de Jure Question About Christian Belief Bishop

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'How to answer the "de jure" Question about Christian Belief Author(s): John Bishop and Imran Aijaz Source: International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 56, No. 2/3 (Oct. - Dec., 2004), pp.

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'How to answer the dejure question about Christian belief

JOHN BISHOP & IMRAN AIJAZ

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 56: 109-129, 2004. 109 © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Department of Philosophy, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand

Our aims in this paper are (1) to argue that Alvin Plantinga's Reformed epistemology (PRE)1 does not provide a categorical affirmative answer to the 'de jure question' about Christian belief; (2) to argue that - on the assumption that our total independent evidence leaves it open whether Christian belief is true or false - a categorical affirmative answer to the de jure question requires defending doxastic venture in favour of Christian belief; and (3) to suggest that PRE's appeal to epistemological externalism may play a significant role in defending the epistemic propriety of doxastic venture in favour of Christian belief. By a 'doxastic venture in favour of a certain belief we understand taking that belief to be true in one's actions and way of life beyond the support of evidence for the truth of the proposition believed - believing by 'a leap of faith,' as is popularly said.

We share with PRE the view that an affirmative answer to the dejure question will require defending the epistemic propriety of basic Christian belief - i.e., Christian belief whose truth is not arrived at by inference from the truth of other beliefs. We also agree that externalist epistemology has a contribution to make to such a defence: our objection is only that the key externalist insight of PRE cannot bear the entire weight of vindicating an affirmative answer to the dejure question. Our criticism, then, is a thesis about the limitation of PRE - it is not an allegation of wrong-headedness or unsound motivation. And our purpose is construc- tive: we seek to build on the insights of PRE by indicating the direction in which progress needs to be made in order to overcome its limitations and achieve the sort of answer to the dejure question that a defence of warranted Christian belief really needs. That direction, resting as it does on establishing that one may be within one's epistemic rights in making a doxastic venture in favour of Christian belief, is clearly too 'fideist' to appeal to Plantinga. Nonetheless, we think it is the direction in which a correct appraisal of the strengths and limitations of PRE must surely lead us.



110 JOHN BISHOP AND IMRAN AIJAZ

1. The de jure question

By 'the dejure question about Christian belief we understand the question whether it is 'intellectually respectable to accept Christian belief'2 - the question whether, in a certain sense, one is 'entitled' or 'within one's rights' to be a Christian believer.

To fix the meaning of the dejure question further, consider a paradigm situation in which such a question arises. It is the situation of the reflective Christian believer who has come to give some weight to an 'evidentialist' claim that one should hold and act on beliefs such as Christian beliefs only to the extent that their truth is supported by one's evidence - i.e., that one is within one's rights to hold and act on Christian belief only with evidential support for its truth. Some such principle is often enough advertised as part and parcel of commitment to enlightened rationality. Our reflective Christian believer may be inclined to think that she ought to share such commitment, and that holding and acting on religious (and other) beliefs only to the extent of their evidential support may indeed be required from one who aspires to rational integrity. The question whether she is within her rights in continuing to hold and act on her Christian belief may thus become existentially pressing for her, especially if she comes to doubt whether she does in fact have adequate evidence for the truth of her Christian belief.

We wish to consider, then, whether Plantinga's Reformed epistemology provides a satisfactory answer to this kind of dejure question about Christian belief that arises in our reflective believer's situation as described. (Hitherto, when we speak of 'the dejure question' we will mean the question of entitlement to belief that arises for our reflective Christian.3)

Some issues about the nature of the dejure question are more or less controversial. For example, we are ourselves inclined to think that the dejure question about Christian belief is, ultimately, motivated by moral concern - that, ultimately, our reflective Christian's question is whether she is ethically within her rights in holding, and (more pertinently) acting on, Christian belief. We shall not insist on that point, however, and will be content to take it that our reflective believer's question concerns her epistemic rights in holding and acting on Christian belief.

Another controversial area concerns the explanation of how it is possible for any question about a person's right to believe to arise at all. Such a question can coherently arise only if one has a genuine option over whether to believe or not ('ought implies can'). Were we wholly passive with respect to our beliefs and their influence on our behaviour, no dejure question about belief could possibly arise. Direct voluntary control over belief does



HOW TO ANSWER THE DE JURE QUESTION ABOUT CHRISTIAN BELIEF 111

not seem coherent, however. So if a de jure question about belief is to be coherent, we must have some kind of voluntary control with respect to our believing. Plantinga himself offers an account of indirect control over belief.4 We would add to Plantinga's account the observation that, though it may not be within our reflective believer's power (her direct power, anyway) to cease holding Christian belief true, it is certainly directly within her power to cease taking it true in her actions. She can thus coherently ask whether she is within her rights to continue taking her Christian belief true in her actions and way of life - and that is the existential force of her dejure question. Under the influence of evidentialist views about rational integrity, she becomes concerned as to whether she is epistemically entitled to her Christian beliefs, and is inclined to presume that, if she is not, she should cease acting on them and at least attempt to abandon them.

2. PRE's answer to the dejure question: An appeal to externalism

How does Plantinga's Reformed epistemology seek to provide the comfort of an affirmative answer to our reflective Christian's dejure question?5

PRE's answer to the dejure question begins from the claim that what Plantinga calls 'warrant' can be conferred on a belief in virtue of its having a certain kind of causal history - namely, being produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment according to a design-plan successfully aimed at truth.6 'Warrant,' in Plantinga's technical usage, is defined as whatever is needed to convert true belief to knowledge.7 So Plantinga's claim about how warrant can be conferred belongs to an 'externalist' epistemology that allows for beliefs to count as knowledge independently of any 'internalist' support for their truth coming from evidence accessible to the believer.

PRE next proceeds to apply its externalist account of warrant to Chris- tian belief to produce its central claim - namely, that // Christian belief is true, then it is highly likely that Christian belief has warrant for those who hold it. PRE's central claim is supported by arguing that, if the Christian God does indeed exist, the mechanisms which actually produce Christian belief - both the core theist beliefs, and specific Chris- tian doctrines - constitute the means deliberately intended by God to bring about correct, though limited, apprehension of His existence, nature and will. (Plantinga uses Calvin's term - sensus divinitatis - to refer to the mechanism that produces the core theist beliefs, and 'the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit' as the name for the mechanism that yields specific Christian doctrinal beliefs. Plantinga calls his model for warranted Christian belief 'the extended A/C model,' after Aquinas and Calvin.8)




3. Does PRE's central claim resolve the dejure question?

Plantinga's Reformed epistemology could be - and has been - criticised head on by questioning the strong epistemological externalism on which his theory of warrant relies.9 Rather than entering into the - seemingly interminable - debate between epistemological externalists and internal- ists, we prefer to put PRE directly to what we consider to be a crucial test. Our approach will be to accept (for the sake of argument) Plan- tinga's externalist A/C model and consider whether it can indeed succeed in resolving the de jure question as it arises for our reflective Christian believer.10 That, then, is our focal question: does PRE's central claim - and the externalist epistemology on which it is based - suffice to provide an affirmative answer to the dejure question?

4. PRE blocks a straightforward inference to a negative answer to the de

jure question from the absence of inferential9 evidential support for Christian belief

Consider our reflective Christian for whom the de jure question about her Christian belief arises. Suppose, further, that she finds that, pace both the natural theologians and the natural atheologians, there are no good arguments to support either the truth or the falsity of Christian belief. That is, she finds that the truth value of Christian claims cannot be settled by inference from other beliefs she recognises herself as epistemically entitled to hold independently of any Christian commitment. This is the situation in which, it seems, Plantinga finds himself: in his view, there are neither proofs nor 'defeaters' for Christian beliefs.11 In what follows, we will keep this situation fixed - that is, we will be concerned solely with the situation of a reflective believer who takes the truth of Christian belief to be, we shall say, inferentially evidentially ambiguous. n (We make no claim, however, that a de jure question should arise for all good Chris- tians. 'Innocent' Christian belief for which issues of epistemic entitlement never become existentially pressing may be a blessed or even saintly state - though it is clearly remote for Christians immersed in contemporary 'Western' culture.)

Suppose now that our reflective Christian believer seriously wonders whether, in her situation of inferential evidential ambiguity, she should attempt to abandon her Christian belief - or, at least, cease to take it to be true in the way she lives her life. That, indeed, is what she should do if an 'inferential' evidentialist principle applies to Christian belief- that is, if one may hold and act on Christian belief only if the truth of that belief




may rationally be inferred from the truth of other beliefs to which one is independently epistemically entitled. And, as we have noted, she has some inclination to think that she should conform to such a principle - for the sake of rational integrity, and, perhaps, for the avoidance of superstition and 'enthusiasm.'

But if (as we are assuming) the central claim of PRE is true, then our reflective believer has reason to pause before accepting that any such 'inferential' evidentialist principle applies to her Christian belief. For, given inferential evidential ambiguity, it remains open that her Christian belief is true, and, given PRE's central claim, if Christian belief is true it is highly likely to be warranted. Thanks to PRE, then, she may therefore quite properly think to herself that, despite the absence of inferential evidential support for the truth of her Christian belief she may yet be warranted, and so within her epistemic rights, in maintaining it.

5. Our initial argument for the inadequacy of PRE's answer to the de

jure question

PRE serves our reflective Christian believer well, then, by blocking any immediate inference to a negative answer to the dejure question from her acceptance that her other beliefs do not provide independent inferential evidential support for the truth of Christian belief. That is not enough, of course, for an affirmative answer to the dejure question. To rebut an argument for the negative answer to the dejure question is not eo ipso to argue for the affirmative answer. PRE's central claim takes our reflective believer far enough to acknowledge the possibility that she may be epistemically entitled to her Christian belief in the absence of independent inferential evidential support. What we wish to consider is whether PRE can take her further. Can PRE satisfy the Christian believer in the situation of inferential evidential ambiguity that she actually is epistemically within her rights to hold and act on her Christian beliefs?

Here is an initial argument for concluding that it cannot. PRE's central claim is the conditional claim that if Christian belief is

true, Christian belief is warranted and counts as knowledge. For an affirmative answer to the de jure question about Christian belief, however, it would be necessary to establish the categorical claim that Christian belief is warranted. Obviously, from the fact that Christian belief would be warranted if Christian belief were true, it does not follow that Christian belief is actually warranted. That conclusion will follow, of course, given the premise that Christian belief is true. And the reflective believer does, of course, hold that premise to be true. But, since she is concerned whether



114 JOHN BISHOP AND IMRAN AI JAZ

she is epistemically entitled to hold Christian belief, she cannot on pain of begging the question accept any argument for the conclusion that she is entitled to her belief that depends on assuming the truth of the very belief which is the subject of her concern.13

This objection is worth elaborating. Those who think that PRE does establish an affirmative answer to the dejure question might claim that it does so because the reflective believer is in a position to argue as follows (where p is the - long, conjunctive - proposition held true in Christian belief):

l.p 2. If p, my believing that p has warrant

Therefore, 3. My believing that p has warrant.

This argument - which we shall call 'the PRE argument' - is deductively valid. Furthermore, our reflective believer will take it to be sound, since she obviously accepts premise 1 and {ex hypothesi) accepts PRE's central claim (premise 2). Does it follow, then, that our reflective Christian believer can resolve her dejure question because she can take the PRE argument to be sound?14

We think not. In the dialectical context in which the dejure question arises for the reflective believer, she is not (yet) sure whether she is epistemically entitled to Christian belief- that is, to taking p to be true. But, then, she may not properly affirm the truth of p as a premise in an argument, and also treat the conclusion of that argument (even if the argument is indeed sound) as a truth to which she is epistemically entitled. Accordingly, the conclusion of the PRE argument is not a conclusion to which she is epistemically entitled: the PRE argument is epistemically circular. So an affirmative answer to the de jure question fails to be secured. In effect, given that premise 1 cannot be affirmed with epistemic entitlement, her ability to rehearse the PRE argument does not take the reflective believer beyond epistemic entitlement to PRE's central claim (premise 2) - and our basic allegation that she is entitled only to a conditional claim, when it is a categorical one that is required, is therefore sustained. It seems, then, that - unless more can be said on its behalf - PRE is of limited value in dealing with our reflective believer's dejure question: it establishes only the possibility of being epistemically entitled to Christian belief in the absence of independent inferential evidential support.15




6. What more would be needed for epistemic entitlement to Christian belief, if our initial argument for PRE's limited value is correct?

If our initial argument succeeds, then PRE does not secure a categorical affirmative answer to our reflective Christian's de jure question. Before turning to consider replies, we will first briefly review what the situation would be if our argument succeeds. If our objection does hold, what would then be needed to provide a categorical answer to our reflective believer's dejure question?

Given that our reflective Christian accepts that her belief cannot be shown true or probably true on the basis of inference from any other truths she is independently entitled to hold, it seems to follow that her taking Christian belief to be true requires a venture at least beyond that kind of inferential evidential support. Therefore, if she is to be within her epistemic rights in taking Christian belief to be true, she must be within her epistemic rights in making such a venture - at least in this particular case. For an affirmative answer to the de jure question, then, we would need (a) an account of the conditions under which one is epistemically entitled to make such ventures in belief beyond inferential evidence, and (b) a demonstration that her venturing in favour of Christian belief meets those conditions. And to provide (a) we would, of course, need to defeat the objection that one is never epistemically entitled to believe Christian belief (or any belief in a similar category - however that category should properly be described) without the support of independent inferential evidence.

An initial argument can be given, then, for the claim that PRE does not provide a categorical affirmative answer to the dejure question, and that, furthermore, such an answer will require defending the propriety of venturesome believing beyond the evidence. Defenders of PRE, however, will take strong exception to these initial conclusions. They will claim that there is more to PRE than has yet been acknowledged, and, in particular, that PRE has sufficient resources for a good reply to our initial argument. In consequence, they will maintain, our current talk of a need to defend 'ventures' in belief beyond the evidence is premature and misleading.

7. An attempted reply: PRE as 'broadly' evidentialist

PRE's central claim entails that Christian belief could have warrant without the believer's having independent 'inferential' evidential support for its truth. It does not follow, however, that PRE sustains the view that someone may properly hold Christian belief without having any evidence for its truth




whatsoever. Plantinga's rejection of 'evidentialism' is well known: never- theless, we believe that PRE is best understood as upholding a position which can properly be described as broadly evidentialist in so far as it accepts that one is epistemically entitled to Christian belief only if one has evidence supporting its truth. The 'evidentialism' Plantinga rejects is the claim that epistemically legitimate Christian belief must meet a narrow 'inferential' evidentialist principle.16 But PRE does not repudiate evidentialist principles altogether; indeed, Plantinga makes it clear that he thinks that there is no basis for 'fideist' talk of Christian belief involving some kind of 'venture beyond the evidence'.17 And that anti-fideist view must surely entail commitment to some, suitably broad, evidentialist constraint on epistemically legitimate Christian belief.

Indeed, PRE's status as a 'broadly' evidentialist position may be argued as follows, using Plantinga's famous notion of a properly basic belief.18 According to PRE, some Christian beliefs - those foundational to the Christian 'noetic framework' - will be basic beliefs, in the sense that they are not held through inference from other, more inferentially fundamental, warranted beliefs. And it follows from PRE's central claim that, if Chris- tian belief is true, these basic beliefs will be properly basic - i.e., basic and warranted. Now, though these beliefs are basic it does not follow that they are evidentially groundless. It does follow from their status as basic that they are not evidentially grounded by inference from other beliefs. But they may still be evidentially grounded since they may be (non-inferentially) grounded in the believer's experience. That is, the believer may find their truth to be simply evident in experience - which is not to say that she finds them self-evident, but just that some of her experiences have the character that they reveal or disclose the truth of (certain) Christian beliefs. (These are, of course, the experiences in which, on Plantinga's model, the sensus divinitatis or the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit are in operation.) A person may thus conform to a broad evidentialist requirement to hold Christian belief only as supported by her total evidence even though she has no good arguments for the truth of Christian belief, since her total evidence may include beliefs that are (we shall say) basically evident in her experience. Indeed, it might be thought that the point can be strengthened: if Christian belief is basic, then, arguably the believer must find its truth evident in experience, since otherwise what motivation could she have for belief at all?19

If her foundational Christian beliefs are thus basically evident for our reflective Christian believer (as PRE allows that they may be - or, even, perhaps, if the strengthening of the argument just given is correct, shows they must be), what light does that cast on our initial argument for PRE's inability to secure a categorical answer to the dejure question?




May defenders of PRE argue that, with this addition to its central claim, a categorical answer to the dejure question does indeed emerge, and the epistemic circularity objection expressed in our initial argument fails?

Consider what has now been added to the situation of our reflective believer who accepts the inferential evidential ambiguity of Christian belief, and is exploring how accepting PRE's central claim may satisfactorily answer her dejure question. She accepts that if her basic Christian beliefs are true, it is highly likely that they have warrant. She does, of course, hold those basic Christian beliefs to be true. But she does not do so groundlessly: the truth of those beliefs is basically evident in her experience. May she now answer the dejure question by rehearsing the PRE argument as follows: my (basic) Christian beliefs are true, as is evident in my experience; if they are true, those beliefs are properly basic (i.e., basic and warranted); therefore, my holding those beliefs has warrant; therefore, I am epistemically entitled to those beliefs? In other words, is the epistemic circularity of the PRE argument overcome once we acknowledge that premise 1 - p, the propositional content of Christian belief- is held true through being directly experienced as basically evident!

8. Basically evident beliefs and epistemic entitlement

Recall that our initial objection to the suggestion that PRE can provide an affirmative answer to the dejure question was that PRE's central claim is only the conditional claim that, if Christian belief is true then it is warranted, and that the reflective believer could not, without begging the question, infer from it the categorical conclusion that her Christian belief is warranted. We suggested that, since the reflective believer has her epistemic entitlement to Christian belief in question, she could not without circularity use its truth as a premise.

But now we have taken note of the fact that, according to PRE, the reflective believer finds the truth of her basic Christian beliefs evident in experience. Does that overcome our objection? It would certainly do so if it followed from the fact that she finds those beliefs evident in experience that she is epistemically entitled to hold them. But does that entailment hold? It seems doubtful. One might subjectively find evident in experience what is objectively false - so the inference from finding a belief basically evident in experience to epistemic entitlement can coherently and seriously be doubted. Furthermore, defenders of PRE presumably agree on this point, since, if they did think that this inference held, their appeal to externalist epistemology would be otiose - for, then, one could get straight




to an affirmative answer to the dejure question from the claim that basic Christian beliefs are evident in experience.

PRE's central claim does show, of course, that if what the Christian believer finds basically evident in her experience is true, then she is epistemically entitled to believe it. But then we are back to the PRE argument - and our epistemic circularity objection to it. If what is at issue is whether there is epistemic entitlement to Christian belief (p), then epistemic entitlement to the claim that p (premise 1) cannot already be assumed. And the fact that the belief that p is non-inferentially evidentially grounded by the believer finding the truth that p to be basically evident in her experience makes no difference, since that fact cannot be assumed by itself to establish epistemic entitlement to p. So our earlier assessment of the PRE argument stands: the argument does not go beyond the assertion of PRE's central claim. If the truth the believer finds basically evident is indeed true, then she is epistemically entitled to it. Yet, important as this result is in showing that the absence of inferential evidential support for Christian belief does not establish that epistemic entitlement for such belief is lacking, it remains impotent to secure that entitlement. PRE is of limited value in answering the dejure question about Christian belief.

9. A comparison with basic perceptual beliefs

We think, however, that defenders of PRE will not be convinced. Reformed epistemology has been powerfully motivated by the suspicion that those who express dejure reservations about Christian belief apply double stan- dards, requiring for epistemically legitimate religious beliefs conditions that could not be met by a whole range of 'common sense' beliefs whose epistemic propriety is not open to reasonable doubt.20 That suspicion may be brought to bear on our epistemic circularity objection to the PRE argument. Proponents of PRE may argue that if our objection to the PRE argument for epistemic entitlement to basic Christian belief were cogent, then, by parity of reasoning, it would be equally cogent to maintain that we cannot give a categorical affirmative answer to the dejure question asked about basic perceptual beliefs, for example. But that is absurd: people are undoubtedly within their epistemic rights in holding and acting on basic perceptual beliefs; hence, by parity of reasoning, our objection to the PRE case for warranted Christian belief must be flawed.

We think that this 'parity' reply fails. To explain why, we shall first elaborate this reply by considering the situation of a reflective perceiver who asks himself the dejure question about a typical perceptual belief: is he within his epistemic rights to hold that (e.g.) there's a tree outside his




window? Clearly, his being unable to infer this from other independent epistemically established beliefs does not show that he is not entitled to hold this perceptual belief. Perceptual beliefs are basic beliefs, not inferred from other beliefs. How, though, can he satisfy himself that he is epistemically entitled to hold such a belief? Well, he finds the truth of his belief that there's a tree outside the window directly and basically evident in his experience - given, that is, that there is nothing to indicate to him that he is not under perceptually normal conditions. Is that sufficient to satisfy him that he is within his epistemic rights in taking it to be true that there is indeed a tree outside?

The sceptic - or, rather, the epistemologist who adopts the method of doubt - suggests not, and backs that suggestion by appealing to possible scenarios under which basic perceptual beliefs formed under normal 'non-illusional' perceptual conditions would be systematically false: the Cartesian 'dream' or 'Evil Demon' hypotheses, or the possibility of being a 'brain in a vat', for example. In response, an appeal to externalist epistemology seems in order. If the reflective perceiver's basic perceptual beliefs are systematically correct, then it is highly likely that they are warranted (and thus properly basic). For, if there is a world external to our senses and if it is pretty much as the world perceptually seems to us to be, then it is plausible to hold that it is highly likely that basic perceptual beliefs result from cognitive mechanisms which have been 'designed' under selective evolutionary pressure to produce in the appropriate environment true (enough) representations of the external world. Let us concede, then, that if perceptual beliefs are true, they are highly likely to be warranted in Plantinga's sense.21

It is arguable, then, that the best the reflective perceiver can do to satisfy himself that he is within his epistemic rights in holding his basic perceptual beliefs (under 'normal' conditions) is to bring together the fact that he finds the truth of these beliefs basically evident in his experience with the theoretical claim (based on an externalist epistemology and an evolutionary explanation) that if his basic perceptual beliefs are indeed true then they are likely to be warranted. He cannot go any further - he can have no non-circular 'internalist' disproof of extreme sceptical hypotheses.

Yet, surely, no one could reasonably hold that people are not, or even might not be, within their epistemic rights in holding and acting on basic perceptual beliefs (formed under normal conditions)? Arguably, then, the best that the reflective perceiver can do is definitely good enough to establish that he is epistemically entitled to his basic perceptual beliefs.

But if the combination of finding basic beliefs evident in experience plus the fact that if they are true they are warranted is enough to show that basic perceptual beliefs are warranted, then surely, by parity of reasoning, that



1 20 JOHN BISHOP AND IMRAN AIJAZ

same combination must be sufficient to show that basic Christian beliefs are warranted? This is what the 'parity' reply maintains, anyway - and, accordingly, defenders of PRE conclude that the PRE argument, with the addition that the truth of Christian belief is found to be basically evident in experience, does give a satisfactory affirmative answer to the de jure question about Christian belief and does not succumb to the epistemic circularity objection we have raised.

10. Where the 'parity' reply goes wrong: the dejure question about perceptual belief answered by default

This 'parity' reply is, however, fallacious. We grant that, indeed, no one seriously doubts that we are generally within our epistemic rights in holding and acting on basic perceptual beliefs. We grant, also - at least for the sake of argument - that the best one can do to provide an argued case for this epistemic entitlement is to appeal to the basic evidence of the truth of perceptual beliefs in experience combined with the claim that if they are true externalist conditions for their warrant obtain. It does not follow, however, that best possible argued case is sufficient!

Indeed, to the contrary, we maintain that since this argument does indeed parallel the PRE argument seeking to establish epistemic entitlement to basic Christian belief, and since that argument is question-begging and epistemically circular, then the parallel argument with respect to basic perceptual beliefs is also question-begging and epistemically circular.

But if this kind of argument does not provide a categorical affirmative answer to the dejure question, what grounds can there be for the claim - agreed on all sides - that we are certainly epistemically entitled to our basic perceptual beliefs (under normal conditions)? Our answer is that no grounds are needed for this claim: we are simply constructed in such a way that we cannot proceed other than on the assumption that what we perceive under normal conditions is the case, and is to be treated with belief-grade weight in our practical inferences.

Systematic sceptical doubts about perceptual beliefs are hyperbolical - all very well for the esoteric and restricted purpose of what Bernard Williams has aptly called 'the project of pure inquiry,'22 but quite without any persuasive force for lived out practical purposes. In their 'ordinary' lives, philosophers who take hyperbolical doubt seriously, if they are not to fall into insanity, will regularly act on their own relevant basic perceptual beliefs with the degree of confidence that goes with belief, even if they somehow manage the feat of suspending 'belief itself. (That may be psy- chologically very challenging. Will they really manage to think to them-




selves thoughts like this: 'I am stepping aside on the confident assumption that there is a truck bearing down on me, though I don't actually believe this to be true'?)

Our point, then, is that the dejure question about basic perceptual belief gets answered affirmatively only, so to speak, by default - and not through an argument that appeals to externalist conditions for warrant and the fact that we find the truth of basic perceptual beliefs evident in experience. We are within our rights in holding and acting on basic perceptual beliefs only because we simply have no real choice about whether we do so or not, and we must be entitled to do what we cannot avoid doing ('ought implies can'). The dejure question about basic perceptual beliefs does not arise as a genuine question bearing on how we live our lives: acting confidently on their truth is 'hard-wired' in us given the evolved animals that we are. ('You might just as well ask whether we are within our property rights when we take in oxygen at each breath.') So, with respect to any account of epistemic entitlement to belief that relates to whether we may take propositions to be true in our practical reasoning, it is inevitable that we should take ourselves to be epistemically entitled to hold and act on basic perceptual beliefs. This, of course, explains why some epistemol- ogists' fondness for the method of doubt causes such incomprehension and hilarity amongst the general populace. Philosophers energetically dis- cuss what our rational justification could be for doing something that - there's simply no real question about it - we are certainly going to go on doing, whether there are good philosophical grounds for it or not. And the fact that we will inevitably take ourselves to be epistemically entitled to our basic perceptual beliefs does not show that there must be some philosophical account that rationally secures this entitlement - let alone that the appeal to externalist epistemology is enough to serve that purpose.

11. Christian belief typically not unavoidably evident in experience

If things were the same with respect to foundational Christian beliefs, then, of course, the dejure question with respect to them could be answered in the same 'default' way. If our reflective Christian believer does indeed find that taking her foundational Christian beliefs to be true is as practically unavoidable for her as taking her basic perceptual beliefs to be true, then, we agree, she is by default epistemically entitled to those beliefs. But is that antecedent condition likely to be satisfied?

Clearly, neither Christian nor any basic theist beliefs are inevitably taken as evident in experience by human beings generally (otherwise at-




tempts to give reasons for our epistemic entitlement to basic theist belief would be seen as equally esoteric as the parallel attempts with respect to basic perceptual beliefs). But, equally clearly, this is also not the case even for Christians or theists generally: plenty of people who do believe in God do not take that belief to be on a par with a basic perceptual belief in respect of being basically evident in experience. Many Christian believers who do have religious experiences in which they are in some sense directly aware of God's presence, His help, even His voice, would not assimilate that awareness to having a basic perceptual belief- because (especially on reflection) they recognise that they are choosing to inter- pret their experiences in a religious way when that interpretation is not unavoidable for them.23 Indeed, many would regard their faith as enabling them to see the divine presence and loving activity in perfectly ordinary experiences (e.g. the breaking of bread) - experiences that, necessarily, could be understood without that perspective (albeit, they believe, to their great impoverishment). (Here it might be observed that all perceptual experience involves active interpretation by the mind. True: but when it comes to basic perceptual beliefs the mind's activity is both subcon- scious and involuntary; whereas, in the case of basic religious beliefs we may become conscious that we are placing a religious construal on our experience.)

We are not, however, able entirely to exclude the possibility that, for some Christians the truth of basic Christian belief is as inevitably com- pelling as the truth of basic perceptual belief - and, we repeat, that, if there are such Christians, then for them the de jure question has an affirmative answer by default. For a categorical affirmative answer to the de jure question about Christian belief, however, a vindication of epistemic entitlement is needed for those whose basic Christian beliefs are not quasi-perceptual in this way. This is, we think, clearly the situation for the vast majority of Christians - indeed, there may be good reasons internal to Christian theology why this is so, relating to the nature of meritorious faith and the hiddenness of God. Furthermore, it seems clear that reflective Christians for whom the de jure question is existentially pressing are not bothered merely by a hyperbolical doubt of purely theoretical interest. In effect, then, it seems that, though God no doubt could have given us a sensus divinitatis that was literally akin to a further sensory faculty, in fact - if He exists - He appears to have chosen a more complex cognitive mechanism in which our conscious active concurrence in placing a religious interpretation on our experience is required.



HOW TO ANSWER THE DE JURE QUESTION ABOUT CHRISTIAN BELIEF 1 23

12. Christian belief as requiring doxastic venture

We have argued, then, that PRE does not furnish a categorical answer to the de jure question for Christians who find that their foundational Christian beliefs do not inevitably seem evident in the way that perceptual beliefs do.

The question now is where we might turn to find an adequate affirmative answer. PRE certainly proves helpful in advancing the idea that a person may be epistemically entitled to Christian belief as basic belief in the absence of any 'inferential' evidential support. That possibility is crucially important for the kind of reflective Christian on whose situation we have been focussing who concludes that the independent 'inferential' evidence leaves it open whether Christian belief is true or false. So, if our reflective Christian believer is to be shown within her epistemic rights, it will have to be by showing her epistemic entitlement to basic Christian beliefs. And it is thus important to note that our claim that it would be both rare (and perhaps theologically deviant) for a Christian to find the truth of foundational Christian belief inevitably basically evident in her experience does not at all entail that such belief could not be both basic and held with epistemic entitlement. It is most important to recognise that a person's belief could be properly basic without its truth being experienced by that person as unavoidably evident in the way that basic perceptual beliefs are standardly experienced.

But how could it be epistemically proper to hold and act on a basic belief if one accepts that its truth is not simply and inevitably evident in experience? That could be epistemically proper only if it could be epistemically proper to believe without satisfying any broad evidentialist requirement to believe only what the evidence supports, where the evidence includes not only 'inferential' evidence (inference from other beliefs to which one is independently entitled) but also beliefs whose truth is basically evident in experience. PRE aimed to defend the epistemic propriety of Christian belief within just such a broad evidentialist framework, despite conceding the inferential evidential ambiguity of Christian belief, by showing how basic Christian beliefs could be properly basic and evident in experience. We have argued that PRE fails in that aim: Christian beliefs could be properly basic, but, if they are, they do not standardly present themselves as simply and inevitably evident in experience in the way that basic perceptual beliefs do.

We therefore conclude that (assuming inferential evidential ambiguity) epistemic entitlement to Christian belief cannot be established consistently with any broad evidentialism. In holding and acting on Christian belief, the believer goes beyond her evidence altogether. She makes a doxastic




venture - where that is to be understood as believing without the support of evidence, either of the inferential or the non-inferential kind.

13. Defending the epistemic propriety of doxastic venture

An adequate affirmative answer to the de jure question, then, requires a defence of doxastic venture with respect to Christian belief. Establishing the epistemic propriety of Christian belief rests on defending a certain kind of 'fideism.' It rests on showing that, under certain conditions, it is epistemically respectable to believe 'by faith' beyond one's evidence.

That conclusion has emerged from a critical evaluation of PRE, and in sympathy with the aim of Reformed epistemology - namely, to defend epistemic entitlement to Christian religious belief even if (as we have through- out assumed) rational arguments for belief in God and other Christian doctrines fail.24

In constructing a general theory of the conditions under which doxastic venture is within a believer's epistemic rights, we believe that key insights from PRE will need to be preserved and utilised.

First, given acceptance of the inferential evidential ambiguity of Chris- tian belief, we obviously need to preserve the idea that Christian belief could be properly basic. This idea, however, needs to be separated from the suggestion (which we have just been criticising) that Christian belief might be basically evident in experience in the way basic perceptual beliefs are. But we still need to recognise that beliefs that are held 'by faith' beyond the evidence will necessarily be basic - or, at least, that will be the case for the foundational ones on which the whole noetic structure of faith-beliefs depends. So the task is to defend the epistemic propriety of holding basic beliefs without their being simply evident in experience. And that will require explaining how someone can have the motivation to believe - to take a proposition true - without either inferring it from other propositions taken true or finding it simply and unavoidably evident in their experience.

We think that William James provides the right explanation here: the attitude of holding a proposition true can have a 'passional' cause - as he argues persuasively in 'The Will to Believe.'25 Wishes and desires can cause people to believe. So too can evaluative attitudes - one may take a proposition to be true because one regards its truth as a good thing. Beliefs also result from response to cultural and religious traditions - and this, of course, is salient for the case of basic Christian belief. Christians emphasise that belief is elicited by encounter with the Good News as preached or practised; and this is neither a matter of inferring the Gospel's




truth from the evidence of other beliefs, nor of simply finding it quasi- perceptually evident, but of 'the heart's' response to what is heard - a passionate inclination to accept the Good News as true.

James did, of course, seek to argue that it is legitimate to let oneself take to be true propositions one is inclined to believe solely on a passional basis - provided the truth of those propositions could not be settled on evidential grounds, and provided also that the choice to take them true in action constituted what James called a 'genuine' option (one which is both existentially significant and 'forced,' in the sense that what matters is whether one does or does not believe).

It is controversial whether James's thesis can be defended - and, indeed, controversial just what his thesis amounts to.26 We think that the best prospects for defending the epistemic propriety of doxastic venture (under rather severely restricted conditions) do rest on developing James's arguments. Here we wish only to suggest that the externalist insight of PRE may potentially contribute to an argument for James's thesis - and this is then the second aspect of PRE that we think needs to be taken forward in order to provide the desired categorical affirmative answer to the dejure question about Christian belief.

If the Christian God exists, then his dispensation to enable (some of) us to come to knowledge of him may be through heartfelt response to the preaching of the Gospel of Christ. In which case, externalist conditions sufficient for warrant could well be met when individuals come to believe the great truths of the Gospel. This, of course, is just the central claim of PRE: if Christian belief is true it is likely to be warranted. Now, if a person does respond to the preaching of the Gospel with a passional inclination to believe it true, and is asking himself whether he may let himself act on this belief (as against the alternative of remaining uncommitted out of loyalty to a supposed evidentialist epistemic obligation), then does it not tell in favour of the epistemic propriety of his letting himself make the doxastic venture to which he is inclined that if the Gospel is indeed true, the only way he can grasp that truth would be through such a venture? For, if he sticks to the evidentialist injunction, then the only way in which he could end up living in accordance with the truth on the option for or against belief in the Gospel is if the Gospel is false (since the evidentialist injunction will require him to suspend belief, and that, in practice, is equivalent to living as if the Gospel is false).27

Perhaps, then, PRE's central claim (applying externalist epistemology to Christian belief) can feature in an argument that shows the epistemic worth of a policy that is prepared to take the risk of falling into error for the sake of grasping a truth that could be appropriated only through doxastic venture. We are not sure. A committed evidentialist might retort




that it is epistemically irresponsible to risk an error that could not be corrected - and, indeed, such a risk does seem to attend doxastic venture of this kind. How the development of Jamesian-style arguments for the epistemic respectability of doxastic venture plays out still remains to be seen. We do believe, however, that it is in this context that the central claim of Plantinga's Reformed epistemology needs to be applied if it is to succeed in yielding a categorical affirmative answer to the dejure question about Christian belief.

Notes

1 . Plantinga's Reformed epistemology is articulated and defended in its fullest form in Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, hereafter WCB).

2. See WCB, p. 67. 3. In his 'Advice to Christian philosophers' Plantinga maintains that 'the Christian phi-

losopher does indeed have a responsibility to the philosophical world at large; but his fundamental responsibility is to the Christian community, and finally to God.' (See http://www.faithandphilosophy.com/plantinga-advice.htm. The article's source is Faith and Philosophy 1 (1984) pp. 253-271). We do not here question that assessment of where a Christian philosopher's primary responsibility lies, and accept that PRE's answer to the dejure question is intended as one that can be given credit from within a Christian perspective. Our interest is wholly in whether Plantinga's Reformed Episte- mology succeeds in discharging the responsibility to provide an answer to the dejure question as it arises in the case of our reflective believer- and her situation is, of course, one that belongs within the Christian community.

4. See Warrant: the current debate (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 24. 'It is within my power to adopt policies that influence and modify my propensities to believe; I can adopt such policies as paying careful attention to the evidence, avoiding wishful thinking, being aware of such sources of belief as jealousy, lust, contareity, excessive optimism, loyalty, and the like. . . . this implies at least a certain degree of indirect control over my beliefs.'

5. Our concern in this paper is solely with Plantinga's version of Reformed epistemology, as it has culminated in WCB. The question of the extent to which the line of argument we develop in this paper would apply to the work of other Reformed epistemolo- gists is beyond our present scope, though obviously of considerable interest. For what are widely regarded as the seminal essays of Reformed epistemology see the essays by Plantinga, Alston and Wolterstorff in Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (eds.), Faith and Rationality (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). William Alston's Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991) is another important and influential work of Reformed Epistemology.

6. SqqWCB,p. 156. 7. See the opening sentence of his Warrant: the current debate, p. 3. 8. See WCB, Chapters 6-8.




9. See, for example, Jonathan L. Kvanvig (ed.), Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology (NY, Rowman & Littlefield: 1996).

10. Plantinga argues that the only contestable form in which the de jure question arises is as the question whether one is warranted in holding Christian belief. Doubts may be raised about this claim - see, for example, Thomas D. Senor, 'A Critical Review of Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief \ International Philosophical Quarterly ', 42 (2002), especially pp. 390-391. For our purposes, however, provided the meaning of the dejure question is grounded in the situation of our reflective Christian believer, we are prepared initially to concede that the question is about the warrantedness of Christian belief in Plantinga's sense. We wish to ask whether, even with that granted, an adequate answer to the dejure question results from accepting the A/C model.

11. See WCB, p. 170 ('As for classical Christianity there is even less prospect of demonstrating its truth [sc. than of demonstrating the truth that God exists]'), and p. 499 where Plantinga draws the conclusion that none of the 'actual or potential' defeaters for Christian belief that he has surveyed succeed. Note also WCB, p. 201 : 'I don't know of an argument for Christian belief that seems very likely to convince one who doesn't already accept its conclusion.'

12. Compare John Hick's thesis of 'religious ambiguity:' the claim that our universe 'is capable from our present human vantage point of being thought and experienced in both religious and naturalistic ways' (An Interpretation of Religion, London: Macmil- lan, 1989, p. 73). If 'capable' is taken to mean 'capable with respect to the force of the inferential evidence' then the situation we are considering is one of religious ambiguity as regards Christian religious claims.

13. Anthony Kenny puts this objection thus: '[t]he doubting believer in God cannot reas- sure himself that his belief is warranted; for only if there is a God is his belief warranted, and that is what he was beginning to doubt.' What is Faith? (Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 71.

14. It seems that Plantinga never explicitly claims that being able to judge this 'PRE argument' to be sound enables our reflective Christian believer to satisfy herself that she is within her epistemic rights in continuing to take her Christian belief to be true. There are contexts, however, where Plantinga may well seem to make this claim implicitly. Consider, for example, the following passage, which concludes Plantinga's article on 'Reformed Epistemology', Chapter 49 in Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Blackwell, 1999), pp. 383-389:

'. . . the Reformed epistemologist will point out that (in all probability) theistic belief has warrant if and only if it is true: since she thinks it is true, she will also think it has warrant . . . Here she can't claim . . . that it is just obvious that theistic belief has warrant; for it isn't just obvious that theism is true. Instead, she points out that theistic belief has warrant if and only if it is true: hence whether one thinks it has warrant will depend upon whether one thinks it is true'.

Our reflective Christian believer, then, will think her belief warranted (and will do so by taking the PRE argument to be sound). The question is whether that suffices to resolve her dejure question. Plantinga doesn't say . . . but might well be understood to be implying that it does. In his article, 'Religion and Epistemology' in Edward Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy (New York, Routledge, 1998, pp. 209-218), Plantinga claims that the dejure question about Christian belief 'reduces to' the de facto question of its truth, and this claim might also plausibly be interpreted as equivalent to the claim that the reflective believer may answer her dejure question by rehearsing the




PRE argument. In any case, whether Plantinga would or would not endorse the PRE argument as resolving the dejure question, we think it is certainly helpful to determine whether it does - and that is the issue we here take up.

15. In WCB Plantinga anticipates charges of circularity against his A/C model, and seeks to set them aside by emphasising that the source of warrant for Christian belief is not, on the model, any kind of argument at all, and so, a fortiori, not an argument that could exhibit vicious circularity (see p. 352). Our discussion is within the scope of the assumption that Plantinga's A/C model is correct, and so we agree that if Christian belief is true, then Christian belief is warranted, and, indeed, warranted in a way that does not depend on the believer's accepting any argument for its truth (or warrant). Our allegation of epistemic circularity arises, however, in the context of considering how this conditional claim can be employed in providing for our reflective Christian believer a categorical answer to her dejure question - and, in particular, in the context of considering whether the PRE argument can be properly used to yield that categorical answer. Accordingly, Plantinga's correct observations about the non-circularity of his model of warrant do not amount to any kind of reply to the charge of epistemic circularity that is our present concern.

16. See, for example, WCB, p. 1 70. 'Evidentialism is the view that belief in God is rationally justifiable only if there is good evidence for it, where good evidence would be arguments from other propositions one knows.' This evidentialist view follows from the classical foundationalist epistemology which Plantinga rejects on the grounds that it is too narrow and, anyway, self-referentially incoherent (see WCB, pp. 93-107).

17. 'Faith, according to the [extended A/C] model, is far indeed from being a blind leap; it isn't even remotely like a leap in the dark . . . [y]ou might as well claim that a memory belief, or the belief that 3 + 1 = 4 is a leap in the dark' ( WCB, p. 263).

18. For Plantinga's account of properly basic belief, see, for instance, WCB pp. 175-179. 19. Plantinga does make explicit this wider use of the notion of a person's evidence: '. . .

evidence includes not just other propositions that you believe (although it does include that) but also your current experience: the ways in which you are being appeared to, for example, when you look out at your backyard . . .' in Quinn and Taliaferro, op cit. , p. 387. The need to distinguish between a broad and a narrow sense of evidence is helpfully articulated by Stephen J. Wykstra, who further notes that the 'natural' sense of the word 'evidence' is the broad sense. See his 'On behalf of the Evidentialist: a reply to Wolterstorff ' in D.Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin, eds, Philosophy of Religion in the Twenty-first Century, Palgrave, New York, 2001, 64-84, pp. 66-67.

20. Alston maintains that this 'double standard' is a feature of what he calls 'epistemic imperialism.' See Perceiving God, p. 199.

2 1 . Plantinga himself would not endorse this claim - and so could not himself run the 'parity' reply along the lines we are here considering. This is because Plantinga argues that on 'naturalist' evolutionary assumptions, our cognitive structures 'were not selected for their penchant for producing true beliefs in us ... [T]he ultimate . . . function of ... belief-producing mechanisms will not be the production of true beliefs but survival . . .' ( WCB, p. 228). One might, however, plausibly argue that, though the ultimate function of perceptual belief-producing mechanisms is no doubt survival, they could not have that ultimate function unless they had the proximate function of producing (under normal conditions) beliefs true of our 'phenomenal' lived environments. In that case, an externalist case for the warrant of perceptual beliefs would be plausible, and so a 'parity' reply along these lines is certainly worth considering by a proponent of PRE.




22. Bernard Williams, Descartes: the Project of Pure Inquiry (Penguin Books, 1978). See especially, pp. 46-51.

23. It has been observed that theists frequently do not hold their basic theist beliefs with the degree of firmness envisaged on Plantinga's A/C model (see Richard Swinburne, Tlantinga on Warrant', Religious Studies 37 (2001), p. 203, and Andrew Chignell, 'Epistemology for Saints' (http:/www.christianitytodaycom/bc/2002/002/10.20.html). We are here making the further point that, even for those theists who do (on occasion, anyway) very firmly believe their basic beliefs, that firmness of belief is not experienced as just like the firmness of belief that arises utterly routinely with (e.g.) perceptual beliefs under normal conditions.

24. We thus agree with C. Stephen Evans' diagnosis of PRE as in a certain sense 'fideist,' a sense which Evans argues is implied by commitment to an externalist epistemology. See his Faith beyond Reason: a Kierkegaardian account, W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1998, pp. 45-47. In Evans' terms, then, our contention is that an affirmative answer to the de jure question about Christian belief will require a defence of the epistemic propriety of fideism, understood as the thesis that doxastic venture is permissible under certain conditions.

25. William James, The Will to Believe' in The Will to Believe, Human Immoratlity, and other essays on popular philosophy (Dover, 1956).

26. For a thorough recent discussion see Richard M. Gale, The Divided Self of William James, Cambridge University Press, 1999, Chapter 4. Even if it is defensible as an

interpretation of James's own views, we doubt whether Gale's 'belief-consequentialist' account of the James's will-to-believe doctrine can provide an ultimately successful defence of the epistemic propriety of passionally motivated doxastic venture. We think the proposal we are about to canvass potentially more promising in that respect.

27. Compare William James: 'If religion be true and the evidence for it be still insufficient, I do not wish, by putting your extinguisher upon my nature (which feels to me as if it had after all some business in this matter), to forfeit my sole chance in life of getting upon the winning side - that chance depending, of course, on my willingness to run the risk of acting as if my passional need of taking the world religiously might be prophetic and right.' (The Will to Believe', p. 27).

Address for correspondence: John Bishop, Department of Philosophy, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand Phone: +64-9-373-7599x87611; Fax: +64-9-373-7408; E-mail: [email protected]



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