الوسم: Test for Truth

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know
PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

The failure of theoretical and even purely factual tests for truth lends support to a pragmatic test. Pragmatists contend that one cannot think or even feel truth, but he can discover it by attempting to live it. Truth is not what is consistent or what is empirically adequate but what is exponentially workable.

Did not even Jesus say that “by their fruits, you shall know them”? Although Christian apologists of the pragmatic variety have not been abundant, they are by no means nonexistent. Indeed, sophisticated philosophical systems have been built on a pragmatic theory of meaning and/or truth.

An Examination of Pragmatic Approaches to Meaning and Truth

Kant used the word pragmatic to mean a “contingent belief, which yet forms the ground for the actual employment of means to certain actions.… ”¹ But the thought of developing Kant’s use of “pragmatic” into a theory of meaning or test for truth was not German but American in origin.

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914): Pragmatic Theory of Meaning

Properly speaking, Peirce did not offer pragmatism as a test for truth but as a theory of meaning. He was not concerned as such with verification of a theory but with clarification of thought.

The Four Methods of Belief. After dismissing Francis Bacon’s approach to science as cavalier and Descartes’ starting point in doubt as difficult if not impossible to attain, Peirce suggests that beliefs may be fixed in a much better way. First, our problem would be greatly simplified if instead of speaking of “truth” one would/could attain belief unassailable by doubt, namely, a state of confidence. The process of attaining this he calls “The Fixation of Belief.” Peirce declares that there are only four methods of stabilizing one’s beliefs:

(1) The method of tenacity is evident when “a man may go through life, systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinions.…” Despite the satisfaction and peace of mind, this method may bring to the individual, it “will be unable to hold its ground in practice. The social impulse is against it. The man who adopts it will find that other men think differently from him.…” It would work only for a hermit but is ineffective for a community.

(2) The method of authority backing one’s belief by social convention, by creating a priesthood or aristocracy to pontificate. Although Peirce granted this method “immeasurable mental and moral superiority to the method of tenacity,” he considered it unfeasible. For “no institution can undertake to regulate opinions upon every subject.” Some minor freedoms must be allowed, and these will always be the breeding grounds for major dissent.

(3) The a priori method of fixing beliefs is one which is “agreeable to reason.” This method “is far more intellectual and respectable from the point of view of reason than either of the others which we have noticed,” wrote Peirce. However, “its failure has been the most manifest. It makes of inquiry something similar to the development of taste.” For the unshakable views of today are tomorrow out of fashion.

(4) Only the method of science is sufficient for fixing beliefs. The fundamental thesis of this is that “there are real things, whose … realities affect our senses according to regular laws … yet, by taking advantage of the laws of perception, we can ascertain how things really are.” Furthermore, “any man, if he has sufficient experience and reason enough about it, will be led to the one true conclusion.”²

The evidence Peirce offers for this is fourfold: First, even if investigation cannot prove this thesis, “no doubts of the method … necessarily arise from its practice, as is the case with all the others.” Second, “nobody … can really doubt that there are realities, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction.”

For doubt always results from the repugnance of two propositions that presuppose the reality of “some one thing to which a proposition should conform.” Third, “everybody uses the scientific method about a great many things, and only ceases to use it when he does not know how to apply it.” Fourth, “experience of the method has not led us to doubt it, but, on the contrary, scientific investigation has had the most wonderful triumphs in the way of settling opinion.”

Hence, “this is the only one of the four methods which presents any distinction of a right and wrong way. If I adopt the method of tenacity, and shut myself out from all influences, whatever I think necessary to doing this, is necessary according to that method.” Likewise, “with the method of authority … the only test on that method is what the state thinks; so it cannot pursue the method wrongly. So with the a priori method. The very essence of it is to think as one is inclined to think.” And on this ground, of course, one can never be wrong. “But with the scientific method the case is different,” concludes Peirce.

For “the test of whether I am truly following the method is not an immediate appeal to my feelings and purposes, but, on the contrary, itself involves the application of the method.” In this way the person who confesses that there is such a thing as truth as versus falsity simply says this: “that if acted on it will carry us to the point we aim at and not astray.…”³

The Pragmatic Clarification of Ideas. From the principles set forth in the foregoing scientific or pragmatic method Peirce believes he has reached “a clearness of thought of a far higher grade than the ‘distinctness’ of the logicians.” For “the essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.”

If beliefs do not differ in this practical way, then “no mere differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing different tunes.” In short, the final rule for attaining “clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have.

Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” Or, in other words, the meaning of anything is to be found in its practical results. The final differential is a pragmatic one. A mere difference in mode of conception is not a clear and distinct difference. But a practical difference in experienced results is a clearly distinct difference.⁴

The components of a belief, then, are three: first, it is something of which we are aware. Second, it satisfies the irritation caused by doubt. And finally, it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action or a habit. Thus Peirce wrote elsewhere, “Belief is not a momentary mode of consciousness; it is a habit of mind essentially enduring for some time, and mostly (at least) unconscious.”⁵ So the essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by different modes of action to which they give rise.

The Concept of God Clarified. Peirce held that any normal man would come naturally to act as if there were a God. This would simply be the pragmatic clarification of an implicit belief that he possessed. It would be an overt action that demonstratively clarified that covert belief.⁶ In another place Peirce said, “So, then, the question being whether I believe in the reality of God, I answer. Yes. I further opine that pretty nearly everybody more or less believes this, including many of the scientific men of my generation who are accustomed to think that belief is entirely unfounded.”

And “if a pragmaticist is asked what he means by the word ‘God,’ he can only say that just as long acquaintance with a man of great character may deeply influence one’s whole manner of conduct, so that a glance at his portrait may make a difference, … then that analogue of a mind—for it is impossible to say that any human attribute is literally applicable—is what he means by “God.”

However, our knowledge of God is more than purely negative “because the discoveries of science, their enabling us to predict what will be the course of nature, is proof conclusive that, though we cannot think any thought of God’s, we can catch a fragment of His Thought, as it were [in nature].”⁷

As to whether there really is such a being as God, “the only guide to the answer to this question lies in the power of the passion of love which more or less overmasters every agnostic scientist and everybody who seriously and deeply considers the universe.” Peirce quickly adds, “But whatever there may be of argument in all this is as nothing, the merest nothing in comparison to its force as an appeal to ones’ own instinct, which is to argument what substance is to shadow, what bedrock is to the built foundation of a cathedral.”

The idea of God comes, then, from direct experience. “As to God, open your eyes—and your heart, which is also a perceptive organ—and you see him.” Of course delusions are possible. “I may think a thing is black, and on close examination it may turn out to be bottle-green. But I cannot think a thing is black if there is no such thing to be seen as black.” Likewise, one cannot be totally deceived as to the reality of God, however wrong he may be about his precise nature.⁸

William James: The Pragmatic Test for Truth

James’s first major venture into religious writing was one of descriptive psychology. His description is classic, and it sets the stage for his pragmatism.

A Description of Religious Experience. Upon examining religion on the experiential level he concluded there are two types: the “once-born” and the “twice-born.” The former is optimistic in outlook and the latter is pessimistic. The one maximizes good and the other evil. The first type is healthy-minded and the second is sick-souled. For the once-born are born with a sense of harmony but the twice-born have inner discord naturally.

For the former, happiness is the evidence of God;but for the latter, unhappiness manifests man’s need for the Divine. In the case of once-born men there is a continuity with God. At worst man is only maladjusted and is naturally curable. But in the case of the twice-born there is discontinuity with God based on a sense of man’s essential evil which calls for supernatural help.

According to James, the Latins tend to be once-born type and the Germanic peoples tend to be twice-born type. In terms of conceptualization, the first group tend to be pantheistic and the last group theistic. Emerson and Whitman illustrate the former while Luther and Bunyan are examples of the latter.⁹

James described the characteristics of two types of conversion: gradual and sudden. Both are characterized by:

(1) a change in the habitual center of personal energy (i.e., self-surrender),

(2) the undermining and replacement of one life system by another.

This change generally occurs in adolescence but it takes about 1/5 the time in conversion. The symptoms of this experience are a sense of incompleteness followed by anxiety about the hereafter that leads to a sense of happy relief upon conversion. The sudden conversions are characterized by:

(1) a period of subconscious incubation from sublimation, followed by

(2) an uprush from the subconscious called automation.

(3) The larger the subconscious storehouse of sublimation, the more likely there will be a sudden conversion as opposed to a gradual one.

(4) But there are no psychologically discernible differences between a natural conversion and an alleged “supernatural one” as described by Jonathan Edwards in his famous Religious Affections.

James does not deny the working of God in conversion but leaves the door open through the subconscious as the route of divine activity.¹⁰

The common core of all religious experience, according to James, involves both the subjective and the objective. The subjective or emotional side involves:

(1) a feeling that the visible world draws its chief significance from the wider spiritual universe,

(2) a sense that union or harmonious relation with the higher universe is our true end, and

(3) a feeling that prayer or inner communion with the spirit of this higher universe produces effects within the phenomenal world. The effects of these three beliefs provide

(4) a new zest for life manifest in lyrical enchantment or an appeal to earnestness and heroism and

(5) an assurance of safety and a temper of peace in oneself and of love toward others.

On the objective or intellectual side of the religious experience are two factors:

(1) a sense that something has gone wrong about us the way we are naturally, and

(2) a belief that we are saved from this wrongness by making proper connection with higher powers.

This is the minimal cognitive content in all religious experience.¹¹

James held that there were two sides of the religious experience: the “hither” and the “thither.” The “hither” side may be identified with the subconscious continuation of our conscious self. That is, what one means by “God” is, on the psychologically describable side, said to be found in the area of one’s individual subconsciousness. What the “thither” or “higher” side may be is not subject to direct scientific investigation. It is a matter of “over-belief.” However, James believes that one can posit a hypothesis about this “more” or “God” that can be practically tested.¹²

The Will to Believe. Even before James put together his classical analysis of religious experience (1902), he had already written on how to justify a religious belief in his famous essay. The Will to Believe (1896). He argued that one’s will to believe can be based on very personal and practical bases. A hypothesis, wrote James, is “anything that may be proposed to our belief.” As such it may be either living or dead.

“A live hypothesis is one which appeals as a real possibility to him to whom it is proposed.” And “the maximum of liveness in a hypothesis means willingness to act irrevocably.” Further James writes, “Let us call the decision between two hypotheses an option.” Options may be “first, living or dead; secondly, forced or avoidable; thirdly, momentous or trivial. And for our purposes we may call an option a genuine option when it is of the forced, living, and momentous kind.” A live option is one in which each alternative “makes some appeal, however small, to your belief.”

A forced option is one “based on a complete disjunction, with no possibility of not choosing.…” Finally, a momentous option is a unique opportunity as versus a trivial one where “the stakes are insignificant, or when the decision is reversible.” Science abounds with trivial options. Needless to say, religion for James is a genuine option, that is, one that is forced, living, and momentous.¹³

James believed that “our passional and volitional nature lay at the root of all our convictions.” Free will is not a “fifth wheel to the coach.” Even as scientists “we want to have truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it.” And “as a rule we disbelieve all facts and theories for which we have no use.”

Hence, James concludes that “our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot be decided on intellectual grounds.” For “to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision—just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.”

James believed there was no way to settle the religious question on purely intellectual grounds. “Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with,” he continues, “but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?” Indeed, “no concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.” “For what a contradictory array of opinions have objective evidence and absolute certitude been claimed”!¹⁴

Of course, “whenever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come.” In scientific matters it is almost always the case that such skepticism in the absence of evidence is called for.

However, religious and “moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for a sensible proof.” Of course, “the question of having moral beliefs at all or not having them is decided by our will.” For “if your heart does not want a world of moral reality, your head will assuredly never make you believe in one.” Moral skepticism can be no more refuted or proved by logic than can intellectual skepticism.

And the religious skeptic says, “Better risk loss of truth than chance of error.” When in the presence of a religious option he always believes that “fear of its being error is wiser and better than to yield to our hope that it may be true.”¹⁵

James, however, responded to the skeptic by saying, “I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature … to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side.…” For religion is a genuine option that says “the best things are the more eternal things …” and “we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.” This means that religion is both a living option (to all who are tempted to believe it) and it is a momentous option in view of the unique opportunity for betterment it offers.

Likewise, religion is a forced option because “we cannot escape the issue by remaining skeptical and waiting for more light, because although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve.” Hence, “we have the right to believe at our own risk any hypothesis that is live enough to tempt our will.” And “any rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there, would be an irrational rule.”

For “there are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ‘lowest kind of immorality’ into which the thinking being can fall.” But “since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.

The whole defense of religious faith hinges upon action.”¹⁶ Thus James believed that faith in God did make a difference from one who believed only a naturalistic hypothesis. And some years later in his classic on religious experience, James offered the evidence for his belief that religion does make a difference.

The Value and Fruit of Religion in One’s Life. Religion is not to be judged by its source or root but by its result or fruit. Both the inner and outer characteristics of “saintliness” are superior. Internally, the religious man gains (1) a satisfying feeling of being in a wider (Ideal) life than this world’s selfish interests, (2) a sense of friendly continuity between oneself and this Ideal Power, (3) an immense sense of freedom and elation as our confining self-melts down, and (4) a shifting of our emotional center toward love and harmony with the other.

Externally, religion manifests itself in (1) asceticism where self-surrender becomes self-sacrifice, (2) strength of soul by enlargement to new reaches of patience and fortitude, (3) purity or a spiritual sensitizing that results from a shift of our emotional center, and (4) charity where the same shift brings increased tenderness to our fellow creatures.¹⁷

In summary, James wrote, “In a general way, then, and ‘on the whole,’ … our testing of religion by practical common sense and the empirical method, leave it in possession of its towering place in history.” For “economically, the saintly group of qualities is indispensable to the world’s welfare. The great saints are immediate successes; the smaller ones are at least heralds and harbingers, and they may be leavens also, of a better mundane order. Let us be saints, then, if we can.…”¹⁸

The Pragmatic Test for Truth. James’s pragmatism is implicit in Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) when he said that “over-beliefs” cannot be scientifically proved but that the pragmatic and experiential grounds of religious belief are so plausible that “scientific logic will find no plausible pretext for vetoing your impulse to welcome it as true.” This “thoroughly pragmatic view of religion,” says James, “has usually been taken as a matter of course by common men” but “I believe the pragmatic way of taking religion to be the deeper way.”¹⁹

Several years later James explicated his pragmatic method very clearly in his work on Pragmatism (1907). “True ideas,” he wrote, “are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we can not.” Ideas are not intrinsically true or false. Rather, “truth happens to an idea.” Ideas are made true by events. On the common-sense level truth is “a leading that is worth while.”

To borrow a banking analogy, “truth lives on a credit system.” Ideas pass along until someone wants to “cash in” on them. Truth, then, is the “cash-value” of an idea. “We trade on each other’s truth. But beliefs verified concretely by somebody are the posts of the whole superstructure.” Verification then may be direct or indirect but eventually “all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere, which somebody’s ideas have copied.”

The true, to put it very briefly, “is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the ‘right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”²⁰ Pragmatism’s “only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best.… If theological ideas should do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do it, how could pragmatism possibly deny God’s existence?”²¹

The pragmatic method yielded for James a pluralistic rather than a monistic universe, one which was melioristic rather than either optimistic of inevitable salvation or pessimistically resigned to ultimate doom. But traditional theism is ruled out for a “pragmatic or melioristic type of theism” which involves a superhuman but finite God. In the final analysis, however, “pragmatism has to postpone dogmatic answer, for we do not yet know certainly which type of religion is going to work best in the long run.”²²

Pragmatic Element in Evangelical Apologetics

Pragmatic elements have been present in orthodox apologetics from the very beginning. Jesus’ statement, “by their fruits you shall know them,” has long been taken to be a pragmatic test for the truth about a religious teaching. Even Thomas Aquinas spoke of believing “what another says because it seems fitting or useful to do so.

Thus, too, we are moved to believe what God says because we are promised eternal life as a reward if we believe.”²³ The emphasis among Christians that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” is found extensively on the popular level.

Few contemporary Christians, however, have given more thoughtful and philosophical backing to a kind of pragmatic test for truth than has Francis Schaeffer. In a chapter entitled “How Do We Know It Is True?” Schaeffer outlines his test for truth as follows: “The theory must be non-contradictory and must give an answer to the phenomenon in question” and, second, “we must be able to live consistently with our theory.”

Schaeffer admits that a non-Christian view such as materialism may fit the first criterion “but it will not fit the second, for man simply cannot live as though he were a machine.” The Christian view of the universe, however, “can be lived with, both in life and in scholarly pursuits.” And “it should be added in conclusion that the Christian, after he is a Christian, has years of experimental evidence to add to all the above reasons.…” Thus, crucial to the falsity of the non-Christian view is its unlivability while the truth of Christianity is confirmed by its livability and experiential verification.²⁴

Schaeffer illustrates his point by what may be thought of as a kind of broad experiential teleological argument.²⁵ He notes that no one can really live a chance philosophy of pure materialism. Jackson Pollock, who dipped paint on his canvas by chance, after exhausting his method, committed suicide. On the other hand, the American musician John Cage, who flipped coins to determine notes, took up hunting mushrooms as a hobby.

He confessed, “I became aware that if I approached mushrooms in the spirit of my chance operations, I would die shortly. So, I decided that I would not approach them in this way!” Pollock is dead because he tried in vain to live his chance philosophy. Cage lived on because he was inconsistent with his random view of the universe. Both proved that disteleology is unlivable.

Therefore, one must believe, if he is to live consistently, that this is a designed and personal universe (viz., a theistic one). Of course, Schaeffer gives much more elaboration and sophistication to his position, but the broad pragmatic emphasis is there nonetheless. Only the Christian view is consistent and livable, and all non-Christian views are in the final analysis unlivable. Experience confirms this to be true.²⁶

Pragmatic Element in Evangelical Apologetics

Some Common Characteristics of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

Pragmatists, like rationalists or empiricists, differ in the outcome or result of their test for truth. Some are theists while others are not. But whatever the difference in conclusion, there is a central agreement on the nature of the pragmatic test itself. These common tenets may be briefly summarized now.

First and foremost is the belief that the testing ground of a theory of truth is human experience. Is the position livable? Does it work in the lives of men for whom it is proposed? What is its cash value in human experience? There is a difference as to the source and nature of the theory of truth among pragmatists—some get it from sense experience and others from divine revelation—but the test is the same, namely, what are the fruits of this theory in the lives of persons? As a test for truth, then, pragmatism is decidedly experiential.

Pragmatism, as proposed by William James, is characterized by other things like futurity. That is, it is not present and individual experience that will decide the truth of a hypothesis but general, continual, and long-run experience. Over the long haul our experiences will determine the truth of a religious hypothesis. Truth may have tentative confirmation in the present, but it is subject to revision and disconfirmation by our experiences in the distant future. The next point follows directly from this.

Pragmatism disavows absolute results of its test. All conclusions about truth are less than absolute and final. Knowledge is always progressive if not processive. Some views may be more widely confirmed than others, but none are really universally and finally settled.

There are many other things that characterize philosophical pragmatism, such as its distaste for or denial of essential truth, its progressivism, and its instrumentalism; but the foregoing are at the heart of its test for truth. And this latter point is our only concern here.

Some Common Characteristics of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

An Evaluation of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

There is undoubtedly a pragmatic strain in all men. Both the need for and appeal of results in human operations add to the attractiveness of the pragmatic theory. Emerging from this are several commendable features of the pragmatic emphasis.

Positive Contributions of Pragmatism

The offers of pragmatism are a refreshing contrast to those of rationalism. It brings one back from the ivory tower of the abstract possibilities to the concrete realities of life. In this regard we may note several important contributions to the truth question.

Pragmatism provides a balance in the reaction against the purely formal and rationalistic approach. It stresses the practical vis-à-vis the purely theoretical. It is not content with seeking causes but also is concerned with producing effects in lives.

It does not judge an idea solely on its root but considers also its fruit. Pragmatism rightly stresses that contemplation is not always sufficient; action is sometimes necessary. It points out that truth does not abide merely in the abstract but that it has concrete dimensions and applications.

Truth, at least religious truth, is finally confirmed in personal experience. Any theory that offers itself as a world and life view must be applicable to life. Human experience is the proving ground where many beautiful theories have been ruined by brutal gangs of facts. If a view is actually unlivable, how can it be considered a true perspective on life? Certainly, religious truth, with its life-transforming claim, must be applicable to life or else it must be disqualified as a claimant of truth.

Pragmatists also provide a helpful reminder of the tentative or probable nature of much of our knowledge. Perhaps no truth about reality can be known with rational inescapability. And certainly, many truths about the world of our experiences are held on less than absolute grounds. Finite man must be content with the limits of his finitude. Even if there are absolute truths, he does not have an absolute grasp on them.

And even if there is an Infinite Being, limited humans have far less than an infinite understanding of him. Pragmatists serve a corrective role to dogmatists and a reminder to the Christian that “now we see through a glass darkly” (I Cor. 13:12).

Finally, pragmatists, like existentialists, remind us again of the role of the personal and volitional in truth. The process of understanding and applying truth to one’s life is more than purely rational. There must be a will to believe. The horse can be led to the water but cannot be made to drink—not at least by purely rational arguments.

Even if one could prove rationally that God exists, it does not follow that one must believe in God. A young man may know that there are many wonderful young ladies who would make excellent wives but at the same time he may not desire to place his marital trust in any of them. Faith is essential to religious experience. Without an ultimate commitment to the Ultimate, to borrow Tillich’s terms, there will be no ultimate or religious satisfaction.

Some Criticisms of the Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Despite the many obviously commendable features of pragmatism, as a test for the truth of a world view it is clearly insufficient. When it is tried in the methodological scales it is found wanting. Many men have undertaken to criticize pragmatism from many perspectives. We summarize here only those observations that apply to pragmatism as a test for truth.

First, the results or consequences of an action do not establish what is true but simply what happened to work. But success is not truth and failure is not necessarily falsity. Even when given or desired results are attained, one can still ask of the view or action, “Was it true?” The truth question is not settled but is still open after the results are reached. Pragmatism shows only what works (and one would expect truth to work) but it does not prove that what worked is true.

Second, truth may be unrelated to results. The results may have been accidental, in which case there would be no more relation to truth than accidentally discovering a million dollars proves one is the rightful owner of it. And even if the results are not accidental but follow regularly from a given belief or action, it does not prove that that belief is true.

Unlawful entry by picking a lock will work regularly, but that result does not demonstrate that this was either a right way to enter or that entry was the right result. But it worked. Further, sometimes truth may not bring the desired results (e.g., being honest on one’s income tax may be economically painful). And sometimes the desired result may not be true (e.g., desired economic gain by oppressing the poor). Neither the desired nor desirable is necessarily the truthful.

Third, truth is more than the expedient. As Josiah Royce once put it, one wonders whether James would be satisfied to put a witness on the stand in court and have him swear to tell “the expedient, the whole expedient, and nothing but the expedient, so help him future experience.”²⁷ At the heart of this criticism is the contention that we do mean more by truth than what works.

The meaning of truth cannot be limited to the functional and practical. And if it were, we would have to determine whether it means what is meaningful for the individual or for the race. If the former, solipsism would follow; that is, truth would be entirely relative to the individual, to what is expedient for him at that moment. And if truth is what is meaningful to most men in the long run, then other problems emerge to which we now turn.

Fourth, James admits that it is impossible for us to know the long-run consequences. Further, he admits that pantheism has seemingly worked well for vast masses of men for centuries of time. And were he alive today he would witness even more Westerners adopting pantheistic views. Does this confirm its truth or merely the fact that more people are trying it and finding that it works for them?

Maybe, as fads go, there will be a great reversal in the long run. What then? How is one to know now which view is true? Must one rely solely on the will to believe? On purely pragmatic grounds there appears to be no other alternative for a finite person who cannot divine the distant future.

Fifth, a passional and volitional basis alone for deciding truth is insufficient. It is subject to the same critiques leveled against fideism (see here). Faith is certainly necessary for belief in God; but one must have some evidence or reason to believe that there is a God before he can meaningfully believe in him.

But if the pragmatist is unable to decide the momentous religious issue of whether there is a God on intellectual grounds, then he must rely on purely passional bases. And in this case, there is really no objective or public test for truth at all. A purely personal and private test for truth cannot meet even the minimal standards for truth criteria, for it is neither available to others nor can it really exclude other views. In short, at this point, pragmatism reduces to fideism.

Sixth, on purely pragmatic grounds opposing world views, may work equally well. James admitted that pantheism has worked for millions of men for hundreds of years. If what some pantheist desires is the cessation of all craving, then attaining Nirvana (i.e., the extinguishing of all craving) will not only work well but it would work better than heaven as Christians conceive of it (i.e., as a continual fulfilling of all desires forever).

Heaven would be a perpetual frustration to one who does not want to experience desire and fulfillment any more. Likewise, Nirvana would not be a fulfillment of Christian desire but a cessation of even the ability to desire. So, on a purely pragmatic ground, one would have to say that Nirvana works best for pantheists and heaven for Christians. But they are opposing world views; both cannot be true at the same time and in the same sense.²⁸

Hence, the only alternative for adjudication of these conflicting truth claims is to contend that one view (or both) has the wrong goal. But on a purely pragmatic basis, there is no way to affirm this, since truth and rightness are known only from attaining desired consequences. And we have already seen that the consequences are best for each view in accord with its own goals but not in accord with those of the other. The pragmatic test for truth cannot rescue us from total relativism in this regard.

Summary and Conclusion

There is a difference between a pragmatic theory of truth and a pragmatic test for truth. Christian apologists disavow the former but often employ the latter as part, if not all, of their test for the truth of Christianity. There are indeed some important insights provided by pragmatists that are not foreign to Biblical Christianity. Truth must work in one’s life; faith in God is essential; by their fruits you shall know them; and so on.

All of these are good. Of course, all truth must work, but not everything that works is necessarily true. However, it is both an ill-advised and fatal apologetic move to employ pragmatism as a total test for truth or as the test of a total world view because it reduces to relativism, fideism, or experientialism—all of which are inadequate to establish the truth of Christianity vis-à-vis other world views. Many differing views work for many different people. But results are often unrelated to truth.

Further, who can know what the long-run consequences or results of belief will be? How can a person believe in God on a purely passional basis when he has no evidence to support a belief that God is there? The Christian apologist believes that truth will work in the short run and in the long run, but he cannot hold that what works is true. For many false and evil things have worked for many people for many years. And no finite can see the distant future. Hence, pragmatism fails as a sufficient test for truth in the present.

SELECT READINGS FOR Pragmatism

Exposition of Pragmatism
- Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy.
- James, William.
- ————. The Meaning of Truth.
- ————. The Will to Believe.
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. Charles Sanders Peirce: The Essential Writings.
Evaluation of Pragmatism
- Ayer, A. J. The Origins of Pragmatism.
- Blanchard, Brand. The Nature of Thought, II, chap. 10.
- Driscoll, John T. Pragmatism and the Problem of the Idea.
- Hackett, Stuart. The Resurrection of Theism, I, chap. 4.
^[1]

¹Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A 824, B 852.

²C. S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” V, collected in Charles Sanders Peirce: The Essential Writings, ed. Edward C. Moore, p. 133.

³Peirce, V.

⁴Peirce, “How to Make our Ideas Clear” II, col. and ed. Moore.

⁵Peirce, “What Pragmatism Is,” col. and ed. Moore.

⁶C. S. Peirce, “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God,” Hibbert Journal, 1908.

⁷ “Concept of God” in Philosophical Writings of Peirce, chap. 28, ed. Justus Buchler (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1955).

⁸Buchler.

⁹William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, Lectures 4–8.

¹⁰James, Lectures 9–10.

¹¹James, Lecture 20.

¹²James, Lecture 20.

¹³See “The Will to Believe” in Essays in Pragmatism, ed. Alburey Castell (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 88–89.

¹⁴Castell, pp. 90–98.

¹⁵Castell, pp. 101–6.

¹⁶Castell, pp. 105–8.

¹⁷James, Lectures 11–15.

¹⁸James, p. 280 (Mentor Paperback).

¹⁹James, pp. 385, 390, 391.

²⁰See William James, Pragmatism and Other Essays (New York: Washington Square Press, Inc., 1963), pp. 89, 90, 92, 95, 96.

²¹James, Pragmatism, “What Pragmatism Means,” p. 38.

²²James, Pragmatism, “Pragmatism and Religion,” pp. 129, 125, 131, 132.

²³Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, XIV, i, reply.

²⁴Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, pp. 109–11. Schaeffer, of course, has more than a mere pragmatic test for truth. He has in some places what appears to be a transcendental argument or one based on actual undeniability (see He Is There and He Is Not Silent, chap. 1).

²⁵Thomas Morris, Francis Schaeffer’s Apologetics: A Critique (Chicago: Moody Press, 1976), chap. 1.

²⁶Schaeffer, pp. 73–74.

²⁷Quoted by Joseph L. Blau in “Introduction” to Pragmatism and Other Essays, p.XIV.

²⁸Alan Watts’ more recent attempt to build a two-level parallel between pantheism and Christianity will not work. See Watts, The Supreme Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), pp. 12, 13, 45, 52, 53. As Watts later saw, both systems must lay claim to truth; but as contrary views, both cannot be true (Beyond Theology, pp. VI, VII).

^[1]Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (101). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know
12 فبراير، 2022
EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know
EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know

Christianity is a historical religion and it has been common for Christian apologists to appeal to the historical evidence of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a verification of its claim to be true. However, the appeal to evidence is by no means limited to the past or historical evidence. Other apologists appeal to the present evidence in the natural world.

And some contemporary Christian thinkers have made appeal to future or eschatological evidence for the verification of Christianity. It is the purpose of this chapter to assess evidentialism as a test for the truth of Christianity.

An Exposition of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Perhaps the most common appeal to evidence by Christian apologists is to the past. The great facts of Christian history including the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ are seemingly irresistible focal points of Christian apologetics. Two examples will suffice.

The Appeal to Past Evidence: Historical Approach of C. H. Dodd

The Historical Nature of Christianity.

Dodd is in agreement with those who react against a pure “historicism” or quest for the bare facts of the historical Jesus. The history of Christianity, he feels, is written “from faith to faith.” Nevertheless, when all this is admitted it still “belongs to the specific character of Christianity that it is an historical religion.” While “some religions can be indifferent to historical fact, and move entirely on the plane of timeless truth, Christianity cannot.”

For “it rests upon the affirmation that a series of events happened, in which God revealed Himself in action, for the salvation of men.” The Gospels of the New Testament profess to tell us what happened. They do not set out to gratify our curiosity about past events “but they do set out to nurture our faith upon the testimony to such events.”¹

As a historical religion Christianity is to be contrasted with both mysticism and nature-religion. The former concerns itself wholly with man’s inner life and rejects the world of nature, and the latter recognizes the external world as in some sense a medium of divinity. And while Christianity neither repudiates God’s revelation in nature nor his work within the spirit of man, it stresses that “the eternal God is revealed in history.”

There is no claim, however, that “the truth about God can be discovered by treating history as a uniform field of observation (like the ‘nature’ studied in sciences), in which it is possible to collect data from all parts of the field, and to arrive by induction at a conclusion.”²

The Meaning of History: Fact and Interpretation. “History” is used in two senses: a series of events or the record of this series which in the wider sense have not merely a private but a public interest. Hence, history cannot be a mere “diary” or “chronicle” without context and interpretation. For even here the selection and context of what is recorded provides some meaning to the events recorded.

A “historical ‘event’ is an occurrence plus the interest and meaning which the occurrence possessed for the person involved in it, and by which the record is determined.” Hence, when we speak of God revealed in history we do not mean the bare occurrences but also the rich and concrete meaning of these events.³

Further, “since events in the full sense of the term are relative to the feelings and judgments of the human mind, the intensity of their significance varies, just as in the individual life certain crucial experiences have more than everyday significance.”

Therefore, we can “understand that an historical religion attaches itself not to the whole temporal series indifferently, nor yet to any casual event, but to a particular series of events in which a unique intensity of significance resides.” So then “this selection of a particular series is not incongruous with the nature of history itself.” For “the particular, even the unique, is a category entirely appropriate to the understanding of history.”

And since “one particular event exceeds another in significance, there may well be an event which is uniquely significant, and this event may give a unique character to the whole series to which it belongs.” According to Dodd, “this is in fact the assertion which Christianity makes.”

For “it takes the series of events recorded or reflected in the Bible, from the call of Abraham to the emergence of the Church, and declares that in this series the ultimate reality of all history … is finally revealed, because the series is itself controlled by the supreme event of all—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And, adds Dodd, “this valuation of the series is not imposed upon it from without, but is an integral part of the history itself.”⁴

The Central Facts of Sacred History.

By means of Form Criticism Dodd constructs what he admits is a limited number of facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Nonetheless, the essential elements recovered from the documents “inevitably include both fact and interpretation” about the central facts of Christianity. These include an overall sketch of Jesus’ life, his teaching, as well as his death and resurrection (although Dodd is not sure it involved a physical resuscitation of a corpse).

But “the Resurrection remains an event within history, though we may not be able to state precisely what happened.” So Christianity is not a “massive pyramid balanced upon the apex of some trivial occurrence …” but rather it is a “significant occurrence plus the meaning inherent in it.…” In view of this there is no mere incidental connection of historical events.

For “the connection of events ceases to be ‘accidental’ if the tradition as we can recover it from the New Testament represents in substance a true memory of the facts, with the meaning which they really bore as an episode in history.”

For “either the interpretation through which the facts are presented was imposed upon them mistakenly … or the interpretation was imposed by the facts themselves, as they were experienced in an historical situation … and in that case we do know in the main what the facts were.” Dodd believes that this “conclusion may not be demonstrable but it is not unreasonable.”⁵

The Relation of Sacred and Secular History.

History itself is, according to Dodd, “the whole succession of events in time, in which the spontaneity of the human spirit interacts with outward occurrences.” Part of this succession of events is recorded in the Scriptures. And “part of this record is a source of evidence for secular history, dovetailing into the records of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.”

However, “the events recorded are presented in the Bible as a history of the dealings of God with men, interpreted by the eschatological event of the coming of Christ, His death and Resurrection.” That is, Biblical history is Heilsgeschichte or sacred and redemptive history. But “it is important to bear in mind that the same events enter into sacred and secular history; the events are the same, but they form two distinguishable series.”

The “empirical series which is secular history extends over all recorded time, to our own day, and is still unfinished.” This series is “linked together by succession of time, and by the operation of efficient causes, whether these causes be physical or psychological.” But “the attempt to find a general pattern and universal meaning in this succession meets admittedly with no more than doubtful success.”

The basic reason for this is that “it is impossible in the empirical series to work backwards to a real beginning, or forward to a real end.” Using any process without a beginning or end—just a sheer process—makes it difficult to predict an absolute meaning or value. For “any period or event which we may choose as a standard of judgement—our own period for instance—is only part of the process.”

Likewise, any ideas in our minds we may wish to use as criteria are “in part at least, a product of our particular historical condition.”⁶

The Redemptive Meaning of History.

Dodd believes that this uncertainty about the meaning of history in general may be the reason many turn to mysticism or to nature instead of history as the basis of their religious views. The Christian, however, affirms that there is another series into which historical events may fall, namely, sacred history. Of this redemptive series the Biblical history forms the inner core.

“But the Bible always assumes that the meaning of this inner core is the ultimate meaning of all history, since God is the Maker and Ruler of all mankind, who created all things for Himself, and redeemed the world to Himself.” In this case, “the whole of history is in the last resort sacred history, or Heilsgeschichte.”

And the “principle of the universality of the divine meaning in history is symbolically expressed in Christian theology by placing the history of the Old and New Testaments within a mythical scheme which includes a real beginning and a real end.”⁷

The “Creation and Last Judgement are symbolical of the truth that all history is teleological, working out one universal divine purpose.” Hence, “the story of Creation is not to be taken as a literal, scientific statement that the time series had a beginning—an idea as inconceivable as its opposite, that time had no beginning.”

Neither should “the story of the Fall … be taken as a literal, historical statement that there was a moment when man began to set himself against the will of God.” Both Creation and Fall are “a symbolic summing-up of everything in secular or empirical history which is preparatory to the process of redemption and revelation.” These stories affirm “that in man and his world there is implanted a divine purpose, opposed by a recalcitrant will.

This is universally true … of the entire human race at all points in the temporal process.” And “the myth of a Last Judgement is a symbolical statement of the final resolution of the great conflict. Serious difficulties are raised if we attempt to treat it as a literal and quasi-historical statement that the succession of events in time will one day cease—once again an idea as inconceivable to us as its opposite.”

Nor is the myth to be taken as “a prediction that before man dies out of this earth, or before the earth itself perishes in some astronomical catastrophe, the good will finally and manifestly triumph over the evil in human history.” Rather “this triumph is something actually attained, not in some coming Day of the Lord, near or distant, but in the concrete historical event of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Thus Christianity is a “realized eschatology,” symbolizing by the Last Judgement “the relation of all history to the purpose of God. For the essential feature of the Last Judgement is its universality.” It includes “the quick and the dead,” that is, “all generations of mankind.” It means in essence “that all history is comprehended in that achievement of the divine purpose of which the coming of Christ, His death and resurrection, is the intra-historical expression.”⁸

In summation, history “as a process of redemption and revelation, has a beginning and an end, both in God. The beginning is not an event in time; the end is not an event in time. The beginning is God’s purpose; the end is the fulfillment of His purpose. Between these lies the sacred history which culminates in the death and resurrection of Christ.”

And it is “the task of the Church to bring all historical movements into the context of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in order that they may be judged by the divine meaning revealed in that event.” And this “divine judgement is not a bare sentence, or expression of opinion. It is historical action in the Cross and the Resurrection.”

Thus “full meaning is not reserved for the last term in a temporal series, which supersedes and abolishes all previous stages in the process.” For “every situation is capable of being lifted up into the order of ‘sacred’ history.” So “in any given situation there are factors at work belonging to the empirical order … but the ultimately constituitive factor is neither nature nor the spirit of man, but the Kingdom of God.”

In it “the temporal order, which is the ‘body’ of the human spirit on earth, is ‘raised in glory’ in the eternal order. That is the ultimate destination of the historical process.”⁹

The Apologetic Implications of History.

According to Dodd, certain facts about the life of Christ are historically determinable. These facts are both public and historically verifiable by historical methodology. Central to these is that Jesus of Nazareth died and rose from the dead. These facts come with the interpretation of Jesus’ contemporaries but this interpretation is not arbitrary; it grows out of the facts themselves.

For some facts are more significant than others and these sacred facts stand out as the most significant in history. And by means of these key sacred facts we can give meaning to all of history, that is, to secular history which otherwise has no apparent meaning growing out of its series of events as such. Thus Christian facts are historically discoverable, and on the basis of these facts one can determine the truth about all of human history and destiny.

That is, historical evidence—the cross and resurrection—is the basis and test for truth for one’s life and view of the universe. Evidence from the past, from history, is the basis and test for truth in both the present and the future. Dodd’s view is an example of historical evidentialism.

Others have made a far stronger claim for the evidential value of history than Dodd. John W. Montgomery, for example, appeals to what he believes is the historically demonstrable fact of the resurrection as the verification of Jesus’ claim to be God and thereby of Christ’s attestation of the divine authority and inerrancy of Scripture.¹⁰

From the earliest Christian times Christian apologists have made recourse to historical justification of their beliefs in the miraculous events of the first century. For many apologists it is these historical events that provide the crucial test for Christian truth.

The Appeal to Present Evidence in Nature

Evidence is by no means limited to the past, to history. Apologists often appeal to evidence available in the present. Since the appeal to what we may call internal evidence of experience has already been discussed (see Chapter Four), we will center our attention here on what may be called external evidence, on nature or the external world.

Paley’s Watchmaker. Perhaps the most common appeal to nature as evidence of God is some form of the Teleological Argument. Although the argument has been around since before the time of Plato, one of the more popular modern forms of it was set forth by William Paley (1743–1805). Paley insisted that if one found a watch in an empty field he would naturally and correctly conclude that it had a watchmaker.

Likewise, if one studies the more complex design found in the natural world, he cannot but conclude that there is a world Designer behind it. For a watch indicates that it was put together for an intelligent purpose (viz., to keep time) by virtue of its intricate series of parts from spring to glass cover. And in like manner the natural world has far greater and more subtle adaptations of means to an end. It follows then that if a watch needs a watchmaker, the natural world demands an even greater Designer (viz., God).¹¹

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) saw an important weakness in Paley’s argument. The argument is built on the assumption that similarity in effect implies similarity in cause. But in this kind of analogy, the argument is weaker when the dissimilarity is greater. And there is a significant dissimilarity that weakens Paley’s argument, for watches imply, watchmakers, only because we know by previous experience that watches are things made by watchmakers.

In like manner one would not know that dung was something left by an animal unless he had previously observed animals deposit dung. Mill did feel, however, that a more plausible argument from nature could be stated based on his inductive method of agreement. For example, there is an amazing concurrence of many diverse elements in the human eye. It is not probable that random selection brought these together. The inductive method of agreement would point to a common cause of the eye in some purposing Designer.¹²

Taylor’s Teleological Evolution. Even before Paley, David Hume had proposed a criticism of Paley’s type of argument that many feel is decisive. The apparent “design” may be nothing more than a “happy accident,” Hume argued. Given enough time it is possible that chance reshuffling would produce any given combination of elements including the human eye, the human anatomy, and the whole of the so-called order of nature.¹³

With the rise of Darwinism, a hypothesis to provide the modus operandi of chance, an alternate explanation to design became more plausible to many modern minds. As Bertrand Russell later pointed out: the adaptation of means to end in the world is either a result of intelligent preplanning or else a consequence of evolution. But since it can be accounted for on strictly evolutionary bases, there is no need to posit an intelligent Designer.¹⁴

It is to this type of argument that A. E. Taylor directs his form of the teleological proof for God. Taylor contends that nature reveals an anticipatory design that chance evolution cannot account for. For example the body’s need for oxygen is anticipated by the membranes that provide it. Some insects deposit their eggs where the developing young will have food available in anticipation of their need to eat, and so on throughout nature.

Neither can nature’s advanced planning be accounted for by physical laws alone, since there are innumerable ways electrons could run, but they do invariably move in accordance with an advanced planning that preserves the organisms, whether they are healthy or unhealthy (e.g., antibodies). In fact, mind or intelligence is the only known condition that can overcome the improbabilities against the developmental preservation of life.

Without advanced planning in nature, life would not survive. In short, the order evident in natural development of life is evidence of God.¹⁵

Some purely naturalistic evolutionists have attempted to overcome Taylor’s type of argument by an appeal to natural selection. Julian Huxley, admitting that the mathematical odds against evolution are staggering (one chance in 1,000 to the millionth power, i.e., one followed by three million zeros), argued nonetheless “it has happened, thanks to the working of natural selection and the properties of living substance which make natural selection inevitable.”¹⁶

Another broader attempt to make the mathematical odds appear less formidable is to consider the world in which life has developed a mere “oasis of design” surrounded by a vast desert of chance. That is, in comparison with the immensity of the universe it is not nearly so unlikely, but even probable, that a “happy accident” such as the succession of favorable conditions for the advancement of life would occur in this small pocket of the universe (and perhaps even in others).

Tennant’s Objections to Chance. F. R. Tennant has done more to keep alive the evidence for God from the order of nature than almost any modern theist. He admits the conceivability of the “oasis of design in a desert of chance” thesis but denies its plausibility. He argues that mere possibilities within the unknown world can never be used to refute the probabilities in the known world. And the world as we know it shows marked evidence of adaptation to ends.

For example, there is an adaptation of thought to thing or mind to the world which makes the external world thinkable. Internally, there is the adaptation of the parts of organic beings. Nature is adapted to man’s aesthetic needs, the world is adapted to human moral goals, and the world process is adapted to a culmination in man with his rational and moral status. And in view of the strong probability of design in the known world we have no reason to believe that the evidence for design in the known world is a lie to the unknown world.

Indeed, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) makes completely random development unlikely. For if the world is tending to disorder, unless there is behind it an ordering power it would be more and more—if not completely—chaotic by now. Nor, argues Tennant, does a mere chance reshuffling of matter by mechanical means account for the origin of mind and personality. In short, the odds against a chance explanation of the world are extremely great. The preadaptive order of the world we now have is good evidence for a Designer (i.e., God).¹⁷

Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Nature. Sometime before Paley, the classic work of Bishop Butler on the Analogy of Religion (1736) presented an important defense of an evidential apologetic based on the natural order. Even the skeptic Hume considered it the best defense of Christianity he had ever read. Butler considered his highest obligation to Christianity that of “examining most seriously into its evidence, supposing its credibility; and of embracing it, upon supposition of its truth.”

Butler’s method was both empirical and inductive. He made constant appeal to the canons of reason to which he believed the wise man must grant assent. Of course, it is foolhardy to demand absolute proof for anything. Rather, “probability is the very guide of life.”¹⁸ The reasonable man will without absolute knowledge guide his life by the trends observable in experience. That is, by analogies drawn from nature one can argue for the probability of the truth of Christianity and live accordingly.

By analogy with nature we can know that God governs the world and that there is a future life. Butler’s argument for immortality is illustrative of his approach. Nature reveals to us that many creatures live in different states of perfection (e.g., worms become flies). Indeed, the doctrine that we shall live on after this life in another state has many analogies in nature.

Further, there is a natural momentum in things that fits beautifully with the persistence of man’s personality after death. There is no more reason to believe that death ends all than that inactivity in sleep implies that one will not awaken to consciousness after sleeping. And just as one carries his powers of personality through the changes of childhood, adulthood, and old age, there is by analogy no reason to believe that he cannot carry them through death.¹⁹

Some have criticized Butler’s analogy or probability argument from nature on the grounds that the improbable sometimes happens. A hunch sometimes pays off. Why then should one always act on the basis of the most probable? Butler’s rejoiner is that probability is the guide of life. It is usually cold in Alaska so the prudent man will take his overcoat. If he does not, he will spend more days shivering than not.

A man cannot guide his life entirely by hunches without eventually running into serious difficulty. Although probable knowledge is not absolute, it is sufficient. In fact, it is all we have. The wise man, then, will base his beliefs on the most probable conclusion to which the evidence of nature points. For Butler, that means the wise man will believe in Christianity, despite the fact he lacks any compelling proofs of its truth.

Appeal to Future Evidence: John Hick’s Eschatological Verification

The appeal to evidence as a means of verifying the truth of Christianity has been made to the past (history) as well as to present experience either internally (as in mysticism) or externally (in nature). But some have also appealed to the future as a source of evidence for the possible truth of Christianity. Such was the suggestion of John Hick in his eschatological verification.²⁰

The minimum demand of linguistical empiricism is that one specify some conditions under which one could know if his religious assertions were true. That is, religious assertions need not be actually verified to be meaningful but they must at least be somewhere, somehow, sometime verifiable in order to be meaningful or true. Hick responds to this challenge by suggesting that it is meaningful to believe in God since this can be verified upon death, if one has an experience of meeting God in a future life.

Hick begins his argument by disavowing a necessary symmetrical relation between verification and falsification. For instance, one’s immortality can be verified if one day he observes his own funeral. But he cannot falsify his nonimmortality if he does not survive death to do so. Hence, it may be that belief in God is not falsifiable by anything in this world or beyond it.

But God’s existence is verifiable in principle if we can state the conditions in the next life under which one would recognize that he had met God. And, of course, belief in God would be verified in actual practice if one actually had this experience of meeting God one day.

Hick admits that “the alleged future experience of this state cannot, of course, be appealed to as evidence for theism as a present interpretation of our experience; but it does suffice to render the choice between theism and atheism real and not a merely empty or verbal choice.”²¹

According to Hick there are “two possible developments of our experience such that, if they occurred in conjunction with one another (whether in this life or in another life to come), they would assure us beyond rational doubt of the reality of God, as conceived in the Christian faith.” These are ”first, an experience of the fulfillment of God’s purpose for ourselves, and this has been disclosed in the Christian revelation; in conjunction, second, with an experience of communion with God as he has revealed himself in the person of Christ.”

Hick wards off anticipated criticism as to how one would know God when he met him by appeal to the incarnation of Christ, claiming with Barth that “Jesus Christ is the knowability of God.” Further, the purpose of life for the Christian is final self-fulfillment and happiness in eternal life. This too would be readily recognized when experienced, says Hick.

And the skeptic cannot press any falsification charge on the basis that thousands of years have passed and such a blessed state has not yet arrived. For “no final falsification is possible of the claim that this fulfillment will occur—unless, of course, the prediction contains a specific time clause which, in Christian teaching, it does not.”²²

Hick concludes with the reminder that his purpose is not to seek to establish that fact or truth of a given religion “but rather to establish that there are such things as religious facts.…” In particular he wishes to show “that the existence or non-existence of the God of the New Testament is a matter of fact, and claims as such an eventual experiential verification.”

In brief, even though the eschatological method cannot establish Christian theism now, nevertheless, one day it can be verified in the eschaton. Meanwhile, it is at least possible to believe the truth of Christianity.²³

Some Characteristic Tenets of Evidentialism

The above analysis indicates some marked differences among evidential attempts to establish the truth of a world view. Some appeal to past or historical events (as Dodd); some appeal to present religious experience (following Schleiermacher); others appeal to the evidence for God in the external world of nature (as Paley or Butler).

And still others (like Hick) call on the evidence of experiencing God in the future for a verification of religious claims. Despite this diversity, there is a characteristic commonality in the evidential appeal that bears exposition and evaluation.

First, evidentialism is empirically or exponentially based. It calls one to the basic facts or events of the world or at least to some of them. Truth must be based in facts, not in ideas or theories, or else it is not grounded at all. Truth is based in facts or events.

Second, evidentialists state or imply a distinction between fact and interpretation. The facts are both separate and distinguishable from the interpretation men place on these facts. It is possible to relate and structure many, if not all, facts in differing ways. But the interpretation does not constitute the facts. Facts stand by themselves apart from frameworks that may be given to them from differing points of view.

Third, the evidentialists believe that not all facts can be interpreted in entirely different ways. They contend that meaning grows out of the facts. Somehow, the facts finally “speak for themselves.” To be sure, facts need interpretation but the interpretation cannot be arbitrarily imposed from without; rather, it arises from the facts themselves in a natural way.

Fourth, evidentialists often appeal to some special or unique facts as being definitive in determining truth. For some it may be past miraculous events, for others it may be a present mystical experience, and for still others it may be a final blessed state. Christians most often appeal to the fact of the incarnation, to the crucial events of the life of Jesus, as definitive for truth.

Fifth, many evidentialists place strong emphasis on the objective and public nature of facts. In this respect they regard private and subjective experience as nonevidential. Truth must be observable and general or it is unsubstantiatable.

An Evaluation of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Evidentialism provides some notable insights into the relation of truth and human events. Among these are several of general interest to the task of an apologist.

Positive Contributions of Evidentialism

Evidentialists are to be commended for anchoring truth to facts or events. In this regard several positive contributions can be noted.

First, evidentialists make a significant point when they stress the objective and public nature of evidence. Completely private and purely subjective events or experiences are not really evidence at all. The subjective and personal may very well be a significant source of truth, but it definitely cannot be a deciding test for truth. If truth is to be tested, it must be available to others.

In point of fact, it is highly questionable, if not completely impossible, even to express or communicate a private “truth.” If language or the medium of expression is always common to a group, then it is impossible for an individual to understand a truth solitary to himself. Publicity or objectivity is essential to verifiability. Truth may be subjectively realized but it must be objectively grounded.

Second, truth is factually based, as evidentialists point out. Facts are not based in theories but theories in facts. Experience is the basis for expressions about it. Events are fundamental to interpretation; the viewpoint does not constitute the factualness of the events. Evidentialism rightly places the horse before the cart. For the actual is not based in and constituted by the theoretical. Rather, the interpretive framework provided by the latter simply gives a certain structure or significance to the facts which stand independently in and of themselves.

Third, given a certain context of facts or events, there is no reasonable basis for saying that meaning is entirely arbitrary to the facts. Such facts cannot be interpreted capriciously. Some meaning is essential to certain series of events in a given context. Given the context of hateful intentions, stabbing another twelve times in the heart must be reasonably viewed as murder, and so on. And no fact should be interpreted out of its intended context, for the meaning and the fact of an event are concomitantly related.

That is, facts are not known to us as bare facts but as interpreted by the context from which or through which they are viewed. In this sense, no facts can be justifiably isolated or arbitrarily interpreted apart from their proper context. For example, given the context of a theistic world, not every series of unusual happenings can be justifiably understood as chance events. Some could very well be miracles.

Some Negative Criticisms of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Although evidentialism provides some significant contributions to the apologist’s task, nevertheless, as a test for the truth of a world view it is entirely inadequate. For evidence gains its meaning only by its immediate and overall context; and evidence as such cannot, without begging the question, be used to establish the overall context by which it obtains its very meaning as evidence.

First, facts and events have ultimate meaning only within and by virtue of the context of the world view in which they are conceived. Hence, it is a vicious circle to argue that a given fact (say, the resuscitation of Christ’s body) is evidence of a certain truth claim (say, Christ’s claim to be God), unless it can be established that the event comes in the context of a theistic universe.²⁴

For it makes no sense to claim to be the Son of God and to evidence it by an act of God (miracle) unless there is a God who can have a Son and who can act in a special way in the natural world. But in this case the mere fact of the resurrection cannot be used to establish the truth that there is a God. For the resurrection cannot even be a miracle unless there already is a God.Many overzealous and hasty Christian apologists rush hastily into their historical and evidential apologetics without first properly doing their theistic homework.

Second, contrary to evidentialism, meaning is not inherent in nor does it arise naturally out of bare facts or events. Nothing happens in a vacuum; meaning always demands a context.²⁵ And since the facts are admittedly distinct from the interpretation, it is always possible that in another context or framework of meaning the said facts would not be evidence for Christianity at all.

For example, in the context of a naturalistic world the resuscitation of Jesus’ corpse would not be a miracle but merely an unusual natural event for which there is no known scientific explanation but which, by virtue of its occurrence, both demands and prods scientists to find a natural explanation. Meaning, then, does not really grow out of the event by itself; meaning is given to the event from a certain perspective.

The earthquake that an Old Testament theist believed was divinely instigated to swallow Korah (Num. 16:31 ff.) would undoubtedly be explained by a naturalist as geological pressures within the crust of the earth. What the New Testament claims was the “voice of God” in John 12 was admittedly interpreted by someone standing nearby as “thunder.”

No bare fact possesses inherent meaning; every fact is an “interprafact” by virtue of a necessary combination of both its bare facticity and the meaning given to it in a given context by a specific perspective or world view.

Third, there is no way from pure facts themselves to single out some facts as having special, crucial, or ultimate significance. “Singling out,” “selecting,” “comparing,” and the like are processes of the mind based on principles or perspectives one brings to the facts and not characteristics inherent in raw data. Events simply occur in a series; only one’s perspective or view of those events can determine which one is to be honored over another with special significance.

Not even unusual or odd events as such have inherently more significance than usual or common ones. For if that were so, anomalies would be more important than scientific laws and more human significance would be attributed to freaks than normal people. In fact, in the context of a random universe, even series of odd events bear no more significance than unloaded dice that roll the same numbers on several successive throws.

Of course, in the context of a designed or theistic universe a series of unusual events, such as the point by point correspondence of the life of Christ with a significant number of predictions made hundreds of years in advance, would be an entirely different matter. For if there is a God who can make a series of predictions of unusual events that come to pass as foretold, surely it is not unreasonable to consider them miraculous. But to return to the point, whether or not there is a God is precisely the point at issue.

And it is invalid to appeal to “theistic evidence,” that is, to allegedly miraculous events as a proof that this is a theistic world. That begs the whole question. If this is a theistic universe, of course certain odd series of events can be given special significance. However, the significance does not reside in the events as such but is attributed to them by virtue of the important overall context in which they occur, namely, the theistic context.

But if this is a random natural world rather than a theistic world, neither the life of Christ nor any other unusual series of events has any more special religious significance than an odd series of combinations on a Las Vegas gambling table.

The real problem for the Christian apologist is to find some way apart from the mere facts themselves to establish the justifiability of interpreting facts in a theistic way. No appeal to the mere events or facts themselves will aid in determining which of the alternative interpretations should be placed on the facts. Viewpoints and world views come from without and not from within the facts.

Hence, facts or events as such cannot establish theism. The selection, relation, and relative weight given the facts is not inherent to the facts themselves. Even Dodd reveals this when he appeals to the paradigm importance of the Christian mythological or symbolical structure in order to interpret the events of the secular world. But the question as to the warrant for choosing one myth or symbol over another remains unsettled by mere facts or events.

Fourth, a word must be said about the appeal to so-called order of nature as evidence of God. First of all, this kind of argument makes sense only within the context of design such as was supposed in the theistic or deistic days of Paley and Butler. Since Christianity (with its emphasis on order and regularity) spawned modern science, it is understandable that men speaking out of a scientific context would tend logically to conclude that there is a God.

However, this is a large but vicious circle. For if the supposition and application of a Christian world view gave birth to its child, science, it is not strange that the offspring should naturally pay homage to its parent. Put another way, “order” and “design” are read into, not out of, nature. Indeed, the very word nature is loaded with theistic or, perhaps, deistic connotations.

There is no natural order in a pantheistic world, and in a random world it begs the question to speak of the order of nature. Of course, design implies a Designer and order entails an Orderer. But on what basis does one have the right to label events as “ordered” or “designed,” unless he is already presupposing a theistic view?

Finally, a word is in order about eschatological verification. Simply put, at best it is only a test for meaning (i.e., for the possibility of truth) but not a test for truth itself. At least it is not a current test for truth. Even if in the long run it may serve to confirm a theist’s claim, nonetheless for the present it offers (and Hick admits this) no hope for deciding which world view is probably true vis-à-vis the others.

In other words, it is not really a present test for truth at all. For the present we are left to simple fideism or to find some other test for truth. And what rational man would want to leave the total determination of his lifetime—even eternal—decision on the simple hope that the end will vindicate him! If the future fails him, it may be too late. The wise man will seek a firmer ground now on such ultimately important questions.

Summary and Conclusion

Evidentialism, like experientialism, offers some significant contributions to our understanding of the role of events and facts to religious truth. Truth must be objective and public; it needs a basis in fact. Interpretation is distinguishable from the facts being interpreted. And in a given context not just any interpretation can be given to any fact.

However, there is no way for facts themselves to determine in which context or by which framework they are to be viewed. No meaning is inherently and inseparably attached to a given set of facts. And there is no ultimate meaning or truth attributable to facts unless it is from the overall perspective of a world view. But no fact, event, or series thereof within an overall framework which derives all of its meaning from the framework can be determinative of the framework which bestows that meaning on it.

For no fact or set of facts can of and by themselves, apart from any meaning or interpretation given to them, establish which of the alternative viewpoints should be taken on the fact(s).

SELECT READINGS FOR CHAPTER FIVE

Exposition of Evidentialism
- Burrill, Donald. The Cosmological Argument, pt. II, “The Teleological Argument.”
- Butler, Bishop. Analogy of Religion.
- Dodd, C. H. History and the Gospel.
- Montgomery, John W. History and Christianity.
Evaluation of Evidentialism
- Clark, Gordon. Historiography, especially chap. 6.
- Hick, John. The Existence of God, pt. III.
- Popper, Karl The Poverty of Historicism.
- Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith, especially chaps. 8 and 10.
^[1]

¹C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel (Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 11–12.

²Dodd, pp. 15, 18.

³Dodd, pp. 19–21.

⁴Dodd, p. 22.

⁵Dodd, pp. 72, 75–77.

⁶Dodd, pp. 114–15.

⁷Dodd, p. 117.

⁸Dodd, pp. 115–17.

⁹Dodd, pp. 118, 125.

¹⁰See chap. 16 for a presentation of historical apologetics.

¹¹See William Paley, Natural Theology, pp. 1–8.

¹²John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion, pp. 167–75.

¹³David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, pt. VIII.

¹⁴Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, pp. 9–11.

¹⁵A. E. Taylor, Does God Exist?, chap. 4.

¹⁶Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action, pp. 45–46.

¹⁷F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, pp. 78–120.

¹⁸Bishop Butler, Analogy of Religion, pp. 197, 69.

¹⁹Butler, pt. One, chaps. 1 and 2.

²⁰John Hick, ed.. The Existence of God, pp. 253–73.

²¹Hick, pp. 257, 261.

²²Hick, pp. 269, 271.

²³Hick, p. 273.

²⁴See chap. 15.

²⁵See Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Roulledge and Kegan Paul, 1957).

^[1]Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (83). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know
12 فبراير، 2022

الوسم: Test for Truth

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

An Examination of Pragmatic Approaches to Meaning and Truth

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914): Pragmatic Theory of Meaning

William James: The Pragmatic Test for Truth

Pragmatic Element in Evangelical Apologetics

Some Common Characteristics of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

An Evaluation of the Pragmatic Test for Truth

Positive Contributions of Pragmatism

Some Criticisms of the Pragmatic Theory of Truth

Summary and Conclusion

PRAGMATISM – All you want to know

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know

An Exposition of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

The Appeal to Past Evidence: Historical Approach of C. H. Dodd

The Appeal to Present Evidence in Nature

Appeal to Future Evidence: John Hick’s Eschatological Verification

Some Characteristic Tenets of Evidentialism

An Evaluation of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Positive Contributions of Evidentialism

Some Negative Criticisms of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Summary and Conclusion

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know