Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's seventh chapter in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses.
What Counts as Knowledge?
The stated purpose of the chapter is to answer what one can one know and what counts as knowledge. Mr. Lazar's first subsection in the chapter is called "Clark and Scripturalism on Knowledge and Opinion" (emphasis mine), yet he begins the section with a remarkable admission: he "wasn’t able to find a clear statement by Clark of what he considered to be knowledge." Therefore, Mr. Lazar instead quotes Crampton for his understanding of what knowledge is.
If Mr. Lazar wanted to evaluate his own philosophy in light of Crampton's thoughts, I would completely understand why he is cited so often in the book. But that Clark's name is in the header implies Mr. Lazar still desires to follow his original intention of the book, "a work of constructive 'Clarkian' thought" (emphasis mine). At some point, it becomes difficult to accept that Mr. Lazar is really comparing his philosophy to Clark's. There is overlap between Clark and Crampton, and I do not wish to imply Mr. Lazar is being deceptive. However, as a reviewer, it is frustrating to untangle to whom Mr. Lazar is really directing some of his replies.
Additionally, what Clark has written about "knowledge" doesn’t appear to satisfy Mr. Lazar, who wants to stick to what the Bible means by the word. This is an understandable goal. However, since the Bible attests to its own truth, there is nothing wrong with, say, apagogically reasoning about what ideas about "knowledge" must be true in order for Biblical consistency to be maintained. This is what I think Clark often did.
Anyways, there are plenty of places in his published works in which Clark wrote about "knowledge" of which Mr. Lazar doesn't seem to be aware (link). I don't think Clark's epistemology can be given a proper evaluation if one isn't able to establish that with which Clark was concerned. To give three examples:
1) The various Scriptural usages of the verb know raise a problem in apologetics to which a commentary can only allude in a footnote. The common meaning is exemplified in simple sentences, such, “I know that there is a tree on the lawn,” and “I know that David was King of Israel.” But sometimes, both in Hebrew and in Greek know means believe, obey, choose, have sexual intercourse. English too uses the verb in a variety of meanings. In their opposition to the intellectual emphasis on truth, experiential, emotional, mystical, and neo-orthodox apologetes have contrasted the intellectual Greek meaning with the (sometimes) sexual Hebrew meaning. This contrast is misguided because the Hebrew verb and the Greek verb are both so used. More serious than this linguistic incompetence is a flaw or a gap in the apologetics of these apologetes. It is well enough to point out the extended meanings of the verb. The verb is indeed so used. But such information is irrelevant as an argument against intellectualism and truth. The fallacy or defect is that these apologetes fail to explain knowledge in its basic sense. To insist on extended meanings of knowledge is no substitute for a basic epistemology. (The Pastoral Epistles, 1983, pg. 166)
2) If a system has no starting point, it cannot start, nicht? But a starting point cannot have been deduced or based on something prior to the start, for nothing is prior to the start n’est-ce pas? Every system, therefore, every attempted system, must have an original, undeduced axiom. Our dear friend Aristotle noted this, for he argued that if all propositions had to be deduced, they would regress to infinity, with the result that nothing could be deduced.
Since even Communism cannot prevent one from choosing whatever principle seems best to him, the Christian will choose the God of truth, or, if one prefer, the truth of God. He then proceeds by deduction, that is, by the law of contradiction, for the law of contradiction is embedded in the first word of Genesis. Bereshith, in the beginning, does not mean half-way through. That is to say, Scripture throughout assumes the law of contradiction, viz., a truth cannot be false. Since deduction is necessary inference, no further deduction – let alone induction – can disprove what has already been proved. Accordingly the knowledge possible for human beings consists of the axioms of and the deductions from Scripture. We can indeed entertain opinions about Columbus, and by accident or good luck they may be true; but we could not know it. Our dear pagan Plato, at the end of his Meno (98b) declared, "That there is a difference between right opinion and knowledge (ōrtheme) is not at all a conjecture with me, but something I would particularly assert that I knew." (Lord God of Truth, 1994, pg. 40)
3) There is a story that at the birth of Louis XIV, Marie de Medici gave birth to twins. Father Joseph wrote a not to Richelieu, who imposed perpetual silence on the midwife. But a Spanish plotter picked up the discarded not and kidnapped the second twin. After training the younger twin, and after Richelieu’s death, the Spaniard managed to catch Louis XIV alone, put him in the Iron Mask, and the twin reappeared as Louis XIV.
Granted, it is unlikely that anyone should go to such extremes to substitute another woman for the wife of an unimportant theologian or philosopher. But how do you know? So long as substitution is possible, certainty is impossible. Nor is substitution the only danger. For those whose philosophic preparation rises above the level of Alexander Dumas, there are always the prior difficulties of solipsism, subjective idealism, and, let us remember, Descartes’ malignant demon, who, so potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive us. Modern philosophers prefer to ignore rather than to confront him.
With this result the previous question returns. What account shall be given of everyday “knowledge” that common sense thinks it silly to doubt? Don’t I know when I am hungry? Can’t I use road maps to drive to Boston or Los Angeles? Indeed, how can I know what the Bible says without reading its pages with my own eyes? It was one secular philosopher criticizing another who said that knowledge is a fact and that any theory that did not account for it should be abandoned. But all such criticisms miss the point. The status of common opinion is not fixed until a theory has been accepted. 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.
For one last time, therefore, we must summarize and emphasize the whole argument. Consider the philosophy of science outlined in the preceding lecture. There it was claimed and argued that experimental science produced no knowledge whatever of the processes of nature. The laboratory can devise no method for determining whether the Earth moves still while the Sun stands still or whether the Sun moves while the Earth stands still. Nor can the greatest amount of experimentation explain why two smooth pieces of marble adhere so stubbornly to each other. Neither can physics observe anything moving in a straight line. It is incorrect, therefore, to complain that the axiom of revelation deprives us of knowledge otherwise obtainable. There is no knowledge otherwise obtainable. (Clark and His Critics, Pgs. 75-76)
To summarize, the first quote shows that Clark recognized, as Mr. Lazar correctly notes, that the word "knowledge" has a semantic range that depends on the context. Later in the chapter, Mr. Lazar provides biblical examples of extra-biblical "knowledge" that I suspect Clark normally would have, if they weren't Scriptural accounts, categorized as "opinions." I think he would have done so due to an internalist constraint upon knowledge that is implicit both in the above statements (e.g. references to Descartes' demon, our ignorance of substitution as preventing us from knowing our wife, etc. are, from my readings, usually less relevant on externalist theories of knowledge, since such theories often take for granted scenarios in which what one believes is true) and others about his epistemology (link).
What this means, however, is not that Mr. Lazar has "falsif[ied] the Scripturalist definition of knowledge" (emphasis mine). Rather, he has falsified a Scripturalist constraint upon knowledge, a constraint I have also written against elsewhere (link). This is not to diminish what Mr. Lazar has accomplished! Understanding that other kinds of “knowledge” as biblically legitimate is important. But the distinction between what Mr. Lazar has falsified and what he thinks he has falsified is also important.
Frankly, I honestly can't answer how Clark would have understood, for example, Mark 6:38, 13:28, and 15:44-45, in which people attain "knowledge" apart from divine revelation. Perhaps Clark really would have argued that the uses of "ginosko," in those cases, are examples of when the word refers to [mere] "belief," i.e. opinion, after all. If that would have been his answer, I would find it implausible. That is, if Clark set such a constraint upon "knowledge" that he would only have accepted an internalist and infallibilist form of epistemic justification, then I think he should not have done so.
Given Clark's acceptance of a semantic range for "knowledge," maybe Clark would have had no issue with the way in which Mr. Lazar, in a later chapter, suggests how these cases can count as "knowledge." However, even if Clark is in need of correction here, as I suspect, I still think Clark is correct that the kind of "knowledge" referenced in those passages no substitute for a "basic epistemology." Why do I say that, and what does that mean for Clark?
If we look back to the bolded section of the first quote, in the context in which Clark mentions possibilities of what "knowledge" means, he mentions the failure of neo-orthodox apologetes to understand what the "basic sense" of "knowledge" is. I believe Clark's point is that "[i]n their opposition to the intellectual emphasis on truth," the neo-orthodox apologete has forgotten that his very apologetic itself presupposes "intellectualism and truth." Apologetics presupposes the sort of "knowledge" Clark had in mind.
As to what kind of "knowledge" Clark believed was needed for a "basic epistemology" and apologetics, I think he was interested, as I mentioned in the above link on meta-epistemology, in beliefs in true propositions sourced in a self-authenticating, axiomatic foundation of which one could be infallibly aware or upon one could reflect.
I would argue that this kind of knowledge Paul tells the believers at Colossae (2:2-4) he wanted for them: "reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments."
Keeping in mind the parallelisms of the "word[s] of God" (link, link), no apologetic can falsify a faith grounded in God's self-authenticating word, the extant extent of which is codified in the Bible. If our epistemology is grounded in divine revelation, therefore, we cannot be deluded by plausible arguments or be deceived as Adam and Eve were. They abandoned God's word as foundational.
Instead, we must reach for a full assurance of knowledge. To be fully assured implies one is infallibly aware of the epistemic justification one has. One cannot have full assurance if he is incapable of reflecting upon his "knowledge," any other epistemic justification of it (e.g. if his knowledge is deduced), or if what he knows is capable of being false. Such incapability may have been true in Mr. Lazar's examples in Mark, in which third-persons (like Jesus or the gospel authors) are describing others coming to know certain things - those examples are compatible with an externalist view of knowledge, and I don't so constrain the semantic range of "knowledge" to eliminate such possibilities.
But in this passage, Paul is exhorting us to reach for a first-person assurance - and this, I would argue, requires reflective access to that by which we are ourselves fully assured, i.e. a purely internalist view of knowledge. Other kinds of "knowledge" may be legitimately biblical, but I hope it is becoming more clear in what way Clark's understanding of "knowledge" can also be supported by the Bible, even if Clark himself provided no such defense or was overly restrictive in constraining that else to which "knowledge" may refer.
Furthermore, I hope it is becoming more clear as to why this understanding of "knowledge" is necessary for a "basic epistemology" and apologetics. As seen in the second and third quotes above, Clark recognized "knowledge" and "opinion" as two classes of beliefs. If one wants to reach for full assurance regarding his "knowledge," he must do as Clark writes and address "[t]he problem" of "elaborat[ing] a method by which the two classes can be distinguished."
This is what a basic epistemology does. It answers Clark's often asked question, "how do you know?" It does not, as an externalist theory does, answer how other people might know, or how oneself might hypothetically know [if certain justificatory factors external to oneself and incapable of reflective access are present]. Rather, a "basic epistemology" enables us to be fully assured, and hence internalism and infallibilism are fundamental even if one would admit that other kinds of knowledge are legitimate.
Moreover, apologetics - as I've mentioned many times in these reviews - is a defense of our epistemology. One must have an awareness of what one is defending: the hope within us. We may reflect and meditate on our hope, we may defend it, and indeed God calls us to do so. Just as with assurance, apologetics presupposes a first-person account of what we are defending (ideally, "knowledge").
In conclusion, Mr. Lazar's statement that "the Bible doesn't limit knowledge to what can be deduced from Biblical propositions" can be taken in one sense in which Mr. Lazar would be right and in another sense in which Mr. Lazar would be wrong. If we take Mr. Lazar to mean that in the Bible, the word "knowledge" is not itself limited to referring to one kind of belief, Clark himself recognized this in discussing the semantic range of the word. Mr. Lazar is also correct that the Bible provides case-examples of "knowledge" that are kinds of beliefs which Clark seems to preclude as possible, given what appears to me to be an implicit internalist and infallibilist constraint Clark placed upon epistemically justification. But if we take Mr. Lazar's statement to mean that "the Bible doesn't limit knowledge [that is epistemically justified in an internalist and infallibilist sense] to... Biblical propositions" and what may be deduced from biblical propositions, then I would have to disagree, given that the Bible is the extant extent of divine revelation.
To those interested, I have written more on why I find exegesis to be yet another motivating factor for an internalist understanding of knowledge in my reply to Aquascum (linked above). Other posts in which I defend internalism and infallibilism as fundamental to Scripturalism include here, here, here, and here, as well as in a dialogue with Steve Hays (link, link, link).
In the next part of my review, I will turn to chapter 8, which Mr. Lazar calls The Bible and Sense Knowledge.
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