No SR from GR (Certainty and the Bible)

In a previous post I raised problems for Gangadean and Anderson's view that maximal consequences (of unbelief in God) requires maximal clarity (regarding God's existence). The thrust of that post was that there are a number of other beliefs that most Christians (including Gangadean and his kin) would accept to be essential for spiritual life (or salvation), that do not seem maximally clear. Thus, the edict that maximal consequences imply maximal clarity would seem to be in tension with Gangandean's own views (unless of course they want to argue that all that is necessary for spiritual life is maximally clear).

That the bible is the word of God (special revelation) is a central part of the Christian faith. Gangadean affirms that the bible is the word of God and further that it is infallible, wholly true, and the means by which the the holy spirit leads the church into all truth.  It isn't clear whether he thinks that there is some special portion of scripture that one must accept in order to realize spiritual life. In conversation I have heard Anderson and others speak as if spiritual life is not a binary notion, but rather something that obtains as a matter of degrees. Other times I have heard them speak of spiritual life as if some are in fact, spiritually dead (at one time all people) and then have come to be awakened by God's grace---which makes me think it might be a binary matter. Perhaps it's both binary and degreed (there's a number of propositions which you are required to know if you are going to be spiritually alive, but after that threshold, you can increase in spiritual life based on what you come to understand). Whatever the view, let's say that some part of scripture (or knowing some portion of scripture) is necessary for spiritual life. So one might think that if this is the case, and if maximal consequences implies maximal clarity, then it is going to be maximally clear that scripture is the word of God (at least some portion of it). In fact, from what I understand Gangadean makes an even stronger claim that we can come to know that the bible (as a whole) is in fact the word of God (or special revelation). This has to do with the fact that there is more than one holy book purporting to be revelation from God. Thus any thinking person will need to work through the epistemological issue of how one knows when one such book is really the word of God.

Now I want to present an argument that one cannot be absolutely certain that the bible (as a whole) is the word of God. That is to say, there is no sound deductive argument proving that the bible is actually the word of God. My point is not to call the bible into question so much as to show that Gangadean, given his idiosyncratic epistemological views, cannot affirm that he knows (as he defines it) that the bible (the canon as a whole) is the word of God. I hope that this gestures towards a reductio against those that want to affirm that it is rational to both believe the bible is the word of God and accept Gangadean's quirky epistemological views.

It will be important to keep in mind that Gangadean believes the following claims.

1) Knowing some proposition p, is equivalent to having a maximally justified, true belief in p. In short, you know something if and only if, you truly believe it and could not possibly be wrong about it.

2) A person can know (with certainty) that the bible (as a whole) is in fact, special revelation from God. This of course, means that one can know (with certainty) that the bible contains only true propositions.

Now the bible contains a plethora of claims. The bible makes mentions of kings and kingdoms, of persons that lived to be hundreds of years old, of Jonah living in the belly of a whale, of the dead rising at Jesus' command, of water turning into wine and the red sea splitting. It also includes detailed genealogies and testifies of the Christ being crucified for our sins and rising again. It also presents claims about what is yet to occur, for instance, the imminent return of Christ. In short, there are number of historical and even future claims made by scripture. The question I want to raise is, what deductive argument can be given to confirm that all of these claims are actually true?

Gangadean essentially believes that using what we know from General Revelation (those claims that we can be certain about via the use of reason alone) we can deduce a criteria for special revelation, which we can then use to determine the clear winner among the available options. I am going to argue that this is simply not enough if one is after epistemic certainty.

The problem can be seen by considering how there is nothing we can deduce from General Revelation (hence forth, GR) to a claim like, "there was once a man named King David who defeated a giant Goliath." Now as I have written before, I doubt that we can know (on Gangadean's concept of knowledge) that the God of Theism exists, but I'm willing to grant that for the sake of argument here. Further, I'm going to grant even more of Gangadean's views (again not because I think they are correct, but for the sake of the point I'm trying to make, here). You see, Ganagdean takes it that we can know (with certainty) that God is infinitely just and infinitely merciful (that is to say, that there is a deductive argument or series of arguments from "Whatever is eternal is spirit" to "the eternal spirit is at least infinitely just and infinitely merciful." Further, Gangadean takes it that there are deductive arguments for the claim that we are in sin and that we need to be redeemed. Let's grant all of this (though they are highly contentious arguments). From this it is supposed that we can come up with a criteria by which we look at the various purported holy books and determine that the Bible must be the word of God. Whatever is in fact the the word of God must be entirely consistent with what we know from GR. For instance, it should affirm that there is only one God the creator, that man is in sin (fails to seek and know the clearly knowable God), and that God is infinitely just and merciful, and crucially it should explain just how infinite justice can be fulfilled in light of sin, while God's infinite mercy is exemplified (infinite justice cannot merely be set apart, but must be fully realized). Finally, the claim is that no other purported holy book, or parchment or whatever, besides the bible is able to satisfy all these conditions. Hence, the bible must exclusively be the true word of God.

This is a terrible argument. To reiterate, this is because the bible contains so much more in addition to what we can deduce from GR. Take again the claim about King David's existence and his defeat of the giant. This is not something that is deducible from GR. So what are we to make of such claims? What are we to make of all the stories in the old and new testament that do not logically follow from the aforementioned criteria? If we reduce the bible to merely an account of God, sin (and therein good vs. evil), justice and mercy, we lose a lot. We lose all those details from the various narratives, so much of the advice that the epistles provide about how to run a church, and the lessons we draw from the lives of various figures like David, Solomon, and the prophets of old. Further, what are we to make of the book of Revelation? Remember on Gangadean's account of knowledge, we can't know any of this stuff unless it is deducible from GR.

Now curiously, Gangadean's approach is that all of these additional claims in the bible are consistent with what we know in GR.  But this won't do. Consistency is too weak a relation between propositions. At the moment, it is raining outside. It is consistent with this fact that as a result I got wet. But it is equally consistent with the fact of rain outside that I did not get wet. What this shows us is that consistency doesn't rule out much. You can't know with certainty some proposition solely on the basis of the fact that it is consistent with a known proposition. There are any number of claims that are consistent with any given set of facts, and as my lame examples shows, some of these are going to be mutually exclusive. So to say that these additional claims in the bible are consistent with what we know in GR does not make them true (that simply doesn't follow). It is perfectly consistent with all of the assumptions we started with (that there is one God the creator that is infinitely just and merciful, that there is sin, evil, the need for redemption, etc) that there once lived a King named David, that defeated a giant, but our starting assumptions are equally consistent with the claim that there was no such King. So consistency with what is known in GR is necessary but not sufficient for claims being truly the word of God.

A second worry has to do with the issue of the criteria of "the word of God". I stated earlier that on Gangadean's view, GR provides us with a certain kind of criteria by which we determine whether a book is really the word of God. One crucial issue on Gangadean's view is that whatever is in fact the word of God must present how infinite justice is satisfied by infinite mercy (on the Christian picture, this is the son of God dying for the sins of the world). Now we run into a problem here. Ask yourself, "how would I know whether some narrative explains how infinite justice is satisfied by infinite mercy?" That is, when you read the bible, how can you know (with certainty) that Jesus dying for the sins of the world actually achieves both the instantiation of God's infinite justice and his mercy? This is something like the problem of criterion in epistemology. Philosophers ask how we can know what knowledge is. How will we know when we have the right theory, without already knowing what it is? Similarly, how can we know that in fact, the bible's account is the correct account of the satisfaction of divine justice and mercy? Don't you have to already know what you're looking for in order to recognize it as such? And if you already know what it takes for divine justice to be satisfied by divine mercy, then you no longer need special revelation to show you.

In response one might argue that what we know from GR can provide us a way to deduce everything in the bible---and hence all the contents of the bible are entailed by what is known from GR. In fact, this is exactly what Gangadean needs for certainty that the bible as a whole is the word of God. Unfortunately, it's false. You simply can't deduce the kinds of empirical claims (e.g., that their existed a Jesus of Nazareth, or much of Paul's teachings that go beyond GR, or the stories that line the old and new testament). You may have good reasons to believe it, but it won't be via a deductive proof. So on Gangadean's view of knowledge, you can't know the bible as the word of God.

In speaking with Anderson about these issues, he essentially argued that what is known from GR is found in the bible alone. This gives us proof that the bible, but no other text, is the word of God. He said that this was "enough" of a test. This is truly a puzzling response!

Remember we wanted a deductive proof that the bible is the word of God. That is to say, a way of being absolutely certain that the bible (as a whole) is the one and only word of God. Even if Anderson is right that the relevant details from GR are found only in the bible and not in any other texts, we still don't get a proof that the rest of the contents of the bible are true. Again consistency is not enough. Consistency is necessary but not sufficient for this task.

And it gets even worse for Anderson and company. His response requires that he first prove that there is no other holy book that gets the relevant details of GR right, but he would have to show that no other such book (that will diverge on other details form the bible) is even possible. This is an incredibly strong claim and I don't see how he can motivate it.  Putting all of these considerations together, we have an extremely idiosyncratic view of knowledge which requires epistemic certainty (ultimately, we know only those things we can deduce). But the contents of bible as a whole cannot be deduced. So we can't know that the contents of the bible as a whole are true.