Suggested Readings on Epistemology

/ Philosophy, Recommendations

I was recently asked to suggest reading lists on (1) epistemology in general, (2) religious epistemology, and (3) Reformed presuppositional/Van Tilian/Framean epistemology. Here’s my response, in case it’s useful for other folk. Obviously these are just start-up lists, and there may be better introductory texts/articles that I haven’t come across. (Registered users, feel free to make further recommendations in the comments.)

I think the following books should get you up to speed on contemporary epistemology in general (and religious epistemology more specifically):

  • Robert Audi, Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (3rd ed.)
  • Ernest Sosa et al, eds., Epistemology: An Anthology (2nd ed.)
  • Matthias Steup et al, eds., Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2nd ed.)
  • William Alston, Perceiving God
  • Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief
  • Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification
  • John M. DePoe & Tyler McNabb, eds., Debating Christian Religious Epistemology

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has many helpful articles on topics in epistemology, but start with these:

Kelly James Clark’s article “Religious Epistemology” in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides a good overview of the contemporary landscape (along with a helpful bibliography).

On Reformed presuppositional/Van Tilian/Framean epistemology, I recommend the following for starters:

Van Til & the Use of Evidence

/ Apologetics

Van Til & the Use of EvidenceThom Notaro’s excellent little book, Van Til & the Use of Evidence, has been out of print for years. However, Thom holds the copyright and has generously granted permission for me to make a scanned copy of the book available for free download. Enjoy!

Van Til & the Use of Evidence (with cover) (3.5 MB)

Van Til & the Use of Evidence (without cover) (3.2 MB)

The advantage of the “without cover” version (other than the smaller size) is that the PDF page numbers correspond exactly to the book page numbers.

Both versions are searchable (big thanks to Fred Zaspel and Michael Riley).

Van Til and Analytic Philosophy

/ Apologetics, Philosophy

An essay written for a forthcoming collection of essays “in the Van Til tradition.”

The main thesis: While Van Til was rightly critical of the early forms of analytic philosophy (Moore, Russell, etc.), there is no inherent conflict between Van Tilian philosophy and contemporary analytic philosophy; in fact, there are significant points of affinity or complementarity. Thus, “analytic Van Tilianism” is not a contradiction in terms, but rather a project worth pursuing.

A Muslim Defends His Worldview

/ Apologetics / 2 Comments

What's Your Worldview?I was gratified to receive the following message via the Contact form:

Sir, I’m a Muslim, and I’ve read the Islam section in your book What’s Your Worldview. However, to say the least, I haven’t found any of the objections therein to be tenable:

He goes on to give brief responses to two of the “objections” I raised. (In the book, I really presented them only as food for thought, as prompts for readers to think more critically about the Islamic worldview. But still, it’s fair to call them objections.) In this post, I’ll reproduce the relevant sections from What’s Your Worldview? along with his responses, and then reply to them. (In the quotations from WYW, I’ve omitted the endnotes, most of which provide references to verses in the Quran.)

Objection #1

From WYW, pp. 65-66:

One of the central teachings of Islam is that there will be a final day of judgment. On that day, all of our words and deeds will be weighed in the balance of divine justice. Those who have believed in Allah and lived good enough lives will be rewarded with pleasures in paradise, while the rest will be punished with torments in hell.

Muslims don’t think that you have to live an absolutely perfect life to enter paradise. They insist that Allah is compassionate and merciful, and can forgive the sins of those who believe in him and love him (though no one should ever presume upon Allah’s forgiveness). However, there seems to be a tension within Islam between the justice and the mercy of Allah. If justice is to be satisfied, every violation of the law should receive its just penalty. Therefore, an absolutely perfect judge would ensure that no crime goes unpunished. According to Islam, however, Allah simply chooses to overlook some people’s sins. How, then, can he be an absolutely perfect judge? Does Allah consistently uphold his own just laws? The problem for Islam is that, unlike Christianity, it has no doctrine of atonement that could explain how God could forgive human sins without violating his own principles of justice.

Our Muslim friend responds:

1. “First, anyone who acts unjustly towards any person or being would fall short of being perfectly good. So, if there are cases in which God needs to prioritize being just over being, say, forgiving, God’s perfect goodness requires him to do what is just in that case. Second, justice reflects the balance and harmony between God’s moral attributes. Hence, the cases in which God deems it more appropriate to be forgiving over treating people as they deserve, He concedes justice and acts mercifully. However, in those cases, justice is at work in a different way, as God judges it to be more harmonious or appropriate to be forgiving over doing what justice––in its first sense––requires to do.” – Seyma Yazici: Is God perfectly good in Islam?

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John Murray on the Christian State

/ Culture, Ethics, Theology / 3 Comments

Some readers will be aware that I have criticized the Two Kingdoms (2K) view of Christianity and culture in a few places. In 2019, I gave a lecture in which I argued that three distinctive tenets of a Reformed worldview (a biblical revelational epistemology, the absoluteness of God, and the lordship of Christ) point us away from a “Two Kingdoms” paradigm and toward a “One Kingdom with Different Administrations” paradigm — basically a Kuyperian “sphere sovereignty” paradigm but expressed in terms of Christ’s kingship.

John MurrayBrandon Smith, archival editor at Westminster Magazine, recently brought to my attention a 1943 article by John Murray entitled “The Christian World Order” (originally published in The Presbyterian Guardian).1 Murray is best known for his deeply exegetical approach to systematic theology, with a particular focus on Christology and soteriology, and not often as someone who pronounced on matters of political theory and contemporary cultural engagement. But in this remarkably forthright and lucid article, Murray sets forth an indisputably Kuyperian vision of the three societal institutions of family, church, and state. The entire article is worth your time, but I was particularly struck by the section on the state, which makes essentially the same argument I made in my 2019 lecture, albeit with Murray’s characteristic elegance and economy of words. I’ve taken the liberty of reproducing that section here (but read the whole thing).

Everything below the line is from Murray’s article, although I’ve emboldened parts of the text for emphasis.2

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  1. The article can also be found in Collected Writings of John Murray, Volume 1: The Claims of Truth (Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), pp. 356-66. ↩
  2. Note that Murray’s position should not be confused with “Christian nationalism” as the term is commonly used today (whether by its defenders or its detractors). There is nothing ‘nationalist’ about Murray’s view of the state. ↩

Greg Welty on Alvin Plantinga

/ Apologetics, Philosophy

Greg Welty’s book Alvin Plantinga hits the bookstore shelves today. I’m sure you’re dying to hear what I think about it, so here’s my endorsement:

Alvin Plantinga by Greg WeltyAlvin Plantinga is one of the titans of contemporary Christian philosophy and it would be almost unforgivable to omit him from P&R’s Great Thinkers series. His writings over the course of a six-decade career combine an astonishing degree of creativity with rigorous analytical precision, a delightful sense of humor, and a refreshingly uncomplicated Christian piety. Until now, there has existed no reliable introduction to Plantinga’s work that I could enthusiastically recommend to students, pastors, and other interested readers. That deficiency is now remedied with the publication of Greg Welty’s Alvin Plantinga, a superlative addition to an already excellent series. As a seasoned teacher-scholar with advanced degrees in theology and philosophy and a firm commitment to confessional Reformed doctrine, Dr. Welty was the ideal person to write this book. In a concise and eminently readable style, Welty clearly explains Plantinga’s major contributions and argues that, despite Plantinga’s own deviations from the Reformed tradition at points, his most valuable contributions can be comfortably accommodated by that tradition. I would never suggest reading only one book on Plantinga, but if it must be one, make it this one.

If you want to find out a bit more about the book and its distinctive contributions, I recommend this interview with the author.

The book is available from the publisher at a significant discount right now ($10.39 instead of $15.99). So what are you waiting for? Go order a copy!

Addenda:

Spanish Translations

/ Uncategorized / 1 Comment

I don’t speak Spanish, other than a few handy phrases I picked up while vacationing in Majorca many years ago, such as ¿Hablas inglés? and Una cerveza por favor. However, Valentín Alpuche and the good folk at Valle de Gracia know the language very well and have kindly translated some of my articles into Spanish:

More to come, Lord willing!

Philosophy after Christ: A Short Review

/ Apologetics, Philosophy / 1 Comment

Philosophy after ChristTony Flood was kind enough to send me a copy of his latest book, Philosophy after Christ, and I promised I would post a brief review. As the introduction explains, the title of the book is inspired by Colossians 2:8, where the apostle Paul contrasts two kinds of philosophy: philosophy that is “after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world,” and philosophy that is “after Christ” (KJV). The English word ‘after’ translates the Greek preposition kata, which in this context might be better rendered ‘according to’. As such, Flood’s agenda is not to expound a philosophy that is subsequent to Christ or beyond Christ, but rather according to Christ. Since Christ is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24, 30) only a philosophy founded on Christ and his Word can succeed. Philosophy after Christ is thus a spirited and invigorating defense of a truly Christian approach to philosophy and apologetics. As the author notes, the material in the book is not entirely new but consists of revisions of essays written between 2018 and 2021, some of which began life as articles on Flood’s website. However, it is useful to have them collected and systematically arranged in one volume; the assembled whole carries more force that the sum of the parts.

Part I (“Basics”) makes the initial argument that Christian philosophy must be conducted self-consciously in the context of biblical Christian worldview, and, more provocatively, that even non-Christian philosophies tacitly depend on a Christian theistic worldview for their very intelligibility. Flood rightly recognizes that there can be no such thing as an autonomous or worldview-neutral philosophy:

If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then the adjudication of worldview-conflict cannot be such a problem. The attempt to address such conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to undertake such a task. (p. 4)

Flood proceeds to argue that if Christ is indeed the Wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:24) and the Word of God (John 1:1) then no philosophy that is anti-Christ can ultimately stand, and if autonomous thought must be shunned then philosophers need to recognize their dependence upon divine revelation. As Flood vividly puts the point (with acknowledgements to Scott Oliphint), Christ is “our philosophical GPS” that not only supplies our map but also (crucially) tells us our position. Developing further this recognizably Van Tilian line of thought, Flood contends that the God of the Bible is “under the floorboards” of every argument, even those arguments leveled against God. Moreover, since God’s existence is not only evident (Rom. 1:19-20) but “the very ground of evidence-seeking,” atheists have no excuse for their unbelief.

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A Brief Statement on Muslim Apologists

/ Apologetics, Theology

Paradox in Christian TheologyIt has been brought to my attention that some Muslim apologists have been citing my writings on theological paradox to support their arguments against the doctrine of the Trinity, especially in debate with Christian apologists. Since that’s directly contrary to my own views and arguments, I thought I should issue a statement to clear up any confusions.

In Part I of my book Paradox in Christian Theology, I argue that the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity is paradoxical in the sense that it presents us with an apparent contradiction. However, I reject the conclusion that the Trinity is really contradictory. In Part II of the book, I develop and defend an epistemological account according to which (1) the doctrine of the Trinity is a merely apparent contradiction and (2) Christians can be rational in believing the doctrine, on the basis of divine revelation, despite its paradoxical nature.

It is true that I claim (in PCT and elsewhere) that there is currently no satisfactory solution to the so-called logical problem of the Trinity. (That’s why we find it paradoxical!) But it doesn’t follow that there cannot be a solution to the logical problem, or that the doctrine of the Trinity is illogical, incoherent, or nonsensical. In fact, since I deny that there are any true contradictions, I think there must be a solution to the logical problem, even if it turns out that that God alone can comprehend it. I don’t argue that we will never understand how the doctrine of the Trinity is logically consistent. Perhaps we will gain that understanding in the eschaton; I can’t rule that out. All I argue in my book is that there are good rational grounds for believing the doctrine of the Trinity even in the absence of a satisfactory solution to the logical problem. In other words, it’s rational for Christians to believe that there is a solution, even if we can’t specify that solution. (Compare: it’s rational for physicists to believe that there is a solution to the apparent conflict between relativity theory and quantum mechanics, even though no one has figured out that solution.)

All this to say, my book taken as a whole is a defense of rational belief in the Trinity. If you encounter Muslim apologists citing it against the doctrine of the Trinity, you should know that they are not representing my views and arguments responsibly. They’re citing my work selectively and not giving the full story and context. That’s rather like the critic who quotes some New Testament scholar saying “There have been tens of thousands of changes to the text!” without also mentioning that most of those changes are trivial and make no difference to the meaning of the text.