Evangelical Epistemology

I have been looking for an epistemological foundation for my evangelical beliefs for several years now. When I first became a Christian, I was able to dismiss all epistemological questions related to my faith because of powerful experiences with God which were based on submission to Biblical teachings, not on theological or philosophical reflection. I think that position was important during that period of my life, but after a few years I yielded to the fact that mature Christian belief should involve theological reflection if it is to resist devolving into mere superstition. Since then I have never come up with an Evangelical epistemology that I have been satisfied with.

I am currently taking a Religious Epistemology course, taught by professor Keith Yandell. The course mostly follows his book on the same topic. I am hoping to use this as an opportunity to finally hammer out my own religious epistemology. My course grade will be based entirely on a twelve-page paper, due in two weeks. I am supposed to use formal logic, which I am about as comfortable with as I was doing geometric proofs in High School (not much). I’m hoping to use this blog to sort through the issues I want to deal with in that paper, or at least to lay the groundwork in my personal thoughts so that I can write something else.

Before I begin, I shall define my terms. By Evangelical theology (E), I mean theology that is based on the authority, infallibility, inerrancy, and inspiration of the Bible. I take it that E entails the following:

E1. God exists as Trinity, one substance consisting of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
E2. Jesus Christ is God incarnate, both fully God and fully human.
E3. Jesus Christ rose bodily from the grave.
E4. Humanity is enslaved to sin and destined to spend eternity alienated from God in hell.
E5. Jesus Christ made atonement for the sins of humanity on the cross, so that those who believe in Him will receive salvation.

By salvation I mean (a) having communion with God, and (b) receiving eternal life rather than eternal damnation.

When I first began my critical reflection, my defense of E ran somewhat like this:
1. I had powerful experiences of God after believing in Jesus. (A subject for another post.)
2. Having an experience of God entails (is dependant on) having received salvation.
3. Therefore I received salvation after believing in Jesus.

4. E entails that those who believe in Jesus will receive salvation.
5. Therefore E is correct.

There are several problems with this logic, however. First, premise 2 is based on E4 and E5, but these premises are themselves based on premise 5, which they are being used to prove. E4 and E5 would need to be supported on other grounds. Perhaps with some imagination I could reword the premises in such a way that would be logically sound. But this is not my primary concern with the syllogism.

A more critical error is that Premise 5 does not follow from 3 and 4. It is a fallacy that follows the form A entails B; B; Therefore A. For example, “Someone who has an M.Div. degree has necessarily taken at least one theology class; I have taken a theology class; therefore I have my M.Div.”
One possible way to avoid this fallacy is to change it to an argument of inference to best explanation:

5*. Based on Premise 4, E provides the best explanation for Premise 3.

But it is not at all clear that E is the best explanation. Many people in contrary religions have also had experiences of God. At the very least we would need comparisons with the explanations offered by other religions. Perhaps this is best way to proceed, but it requires significantly more knowledge than I currently have (or am particularly excited about taking the time to acquire). Instead, let me propose an alternate theological system that I shall call Soteriologically Pluralistic theology (SP), which is essentially Deism without the anti-supernatural bias. SP is based on the following premises:

SP1. God exists.
SP2. God has interacted, and continues to interact, with various people at various times (i.e. through prophecy, miracles, etc.)
SP3. Individual eschatological salvation (receiving eternal life rather than eternal damnation) is available through a plurality of religions.

SP is not pluralism in the sense that it entails that the major world religions are equally correct. Rather, it is pluralistic in the sense that salvation is not limited to a particular religion. Put simplistically, SP is the idea that God is more concerned with our deeds than our creeds.

Taking account of SP, my revised defense of E looks somewhat like this:

3. I received salvation after believing in Jesus.
4'. Belief in Jesus is a religion (namely, Christianity).
5'. Therefore I received salvation through a religion.

6'. SP entails that salvation is available through a plurality of religions.
7'. Based on Premise 6' and Premise 4, SP and E provide equal explanatory power for Premise 3.

I began looking for another defense of my faith. Christian apologetics seem to place a large focus on proving the Premise, God exists, but the connection from theism to Christianity rests entirely on the Resurrection. This argument runs as so:

R1. Jesus rose from the dead.
R2. If Jesus rose from the dead then E is correct.
R3. Therefore E is correct.

R1 was easy to accept when I thought my argument from experience confirmed E. When I am trying to use R1 to establish E, suddenly the arguments seem significantly weaker. It is easy to believe in the resurrection if I already have good reasons for being an evangelical, but when those reasons start to break down, the resurrection seems much less plausible. It is definitely not plausible enough to become a foundation for soteriological exclusivism! And even if we accept R1, I’m not entirely convinced of R2.

In contrast, SP has several factors that make it epistemically preferable to E. It accounts for positive aspects of other world religions in a way that is difficult for E. It avoids the problem of declaring large swaths of humanity (especially those who have never heard, or those who lived before the time of Christ) to be eternally damned. Finally, it has the support of some strands of Biblical narrative, such as Melchizadek and the Magi.

Again, I ask for your comments. I am not very happy with what I have written here yet, but it’s good enough for the blogsphere.

Debate on Theism

I just finished listening to a debate between Ray Comfort and Ron Barrier on the existence of God. An mp3 version is available at http://www.livingwaters.com/listenwatch/BCAD.mp3. Thought I'd share just a few thoughts.

This debate is different from many others on the same topic. It is very entertaining, being waged at the level of references to pop culture and anecdotes rather than deep philosophical argument. Even their names convey something of the tone of the debate: one is a comfort to faith, the other a barrier.

I was more than a little disappointed with Ray's debate style. He recited his arguments word-for-word from his book, God Doesn't Believe in Athiests. He has had a lot of time to fine-tune his humor, so he was almost like an actor reciting lines. In fact Ray had almost no interaction with Ron outside of an introductory sentence at the beginning of each of his periods of speaking. His first rejoinder began, "Thank you, Ron for that. Food for thought." With that he proceeded to ignore everything Barrier had just said and presented a second section from his book, entirely unrelated to any of Barrier's points. I've seen debates where it seems the opponents were speaking past one another, but in this debate it did not matter one bit what Barrier had to say. Every one of Comfort's rejoinders were directly scripted from his book.

Nevertheless, for my money Comfort was the clear winner. Though he never really debated, he was at least clear and his points made sense. Barrier, on the other hand, was rambling and almost totally incoherent. To say that most of his points were non sequitors would be granting too much. Instead, it was difficult to even understand what point he was even trying to make. For instance, his first point is to appeal to what he calls the principle of environmental incompatibility, where his argument runs something like this:

All things require an environment, therefore God must have an environment.
Theists claim that God's environment is the Supernatural.
The claim that something is supernatural presupposes that one knows all known natural laws.
It is therefore a claim to absolute knowledge.

Huh? Sorry if I missed exactly how that leads to the conclusion that God must not exist. He jumps from point to point assuming that we will infer how he got there, though his mental process is far from clear. I couldn't agree with him if I wanted to.

I am about 98% sure that Ray had an intense prayer meeting beforehand and prayed something like, "Lord, confuse the argument of my opponent." Honestly, I'm not sure how helpful these kinds of prayers are. They make me think Comfort won the debate by being a better debater rather than having a better argument.

For a more philosophical treatment of the theism debate, I recommend God? A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist, by William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. Both are strong debaters at the top of their game, and most of the relevant issues are covered in depth.