Epistemological
Perspectives and Evangelical Apologetics
Associate Professor of Apologetics and Systematic Theology
Westminster Theological
Seminary, Escondido, California
I have sensed that
in recent years the debate within evangelicalism over apologetic method has
degenerated into a series of partisan shouting-matches. The different parties
("presuppositionalists," "evidentialists," Van
Tillians," "Montgomeryites," Gerstnerites," etc.) seem more
and more to be talking past one another.
In such a situation, there ought to be some value in all of us backing
away a bit from our particular partisan commitments and in asking why it
is that we tend to misunderstand one another in this area. People with a common commitment to the Christ
of Scripture ought to be able to achieve greater unity than we have now (and
not only in the area of apologetics).
The prospect for meta-apologetic discussion, then, should be considered
promising. In this paper, I shall seek
to make some contribution toward clarifying our differences, first, by viewing
them in historical perspective, and, second, by a fresh evaluation of that historical development in the light of Scripture.
I. Historical
Roots of the Issue
I would like to distinguish three general
types of epistemology appearing through the history of philosophy. It is not important to my argument
that this enumeration be the best possible classification, or the only possible
classification, or an exhaustive classification. It is sufficient for us to recognize that
these three tendencies have existed and have exerted influence upon Christian
and non-Christian thinking alike. The
first tendency is rationalism or a_ priorism,
which I shall define as the view that human knowledge presupposes certain principles known independently of sense-experience, principles
by which, indeed, our knowledge of sense-experience is governed. The second tendency is empiricism, the
view that human knowledge is based upon the data of sense-experience. Thirdly, there is subjectivism, the
view that there is no "objective" truth, but only truth
"for" the knowing subject, verified by criteria internal to the subject.
No philosopher has
succeeded in being a consistent rationalist, empiricist or subjectivist. A few, at least, have tried: Parmenides comes close to
being a consistent rationalist, John Stuart Mill a
consistent empiricist, Protagoras and the other sophists consistent
subjectivists. But the failures of such
attempts have become well-known in the philosophical literature. The greatest philosophers, like Plato,
Aristotle, Aquinas and Kant, have not even tried to achieve epistemological
purity in terms of our categories.
Rather, they have sought to do justice to divergent epistemological
concerns. But that too has proven to be
a difficult task. The nature of the
difficulty can be summarized with the observation that rationalism, empiricism,
and subjectivism as defined above are simply inconsistent
with one another. They cannot all be affirmed simultaneously.
Still, it is not
too surprising that philosophers have tried to combine these inconsistent views. For
each seems to arise out of legitimate concerns. The
rationalist notes that without criteria of truth and falsity, no conclusions
whatever can be drawn from sense-experience or from subjective states. Sense-experience is always problematic: How
do I know whether a stick in the water is really bent or
whether it only appears that way? The visual image, taken by itself, can be
interpreted in either way. All sense-experiences, it would seem, can be interpreted in various ways; and if the criteria for proper
interpretation are drawn from sense-experience, then they would also be
problematic and incapable of yielding a conclusion. Thus,
the rationalist argues, the criteria which determine the true
interpretation of sense-experience must come from some source other than sense-experience. The rationalist takes a similar view of
subjective
The rationalist recognizes, of course, that
appeals to sense-experience and to subjective states are often
plausible. I know that a certain
apple will fall to the ground if I drop it. How do I know this? It is
plausible to say that I know this on the
basis of past experience: other apples have always fallen when dropped.
But the rationalist asks: how do I know that the future will resemble the past?
Is it because such resemblance has always occurred in the past? But that merely
shifts the problem to another level. How do I know that such resemblances between past and future will continue into the
future? Clearly I cannot derive such a principle from past or present
experience. If it is true, says the
rationalist, it must be derived from some source other than sense-experience. Similar arguments can be raised in regard to
subjective states. Someone says, e.g.,
that war is wrong because he subjectively perceives it to be wrong. The
rationalist replies that if this judgment is a rational judgment it must be based on something more than
a mere feeling, since feelings often
mislead us.
A strong case, then, can be made for rationalism. But strong cases
can also be made for empiricism and subjectivism. The empiricist stresses the
need for publicly observable facts as a basis for knowledge. He recognizes that sense-experience is problematic, but he points out that claims to a
priori truth are also problematic. Philosophers have contradicted one
another on the question of what can be known
a priori; Parmenides claimed to know a_ priori that
all motion was illusory; Plato denied this claim. Descartes claimed an a priori knowledge of his own existence as a
thinking substance; Hume deiied that
claim. Surely, then, says the
empiricist, claims to a_ priori knowledge are fallible: some of the historic claims must be
wrong. How do we judge the truth
of such claims? Certainly, says the empiricist, we cannot simply take someone's word for it. There must be checking procedures available
to all, not just to the individual making the claim. To speak of publicly available checking
procedures is to speak about sense-experience. But is sense-experience a truly public
point of reference? Or is it, perhaps, something that varies greatly from
person to person, a merely subjective phenomenon? The empiricist response to subjectivism parallels that of
rationalism: if sense-experience is not a univerally shared access to
reality then there is no such access, and knowledge is impossible. Thus the
empiricist argues that sense-experience is the
ultimate test of alleged a priori principles and of all subjective convictions.
For the consistent empiricist like Mill, such argumentation virtually
eliminates a priori principles altogether.
The empiricist can also argue against the
rationalist that even if one can become assured of an a_ priori
principle—say, the law of non-contradiction or the existence of the self—such a
principle is quite useless without sense experience. Nothing can be deduced
from the law of non-contradiction alone. Logic
becomes useful only when applied to non-trivial premises of arguments. But no
one would argue that all premises of all valid arguments are known a priori or are deducible from premises known a priori. But if some premises are known a posteriori, then
it would seem that logic yields truth only in >dependence upon a_ posteriori knowledge, most likely
sense-experience.
What about
subjectivism? Is it possible to make a case for that too, after the apparently devastating attacks on it by the rationalists and
empiricists? Certainly. If one accepts the rationalist argument for
the fallibility of sense-experience and the empiricist argument for the
fallibility of claims to a_ priori knowledge,
then subjectivism seems unavoidable.
Further, do not all claims to a_ priori
knowledge and empirical fact boil down to subjective judgments? Take the law of
non-contradiction, for example. Why should I affirm it? Is it not because I am
personally convinced of its truth? No, reply the rationalist and the empiricist: whether you are subjectively persuaded
is irrelevant; you should not affirm a principle unless it is objectively true.
But, the subjectivist replies, I must be persuaded of that objective
truth. The others insist: You must be persuaded on principle. The subjectivist reiterates: Yes, but I must
also be persuaded that the principle is true. Any principle you propose,
I must investigate and evaluate. I
accept only those principles which I consider worthy of acceptance. Therefore any appeal to principle would seem
to depend on a subjective act by which that principle is adopted. We saw earlier that subjectivism can be made
to seem impossible. But it can also be made to seem inescapable.
Now Christian
apologetics reflects the epistemological tendencies I have described. Gordon Clark is the clearest example among
evangelical apologists of the rationalist tendency, but many have used the
traditional rationalist arguments in refutation of scepticism and in defense of
the objectivity of truth. Empiricism is
evident in the work of John W. Montgomery and others. Subjectivism is
relatively absent from evangelical apologetics, because of the evangelical emphasis on the truth/falsehood antithesis. But Edward J.
Carnell's book The Kingdom of Love
and the Pride of Life does present what might be calleda Christian subjectivism. In that
book, Carnell appeals to feelings and intuitions which he considers universally
human, without much (if any) reference to the objective grounding of these
feelings or intuitions via a_priori principles and/or empirical
fact. Such objective grounding is, of
course, presented in Carnell's other books, but if one had only this one book,
he might be led to think that Carnell was an
epistemological subjectivist. And that fact suggests what
may be a significant observation: there may be a kind of subjectivism which is compatible with other epistemological
principles, about which more at a later point.
Other evangelicals also combine motifs from
various epistemological options. Norman Geisler preserves in large measure the
balance between rationalism and empiricism characteristic of the
Thomistic-Aristotelian tradition.
Cornelius Van Til, in my view, should not be grouped
with Gordon Clark as a "presuppositionalist" as is often done. Van Til,
rather, presents us with a complex epistemology
involving motifs from all three tendencies and more. My own construction, to which we shall next
turn, is indebted to Van Til, though I take full responsibility for the formulation.
II. Some
Biblical Considerations
It is interesting
to note that the three epistemological tendencies discussed above correlate
roughly with the three sources of divine revelation affirmed in Scripture and
Christian theology: Scripture, nature and human personhood (the image of God). I say the correlation is "rough;" I
must add a few refinements. The precise
biblical correlate of the "a priori principle" is divine law. Just as in
secular rationalism the a_priori principle supplies the criterion for truth and falsity, thus controlling the interpretation
of sense-experience and subjective states, so in Christianity, God's law, (or
equivalently, God's word) serves as the ultimate criterion of truth and
falsity,
So although only Scripture is the law
of God written, the law of God can be found everywhere. And equally comprehensive is the second form
of revelation— "natural" or
"general" revelation, the category which correlates naturally with the
philosophical notion of "empirical fact." Nature includes everything
in creation. It includes even the Bible as a created book;
and it contains us, us human beings
in the image of God.
"Nature" and "law," then, are inseparable. The
logical distinction between them is that
nature is the environment in which we are called to live obediently to
the law. The law calls us to replenish and subdue the earth (Genesis l:27ff).
The word of God thus governs all of our activity in this world. But what does
the word of God require of us concretely? How, specifically, do we go about
"subduing" the earth? To find out, we must study not only God's
command, but the earth itself as well. The nature of the earth will determine to some extent how it is to be subdued.
Subduing a lion is one thing; subduing a river
quite another. In an odd sense, we must
study the world in order properly to exegete God's word. Else we
shall not know the concrete meaning of the
word. And if we don't know its concrete
meaning, then we don't know it"*s meaning at all. Thus do general and special
revelation work together in the believer's life. The word directs us
to the world; and in the world we find more of the
meaning of the word.
Then comes the third member of the triad,
human nature, which correlates with philosophical
"subjectivity." Self-knowledge has always been philosophically
difficult. As Hume and Wittgenstein especially have pointed out, the self is not one of the things we see as we look on the world. Yet it is through ourselves that we come to
know everything else. All we know, we
know through our own senses, reason, feelings, through what we
are. And it is thus in knowing other things that we come to know the self. The
self seems to be everywhere and nowhere. We know it, but only as we know other
things. Hence the strange opening pages
of Calvin's Institutes where he notes that we know God in knowing
ourselves and vice-versa and adds (casting some doubt on the purity of his presuppositionalism) that he does not know which "comes
first." From a biblical standpoint, however, this is
not so strange after all. Scripture
tells us over and over that God-knowledge and
self-knowledge are inseparable. What we are is "image of God."
Knowing ourselves is knowing our resemblance to God, and indeed the defacement
of that resemblance. The self is by its very nature a reflection of something else—a reflection of its ultimate environment.
On the other hand, knowing God always involves
attention to ourselves. "Knowledge
of God" is an ethical concept in Scripture. Knowing
God, in the most profound sense, involves obedience. Obedience is the fruit of
hte knowledge of God, and it is, also the way to deeper knowledge
of him (Romans 12:If, Ephesians 5:8-10, Philippians
1:10, Hebrews 5:11-14).
In Christianity, then, law, object and
subject are distinguishable, but not discovered
separately. In every act of knowledge,
we simultaneously come to know God's law, his world, and ourselves. These are not three separable
"parts" of our experience, but three "aspects" of every
experience, or (perhaps better) three "perspectives" on experience.
Thus I speak of "normative," "situational"
and "existential" perspectives on experience. The normative perspective views our
experience as a means of determining what God_requires of us. It focusses especially on Scripture as the
one written word of God, but also on creation and the self as means of
understanding and applying the norms of Scripture. The situational perspective views our
experience as an organic collection of facts to be known and understood. The existential perspective views our
experience as a means to self-knowledge and personal growth.
The resulting epistemology is complex, but
illuminating. It is neither rationalist,
empiricist, nor subjectivist in the senses defined earlier, but it appreciates
the concerns which have generated these three positions. It recognizes, with the rationalist, that
sense experience and subjective impressions are fallible; but it also agrees
with the empiricist and the subjectivist that the same fallibility attaches to
the reasoning process and to all claims of a_ priori
truth. Scripture alone is
infallible. The search for some infallible element in human thinking as such is idolatrous. Similarly idolatrous, in my view, is the
attempt to give any one perspective a "priority" over the others,
i.e. to claim that one perspective rather than the others furnishes the
"ultimate" ground for belief in something. Only God's word furnishes such an ultimate
ground, and God's word is available to us in all three perspectives. Why, for
instance, do we believe that 2+2=4? Is it because mathematical relations of this sort are presupposed by the
very nature of thought itself (rationalism)? Is it because past
experience has gotten me into the habit of expecting 2+2 to result in 4
(empiricism)? Or is it because that sum seems psychologically
inescapable (subjectivism)? I find all
three explanations persuasive, and I see no particular need to choose between
them. I think I recognize all three
sorts of mental processes taking place.
But which is ultimate? On which of them do the others
depend? Are my views about "the nature of thought
itself" dictated by habits of mind developed through experience, or do
those views dictate what my mental habits ought to be? (The same sort of question can be asked about any two of the three perspectives.) The
answer is again that I see no need to choose. I see no reason to assume that any of the
three perspectives is "prior" to the others; there is dependence, but
mutual dependence. It is a system of
"checks and balances."
Such checks and balances tend to be lacking
in non-Christian thought. Without the Christian God to
coordinate the law, the world and the self,, there is little reason to suppose that the three will cohere. Thus, one must
simply choose the one he considers most trustworthy
and give it "primacy" over the others.
Now the difficulties traditionally noted in
rationalism, empiricism and subjectivism result, I would say, precisely
from the attempts made in these epistemologies to
absolutize one perspective over against the others. The rationalist errs precisely in his claim to an infallible knowledge of a_priori truths, not subject to any empirical or
subjective tests. His method fails to yield such
infallible knowledge, and the truths for which it claims infallibility are too few to establish a comprehensive framework for human knowledge.
The empiricist and the subjectivist, on the contrary, fail
to see the need of law, the need of principles by which to sort out and
evaluate empirical and subjective data.
To say as I have that none of the
perspectives is infallible and that none is ultimate has
relativistic overtones. Indeed, my position would be
III.
Some Apologetic Implications
Earlier I distinguished three types of
evangelical apologetics influenced by rationalistic, empiricist and
subjectivist epistemological tendencies respectively. We may now describe these as normative,
situational and existential types of apologetics. Our earlier discussion would lead us to believe that all three types have biblical warrant if they are qualified
in the ways demanded by a biblical epistemology. And so they do. All three general types of
apologetic are not only warranted in Scripture by inference from a biblical
epistemology; they are each found in Scripture explicitly.
Normative apologetics is found in the
explicit appeals by the prophets, Jesus and the apostles to the law of God in
Scripture, but not only there. It is implicit in the way Scripture responds to
doubting questions with rebuke (Job 38-42, Ezekiel 18:25,
Matthew 20:1-15, Romans 3:3ff, 6:lf, 6:15, 7:7, etc). The force of such passages is that we have no right to doubt
God's truth, love, faithfulness; that such doubt is simply contrary to his law,
a law of which we may not claim ignorance. Even those ignorant
of Scripture are aware of that law (Romans 1). One might even say that all biblical
apologetics is normative;for even when the immediate appeal is not to law but to
empirical fact or subjective awareness, the law is never absent. Scripture never leaves it an open question as
to how the empirical or subjective data are to be interpreted and responded
to. Such data do not lead merely to
probable or optional conclusions; they lead to certainty, because indeed they
are law-laden. Thus Paul in Acts 17, 12
Just as certainly,
Scripture contains situational apologetics.
That should be the most obvious of the
three. Continually Scripture refers to
the mighty acts of God in nature and redemptive history,
pre-eminently the resurrection of Christ, to validate the truth of the
proclamation. Since the gospel itself is
a proclamation of historical fact, one might say that all biblical apologetics is situational (not forgetting what we also said
earlier, that all biblical apologetics is normative). The two do not exclude one another; they are "perspectives" on one another.
And there is
biblical precedent for existential apologetics.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus were surely impressed by the force
of divine law as Jesus expounded the Scriptures to them, and by the correlation
of this law with the events of Jesus' life (here we find both
"normative" and "situational"
perspectives); but it was also significant, and epistemologically significant,
that when Jesus taught, their hearts burned within them (Luke 24:32). The point of an apologetic is never merely to convince the mind, but to influence the unbeliever's whole outlook, so that he not only accepts
the truth, but loves it, treasures it, seeks earnestly
to act upon it. Only then can we say
that people are truly "persuaded," truly converted. Thus the Psalms, the sermons of Jesus, the letters of Paul are not academic treatises, not
collections of definitions and syllogisms, but appeals to
the "whole person," filled with poetry, figures of
speech, expression of emotions, pleadings, weepings. The gospel is law, it is historical fact, but it is also something that
people can live with, joyfully. The gospel speaks
to our anxieties, our fears, our sorrows, our
lusts, to the whole range of human subjectivity. Can we say that all biblical apologetics is existential, as we said earlier that it was
all normative
and all situational? Yes. For Scripture always
addresses the full range of human
subjectivity; it always seeks comprehensive inner change,
"heart-change". Thus, although
the existential approach is sometimes more, sometimes less prominent in
biblical apologetics, it is a "perspective" on all biblical apologetics.
Thus, all three
methods are biblically legitimate, as long as neither seeks to claim ultimate
priority or to exclude another as a complementary "perspective." In
the current debate over apologetics, we must recognize the claim of the
presuppositionalists that knowledge is impossible without law and that the ultimate law is
the Scripture. We must also grant the claim of the evidentialists that the truth is found through the publicly observable
events of nature and history. And we
must grant the point made by many that no one will think rightly unless he is
psychologically qualified to do so (there is much to be said here about the
noetic effects of sin and the illumination of the Holy Spirit). Any of these approaches may be prominent in
any particular apologetic encounter; but none will be successful unless the
other approaches are also present implicitly. If we seek, to present God's
requirements without relating them in any way to the individual's experience
and consciousness, our apologetic is unintelligible. If we seek to examine the events of nature
and history without organizing and interpreting these facts in a divinely
acceptable way, and without addressing the unbeliever's capacity for doing
such, we achieve nothing. And if we seek to address an individual's
subjectivity without giving him a legal and
historical basis for inner change, then we are being manipulative and are not
presenting the gospel at all.
Yet these
strictures leave a wide scope for creativity, for using different methods,
different starting points, depending on the area to be discussed, the gifts of the apologist and the felt needs of the
non-Christian. Scripture itself is wonderfully rich in the
methods it uses to lead us to repentance and faith. It is a shame, indeed, that modern
apologetics has fallen so largely into stereotyped patterns. I am hoping that the multi-perspectival
approach suggested in this paper may unleash our creative energies to show the
world that indeed every fact of experience, every valid principle of reason,
every burden of the human heart, has God's name upon it.