The Future of Scripturalism Revisited: Contemporary Epistemology

In the past few years, I've written a few posts about how I think a Scripturalist epistemology can be plausibly and legitimately developed. These two (here and here) came to mind, although there might be others. When I write these kinds of posts, it’s in part a gentle nudge to Scripturalists that it’s time to take off the training wheels of Clark. 

It strikes me that when a Christian first reads and understands Clark’s theory of knowledge, the effect can be rather like when one first reads, understands, and accepts Calvinism through the likes of Sproul, Piper, etc. The result is an attraction to a sincere and seemingly successful attempt at Scriptural and logical consistency, an attraction magnified by contrast with previously encountered authors or belief systems which didn't seem to do the subject (soteriology, epistemology, etc.) justice. And this attraction naturally inclines one to defend said author or belief system. 

I mentioned Calvinism because that mirrors my own experience. To make a long story short, after I read Sproul's Chosen By God, I began to see God's word as something more than a set of historical facts that have had an impact on my life - a significant impact, but one I took for granted. In addition to that Christianity is right, I saw a way to understand why Christianity is right. I saw design, beauty, art, logic, God. I was interested, and with that interest came a desire to interest others. 

But given that I like to talk to people who don't agree with me, it didn't take long to find out that I would have to develop my understanding of Calvinism beyond the level of Sproul's presentation in order to convince many people as well as increase my own assurance of its tenability - which is fine, since as far as I recall, Sproul's book is meant to be introductory. That involved reading Scripture, other Calvinists, and other authors who disagreed with Calvinism. It also involved self-reflection, evaluating whether I could myself contribute any arguments for or against Calvinism.

When Scripturalists first read Clark, I think they usually similarly develop an affinity for his position and an appreciation for the man given the number of topics he was willing to discuss. Again, there is no problem with this. But if Scripturalism really is Scriptural, there is likely more to it than what one man has had to say about it. Even during his life Clark was happy to see other people try to find ways to strengthen what he thought was a sound, Christian epistemology, and certainly Scripturalism can be elaborated in light of scholarly epistemological issues that have arisen in the some 30 years since Clark died. 

Clark not only wrote about philosophers throughout history, he engaged his contemporaries. That's what Scripturalists need to be doing now. Objectivism isn't really scholarly, but John Robbins' book Without A Prayer is a fair example of the sort of applied epistemology I'm talking about. Robbins didn't seem to be parroting pre-established, stock arguments against Objectivism. I think he gave some good, original arguments. I appreciated that, which is why I didn't just recycle his arguments in a regurgitated, book report fashion when I wrote my own evaluation of Objectivism.

The point is that there are a lot of contemporary epistemological concepts Clark never talked about at length, and they're just as interesting as the ones Clark did talk about. To name a few:

Infinitism, coherentism, foundationalism, positism; internalism and externalism; occurrent and dispositional beliefs; doxastic and propositional justification; pragmatic, deflationary, coherence, and correspondence  theories of truth; infallibilism and fallibilism; warrant, proper function, justification, anti-Gettier case conditions; contextualism; closure; virtue epistemology; etc.

There are even more metaphysical and linguistic categories that Scripturalists since Clark - and Clark himself, for that matter - haven't really touched. On the other hand, here's what I don't think Scripturalism needs more of: [Lockean-like] empiricism is nonsense; analogical knowledge is nonsense; skepticism is nonsense; nihilism is nonsense. These are more or less true, and there's nothing wrong with pointing these out, but these points shouldn't constitute the extent of Scripturalism. They're points Clark and others have already made dozens of times. There's also nothing particularly Scripturalistic about these points. There are other, more pressing issues Scripturalists should be talking about, like what the meanings of knowledge, belief, truth, and justification are or should be - concepts basic to any epistemology but never really given a lengthy treatment by Clark in the context of alternatives, especially ones which have become more popular since his death.

My opinion: if Scripturalism is to have a bright future, Scripturalists need to start talking to and about people with opposing views that fall between the extremes of materialistic, empiricistic, skeptical atheism on the one hand, and Van Tilianism on the other. More often than not, that doesn't seem to be the case. In addition to explicating Scripturalism beyond the introductory level of, say, Crampton's Scripturalism of Gordon H. Clark - again, there's nothing wrong with introductory material, but at some point a position has to adapt to new challenges or be abandoned - that's a lot of uncovered ground.