Since the early 1980s, there has been a new trend in philosophy which has been reaffirming the rationality of belief in God. Philosophers such as Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and Nicholas Wolterstorff, to name a few, began to question the dominant epistemology (theory of knowledge) that philosophy had made use of for centuries. This school of philosophy, called ‘Reformed Epistemology’, formally began as a year-long project called “Toward a Reformed View of Faith and Reason”, and with the publication of a volume called Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God. What they have undertaken, in the words of Nicholas Wolterstorff, is to come to terms with the foundationalist and evidentialist objections to belief in God, in a way that remains true to the Calvinist tradition, thus Reformed Epistemology.
Each figure that has played a role in this philosophy does so in their own way. Alvin Plantinga seeks to show that belief in God is what he calls a ‘properly basic belief’, and that with this in mind, believing in God is as rational and justified as believing that (using Plantinga’s example) when I see a tree, I am justified in believing that I do indeed see a tree. William Alston suggests that the ground, or justification for belief in God lies in the Christian experience of believers, and that in this way we can rest confident in our belief that God exists as we understand him to. Nicholas Wolterstorff, retired professor of philosophy at Yale, draws the distinction of being the most accessible thinker of this group. His basic concept, which I will explain in more detail, is like the rest of the Reformed Epistemologists; that foundationalism is not as tenable as it has appeared to be, and that in light of this we must begin to develop a nonfoundational account of knowledge, one which he will base on the role of beliefs rather than the role of Reason.
Before going much further, it is essential that we all understand what it meant by the term ‘foundationalism’. Foundationalism is the view that everything that we know with certainty, that we know for sure, must be founded on some article of knowledge, some proposition that is held with certainty to be true. Essentially, we hold our beliefs on the basis of other beliefs, which we hold on the basis of other beliefs, and so on. However, no philosopher likes to carry this chain on indefinitely. Thus there must be some beliefs that we hold not on the basis of others, but on their own merit, so to speak. We hold these beliefs immediately, not in terms of time, but in terms of there being no intermediary belief which gets me from one to the other. I have an immediate belief that my toe hurts after I stub it on something, I have an immediate belief that 1+1=2 (the most widely used philosophy example). The beliefs that we hold on the basis of others, mediate beliefs, must be supported in some way. They are not like the immediate beliefs that we just know to be true, or experience them. The mediate beliefs depend on the immediate ones for their truth value and, it could be argued, their being known at all. All of our knowledge, then, rests on the relatively few immediate beliefs (or incorrigible propositions as they are sometimes known), and a mediate belief must be justified and accounted for by the standards of reasonable argument, deduction, induction, etc. Our knowledge must be like a well-built house, resting on a firm foundation.
While foundationalism itself was developed as a scientific tool, it came to be used in as a more general rule regarding knowledge, and came to be known as Evidentialism. This ‘type’ of foundationalism follows along the same lines, but stresses the notion that we must be able to give appropriate evidence to the beliefs that we hold. If we are unable to provide such evidence for what we believe, then we are irresponsible in holding them. Faith, it argues, is not as sure a method of gaining knowledge as is Reason, and so whatever we know through Faith must be judged by Reason, and so justified, or removed. In other words, if we are “to be rational in holding [our beliefs], they must occur in the superstructure of our system of belief”. If I say, then, that I believe that God exists, I must be able to furnish evidence for that claim, or be prepared to either give up the claim altogether, or be considered irrational. From this philosophical standpoint, Anthony Flew published an article called “The Presumption of Atheism” in which he argues that because of the nature of knowledge, and how we come to know things, any debate about the existence of God should begin with the assumption that God does not exist, and if proof is found to contradict that statement, then the point must be conceded. If not, however, then we are exactly where Reason has placed us, and we lose nothing. The burden of proof in evidentialism lies with those who would introduce into our belief systems things that are not evident to our senses or Reason, things that are, essentially, outside of our frame of reference.
This is the type of argument and notion that Reformed Epistemology is reacting to. They wish to retake the field of Reason, and show its failings and limitations, and in this way to show the failings and limitations of Foundationalism as well. Wolterstorff, in one of his earliest works, questions the validity of foundationalism, attacking it on two major points: what it means for a proposition to be justified under foundationalism, and how we are to find enough propositions to use as foundations. His point is basically that if we do have a set of foundational propositions, things that we know to be true, how do we get from them to mediate beliefs? How do these immediate beliefs relate to those that are founded on them? For most of the logical arguments all assume a certain proposition that is not entirely certain, and cannot be proven or known immediately: namely that the universe is a uniform and standard place. If every swan that we see has wings, and we have seen many swans, can we deduce that all swans have wings? Common sense would say yes, but by the standards of foundationalism we cannot, since we do not have adequate grounds for such a proposition, even though foundationalists have made such deductions and arguments for generations. Even if we conceded this point, the other objection would still stand: how do we know that we have an adequate number of foundational propositions? Again, to Wolterstorff it seems that the foundationalists have made an assumption again, that we can know what it is that we need to know to derive other propositions, and that we appropriately understand what it means for a proposition to be ‘certain’. Can we be confident that we understand what we perceive properly? The only things that seem to be able to stand up to this type of questioning are those concerning our own state of being: I am dizzy, hungry, sore, etc. But belief in God, or even scientific propositions, do not generally base themselves on this type of proposition.
The arguments that Wolterstorff gives concerning the validity of foundationalism are more complex and drawn out than I have indicated here. But that is not the only major point of his work. What he attempts to do, in much of his work, is to suggest a nonfoundational epistemology to replace foundationalism and come to a more satisfactory understanding of what it means to know. He looks at the role of belief, and uses that to come to an idea of knowledge that he argues is more in line with the practice of knowing than foundationalism is. He suggests that historically, the pattern of coming to knowledge claims has not been done in the way that foundationalism requires it. When coming into a situation in which we will have to make a decision regarding what we believe, we never put our beliefs to the side, they are always with us. When we try to discern what the issues are, what we will regard as ‘data’ in the issue, we use what Wolterstorff calls Data Background Beliefs, which tell us what we think we can know, and what is relevant to the situation or not. The data background beliefs are those which we use to tell us which beliefs regarding the world we will use as data, or Data Beliefs. When we have to come to a decision regarding how we will understand the issue, and what we will accept or reject as propositions, we use what he calls Control Beliefs to determine whether or not we can accept certain propositions or if we have to reject them. Just as in the 17th century, the Church decided against Copernicus concerning the movement of the sun and the earth. Their control beliefs were such that it was impossible for them to come to terms with the earth not being the centre of the universe, as they understood it to be taught in scripture. To them, the truths of scripture as they understood them were much more important than the theories of science.
Instead of rationally coming to a decision regarding what we ought to and ought not to believe on the basis of certain propositions and rational argument, Wolterstorff argues that we are never in as an ideal situation as foundationalism requires for us to make knowledge claims. We are historical beings, living in contexts and situations that we do not always fully appreciate. We have assumptions and beliefs that we are not willing to give up, and even some that we are not even aware that we have. And all of these beliefs play a role in what we as a person can know and can come to know. Atheists as well as Christians operate this way. Just as Anthony Flew assumes that the proper way to debate about the existence of God is to begin with the presumption of atheism, so a Christian, like John Calvin, assumes that God exists and illustrates, from that belief, that we can know God through his created works. The foundationalists assume that using Reason we are able to come to all of our knowledge claims, since Reason is unclouded in its judgment, and the most objective of all the human faculties. We all believe something, and it is these beliefs which will determine what we know, and what we come to know.
But this does not take away from us our responsibility to inspect our beliefs and our assumptions. Just because we have them does not mean that it is always right to have these beliefs. The Church was wrong when it stated that the earth was the centre of the universe, and that the sun travelled around it. The Enlightenment was wrong when it assumed that Reason was untouched by sin, and therefore could be used to come to know whatever we put our minds to. We are all wrong in some of the beliefs we hold. What we are responsible for is making sure that we know, as well as we can, what we believe, and what we assume regarding the world in which we live. Just because Reason might not be the faculty that many people thought it was, does not mean that there is no place for reasons in our beliefs and knowledge claims. Reason is a fallen faculty, just as everything has become after the fall into sin. But it is still a useful faculty as long as we realize its limitations.
This is the crux of Wolterstorff’s point. We must be aware of the limitations of Reason, and thus provide reasons for what we say and believe. We are never to rest on the deep assumptions of our knowledge, but to constantly probe them and remove what ought not to be there. It is then, as rational to believe in God as it is to not believe in God. It is as rational to believe in a loving God as the scriptures reveal as it is to believe that Reason can lead us to wherever we need to go. What Wolterstorff does is to free us from the restrictive bounds of a theory of knowledge that assumes that anything that lies outside of our experience is either irrational or untrue, and gives Christianity a firm footing. Rather than working within these restrictive boundaries, we can find our own ground and say the things that we need to say about God, without first needing to prove his existence. And once we are past that hurdle, we may find the rest considerably easier.
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