually be conducive to his survival in view of the health benefits of having such an optimistic attitude. Therefore even though his belief that he will survive his cancer may not be epistemically justified and in that sense irrational, still he is practically justified in believing such a thing. Practical rationality and epistemic rationality can thus come apart.

Some thinkers will insist that while pragmatic arguments show that holding certain beliefs, including religious beliefs, is beneficial and therefore prudent, nevertheless that does not show that holding such beliefs is epistemically permissible, that one has not violated some epistemic duty in believing without adequate evidence. Accordingly, critics of Christian belief have typically defended what has been called the evidentialist objection to Christian belief which can be formulated as follows:

1. Christian belief is epistemically justified only if there are cogent arguments in support of Christian belief.
2. There are no cogent arguments in support of Christian belief.
3. Therefore, Christian belief is not epistemically justified.

Some Christian philosophers have responded to the evidentialist objection by defending various arguments of natural theology and Christian evidences on behalf of Christian belief in order to rebut (2). Proponents of such an evidential case for Christian belief may or may not agree with (1). A person who knows that Christianity is true, for example, on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit may also have a sound apologetic which reinforces or confirms for him the Spirit's witness but does not serve as the basis of his belief. Since I do not think that such an apologetic case, though available, is necessary for the epistemic rationality of Christian belief, I leave it to the side for present and turn to an examination of premise (1) instead.

One of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology is so-called Reformed epistemology spearheaded and developed by Alvin Plantinga which directly challenges the evidentialist construal of epistemic rationality. Plantinga has articulated his views fully in a monumental three-volume series Warrant: The Current Debate (1993), Warrant and Proper Function (1993) and Warranted Christian Belief (2000). Due to the constraints of time I shall assume that my audience as advanced students in apologetics is already somewhat familiar with Plantinga’s religious epistemology.

During the years following the completion of Plantinga's Warrant trilogy it has come to be widely appreciated that Reformed epistemology actually consists of two standalone elements: (1) proper functionalism which is a theory of epistemic warrant in terms of the proper functioning of one's cognitive faculties, and (2) Reformed epistemology proper which is an account of the way in which Christian theistic beliefs can be properly basic with respect to justification, rationality, and warrant. To avoid confusion I shall refer to these two elements as proper functionalism and proper basicality, respectively.

It is now recognized that proper basicality can be successfully married to a wide range of diverse epistemological theories and so is not wedded to proper functionalism. This realization is important for the systematic theologian since proper functionalism is obviously not explicitly taught by Scripture even if it is consistent with Scripture. The theologian who holds on scriptural grounds that Christian beliefs are properly basic thus need not advocate or defend proper functionalism.

Furthermore, many philosophers have sought to tease apart evidentialism from classical foundationalism by construing evidence more broadly than propositional evidence. For example, Dougherty and Tweedt take evidentialism to be the thesis that epistemically justified belief requires sufficient evidence of some sort. More precisely, E: A subject S is justified in believing a proposition p if and only if S's evidence sufficiently supports p, where S's evidence refers to the evidence on the basis of which S believes p. Such evidence need not be propositional, much less consist of the sort of propositional beliefs demanded by the classical foundationalist. Since, on Plantinga’s theory, properly basic beliefs are appropriately grounded in experience, that experience can be considered to be non-propositional evidence supporting such beliefs. E becomes especially innocuous if it is conjoined with what has come to be known as phenomenal conservatism, the view that if it seems to someone that p is true then he is prima facie justified in believing that p. More precisely PC: If it seems to S that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S is thereby justified in believing that p. Together, PC and E imply that if it seems to S that p then, in the absence of defeaters, S has evidence that sufficiently supports p.

Phenomenal conservatives nominalize how it seems to S as S's “seemings” which refers to experienced mental states with propositional content and a distinct phenomenal character. Seemings, like beliefs, have propositional content in that just as S may believe that p so it may seem to S that p, but whereas beliefs are true or false and typically corrigible, seemings are veridical or non-veridical and uniformly incorrigible. Moreover, seemings have a forceful phenomenal character. They have a sort of felt veridicality that inclines us to believe their propositional content. Chris Tucker has emphasized that given phenomenal conservatism evidence comes cheap so that evidentialism's demand for evidence is easy to satisfy for so long as it seems to S that p and S has no defeater of how things seem to him, S has adequate supporting evidence to believe that p.

Plantinga is quite open to evidentialism as expressed by E so long as one construes evidence broadly to include non-propositional, non-inferential grounds. He simply reminds us that evidentialism has been traditionally understood in terms of classical foundationalism with its demand for propositional inferential evidence for non-basic beliefs. Give up that demand, as the phenomenal conservative does, and Plantinga is happy to agree that seemings count as evidence for our properly basic beliefs.

Thus, there is no inherent conflict between evidentialism and the proper basicality of Christian beliefs with respect to justification, rationality, and warrant.

With these developments in mind, what might be said by way of assessment of Plantinga's religious epistemology? Plantinga embarked on two projects: a public one and a private Christian one. His public project was to show that there is no successful de jure objection to Christian belief apart from presupposing Christianity's falsehood. Some philosophers have complained that on pain of vicious circularity Plantinga’s model leaves us with no way of being justified in thinking that Christian belief is warranted for so far as he has shown all that we know is that if Christian theism is true then it is warranted. But what entitles us to think that it is true? Thus, Richard Swinburne, for example, complains that

[Plantinga] works up to the conclusion that ‘if Christian belief is true, it very likely does have warrant’ . . . But this conditional is of little use to anyone without some information about the truth of the antecedent (whether Christian belief is true); and on that, Plantinga explicitly acknowledges . . . he cannot help us.^[1]

Now, at first blush such an objection might seem maladroit. The very purpose of Plantinga’s model is to give an account of how we know that Christian theism is true, namely through the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis and the witness of the Holy Spirit. But the critic charges that such an appeal is viciously circular for it assumes the truth of the model which is what is in question. At issue here is not whether one's Christian belief was reliably formed but how one knows that one's Christian belief was reliably formed. If all one has to offer is a circular argument for that conclusion then one's justification for thinking that one's Christian belief was reliably formed seems to be defeated.

For his part, Plantinga seems content to rest with his conditional claim insofar as his public project is concerned. With respect to this project, in contrast to his private project, he says,

[I]t would not be appropriate to start from Christian belief; this is a project . . . addressed to all philosophers . . . not just Christians. And here what I offer to the non-Christian or nontheist philosopher is the proposition that if Christian belief is true, then (very likely) it has warrant, and has it in something like the way the model suggests. Given that there is no independent route to determining the warrant of Christian or theistic belief, it follows that there aren't any decent de jure objections that do not presuppose the falsehood of such belief.^[2]

William Alston acknowledges the circularity of accepting the reliability of Christian religious experience but he argues that such experience is in this respect on a par with sensory experience. So if we are justified in taking sense experience to be a source of knowledge, we are pari passu similarly justified in taking our Christian experience to be a source of knowledge. Thus, neither Plantinga nor Alston defends the use of circular arguments to establish the epistemic justification of Christian faith.

But now, in an important paper, Andrew Moon challenges the assumption that circular arguments always fail to confer epistemic justification upon target beliefs. Distinguishing between malignant circularity and benign circularity, Moon argues that a justificatory argument for the reliability of one's Christian belief can be benignly circular and therefore permissible in response to de jure objections, or, to connect with current philosophical nomenclature, what Moon calls debunking arguments against the permissibility of Christian belief.

The debunker claims that Christians are not justified in the categorical claim that it is probable that Christian belief is formed reliably. Moon disputes this by arguing that a circular argument for such a conclusion can be justificatory. Following Plantinga, Moon differentiates between a defeater-defeater and a defeater-deflector. A defeater-defeater is used to restore the epistemic credentials of a belief which is facing a defeater, but a defeater-deflector prevents a would-be defeater from becoming a defeater in the first place. To illustrate, suppose that you learn that a certain drug distorts the color vision of 95% of the people who ingest it, and that your dinner had been tainted with that drug. You now have a defeater for the reliability of your color vision. Obviously, you cannot defeat that defeater by appealing to how clearly the colored objects around you appear for the reliability of your color vision has now been radically called into question. Appealing to your color vision to establish the reliability of your color vision would be malignantly circular. Alternatively, you could enjoy a defeater-deflector of the would-be defeater. Suppose that before dinner a scientific expert informs you on the basis of a blood test that you are among the five percent who are immune to the drug. In this case the would-be defeater never becomes a defeater in the first place. It is deflected by what you already believe. In this case you are perfectly justified in appealing to your color vision to defend the veridicality of the colors you see because you have no reason to doubt the reliability of your color vision. Your appeal to your perception of colored objects in defense of the reliability of your color vision is circular but benignly so since it has not been called into question.

So consider Hannah, a Christian who believes that her Christian belief is reliably formed. Even if Hannah cannot permissibly just assume that her Christian belief is reliably formed, Hannah can deflect the debunker’s would-be defeater via the following argument.

1. Christian belief is true.
2. If Christian belief is true then it is probably true that my Christian belief is formed reliably.
3. Therefore, it is probably true that my Christian belief is formed reliably.

Hannah believes (2) on the basis of Plantinga’s argument for the claim that if Christian belief is true then it very likely has warrant in something like the way the model suggests, and on her belief that her personal Christian belief was not unusually formed. She figures that,

Given Christianity's truth, Christian belief is probably not merely the result of unreliable wishful thinking or dysfunction, as the Freud-Marx objection claims; it is more likely the result of a testimonial, belief-forming process that involves the Holy Spirit's reliable guidance.^[3]

Moreover, she knows that she formed her Christian belief through hearing the Gospel preached, seeking God, and prayer, and so on. So Hannah can justifiably believe that if Christianity is true, her Christian belief involved the Holy Spirit's activity and so was reliably formed.

But what about (1) [Christian belief is true]? Assume for the sake of argument that Hannah's belief in (1) is prime facie warranted? Does it succumb to a debunking argument? If we assume with Plantinga that there is no independent route to determining the warrant of Christian belief, Hannah's argument for (3) [Therefore, it is probably true that My Christian belief is formed reliably] is epistemically, if not logically, circular, for her basis for her believing that my Christian belief is formed reliably is that that belief was formed by a particular process (the witness of the Holy Spirit) which leads her to infer that that process was reliable. But the reason that she believes (1) to be true is that the belief in (1) was formed by that very process. It is a properly basic belief grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit. If we were to ask Hannah, “How do you know that Christianity is true?” she would reply, “Because the Holy Spirit bears witness to me that it is true.” “And how do you know that the Holy Spirit's witness is reliable?”, we ask. She replies, “Because Christianity is true.” Moon acknowledges the epistemic circularity of Hannah's argument but he maintains that the circularity is benign. We may suppose that Hannah is initially justified in believing (1) in a properly basic way grounded in the witness of the Holy Spirit. This premise never faces a de jure defeater because such a defeater is deflected. Moon asks whether Hannah should be doubting that her Christian belief is formed reliably and answers,

The only plausible reason to think that is if she has some good reason to: a defeater. But in this case, Hannah can use her modus ponens argument to prevent herself from ever gaining a defeater in the first place. Hannah is wielding a defeater-deflector and not a defeater-defeater. If we took Hannah to be wielding a defeater-defeater, then her belief in (1) (or Christianity) would already be defeated . . . by the de jure objection, and so she could not use it as a premise to defeat the defeater. Fortunately, she is wielding a defeater-deflector, and thus, preventing any defeat from happening in the first place.^[4]

So Hannah is perfectly entitled to her Christian belief, and so to her further belief that her Christian belief is formed reliably for the circularity involved in her argument is benign. Moon concludes that premise (1) is, for Hannah, “an epistemically self-promoting proposition”; that is to say, if she justifiedly believes it then she gains good evidence that her belief in it is reliably formed.

This terminology recalls Plantinga’s characterization of the central truths of the Gospel as self-authenticating. Plantinga’s public project thus survives debunking arguments in support of a de jure objection to Christian belief.

What then of Plantinga’s private project? The goal of this project is to provide an epistemological account of Christian belief from a Christian perspective. How well does it fare? On the basis of his phenomenal conservatism, Chris Tucker has proposed a modification of Plantinga’s model that would, I think, bring it closer into line with the teaching of Scripture on the witness of the Holy Spirit. Tucker observes that one's experience of a sunset is evidentially irrelevant to the belief that God loves me; yet on Plantinga’s model God might produce in me this belief when I am in such circumstances. Such a properly basic belief would have no evidential connection with its grounding circumstances but would be entirely arbitrary. The Holy Spirit could directly produce in a person Christian beliefs which have no inherent connection with the circumstances which ground it. He could, for example, have chosen to produce belief in Christ's atoning death on the occasion of one's sneezing. Tucker's phenomenal conservative approach assays to rectify this shortcoming by introducing religious seemings as the intermediate link between the Holy Spirit's work and one's properly basic beliefs. On the occasion of a particular experience, the Holy Spirit makes it seem to a person that Christ died for his sins, and so the person comes to believe such a thing on the evidence of such seeming. Thus, although the Holy Spirit might use arbitrarily any experience to produce a religious seeming, the grounding relation between the religious seeming and one's properly basic belief in its propositional content is an evidential relation given phenomenal conservatism. For now, one's properly basic belief is grounded in how things seem to one, not in the occasions or circumstances which the Holy Spirit uses.

Such a modification of Plantinga’s model seems quite congenial, and Plantinga himself has spoken freely of seemings which serve to ground properly basic beliefs. On the modified account, properly basic Christian beliefs do not just magically appear in consciousness as it were but are grounded in experiences of how things seem, and this grounding relation is a non-propositional evidential relation.

Such a model seems more consonant with New Testament descriptions of the experiential nature of the witness of the Holy Spirit. Recall Paul's words: “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:15-16). Paul is naturally understood to mean not that the belief that “We are God's children” just pops into our heads, but that as a result of the Holy Spirit's work we experience a filial relationship with God. He seems to us a loving father.

Nonetheless, Dougherty and McAllister complain that on Tucker's model even if the relation between one's seemings and the belief they ground is evidential, still the relation between one's experiences and the seemings is arbitrary. They propose a reductionistic model which removes this arbitrariness. The sensus divinitatis is reduced to our human rational faculties which unconsciously perceive support relations between the propositional content of our experiences and propositions implying the existence of God so that they seem to be true.

Doughtery and McAllister's reductionism seems scripturally on track in eliminating the sensus divinitatis which is scripturally unwarranted and superfluous given the New Testament doctrine of the witness of the Holy Spirit. But their reductionistic account is, I think, far too intellectualist to be credible. Moreover, they do not explain how their account handles the formation of Christian beliefs like “Jesus died for my sins” which would have to involve an incredibly reticulate tacit reasoning process. Nor do they show how such a reductionistic account comports with Scripture's teaching that there is a genuine witness borne by the Holy Spirit to us.

The potential arbitrariness they fear between one's experiences and one's seemings may be no more than the Holy Spirit's sovereign freedom to use what experiences he chooses in order to form in us the desired seemings. But there is, in fact, no reason to affirm that such arbitrariness actually exists. On Plantinga’s account, the Holy Spirit typically uses the Word of God, whether in the form of the proclamation of the Gospel or the inspired text of Scripture, to produce in people the seeming to be true of what they hear or read with the attendant beliefs. One can imagine great benefits from the Holy Spirit's use of the hearing of the Gospel rather than sneezing as the experiences he employs to bear his witness such as fostering a love of God's Word.

Is the witness of the Holy Spirit defeasible? In considering whether a person who holds belief in God in a properly basic way may be open to argument, Plantinga appears to allow the belief in God so held may be defeated by argument so that the theist, in order to be rational, may have to abandon his belief in God. But this I find very disquieting. Since almost every intelligent adult theist is bombarded throughout his education and adult life with multifarious defeaters for theism, it seems that, for a great many (if not most) people, rational argument and evidence will be indispensable for the rationality of their faith. But then the belief that God exists will hardly be comparable to other basic beliefs like “I see a tree” or “I had breakfast this morning” for it will have to be surrounded by an enormous and elaborately constructed citadel bristling with defensive arguments trying to ward off the enemy. In such a case, one wonders how much has been gained by making belief in God properly basic. So long as we allow defeaters of Christian belief, the sting of evidentialism has not been removed.

It is for this reason, therefore, that Plantinga’s later clarification and development of his view of the relationship between a basic belief and potential defeaters is so welcome. In his reply to Philip Quinn, Plantinga deals with the question of whether an intellectually sophisticated adult can take belief in God as properly basic. Plantinga asks why some basic belief itself may not have sufficient warrant to overwhelm its potential defeaters. Plantinga imagines a situation in which a person is accused of a crime which he knows from memory that he did not commit. Moreover, the evidence is solidly stacked against him so that an impartial jury of his peers would convict him of wrongdoing. Is he himself obligated to believe on the basis of the evidence in his own guilt? Obviously not if the warrant for his properly basic memory belief is greater than the warrant conferred by the forensic evidence. In such a case the non-propositional evidence in support of his memory belief overwhelms the propositional evidence lodged against him. If a basic belief p has more warrant than a potential defeater q, then p is an intrinsic defeater of q – what Plantinga calls an intrinsic defeater-defeater. Applying this condition to Christian belief, Plantinga suggests that

Perhaps the non-propositional warrant enjoyed by your belief in God is itself sufficient to turn back the challenge offered by the alleged defeaters, so that your theistic belief is an intrinsic defeater-defeater.^[5]

It functions, in effect, like a defeater-deflector.

With this Plantinga has moved, I think, in the direction of the Reformers and the New Testament. For the Reformed theologians, the basis of faith which could withstand all rational attacks was the testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum. For Calvin, apologetics was a useful discipline to confirm the Spirit's testimony, but it was by no means necessary. A believer who was too uninformed or ill-equipped to refute anti-theistic arguments was rational in believing on the basis of the inner witness of the Spirit even in the face of such unrefuted evidence.

The Reformers doctrine was grounded squarely in the New Testament teaching about the work of the Holy Spirit. The inner witness of the Holy Spirit on behalf of Christian belief makes such belief an intrinsic defeater-defeater of any challenges brought against it for it is God's will that we persevere in saving faith despite all challenges brought against it. Given the harsh warnings in the New Testament against apostasy, it is inconceivable that it might be God's will for one of his children that he should apostatize. The author of Hebrews is especially emphatic:

. . . We are [God's] house if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope. . . . Take care, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we share in Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end (Hebrews 3:6-15).

As Christians, we have God living within us and speaking to us enabling us to persevere in faith. Apostasy is attributed to an evil, unbelieving heart which is contrary to God's will and command. Those who do not persevere have no share in Christ.

Now, many, if not most, of us will doubtless say that we do not enjoy so powerful a witness of the Holy Spirit as to ground Christian belief as an intrinsic defeater-defeater. While that fact may well be a call to self-examination to see whether there be in any of us an evil, unbelieving heart leading us to fall away, the more fundamental point to be made here is that the testimony of the Holy Spirit can vary in intensity as the circumstances require. Most of us have extrinsic defeaters of the defeaters brought against Christian belief – that is to say, propositions distinct from those belonging to Christian belief itself that serve to defeat the defeaters brought against it, and therefore have no need of an overwhelming witness of the Holy Spirit. But someone in a disadvantaged situation, such as a university student in the old Soviet Union who has no access to such extrinsic defeaters-defeaters, may be vouchsafed a more powerful witness of the Holy Spirit enabling him to persevere even in the face of unanswerable defeaters. God is faithful and will supply what his children need in order to persevere in faith.

Intriguingly, Moon addresses the objection that,

. . . my strategy makes it impossible for Hannah's Christian belief to ever get defeated since she can always flat-footedly appeal to the Holy Spirit anytime a defeater looms. Hannah is thereby rationally sealed from open-mindedness about the possible falsity of her belief. This indicates that the strategy is problematic.^[6]

Moon's first response to this curious objection is that,

Hannah can still gain defeaters by considering de facto objections to Christian belief, say, arguments from evil or arguments that Christianity is logically incoherent . . . So, open-mindedness is not ruled out.^[7]

Now, Moon is quite correct that Hannah can gain defeaters of her Christian belief, though it would be sinful for her to do so. We can grieve and quench the Holy Spirit within us. Apostasy is a real and terrifying possibility. Therefore, as the author of Hebrews warns, “we must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it” (Hebrews 2:1). Where Moon errs, rather, is equating open-mindedness with openness to apostasy. Without being open to the latter, we can be open-minded in considering arguments and objections fairly and objectively, even admitting it when we do not have an extrinsic defeater-defeater of an objection brought against us.

In any case, the objector's argument is logically fallacious. One can be open to the defeat of one's belief even though that belief is, in fact, indefeasible. Hannah could be open to the defeat of her Christian belief even though that belief is immune to defeat just as Jesus was open to temptation even though he was, in fact, impeccable.

Moon's second response is that Hannah could also gain a defeater for believing premise (2) that if Christian belief is true then it is probably true that my Christian belief is formed reliably. Part of the reason Hannah thought her Christian belief was reliably formed given Christianity's truth is that she formed it in a customary way. But Hannah could gain compelling evidence that she had taken a drug that both made her hallucinate the whole thing and also erased her memory of taking the drug. The assumption here seems to be that Hannah is not, in fact, a regenerate Christian indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Counterfeit religious experiences are obviously possible. But if Hannah is a genuine Christian to whom the Holy Spirit bears witness then it is hard to see how she could acquire a defeater of (2). Hannah's belief in (2) was supposed to have been partially based on Plantinga’s argument for the proposition that if Christian theism is true then it is likely to be warranted, and we can imagine Hannah's losing confidence in that argument. But it is hard to see how she could come to abandon (2) given that her belief in (1) [Christian belief is true] is the result of the Holy Spirit's work. For if (1) is a self-promoting proposition then Hannah, even if she sees that her belief was connected historically with drug abuse, remains convinced of (1) and hence that her present Christian belief is reliable. So short of committing apostasy, Hannah will maintain her belief in (2) along with (1). There is nothing flat-footed about Hannah's steadfastness; rather she is faithful just as God is faithful.

In summary, whatever one makes of proper functionalism, the Christian philosophical theologian should, on scriptural grounds, affirm the proper basicality of Christian belief with respect to epistemic properties like justification and warrant on the basis of the witness of God's Holy Spirit. Not only is Plantinga’s thesis that Christian belief is warranted if true defensible, but so is the claim that Christian belief is warranted whether on the basis of natural theology and Christian evidences or on the basis of a benignly circular argument appealing to the witness of the Spirit. I have proposed several modifications of Plantinga’s model in order to bring it more into line with scriptural teaching including eliminating the sensus divinitatis in favor of the testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum. The addition of religious seemings rather than basic beliefs as the result of the Holy Spirit's work and understanding the Holy Spirit's witness as the source of an intrinsic defeater-defeater for those who attend to it, especially those bereft of extrinsic defeater-defeaters. Christian theologians are thus deeply indebted to contemporary Christian philosophers for their groundbreaking work in religious epistemology.