Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's fourth chapter in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses.
A few prefatory remarks before I start this review. This chapter is short, and it's compact nature accentuates how critical Mr. Lazar is of Scripturalism on the subject matter discussed. There is nothing wrong with being critical of positions with which one disagrees. I also believe that for all of his criticisms, Mr. Lazar appreciates Clark's work.
But the nature of this chapter did bring into focus for me that I don't want to give readers the misimpression that I hate or disagree with everything in Mr. Lazar's book. I agree with him in several places throughout his book. I've tried to mention those places in previous reviews, although I could probably have been more praiseworthy at those points. I do believe Mr. Lazar and I have a common goal of growth in grace and knowledge. As we interact with those who disagree with us, a spirit of charity is as important as a logical mind. Even though I disagree with Mr. Lazar in much of this chapter, I will try to keep that in mind in what follows. If nothing else, the reflection Mr. Lazar's has prompted me to have may be partially responsible for a significant clarification in my own epistemological-apologetic understanding, as I will mention towards the end of the post. So I am thankful to Mr. Lazar for occasioning that.
Apologetics, Epistemology, and the Tests
Mr. Lazar begins his fourth chapter in his book by mentioning the second line in the following Clark quote as a test by which preference can be established for one axiom vs. another:
No philosopher is perfect and no system can give man omniscience. But if one system can provide plausible solutions to many problems while another leaves too many questions unanswered, if one system tends less to skepticism and gives more meaning to life, if one worldview is consistent whole others are self-contradictory, who can deny us, since we must choose, the right to choose the more promising first principle? (A Christian View of Men and Things, 2005, pg. 29)
Mr. Lazar proposes to evaluate whether Clark can satisfy the "test of explanatory power." That is, does Clark's Scripturalism provide plausible solutions to many problems, or does it leave too many questions unanswered?
I think the way Clark frames his rhetorical question is a bit more accurate than how Mr. Lazar frames the situation. Clark's aim seems to be apologetic rather than epistemic. Clark is not referring to the tests as epistemic ones we should apply by which to "prefer" one epistemic axiom over another - that, as mentioned in previous reviews, would imply the various "tests" being discussed would be epistemic grounds more foundational than whatever so-called "axiom" would be chosen. In this case, the preferred axiom wouldn't be an axiom at all but rather a conclusion to an epistemic process of reasoning.
Instead, the point being made is that since humans must have a foundation from which to begin reasoning, one whose first principle cannot pass the tests has no basis upon which to deny or criticize one whose first principle is able to pass the tests. This is true. If your worldview is self-contradictory, you have no right to deny or criticize one whose worldview is consistent. If your philosophic system leaves "too many" questions unanswered (and I'll return to counts as too many), then you have no right to deny or criticize one whose worldview can provide "plausible solutions" to such questions.
Again, fundamental to the my reviews of Mr. Lazar's book is the distinction between epistemology and apologetics. It is not as if Clark considered Scripturalism as capable of failing the tests. Falsifiability of a true epistemic foundation is not a live option, for that would imply whatever criteria one would appeal to in order to falsify the foundation would be more foundational than the foundation. Rather, tests are applied to apologetically defend and confirm before others that one's own worldview is true and undermine false worldviews.
Those who have been following all parts of this series of posts may think that I am overkilling mention of the epistemology-apologetic distinction. If so, I would prefer that to the alternative in which it is not absolutely clear what is the relationship between the two. It is not only Mr. Lazar who conflates the two (especially in contexts in which Clark's philosophy is evaluated). Gordon Lewis made the same mistake. I am reading a book right now called "Without Excuse" (that my friends and I will review on our podcast next month) in which Clark is lumped in with Van Tilian presuppositionalists as adhering to circular reasoning as a method for "proving" first principles. If these authors had only understood that Clark was an epistemic foundationalist and kept such in perspective throughout their evaluations of his thinking in all other areas, I think conflation of Clark's epistemology with his apologetic approaches could have been avoided.
The Test of Explanatory Power and Epistemic Contentment
The criticism Mr. Lazar makes in this chapter essentially repeats his argument from incredulity in his previous chapter. He quips that Sam Cooke's song Don't Know Much About History encapsulates what "could be the Scripturalist theme song." Mr. Lazar thinks that most of what Cooke admits he doesn't know in his song allegedly aligns with what a Scripturalist such as Clark would admit he can't know: history, biology, French, science, geography, trigonometry, algebra, etc. Mr. Lazar later grants that in the case of math, a Scripturalist might be able to know some truth, but in general, he argues that a Scripturalist might have opinions about these topics but can't know them.
In my last review, I mentioned Clark was perfectly comfortable being looked at as having a relatively skeptical epistemology compared to ones, like empiricism, whose adherents make many knowledge-claims but cannot make good on them. Some (or even a little) knowledge is better than none, and so an epistemology which is "more skeptical" is better than one which collapses into total skepticism.
However, I believe that Clark would have also disagreed with the sentiments presented by Mr. Lazar in this chapter. As funny as the comparison to the song may be, here are some remarks about by Clark about what he thought could be known, given his first principle:
This is not to say that the Scriptures answer all questions and that we need be ignorant on no point; nonetheless, there are many points, the most important points, on cosmology, psychology, philosophy of history, epistemology – not to mention morality and religion – on which the Bible protects the Christian against plausible but false theories. (Thales to Dewey, pg. 156)I think Clark was optimistic about the various fields that the Bible covers. Of course, even if Clark were optimistic, that would not mean his optimism is justified. But it does paint a different picture than one usually hears when it comes to Clark's epistemology. Any hint of pessimism about what we can’t know, Clark usually reserved for contexts in which he responded to critics who desire to know more but didn’t, in his mind, have adequate epistemological justification. He was content with being able to know at all in contrast to those whom he argued could not know at all, given their epistemology.
“…theology, the theology here in view, covers the entire field of human knowledge: anthropology, history, and science.” (Karl Barth’s Theological Method, pg. 111).
Such epistemological contentment is underrated. In my experience, people more often than not are afraid of knowing too little as opposed to knowing too much. Some knowledge is necessary, yes, but there comes a point of sufficiency at which one is equipped to handle whatever situation Providence has placed in his life. Are you a father who can't read (let alone write) 300 blogs on theology? Well, so what? In church history, many fathers couldn't read or write. But did you take your family to church? Do you talk with them about the sermon to field any questions (that you can in turn take to the elders if you don't have all the answers)? Do you do your best to lead by our Father-God and Husband-Christ's examples? That is enough, be content.
We're members of a body: we don't have to do it all or know it all. In fact, we have been designed specifically so that we can't do that. Contentedness and humility go hand in hand. I was lamenting the other day about how little time I have to write everything down about God's word that comes into my mind. Not only does this support Clark's optimism about how much can be known from Scripture, it serves as a reminder that no one is going to master in one lifetime all the implications of what God has revealed to us... no one is meant to. Our responsibility is to arm ourselves as best we can. We are not absolved from study and application, just cognizant of our own limitations and, therefore, need for dependence upon God and our fellow members. We trust that God has prepared us for every good work that is set before us (collectively as His church-bride, not as lone-ranger Christians).
Applying these thoughts to the test of explanatory power, in order to explain what the purpose of the test is really to discern, let's first discuss what it is not its intended purpose. I'm not going to parse the following as an analytic philosopher might, so try to read the following in the spirit in which it is intended: say I claimed to own a magic 8-ball. I claim that as long as any question that is asked of it refers to events or things after a time that everyone currently living on earth will pass away, it will accurately answer that question.
Now, that seems to be a lot of potential explanatory power, doesn't it? There is well more future history to come than past history. However, the scenario presented prevents one from, in his own lifetime, confirming the accuracy of the magic 8-ball. Should policymakers trust the magic 8-ball if it says not to worry about global warming since an ice age is coming anyways (or vice versa to anyone who wants to flip the scenario and suppose the magic 8-ball wants us to worry about it after all)?
The point is that Mr. Lazar ultimately criticizes Scripturalism because it "gives us relatively few answers and leaves us with millions of questions." Well, even a fool can ask more questions than a wise man can answer. Not that Mr. Lazar is a fool! But we must ask what number of questions Mr. Lazar thinks an epistemology must be able to answer for it to satisfy the test of explanatory power? A magic 8-ball amount? I doubt that is what Mr. Lazar intends, but what he thinks the test for explanatory power is really designed to do, then, is a question left unanswered.
It reminds me of a question Clark asked somewhere (I forget where) about inductive reasoning and how many instances are enough or sufficient to warrant a generalized inference. Clark's answer was that there are never enough, for the inference will always be a leap. But any number one could conceive of would seem to be arbitrary. The way Mr. Lazar explains the test makes it seem as though what matters is quantity and that one can never have too much. More is better. But when is enough, enough? Can one not be epistemically contented?
Even if Mr. Lazar really were concerned about quantity, Clark could reply that his first principle makes possible an infinite amount of knowledge - knowledge that 1 + 1 = 2, 2 + 1 = 3, ad infinitum - given that Mr. Lazar has admitted mathematical truths are knowable on Scripturalism. Without going too far into a rabbit hole I hope Mr. Lazar did not want us to begin digging into in the first place, would that not be a sufficient quantity, or would we need to discuss countable vs. uncountable infinities?
Instead of continuing down this line of questioning - rather than discussing what quantity of questions that can be answered - I think point of the test of explanatory power more so concerns the quality of questions that can be answered. Even this qualification needs a bit of fine tuning, which is why I happen to think the magic 8-ball example is so fun! The magic 8-ball can provide answers to a variety of topics: French, mathematics, biology, etc. 2 + 2 will still equal 4 for my great-great grandchildren. Geographically, there will still be 7 continents. French is no longer spoken. Etc. So speaks the magic 8-ball! Prima facie, the magic 8-ball seems to have a wide scope of explanatory power. It may even provide answers to more questions than Scripture can, as Scripture tells us some information about future events belong to the secret things of God.
But what the magic 8-ball cannot tell one is where it comes from, for that is a question about the past. It cannot even attest to us whether it knows its current answers (or my claims about it) are true, for that is a question about the present. It cannot tell us whether it is the one determining future events (present information) or if it has attained its answers from another source (past information). It can't help me navigate moral conundrums I am currently facing.
Are not these types of questions more relevant to explanatory power than whether it can provide an answer to if my great-great-grandchildren will be millionaires? The existence of the magic 8-ball begs important, quality questions it cannot, in principle, answer. A God we can know is the source of, has determined all, and therefore knows all things has more explanatory power than the magic 8-ball even if (hypothetically) what answers God has provided in divine revelation to possible questions we may have is actually less in quantity than what the magic 8-ball could reveal.
For those who were not impressed by the magic 8-ball example, substitute a different example: Mormons and Roman Catholics both have open canons. Both have claimed to receive further divine revelation on top of Scripture even Mr. Lazar would claim. Is their first principle ipso facto more preferable? Of course not. The test for explanatory power is one test among many others that are equally important, if not more so. A Mormon or Roman Catholic "passing" this one test does not mean they've passed them all. Therefore, the test of explanatory power is not, to repeat above, one that epistemically legitimizes one first principle over against another. Rather, it is a test designed to ask only whether a worldview answers important questions. One such important question is whether can one have epistemic contentment on a worldview in question. I'll come back to this.
Mr. Lazar's skepticism regarding what questions Scripturalism can't answer runs much deeper, however. He thinks one could multiply "questions and problems across every discipline of human inquiry and Scripturalism can't account for any of them." Scripturalism fails the test? Really? How about salvation (soteriology) from sin (hamartiology)? How about ethics? How about destiny (eschatology) and purpose (teleology)? How about who we are (anthropology) as images of God? How about who God is (theology)? How about the creation of the world (protology and cosmology)? The typologies that use, as symbols, architecture, animals, agriculture, space, geography, etc. to foreshadow the incarnated Son and His people itself is enough to boggle my mind. Has Mr. Lazar not picked up a systematic or biblical theology book lately? Are these not the important things in life? This is where I need to remember, in a spirit of charity, that Mr. Lazar hopefully was just not thinking about these sorts of things when he wrote his chapter. I would assume he knows Clark well enough to know his appeal to the Westminster Confession:
The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture. (WCF 1.6)
That's suggestive of a lot of information in one place! John wrote that "were every one of [the things Jesus did] to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." Is it not fascinating to think that of what we do know that Jesus did, the world can barely contain the books written on them as it is? Is it not humorous to consider that God has perhaps decreed the destruction of physical libraries or creation of digital libraries to make room for books about His Son that can be written just with what information has been revealed to us in Scripture?
So it is not that a Scripturalist is lacking in quantity or qualitative dimensions of knowledge. On the contrary, a principle of epistemic contentment has to reign against any depression one might otherwise feel in being unequal to the task of mastering all of what can be deduced from Scripture.
Mr. Lazar mentions a select few things a Scripturalist "might give you" and then scoffs that such "barely scratches the surface of human knowledge." Well, in one sense of "human knowledge," he might be right. Really, though, he is begging the question until he provides a worldview in which he can account for all these other things he thinks can be known. At this point in the book, we don't even know what Mr. Lazar means by "human knowledge" and how it differs from "opinion." He hasn't yet defined his own terms.
Even if he does get to that later, one future suggestion I would have for Mr. Lazar and other authors is to evaluate another individual's philosophy or epistemology only after providing one's own first. Apagogic argumentation can only be performed if one has an operative first principle of his own (link). While he later attempts to explain his own, it would have been helpful to the reader to contrast Clark's Scripturalism with the author's own proposal as he is reading the criticisms of Clark. Having to wait until the second half of the book leaves one in suspense as to whether or not Mr. Lazar's own proposal is worth the investment. This is a small, structural suggestion, not a criticism.
It is a good time to remember, though, that until and unless Mr. Lazar is able to establish his own proposal as legitimate, the "few" items of knowledge Scripturalism can provide may be better than the "none" that Clark claims can be found from any other first principle. That is, it may turn out Scripturalism relatively provides the most human knowledge. For one to know that Scripturalism gives us relatively few items of knowledge means another gives us relatively more without also collapsing into skepticism. We must wait until a later chapter to see if Mr. Lazar makes good on his above claims and concluding statement that "if there's a better worldview, you should look for it" (emphasis mine).
Speaking of knowledge, Mr. Lazar says, “If Scripturalism doesn’t provide knowledge of those fields, then it cannot provide solutions in them either.” On the face of it, I must disagree with the conclusion. It doesn't follow from the premise. What does it mean, for example, to “solve” something in Russian history, and why does one need to “know” Russian history to find solutions to it? Say that information as to what a Russian leader did during his reign has been lost. So what? Does that mean Scripturalism, empiricism, etc. would be at fault? Does that mean we have to accept a magic 8-ball epistemology which could tell us about the past? No.
Or take Mr. Lazar's example of the coronavirus. He remarks that Scripturalists can’t know how to treat the coronavirus, or that patients are even affected by it, or even that there is such a virus. On a certain conception of "knowledge" with which the Scripturalist is typically concerned, Mr. Lazar is correct. But he forgets to explain why he thinks we have to "know" these things to provide solutions for them.
Indeed, why can’t we just opine that there is a coronavirus that is harming people? How is a lack of medical "knowledge" a failure in explanatory power? Or, better, why can't the usefulness of opinion be sufficient? Suppose one hypothetically "knows" how to cure the coronavirus. Now suppose a Scripturalist opines and applies the same cure. What's the practical difference? Is Mr. Lazar arguing that an opined answer that works doesn't really solve the question or problem at stake? Why not? Clark wrote a whole book on the philosophy of science in which he concluded just this by affirming operationalism. I've written several posts on the value of opinion (link, link). I am all for making Scripturalism more plausible (link) or for being open-minded in regards to other kinds of knowledge than that with which Clark is strictly interested, but in critiquing Clark here, one has to actually deal with his argument:
One may admit that a number of propositions commonly believed are true; but no one can deny that many such are false. The problem is to elaborate a method by which the two classes can be distinguished. Plato, too, granted a place to opinion as distinct from knowledge; he even admitted that in some circumstances opinion was as useful as knowledge with a capital K. But to dispose of the whole matter by an appeal to road maps that we can see with our own eyes is to ignore everything said above about Aristotle. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pgs. 75-76)
No doubt that scientific laws are useful: By them the atomic bomb was invented. The point of all this argument is merely this: However useful scientific laws are, they cannot be true. Or, at the very least, the point of all this argument is that scientific laws are not discovered but are chosen. (A Christian View of Men and Things, 2005, pg. 149)
To conclude my review of Mr. Lazar's chapter, I think that there are certain kinds of knowledge available to people that Clark may have denied, I don't think that any disagreement I could have with Clark here disqualifies him from passing the test of explanatory power. The knowledge about which we would disagree is not that spoken of in WCF 1.6; it is a super-abundance. Unfortunately, if we really want to talk about too many questions that are left unanswered, that is the feeling I got when reading this chapter.
The Test for Explanatory Power: A Constructive Approach
The following is a bonus to the review. I felt it was needed, because up to this point, it may not seem as though the test for explanatory power is much of a test at all. So long as a worldview can answer some questions, does that mean it automatically passes the test? What, for Clark, would count as "too many unanswered questions"? To be honest, I am not sure. He doesn't use the specific phrase, at least as far as I can find, although the phrase does seem to capture whatever Clark had in mind in the original quote in the beginning of this post and Mr. Lazar's chapter. My best guess is that Clark has in mind something along the following lines: in the context of the quote from the beginning, Clark also wrote the following:
...suppose there still remain two or more fairly self-consistent but mutually incompatible systems of thought. This is likely to be the case even if the coherence theory of truth is correct, for the coherence theory cannot be applied with final satisfaction unless one is omniscient. Since life is short and since the implications of various propositions have not been exhausted, there may remain false propositions whose absurd conclusions have not yet been deduced. We may therefore be left with large but incomplete worldviews. Instead of being thoroughly integrated. The opposing systems will lack some parts and connections. Nonetheless, they will be worldviews on a large scale. Each one will have its first principles, the outlines will be plainly drawn, the main figures will have been painted in, and considerable detail will have been finished. Even though the artists have had neither time nor genius to finish their pictures, the contrast between them is unmistakable. What must be done? (A Christian View of Men and Things, pgs. 26-29)
Clark is hypothesizing two worldviews which are both, so far as can be discerned, internally consistent. The both pass that test, so far as we can tell. What then can an apologist do? Now compare this sentiment to the following quote:
Now, it is true that Clark pointedly attacks Logical Positivism, and some other philosophies also, on the ground of their self-contradiction. But he explicitly acknowledged that Russell’s symbolic logic (maybe with a minor slip or two) is not self-contradictory. His criticism is that Russell’s system is truncated. Clark agrees with Russell's nineteen syllogisms are as valid as Aristotle could have wished, but the excision of the other five depends on an incorrect definition of the word all. Clark may not have stated other examples so clearly. Nevertheless in his lectures, though perhaps not in any publications, he cited some eastern religion that restricts itself to murmuring the syllable Om. A single syllable can hardly be called a system, but four spiritual laws qualify theoretically. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pg. 399)
Just as in the context of original quote at the beginning, Clark here is discussing how he has critiqued a worldview or system for a reason other than its internal inconsistency. In this case, it's "truncated." I may be reading too much into Clark's statement here, but it sounds similar to the suggestion that Russell has left out syllogisms which he should have included. Russell's system lacks "explanatory power" that should be present. Likewise, the eastern religion[s] alluded to has left too many questions unanswered. This interpretation gains a little credence when one keeps reading and, on the same page, finds Clark telling Gordon Lewis that he has never regarded coherence as the "sole test of truth-claims," citing competing internally consistent geometries as an example of why he denies this. There are other tests we can and should apply to other worldviews in order to falsify them.
If this reading is correct, it would closely match the way in which I have elsewhere referred to "insufficient explanatory power" as a "way of stating that epistemology requires answers to certain questions which, if left unaddressed, results in skepticism" (link). Information is left out that should be included. What information? What questions need answers? Questions that deal with "necessary preconditions" for knowledge (link); perhaps a better way to read that is "ontological preconditions" for knowledge, since they certainly are not epistemically prior to one's sufficient [epistemic] condition for knowledge, i.e. his first principle. I will highlight the parts relevant to this blog post:
Necessary conditions are most useful when constructing apagogic arguments. They are like tests used to falsify worldviews. They delimit possibilities. Worldviews which reject or have unsound perspectives of principles of logic and language, for instance, cannot account for knowledge. The adherents of these worldviews will accordingly be unable to account for their true opinions, precluding knowledge.
This is relevant to my aim to “marry the intuitive appeal of classical apologetics with the necessity of epistemic preconditions for knowledge” (link). The, or at least a, goal is to instrumentally effect belief with which one can agree but for which the opponent’s epistemic system cannot account. The apologist starts by deconstructing the opponent’s worldview. He shows it to be internally inconsistent, lacking in explanatory power, etc. But this leaves the opponent with a problem. He may intuitively recognize that his system fails to satisfy a necessary condition for knowledge, but how can he account for this recognition without a sufficient condition for knowledge, a precondition for knowledge such that no other epistemic requirement is necessary to explain how he could be certain that what he claims to know [about his or my worldview or any other proposition] is, in fact, true? He can’t. What happens in such a case is that the apologist shows a person his inconsistencies. The person then accepts truth, but he isn’t yet able to justify this. He senses that something is wrong when a person points out his self-defeating propositions, and naturally so, for although his capacity to reason soundly has been lost, he is still able to reason validly.
The sufficient precondition for knowledge he must accept to reason soundly is Scripture. I have provided on this blog several necessary preconditions for knowledge intended to help “delimit the possibilities” and point readers in this direction. The hope is that those who disagree recognize something is wrong with their worldview and that they need to change what they believe. But the simple fact is that one can’t strictly reason from necessary preconditions of knowledge to a sufficient precondition for knowledge. Given that we are not omniscient, it would be speculative to take a collection of necessary conditions and pronounce that they are sufficient for knowledge (indeed, there is a necessary condition for knowledge related to this). It has to be the other way around: one must know the sufficient precondition for knowledge first. This is not to say the alleged sufficient condition will be arbitrary. As already mentioned, it will need to be able to account for all necessary preconditions for knowledge. But ultimately, one must support the idea that some [axiomatic or presuppositional] propositions may be and are internally rather than externally justified. I’ve written more about the mutual dependency between axioms and it attendant theorems here and elsewhere.
Now, it is clear one cannot reject that or those principle[s] which suffice for knowledge yet still possess knowledge, at least given said principle[s] alone suffice[s]. But I think one can reject a necessary principle yet possess knowledge. Why? Because he may simply be being inconsistent; that is, it may be the case that from what he accepts as sufficient follows the necessary principle[s] but that the person does not realize it. If upon a logical examination of a worldview itself the necessary principles would be compatible with it, then the possibility that one might erroneously reject said principles would not mitigate against his worldview and, thus, what he has actually derived from it.
So when I refer to a “necessary precondition for knowledge,” what I mean is a proposition which must be accountable within a worldview for it to be true. The laws of logic, a philosophy of language, an omniscient source, self-knowledge, etc., must be necessarily possible for Scripturalism as such to be true, though individual Scripturalists really only need to hold to the sufficient condition - divine revelation in general and the Bible (as the extant extent of divine revelation) in particular - by which these propositions may be justified in order to possess knowledge.
Everything I've mentioned in the series of posts up until this point is reflected in the above. Apologists use the sorts of tests (or necessary preconditions) Mr. Lazar mentions to falsify other worldviews, not to reason to own's own first principle, i.e. his sufficient precondition for knowledge. These tests are truths (propositions) that must be answerable by one's worldview if one is asked about them. One's worldview has the explanatory power of accounting for them, so far as is possible.
For example, in order to fully apply a test of consistency, one would, like Clark says, have to be omniscient. We aren't omniscient, so this test cannot possibly be the basis upon which we reason our way into belief of Scripture... even though we can know from Scripture itself (our epistemic foundation) that it is internally consistent, as any attempt to pursue the test so far as one can will, if done correctly, confirm. A Hegelian, by way of contrast, can have no epistemic contentment, for he is supposed to be able to deduce Herr Krug's pen but, alas, cannot.
Or does one's worldview enable him to intelligibly account for language? If humans were no more than physical bags of atoms that have been arranged by chance, as some atheists think, then on that theory, we have no possible reason to suppose that what appears to be intentionality in the course of dialogue with them are anything more than coincidental sounds which, in fact, signify no meaning. If the atheist really wishes for his communication to engaged seriously, in the first place he must make tacit presuppositions against eliminative materialism and the like.
While one who adheres to a true worldview needn't know the answers to these questions in order to know anything - for again, that would be to suppose that one's apologetic undergirds his epistemology - the test for explanatory power, I think, is best understood as saying that one's first principle and that which can be derived from it must have answers to these kinds of transcendental arguments available, or else one's worldview is at risk of being criticized as "truncated."
I think there is more to be said about the relationship of one's epistemic first principle, which must be his sufficient condition for knowledge, to the tests (necessary preconditions) that one can apply to first principles and resultant worldview systems. I want to reflect more upon the idea the the necessary preconditions for knowledge I describe above and the various tests that Mr. Lazar, Clark, and I have mention are perhaps better labelled ontological preconditions for knowledge.This seems right and, with further elaboration, would communicate what I am trying to get at more clearly: they characterize what the knower, knowledge, known, etc. must ontologically be or [possibly] possess in order for knowledge to occur. This is how the knower can know his first principle or sufficient condition for knowledge without necessarily knowing necessary, subsidiary preconditions that his worldview must have, in principle, the power to explain. But I will think on that and leave it for another day. For now, I think it will be most useful to end with the following story-metaphor:
Liken the Christian worldview founded upon divine revelation to a strong, tightly wound, and unbreakable bundle of sticks. One who begins with the bundle is in no danger of having his worldview snapped by apologetic criticism. The bundle holds strong because every question by which one could test its soundness is accounted for in the bundle - even if the stick or answer that accounts for its unbreakability is buried inside the bundle such that we cannot, for the moment, see it.
Now imagine one who tries to build his worldview with one stick at a time. I need logic to have a defensible worldview? I'll grab that stick. I need language? I'll grab that stick. Self-knowledge and an omniscient communicator? Let's see what sticks I can find. Etc.
In the process of grabbing sticks, a realization dawns upon the one collecting them. It is essentially a question I asked above: how does one know how many sticks he must grab to have a bundle that cannot be broken? What amount of "explanatory power" is sufficient? At first, he thought he only needed the 4 sticks mentioned above. But then someone came along and points out that a first principle must be self-justifying in order to justify any other beliefs, or that memory is required for self-knowledge. A question begins to be formed, and because he didn't begin with an unbreakable bundle, he never will be able to have epistemic contentment in knowing how many sticks he really needs in order to know that no one else can snap the collection he has gathered piece by piece.
This is why apologists who attempt to copy Christians are doomed to fail. They may try, piece by piece, to abstract our sticks from the bundle - divine revelation - in which we found them. Whether they realize it or not, their deliberate attempts to truncate the Christian worldview give them more than they bargain for: our God is a God of irony, and He often humiliates His enemies by giving them precisely what they want. They want to cherry-pick the "good sticks" of Christianity they agree with and doubt the rest. God will indeed give them doubt, and it will be best manifested when a presuppositionalist comes along and points out another stick that is missing - a stick will always be missing unless one begins with the self-justifying, divine revelation. The ultimate irony is that because the sticks are not a tightly wound bundle but must remain loose to incorporate more potentially necessary sticks, they are likely to slip out of one's hands for one reason or another. Such is the problem of an open canon for epistemic criteria. Such is the problem for the apologetic copycat who attempts to use the tests - the merely necessary conditions for knowledge - to build a sufficient epistemology. It's an epistemic tower of Babel in the making. What then shall we say?
…one cannot validly infer from the collection of a few necessary preconditions for knowledge that one possesses a sufficient condition for knowledge. Hence, Scripturalists appeal to a top-down epistemic approach, beginning with a presupposition which is the sufficient condition for knowledge and accounts for all subsidiary, necessary preconditions for knowledge: divine revelation. (link)In the next part of my review, I will turn to chapter 5, which Mr. Lazar calls The Test of Hardcore Common Sense.
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