-----Original Message----- From: Michael Sudduth [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, February 03, 2003 9:36 AM To: Dr. Kelly James Clark Subject: Re: Van Til and the Knowledge of the Unbeliever Hi Kelly, While I'm no Van Tilian, and I have certainly had my share of confrontations with folks on the Van Til list, I'm not persuaded that your criticisms of Van Til are all that plausible, at least not as you have developed them thus far. Since I'll be discussing Van Til in one of the chapters in my book in progress and I'm pressed on time at the moment, I won't get into specific exegetical issues here and try to argue against your contention that Van Til's view implies that unbelievers have no knowledge. My main goal here is simply to present reasons for your consideration as to why you haven't adequately argued that his view has the implication in question. I. Knowledge and the Truth Condition In your post to the Van Til list, you wrote: "The point is, truth is a requirement of knowledge. So if the unbeliever cannot have an "even true interpretation of the snake", then they cannot know anything." It seems to me that a crucial issue here is what exactly Van Til *meant* by "true interpretation." Did he understand this phrase in such a way that it entails that unbelievers possess no true beliefs? In your post, you provide two possibilities, only one of which implies that unbelievers have no knowledge. But as far as I can see you really don't *argue* that Van Til understood the phrase this way. What is lacking here I think is a careful engagement with the relevant texts and a consideration of the philosophical background of Van Til's thought in order to ascertain what Van Til meant by the phrase in question. But I don't see that you done much here, at least not in your post to the Van Til list, your paper-response to Oliphint, or your contributions in the *Five Views* book. If we can't ascertain with any degree of likelihood what Van Til meant by this phrase, the reasonable thing is to be agnostic about whether his claims have the implications you attribute to them. Of course, as you note, Van Til himself claims that unbelievers *do* have knowledge. So perhaps we have better reason to deny that the implication you suggest holds than to affirm it and accuse Van Til of contradiction. This would be the charitable interpretation. II. Lack of Justification In the *Five Views* book, you wrote: "Van Til and his followers often claim that Van Til never claims this. The problem is that the conclusion - that unbelievers cannot know anything - follows fairly simply from their analysis of knowledge and the disparaging remarks they make about the unbeliever's lack of justification due to faulty reasoning." You bring this up again in your post to the Van Til list, though here you are directing your comments specifically to Frame: "Frame's views of justification imply that unbelievers cannot know anything because they lack justification (which requires explicit faith in Jesus, according to Frame). If a person is not justified in her belief that p, a person cannot know that p." I think the argument you are suggesting here and in the *Five Views* book, is problematic for several reasons. Why suppose that by virtue of the unbeliever's presuppositions (faulty as they may be), the unbeliever is *unjustified*? Unjustified in what sense? And unjustified in believing *what* exactly? I think the argument at best needs more unpacking if it is to have any show of plausibility. It is true that Van Til held that the unbeliever's worldview, or his presuppositions qua unbeliever, cannot *account* for the epistemic efficacy of our cognitive faculties. In this sense, the unbeliever qua unbeliever cannot *justify* his epistemological commitments. Indeed, on Van Til's view, *if* the unbeliever's worldview were true, then knowledge would not be possible. Of course, part of Van Til's point is that the world in fact is not as the unbeliever takes it to be, and this why knowledge is possible. Moreover, one of the implications of the doctrine of antithesis is that the unbeliever himself operates with an antithesis, a dichotomy - for instance - between his metaphysical naturalism and his positive theoretical and/or practical epistemological commitments. There is a conflict here, and so - as Van Tilians say - since the unbeliever's epistemological commitments can only be justified within the framework of Christian theism, the unbeliever is living off "borrowed capital." But how exactly should we understand all of this? The first thing to note here is that this *logical* point about the alleged incompatibility between (a) the unbeliever's worldview qua unbeliever and (b) his state of knowing (as well his taking himself to have knowledge or to be justified) does not entail that the unbeliever is unjustified to believe the second-order proposition that his cognitive faculties are reliable, valid, or epistemically efficacious, at least not under most theories of epistemic justification. After all, like the evolutionary naturalist, perhaps he doesn't see the connection between the relevant propositions. And depending on what constraints one places on defeaters, it isn't clear that he gets a defeater for his second-order beliefs about the positive epistemic status of his first-order beliefs. Or perhaps the idea is that if the unbeliever *were* correct, say, in his metaphysical naturalism, then he *would* be unjustified to believe that knowledge is possible. But of course this is not the case. So I think it is far from obvious that the unbeliever is unjustified in holding these higher-order beliefs. Of course, perhaps it follows that the unbeliever cannot engage in the *activity* of justifying his epistemological beliefs, at least not successfully, since his worldview cannot properly account for them. But it wouldn't necessarily follow from this that he cannot *be* justified in these beliefs. All one needs to do is pull a Reid out of the Van Tilian hat. Perhaps God has so designed us that these epistemological commitments are basic beliefs. So we are immediately justified to believe them. In that case, the unbeliever's inability to successfully engage in the activity of justifying these beliefs by argument does not entail that he is unjustified in holding these beliefs. Indeed, in that case, one might suppose that these epistemological commitments give the unbeliever a defeater for his metaphysical naturalism. At all events, it certainly doesn't follow in any obvious way that the unbeliever is unjustified in his second-order beliefs about knowledge or the epistemic efficacy of his cognitive faculties simply because some of his metaphysical presuppositions clash with the truth of these second-order beliefs. For the same reason the unbeliever can hold justified beliefs that presuppose the validity of causality, even if his metaphysical presuppositions are such that they cannot justify or account for the law of causality. Indeed, in the *Five Views* book, Frame asserts this contradiction between the unbeliever's worldview qua unbeliever and the unbeliever's de facto *commitments* that allegedly presuppose the truth of theism. But again, why conclude from the fact that there is this contradiction, that certain beliefs are unjustified? I can't see how this follows from anything Frame or Van Til says. Moreover, I suspect this last point is connected to a lack of specification in your argument regarding *justification.* You don't explain what you mean by "justification," or what plausible conditions may be imposed upon the instantiation of the concept. For this reason, there is a sense in which it isn't clear what you are denying. The necessity of justification as a condition of knowledge depends in large part on how one understands the concept of epistemic justification. Since this is left unclear, the deductions there from are doubtful. But even if we supposed that the inability of the unbeliever to justify his epistemological commitments, or that the clash between these commitments and his worldview entailed that he was not justified in believing that his cognitive faculties are reliable, it would not follow that the unbeliever was unjustified in his other first-order beliefs, at least not if there are no higher-level requirements for justification. I can't see that it is very plausible to suppose that to be justified in believing that p I must also be justified in believing that I am justified in believing that p. The same thing holds true if we replace "justified" with "knowledge" here, unless of course you are assuming some radical form of internalism that involves higher-level requirements. (Of course those of us who are dubious about such accounts of justification are not likely to find such an argument persuasive). So perhaps the unbeliever cannot justify his epistemic beliefs or claims. Perhaps he is not justified to hold such beliefs. But it doesn't follow from this alone that he lacks knowledge. If it did, just about everyone would be in the same boat because most people, Christian or otherwise, cannot successfully justify their epistemic beliefs, unless one is being considerably liberal as to what counts as justifying a belief. Finally, it isn't clear where Van Til himself stood on the concept of justification, especially since he wrote before the JTB theory of knowledge came into prominence. So I think it is a bit unfair to Van Til to claim that *his* beliefs imply that unbelievers cannot know anything, as the derivation depends on assumptions about the nature of knowledge which have not been exegetically established to be Van Til's own. I realize that Frame uses the term justification (though how exactly is another question), but here is a situation where it would be prudent to distinguish between Van Til's views and the views of some of his commentators. III. The Necessity of Presupposing God A final point. In the *Five Views* book, you state: "Presuppositionalists, in general, seem to assume that, lacking explicit knowledge of God, we cannot know things" (p. 258). They may *seem* to assume this, but is this really so? Where is the support for the notion that "generally" presuppositionalists think this? While presuppositionalists maintain that everyone does have a knowledge of God (i.e., a sensus divinitatis), it is wholly unclear that the presuppositionalist position requires that this knowledge be *explicit* in all people. That this knowledge is not explicit may indeed be a consequence of the fact that the knowledge is suppressed by sin, a theme that is central to Van Tilianism. In that case, perhaps this knowledge is in some sense, *implicit.* The notion of a universal, implicit knowledge of God is certainly not an uncommon view in the history of philosophy. In fact, it appears to have been fairly popular among thinkers who would have been among Van Til's proximate intellectual predecessors (e.g., Strong, Harris). The idea strikes me as a plausible interpretation of Van Til. At any rate, one certainly needs to be alert to the fact that Van Til's position may be nuanced than you make it out to be. Now perhaps it appears that the Van Tilian is committed to the idea of an explicit knowledge of God as a necessary condition of knowledge generally because he contends that knowledge presupposes God. One might suppose that this implies that knowledge requires an awareness of or explicit belief in or acceptance of God. But "presupposing x" can be can be interpreted in various ways, some of which do not require the subject has formulated a proposition about x. One finds such uses in both Augustus Strong and Samuel Harris in the late nineteenth century. Van Til himself used the word "presupposition" in different ways, but I don't quite see why you have excluded the interpretation that Van Til had in mind the necessity of the *ontological fact* of God's existence for the possibility of knowledge. When you say "It does not follow that atheists must be aware of God's existence or submit to God's authority in order to know things" (*Five Views,* p. 258), I would think that many Van Tilians would agree with this, though they would add that human beings do at least have something like an implicit knowledge of God. In the light of the points raised above, I have reservations about the cogency of your arguments and the plausibility of your contention that Van Til's beliefs or views entail that unbelievers lack all knowledge. I just don't see that you have presented a very strong argument for this. The argument needs a lot more work. Now perhaps such an argument *can* be made. Indeed, perhaps your arguments as they stand have force against *some* Van Tilians. But I can't see that they hit their purported target, namely Van Til himself, or even Frame. I'm certainly not here to defend all Van Tilians, much less the notion that no Van Tilian is in the position of being logically committed to the view that unbelievers lack all knowledge. I'm fairly sure this is an entailment of the beliefs held by *some* Van Tilians. But it is easy to find philosophically incompetent devotees of just about any philosopher. But what about Van Til himself? What were his views? That's my question. And that's what I would expect to find in the arguments by anyone who makes claims about the implications of Van Til's views or beliefs. In addition to the distinctions I have suggested above, you might want to take a look at the textual material and references presented by James Anderson under "Frequently Encountered Misconceptions" of Van Til's thought. http://www.vantil.info/articles/vtfem.html peace, Michael