Reason's Relationship to Revelation

Sean, great questions. You’ve got several distinct ones, though.

If I were you, I’d table the canonicity question until I’ve settled the faith and reason question and the sola scriptura question.

On faith & reason, saw this Kuyper quote yesterday:

http://www.markandlauraward.com/blog/2012/10/19/kuyper-on-overlapping-m…

Probably the best part:

“[All knowledge] proceeds out of faith. All science presupposes that we ourselves believe; presupposes a belief that the laws of thinking are correct; presupposes beliefs about life; and presupposes above all faith in the principles from which we proceed….”

I believe he’s right. Everybody starts with faith, even those who passionately deny that.

Personally I see two species of faith. The first has to do with starting points. You have to believe something independently of “rational” process—or at least in a way not logically dependent on observation and reasoning. These are principles that don’t really allow cross examination. It’s probably accurate to say they spring directly from our spirit. I don’t know about that; what I know is that how we arrive at these starting beliefs is mysterious (as is how we persuade anyone else to accept them—ultimately we don’t persuade).

Second species of faith are beliefs built on the first set. I’m sure real philosophers would break this down a great deal more—but at the cost of becoming very difficult to understand. For me, belief that God exists and that He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures are the starting beliefs. The rest build on those—and they employ reason to read and understand and believe His written revelation.

I’m probably splitting hairs, but I really didn’t mean to say “assumptions.” From the standpoint of argument, the things we believe by faith function as assumptions and a priori is a good way to describe them. But assumption tends to make them sound arbitrary—groundless. To me, they are unverifiable but still not arbitrary. This is a category the materialist/empiricist has a hard time believing even exists—a belief fully justified but not on rational or verifiable grounds.

… but it gets too messy for me pretty quickly because can’t “rational” be retroactive? Empirical assumptions say you have to observe then reason, and that this is what “rational” means. But why can’t we believe, then support the belief with observation and reason—in other words “rationalize”? I think this is really what everyone does with the small handful of questions that are the biggest (some do this with pretty much every conclusion they reach!)

Anyway, if you reason after accepting the conclusion, does that render the reasoning invalid? Why? These are some ways I’m skeptical of empirical assumptions.

About canonicity, that’s another ball of yarn.

The case that the apocryphal books (or deuterocanonical in the Roman tradition) are not on a par with the other 66 is pretty clear to me. I don’t have much trouble drawing that conclusion on rational grounds. So, to me, the order is like this:

• I believe God exists and has revealed Himself to us in writings
• I believe the evidence favors identified only the 66 books as His writings.

As for the actual case, for me two things are enough: (a) protestant consensus and (b) my own experience with the 66. The material of value that appears in plausible candidates beyond the 66 is either already sufficiently revealed in this canon or is contradictory to it. So it seems. I haven’t made a book by book study. So I don’t mind saying I rely heavily on the convictions of my forbears on this point.

I’m not sure who to recommend reading on this but W G T Shedd has a lengthy discussion in Dogmatic Theology part 2, ch.4. Carl F H Henry has about 50 pages in God, Revelation and Authority (vol 4). Augustus H Strong has well over 20 pages, depending on what edition.

Sean,

Simply put, there is no way to make a justified epistemic leap to canonicity. For one thing, there is no single Christian canon. Catholics differ, and the Eastern churches differ sometimes slightly differently. Deciding between these requires historical and literary judgments, and quite possibly religious and theological ones as well.

On sola scriptura, I think you’ve hit on a problem. But I would like to alter your definition. The original Protestant position on religious authority is NOT that the Bible is our only source of authority. Rather, it was that the Bible is the highest authority, the final court of appeal, that helps up put these necessary lesser authorities (philosophical, historical, traditional, and ecclesiastical). This leaves room to see, at least in terms of a starting point, the canon developing as the Holy Spirit guided the Church. You are right that with a very restrictive concept of sola scriptura, we are left with the problem that the Bible contains no inspired table of contents.

Now, as for reason, one of the things you will soon encounter is the collapse of strong foundationalism. This is very important to recognize, because many apologetics books are written from a strong foundationalist viewpoint. In strong foundationalism, a proposition is true if it rests on true premises and is validly derived through a syllogism. However, in order to know that the premises are true, we must check the premises that support our original premises. On and on. To avoid an infinite regress, certain propositions are labeled as self-justifying or axiomatic. So, the law of non-contradiction, the existence of the self, and various other things can be labeled self-justifying. However, there is a problem. In this system, most propositions are EITHER rich OR secure. That is, they EITHER have real, deep informative content OR they are basic. How many things can you actually deduce from this handful of self-justifying premises? Hardly anything.

I don’t want to blabber on, but just make the situation more acute. I think there have been some constructive responses to the problems of strong foundationalism. There is “modest” or “weak” foundationalism, such as Reformed Epistemology, discussed in this article. There are some other strategies that that are developed from an insightful Christian point of view. I greatly enjoy Esther Meek’s work, such as Loving to Know: A Covenant Epistemology.

What I have taken from the postmodern critique is the reality that none of us comes into the world a blank slate, and that none of us has unmediated access to universal reason. I have my mind, shaped by my community, experiences, and temperament; you have yours. Also, I could never work hard or long enough to justify incorrigibly every one of my beliefs. Discarding all of my particularity in an attempt to reset my epistemic status, which is what Descartes tried to do, simply doesn’t work. Rather, I acknowledge that I start from where I am, and I try to move, however I can, insofar as I can, toward better beliefs, or toward better exploring my beliefs. This stance requires a great deal of openness and willingness to revise one’s opinions. On the other hand, it takes the pressure off. When I find out I can’t exhaustively justify (especially to someone else) something I believe, I recognize that this will happen often, and I can approach the issue in a relaxed fashion. Too many people make life-altering decisions simply because they can’t handle a little bit of uncertainty or intellectual disharmony.

How do I logically make the leap from: 1) God exists, to 2) His special revelation to us is contained entirely and exclusively in the 66 books of the Protestant canon?

First, by revelation: God said the the inspired Scripture is able to equip us for every good work. That means no work that is good is outside the ultimate influence of revelation. We believe is because he said it (i.e., it is revealed to us).

Second, by providence: Having given us a sufficient word, it is only logical (your word) that God has preserved that for us. Providentially (through supernatural guidance through ordinary means), in church history the church has been virtually unanimous about the identification of that revelation. Other works have never been received by the church as Scripture.

Larry,

I think, maybe, the question is not quite right. Reason is important, but not exclusive. We also live by faith. Not blind faith, but a reasoned faith. So I am not sure we can logically arrive at every conclusion based solely upon reason.

You also might get a copy of Diogenes Allen’s Philosophy for Understanding Theology. I have the first edition, but you might get the 2nd which includes a discussion of the effects of postmodernism on theology. Don’t know if that would answer all your questions regarding God’s Word, but it might help sort through some of the epistemological issues which have come up.

One thing that has helped me—mostly in communicating w/others (because I never really had any kind of crisis about this)—is realizing that everybody bets his life on something. Even trying to table the whole question is betting one’s life on the idea that it’s safe to table the question.

I’m persuaded that we’re reasoning beings by design, but that it’s often unclear whether reasoning is guiding us to conclusions or conclusions (arrived at some other way) are guiding our reasoning. In any case, it seems sensible to me to reason like this:

• We’re all betting our lives on something being true
• We ought to bet them on the best “something”
• The idea that the One True God has revealed Himself in the 66 books of the Bible is the best option

I don’t know if anyone really gets there this way. But some certainly get there and then support it this way. So the question becomes what are the alternatives? How do they stack up? (And what are the criteria?) It might be that when you look at what else is available, the whole thing becomes much clearer.

I’m not really talking about individual books of the Bible here, but the whole “66 and no more” idea. Taking that proposition as a whole vs. other views as a whole (i.e., the R.Catholic canon or Bible-plus-tradition or whatever, or some other approach) has some advantages.

Sean, here is my thinking. It is simplistic, I admit.

1. The universe exists and so do I; complexity of creation and human instinct both argue simply for a creator.

2. One nation (and only one nation) stands out as God’s special nation, Israel. From it not only flow 3 of the world’s great religions, but it has continued to exist for nearly 1900 years without a homeland. Its people were the subject of attempts at genocide. Events occurring on the 9th of Av are logically more than merely coincidental, displaying God’s wrath but continued interest in this people. As a matter of fact, Israel is one coincidence after another.

3. Israel came back into being in 1948. Stalin, who was antisemitic, could have blocked the UN resolution, but he was on a manic high at the time and let it ride. Truman’s advisors and cabinet were against allowing the UN resolution, but Truman was for it, standing alone.

4. Israel was outnumbered time and time again, but kept gaining more ground every time attacked.

5. This survival of Israel must be if the Biblical end time prophecies are to be fulfilled as promised. Thus if the Bible were true, we would expect Israel to survive.

6. If Israel is God’s special nation, then the Hebrew Scriptures are therefore supernatural. The same OT we embrace is the Tannakh of Judaism. The NT writers quote from almost all of those books as Scripture, but not the Apocryphal books. At the time of Jesus, every OT book was recognized with the exception of Song of Solomon which was finally decided for inclusion at Yavneh (Jamnia).

7. The Hebrew Scriptures predict a Messiah who would atone for sin (Is. 53) and reign (Is. 2). This Messiah had to be cut off before Jerusalem was destroyed in 70AD (Dan. 9:25-27). Jesus is the only candidate.

8. Jesus founded the church and trained his authoritative emissaries (apostles) to lay the ground work, and thus their teachings were authoritative.

9. Although we cannot be sure that every book belongs in the NT canon (except by God’s providence), most were written by apostles and the rest by close associates of the apostles. thus it is reasonable to believe that they do belong. A few books have been questioned as canonical, but the bulk are clearly authoritative.

10. Christianity is best understood at Trans-cultural Messianic Judaism. Much of Christianity today is a European version, but we need to remember that Christianity is actually a Jewish faith.

[Sean Fericks]

Gonna have to do quite a bit of thinking on that Ed. At first glance, your reasoning seems to be great evidence especially for the O.T., but also somewhat for the N.T. Thanks

The 9th of Av you can research for free on Wikipedia or other sites.