From GR to SR: A Conversation with Anderson

A number of years ago, while I was still a member of Westminster Fellowship, I had written a paper which I sent to Gangadean, Anderson and a few others in the congregation which challenged the idea that we could use reason alone to determine that the bible was special revelation (with anything like certainty). You can find the essence of that paper summed up in this post. It was this paper that essentially got the ball rolling for my eventual dismissal from the congregation.

To this day, I have yet to hear Gangadean's response to it because he refused to engage with me about it until I had come to affirm what he deemed to be "more basic things". Mind you, I soon learned that harboring any amount of sincere doubt with respect to these "basic things" was incompatible with "affirming" them in Gangadean's mind. That was grounds for dismissal from his congregation as well ending our conversations. Though this is speculative, I suspect that this move might be a strategy that Gangadean employs when he encounters questions for which he's got no answers. That is, by finding a way (in my eyes, illegitimately) to peg his interlocutor as a "reason-denier" or as denying the "more basic" he can forever avoid addressing trenchant objections. Of course, he presupposes that any amount of doubt in relation to what he thinks are the "most basic" things, makes conversation useless, which is a presupposition he never bothers to defend. So while he would say that he had sufficient answers to my objections about how we could know with deductive certainty that the bible was special revelation, he managed never to tell me what those were.

Additionally, I discussed my paper with a few others at the church during that time and they for the most part had no clue how to address it. There was one long-time member (who I took to be very knowledgeable of the church's positions) who, in response to my worries, stated that certainty wasn't possible or necessary when it came to determining the bible as special revelation, which was essentially to concede my point. What this person failed to see was that such a concession raised serious issues for the need for clarity as it concerns "more basic" things. I've discussed this before. The basic idea is that according to most formulations of Christianity, belief in God is necessary, but insufficient for avoiding spiritual death (after all the bible claims that even the demons in hell believe that God exists; see James 2:19). The non believer isn't merely held responsible for unbelief in God, but also must accept the work that Christ has done on the cross for the atonement of their sins. Further, Gangadean accepts that maximal consequences (spiritual death) requires maximal clarity. That means that everything that is required for spiritual life should be maximally clear. And it's hard for me to think that on Gangadeanianism, the belief that a person named Jesus lived without sin, was crucified for our sins, before rising again is unnecessary for spiritual life. But you don't get to such claims from reason alone (else, the bible or special revelation would be unnecessary for salvation).

Anderson on the other hand attempted to engage with the issue more directly and seems to have a different view than the previously mentioned Gangadeanian. I mention these differences because I think his people are pretty unsure of what the official view of the church is (i.e., what Gangadean's view is) or at least this was the case at the time. Given how cagey Gangadean was with me regarding the issue, this is what you might expect. At any rate, I've included my conversation with Anderson below in its entirety. As you'll see, Anderson admits that perhaps much of the contents of the bible cannot be deduced from general revelation. His claim though is that this isn't actually a problem for coming to know (with certainty) that the bible, in its entirety, is special revelation (i.e., the word of God). What he seems to be doing is taking the canon as a whole--which is to presuppose that it's a singular book to begin with. But that won't do because he doesn't deny the canonization process. Indeed he believes that the canonizers used at least something like the test of consistency in order to do so. We don't get into this in the featured conversation, but Anderson includes it in his book, The Clarity of God's Existence. He writes,

A book that claims divine origin, or a prophet who claims to have special revelation, and yet communicates a message that contradicts what is known of God from general revelation, cannot actually be special revelation from God (6).  

Note that logical consistency with general revelation provides us only with a necessary condition for a claim or text counting as genuine special revelation. But we don't yet have the sufficient conditions. In other words, consistency with known truths, is a minimal kind of test for veracity. At best, when something is consistent with what we already know, we can only determine that it's possibly true (or not necessarily false), but we don't know yet whether it's actually true. I've noted all of this before in this post. So there must be additional criteria (i.e., the jointly sufficient conditions for something to be special revelation), but Anderson seemed to have trouble articulating what that is in our conversation. I certainly could have done a better job and pressing this point more precisely, but Anderson is a smart guy, and I suspect he knew exactly what was at issue. At the very end, Anderson seems to get defensive and then merely reassert the very thing in question, so I didn't pursue it any further. In my paper that Anderson and I are discussing, I talked about Abraham and how he could ascertain (via reason alone and with certainty) that God was truly speaking to him when he commanded him to leave Ur, and to take Isaac to the mountain to sacrifice him, and then again not sacrifice him and to sacrifice the ram instead. I then suggested that we are in no better epistemic position than he is as it concerns many of the claims in the bible.

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OA: I think a lot of the issue about GR to SR will be in the meaning of words like "consistent with" and "follows from" and "inferred from". Could it have been inferred ahead of time that God would call Abraham to go West and not East? I don't think the requirement is that each such fact or command is to be determined to be consistent and derived somehow from Gen 1-3. The claim is that humans, in sin, could not originate a theistic document at all, nor one that gets it right about God's justice and mercy. So the important things to test, for Abraham, are the recognition of Ur as in sin and idolatry, that the call is from God the Creator, and that redemption comes through sacrifice. The same is true of the comments you made about David. The origin of scripture is divine due to the total depravity of humans in sin, so that the content of scripture cannot be mimicked by the idolaters in Ur. Nor is the content of scripture completely derivable from GR in that Abraham could not derive that he would be called to go West and not East, North, or South.

J: I appreciate your thoughts and for your taking the time to read my paper. It seems to me that determining the bible as SR requires much more than it being a theistic document since it includes all sorts of claims about the world (and beyond) including but not limited to purportedly historical facts. As I address in my paper, we could presuppose the bible as a single unit and so conclude the entire thing to be genuine SR on the basis of it getting some things right, but that would be an unwarranted presupposition. Further, I raise the issue that there is something like the problem of criteria regarding how it is that we would recognize a genuine case of divine justice and mercy being reconciled. Could we know it when we saw it without having previous knowledge of what it must be like? Further, even if the bible has the "right" account of how God's justice is satisfied by his mercy, again we cannot simply affirm all of the bible as SR this is because the bible contains more claims than simply that God the creator exists and that he provides the sacrifice (his incarnated son) to atone for our sins. And even if the rest of the bible is consistent with the two above themes, it need not necessarily follow, (i.e., the details aren't the only possible ones consistent with these themes) which means we fall short of certainty.

Interestingly, you said that what was important for Abraham "is to recognize that the call was from God" but this is a point that I take issue with in the paper. I am arguing that I don't see how Abraham or anyone for that matter could ever recognize that God is speaking or giving SR to them. That the contents are "consistent with" what is known in GR is not a strong enough relation to provide epistemic certainty.

OA: I did see those claims in your paper but I didn't think you'd established anything with them. Theism is enough. That's the point of 'origin'. In the unregenerate state humans could not produce a theistic text. There are no theistic texts besides sr and those influenced by it. Abraham would have the account coming down to him of creation, fall, redemption, the flood, and babel. He could rely on these because of their affirmation of God, and the relation of moral and natural evil, his own call fits into that context. The details are reliable in that the message is from God and could not be otherwise given the fallen condition. So we put together what is known from gr, plus origin, content, and context and there isn't a problem. There is no problem of the criterion because we know what justice and mercy are so we know if each is satisfied.

J: You seem to presuppose or rather assume that the text (the bible) should be taken as a whole in all of its details. If so, then what grounds have you for that? If not, then the fact that it contains theistic details (that may be in line with what is known in GR) would not be enough. You wrote, "The details are reliable in that the message is from God..." But again we can't simply assume all of the bible is God's message in the first place.

Secondly, if we know apart from SR, how justice and mercy can be reconciled in virtue of knowing the nature of each, then what need have we for SR? Aren't we in a position to deduce it ourselves based on our understanding of each?

OA: I'm speaking of Abraham not our situation since you focus on him in your paper. When you shift to us your basically asking about how we can know the original text compared to existent texts. But the point I made still holds in that unregenerate man cannot produce a book like exodus or Isaiah. The details are given and preserved by God, unless you want to say given but not preserved.

We can know what both j and m are, but not that God would offer his only son.

J: I use Abraham as one particular instance of the more general problem of knowing with certainty, what is genuine SR (provided it isn't entailed by GR). Abraham is granted with what is purportedly SR, and so are we. In both cases a test is required to determine whether the message is really SR. I am not sensing the shift that you refer to or at least the weight of it.

Abraham knows some things from GR, but then is given commands that go beyond GR (I take this 'going beyond GR' to be entailed by the very notion of SR). But then how does he know he can trust what he hears or is "commanded" especially given the very particular nature of the purported revelation? You seem to think that a "generally theistic document" is enough, but this doesn't address non theistic parts of the text as a whole. I take this to be an issue for Abraham, any prophet of old, and us so long as the SR goes beyond claims that are clearly known or entailed by GR.

Also I don't really understand your point about what it would take to produce a book like Exodus or Isaiah. In the first place, what does regenerated or unregenerated have to do with it since if SR is "given by God" even the regenerate couldn't produce it. More importantly, again from where I stand those books cannot simply be presupposed to be SR and any part that is not merely Theistic or entailed by what is known from GR cannot be. If so, then I do not feel the weight of your point of the origin of them as a whole.

Per your note about j and m: how do we know that God's providing his only son is a sufficient means for justice satisfying mercy?

OA: There's a number of directions developing so I'm going to focus on one. What goes beyond gr is the redemptive content. He knows this is divinely inspired in that no human could give the theistic content. Maybe we don't agree on total depravity? The author is and must be God in that humans in sin couldn't get gr right in order to then add false additional content. The only examples are people who were influenced by sr like joseph smith.

J: What reasons do you have to believe that persons in total depravity "couldn't get gr right in order to then add false additional content" ? If you think it follows trivially from the very notion of "total depravity" that one cannot come to at least believe what is clear GR, then perhaps we do disagree about total depravity, at least as to what it means.

On that note, my first question is this: why can't a person be totally depraved and still come to at least believe true things, even a great many true things as a matter of epistemic luck? Secondly, it seems to me that one doesn't even need to believe (let a lone know in the strong sense) what is clear GR in order to be the explanation of a theistic document. Both may be remote possibilities (per our common sensibilities), but I see nothing incoherent about them.

OA: This reminds me of intelligent design. There is an irreducible complexity to information such that one does not get it right by luck. To believe many less basic things and in some sense be correct is not the same as understanding basic things. In total depravity a person starts out with the belief that all is eternal, the rest of ones beliefs follow from this. So such a person will not be able to write a redemptive theistic text.

J: Hmmm... Well, such a person need not 'understand' basic things in order to write a redemptive text. Also how can we be sure the analogy works? I don't see anything incoherent with the idea that a person gets lucky forming n true beliefs and then n+1, n+2...

OA: Interestingly, there is a sense in which the human author may not understand fully, but the actual author is God. That God will give redemptive revelation is seen in natural evil as a call back. So it does exist. What you'd need to show is that there are other competitors, and there aren't.

J: I'm not sure I agree that I would need to show actual competitors, since to demonstrably know per your view requires that it isn't even possible that there are other options out there.

OA: Your message reads antagonistic in that I thought we were sharing the burden of proof. I don't think its possible that there are other texts given the condition of man and the purpose of God.

JA: I'm sorry that you feel my message is antagonistic. We are in opposition with one another about some of these important views so perhaps it necessarily seems that way. I don't know how to share the burden of proof, perhaps you can suggest for me how. The thing is, you seem to be arguing for a position which involves categorical claims about the origin, and nature of SR. You said that you think it not "possible that there are other texts given the condition of man and the purpose of God" but I feel like I've presented coherent counter possibilities to your view that keep these presuppositions in mind. Taking for granted that man is totally depraved, and God has a particular nature such that he is both divinely just and merciful and even that he wants to redeem man, it still remains a possibility (despite how remote) that persons happen on true beliefs and pen a theistic document which may be right about some things, but not about others. When you asked me to provide you a viable alternative to the bible, I responded in the way that I did because even if I (or anyone else for that matter) cannot come up with one, it doesn't prove your position. All we may conclude is that I (and anyone else looking for an alternative and coming up short) lack awareness of such a text. Your view has an implicit modal component which consist of denying the very possibility of another theistic text existing. I am simply asking you to show me how you or anyone can know this?

OA: We know this BC humans cannot provide one even on accident, and God will provide one. So what we have isn't from humans and in error and is from God. Humans cannot accidently write one any more than one can form in the sand due to the wind. This is due to the human condition, the nature of meaningful texts, and the purpose of God.