The Advantages of History but None of its Risks

This appears to be the only picture of Van Harvey available. He's the one in the hat, I think.

The title of this piece is, I think, a pretty fair description of what faith, in the religious sense, gives a believer (I've paraphrased it from a better writer than me).

I've long been intrigued by faith, having failed to maintain it myself, and puzzled over the Catholic definition of 'certain' faith. There is always, it seems to me, a fundamental ambiguity at the heart of anyone's faith: it is based on historical events but it refuses to countenance their non-occurrence.

Weird Catholic leaning blog First Things recently posted a piece by Thomas Cothran (an attorney who lives in Lexington, Kentucky, so there) called Against Faith in Faith. He rails against a naive depiction of faith:

Confronted with inadequate evidence for the deeper truths of life, one must conjure up a commitment to ideas for which the subjective act of faith can be the only ground, and one must believe not only in the content of faith but in the faith-act itself. 

This is the faith described by Dennett, Dawkins and Harris, he says, and also professed, embarrassingly, by Christians too (well done for admitting that). Indeed, as I have discussed, William James defends a pragmatic faith against Clifford. Incidentally, for (another!) good discussion of James and Clifford, see this and this from Massimo Pigliucci.

But Cothran wants to draw a different picture of faith:

Far from posing a threat to one’s faith, knowledge reinforces it: the more reason one has to believe in God’s providence, the more readily the believer entrusts himself to God. 

But if one has more reason to believe, that is not faith, but reason. He then attempts to objectify his faith:

The knowledge of faith, rather than relying on the outmoded theories of knowledge where the mind merely represents external objects, is participatory; the act of contemplating the things of God partakes in God’s own Trinitarian activity. The knowledge of faith is not therefore “subjective” in the sense that it happens primarily in the believer, but is “objective” because the believer participates in the eternal activity of the object of faith; the believer’s subjective faith is therefore secondary and derivative.

I have no idea what phrases like "the act of contemplating the things of God partakes in God’s own Trinitarian activity" and "the believer participates in the eternal activity of the object of faith" mean, but Cothran appears to be trying to remove subjectivity from faith. Well, that would be nice, but baffling sentences do not by themselves give faith objectivity. Sadly, Cothran has more in the bank:

The tacit participatory metaphysics in which Christian faith becomes intelligible emphasizes that Christianity is not an abstract system or an existential human possibility, but the ontological union of God and man in time and history through the recapitulative activity of the incarnate Word of God.

Yikes. It's hard to believe someone wanting to make themselves understood put these words together like this. He ends by trying to set aside a faith that is different, I presume, from the faith attacked by Dennett, Dawkins and Harris:

One must attack (or defend) Christian faith where it may actually be found, not in the mind as an idea but as a form of life realized in the historical community established by Jesus Christ.

It's a No true Scotsman defence of faith. But, as he himself pointed out, the problem is that many profess the version of faith he dismisses, so any attack on that version is perfectly justifiable, and there is no 'must' about what is attacked or defended. In any case, his version of faith appears to be incomprehensibly post modern.

I'm currently reading Van Harvey's The Historian & the Believer, which, while exploring the tension between history and belief, includes a chapter on dialectical theology's attempts to set aside faith (in a similar fashion to Cothran) from the attack of the 'rational robots' of the enlightenment. In fact, I find Cothran's blurb reminiscent of Bultmann's, Barth's and Tillich's. Consider this analysis of Barth's view of faith, by Van Harvey:

Faith is...the realisation of the abysmal gulf separating man from God. It is the recognition of the "qualitative distinction between time and eternity." Consequently, faith is closely allied to, if it is not identical with, a recognition of the ambiguity and questionableness of life. (p.132)

I don't begin to understand this, but that, of course, may be my failing. Barth appears to accept the ambiguity that I find troubling, but it's not clear how that helps the situation. In discussing the tension between the historical reality of the resurrection and belief in it, Van Harvey quotes Bultmann as arguing that the Christian faith proclaims to man:

...that in what happened then, however it might have been, God has acted, and through this act of God the Word of divine judgement and forgiveness which now confronts him is authenticated. The meaning of that act of God is nothing other than the actual establishment of this Word - the proclamation of this Word itself. No historical science can control or confirm or reject this affirmation. For that this Word and this proclamation are God's acts stands on the other side of historical observation. (p.143)

Orrly? How convenient that one's beliefs lie "the other side of historical observation". Talking about Tillich's notion of absolute faith, Harvey says:

What seems remarkable about the description of absolute faith is its apparent formlessness, although Tillich, like Bultmann and the early Barth, understands it to be the way of talking about the cruciform structure of faith, the self-surrender and negation of everything finite which brings one into confrontation with the Absolute. (p.147)

(note that the goal appears to be transcendence from our poor finite existence to some absolute infinite, er, existence, or knowledge, perhaps)

Now, I don't begin to understand dialectical theology (as is surely plain), but in Harvey's analysis of Barth's defence of faith in the face of facts, I think he puts his finger on the issue that drives me mad about much apologetic writing: its special pleading (and I quote extensively from the book because I think it's worth it):

To say that Barth's view is an arbitrary one is to say, first of all, that he makes historical assertions on the basis of faith which he then claims no historian has the right to assess. He claims that the bodily resurrection is a guarantee that it was Jesus who appeared to the disciples and yet insists that no historian can, in the nature of the case, assess this claim. He insists that the resurrection was physical and appeals to the story of Thomas in the Fourth Gospel to prove it but deals with none of the numerous critical questions concerning the historical veracity of that Gospel or the function miracle stories have in it. He appeals to the forty-day tradition and the empty-tomb stories but in no way answers the many questions biblical critics have raised about these stories. Consequently, Barth uses the stories to argue for the historical nature of the events but concedes that the stories cannot, from a historical standpoint, stand any critical scrutiny. this leaves the believer in the position of accepting an argument the warrants of which are historical in type but which are, at the same time, confessed to be contradictory and "imaginative-poetic." It leaves the inquirer in the position of having to accept the claims of alleged eyewitnesses or risk the state of being a faithless man, Insofar as the believer wants to be historian, or the historian a believer, he has to surrender the autonomy of critical judgement. Barth, in effect, claims all the advantages of history but will assume none of its risks. (p.157-158)

Spot on, and I would say that many apologists and believers do the same - they are inconsistent in their application of critical judgement. Of course, we all are inconsistent, at times, but it is surely our duty in such weighty matters to eliminate such inconsistencies, and rule out subjective influence where we can.

To sum up, the faith claims of believers are a non-starter without the assumption of rules that they then go on to deny, because those rules threaten their faith. It's a vicious circle, and I don't think obscure redefinitions of faith break that circle, but simply twist it. Cothran's 'historical community' is confirmed by rules that rule out the events that spawned it.

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Polkinghorne's Motivated Belief

John Polkinghorne has written a piece for the regular Credo column in the Times, called Motivated Belief and the Stringent Search for Truth. Polkinghorne is notable for being a physicist *and* an Anglican priest. From what I’ve read of his apologetics, his arguments for a god stem from such things as the intelligibility of the universe and fine tuning. I find these arguments very *unpersuasive*, but it’s apparent that Polkinghorne thinks that a creator god based universe makes more sense to him than no creator. To a limited degree, I think that one could *understand* how someone might arrive at this (erroneous, IMO) conclusion. And not being a physicist, I obviously have to bow to his greater understanding of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. But at best this only gets one to a deist view of reality.

What is more baffling, and, I would say, unforgivable, is how he can be a Christian theist and claim it is based on the evidence. So it is noteworthy that he writes about his ‘motivated belief’ in the article.

He starts:

If being a scientist teaches you anything it is surely that the world is surprising, often behaving in strange ways that we could not have anticipated. Who would have thought in 1899 that something could sometimes behave like a wave (spread out and flappy) and sometimes like a particle (a little bullet)? Yet that is how light has been found to behave, and physicists have come to understand how this seemingly oxymoronic combination is possible.

This sort of experience means that the instinctive question for a scientist to ask is not "Is it reasonable?", as if we knew beforehand the shape that rationality had to take, but rather "What makes you think that might be the case?"

I think this is true; we cannot know what’s unusual if we don’t know *everything*; we don’t have a full knowledge of the workings of the universe, so we cannot judge if something is unreasonable in the sense that it is improbable. Whatever the evidence suggests, should be considered. At least, I think that’s what he’s saying. Then

That is a question at once more open and more demanding. It does not try to specify beforehand the form that an acceptable answer has to take, but if you are to persuade me that some unexpected possibility is true, you will have to offer evidence in support of your claim. Science trades in the search for truth attainable through motivated belief.

I quite like that. One must follow the *evidence*.

So does religion.

Not so much. Many theists *don’t* have ‘motivated belief’, in the sense of *evidenced* belief, for religion, but faith. Still, good to hear that JP has good reason for his belief. Let's hear it:

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Jesus Christ is that we have all heard of Him.

Eh? He puts forward an argument that one should believe in JC because he’s famous. Well, I do think this counts a *little* as evidence for his position (many wouldn’t). But it is *very* little; otherwise one would be obliged to also believe in every other famous religion – an impossible position to put oneself in. But I'm prepared to give them a few brownie points for having a persistent meme.

All the writers of the New Testament believe that what happened was his Resurrection from the dead the first Easter Day. Can we today believe this strange counterintuitive claim?

Hume says 'No'; what does JP say?

Looking for the motivations for this belief requires a careful and scrupulous assessment of the evidence.

Good, I would say so too.

Here I can do no more than sketch the considerations that persuade me to bet my life on accepting the claim.

Never mind, get on with it.

The New Testament offers two lines of evidence. One line is the appearance stories, strangely varied, yet with a surprisingly persistent theme, that initially it was hard to recognise the risen Christ. I believe that this is a genuine historical reminiscence, indicating that these are not just a bunch of made-up tales constructed by a variety of early Christians.

This doesn’t seem to qualify as evidence to me. I can’t go to someone else and say, ‘John Polkinghorne thinks the surprisingly persistent theme of the appearance stories in the gospels means it's a genuine historical reminiscence’ – there’s your evidence. After all, that person might say, hey, Bart Ehrman and others have demonstrated how after the fact adjustments to the texts have tried to enforce some kind of persistent theme. And *Ehrman* has studied the texts more than JP, I would think.

Then there are the empty-tomb stories. If these were just concocted, why make women the discoverers when they were regarded as unreliable witnesses in the ancient world?

Why do they need to be concocted? Bodies can be removed from tombs without resurrection. How many times in history have empty tombs been found? Lots. How many times was it a result of resurrection? None, I would say; JP would say once. I’ve *no* idea why, if one bases it on *evidence*.

Clearly there is much more that needs to be said...

Yes.

...but I hope I have said enough to show that a scientist, open to unexpected beliefs but stringent in demanding adequate motivation for them, can believe in the Resurrection of Jesus, the fundamental pivot on which Christian belief turns.

No, and one cannot help but conclude that this ‘evidence’ is not why John Polkinghorne believes. Two very sorry looking bits of exegesis do not make a compelling case. A *stringent* search for truth is not at all evident.

I think he’s missed an opportunity here, because it would be nice to know what does lead a brilliant scientist like Polkinghorne to believe in Christian Theism. I guess he wasn’t able to tell us in this short article. Pity.

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Hume and Probability

Response to edulike comment on RD.NET, re the historicity of the resurrection:

You are taking the stance that "if there is any doubt, because of the incredible nature of the events depicted, then I will not believe they occurred until I have examined every shred of evidence".

*Absolutely* not.

Quite the contrary, I am open to the possibility that the events occurred. Because of the timescales we necessarily don't have the sort of evidence that could *prove* matters either way. So what do we do? As is often the case, David Hume provides the answer:

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event. In other cases, he proceeds with more caution: he weighs the opposite experiments: he considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines, with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgement, the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments, where they are opposite, and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence. (Of Miracles)

We have no choice, if we are being scientific, but to base our determination of the historical events based on what is most likely; *probability* has to be used. This is how all good historians *must* operate. This is not to exclude other explanations as *possible*; there are any number of possible explanations for stories we hear. What we are trying to establish is which is the most *reasonable* explanation.

So what is the effect of this principle? It is often stated as 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence', and *must* be the way to proceed, to be scientific.

You say:

Hence there are no words like certainty and probability in my reasoning.

Well, exclude certainty, perhaps, but if you don't use probability you are simply not acting scientifically. Now that may be fine for you, since you don't think you can answer this scientifically; but it's clear we *can* evaluate the *evidence* scientifically, and I can demonstrate your position is *less reasonable* than mine. Not *unreasonable*, necessarily, but less reasonable. You are adopting the NOMA principle beloved of scientists who believe; cognitive dissonance by another name :-).

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