Chapter Summaries of Gordon Clark's book Three Types of Religious Philosophy
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter briefly describes and compares the three different methods to religious philosophy – dogmatism, rationalism and empiricism.
Religion is commonly viewed as having to do with God, life, and morality. It is closely related, if not identical, to philosophy since philosophy also deals with these questions. In discussing the philosophy of religion, it is more important to begin with the method one uses than a specific topic like the existence of God because a wrong method will lead to invalid arguments and conclusions.
Dogmatism is defined as that method of procedure which tries to systematize beliefs concerning God, science etc. on the basis of information divinely revealed in the sacred writings. This method is widely held in ill-repute today and very few books on religious philosophy will even mention it. Yet it has been and still is a widely held form of religious method. The objection is raised that such a method is forced to deny truths obtained from other sources, e.g. science. The dogmatist could either reply that science does not establish any law as absolute or he could simply say that there are no other sources of truth.
Rationalism is defined as the theory that all knowledge, including religious knowledge, can be deduced from logic alone, i.e. logic apart from both revelation and sensory experience. Anselm and Spinoza are the most perfect examples while Augustine is not a strict rationalist since he accepts revelation and some empiricism. Those who accept two sources of knowledge face the problem of resolving, relating, combining and unifying the two sets of truth. Anselm used the Bible at times and at other times deduced the same truths without appealing to the Bible. In fact, he believed that the whole Christian system could be deduced from and by logic. There are five possibilities among those who hold to both revelation and logic as sources of truth, which illustrates the difficulty of acknowledging two types of truth.
Rationalism, like dogmaticism, is held in ill-repute in this era. Nevertheless, it cannot be easily forgotten in view of centuries of acceptance. It would be helpful to compare dogmatism and rationalism. Both of them make use of logic. Note that it is wrong to contrast faith and reason. But the two are different in terms of the source of their premises. The former takes its premises from scripture and deduces its conclusions. The latter seeks its premises elsewhere. The two methods also have this in common, namely, that they both use abstract concepts or platonic ideas, and do not restrict the real and knowable universe to sensory individuals. The author shows the difference between empiricism and rationalism through an imaginary dialogue. The rationalist shows that without concepts, there can be no similarity and individuality and empiricism fails. But another difference between the two methods is the philosophic content. Logic alone cannot deduce historical particularities from universal premises whereas history is indispensable in Christianity.
The final method is empiricism, which is the epistemological theory that all knowledge is based on sensation alone. Whereas religious experience, aesthetic response and mystic traces cannot be verified, only sensation provides verification and thus all empirical philosophers make their basic appeal to sensation. The best known application of empiricism to religion is Aquinas’ cosmological argument for the existence of God. Empiricism holds that nothing can be more certain than what appears to our senses.
Chapter 2: Rationalism
This chapter begins the examination of rationalism by looking at the arguments of two rationalists – Augustine and Anselm. It then discusses Kant’s critique of Anselm and shows that Kant failed. Finally, it looks at the arguments of two modern rationalists who reject Christianity, and shows their flaws.
Augustine was concerned with showing the skeptics that knowledge was possible. He wanted a truth that was absolutely basic and self-authenticating, and he found it in the laws of logic. Nothing is more basic than the laws of logic for logic cannot be explained or proved or deduced from anything else. Even the skeptic cannot escape it. Augustine went further to say that the norms of morality were also known and certain, and that skeptics were refuted by the moral quality of their own actions. Now if norms are necessary and universal truths, they are true for everyone and for all time. They cannot be abstracted from any mutable matrix but are eternal and immutable. These truths prove that God exists.
Anselm adopted Augustine’s motto “I believe in order to understand”, and sought to improve on him. His ontological argument basically says that if I can conceive of a being that cannot be surpassed in greatness, then he has to exist or else it would be possible to conceive of a being that is greater than the first, i.e. one that exists, which would be impossible. In other words, if God is defined as the greatest and most perfect being, and existence belongs to greatness and perfection, then God must exist or he will neither be the greatest nor the most perfect being.
Kant held that the idea of God was just a principle by which we conduct investigations. He raised the question of how it is possible to state a condition that makes it impossible to think about the non-existence of anything. For him, the ontological argument only proved the necessity of a proposition but not the existence of an object. He seems to suggest that if we annihilate God in thought, then we annihilate His existence. But what does it mean to annihilate something in thought? It is impossible to annihilate God in thought for if a person thinks anything, he must think God. Three things may be said about Kant’s arguments. Firstly, he is unable to show how God can be annihilated in thought. Secondly, he cannot claim to have disproved the existence of God. Thirdly, he cannot legitimately claim to have disproved the ontological argument. The best he can say is that it is incomplete, although Augustine would say otherwise. Moving on, Kant also distinguished between analytic and synthetic judgments. For him, the statement “God exists” is synthetic, i.e. the predicate adds information to the subject because all existential judgments are synthetic. Rationalists reject Kant’s distinction and see all truth as analytic. The predicate existence can be attached to anything real or imaginery without exception. In fact, anything exists in so far as the term has any meaning at all. The question that needs to be asked is not whether God exists but what He is.
It is not true that one who follows the rationalistic method will always arrive at the same conclusion as one who follows the dogmatic method. For example, Spinoza held that God was the universe rather than the creator of the universe. Modern rationalism is generally antagonistic toward Christianity. Instead of accepting revelation, rationalism seeks to determine whether the contents of a document are such that God could have revealed. It believes that its method can deduce what God can and cannot say.
The first example of modern rationalism which the author cites is Frederick Ferre. Ferre seeks to show that dogmatism is a failure. Unfortunately, he misunderstands it when he says that traditional dogmatists deny logic. His arguments apply more to theologians like Barth and Brunner. Another problem with Ferre’s argument is his use of the word reason. He first uses it to mean logic but then later switches to natural theology. Traditional dogmatists deny natural theology but do not repudiate logic. Ferre argued that if the evidence for revelation was dependent on the proposed authority itself, it fails to be a reasonable source of trustworthy propositions. Two things may be said in reply. First, it assumes that a first principle cannot be self-authenticating. Yet every first principle, regardless of the subject, must be. Second, his use of the word “reasonable” simply implies that those who reject his first principle are unreasonable.
The second example is Edwin Burtt. Burtt said that if man’s mind is incapable of deducing all that he needs for his own ultimate good, then he could not even prove the existence of God and hence that there is a revelation. But this is invalid for the inability to deduce certain theorems does not presuppose the inability to deduce other theorems. Furthermore, Burtt’s objection is a tautology because he is really saying: if the mind needs no revelation, it needs no revelation.
The author ends with two conclusions. Firstly, different questions, e.g. is there a God, is there revelation, which method should be used, may overlap but each question must be answered singly and definitely. Secondly, substantial questions, e.g. is rationalism possible, can God’s existence be proved, is there revelation, are decisive.
Chapter 3: Empiricism
This chapter looks at the ideas of various empiricists both ancient and modern, secular and religious. It shows that empiricism gives no certain knowledge.
Thomas Aquinas made used of Aristotle to construct his empirical proof of God’s existence argument. The author states his first of five cosmological arguments, which is the argument from motion, and makes five points of criticism in response. The first is that sensation provides no knowledge. The second is that it is based on a long series of syllogisms and if even one of them is invalid, the entire argument is invalid. An example of a flaw is his use of the concept of potentiality, where he both uses it to define motion and to explain it by motion itself. The third criticism is that the conclusion itself occurs as one of the premises of the argument, i.e. the first mover is both the conclusion and the reason against infinite regress. The fourth criticism is Thomas’s use of analogy without any univocal basis which makes the conclusion contain concepts not found in the premises. The fifth criticism is that it fails to show how Aristotle’s first mover is the Triune God of the Bible and not some other god.
Paley tried to modify Aquinas’s argument by adding to it the concept of design or purpose. But because it is still based on experience, it cannot escape the basic criticisms of Aquinas’s argument. David Hume objected to all arguments based on experience. He restricted what one knows about the cause to only those qualities which may be observed in the effect. He also objected to the world to come where all injustices will be put right because experience does not give us this information.
Sensation gives rise to no knowledge whatever. And since not everyone has the same sensations, we cannot rely on it to give us trustworthy information about the nature of so-called external objects. Most people would admit that at least some sensations are only modifications of the mind. The Greek skeptic Pyrrho taught that nothing is sensed all by itself but always in relation to other things, and these relationships alter the sensation such that our senses do not present us with the object’s inherent property. Another ancient skeptic Arcesilaus attacked the idea of self-authenticating sensations by questioning whether we can be certain of our sensations at any time since we are mistaken at certain times.
Hume, following Berkeley, argued that sensory experiences are mental events, i.e. they take place only in the mind. Only perceptions are perceptible and external objects, even if they exist, are non-perceptible. Empiricism thus gives no knowledge of an external world, finds no evidence for its existence, and confines sensations to the mind. But beyond that, Hume found no empirical evidence for a perceiving mind! Thus, in addition to being unable to prove God’s existence, empiricism fails to prove the existence of external bodies and internal selves.
The author then surveys the work of Brand Blanshard, a modern philosopher who attempted to arrive at knowledge through perception. According to him, the simplest form of truth is perception, which happens after sensation. Perception is an inference. Unfortunately, he does not define sensation and he does not show how the inference of perception is made or how the inference is valid.
Yet another problem with empiricism is the trustworthiness of memory. Experiences must be stored in the memory if they are to be useful. But how is it possible to certify the accuracy of memory?
Perhaps the reason why some empirical philosophers do not deal with these basic objections is because they rely on religious experiences rather than sensations. But religion must have some relationship to the world in which we live in and these empiricists must defend some view of the world. And beyond that, one must ask how an analysis of religious experience can lead to any religious conclusions or truths.
The author surveys the work of John E. Smith, an empiricist who opposed sensory empiricism. Smith taught that experience was an objective and critical product of the intersection between reality and a self-conscious being. But he does not explain how this is done or whether it is even possible. He refuses to take experience as mental or subjective as this will lead ultimately to skepticism, but he does not explain how a non-mental experience can teach a conscious being about reality. In the area of religious experience, Smith appeals to “living reason”, but does not show how it leads to one religion and not another and how it can justify this or that truth.
The final example the author cites is C.F. Potter. Potter argued that where religion has failed, particularly in the area of immortality, science can give us something better, namely, that evolution will produce the creative personality. The new species of man will have cosmic-consciousness, which will be better than that of religion since it does not rely on trances and will be able to make this the normal experience of everyone. In addition to the numerous fallacies in his work, Potter’s theory does not remove the inevitable frustrations of life as he claimed it would.
In conclusion, it has been shown that all empirical religion, whether based on science or hunches, fails because they all leave wide gaps between their basic experience and their propositional conclusions.
Chapter 4: Irrationalism
This chapter traces the historical development of irrationalism from Hume to Hegel to Kierkegaard and shows that a rejection of logic leads to meaninglessness.
In the history of philosophy, irrationalism began as a reaction against Hegel’s rationalism. Hume reduced empiricism to skepticism. Kant tried to rescue sensation by proposing certain apriori forms of the mind, by which sense data could be organized. Kant also invented certain unknowable objects like God. Hegel argued that it was not possible to know that there is an unknowable since that would be a contradiction. He reestablished rationalism by locating the source of sensation in the mind rather than something external. Hegel gave the impression that his theory could solve all the problems but it didn’t and a reaction in the opposite direction occurred. His opponents objected that his system had only concepts but no place for individuals, both person and things. Kierkegaard, being a Christian, was concerned about individuals. But for him, individual historical events were unimportant since it is not possible to base one’s eternal happiness on historical knowledge. Furthermore, it is impossible to really know what happened in history since history is based on empiricism, and even if a historical event were proven true, it would not produce faith. Instead, faith requires passion and not certainty or scholarship. Kierkegaard ridiculed both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant view on authority since, according to him, they both relied on empirical historical knowledge. Kierkegaard also objected to rationalism. For example, if everything must be reasoned out, there can be no unreasoned first premise and thus reason cannot begin.
In place of objectivity, Kierkegaard proposed a subjective kind of faith that is not based on object truth. The problem is that Kierkegaard could not communicate this idea that truth is subjective and inward to anyone. He developed his theory of indirect communication, based on a misunderstanding of Socrates’s method. But there was no way he could know whether he had communicated this faith or infinite passion to anyone and even if it did, there was no way to tell whether it would lead to eternal happiness. Kiekegaard did not oppose intellectual understanding altogether and even insisted on its necessity. But for him, reason is essential in order to know what is unreasonable, and thus have faith, for faith is unreasonable. So faith, according to Kierkegaard, begins with understanding that two propositions are contradictory and then it accepts both of them. By denying the laws of logic, he becomes irrational.
Barth and Brunner made use of Kierkegaard’s idea and influenced many to espouse the religion of irrationalism. Barth taught that the law of contradiction must be restricted to a very minimum of application and denied that theology can be systematic. His general tendency was towards irrationalism. Brunner was more forthright than Barth in his irrationalism when he said that God can speak to man even in false propositions and that theology is not concerned with intelligible rational truth.
In conclusion, irrationalism teaches that faith has no object and this means that it has no faith as well. It stresses the “how” as opposed to the “what”. Kierkegaard illustrates the “how” by describing the difference between an intellectual hypocrite and a sincere pagan. But not all intellectuals are hypocrites. Furthermore, both a hypocrite and a pagan are unacceptable to God. Kierkegaard’s fatal flaw is his rejection of logic, which leads to pure subjectivity and meaninglessness.
Chapter 5: Dogmatism
This chapter looks at the final approach to religious philosophy, namely, dogmatism. It compares this approach to other methods and answers some objections.
Besides dogmatism, and bearing in mind the failure of the other methods, the only good alternative seems to be suicide. Dogmatism is the only possible alternative to futility. Note that the God of dogmatism is a sovereign deity who determines all his creatures and all their actions, and cannot be separated from His revelation.
There are two similarities between dogmatism and rationalism. The first is that they both posit a first principle. Empiricism on the other hand is unable to explain how a concept is obtained from sensation and how one can recognize a principle as first. For example, logical positivism, which says that a sentence is meaningful only if it is verifiable by sensory experience, is refuted on its own principle. Every system must have first principles or it cannot start. Thus, no one can consistently refuse permission to the dogmatist to start where he has chosen to.
The second similarity between rationalism and dogmatism is realism, i.e. that the real object of knowledge is itself present to the mind. Empiricism on the other hand either holds that what is in the mind is a representation of a real external object or that external objects do not exist. Both of these options are problematic and they make communication impossible because no two persons can ever have the same thought. In fact, empiricism leads to solipsism, i.e. that self is all that exists or can be known. Nominalism, which holds that individual sense objects are the only realities, is also a failure because it has the same problems as empiricism and it makes universal concepts and communication impossible. Realism knows the truth itself. Truth is not a sensation. Not only can it return again and again, but two persons can know the same thing simultaneously. In Christian dogmatism, where biblical propositions are constituents of God’s mind, one is enabled to know God directly.
A dogmatist will not try to prove that the Bible is a divine revelation for that is its first and thus indemonstrable principle. But the question still remains: how does one decide between two incompatible principles? Pascal’s wager, which calls a person to believe in God because there is nothing to lose and everything to gain, is not the Christian answer to the problem because it fails to explain why one should choose the Bible rather than the Koran. Note that this question of choosing one’s first principle also arises in science and that even in a minor law of physics, choice is required. The author briefly reviews Yandell’s book on philosophy of religion and shows that while he gives a good analysis of both the arguments for and against theism, he fails to give any constructive conclusion.
The author then briefly reviews Montgomery’s critique of dogmatism and the replies of three students from Westminster Seminary to him. Two of the students, Poythress and King, weaken their arguments against empiricism by basing it on the corruption of man’s mind. The fall of man is irrelevant because even before the fall, Adam would not be able to construct valid arguments based on sensations in order to prove the veracity of God. The basic reply to Montgomery is that all inductive arguments are formal fallacies. Montgomery needs to answer the question of where one should start. By holding to empiricism, he holds that sensory experience is more reliable than a divinely given revelation and that while sensation is self-authenticating, the Bible is not. He is equally unable to provide any evidence for his own first principle of empiricism.
One objection to theism and thus to dogmatism is that it leaves no room for further investigation. But this is true of theism as it is of science or any other system for the acceptance of a first principle or a final answer puts an end to investigation. When one believes that he has the solution to the problem, then there is no further investigation of that problem. In other words, as long as a belief is confidently held, one does not continue to re-solve the solution.
The final objection to dogmatism is that it puts an end to communication and removes all possibility of convincing an opponent because no common ground can be found with those who do not accept the same first principles. But this is a poor objection because it applies equally to all systems. Two persons with the same choice of first principles can solve subsidiary problems but not so when they are different. Nevertheless, each must make a choice between a dogmatic principle or skepticism and irrationality. But the question remains: why does anyone choose the Bible rather than something else? The answer is that faith is the gift of God. Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit and this alone produces faith. The preaching of the gospel by itself cannot produce faith, but it does provide the propositions that must be believed. It is God alone who causes a man to believe the Bible rather than the Koran.
Empirical evangelicals sometimes object to dogmatism by saying that it leaves no room for archaeological evidence and thus places itself at a great disadvantage. The dogmatist may give two replies. Firstly, empiricism assumes without reason that perception can accurately describe artifacts and that a thinker can validly draw from them the conclusion that Christianity is true. Secondly, dogmatism allows a person to use ad hominem arguments for what they are worth. For example, it can be used to show the liberal theologian of self-contradictions.
This chapter briefly describes and compares the three different methods to religious philosophy – dogmatism, rationalism and empiricism.
Religion is commonly viewed as having to do with God, life, and morality. It is closely related, if not identical, to philosophy since philosophy also deals with these questions. In discussing the philosophy of religion, it is more important to begin with the method one uses than a specific topic like the existence of God because a wrong method will lead to invalid arguments and conclusions.
Dogmatism is defined as that method of procedure which tries to systematize beliefs concerning God, science etc. on the basis of information divinely revealed in the sacred writings. This method is widely held in ill-repute today and very few books on religious philosophy will even mention it. Yet it has been and still is a widely held form of religious method. The objection is raised that such a method is forced to deny truths obtained from other sources, e.g. science. The dogmatist could either reply that science does not establish any law as absolute or he could simply say that there are no other sources of truth.
Rationalism is defined as the theory that all knowledge, including religious knowledge, can be deduced from logic alone, i.e. logic apart from both revelation and sensory experience. Anselm and Spinoza are the most perfect examples while Augustine is not a strict rationalist since he accepts revelation and some empiricism. Those who accept two sources of knowledge face the problem of resolving, relating, combining and unifying the two sets of truth. Anselm used the Bible at times and at other times deduced the same truths without appealing to the Bible. In fact, he believed that the whole Christian system could be deduced from and by logic. There are five possibilities among those who hold to both revelation and logic as sources of truth, which illustrates the difficulty of acknowledging two types of truth.
Rationalism, like dogmaticism, is held in ill-repute in this era. Nevertheless, it cannot be easily forgotten in view of centuries of acceptance. It would be helpful to compare dogmatism and rationalism. Both of them make use of logic. Note that it is wrong to contrast faith and reason. But the two are different in terms of the source of their premises. The former takes its premises from scripture and deduces its conclusions. The latter seeks its premises elsewhere. The two methods also have this in common, namely, that they both use abstract concepts or platonic ideas, and do not restrict the real and knowable universe to sensory individuals. The author shows the difference between empiricism and rationalism through an imaginary dialogue. The rationalist shows that without concepts, there can be no similarity and individuality and empiricism fails. But another difference between the two methods is the philosophic content. Logic alone cannot deduce historical particularities from universal premises whereas history is indispensable in Christianity.
The final method is empiricism, which is the epistemological theory that all knowledge is based on sensation alone. Whereas religious experience, aesthetic response and mystic traces cannot be verified, only sensation provides verification and thus all empirical philosophers make their basic appeal to sensation. The best known application of empiricism to religion is Aquinas’ cosmological argument for the existence of God. Empiricism holds that nothing can be more certain than what appears to our senses.
Chapter 2: Rationalism
This chapter begins the examination of rationalism by looking at the arguments of two rationalists – Augustine and Anselm. It then discusses Kant’s critique of Anselm and shows that Kant failed. Finally, it looks at the arguments of two modern rationalists who reject Christianity, and shows their flaws.
Augustine was concerned with showing the skeptics that knowledge was possible. He wanted a truth that was absolutely basic and self-authenticating, and he found it in the laws of logic. Nothing is more basic than the laws of logic for logic cannot be explained or proved or deduced from anything else. Even the skeptic cannot escape it. Augustine went further to say that the norms of morality were also known and certain, and that skeptics were refuted by the moral quality of their own actions. Now if norms are necessary and universal truths, they are true for everyone and for all time. They cannot be abstracted from any mutable matrix but are eternal and immutable. These truths prove that God exists.
Anselm adopted Augustine’s motto “I believe in order to understand”, and sought to improve on him. His ontological argument basically says that if I can conceive of a being that cannot be surpassed in greatness, then he has to exist or else it would be possible to conceive of a being that is greater than the first, i.e. one that exists, which would be impossible. In other words, if God is defined as the greatest and most perfect being, and existence belongs to greatness and perfection, then God must exist or he will neither be the greatest nor the most perfect being.
Kant held that the idea of God was just a principle by which we conduct investigations. He raised the question of how it is possible to state a condition that makes it impossible to think about the non-existence of anything. For him, the ontological argument only proved the necessity of a proposition but not the existence of an object. He seems to suggest that if we annihilate God in thought, then we annihilate His existence. But what does it mean to annihilate something in thought? It is impossible to annihilate God in thought for if a person thinks anything, he must think God. Three things may be said about Kant’s arguments. Firstly, he is unable to show how God can be annihilated in thought. Secondly, he cannot claim to have disproved the existence of God. Thirdly, he cannot legitimately claim to have disproved the ontological argument. The best he can say is that it is incomplete, although Augustine would say otherwise. Moving on, Kant also distinguished between analytic and synthetic judgments. For him, the statement “God exists” is synthetic, i.e. the predicate adds information to the subject because all existential judgments are synthetic. Rationalists reject Kant’s distinction and see all truth as analytic. The predicate existence can be attached to anything real or imaginery without exception. In fact, anything exists in so far as the term has any meaning at all. The question that needs to be asked is not whether God exists but what He is.
It is not true that one who follows the rationalistic method will always arrive at the same conclusion as one who follows the dogmatic method. For example, Spinoza held that God was the universe rather than the creator of the universe. Modern rationalism is generally antagonistic toward Christianity. Instead of accepting revelation, rationalism seeks to determine whether the contents of a document are such that God could have revealed. It believes that its method can deduce what God can and cannot say.
The first example of modern rationalism which the author cites is Frederick Ferre. Ferre seeks to show that dogmatism is a failure. Unfortunately, he misunderstands it when he says that traditional dogmatists deny logic. His arguments apply more to theologians like Barth and Brunner. Another problem with Ferre’s argument is his use of the word reason. He first uses it to mean logic but then later switches to natural theology. Traditional dogmatists deny natural theology but do not repudiate logic. Ferre argued that if the evidence for revelation was dependent on the proposed authority itself, it fails to be a reasonable source of trustworthy propositions. Two things may be said in reply. First, it assumes that a first principle cannot be self-authenticating. Yet every first principle, regardless of the subject, must be. Second, his use of the word “reasonable” simply implies that those who reject his first principle are unreasonable.
The second example is Edwin Burtt. Burtt said that if man’s mind is incapable of deducing all that he needs for his own ultimate good, then he could not even prove the existence of God and hence that there is a revelation. But this is invalid for the inability to deduce certain theorems does not presuppose the inability to deduce other theorems. Furthermore, Burtt’s objection is a tautology because he is really saying: if the mind needs no revelation, it needs no revelation.
The author ends with two conclusions. Firstly, different questions, e.g. is there a God, is there revelation, which method should be used, may overlap but each question must be answered singly and definitely. Secondly, substantial questions, e.g. is rationalism possible, can God’s existence be proved, is there revelation, are decisive.
Chapter 3: Empiricism
This chapter looks at the ideas of various empiricists both ancient and modern, secular and religious. It shows that empiricism gives no certain knowledge.
Thomas Aquinas made used of Aristotle to construct his empirical proof of God’s existence argument. The author states his first of five cosmological arguments, which is the argument from motion, and makes five points of criticism in response. The first is that sensation provides no knowledge. The second is that it is based on a long series of syllogisms and if even one of them is invalid, the entire argument is invalid. An example of a flaw is his use of the concept of potentiality, where he both uses it to define motion and to explain it by motion itself. The third criticism is that the conclusion itself occurs as one of the premises of the argument, i.e. the first mover is both the conclusion and the reason against infinite regress. The fourth criticism is Thomas’s use of analogy without any univocal basis which makes the conclusion contain concepts not found in the premises. The fifth criticism is that it fails to show how Aristotle’s first mover is the Triune God of the Bible and not some other god.
Paley tried to modify Aquinas’s argument by adding to it the concept of design or purpose. But because it is still based on experience, it cannot escape the basic criticisms of Aquinas’s argument. David Hume objected to all arguments based on experience. He restricted what one knows about the cause to only those qualities which may be observed in the effect. He also objected to the world to come where all injustices will be put right because experience does not give us this information.
Sensation gives rise to no knowledge whatever. And since not everyone has the same sensations, we cannot rely on it to give us trustworthy information about the nature of so-called external objects. Most people would admit that at least some sensations are only modifications of the mind. The Greek skeptic Pyrrho taught that nothing is sensed all by itself but always in relation to other things, and these relationships alter the sensation such that our senses do not present us with the object’s inherent property. Another ancient skeptic Arcesilaus attacked the idea of self-authenticating sensations by questioning whether we can be certain of our sensations at any time since we are mistaken at certain times.
Hume, following Berkeley, argued that sensory experiences are mental events, i.e. they take place only in the mind. Only perceptions are perceptible and external objects, even if they exist, are non-perceptible. Empiricism thus gives no knowledge of an external world, finds no evidence for its existence, and confines sensations to the mind. But beyond that, Hume found no empirical evidence for a perceiving mind! Thus, in addition to being unable to prove God’s existence, empiricism fails to prove the existence of external bodies and internal selves.
The author then surveys the work of Brand Blanshard, a modern philosopher who attempted to arrive at knowledge through perception. According to him, the simplest form of truth is perception, which happens after sensation. Perception is an inference. Unfortunately, he does not define sensation and he does not show how the inference of perception is made or how the inference is valid.
Yet another problem with empiricism is the trustworthiness of memory. Experiences must be stored in the memory if they are to be useful. But how is it possible to certify the accuracy of memory?
Perhaps the reason why some empirical philosophers do not deal with these basic objections is because they rely on religious experiences rather than sensations. But religion must have some relationship to the world in which we live in and these empiricists must defend some view of the world. And beyond that, one must ask how an analysis of religious experience can lead to any religious conclusions or truths.
The author surveys the work of John E. Smith, an empiricist who opposed sensory empiricism. Smith taught that experience was an objective and critical product of the intersection between reality and a self-conscious being. But he does not explain how this is done or whether it is even possible. He refuses to take experience as mental or subjective as this will lead ultimately to skepticism, but he does not explain how a non-mental experience can teach a conscious being about reality. In the area of religious experience, Smith appeals to “living reason”, but does not show how it leads to one religion and not another and how it can justify this or that truth.
The final example the author cites is C.F. Potter. Potter argued that where religion has failed, particularly in the area of immortality, science can give us something better, namely, that evolution will produce the creative personality. The new species of man will have cosmic-consciousness, which will be better than that of religion since it does not rely on trances and will be able to make this the normal experience of everyone. In addition to the numerous fallacies in his work, Potter’s theory does not remove the inevitable frustrations of life as he claimed it would.
In conclusion, it has been shown that all empirical religion, whether based on science or hunches, fails because they all leave wide gaps between their basic experience and their propositional conclusions.
Chapter 4: Irrationalism
This chapter traces the historical development of irrationalism from Hume to Hegel to Kierkegaard and shows that a rejection of logic leads to meaninglessness.
In the history of philosophy, irrationalism began as a reaction against Hegel’s rationalism. Hume reduced empiricism to skepticism. Kant tried to rescue sensation by proposing certain apriori forms of the mind, by which sense data could be organized. Kant also invented certain unknowable objects like God. Hegel argued that it was not possible to know that there is an unknowable since that would be a contradiction. He reestablished rationalism by locating the source of sensation in the mind rather than something external. Hegel gave the impression that his theory could solve all the problems but it didn’t and a reaction in the opposite direction occurred. His opponents objected that his system had only concepts but no place for individuals, both person and things. Kierkegaard, being a Christian, was concerned about individuals. But for him, individual historical events were unimportant since it is not possible to base one’s eternal happiness on historical knowledge. Furthermore, it is impossible to really know what happened in history since history is based on empiricism, and even if a historical event were proven true, it would not produce faith. Instead, faith requires passion and not certainty or scholarship. Kierkegaard ridiculed both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant view on authority since, according to him, they both relied on empirical historical knowledge. Kierkegaard also objected to rationalism. For example, if everything must be reasoned out, there can be no unreasoned first premise and thus reason cannot begin.
In place of objectivity, Kierkegaard proposed a subjective kind of faith that is not based on object truth. The problem is that Kierkegaard could not communicate this idea that truth is subjective and inward to anyone. He developed his theory of indirect communication, based on a misunderstanding of Socrates’s method. But there was no way he could know whether he had communicated this faith or infinite passion to anyone and even if it did, there was no way to tell whether it would lead to eternal happiness. Kiekegaard did not oppose intellectual understanding altogether and even insisted on its necessity. But for him, reason is essential in order to know what is unreasonable, and thus have faith, for faith is unreasonable. So faith, according to Kierkegaard, begins with understanding that two propositions are contradictory and then it accepts both of them. By denying the laws of logic, he becomes irrational.
Barth and Brunner made use of Kierkegaard’s idea and influenced many to espouse the religion of irrationalism. Barth taught that the law of contradiction must be restricted to a very minimum of application and denied that theology can be systematic. His general tendency was towards irrationalism. Brunner was more forthright than Barth in his irrationalism when he said that God can speak to man even in false propositions and that theology is not concerned with intelligible rational truth.
In conclusion, irrationalism teaches that faith has no object and this means that it has no faith as well. It stresses the “how” as opposed to the “what”. Kierkegaard illustrates the “how” by describing the difference between an intellectual hypocrite and a sincere pagan. But not all intellectuals are hypocrites. Furthermore, both a hypocrite and a pagan are unacceptable to God. Kierkegaard’s fatal flaw is his rejection of logic, which leads to pure subjectivity and meaninglessness.
Chapter 5: Dogmatism
This chapter looks at the final approach to religious philosophy, namely, dogmatism. It compares this approach to other methods and answers some objections.
Besides dogmatism, and bearing in mind the failure of the other methods, the only good alternative seems to be suicide. Dogmatism is the only possible alternative to futility. Note that the God of dogmatism is a sovereign deity who determines all his creatures and all their actions, and cannot be separated from His revelation.
There are two similarities between dogmatism and rationalism. The first is that they both posit a first principle. Empiricism on the other hand is unable to explain how a concept is obtained from sensation and how one can recognize a principle as first. For example, logical positivism, which says that a sentence is meaningful only if it is verifiable by sensory experience, is refuted on its own principle. Every system must have first principles or it cannot start. Thus, no one can consistently refuse permission to the dogmatist to start where he has chosen to.
The second similarity between rationalism and dogmatism is realism, i.e. that the real object of knowledge is itself present to the mind. Empiricism on the other hand either holds that what is in the mind is a representation of a real external object or that external objects do not exist. Both of these options are problematic and they make communication impossible because no two persons can ever have the same thought. In fact, empiricism leads to solipsism, i.e. that self is all that exists or can be known. Nominalism, which holds that individual sense objects are the only realities, is also a failure because it has the same problems as empiricism and it makes universal concepts and communication impossible. Realism knows the truth itself. Truth is not a sensation. Not only can it return again and again, but two persons can know the same thing simultaneously. In Christian dogmatism, where biblical propositions are constituents of God’s mind, one is enabled to know God directly.
A dogmatist will not try to prove that the Bible is a divine revelation for that is its first and thus indemonstrable principle. But the question still remains: how does one decide between two incompatible principles? Pascal’s wager, which calls a person to believe in God because there is nothing to lose and everything to gain, is not the Christian answer to the problem because it fails to explain why one should choose the Bible rather than the Koran. Note that this question of choosing one’s first principle also arises in science and that even in a minor law of physics, choice is required. The author briefly reviews Yandell’s book on philosophy of religion and shows that while he gives a good analysis of both the arguments for and against theism, he fails to give any constructive conclusion.
The author then briefly reviews Montgomery’s critique of dogmatism and the replies of three students from Westminster Seminary to him. Two of the students, Poythress and King, weaken their arguments against empiricism by basing it on the corruption of man’s mind. The fall of man is irrelevant because even before the fall, Adam would not be able to construct valid arguments based on sensations in order to prove the veracity of God. The basic reply to Montgomery is that all inductive arguments are formal fallacies. Montgomery needs to answer the question of where one should start. By holding to empiricism, he holds that sensory experience is more reliable than a divinely given revelation and that while sensation is self-authenticating, the Bible is not. He is equally unable to provide any evidence for his own first principle of empiricism.
One objection to theism and thus to dogmatism is that it leaves no room for further investigation. But this is true of theism as it is of science or any other system for the acceptance of a first principle or a final answer puts an end to investigation. When one believes that he has the solution to the problem, then there is no further investigation of that problem. In other words, as long as a belief is confidently held, one does not continue to re-solve the solution.
The final objection to dogmatism is that it puts an end to communication and removes all possibility of convincing an opponent because no common ground can be found with those who do not accept the same first principles. But this is a poor objection because it applies equally to all systems. Two persons with the same choice of first principles can solve subsidiary problems but not so when they are different. Nevertheless, each must make a choice between a dogmatic principle or skepticism and irrationality. But the question remains: why does anyone choose the Bible rather than something else? The answer is that faith is the gift of God. Regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit and this alone produces faith. The preaching of the gospel by itself cannot produce faith, but it does provide the propositions that must be believed. It is God alone who causes a man to believe the Bible rather than the Koran.
Empirical evangelicals sometimes object to dogmatism by saying that it leaves no room for archaeological evidence and thus places itself at a great disadvantage. The dogmatist may give two replies. Firstly, empiricism assumes without reason that perception can accurately describe artifacts and that a thinker can validly draw from them the conclusion that Christianity is true. Secondly, dogmatism allows a person to use ad hominem arguments for what they are worth. For example, it can be used to show the liberal theologian of self-contradictions.
