Book Review: Scripturalism and the Senses (Part 14)

Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's Conclusion in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses. 

Summary and References

Mr. Lazar wraps up his book on Scripturalism with a few final thoughts. I've already replied to much of the substance of this chapter in earlier reviews. Thus, like a recent review (link), this part will mostly serve as a chance for me to point out where specific, more thorough replies are to any who don't necessary want to go back and sift through each earlier review to find where relevant references are.

On why Scripturalists (like Clark) don't normally believe Scripture has a "monopoly on truth," see here.

On why sense knowledge is not "axiomatic," see here. Also note that Mr. Lazar himself "accepts sense knowledge on the basis of Scripture," so it can't be axiomatic.

On whether there is "extra-Biblical" knowledge and in what sense such instances are "knowledge," see here.

On whether we can "argue" that we have "warrant" (i.e. "knowledge" in the Plantingan sense) for "extra-Biblical beliefs," see here, here, here, here, and here. These links also discuss our inability to be aware of the epistemic justification for externally justified beliefs and why it follows that internally justified beliefs are more ideal. 

This link discusses whether skepticism really "pervaded Clark's philosophy" (it doesn't).

On whether we can "learn Biblical propositions by reading Scripture," see here.

Final Thoughts on Clark

Mr. Lazar alludes to the idea of a Paleo-Scripturalism and the possibility that "Clark's earlier writings actually accepted the existence of sense knowledge." In my own research, I have found that there are indications of this. For example:

If we have no reason to believe there is a God, why should we act as though there were one? The early Christians were more empirically minded than the modern development would lead on to believe. John in his first epistle insists on the testimony of ears, eyes and hands. Paul in his defense before King Agrippa requests consideration of evidence, “for this thing was not done in a corner.” The Christian preacher demands faith to be sure, but the faith he demands is a belief based on evidence. Those who reject Christianity act unwisely in refusing to engage in archaeological argument to demonstrate the mythical character of the Testaments. Such a demonstration would be far more convincing and presumably more scholarly than the actual publications of the day. (1935, Kant and Old Testament Ethics)

Compare this to Clark's later works about the same subjects. Clark was not an evidentialist for most of his life, and how Clark exegeted 1 John in 1980 carries a different tune than the above. That is why I find writings like the above all the more interesting. Clark thought one thing, then came to believe another. Even when I disagree with Clark, he tended to have some stimulating explanation for his thought, so I find it enjoyable to consider what reasons he may have had for changing his mind at various points. In time, I hope to demonstrate more of these and other developments in Clark's thought.

Another topic in Mr. Lazar's Conclusion concerns science:

The riddle of induction is still an open question for me. And Clark’s philosophy of science—and hence, his whole approach to evidence and evidential reasoning—seems inadequate to me given the amazing successes of the sciences. If someone keeps winning the lottery, maybe it’s not really a lottery at all? But that’s a gut reaction on my part, not a fully formed argument. It seems to me that much more work needs to be done in the area of the philosophy (and theology) of science. It’s certainly an area that I need to study more. (pg. 159)

Perhaps Mr. Lazar might be surprised to learn that Clark also, at least at some point in his life, approved of Mr. Lazar's lottery-analogy reasoning:

I hope you all know something about craps. I think knowledge is a very fine thing and I would not even prevent from knowing about shooting craps or breaking a safe. Knowledge is a very fine thing. Well these boys are gathered around a circle and they are shooting craps and one of them picks up the dice. He rolls them out and they come seven. That’s lucky! Then he picks them up again and rolls them out and they come seven. That’s remarkable! He picks them up and he rolls them out and they come seven. That’s suspicious. And the other urchins in the game begin to philosophize. I’m all in favor of philosophizing. All these urchins learn philosophy fast. They argue that the angles at which the dice hit the pavement and the force with which they hit, the velocity – all these things differ from one throw to another and hence these factors cannot explain uniform result. And by this process of elimination they arrive at the startling conclusion that the single cause that is present in all these throws is inside the dice. I would be willing to give those two each an A in philosophy. (Christ Died for Our Sins, 1961)

Who would have thought that as late as 1961, Clark would be so agreeable towards reasoning that, strictly speaking, is fallacious? Clark's reasoning here is like if one were to argue about a pitcher who can consistently throw strikes. Given different release points, rotation, and velocity - "all these things differ from one throw to another and hence these factors cannot explain uniform result" - do we thereby conclude that "the single cause that is present in all these throws is inside the" baseball? What about the thrower? The reasoning is too hasty for one to say he knows - without any possibility for error - that the dice is loaded, despite that our intuitions and expectations do lead us to believe otherwise.

Now, if Mr. Lazar wants to expand the semantic range of "knowledge" to encompass beliefs which may be erroneous, maybe the above illustrations can be revisited and said to be "knowledge" in that sense. That might also allow us to account for what Mr. Lazar alludes to - the "amazing success" of science - without worrying about whether some pragmatistic question-begging is happening. While scientific enterprise cannot be said to aid us in knowing truth without the possibility of error, a softer, colloquial definition of "knowledge" might be fine-tuned and defended. But then, this would not be the sort of "knowledge" that many, like Clark of I, would find ideal or worth bothering too much about.

A final thought: while Mr. Lazar and I have exposited Plantinga's or Clark's meta-epistemic views (link), I have not yet found a thorough, exegetical analysis of what "knowledge" means in Scripture - yet this is most important to a robust Scripturalism and, therefore, something I am attempting to make beginnings toward answering: see here (regarding internally and infallibly justified beliefs about which we can have full assurance) and here (regarding prophecy and externally justified beliefs).

Final Thoughts on Mr. Lazar's Book

I appreciated Mr. Lazar's efforts in writing this book and making it available for free. I enjoyed it despite the disagreements I have had, as it offered me an opportunity to consolidate and better articulate much of my reflections over the past dozen years. I'm glad Mr. Lazar has felt that he is able to revisit Clark and his thought of Clark. I hope Mr. Lazar, myself, and readers continue to investigate how to refine the content of "Scripturalism," even if we can't agree on the name.

In the final part of my review, I will turn to Mr. Lazar's Appendix on Gordon H. Clark and Assurance.

How to Study a Philosopher or Theologian

A friend asked me to summarize how I have gone about studying the thought and work of Gordon Clark - that is, what methodological approaches have I used (consciously or otherwise) that would I recommend others take when trying to correctly understand, accurately represent and articulate, and/or develop the thought of another theologian, philosopher, etc. The following is a list of what came to mind:

Is the Theologian/Philosopher Worthwhile?

I started reading books by Gordon Clark a little more than a dozen years ago. At the time, I wanted to be confident in how to defend a faith I had been taught from youth and was learning more about in college. I used to seek out discussions or debates with others to fine tune my apologetic thought processes: what do I find to be good arguments? What arguments seemed to ring hollow? Were there areas in which I was not confident?

To make a long story short, prior to my exposure to Gordon Clark, I toyed with the idea that a transcendental argument could prove the "Christian" worldview true. I knew that evidential arguments would not suffice for a strict proof, so I tried testing, usually in discussions and debates with agnostics and atheists, whether a certain feature or features unique to "Christianity" - for example, the Trinity - had to be implicitly accepted (e.g. either for metaphysical or epistemological reasons). If I couldn't do that, then I felt - at the time - that my faith would rest on shaky grounds. I suppose I was thinking like a rationalist.

Typically, at some point in a conversation, the other person I was talking to would acknowledge that they had certain inconsistencies within their own belief systems and would stop conversation. But I was left with the worried feeling that if they simply pointed out that my own, specific views did not follow from the fact that theirs were flawed - or that whatever arguments I was using did not and would not specifically select for my faith - then I would be unable to affirm with certainty that "Christianity" is true. I felt better about having comparative consistency in my beliefs - I was never tempted to abandon my faith - but I wasn't sure how to pacify my uneasiness in being unable to prove "Christianity" was true. 

[I put "Christianity" in quotes because had someone ever stopped to ask me how I knew what "Christianity" - or a unique feature thereof - was, that may have led to me question how I could prove the Bible itself (a canonical collection of specific books and passages) really was God's Word. It was a question I had never considered, so don't know how I would have answered that.]

In 2009, I happened upon the presuppositionalism of Gordon Clark, whose points about the need for first principles allowed me to see that everyone makes assumptions. We cannot "prove" all of our beliefs ad infinitum. I found this convincing, and the way in which the point was presented was so simple, I found myself wanting to read more by him: did he have ideas about how or why some assumptions or presuppositions could be better than others, or how we could defend some to be true and find others to be false? Yes, he did. The more I read, the more I became interested. I doubt I would have kept reading Clark if he had only made that solitary (though important) observation and left readers to figure out any subsequent questions on their own. 

In short, then, I generally liked how he thought, and his writing was personable enough for me to want to continue learning more about what he had to say. I can imagine that another reason one might be attracted to Clark's thought is by having knowledge of the man himself: in all areas of his life, he stood for what he thought was true. If I were to recommend a starting point for others who want to "master" the thought, so to speak, of another person, it would simply be to find a person whose content or life story you enjoy reading about or listening to. 

Alternatively (or additionally), one can study an author so long as one has a defined motivation, goal, or purpose. A long time ago, I read William Young's "The Shack," not because I thought I would particularly enjoy the content, but precisely because I gathered that someone I knew might enjoy the content - content which I gathered contained unorthodox views of Christianity. While I would not have otherwise read the book, it wasn't so much a chore for me to do so because I had a reason for it: to highlight remarks in the book that an unsuspecting reader might overlook and point them out as having dangerous implications. 

Now, while that was just one book, I could extrapolate the principle to an entire collection of works by an author with whom I disagree, and indeed I have done in at least one other case that I can recall. In preparation for the 2012 TrinityFoundation essay contest - contests which were motivation enough for me to begin reading Clark in the first place - I not only read John Robbins' book-length critique of Ayn Rand's so-called Objectivist philosophy, I bought all of her published books and read them myself. I studied her thought, not just Robbins'. 

As penetrating as Robbins' critique may have been, I wanted to make sure, among other things, that it was accurate as well as developed, two other methodological points which served to supplement my motivation and to which I will return below. Would I have had a personal interest in reading Ayn Rand were it not for an essay contest? No. But again, having a specific goal helped the cause: I wanted to write my own critique of Rand simultaneous to reviewing Robbins' book.

One thing I think is important to mention is that all of these authors mentioned thus far wrote as popularizers, which is not meant as a pejorative (just the opposite). Rand and Young wrote fiction for wide readership. Robbins and Clark wrote so that lay Christians - particularly, Reformed Christians - could understand philosophy and its importance. Their works are all relatively inexpensive. I do not know how easy it would be to invest myself in reading an author whose content, price point, or intended audience is rather specialized unless I had a natural interest in the content about which they wrote or specific purpose for reading their work in mind. 

So: do you want to learn about the sorts of things a given philosopher or theologian has to say? Do you have some definite reason for reviewing their work? Do you plan to write a book on them, talk about them with others, or synthesize some of what insight you think they have into your own belief system or life choices? Make sure your study is worth your time. 

Comprehensiveness and Patience

I didn't immediately know that I was going to study Clark as much as I have. It was due to the essay contests put forward by the TrinityFoundation that I was able to acquire some of Clark's relatively more expensive collections without having to spend a lot of money which, as a poor college student, was important. At some point, I decided that because I had already acquired so many of his books, it would be cool to have them all. 

It was convenient to not have to search hard for a bibliography of his works. At the time, the TrinityFoundation had nearly every publication I could find online. For some authors, this is not so easy. Rand only wrote a dozen or so books. Clark wrote around forty, and even though around 300 writings or transcriptions by Clark have been discovered in the past decade, many of these are short and not nearly as dense as other philosophers or theologians. 

For instance, James B. Jordan, whose work I began looking into last year, is a much more prolific writer and speaker: in a festschrift written for him, the bibliography runs approximately 25 Word document pages long, is now out of date by over 10 years, and does not adequately capture the reality that there are nearly over 1700 recordings of him (compared to the perhaps few dozen or so one can find of Clark).

Hence, studying even one philosopher or theologian can require a great deal of patience. Even before a wife and house and real job (and, in the future, kids), it took me a little less than a year to feel like I had thoroughly studied Rand's philosophy, and it took over 3 years for me to grasp Clark's thought before I really felt equal to the task of understanding him well enough to challenge and/or develop his ideas. It will take a long time for me to be able to do that with respect to Jordan. 

The mindset and approach to how one studies is as important as the study itself. Accepting that studying a philosopher or theologian can be a long-term and ongoing process is important to not feel discouraged, especially if it seems you can't quite get a proper perspective of some aspect you feel as though you should. Even now, with the release of many new articles by Clark, I find myself returning to a project (see below) I had thought was essentially complete. But the payoff is mastery, so I advise collecting as much of the person's works as you can in preparation to be thorough, then reading or listening to them once to get a sense of the general thought, and only afterwards setting yourself to the task of "studying," on which see below.

The Actual Study or Research

What helped me as I went through Clark's books after the first read was setting a goal. As I read more, I found that even in books not specifically geared towards epistemology or apologetics - the reasons I began reading him in the first place - Clark would usually make a few comments that would have some bearing on these subjects. Searching for these over time became almost like a scavenger hunt, which was what probably led me to a research project of compiling a list of his quotes relating to epistemology and apologetics. 

After my first read-through of a book, I would go back through it and skim to find and highlight certain sentences or paragraphs which I later intended to transcribe to a Word document. I only looked for statements that I found relevant to epistemology and apologetics. I worked on this for around a year, with the result being some 200+ pages of Clark quotes. I have been compiling further quotes from newly released articles by Clark over the past few years (at a much slower pace than my original project), and this has led to 350+ additional pages of quotes. There are still 30+ longer articles/transcriptions for me to review, and I anticipate 150+ more pages of quotes to include. This addendum to the original project is ongoing and will probably be another several years before completed to my satisfaction (fortunately, these writings are online, so it is not so much transcription as it is editing). Like I said, patience is a necessity.

While repeat reading and transcription probably helped to solidify Clark's thoughts in my mind, I think what helped more was beginning to apply his thinking to conversations I was having and posts I was writing. The research process I described above facilitated that by making it easy for me to search through my compilation for key words as well as reference to where and what the fuller context of those statements were (if I needed to). When someone had or has a question about Clark's views, I haven't had to work from memory: I have a searchable and quotable resource from which I can lead the questioner straight to the source.

For instance, a few years ago, there was a question in Scripturalist circles as to how Clark defined knowledge: as 1) mere true belief or 2) as [so-called] "justified" true belief. I was able to answer the question for a few people by producing multiple quotes in defense of a particular interpretation of Clark's thought (in essence, of the two choices, I believe the latter description more accurately reflects Clark's thought). Similarly, when some refer to Clark as an epistemological coherentist or externalist, I have resource to think otherwise and have argued to that effect.

Or if I have wanted to write a post on Clark's views - for example, regarding a specific apologetic argument from partial knowledge - having a full library of books at my disposal has been important, but parsing those books down into relevant and searchable portions has been indispensable. But if I had finished the project and not applied it to my any conversations or reflections, I don't know that I would have retained the information very well.

Authorial Tension, Openness to Revision, and History vs. Development

No one theologian or philosopher is perfect. In any work or collection of works, there may be errors or lacuna - the latter might even be by design, given the intended scope of a work. Further, like anyone else, philosophers and theologians can change their minds over time. Therefore, those who study them ought to be open to a revised understanding of what they taught. In his late life, Augustine wrote a whole book of reconsiderations in which he outlined points at which he had changed his mind. In the case of some authors, like Clark, new publications or anecdotes by people who knew him can also surface that can also broaden our understanding of his thought. 

Example: I remember listening to Greg Bahnsen say that in a conversation he had with Clark, Clark openly questioned the Westminster Confession's doctrine of assurance (link, minutes 50-52) due to his skepticism (at the time of the conversation) that a person could have self-knowledge. This is an anecdote you won't find in any of Clark's publications, and the anecdote illustrates the importance of reading or listening to other material than who it is being studied. It is an anecdote I have no reason to doubt; on the contrary, given that Clark wrestled with the question of self-knowledge and found himself answering it in affirmative in some publications and in the negative in others, I can easily enough believe the conversation happened as described. 

What then? Well, I affirm self-knowledge and see that Clark did too... sometimes. Such does not entail that Clark did so at all times, and as much as I or others admire Clark, we need to accept that he was sometimes wrong or did not believe everything that we may wish he did. Authorial tension and history are realities. If one finds real authorial tension or certain historical statements by an author frustrating - especially if it is someone one might consider a "hero of the faith" - I think there may be a danger in implicitly treating him as infallible. A mature Christian ought to be able to separate he believes from what an author believed or believes. 

Another example: Clark once wrote, "Science is always false, but often useful." Even when I read that for the first time, it didn't make sense. If two scientists formulate two contradictory hypotheses and, after scientific procedures, come to contradictory conclusions, one must be right and the other must be wrong. Of course, the scientific procedure of the one who is right may or may not enable that scientist to know that his hypothesis is true, but this is a separate question from whether or not the hypothesis of that scientist is itself true. So many admirers of Clark can't seem to grasp that Clark simply blundered at this point. I suspect Clark intended to say something to the effect of "Science cannot enable us to know truth." But since that isn't what he wrote at this point, the reader has to address the content of the statement as it is: false.

With that said, one can and should, as Bahnsen was, be charitable about disagreement. We can, like Bahnsen did, speculate that Clark perhaps intended something other than the face-value of the statements he made. Even when the disagreement is real and substantial, one can be kind while delivering a rebuke or rebuttal. 

But in order to improve or develop an author's thought - whether towards truth or the application of the thought to other contexts than those the author addressed - one must first have an accurate understanding of the thought as the author himself expresses it. If disagreement exists, it has to be recognized and confronted so that a better view can be proposed. This is best done only after having as full an understanding of an author's reasons for disagreement as possible, as one can then argue the contrary more effectively... or, perhaps, allow that the author's reasoning is sound and change his own mind! Either way, reading or listening to others about the same subject matter as the author being studied will tend to provide needed balance.

Summary

Have a purpose for your study.

Own all the person's works (or as many as possible).

Read and/or listen to the person normally, then skim/highlight with intention.

Consider transcribing/editing quotes of interest for use in conversation, reflective writing, etc.

Accept the possibility of tension within the author's own thought, but be charitable.

Be open to revision.

Differentiate between what the author believed or believes and what you yourself believe.

Think about how to improve the author's thought, whether towards truth or comprehensiveness.

Read other material.

Be patient, and enjoy the study.

Book Review: Scripturalism and the Senses (Part 5)

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)

“…theology, the theology here in view, covers the entire field of human knowledge: anthropology, history, and science.” (Karl Barth’s Theological Method, pg. 111).

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. 

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.

Knowledge, Opinion, and Usefulness

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.

Book Review: Scripturalism and the Senses (Part 4)

Links to all parts may be found here. This part will contain a review and evaluation of Mr. Lazar's third chapter in his book, Scripturalism and the Senses.

The Test of Skepticism

The opening of Mr. Lazar's third chapter pithily asks whether Clark's philosophy is any more capable of deducing Herr Krug's pen than Hegel's philosophy was. Because Clark found fault with Hegel for being unable to deduce said pen (given Hegel's philosophy), the implication is that unless Clark can do so (given his own philosophy), Clark's criticism of Hegel blows back upon himself. 

However, in reply to the above suggestion about Herr Krug's pen, Clark could simply reply that the criticism lands against Hegel, but not himself, because Hegel "denies that there is any limit to knowledge" and that "there is no unknowable" (emphasis mine). In fact, Clark mentions these, in the context of Herr Krug's pen, as reasons why Hegel must deduce the pen (given Hegel's philosophy). All Clark must do, then, is affirm that there is a limit to knowledge, that there is an unknowable, to avoid the burden of deducing the pen on his philosophy.

And Clark does this, at least to some extent. I have written on the problem of partial knowledge and why it is a powerful apologetic argument that a Scripturalist can use against a wide variety of worldviews (cf. link). One such quote by Clark is the following, and it illustrates the relevant difference between his view and Hegel's such that Clark's philosophy needn't be able to deduce things such as Herr Krug's pen to be successful:

Plato and Hegel constructed theories of knowledge which, if pressed to their logical extreme, imply that man must be either omniscient or completely ignorant. If every item of knowledge is so intimately connected with every other that its true nature cannot be seen except in its relation to all, then either we know all or we know nothing. Plato and Hegel both had a hard time escaping this dilemma.

Now Moses said, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever” (Deut. 29:29). The Bible, therefore, both here and everywhere, assumes that we can know some truths without knowing all truths. Accordingly it is incumbent upon us to develop an epistemology in which the relationships are not such as to limit us to the disjunction of total ignorance or omniscience.

This epistemology may follow Augustine’s view that Christ is the light of every man: that is, mankind possesses as an a priori endowment at least the rudiments of knowledge, so that whenever anyone knows anything he is in contact with God. Or, the epistemology required may be more skeptical as to geometry and science and simply insist that God, being omnipotent, can be a verbal revelation make his truths understandable to me. (Baker's Dictionary of Theology, 1991, pgs. 245-246)

If there are limits to what we can know, we needn't be ashamed to admit them. Clark was not, for he knew he wasn't omniscient. On the contrary, precisely because he wasn't omniscient, he recognized the need to rely on the omniscient members of the Trinity for his knowledge. 

Therefore, as can be seen in the quote, Clark was comfortable in admitting that his epistemology could be regarded as relatively skeptical in regards to certain knowledge claims that other philosophical systems, such as Hegel's, make. To the scores of critics who cried out against him, Clark's reply was simple: "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, 2009, pgs. 75-76). 

Now, Mr. Lazar is in good company among the many incredulous persons who wonder how Clark can admit he does not know his wife, pen, etc. Can one sanely suggest he does not know these things exist? Well, yes. Even as someone who now disagrees with Clark here - for I do believe such things are knowable in some sense - this criticism never impressed me. Clark's answer to it is quite satisfactory:

The objection was that even if revelation gives us some knowledge, it does not give us very much. In particular, it does not provide knowledge of zoology and Russian history. At that earlier point a systematically sufficient answer was given, namely, some knowledge at least is thus possible. (Clark and His Critics, 2009, pg. 77)

Although not usually recognized as such, a certain claim to infallibility meets us in our everyday affairs. When an accountant balances his books, does he not assume that his figures are correct? When a college professor hurries to class for fear that his students will disappear if he is late, does he not make judgments as to the time of day and the proclivities of students? When a chess club challenges another to a match, does any suspicion of fallibility impede its action? Cannot this club distinguish the dogma ecclesiastica that there actually is another club from the dogma haeretica that no other club exists? Must not all people act on the assumption that their beliefs are true? (Karl Barth's Theological Method, 1997, pg. 146)

In other words, we may assume or believe to be true that our wife is not a substitution, a pen is in our hand, etc. We act as if our beliefs are true. But for Clark, "knowledge" is not a kind of belief that may turn out to be false. It may be that any reasons I have for believing a pen is in my hand are insufficient insofar as I am hallucinating. It cannot, on the other hand, turn out that divine revelation is false. 

And whether one agrees with Clark's restrictive understanding of "knowledge" or not, one would be wrong, as Mr. Lazar is, to suggest Clark's philosophy collapses into skepticism (and thus fails said test) unless one is willing to attack either the possibility of knowing divine revelation in general or knowing divine revelation on Clark's version of Scripturalism in particular. Knowledge of biblical propositions would be enough to pass the test of skepticism. Mr. Lazar will challenge Clark's ability to know even biblical propositions, as I will return to in a moment, but pausing to note the sufficiency of having some knowledge rather than none is, as Clark, says, important.

Miscellaneous Comments: An Intermezzo

There are some things in the chapter that I think would be beneficial to address even though they do not directly bear on the question of the test of skepticism:

1) Clark was wrong to say "science is always false." He probably meant that scientific analyses are always unknowable. For example, two scientists can, by similar procedures, arrive at opposite conclusions. One meteorologist may say it will rain tomorrow. Another may say it will not rain tomorrow. One's conclusion will be true and based on certain, scientific analyses, but the fact that his conclusion is true does not mean he "knows" his conclusion (at least, not in the sort of internalist, infallibilist sense I believe in which Clark was interested). That is, most meteorologists would admit that their individual conclusions could, for all they know, prove false. But, in fact, one (or more) will be right. So Mr. Lazar is right to correct Clark, but really, this is a simple error Clark made that isn’t relevant to whether or not Scripturalism is true or fails a test of skepticism.

2) Clark may have said that an objection to his philosophy was that we can't know zoology or Russian history. But he never said the objection was true. He simply dismissed the objection as relevant to the point that he was, in contrast to his critics, at least able to account for some knowledge. In fact, Clark wrote a whole chapter on [biblical] history in A Christian View of Men and Things. He did believe we could know some history, contrary to what Mr. Lazar states. Similarly, the Bible also mentions many animals. Is it enough knowledge to satisfy critics? Not usually. But it at least sets the record straight.

3) To Mr. Lazar's allusion to the difficulty of self-knowledge on a Scripturalist epistemology, the quote he mentions doesn’t show Clark regarded self-knowledge is impossible, just harder than people imagine. Personally, I believe Clark held different beliefs at different times in his life. At one point in his life, Clark rejected the possibility of self-knowledge (Modern Philosophy, 2008, pgs. 273-274). At another point in his life, he affirmed it (see below). I argue that self-knowledge is compatible with and necessary for Scripturalism. At any rate, I can do no better at this point than to repeat remarks I have elsewhere made, including the links provided:

I think Clark, consistently acknowledging the difficulty of the subject, both denies and affirms self-knowledge in various places (link). Personally, I defend it (link) and believe it to be as necessary to Clark's epistemology as logic or language. All of the points Butler makes, I address in that post, including that I needn't know my name to have self-knowledge, that the meaning of "I" can be gathered from Scripture, that there are various books of Scripture addressed to the elect in general, and that one must know he is a believer if he is to know Scripture comprises the extent of God's special revelation. There is no incompatibility between self-knowledge with the idea a certain kind of knowledge (i.e. infallibilistic, internalistic) must be divinely revealed, explicitly or implicitly. There is incompatibility between the impossibility of self-knowledge and the concrete revelation of Scripture, which just is the axiom by which we can know anything in an infallibilistic, internalistic sense. Therefore, self-knowledge is legitimate.

4) Mr. Lazar, citing Ronald Nash, supposes Clark must be using "knowledge" in "a very idiosyncratic way." This is an excellent thought! It is unfortunate that it was not followed up by a meta-epistemic discussion of what Clark meant by "knowledge," whether he was right or wrong to think of "knowledge" in that way, and/or what an alternative proposal would be. I will, as in my last post, defer to here for an explanation as to the kind of knowledge Clark had in mind for now (as well as some evaluative, parenthetical comments on where Clark's thought might be improved).

5) One final comment that I will keep brief, since I've mentioned the distinction between epistemology and apologetics in my last two reviews (link and link), is that when Mr. Lazar saying "Clark's negative and positive apologetics both result in skepticism," he really should be speaking about Clark's epistemology, not his apologetic. Mr. Lazar's comments come in the context of his support for Gordon Lewis' criticisms of Clark. I have already addressed Gordon Lewis here. I will only highlight the following points from that post to reiterate what the proper function of tests for truth are (i.e. apologetic, not epistemic): 

Note that the following isn't true: "Clark chooses to believe their truth because Christianity... is alone consistent." Rather, Clark chooses to argue their truth because Christianity is alone consistent. This is the difference between apologetics and epistemology. Apologetics consists in making arguments. This is not always so in epistemology - axioms are not known because they are the conclusion of some argument, they are known because they are self-authenticating. 

Clark has to argue for Christianity via logical consistency and practicality because, at the risk of stating the obvious, he can't know Christianity for those to whom he is engaging in apologetics. He could just say divine revelation is self-authenticating and leave it at that, but it is more persuasive (which is another function of apologetics) to additionally point out, when applicable, that an opponent's system 1) can't be self-authenticating if his system inconsistent or impractical, or 2) that his system is less coherent than Christianity is, in the case of something like Judaism. 

Lewis seems to think that Clark's tests for truth are the basis on which Clark claims to know Christianity. That is really the only explanation for why Lewis would think Clark would have to sift through infinitely many systems before knowing that just one, Christianity, is consistent. But that interpretation goes completely against what Lewis himself stated Clark believed regarding the nature and knowability of axioms earlier in his summary.

While "test[s] for truth" can serve as confirmatory evidences of Christianity, they shouldn't function as the ground of knowledge; divine revelation does. Elsewhere, I have called tests for truth necessary conditions for knowledge and the postulate[s] by which one claims to know anything the sufficient condition[s] for knowledge (link). The former are the means by which we make arguments for (i.e. apologetics) the latter (i.e. epistemology).

Again, apologetics should include an explanation of the epistemology of the system one is defending. Any good defense of a system of knowledge should explain what that system says about how we can know anything. But that explanation and defense should not be confused for that actual process of knowing. In fact, apologetics is only possible insofar as we know the system we are defending is true in the first place (see here).

As I've mentioned, it seems Mr. Lazar doesn’t understand that for Clark, we know the axiom of Scripturalism because it is self-authenticating. Clark was an internalist and foundationalist. We don’t know our axiom because other, non-Christian systems are false. That would be to make the axiom a conclusion, which Clark clearly rejects. It also means we would be searching for a true first principle, system, or worldview by sifting through false ones first, which would be circular, anti-foundationalistic, and/or question-begging given that such an enterprise would already presuppose knowledge of what a true first principle, system, or worldview would look like. Instead, given that apologists or defenders of the faith engage with other worldviews which have their own first principles, we argue about or against those first principles and their relationship to the resulting belief systems they produce. Such apologists already know (or should know!) their own system is true before they argue against others’. 

That is, the “tests” Mr. Lazar mentions are not neutral methods by which one can choose an epistemological first principle/axiom (which, again, would be impossible; cf. link). Rather, they are apologetic tools used to display or witness to the superiority of one epistemological system over against another. There is a very clear distinction between from what all our knowledge claims derive from (our epistemological axiom) and how we then go about trying to defend all of our knowledge claims (which is apologetics, not epistemology as such). We ought to defend our faith in a manner consistent with our epistemology, but it is a common mistake to conflate the two, as Mr. Lazar does in his appeal to Lewis’ critique of Clark.

The [Real] Test of Skepticism

The most noteworthy section in this chapter is entitled, "Is Scripturalism Skeptical of Revelation?" It must be an enticing thought to the critic, for if it were possible to show that Clark's philosophy results in skepticism of divine revelation itself, Clark would be in real trouble! This type of criticism would be much more problematic than one which suggests that Clark can't know certain propositions that other people normally take to be knowable. It would actually be an attempted reductio ad absurdem of [Clark's] Scripturalism. This section of Mr. Lazar's writing is worth quoting at length:

...here's the problem: according to Scripturalism, I can't gain knowledge by reading the Bible. In fact, I don't even know if my mother's New Testament exists. I have opinions about it, but I don't have knowledge of it. So where does that leave my Bible memorization? Do I really know those Biblical propositions or do I merely opine that I do? And how do I tell the difference which verses I know and which I merely opine?

Do you see the problem?

...So far as I can tell, Scripturalism has no way of distinguishing between knowledge of Biblical propositions and mere opinions.

Above, I quoted from 1 John 5:7. If you're familiar with textual criticism, you know the special problem associated with that verse, namely, most Greek manuscripts omit it. It may not be Scripture. In fact, the textual evidence is against it...

I have to wonder, how did Clark acquire his propositions about the evidence for or against the TR? And did he know them or merely opine them? Did the amount to revelation knowledge or something less?

And what about other textual issues? How about the longer ending in Mark?

Or the Pericope Adulterae?

Or Psalm 151?

Are the Scripture or not? How does the Scripturalist know?  

...How does the Scripturalist know if it really is Scripture? What does he check his beliefs against? Anything?

I'll tell you what I do. When I'm in doubt about something being Biblical - regarding the best translation, or the best reading, or whether something is canonical at all - I get out my Bible and check it. If necessary, I'll refer to my Greek New Testament, and to the best scholarship on the issue.

But the Scripturalist can't do that because he can't get such information by reading the Bible or other books. What, then, can he do? How does he distinguish between knowledge and opinion when it comes to Biblical propositions? So far as I can see, the Scripturalist has no way of discerning between the two. Yes, he can say that Scripture is his axiom, and he can formally define that to mean the 66 books of the Protestant canon, but he can't know if any of the propositions he believes are, in fact, part of the canon, can he? What would he do to check to see if there were? He can't check his Bible.

The result is that Scripturalism leads to skepticism about Biblical propositions, too. They function as a Ding an sich (the unknowable thing-in-itself), in the send that Biblical propositions are postulated by the system, but the actual content of the propositions are unknowable.

Hence, despite Clark's claims to the contrary, Scripturalism leads to skepticism about the Bible, too. 

One point of tension Mr. Lazar touches on is between Scripturalism and textual criticism. Clark himself never made much of a deliberate attempt to harmonize the two, although he does mention it in one or two instances I'll come back to later. It doesn't much matter, though, for in seeming contrast to Mr. Lazar, Clark believed that the Bible was propositional, not "ink marks" (God's Hammer, 1995, pgs. 180-182). Clark has his own method of answering how we acquire biblical propositions - occasionalism, as was mentioned in my last review. I would venture to guess that Clark would have resorted to this if someone had pressed him on the matter of textual criticism. 

Then, if someone complained that such meant he can’t know about textual variants – since they haven’t been divinely revealed – I can just imagine Clark being delighted to reply that it is so much the better for Clark not to have the trouble of needing to respond to any criticism dealing in it! Rather, the trouble would be for the person on whose epistemology textual variants are known to exist and inhibit him from knowing the content of divine revelation.

As I said in my last review, I disagree with occasionalism. I'll return to why this hypothetical approach by Clark would be suboptimal. But it is worth taking a moment to appreciate why the response would have some merits. Take Mr. Lazar's own implied position. I question whether Mr. Lazar can claim to be any kind of Scripturalist (neo- or whatnot) when he says that if he is in doubt about something being biblical, he resorts to "the best translation… reading… [or] scholarship." Wait... "best" by whose definition? In the scenario Mr. Lazar outlines, is Scripture his ultimate, epistemic foundation? Rather, does it not seem that his real epistemic foundation is whatever source he defers to in order to erase his doubts and come to assurance regarding what the content of Scripture is? 

Not only does this apply to textual variants (what some have called "micro-canonical" issues), the same question applies to the books of the Bible at large (a "macro-canonical" issue). How does Mr. Lazar claim to know that entire books of the Bible are divinely revealed? Is it the epistemic axiom, presupposition, or foundation with which he begins divine revelation? It seems not. Instead, he first "get[s] out [his] Bible and check[s] it." 

What I'm left wondering is in what way this procedure cures his doubts. What is it about a physical book in his mother's library that gives him confidence? Is he really suggesting that he can reason his way towards knowing the content of divine revelation? As I wrote on the Scripturalist's ability to know the canon of Scripture long ago (link), such an answer would falsely suppose:

...that it is more legitimate to evaluate a creator by His creation than creation by a creator. Are any of these options really more plausible than a self-authenticating revelation? Do any of these alternatives have something more substantial than a superficially intuitive appeal? Well, I must leave that to the reader to decide. I would obviously answer in the negative...

Of course, there are perspectives which I would allege attempt to copy the method of knowing God's word, distorting it by substituting in place of Scripture something not of divine origin. And this troubles people, because if revelation is supposed to be self-authenticating, then how is it possible to sift through all these varying claims? Is playing a back-and-forth game of "my source is true and yours is not because my source says so" really the best that a Christian apologist has to offer? Still more troubling, how can our answer to such questions be made without presupposing revelation? After all, if some sort of revelation is necessary, then we wouldn't be able to answer any question without first specifying said revelation.

Well, actually all of this doesn't turn out to be so problematic. For the reply to this last question just is that we can't answer any question without first presupposing a specific, concrete revelation. So what? The reason why some accept and others reject one proposal over against another should depend on what one's revelation has to say about such. In the case of Scripture, while God's word may be self-evident, the only means by or reason for which any sinner would acknowledge it as such is grace.

Even so, we may further note that we are not left without means of distinguishing false claims to divine revelation. Keeping in mind that no necessary condition for knowledge can ground or function to demonstrate a sufficient condition for knowledge (link), there are nonetheless tests we can perform which serve as confirmatory evidences.

...the Bible itself prescribes criteria against which we can test its claims. Prophecy is one example. Internal consistency is another necessary condition for some communication to have been revealed by God. Etc. I have outlined and dealt with numerous such conditions elsewhere on this blog. Once again, no matter how many of these subsidiary conditions we show the Bible must and does satisfy, our trust in it must ultimately be based on its own, self-authenticating claim to be God's word. But by applying these subsidiary conditions to other worldviews, we can falsify them and thereby lend credibility to our own. While this is not demonstration - no first principle can be demonstrated anyway - it is a technique which is seemingly the most plausible means of persuasion available. The rest is left to God.

So, to summarize, Scripturalism - the axiom that the canon of divine revelation in general and the Bible in particular comprises the extant extent of that which men can know - is clearly not the conclusion of a set of theorems, no matter how necessary those theorems may be in order for a system to be true. Axioms must be self-authenticating or self-evident.

But the acceptance of an axiom is not arbitrary. If it were arbitrary, then it would be unnecessary. One of the necessary conditions, however, is that partial knowledge requires self-authenticating communication from one who is omniscient. We may not be able to demonstrate or prove the Bible in particular is said revelation, but this isn't relevant. For the Bible is taken to be the sufficient condition, not a mere necessary condition, and no axiom can be demonstrated, proved, or externally justified. The fact it just is self-authenticating is enough. People may not accept this, but then again, people may not accept that I know myself. I can't demonstrate that either, but is that any reason to think I can't know myself? No.

I do not see in what way Mr. Lazar could 1) think our epistemic foundation is not divine revelation but 2) also think that the alternative he will eventually prescribe can legitimately be called "neo-Scripturalism." Given the nature of his criticisms against Clark, Mr. Lazar's epistemology apparently relies upon an empirical method of inferring truth from sensations (i.e. referring to his Greek NT, a physical Bible, scholarship, etc.). I hope I am wrong, I just do not know how else to take Mr. Lazar's criticisms of Clark's epistemology than as a reflection upon his own.

Does this not mean that any confidence he has from these sources is on shaky grounds? As I mentioned in my last review, Mr. Lazar would have to confront Sellars' Dilemma and explain how he can start with a non-propositional Bible in his hand and somehow use that as a premise (seemingly without a truth value, since it is non-propositional) from which he is able to infer a propositional truth about what the true content of Scripture actually is... unless Mr. Lazar plans on addressing the whole host of criticisms regarding empirical knowledge that Clark argues in his many works. Even if it is not a pure empiricism to which Mr. Lazar holds, so long as he relies on empirical elements for his epistemology to function - as would be the case if he thinks he can avoid Sellars' Dilemma by actively, consciously derive propositional thoughts from sensations - Clark's criticisms are relevant and must be addressed.

Alternatively, the only way in which one could try to read Mr. Lazar's section here that would enable him to avoid the set of above problems and questions is if Mr. Lazar intends to criticize Clark's apologetic rather than his epistemology. But given that, in this section, Mr. Lazar discusses knowledge vs. opinion and believes he is reducing Clark's Scripturalism to skepticism, it is quite clear that he really is attacking Clark's epistemology after all. 

If Mr. Lazar restricted his critique to Clark's apologetic - if his criticism is merely that Clark cannot defend his beliefs as Mr. Lazar can - then Clark would not fail the test of skepticism. One's doubts could be relieved by recalling that one's apologetic abilities and lines of defense are subordinate to his epistemology. Neither Mr. Lazar nor Clark would (or could) defend their beliefs by appealing to some mysterious, spontaneous intuitions, yet neither would (or should) feel unconfident because of that apologetic limitation. As has been emphasized, apologetics presupposes an epistemology to defend. A more skeptical epistemology will entail a more skeptical apologetic, but "more skeptical" is not "totally skeptical," and is still better than epistemologies that make grand claims but collapse into skepticism upon closer examination.

Textual Criticism

Turning now to a more positive reply to the subject of textual criticism, I have addressed the subject in a few places (link, link, link) that are intended to be supplement a developed Scripturalism - that is, relevant differences between Clark's thought and my own are accounted for within these posts. But even Clark and I could agree with "rhetorical critical" arguments that do not depend on evaluating external, non-propositional realities (such as examining textual transmission and the like) but rather internal ones (such as examining literary structure or implicit, authorial themes present within the propositional revelation itself). 

That is, Clark could easily find common ground with me in giving apologetic reasons, for example, for why the so-called "longer ending" of Mark is divinely revealed. Two such reasons would be the Elijah theme and chiastic parallelism, both of which internally refer to the propositional (including interrogative and imperative) contents of Mark itself and, thus, are not extra-biblical. Of course, one can’t use apologetic arguments or defenses to, say, bootstrap axiomatic belief in Mark or its ending, but that’s true of any epistemic first principle. Clark's epistemology is in much safer territory than Mr. Lazar's.

Now I will return to discuss why I believe the above apologetic possibilities available to Clark are, while sufficient, incomplete. They are only part of a more robust defense available to a Scripturalist. First, let's take a look at a few instances in which Clark mention textual criticism in the context of apologetics:

Once when I quoted a verse from John’s Gospel to a modernist, she quickly replied, “But how do you know that he actually said that?” By the grace of God, I was able immediately to shoot back, “How do you know Jesus said anything?” The other faculty members at the lunch table gave vocal evidence of a point scored. The modernist woman professor and missionary to India wanted to use some verses, but not others. But she saw then that if she insisted on her verses, she could not object to mine. At any rate the attempt to destroy Christian faith by an appeal to the difficulties of textual criticism has been based on considerable exaggeration. (Against the World, 1999, pg. 147) 

Here, Clark made a fair point in the right context. Once one begins to cherry-pick which biblical statements can be regarded as trustworthy, one has begun to slide upon a slippery slope that will, if left unchecked, lead to skepticism. But what of a woman professor who would bit the bullet and admitted that nothing could be known of what Jesus said? Some time ago, I read Gordon Clark's thesis for his doctorate at UPenn. Clark must have been about 27 when he wrote the following:

In the case of Aristotle we are not dependent on fragments, for we have his complete works; we are perfectly familiar with the usages of his language; the only difficulty is textual and whoever bases a skepticism in textual criticism asserts that not only nearly all philosophy, but nearly all history as well, before the Renaissance, it forever unknowable. This is a reductio ad absurdem. We can with tolerable certainty ascertain the exact working of Aristotle, but to understand his thought we need also to know the arguments and discussion of previous arguments men which were the motives to his solution. Are these unknowable? My answer would be, try and see. (pg. 10)

Ironically, Clark would later reverse his thought and admit most of what is commonly supposed to be known is not. He no longer considered it to be a reductio ad absurdem to follow through the logical implications of a textual criticism which often presupposes an empirical methodology. Far from attempts to destroy Christianity through textual criticism being based on an "exaggeration," as Clark said, is this not what we are seeing in modern day anti-Christian polemics? 

The Bart Ehrman's of the world undermine the confidence of Christians, with Muslims and new atheists in tow appealing to their publications (which Mr. Lazar must hope does not constitute the "best" scholarship!) to attack the Christian faith. If anyone should have anticipated this, it should have been Clark, who recognized in other areas that the doctrine of Scripture "on which all other doctrines depend is the one most viciously attacked of all. By a satanic instinct, the battle against Christianity is directed against its citadel" (God's Hammer, 1995, pg. 113). Whatever was the case when Clark wrote the following, it no longer matches the landscape of today's textual criticism:

The author suggests that there is no use discussing whether the alleged error was missing from the original until we have the original. This seems to betray a forgetfulness of textual criticism. The differences between the Greek New Testament which we have and the autographs are few in number and of slight consequence. Most of them are differences in spelling, or in word order, or in some small detail that does not affect the sense. To suppose that we are so ignorant of the original wording as this argument requires is to cast aside the whole science of textual criticism. (God's Hammer, 1995, pgs. 122-123)

The above, originally written in 1963, makes it sound as though Clark thought the science of textual criticism could indeed play an apologetic role to build up the confidence of believers... and he is right, although 20 years later, Clark seemed to have come around a little to look upon textual criticism with suspicion, remarking that modern textual criticism is "untrustworthy" (Behind the Versions, 1983, link). It is easy to understand why, for we can fast forward to present day in which modern textual scholars are positing that "the process of transmission of the New Testament texts resulted in a high degree of contamination" (link). We now have computers that attempt to reconstruct what the original or earliest texts may have been: 

The stated goal of the CBGM is to help pastors, scholars, and laypeople alike determine, “Which text should be read? Which should be applied? ... For the New Testament, this means trying to determine, at each place where our copies disagree, what the author most likely wrote, or failing this, at least what the earliest text might have been.” (link)

Likely wrote? Might have been? The problem with foundationally relying on the "best" scholars is that one has no idea to what conclusions their hidden assumptions will lead. There is no problem with scholarship per se unless one suggests, as Mr. Lazar implicitly has, that one's knowledge of God's word and divine revelation are end-products of such investigation. At that point, we have abandoned presuppositionalism in favor of rationalism, empiricism, some hybrid, or, for all intents and purposes, skepticism. Still worse, the doubt a Christian who subordinates his knowledge of Scripture to knowledge of creaturely authorities faces is left unresolved when the best that these "authorities" can offer are probabilistic "knowledge" of God's word (and we might even, as Clark did, contest how such an "authority" calculated the probabilities).

As I mentioned in my last review, I disagree with Clark's occasionalism. I think Clark's occasionalism would have, if push came to shove, forced Clark to fall back to internal, confirmatory evidences. In light of the above, it can be tempting for Scripturalists to abandon the enterprise of textual criticism - of understanding and evaluating the physical codifications of God's propositional revelation in history - when one begins with the propositions and not the physical codifications anyways. Why bother?

We are to take every thought captive to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5). Educated Christians equipped with the word of God are equipped for every good work, including providing pushback to modern textual critical methodologies that, intentionally or not, undermine or control God's word. No such methodology is neutral. Assumptions are always built in to anyone's investigations. 

What then? The Scripturalist should, armed with God's word as his foundational assumption, be encouraged to apply it to textual criticism. Rather than merely retreat to defend our citadel, we must attack other citadels from it (which, in turn, is a form of apologetic defense). There is ample supply of apologetic material a Scripturalist can use that has already been provided in this [series of] post[s] by which he can defend himself against those who would use textual criticism to spread doubt. 

But we needn't only rely only on internal, confirmatory evidences and reductio ad absurdems, sufficient though they may be. A complete, optimal Scripturalist apologetic should feel free to incorporate textual critical evaluations that are appropriately guided by his epistemic foundation of Scripture itself into his defense of the faith. 

Example: patristic quotations can be used to argue that the books of the New Testament were written early and relatively shortly after Jesus' ascension. This is an example of how our confidence is confirmed and how doubt can be caused in those who oppose the faith. It is not that the argument is then used as a basis upon which to believe the New Testament, for from the divine revelation itself with which we epistemically begin, we can know the New Testament was written by contemporaries of Jesus. Rather, the point is that the truth of Scripture with which we begin has empowered us to find and then speak of extra-biblical confirmations of these truths, confirmations we already had reason to expect to find from divine revelation itself. All of creation is a superabundance of evidence for the Trinity we worship.

Of course, a through-and-through follower of the thought of Clark may ask, for example, how we know patristic quotations are authentic. Or perhaps they might ask how a Scripturalist can know that textual critical evaluations accurately depict the history of the transmission process. The question is legitimate. Because externalism is addressed in a future chapter in Mr. Lazar's book, I will leave most of my reply for a later review. But between this post, the last review, and this link (particularly the last four paragraphs), interested readers can anticipate what to expect. In short, because our epistemic foundation, God's word, indicates that extra-biblical knowledge is possible, we can construct arguments regarding "knowing" extra-biblical ideas. 

Can extra-biblical ideas conflict with our epistemic foundation? No - the latter always establishes the limits of the former. If, for example, it should appear that external, textual critical indicators are apologetically insufficient for defending the longer ending of Mark, Scripturalists should simply use what other apologetic defenses he has available to him to defend what he already knows is true.

Does extra-biblical knowledge eliminate the need for Scripturalism? No - "need" is context based, and I can think of a few reasons why the kind of knowledge Scripturalism defends is needed that the kind of extra-biblical knowledge on offer cannot supply (link, link). 

The upshot of this is that Mr. Lazar can know about the Bible in his mother's library, even though he should not found his epistemological axiom on it - again, see my last review for argument as to why we do not begin with the physical, non-propositional text that codifies the propositional revelation (the latter which we do epistemically begin with) - much less what creaturely scholars[hip] have to say about it. 

One final comment regarding Mr. Lazar's statement that biblical propositions, for Clark, "function as a Ding an sich (the unknowable thing-in-itself), in the sense that Biblical propositions are postulated by the system, but the actual content of the propositions are unknowable." This criticism by Mr. Lazar doesn't make sense. Propositions are the only kinds of things "knowable" (at least if we are speaking about "knowledge" literally). If Mr. Lazar is saying that Clark did not have had a criterion for epistemically deciding between two textual variants, that is because Clark's epistemic first principle already takes care of that question in the first place. Clark doesn't reason to divine revelation, he begins with it and defends from it. The absence of a criterion for discovering one's first principle is something inherent in every first principle, for every first principle must be self-authenticating:

But if there is a revelation, there can be no criterion for it. God cannot swear by a greater; therefore he has sworn by himself. One cannot ask one’s own experience to judge God and determine whether God tells the truth or not. Consider Abraham. How could Abraham be sure that God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac? Maybe this suggestion was of the devil; maybe it was a queer auto-suggestion. There is no higher answer to this question than God himself. The final criterion is merely God’s statement. It cannot be tested by any superior truth. (Today's Evangelism, Counterfeit or Genuine? 1990, pg. 113)

This disjunct faces two replies. First, it assumes that a first principle cannot be self-authenticating. Yet every first principle must be. The first principle of Logical Positivism is that a sentence has no meaning unless it can be verified (in principle at least) by sensory experience. Yet no sensory experience can ever verify this principle. Anyone who wishes to adopt it must regard it as self-authenticating. So it is with all first principles. (Christian Philosophy, 2004, pgs. 46-47) 

This is how to approach questions concerning the canon and textual criticism from a Scripturalist perspective. Thus, in the final analysis, while there is some truth in this chapter mixed in with some error, and while the truths are worth the emphasis, none of them result in a decisive failure of Scripturalism (not even Clark's occasionalistic version of Scripturalism) to pass the test of skepticism. 

In the next part of my review, I will turn to chapter 4, which Mr. Lazar calls the test of explanatory power.