Is Religious (Christian) Knowledge Legitimate?

Several conversations at Positive Liberty have, though, brought up some valuable questions. In particular is the question of the validity of religious knowledge. It is maintained by many that it is not legitimate knowledge because it is based on revelation. That charge deserves a fair and thorough response. My intention here to provide a substantive introduction to why religious (Christian) knowledge is legitimate. If it is legitimate, then the Christian can enter the public arena armed with the knowledge that his faith is not unsuited to that arena.

Is Christian knowledge legitimate? The first reaction raised against the legitimacy of Christian knowledge is that it is sourced in divine revelation. But what does that mean? It means, at a minimum, that divine revelation is not scientifically verifiable. It is not subject to the testing, repeating, reporting, etc., i.e., the demands of the ORV and empirical “scientific method” processes. It smacks (well, more than that, but the term will do for now) of the old verificationism and logical positivism of 60-70 years ago.

The ORV, the “(Once) Received View,” is the criteria control for verifying information. It amounts to an outline of consistent language controls for testing and outcome. This control dovetails with the scientific method which demands postulate, theory, test control, reportability, modification, and repeatability. These processes sound, to anyone in high school, like they are all that is needed to verify anything according to “science” and that anything not subject to these is “unscientific” and a matter of faith. (That is the first false dichotomy of the naturalist in U.S. primary and secondary education.)

This view assumes that all which is legitimate is measurable. Today’s science has rejected that assumption in favor of several corrections and parallel tools for assessment of information. One which is quite popular is the generalized uncertainty principle. Without going into what it is, what it does is provide an explanatory framework for some matters which are not measurable – randomness and contingency. In the end, even the scientists know that not everything fits into the neat little package that LP has demanded. Alas, this has not yet filtered down to deeper levels in education.

While this basic criticism of religious knowledge is easily dealt with, what remains is to establish a foundation for the legitimacy of religious knowledge. Is there warrant and justification for accepting divine revelation and its outcomes?

The outcomes of divine revelation are broad-based. The normal first-course attack from naturalists is to go after the particulars, like miracles. But let’s keep them in proper context – if the knowledge is legitimate then the understanding of the possibility, and probability, of miracles is acceptable. But even more basic is the matter of ethics. If religious knowledge is legitimate then religious ethics has a seat in discussion of public policy and other social concerns. If we establish the foundation for religious knowledge then the rest fall in place. Or at least they ought to.

Plantinga’s Warrant and Proper Function has become today’s foundational work for establishing the legitimacy of religious knowledge. Plantinga (as I understand the work) seems to be going for something akin to a reformed epistemology while employing the methodology of analytic epistemology. In this is work, as he says, is naturalistic.

His work is not only a positive assertion of religious knowledge. It also diminishes the character of naturalistic knowledge as being incapable of maintaining, at a minimum, a certainty as to its own exclusive grasp of knowledge. Bu the legitimacy of religious knowledge does not come in contrast to the failure of the naturalist, but that which stands behind it. The Christian appeal to history (documented miracles as evidence of divine intervention, and fulfilled prophecy) provide justification to the belief system.

The Christian faith has warrant (see Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief, chapter 8, p. 241ff) when faith is properly defined (p. 246). The faith makes its appeal to, again, history as well as the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual. The former provides a providential perspective on history while the latter provides an individual verification on the matter.[1]

In short, religious knowledge has at least as much justification as naturalistic beliefs. With this justification in hand, one who holds to a Christian belief system can properly bring matters of ethics to the public forum.

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[1] Being individual means to some that it is subjective, and suspect as such. It is subjective in that it is individualized, but it is not subjective in being limited to a single individual’s experience. The quantity of people having an experience, or belief, does not affect its legitimacy. Plantinga also appeals to the justified belief system that supported Piltdown Man (WPF, 187, note), and I would likewise point the reader to the brontosaurus as, for decades, a justified belief. Though held as true by many for an extended period of time, with some scientific support, that support ultimately failed. When the justification disappeared then so did the belief in the brontosaur. Sadly, though, the assumptions that allowed the creation of the brontosaur error remain intact.