Jeff and I have been having a good discussion about apologetics and certainty. I want to pick up on that discussion here.
As I’ve thought this through and read through some materials, I think one of the key issues for me is what we mean by “certainty.” I believe we should make a distinction between certainty and certitude or assurance. This distinction is helpfully made by the late Paul Feinberg (a former professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) in his essay on Cumulative Case Apologetics in the book Five Views on Apologetics. Here is what Feinberg said:
Many apologists distinguish between certainty and certitude. Certainty looks at the strength of the external evidence for a belief. Certitude looks beyond the external evidence, recognizing that there is a subjective element which can alone explain the tenacity and stubbornness of belief. This stubbornness is not the result of ignorance or stupidity; it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Feinberg elaborates on this point in a footnote as follows:
Nash makes well the point that I am trying to make here. He points out that because worldviews are about reality, we can never have logical certainty. Evidence for interpretations of reality can only have probability or plausibility as I have called it. Nash points out that some have taken this lack of logical certainty to be a sacrilege. He counters this claim that we can and often do believe matters that lack logical certainty with moral or psychological certainty. I have called this certitude to distinguish it from certainty. It is subjective, and it is the work of the Holy Spirit.
Feinberg touches on the heart of my issue with the term “certainty”: in my experience, all too often, logical or evidential apologetic arguments advanced by Christians are less than convincing. I do believe that there are a number of quite convincing logical and evidential arguments in favor of Christianity, but even these are not indubitably correct. There are any number of points at which even the best logical and evidential arguments could fail, even if the likelihood of such failure seems passingly small. And, there are a number of important questions, many dealing with the relationship between scripture and science, that simply are not resolveable given our present state of knowledge.
I am in agreement, then, with the presuppositionalist view that certitude or assurance is an internal work of the Holy Spirit. However, I do not think there is no role for external logical and historical evidence that can be ascertainable in some sense even to unregenerate people. On this point, I like Feinberg’s cumulative case approach, which sums various arguments to propose an overall case in favor of belief. Perhaps I like Feinberg’s approach because it essentially what we lawyers do when we present a case to a judge or jury.
A second problem concerning “absolute” certainty that I want to address is that of solipsism. There is no way I can demonstrate beyond any possible question that anything I perceive is real. If I am being deceived in some Matrix-like fashion, there is no way I can disprove that deception. At best — and even this is doubtful — all I can know with undeniable certainty is that I exist.
I think this distinction is one of my main issues. “Certainty,” as I understand it, is akin to Cartesian proof or indubitability, and it leads inelectably to solipsism. As I use the term “certainty,” if a proposition is “certain,” it is not even theoretically possible to raise any reasonable question about that proposition. In my view, it should evident to any honest and reasonably well-read and well-travelled person that nothing can be known with Cartesian certainty. Even the proposition I just stated falls into that category of dubitability, so perhaps I should rephrase it: it should be evident to any honest and reasonably well-read and well-travelled person that for every proposition there is a plausible, or at least possible, counter-proposition. Because we cannot exclude the possibility of such counter-propositions, “certainty,” in the sense of indubitability, is not possible, at least insofar as the extent of human experience to date allows.
Even Christian philosophers who hold to a foundationalist epistemology acknowledge this point. For example, in Reclaiming the Center, a defense of foundationalism against postmodern evangelical theology, R. Scott Smith responds to the post-conservative critique concerning a lack of “epistemic humility” shown by many evangelical foundationalists as follows:
Now does this mean that my view suffers from a lack of epistemic humility, the supposed virtue of the approach taken by the authors I have considered? I do not think that needs to be the case at all. Postconservatives claim that their view allows for epistemic humility because they do not have to prove (with certainty) that the faith is true in an objective sense. But we do not need to have one-hundred-percent certainty to be justified in believing that we can and do come in spistemic contact with the objective, langauge-and mind-independent world. There are many things we know, such as that we exist, that Jesus is the only way to God, and that the postconservative view under consideration fails to meet its own criteria. We do not have to have certainty to know these things, as well as many, many other things. Instead, we show humility by giving reasons for our beliefs, all the while acknowledging that it is possible we could be wrong. By that I mean that I could be mistaken. For example, it is possible that I am just a brain in a vat, and that these sentences are just the result of the stimulation of “my” brain by a mad scientist. But then I want to ask the questioner, why should I believe that? If we have ample reasons for our beliefs, then the burden of proof is upon the one who challenges us. And we can walk humbly before our God, all the while having great confidence that we know the truth, and that we can (and should) commend it to others with compelling evidence.
Given all that I’ve said so far, it would seem that I would agree with a presuppositional apologetic such as that presented by John Frame, which kicked off this discussion. I can’t agree, however, with anyone who would suggest that certitude, meaning the work of the Holy Spirit in providing assurance to a believer, is in some sense “absolute.” Partly this is related to the problem of solipsism, which I discussed above: if I can’t be indubitably certain of the validity of my perceptions, I can’t be indubitably certain that what I feel is in fact the Holy Spirit. Party it is related to the complexity of human emotional experience. Emotions are slippery, and it is difficult to pin someting so robust as “certainty” on an emotion.
Therefore, I’d prefer the more traditional term “assurance” rather “certainty” or even “certitude” to describe this work of the Holy Spirit. In another essay in the Five Views book, William Lane Craig, who adopts an even stronger view of the Holy Spirit’s “veridical” work in providing assurance than does Feinberg, says
The fact that one has asurance of the truth of such fundamental Christian beliefs does not imply that such beliefs are therefore indubitable. On the contrary, Paul teaches that we may qunech the Spirit by repressing his working in our lives and grieve the Spirit through sin.. . . Only as we walk in the fullness of hte Spirit can we be guaranteed the assurance of which Paul speaks. (citations omitted).
I think I am reading Craig correctly, and I think it is consistent with a traditional understanding of the Holy Spirit’s work of assurance, if I conclude that “assurance” or “certitude” is a gift that increases and becomes more robust as a believer continually follows and worships God and fellowships with Him and with the community of His people. If assurance of faith is an ongoing work of the Spirit with a capacity for expansion throughout the believer’s life, then it is not ever “absolute” at any one point in time. There is always room, to borrow a phrase from the Narnia books, to go “higher up and further in.”
I would also add to Craig’s observation that sin can quench the Spirit’s work of assurance that the believer’s experience of assurance can be muddied by a person’s general emtional makeup, past experiences, and mental illness. A person who was abused as a child, for example, may struggle with the assurance that God loves her as a caring father. Such a person cannot be said to have “absolute” or “perfect” assurance. This does not mean, however, that such a person lacks faith, or that the Holy Sprit’s work of assurance is absent. It simply reflects the brokenness of this life. Perfect peace, rest and assurance ultimately is eschatological. We only taste now what we will one day know. This, I think, relates to C.S. Lewis’ observations about experiences of the numinous, and the beatiful description in the Narnia book “The Last Battle” about how Aslan’s Country seemed somehow more “real” than Narnia or England.
The question of general emotional makeup and mental illness is near to my heart because of my personal experiences with depression, perfectionism and anxiety. Only in recent years have I begun to understand the cycles of depression, worry, and obsessive thinking to which I am prone. Somehow in my younger days I became convinced that unless I possessed absolute intellectual and emotional certainty about my faith, including a clear and unassailable answer to every contended point of faith and doctrine, I was not truly a Christian.
For a person with my emotional tendencies, this was unbearable. I can’t count how many times during my teen years I was “saved.” The state of my soul was no less my overriding preoccupation than it was for Martin Luther before he embraced the docrine of grace. But my anguish wasn’t about whether my works merited God’s favor; perversely, I agonized over whether my faith was adequate.
To this day, I experience periods of trouble and despair over sundry worries, including worries about the validity of my faith. The Black Dog still hunts. Thankfully, they are less frequent than in the past, and God has increasingly provided me with a greater sense of internal assurance about the truth of my faith and the security of my relationship with Him by virtue of His grace. I can say without hesitation that I know the Holy Spirit’s witnesses to my spirit that I belong to God. I have seen God work in and through me in amazing ways. But this has come only through much prayer, counsel, study, and care, and it remains a moment-by-moment and day-by-day process.
I take great comfort from the fact than many luminaries of the faith (of which I manifestly am not one) have suffered similarly throughout their lives. Indeed, to a greater or lesser extent, I believe this is true of every believer. No one is without any emotional baggage or scars, because we live in a broken world. Some are naturally more confident and self-assured than others, but I believe that anyone who honestly examines himself must admit that is emotions are not an unassailable foundation for anything. Therefore, we should speak of the Holy Spirit’s work of assurance, as we do of other works of the Holy Spirit such as sanctification, as an ongoing process that will be fully realized only when Christ’s Kingdom comes in its fullness. And, therefore, we should not speak of things like “knowledge” or “assurance” as “absolute” or “certain.” Knowledge and assurance are real and present for the believer in this life, but not in the full, absolute, immediate sense that they will be in the Kingdom to come.