Yesterday, I watched this podcast by James White where he criticized evidentialism in light of this crazy post where Cameron Bertuzzi claimed that "Zeitoun provides stronger evidence for Christianity than does the Bible." One thing James said that jumped out at me was that, "You don't prove the highest authority by an appeal to lesser authorities" (50:17). This is the crux of his argument against evidentialism and for presuppositionalism. Whenever we appeal to something external to the word of God for verification of God or the word of God, we are appealing to a lesser authority to prove a higher authority.
Presuppositionalists begin with the Bible. Since the Bible contains the words of God, and God is the highest authority, there isn't anything external to the Bible that can serve as evidence for the veracity of the Bible. Since God is the highest authority, he can't appeal to anything higher to guarantee the truth of his own words. He can only swear by himself (Hebrews 6:13). This is the heart of the presuppositional point of view.
I wonder, though, if this is all consistent with what James has said about the Canon. I remember James saying on a few occasions that we don't have a divinely inspired table of contents for the Bible. James rightly makes a distinction between what makes something part of the Canon, and how we recognize that something is part of the Canon. What makes it Canon is that God inspired it. I'm not entirely sure how James thinks we recognize what belongs in the Canon.
James thinks the scriptures are self-authenticating. I'm not sure what that means. If it means the Scriptures attest to their own truth, that's true. 2 Timothy 3:16 and various other places confirm the truth of scripture. But I've heard other people talk about "self-authentication" in a different way. They say it has more to do with the truth of scripture being self-evident. So you should be able to read the Bible and recognize that it's the word of God. I don't know for sure if that's what James thinks or not.
If that is what he thinks, then the Canon could be settled by appeal to self-authentication. I would be surprised, though, if James thought we could know the Canon that way. I don't know if anybody in the history of the church has attempted to come up with a table of contents for the Bible based merely on "recognizing" the voice of God when reading the scriptures.
So how do we know the Canon if not by appeal to self-authentication? It seems to me the only way to know is by looking at historical evidence. We look at evidence of who wrote the scriptures, how early they were, whether they cohere with the rest of what is accepted, what the early church said, etc. History is a fallible process, though. If it is through history that we know which books contain the word of God, then aren't we appealing to a lesser authority to prove a higher authority? I would love to know what James thinks about this. Since he doesn't think we have a divinely inspired table of contents, then doesn't he ultimately need a lesser authority to prove a higher authority? He needs some fallible evidence or line of reasoning in order to demonstrate which books contain the word of God and which don't. If James appeals to history as evidence for some particular book being the word of God, then he's being inconsistent with his claim that you can't prove a higher authority by appeal to a lesser authority.
There are a couple of issues I have with James' claim that you can't prove a higher authority by appeal to a lesser authority. One problem I have with this claim, at least as he applies it to evidentialism, is that an appeal to evidence is not an appeal to authority. An appeal to authority is when you take somebody's word for something because you believe that person knows the truth. You trust a doctor to diagnose you because they are experts in medicine. You take a lawyer's legal advice because they are experts in the law. A Catholic might take the Pope's word for some theological truth because they think the Pope knows what he's talking about. But that is not how appeal to evidence works. Appeals to evidence are not appeals to authority, so evidentialism does not amount to appealing to a lesser authority to prove a higher authority.
A second problem I have with James' claim is that it seems to confuse or conflate the reliability of how you came to believe the Bible is God's word with the reliability of the Bible itself. It is possible for the Bible to be 100% reliable without you knowing it with certainty. There is nothing inconsistent with believing the Bible to be the infallible word of God even though you're not 100% certain about it. I think James is just wrong to say you can't use a lesser authority (or less than certain evidence) to demonstrate a higher authority. I think James is making the same mistake he made when criticizing Cameron Bertuzzi for using Bayesian reasoning to evaluate the probability that the Papacy is legitimate, which I exlained in another post.
Interestingly, James appears to be making the same mistake that Catholic apologists make when they challenge protestants on Sola Scriptura. The Catholic argument assumes that before you can know that any book is an infallible source of authority, you need another infalliable source of authority to tell you so. You need one infallible source to tell you about another infallible source. Catholics have the infallibility of the Church and/or Tradition to tell them what books belong in the Canon, but since protestants reject the infallibility of the Catholic Church and Tradition, protestants supposedly can't know the Canon.
However, this idea that you need an infallible source to tell you what sources are infallible is clearly wrong, and it seems to me that both James White and Catholic apologists are inconsistent in this area. If you need an infallible source of authority to establish an infallible source of authority, then you're either going to face an infinite regress or resort to a circular line of reasoning. There's no escaping it.
Catholic apologists often go the circular route. They believe they need an infallible Church to tell them what books are the infallible word of God. But how do they know the Church is infallible? Well, they allgedly know that because of passages like 1 Timothy 3:15. And again, they know 1 Timothy is the infallible word of God because the Church says so.
Every time I've pointed out the circularity of this reasoning to Catholics, they have attempted to avoid circular reasoning by appealing to historical arguments for the authority of the Church. So they eventually have to resort to fallible evidence to establish an infallible source of authority. If you can establish an infallible source of authority by appealing to a fallible line of reasoning or assessment of evidence, then there's no reason you can't establish the list of infallible books by appeal to fallible evidence and reasoning.
Since James doesn't think there is an infallible table of contents for the Bible (i.e. there's not an infallible list of books that belong in the Bible), he has no choice but to appeal to some fallible evidence and reasoning to establish which books are actually the infallible word of God. James has to do exactly what he criticizes evidentialists for doing. He has to engage in evidential arguments to prove what books have infallible authority. He has to prove a higher authority by appeal to a lesser authority.
He does the same thing when it comes to textual criticism. The actual words inspired by God are infallible, but James relies on the fallible methods of textual criticism to establish what those words are. He uses a lesser authority to establish a higher authority.
Before I go, I want to make sure I'm not misunderstood. Cameron claimed that the Marian apparition at Zeitoun is better evidence than the Bible for the truth of Christianity. James attacked this claim by attacking evidentialism in general. I attacked James' argument against evidentialism, but I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea and think I'm defending Cameron's claim. I think Cameron's claim is absolute nonsense. Maybe I'll blog on that at another time. In the meantime, you could watch James' video I linked to above. Besides his miguided criticism of evidentialism, he does have some valid arguments against Cameron's claim.
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