Reformed Epistemology Apologetics
In this post, I provide a brief summary of the apologetic methodology known as Reformed Epistemology Apologetics. In Five Views on Apologetics, this approach is defended by Kelly James Clark. Reformed epistemology holds the position that belief in God does not require the support of evidence or argument in order for it to be rational. Alvin Plantinga, one of the most important Christian philosophers of today, is a defender of this approach. While not completely discounting the importance of evidence in our knowing certain things, there are some beliefs which may be rational without evidence.
Clark maintains that we hold many beliefs to be true without evidence. For example, we believe that there are other persons without evidence. It is difficult to “prove” that other persons exist. Much of our knowledge is not based on evidence, but on what others have told us. Most of us know that Paraguay exists, but how many have actually have evidence that it does. How do we know that we were not created five minutes ago with our memories intact? How do we know what we had for breakfast this morning? On the basis of what evidence?
Clark presents at least three reasons why it is rational for a person to accept belief in God without the need for argument:
1. There are very few people who have access to or the ability to assess most theistic arguments.
2. It seems that God has given us an awareness of himself that is not dependent on theistic arguments. John Calvin spoke of the sensus divinitatus. People are accountable to God, not because of a failure of submisstion to a theistic proof, but because they have suppressed the truth God has placed within them.
3. Belief in God is more like belief in a person than belief in a scientific theory.
Reformed epistemology does not maintain that a person cannot come to God through arguments and evidences. It merely maintains that arguments and evidences are not necessary for one to be rational in one’s belief in God. To state the central point of Reformed epistemology in a sentence:
Rational people may rationally believe in God without evidence or argument.
According to Plantinga’s theory of warrant for beliefs…
A belief is warranted if it is produced by properly functioning cognitive faculties in circumstances to which those faculties are designed to apply.
Belief in God is felt to be a properly basic belief. The Reformed epistemologist argues that our cognitive faculties do indeed produce such a belief which properly functioning in the right circumstances. I conclude with Clark’s conclusion:
It is often calimed that Reformed epistemology endorses belief in God without proof or evidence; there is a sense in which that claim is true, but it is surely an exaggeration… Belief in God can be based on reason or on the evidence of religious experience. But experience of God need not be the basis of a warranted belief in God. One’s properly functioning cognitive faculties can produce belief in God in the appropriate circumstances with or without argument, evidence, or religious experience.
I hope, next, to offer my take on the five views on apologetics.