{"id":357,"date":"2006-05-10T14:09:20","date_gmt":"2006-05-10T22:09:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=341"},"modified":"2006-05-10T14:09:20","modified_gmt":"2006-05-10T22:09:20","slug":"evidentialism-presuppositionalism-and-certainty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2006\/05\/10\/evidentialism-presuppositionalism-and-certainty\/","title":{"rendered":"Evidentialism, Presuppositionalism, and Certainty"},"content":{"rendered":"

My buddy Jeff<\/a> points out This Article<\/a> on “certainty” by reformed professor Dr. John Frame<\/a>. Frame is a “presuppositionalist” — according to his Wikipedia entry, he’s one of the foremost interpreters of Cornelius Van Til<\/a>. There are certain aspects of presuppositionalism that I find very appealing. However, I think I’m more of an evidentialist, or at least something of a Thomist when it comes to natural law. (For the distinction between presuppositionalism and evidentialism, see this adequate but thin Wiki<\/a>. Anyway, the Frame article raised some interesting questions on one of my favorite subjects — epistemology and Christian faith — and here are my thoughts.
\n
\nFrame’s article on “Certainty” is certainly \ud83d\ude42 interesting. I’ve heard of Frame but don’t know much about him. Frame’s argument is coherent within the presuppositionalist framework, but I don’t know how it fares if that framework isn’t assumed.<\/p>\n

For example, Frame says: “Our certainty of the truth of God comes ultimately, not through rational demonstration or empirical verification, useful as these may often be, but from the authority of God\u2019s own word.” This is obviously circular: we can be certain of God because of his word, and we can be certain of his word because he is God. So, Frame says, along with other presuppositionalists, that the only way to apprehend and have “psychological certainty” of the truth of God is through divine grace.<\/p>\n

I hadn’t really thought of it this way before, but some of our discussion of “certainty” is really a discussion of evidentialism and presuppositionalism. If you are a presuppositionalist, you can be “absolutely certain” of your beliefs in a sense by fiat. If you are an evidentialist, you ultimately have to acknowledge that the evidence can only go so far — it can show that belief in God is “probable” or “reasonable,” but not “absolutely certain” in the ordinary usage of “absolute.” You can also define “absolute” as modest foundationalists do to mean something less than truly “absolute,” such as “properly warranted”.<\/p>\n

In any of these three cases, the use of the word “certainty” seems potentially misleading. The presuppositionalist can say “I feel certain” and the evidientialist can at best say “I am ‘certain’ in the sense that my beliefs have adequate warrant given the limitations of my perception and knowledge.”<\/p>\n

Since I’m becoming more and more of a “natural law” theorist (studying Thomistic thought for a paper I’m now writing on virtue ethics and patent law), I’d have to say that I wouldn’t place myself squarely in the presuppositionalist camp. I particularly don’t like Frame’s emphasis on “psychological certainty,” since it seems to leave little room for grace to work in those who suffer periodically (like me) from depression and anxiety. There are days when I’m quite certain psychologically, and days when I’m at the bottom of the pit, and days in between. I don’t think those variable emotions define my faith.<\/p>\n

I do agree, though, that there is ontological “certainty” — a reality beyond our social and linguistic constructions — and that we can have varying degrees of “certainty” that our beliefs correspond to that reality. But I don’t think there’s any way a human being can possess any such thing as complete, “absolute” epistemic “certainty” in this life. Uncertainty is part of being human; faith entails commitment despite uncertainty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My buddy Jeff points out This Article on “certainty” by reformed professor Dr. John Frame. Frame is a “presuppositionalist” — according to his Wikipedia entry, he’s one of the foremost interpreters of Cornelius Van Til. There are certain aspects of presuppositionalism that I find very appealing. However, I think I’m more of an evidentialist, or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-epistemology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-5L","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}