## 1. Conceptions of Divine Revelation



Revelation, as commonly understood, has to do with the dispelling of
ignorance. The counterpart of "the revealed", therefore,
is "the hidden" (Wolterstorff 1995: 23). However, the term
has many meanings or uses--religious as well as
non-religious--which are related to each other analogically. A
distinction should be made, first, between the process and product
meaning of the word. "Revelation" can either refer to the
act/process of revealing something, or to the content that is
revealed. Second, while in ordinary discourse one can "have a
revelation" without there being a revealer (an agent that
reveals), in religious contexts revelation is usually understood as a
"person-to-person affair" (Helm 1982: 14; Mavrodes 1988:
96).



The following scheme (S) identifies the elements that are necessary
for a revelatory claim (a claim that a revelation has occurred) to be
true:



(S)
 *m* reveals *a* to *n* by means of (through, etc.)
*k* (Mavrodes 1988: 88).


In addition to a revealer (*m*) and an audience (*n*), an
act of revelation must have a content (*a*) that is made known or
available to the audience through some means (*k*). Given this
scheme, several areas of controversy can be pin-pointed. Since the
topic is divine revelation, *m* is of course identified with God.
However, in contemporary Christian thought, there is a debate about
the nature of *a*. Is the content of divine revelation
propositions about or related to God, or is it God himself, or both
(O'Collins 2016a: Ch. 1)? Many theologians emphasize that God
reveals *himself* rather than propositions or
"information". This debate (to which we will return) must
be understood against the background of the Christian doctrine of the
incarnation, which claims that God "became flesh and lived among
us" (John 1: 14).



Furthermore, there is a debate about whether *n*--the
audience--includes only those who have actually acquired
knowledge through the revelation, or if *n* can also include
those who potentially *could* have acquired such knowledge, but
in fact did not. In other words, is revelation a "success
word" or does it cover cases where knowledge is merely made
available? (For different views, see Sluys 2000; Blaauw 2009; Gunton
1995: 113; O'Collins 2016a: 76).


### 1.1 General/Natural and Special Revelation



A common distinction that relates to the audience (*n*) is
between *general* and *special* (or *particular*)
revelation*,* where the former refers to a revelation that is
universally available, and the latter to a revelation made (directly
or initially) to a limited group of people. Often, general revelation
is identified with *natural revelation*, even though the latter
concept has to do with the means of revelation (*k*) rather than
the audience. The natural world, including human nature, is available
to all, and would be the most plausible candidate as a means for a
general revelation. However, it is conceivable that God could have
made a general revelation by acting outside of the natural order, for
example by making miracles visible to all (Helm 1982: 17). Strictly
speaking, therefore, the counterpart to natural revelation--if
there is a counterpart--is *supernatural* revelation
rather than special revelation. "Supernatural", in a
theological context, refers to putative divine action that is not
included in God's ordinary activity of creating and sustaining
the world. For the most part, however, "general
revelation" and "natural revelation" are used
interchangeably, as are their counterparts "special
revelation" and "supernatural revelation" (for
criticism of the distinction, see Downing 1964).



Some philosophers make a distinction between natural revelation and
*natural theology* (e.g., King 2012; Helm 1982: 22-26;
Wolterstorff 1995: 24-25). According to Helm, for something to
qualify as divine revelation it must be immediate, and the human
recipients must be passive. Since natural theology includes the
activity of inferring knowledge of God from publicly available
evidence, natural theology is not a species of natural revelation,
Helm argues. It is unclear, however, why God could not reveal himself
in a way that requires inferential activity on the part of the
recipients, and many thinkers make no distinction between natural
revelation and natural theology (Davies 2009: 36; O'Collins
2016b: 287). In the context of this entry, however, it is necessary to
exclude traditional natural theology from treatment, and
"natural revelation" will therefore be understood in
accordance with Helm's restrictive definition. The major focus,
however, will be on special
 revelation.[3]



The very idea of special revelation has often been viewed with
suspicion since the Enlightenment (Abraham 2002). Why is not natural
revelation enough? Why would God in addition need to reveal himself to
certain people at certain points in history? A related critique takes
issue with divine hiddenness. If God exists, why does he seem to be
"hidden", so that a revelation is necessary in the first
place? Since objections of this kind concern the coherence of
religious outlooks based on a purported "special"
revelation, it is reasonable for defenders of revelation to appeal to
the doctrines of their own religious tradition. Christian thinkers
have traditionally explained divine hiddenness and the need for
special revelation with reference to humanity's fall into sin.
Sin has cognitive effects, and revelation is typically seen as the
epistemic aspect of salvation (O'Collins 2011: 70-74).
When God acts in history to save humanity, he reveals himself and what
he is doing. Nevertheless, as a result of the Enlightenment critique,
nineteenth century theologians started to downplay special revelation.
Instead, they emphasized what could be ascertained about God on the
basis of 



> 
> 
> rational argument, historical enquiry, analysis of the structures of
> human perception or moral motivation, or any combination of these.
> (Quash 2007: 328) 
> 
> 
> 



This "reduction" of special revelation to a vague form of
general revelation, however, generated a counter-reaction in the
twentieth century by theologians such as Karl Barth, who emphasized a
unique divine revelation in Christ.



When it comes to the means (*k*) of revelation, philosophical
reflection can either consider *a priori* possibilities for how
revelation might proceed, or study ideas and claims about revelation
found in a particular religious tradition, such as Christianity.
Perhaps it is most fruitful to combine analysis of religious claims
with conceptual or metaphysical reflection in order to map the
possible means of divine revelation. Using this kind of method,
William Abraham has described revelation as a "polymorphous
concept" like "teach" and "farm"
(Abraham 1997: 206). Just like one can teach by doing a variety of
different concrete things (lecturing, using pictures or models,
grading papers, etc.), so God could reveal by doing many different
things, such as speaking, doing "might acts" in history,
causing dreams, visions or other experiences, or "making Himself
present and manifesting Himself" by means of an incarnation
(Vatican II, *Dei Verbum* SS 4).


### 1.2 Manifestational and Propositional Revelation



A useful distinction related to the means of revelation (*k*) is
between *manifestational* and *non-manifestational*
revelation (Wolterstorff 1995: 26). Manifestational revelation happens
when somebody "shows" or in some other way makes some
reality manifest, while non-manifestational revelation takes place
when something is revealed without being shown or manifested--for
example, by means of verbal communication. According to Wolterstorff,
the essential difference between these two ways of revealing is that
in the case of manifestational revelation, the means of revelation is
a natural sign of the reality revealed (such as the reality itself, or
a characteristic causal effect of it). In the case of
non-manifestational revelation, the means is not a natural sign.
Instead it can be conventional sign (e.g., a sentence), or some other
entity, such as a belief implanted in somebody's mind by God.




Mavrodes has subdivided non-manifestational varieties of revelation
into two categories which he calls "the communication
model" and "the causation model" (in addition to
these, he suggests a "manifestation model"). In the
communication model, revelation is understood as something analogous
to speech and related linguistic activities. In the causation model,
revelation happens by God causing beliefs in people, either from the
beginning of a person's existence, or at some later time
(Mavrodes 1988: 73-74).



A concept that has figured importantly in debates about the means of
revelation is "propositional revelation". Wolterstorff
claims that this is just another name for non-manifestational
revelation. Since *propositions* are an essential part of the
means (*k*) of non-manifestational revelations (as we will see),
there seems to be good reason for this identification. However, in
twentieth century theology, "propositional revelation" has
received something of a bad reputation. A typical criticism is
expressed by Hordern: "What God reveals is not propositions or
information--what God reveals is God" (Hordern 1959:
61-62; see also Baillie 1956: 28; Kelsey 1975: 32; Schwobel
1990: 34; Williams 2000: 131). In modern theology,
"propositional" accounts of revelation are often said to
have given way to a focus on divine "self-revelation".




> 
> 
> The locus of revelation is not propositions but events, and its
> content is not a body of truths about God, but "the living
> God" revealing himself in his actions toward man. (Hick 1967:
> 190)
> 
> 
> 



In order to address this debate about the role of propositions in
revelation, and to assess the theological critique, it is helpful to
distinguish between two questions:


1. How do propositions figure in the *means* of revelation
(*k*)?
2. How do propositions figure in the *content* of revelation
(*a*)?



There is no consensus about the nature or even existence of
propositions, but most philosophers would agree that propositions (if
they exist) can be true or false, and that they are
"sharable". Many people can believe the same proposition
at the same time, and many different sentences can express the same
proposition (e.g., "Schnee is Weiss" and "Snow is
white"). Assuming this view, there are at least two ways in
which propositions could figure in the means (*k*) of revelation.
First, if God speaks--in a literal sense of "speaks",
that is, if he uses sentences to communicate--then
*sentences* would be the primary means of revelation. However,
if propositions constitute the *meaning* of sentences, then
propositions would figure importantly as well. Second, suppose that
God does not speak in this literal sense, but instead directly causes
certain people to have certain beliefs. In that case, the beliefs that
God causes would be the primary means of revelation. However, since
propositions constitute the *cognitive contents* of beliefs,
propositions would figure importantly too.



In manifestational revelation, the *means* is
(paradigmatically) a direct presentation or manifestation of the very
reality that God wishes to reveal--for example *himself*.
In this kind of "means", propositions are not involved.
God is not a proposition, obviously, and neither does God have a
proposition as his "content". Hence, a central difference
between manifestational and propositional (non-manifestational)
revelation seems to be, unsurprisingly, that propositions figure
importantly in the means of the latter, but not in the means of the
former.



However, and perhaps more surprisingly, when it comes to the
*content* of revelation, the same does not seem to be true.
Propositions must, arguably, figure as part of the content of
manifestational revelations as well as in the content of propositional
revelation. We can see this by the following example. Suppose a person
reveals an object manifestationally by showing it to someone. This
will not only reveal the object itself, but also some propositions
about it. Otherwise, it is hard to see how the act could count as a
*revelation*. Since revelation is an epistemic concept (or at
least has an epistemic dimension), any act of revelation must make
something known or knowable, and this means making at least some
*proposition* known or knowable (Wahlberg 2014:
30-31).



In response, it can be argued that there is such a thing as
"knowledge by acquaintance" that is not reducible to
propositional knowledge. Or perhaps knowing *a person* is
irreducible to knowing *about* that person (see, e.g., Stump
2010: Ch. 3-4).
Even so, it is difficult to see how one could get
acquaintance-knowledge or "personal" knowledge of a person
(or of God) without also having a good deal of propositional knowledge
about him. For example, how could one know somebody by acquaintance
without at the same time knowing *that this person exists*
(which is a piece of propositional knowledge)? (Wellington 2019: 166;
Lamont 2004: 7-8).



This reasoning will not convince those who deny the existence of
propositions (see, e.g., Westphal 1999 for an anti-realist critique).
However, among those who accept propositions, many have taken the
contrast that Hordern and others draw between *revelation of
propositions* and *divine self-revelation* to be
misconceived. God could not reveal himself without simultaneously
revealing (making knowable) some propositions about himself.
Propositions must figure in the content (*a*) of both
propositional and manifestational revelations. In manifestational
revelations, however, they do not figure as *means*
(*k*).



Another important difference between propositional and manifestational
revelation concerns the need for interpretation. In manifestational
revelation, the audience is confronted with "raw
reality"--for example "God himself", or some
spectacular historical event. Such media of revelation contain a
wealth of information, and it is up to the recipient to decide which
aspects of the manifestation to focus on. In propositional revelation,
on the other hand, the audience is confronted with entities such as
words and sentences that are specially designed to express a
determinate message. Something similar is presumably true in cases of
divine direct communication of knowledge to a person's mind.
Hence, even though interpretation is involved in the reception of both
propositional and manifestational revelation, in the case of
propositional revelation, less of it is needed (Wolterstorff 1995:
29). Arguably, it follows from this that if God wants to convey a
fairly determinate cognitive content, he will have good reason to use
some form of propositional revelation (perhaps in addition to
manifestational revelation) (Mansini 2018: 260).



Why, then, are some theologians critical of propositional revelation?
While here are different kinds of critique (Helm 1972; Gunton 1995:
7-13), the main objection has to do with how the notion of
propositional revelation is thought to affect biblical interpretation.
Standardly, the critics' argument (made from a Christian
perspective) goes something like this:


1. If there is such a thing as propositional
revelation, it is found in the Bible.
2. If there is propositional revelation in the Bible,
then it is communicated through literal language that
straightforwardly expresses divinely revealed propositions (Dulles
1992: 48).
3. However, it is very implausible that God
communicates in this way, since the Bible often uses metaphor and
narrative rather than literal language. Moreover, the Bible contains
erroneous and problematic claims and views, and historical-critical
scholarship has shown that the text is shaped by the contingent
historical, cultural and political contexts of the human authors
(Dulles 1992: 49).
4. Hence, the Bible does not contain propositional revelation.
5. Hence, there is no propositional revelation.



An "easy" response to this argument points out that it
assumes that either the *whole* Bible constitutes propositional
revelation, or else there is no propositional revelation in the Bible
at all. However, it is possible that
*parts* of the Bible *record* propositional revelations
that were originally given to prophets, apostles and others. Moreover, some
original divine communications of this kind might not even be recorded
in the Bible but instead preserved and interpreted through an oral
tradition, as traditional Catholic and Orthodox perspectives hold
(however, see Ratzinger 1966: 46).



Many defenders of propositional revelation believe that this
"easy" response concedes too much ground to the critics.
They argue that the Bible as a whole can reasonably be believed to be
"authored" by God and expressive of propositional
revelation. Attacking
 premise 2,
 the defenders of divine authorship point out that propositions can be
expressed by metaphorical and other non-literal forms of language. A
propositional construal of biblical revelation does not mean that a
narrowly literalistic approach to the Bible is necessary (Lamont 2004:
Ch. 5; Wolterstorff 1995: Ch. 11-12; McCall 2009). Attacking
 premise 3,
 they furthermore argue that divine authorship is compatible with the
text being shaped by the cultural and personal perspectives of the
human authors. God could, for example, author the Bible by
"appropriating" or "authorizing" human
discourse, thereby making human utterances or speech-acts into
vehicles of his own discourse. In a similar way as a president can
authorize an ambassador to speak on her behalf, or a speaker can
appropriate the utterances of others by quotation or paraphrase, so
God could "borrow" human speech-acts without depriving the
human authors of genuine authorship (Wolterstorff 1995: Ch. 3. For
criticism, see Wisse 2002; Levine 1998). If this is what God has done,
then biblical interpretation will require that we distinguish between
the intentions and message of the human authors, and the intention and
message of the divine, appropriating discourse. The former may contain
erroneous or morally problematic views, which are not asserted by the
divine author.



Another way of explaining how a medium of divine propositional
revelation could possibly contain errors, is by distinguishing between
the *statements* that are expressed through the medium (the
biblical text), and the sometimes problematic cultural
*presuppositions* in terms of which they are expressed
(Swinburne 2007: Ch. 2). Since it is probably impossible to make
statements that do not depend on the presuppositions of any particular
culture, and since all cultures embody some false beliefs and
problematic conceptions, it is to be expected, argues Swinburne, that
a divine revelation will be expressed by means of presuppositions some
of which are false (for criticism, see Stump 1994: 740-741).



The discussion about propositional revelation in the Bible or other
sacred documents raises questions about God's causal role in the
production of the text. A common view is that the Bible (or the
Qur'an) acquires its status as revelation and/or as being
"authored" by God as a result of its being
*inspired* by God. According to a common understanding,
inspiration is a special divine influence on the writers of the
biblical books. (Not all theologians accept this view of biblical
inspiration, however, see, e.g., Trembath 1987: 5, 109-118;
Burtchaell 1969: Ch. 5.) The divine influence could conceivably take
different forms (Davies 2009: 41-44; Burtchaell 1969). According
to theories of "verbal inspiration", God provides a quite
detailed guidance by controlling the authors' choice of words.
This theory does not necessarily entail divine
"dictation", however; dictation theories are best
conceived as a subspecies of verbal inspiration. "Content
theories" also come in different forms. Some involve a detailed
divine guidance on the level of statements or propositions, while
other versions portray inspiration as limited to the main ideas of the
text. It is also possible to posit different degrees and modes of
inspiration in different parts of the Bible (O'Collins 2016a:
160-161). Another, rather recent theory suggests that God,
through his "middle-knowledge", could providentially have
controlled the human authors of the Bible without taking away their
freedom (Craig 1999). Lastly, the theory of "social
inspiration" (sometimes "ecclesial inspiration")
tries to account for the fact that the biblical books have a complex
history of origin which involves, besides authors and redactors,
processes of oral transmission in liturgical and other social contexts
(Benoit 1965: 24-26; Barr 1983: 27; Farkasfalvy 2010: 211).
Presumably, if God is to control the outcome of such a process, he
must influence social groups over extended periods of time.



What is the relationship between divine *inspiration* and the
idea of divine *authorship* of the Bible? According to
Wolterstorff, these are quite distinct phenomena. Inspiration has to
do with God's *superintendence* over the production of a
text, while divine authorship has to do with God's
*authorization* of a text (Wolterstorff 1995: 41-42). In
principle, God could authorize or appropriate a certain
text--making it his own by "signing" it, as it
were--without having superintended or influenced its production
in any way. Of course, God must do *something* in order for
authorization to happen, for example influencing the process of
canonization. For Wolterstorff, however, the Bible's status as
authored by God does not essentially depend on its being inspired.
That said, 



> 
> 
> it would be bizarre to think of God as just finding these books lying
> about and deciding to appropriate them. (Wolterstorff 1995: 187) 
> 
> 
> 



Some kind of divine inspiration seems very probable also on
Wolterstorff's view. (For the justification of belief in
inspiration, see Crisp 2009.)



According to traditional Christian perspectives, on the other hand,
divine inspiration is an essential condition for divine authorship
(see, e.g., Feingold 2016: 284). This is true of traditional Catholic
as well as Protestant views, which both assume a pervasive divine
guidance that extends to all parts of the biblical text and guarantees
the aptness of the authors' choice of words (without necessarily
involving "dictation"). Traditional views also presume
that inspiration entails inerrancy--that is, freedom from errors
in all respects, not just with respect to essential contents
(Burtchaell 1969: 1-2; for a critique of inerrancy, see Abraham
1981: Ch. 1). 



Can a "strong" theory of inspiration of this sort be
defended? Besides challenges from contemporary biblical criticism,
such views also face the challenge to explain how inspiration is
compatible with the freedom of the human authors (which few would want
to deny) and their status as genuine authors rather than mere puppets.
Perhaps the best shot at success belongs to those who defend a
traditional view from the standpoint of a Thomistic understanding of
divine causality. From such a perspective, God is the principal cause
and the human authors of the Bible are secondary or instrumental
causes (see Feingold 2016: 289-295; for criticism, see Rahner
1964). Instrumental causes are real causes, so the human authors are
real authors. Moreover, God presumably does not choose instrumental
causes arbitrarily, but with an eye to their aptness for the effects
he has in mind (i.e., the texts). The diversity found in the Bible
could hence be precisely what God aimed at in choosing people with
different temperaments, skills, and experiences as his instruments.
Still, since the effect of an instrumental cause transcends the power
of that cause taken alone and manifests the power of the principal
cause, it is appropriate to say that God is the principal author of
the Bible. Moreover, according to the Thomistic view, God acts through
instrumental causes in a way that respects their nature, and this is
true also when God uses human free will as an instrument. The human
authors, hence, are "living and free instruments" rather
than puppets (Feingold 2016: 290).



A potential weakness of this account is that it presumes a
controversial (and possibly incoherent) view about the compatibility
of human freedom and divine causality. On the other hand, precisely by
adopting this view, the account avoids the implausible conclusion that
God and human authors are involved in a kind of "division of
labor" (God being responsible for some aspects of the text,
e.g., the ideas, and human authors for other aspects, e.g., the
words). If divine and human causality are not related in the manner of
a "zero-sum game", both God and the human authors could be
involved in shaping all aspects of the text. However, some authors
claim that a "Molinistic" approach, based on God's
"middle knowledge", could also account for the
divine-human character of the Bible as a whole, while avoiding some
problematic aspects of the Thomistic view (Craig 1999).


### 1.3 Models of Revelation



The distinction between propositional and manifestational revelation
is very general, and a more fine-grained classification of conceivable
means of revelation is desirable. We have already seen that
propositional (or non-manifestational) revelation can be subdivided
into "the causation model" and "the communication
model". Beyond this, the theologian Avery Dulles has suggested a
typology useful for categorizing theories of manifestational
revelation. He divides contemporary theological accounts of revelation
into five major classes depending on "their central vision of
how and where revelation occurs" (Dulles 1992: 27). Besides
propositional revelation (which he calls "Revelation as
Doctrine"), Dulles discerns four basic models for
manifestational revelation.



*Revelation as History*. This model identifies revelation with
God's "great deeds" in salvation history. The Bible
is seen as the record of these deeds, for example the Exodus or the
resurrection of Jesus. The biblical text itself, however, is not part
of revelation. Some representatives of this approach hold that
revelation must include a supernatural cognitive assistance
(illumination) so that the historical events can be interpreted
correctly (Baillie 1956: 65). Others deny that this is necessary
(Pannenberg 1968). 



*Revelation as Inner Experience*. According to this model,
revelation consists in some kind of "privileged interior
experience of grace or communion with God" (Dulles 1992: 27).
Some proponents claim that the interior experience is
"pre-conceptual" and occurs at a depth-level of
consciousness that transcends and embraces our ordinary experience of
the world (Schleiermacher 1799 [1996: 25-26]; 1830 [1999:
16-17]; Rahner 1978: Ch. V). Others take the relevant
experiences to be conceptually structured and more like perceptual
experiences (Alston 1991; Pike 1992). The pre-conceptual view
encounters epistemological puzzles about how non-conceptual inner
occurrences can justify beliefs about God, or how the experiences can
be *about* God in the first place (Proudfoot 1985).



*Revelation as Dialectical Presence*. This model intends to
capture the thought of Karl Barth--who is one of the most
influential figures of revelation-theology in the twentieth
century--and his followers in the school of "dialectical
theology". For Barth, revelation is a
"non-objectifiable" encounter with God himself in Christ,
an event that is mediated by the Bible and the church's
proclamation about Christ. The Bible itself, however, is not
revelation but merely the channel through which revelation
"flows" whenever God wills this to happen. Moreover, since
God is "Wholly Other" and as such unknowable for humans,
revelation must be described in terms of a paradoxical dialectic of
simultaneous "unveiling" and "veiling".
"Revelation", says Barth, "means the self-unveiling,
imparted to men, of the God who by nature cannot be unveiled to
men" (Barth 1975: 320; see also Hart 2000). It is unclear
whether this model manages to present a coherent account of divine
revelation (for a sympathetic discussion, see McCormack 2008:
28-35). The intention behind the model, however, is to reconcile
the claim that revelation provides real, objective knowledge of God
with the claim that God radically transcends all human categories and
all created media of revelation.



*Revelation as New Awareness*. According to this model,
revelation means a transformation of human subjectivity, a
"fulfillment of the inner drive of the human spirit toward
fuller consciousness". Revelation does not disclose God as an
"object", even though God might be "mysteriously
present as the transcendent dimension of human engagement in creative
tasks". In essence, revelation is more about seeing the self and
the world in a new light than about knowledge of God (Dulles 1992: 98,
99, 28).



Dulles's models are theoretical constructions or
"ideal-types", and elements from different models can be
combined. For example, theologians like Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner
combine the "new awareness" model with experiential and
historical elements (Tillich 1951: 111-118, 120-122;
Rahner 1966). It has been argued, however, that none of the
manifestational models presented above can provide--either
separately or in combination--a reasonable account of how
knowledge of God's "theistic properties"
(omnipotence, omniscience and infinite goodness) comes about. Such an
account requires appeal to propositional revelation at some point, or
at least to traditional natural theology (Wahlberg 2014: Ch. 3).


## 2.The Justification of Revelatory Claims



A revelatory claim is a claim to the effect that a certain divine
revelation (propositional or manifestational) has taken
place--that God has revealed *x* to *P* (Menssen &
Sullivan 2007: 69). The existence of revelatory claims in different
religions raises the question of epistemic justification: Could such
claims be justified, and in that case, how? "Being
justified" will here be understood in the very general sense of
having "positive epistemic status" (the status of being
"right, or proper, or acceptable, or approvable or up to
standard" (Plantinga 1988: 1). 



In the contemporary debate, there are both non-inferential and
inferential (evidentialist) models of justification for revelatory
claims. In addition, there are positions that some might characterize
as fideistic, but that are perhaps better described as portraying the
justification of revelation as "totally *sui
generis*". Below non-inferential, inferential and "sui
generis" positions will be treated in turn. However, since the
contemporary debates about justification draw inspiration from a long
tradition of reflection within theology, it will be useful first to
consider some historical background.


### 2.1 Traditional Views



In historical Christian thought, the concepts of (special) revelation
and *faith* go together. Faith is the believing response to the
divine revelation (Dulles 1992: 4). There has been a broad consensus
that the act of faith requires grace in the sense of an internal,
divine influence or assistance. However, classical Christian thinkers
also agree that the act of faith is reasonable, and that Christian
belief is epistemically justified to an eminent degree (Lamont 2004:
46). In modern parlance, "faith" is often understood as
synonymous with "unsupported belief", but this
understanding is alien to the historical tradition, for which faith
constitutes a form of knowledge. It is traditionally agreed, moreover,
that faith has this rational status because it is based on the
authority of God's own testimony. In much pre-modern theology it
is unclear, however, exactly how God's testimony or speech is
identified as such, and what warrants this identification. 



Important church fathers such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
Chrysostom and Augustine all held that there are good arguments from
publicly accessible evidence for the veridicality of the Christian
revelation--arguments that establish the claim that God has
spoken beyond reasonable doubt. Patristic arguments typically appeal
to fulfilled prophecies, miracles, 



> 
> 
> the extension and holiness of the Church, the transformative power of
> the Christian message and the independently establishable goodness and
> truth of Christian teaching. (Lamont 2004: 46, 38) 
> 
> 
> 



However, the major church fathers did not seem to view these
apologetic arguments as necessary for proper faith, or as the
epistemic *basis* for faith. Instead, the divine revelation
itself--the word of God--is often portrayed as having the
power to non-inferentially justify Christian beliefs. As Clement of
Alexandria writes, 



> 
> 
> He who has believed in the divine Scriptures, with a firm judgement,
> receives as an irrefutable demonstration the voice of God who gave us
> those Scriptures. So faith is no longer something that is confirmed by
> demonstration. (*Stromate II*, 2, 9, quoted in Lamont 2004: 32)
> 
> 
> 
> 



Augustine, likewise, emphasized that Christian belief is produced by
God working internally in the believer through grace.



In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas affirms both the supernatural,
grace-induced character of Christian belief and its rational warrant.
Since Aquinas is a common reference point in contemporary discussions
about faith and revelation, it will be helpful to consider his thought
in a bit more detail. (For a comparison between Aquinas's
thought on revelation with Jewish and Islamic medieval perspectives,
see Dobie 2019.) Aquinas believes that the Christian revelatory claim
can be justified, at least to a significant degree, by inferential
arguments (see, e.g., *Summa Contra Gentiles* I, Ch. 6).
Sometimes he seems to suggest that arguments are necessary for
rational assent to revelation (*Summa Theologiae* II-II, q. 2,
a. 9, ad. 3). At other times, however, it appears that faith is
justified without arguments (*ST* II-II, q. 27, a. 3, ad. 2.
See also Niederbacher 2012: 342-343). Due to this tension, there
are different interpretations of Aquinas. John Jenkins has helpfully
distinguished between the *Naturalist Interpretation*, the
*Voluntarist Interpretation*, and the *Supernatural
Externalist Interpretation* (Jenkins 1997: Ch. 6). These
interpretations emphasize different elements of Aquinas's
thought that are also found in traditional theology in general. As we
will see in the following sections, similar elements recur in
contemporary theories. 



According to the *Naturalist Interpretation*, at least some
persons assent to the articles of the Creed because, first, they
accept a cluster of arguments from natural theology, second, they
believe on the basis of human testimony and other evidence that
miracles and other signs have occurred in biblical history and in the
history of the church. From these considerations they conclude that
God has made a revelation in history, which is contained, in its
essence, in the Creed. The Christian revelatory claim is justified on
this inferential basis. Grace and God's supernatural influence
has little epistemic significance in this process--grace just
makes the believer accept God's revelation *without
reluctance* (Penelhum 1977: 146; see also Hick 1988:
11-31).



The *Voluntarist Interpretation*, on the other hand, claims
that a consideration of the evidence is insufficient to elicit firm
assent to revelation. What brings this forth, instead, is something
like "wishful thinking" or utilitarian considerations.
Aquinas says: 



> 
> 
> We are moved to believe the words of God insofar as the reward of
> eternal life is promised to us if we have believed; and this moves the
> will to assent. (*De Veritate*, q. 14, a. 1, quoted in Jenkins
> 1997: 176) 
> 
> 
> 



An act of the will compensates for the "gap in the
evidence". However, since the activity of the will--when it
comes to belief in God--is part of a reliable belief-forming
process put in place by grace, the beliefs that it produces are
warranted. Aquinas, hence, was an epistemological reliabilist of
sorts, according to this view (Ross 1985; Stump 1991).



The *Supernatural Externalist Interpretation* gives arguments
from public evidence a role in preparing a person for the assent of
faith. However, the actual assent is the product of a supernaturally
infused cognitive habit. The supernatural "light of faith"
makes it possible for a person immediately and non-inferentially to
grasp the articles of the Creed *as* divinely revealed. Belief
in the revelatory claim is hence a *basic* belief, and it is
justified 



> 
> 
> because it was arrived at by the proper operation of a cognitive
> process which, though infused and not [natural], was nevertheless
> designed to attain the truth in this sphere. (Jenkins 1997:
> 190-191)
> 
> 
> 



Most contemporary Aquinas scholars now reject the Naturalist
Interpretation, which cannot do justice to the textual evidence.
Hence, even though Aquinas indeed presents a collection of credibility
arguments, he seems to have held that belief in divine revelation can
be--and usually is--justified in some other, non-inferential
way. It is therefore unfortunate that the view represented by the
Naturalist Interpretation is sometimes taken to be "the
traditional view" of how revelatory claims are justified
(Penelhum 1997: 67-86). 



Although Aquinas might not be a good fit for "the traditional
view", some later thinkers are. Starting with Duns Scotus, the
role of inferential arguments in the rational acceptance of revelation
was gradually expanded and made more precise in mainstream Christian
thought. From the seventeenth century to the mid-twentieth century,
most Catholic theologians saw "credibility arguments" as
necessary for faith and as capable of establishing beyond reasonable
doubt that God has revealed the Christian religion (Lamont 2004:
87-88). The act of faith was reduced to the drawing of the
necessary inference from this insight to the conclusion that Christian
beliefs are true. On the Protestant side, this development continued
and culminated in thinkers such as William Chillingworth, John
Tillotson and John Locke, whose views--ironically--are the
closest matches to what Penelhum describes as the "traditional
view". As we have seen, however, the church fathers and Thomas
Aquinas held more complex views in which elements of both inferential
and non-inferential justification are found, and where supernatural
grace and the will play important epistemic roles. Below we will
encounter again these elements in the accounts of contemporary
philosophers and theologians. 


### 2.2 Non-Inferential Justification



A claim is non-inferentially justified when its positive epistemic
status is a result of some form of direct cognition, as opposed to
being achieved through a process of inference from evidence. The
notion of "direct cognition" includes having a belief that
is "properly basic", but also having a belief that
directly represents the content of a perceptual experience (assuming
that experiences have conceptual content). 



There are non-inferential views concerning both the justification of
"natural" and "special" revelation. In this
section, three varieties of non-inferential justification will be
addressed: Perceptual models, Plantinga's A/C-model, and
testimonial models.


#### 2.2.1 Perceptual Models



Some philosophers have suggested a perceptual interpretation of
*natural revelation*, according to which "intentional
design" is a property that can be directly perceived in nature
as well as in human behavior and art. Since intentional design by
definition entails a designer, this means that our experiences of
nature could give us immediate knowledge of the existence of a creator
(Ratzsch 2003; Wahlberg 2012; Plantinga 2011: Ch. 8). For related
views, see Mullen 2004 and Evans 2010).



The putative plausibility of this hypothesis depends on the
phenomenological observation that the *appearance* of design in
nature is something that forcefully strikes most people, even
atheists. As Hume lets Cleanthes say: 



> 
> 
> Consider, anatomize the eye ... and tell me, from your own
> feeling, *if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in
> upon you with a force like that of a sensation?*. (*Dialogues
> Concerning Natural Religion*, Part III, (p. 65)) 
> 
> 
> 



Psychological research, moreover, indicates that teleological beliefs
about nature come natural to humans. Some even argue that humans are
"intuitive theists" (Kelemen 2004; Barrett 2012). A
related consideration in favor of design-perception is that it could
potentially explain why beliefs about design in nature are so
widespread and often held so persistently, even though they have
turned out to be hard to justify by argument (Ratzsch 2003:
135-136).



A standard move by those who claim that belief in revelation is
non-inferentially justified, is to appeal to the
"parity-argument" (first found in Thomas Reid
[1710-1796], see Wolterstorff 2001: 197-206; see also
Plantinga 1990: 271; Alston 1983). Adapted to the present context, the
argument runs something like this: Since beliefs about intentional
design in nature arise in a similar way as (ordinary) perceptual
beliefs and memory beliefs, there is no reason to discriminate among
these classes of beliefs with respect to their *prima facie*
epistemic status. Hence, if we regard perceptual and memory beliefs as
*prima facie* justified without argument, we should regard
design-beliefs in the same way. 



It could be objected that in order to have beliefs about design, a
rather complex conceptual background is necessary. Design beliefs,
therefore, cannot be understood as perceptual. However, the necessity
of a conceptual background for having a certain kind of perceptual
beliefs does not necessarily entail that those beliefs are
inferentially derived from the background (McDowell 2004: 296;
Wahlberg 2012: 128-130. See also McGrath 2008: Ch. 5). Even the
most primitive perceptual beliefs ("red here now")
presuppose a network of concepts.



Is evolution a defeater for the idea of design-perception? (De Cruz
and De Smedt 2014: 195). Perhaps not. The hypothesis that God creates
indirectly, through the evolutionary process, entails that God exerts
a certain control over the outcomes of that process. This means that
God has intended at least certain features of the outcome, and these
features would hence count as divinely designed. Since divine design
in this sense seems to be compatible with evolution, design-perception
might be as well (Wahlberg 2012: 172-190; Kojonen 2018). 



Another objection proceeds from the claim that design-beliefs about
nature are generated by mechanisms that are too unreliable to confer
positive epistemic status. One version of this argument contends that
the "hyperactiveness" of our HADD ("Hyper-Active
Agency Detection Device")--which is an evolutionary
adaptation for detecting possibly dangerous agency in the natural
environment--means that it produces too many false positives to
be trusted when it "detects" design in natural structures.
The debate about this is ongoing (Barrett 2004: 31; Visala 2011: Ch.
5; De Smedt and De Cruz 2020).



In the realm of *special revelation*, there are also theories
of direct, perceptual justification. William Alston has argued for the
possibility that God could be (nonsensorially) perceived, and that
such "mystical perception" can justify beliefs about God
(Alston 1991). Different religions have different, socially
established "doxastic practices" (belief-forming habits)
built on purported experiences of God. Appealing to the parity
argument, Alston contends that such mystical practices can be on more
or less equal footing, epistemically, with basic doxastic practices
such as sense-perceptual and memory-based belief-forming. In general,
basic doxastic practices cannot be shown to be reliable without
circularity, but if they are socially established and their outputs
are reasonably internally consistent and consistent with the outputs
of other practices, they can be rationally engaged in. The case for
the rationality of a doxastic practice is also strengthened if it
generates significant "self-support"--for example by
making predictions that are later confirmed.



Beliefs generated by rational doxastic practices can, however, be
defeated by "over-rider"-systems internal to the practices
themselves. In the case of "mystical perception", the
overrider-system includes a religion's doctrinal teaching, by
which the veridicality of purported mystical perceptions is tested.
Alston argues that the "Christian mystical practice",
which generates significant self-support by the way it can
"predict" or guide spiritual development, can be
rationally engaged in, and hence produce beliefs about God that are
*prima facie* justified. While mystical perceptions of the kind
Alston deals with are often regarded as rare, Michael Rea has argued
that experiences of God's presence and of communication from God
might be "widely available" (Rea 2018: Ch. 6-7). He
suggests that the ability to experience God can be improved through
spiritual practices and disciplines--an idea that is common in
mystical traditions (see also Wynn 2013: 73-74).



The main problem for the idea of direct perceptual encounters with God
is the fact of religious diversity and the seeming incompatibility
between the outputs of rival mystical practices. One approach to this
problem is to view the incompatibility as merely apparent. Building on
Kant's distinction between noumena and phenomena, Hick argues
that God or ultimate reality is unknowable in itself, and that the
different descriptions of this reality produced by different religions
only apply within the realm of human experience (1989: Ch. 14. For
critique of the Kantian picture, see Plantinga 2000b: Ch. 1-2;
Menssen and Sullivan 2007: 22-30; Macdonald 2009b: Ch. 2).
Nevertheless, those descriptions allow people to respond to and
interact with the Real in ways that are conducive to salvation.



Hick's solution to the problem of religious diversity is bought
at the price of denying the incompatibility that religious believers
themselves see between their religious beliefs and those of other
religions. Finding this price too high, Alston takes the disagreements
between religions to be real, and argues that there could be realms of
reality 



> 
> 
> that are so difficult for us to discern that widespread agreement is
> extremely difficult or impossible to attain, even if *some*
> veridical cognition of that realm is achieved. (Alston 1991: 267)
> 
> 
> 



A position that lies between Hick's non-cognitivist pluralism
and Alston's cognitivist exclusivism is Keith Ward's
"open theology" that is attentive to the possibility of
revelation in all religions. This possibility entails, for Ward, that
believers must be prepared to critically question their own tradition
in light of insights from other religions (Ward 1994: 339-340).
Another option is Griffiths' "open inclusivism",
based on the claim that "it is possible that alien religions
teach truths of religious significance to the Church" (2001:
63).



Besides experiences that have God as their putative object, other
kinds of religious experiences could be revelatory as well. Mark Wynn
has drawn attention to the "materially mediated or sacramental
character of much religious experience" and suggested that the
experiential impact of certain "material contexts" (such
as special places with an existentially charged history) could mediate
an awareness of God (Wynn 2009: 147; see also Wynn 2013: Ch. 3). 


#### 2.2.2 The A/C-Model



Non-inferential justification of revelatory claims need not be
construed as perceptual. Alvin Plantinga, while sympathetic to
perceptual theories of natural revelation (2000b: 286-289; 2011:
Ch. 8), has proposed a broader account involving both general and
special revelation. He suggests that humans have a natural cognitive
faculty which "in a wide variety of circumstances produces in us
beliefs about God". Those beliefs are "occasioned"
by the circumstances--for example by the sight of a mighty
scenery or a beautiful sunset--but they are not conclusions from
them, not even "quick and *sotto voce* inferences".
However, the theistic beliefs thus caused could have positive
epistemic status if the cognitive faculty that produces them is
"functioning properly in a congenial epistemic environment
according to a design plan successfully aimed at truth"
(Plantinga 2000: 172, 175, 178). Beliefs generated by such a
faculty--which Plantinga, following Calvin, calls a
"*sensus divinitatis*"--would be
"properly basic" in the sense that they are
non-inferentially warranted as long as they are undefeated. 



Plantinga's model for the justification of natural revelation is
externalist, and he does not claim to be able to demonstrate that it
is true. His agenda, instead, is to defend theistic belief from the
"*de jure* objection", which attacks the rational
status of theism while leaving open the question of its truth.
Plantinga claims that this attack fails. If theism is true, it is very
likely that there is a *sensus divinitatis*, and in that case,
belief in God would be warranted.



Plantinga's model also includes the justification of special
revelation. In what he calls the "Extended A/C-model"
(after Aquinas and Calvin), Plantinga posits, besides the natural
*sensus divinitatis*, a supernatural belief-forming mechanism
consisting mainly in the "internal instigation of the Holy
Spirit". This mechanism is part of God's plan of salvation
that also includes the divine teaching of the Scriptures, and the
divine repair of the cognitive and affective damage caused by sin.
When confronted with the teachings of Scripture, the Holy Spirit can
instigate people to accept them as true by creating faith. Plantinga
sees the beliefs accepted in this way as "revealed to our
minds" (Plantinga 2000: 241). Even though this process is not an
in-built part of human nature, it is (*ex hypothesi*) "a
reliable belief-producing process", and its deliverances will
therefore be warranted and qualify as knowledge (Plantinga 2000: 257,
206).



The debate about Plantinga's proposals is extensive, and
critique comes from both theological and philosophical quarters (Baker
2005). Some criticize Plantinga's model for being
phenomenologically inadequate: Many believers seem to be looking for
grounds for their faith and feel the need for partial support from
other beliefs (Beilby 2005: 195-197). Other critics attack the
very idea that religious beliefs can be properly basic, which
Plantinga defends by means of a version of the parity-argument (see
 section 2.2.1).
 Grigg, for example, argues that a major difference between religious
beliefs and ordinary perceptual beliefs is that people may have a bias
in favor of religious beliefs, since there is a psychological benefit
to be gained from believing that God exists (Grigg 1983: 126). In
response, it has been argued that the same is true of some perceptual
beliefs (e.g., seeing high numbers in one's bank account)
(McLeod 1987: 5). 



A related critique is that more or less absurd belief-systems could
claim to be based on properly basic beliefs. This is often referred to
as the "Great Pumpkin Objection" (see DeRose 1999 in
 Other Internet Resources).
 Michael Martin, developing a version of it, claims that 



> 
> 
> Plantinga's proposal would generate many different communities
> that could legitimately claim that their basic beliefs are rational,
> 
> 
> 
> 



such as voodoo or astrological communities (Martin 1990: 272). In
response, Plantinga can point out that basic beliefs are defeasible,
and that the basic beliefs of what we take to be obviously irrational
belief systems might be easily defeated (Baker 2007: 88-89).



Closely related to the Great Pumpkin Objection is the objection from
religious diversity, perhaps the greatest challenge for
Plantinga's as well as for Alston's theories. Why could
not proponents of other religions copy Plantinga's
epistemological moves and adapt them to their own religions? (Hill
2001). Helm, accordingly, suggests that Plantinga's argument
"leaves his defense of the rationality of Christian theism not
so much open to refutation as to imitation" (Helm 2001: 1112).
In response, it could be argued that if a religion is false, defeaters
will probably arise.



Another type of objections focus on the epistemic consequences of
religious disagreement. Some critics argue that if other religions
"can make as good a case of being knowledge-if-true as
Christianity", it is hard to see why people should remain
Christians in the absence of some religiously neutral grounds (Forrest
2002: 111.) Basinger suggests that religious believers who want to
maximize truth and avoid error are "under a prima facie
obligation to attempt to resolve significant epistemic peer
conflict" (Basinger 2002: 11). However, it might not always be
easy to determine when people are true "epistemic peers",
and the crucial question is what happens if the disagreement, despite
efforts of resolution, remains (Plantinga 1997). Should disagreement
be taken as a defeater of belief? Plantinga has claimed that this idea
is a "philosophical tar baby", since it would mean the
defeat of the religious pluralist position as certainly as that of his
own (2000a: 177; see also Alston 1988). Still, it could be argued that
while disagreement is not a defeater of belief, it should lead people
to believe with less confidence. 



A different kind of charge against Plantinga's model is that it
leaves unaddressed the question of actual warrant (Baker 2007:
87-89). 



> 
> 
> There is ... a monumental issue which Plantinga does not discuss,
> and which a lot of people will consider needs discussing. This is
> whether Christian beliefs do have warrant ... He has shown that
> they do, if they are true; so we might hope for discussion of whether
> they are true. (Swinburne 2001: 206) 
> 
> 
> 



Maybe the sense of dissatisfaction expressed by Swinburne can be
somewhat mitigated by attending to the distinction between
"*being* rational in holding a theistic belief" and
"*showing* that theistic belief is rational"
(Sudduth 2003: 311).


#### 2.2.3 Testimonial Models



The idea of *divine testimony* is at the core of traditional
conceptions of revelation in both Jewish-Christian and Islamic thought
(for the latter, see Adeel 2019: 30-35). However, testimony and
the justification of testimonial beliefs can be understood in
different ways. Within contemporary philosophy of testimony, there are
two basic schools. *Reductionists* hold that beliefs acquired
through testimony must be justified by an (implicit or explicit)
argument from evidence that establishes the trustworthiness of the
witness. *Anti-reductionists* deny this and regard testimony as
a basic, *sui generis* source of epistemic justification, like
perception and memory. Hence, for anti-reductionists, testimonial
beliefs are non-inferentially justified. This view has interesting
implications for the issue of belief in divine revelation.



Inspired by Aquinas as well as by contemporary anti-reductionism
(especially John McDowell), Lamont argues that the ability to gain
knowledge from truthful testimony is an intellectual virtue, together
with perception and memory (Lamont 2004: Ch. 5). When a hearer
*H* believes a speaker *S* testifying that *p*, the
very fact that *S* knows *p* and sincerely testifies to
*p* gives *H* knowledge of *p*, which entails that
*H* has a knowledge-constituting justification for *p*. This
justification is not reducible to H's evidence for the
trustworthiness of *S*.



Lamont argues, on theological grounds, that God speaks through the
Church, and that the Bible is part of this divine speech (Lamont 2004:
Ch. 7). When a person believes a biblical statement because it is
spoken by God, what the person acquires is testimonial knowledge. This
knowledge is justified and counts as knowledge by the very fact that
it comes from God's own testimony. However, a condition for
believing a biblical statement *because* it is spoken by God,
is that the hearer is able to recognize it *as* God's
speech. This recognition happens, according to Lamont, through the
effects that the divine message has on the hearer. Following John
Owen, Lamont appeals to the moral enlightenment and transformation of
the hearer that result when the divine message is heard. These
effects, argues Lamont, can only happen through divine power, and they
are therefore clear signs that allow the hearer to recognize the
divine identity of the speaker (Lamont 2004: 198-206).
The hearer, hence, can believe *God*, and so acquire the
satisfactory epistemic standing that God's testimony
provides.



It can be questioned whether there are moral transformations that
prove the involvement of a *divine* power (King 2008: 74).
However, supposing that the divine origin of the Christian message
could really be established in this way, it seems to follow that
Lamont's anti-reductionist account of testimony has no important
epistemic role to play in his analysis of revealed knowledge. If we
can infer, from certain effects of the message, that it is God who has
spoken, then we can also infer that the message is true (since God
would not lie or be mistaken). This seems to make appeal to testimony
as a *basic* source of knowledge/justification superfluous.




Wahlberg (2014) has attempted to formulate a consistently
anti-reductionist theory of knowledge by divine testimony. He suggests
that one can identify divine speech by relying on God's own
say-so. An example would be if a person believes Jesus when Jesus
claims to speak for God (supposing that his claim is true). In such a
scenario, one would acquire testimonial knowledge from God's
testimony (through Jesus) without (initially) knowing that it is God
who speaks (Wahlberg 2014: Ch. 6; see also Lamont 1996).



However, wouldn't it be irrational just to believe a guy who
claims to speak for God? Wahlberg acknowledges that normally, it
would. He argues that in order for a Hearer *H* to be able to
absorb trustworthy testimony from a speaker *S* in such as way
that knowledge ensues, *H* must exercise *doxastic
responsibility*. This means that she must be sensitive to and on
the lookout for evidence and considerations that speak
*against* the trustworthiness of *S*. If *H* fails to
display such sensitivity, she cannot acquire knowledge from
anyone's testimony, even if it happens to be true. Now, doxastic
responsibility clearly demands that testimony that purports to come
from God be approached with a healthy dose of skepticism. In order for
a responsible hearer to be able to absorb such testimony in a way that
yields knowledge (supposing that the testimony really transmits
revelation), there must be some circumstance that defeats the natural
reasons for mistrust (such as the possibility that a putative prophet
lies or is deluded).



Wahlberg claims that a miracle can constitute such a circumstance. If
Jesus in fact rose from the dead, his closest disciples who saw his
post-mortem appearances would have been in a position to believe
(without doxastic irresponsibility) Jesus' claim to speak for
God. This means that they could have known the truth of a revelatory
claim on the basis of God's own testimony.



But what about those people who do not witness a miracle? Wahlberg
argues that knowledge of Jesus' resurrection could be available,
through the biblical testimony, to non-witnesses, for example to
people who live today. The biblical testimony about the resurrection,
in turn, can be believed without doxastic irresponsibility by people
who live today due to the historical-critical evidence that supports
it and defeats the natural reasons for skepticism. According to
Wahlberg, knowledge of the resurrection gained in this way would be
non-inferentially justified by testimony (as a basic or *sui
generis* source of justification), rather than by inference from
the available historical-critical evidence. The latter evidence is not
good enough for knowledge, but only for enabling responsible belief.




Wahlberg's case for doxastic responsibility depends on a
controversial assessment of the strength of the historical-critical
case for Jesus' resurrection. Another potential problem is the
fact that most Christians do not know the historical-critical evidence
for the resurrection. Does it follow that most Christians do not
believe in divine revelation responsibly? (Griffiths 2018). To address
this difficulty, Wahlberg appeals to the social nature of knowledge,
and argues that individuals can satisfy the requirements of doxastic
responsibility in virtue of the epistemic competence inherent in the
communities they belong to.


### 2.3 Inferential Justification



This section will continue, for a while, with the theme of divine
testimony, but now from a reductionist perspective. The accounts
studied so far work with an anti-reductionist (non-inferential) view
of testimonial justification. However, it can be argued that when it
comes to believing purportedly divine testimony, the stakes are too
high for it to be rational to trust without positive evidence of
trustworthiness (King 2008: 78).



According to King, rational belief in divine self-testimony requires
that God gives us "sufficient evidence to trust in him"
(King 2008: 176). We can know by *a priori* reasoning what kind
of evidence God must provide in order to win our trust, and so we can
anticipate that God (if he exists) will provide this kind of evidence.
Importantly, a divine revelation must be "discrete" and
available only to a few people at first, since a "major"
revelation immediately apparent for a global audience would obscure
God's love with overwhelming power. King provides a list of
possible evidences that satisfy the requirement of discreetness,
including "a sense of [divine] presence", "internal
communication (including dreams, visions)", "fulfilled
prophecies, Resurrection, Incarnation". Any conceivable
revelation must choose its means from this list and hence conform to a
necessary structure, which accommodates the cognitive limitations of
human beings and makes it possible for them to trust in a rational
way. King refers to his epistemological model as
"trust-evidentialism" (2008: 174, 176).



Even though King's account is ostensibly different from the
non-inferential testimonial models presented above, the differences
might be smaller than first appears. As we have seen, "doxastic
responsibility" requires extensive reasoning from evidence in
Wahlberg's account, even though such reasoning is construed as
defeater-deflecting rather than as trust-grounding.



As the example of King illustrates, inferential models for the
justification of revelation can be construed as testimonial, if
testimonial justification is understood in a reductionist way. John
Locke is a classic example of this. 



> 
> 
> Faith ... is the assent to any proposition ... upon the
> credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way
> of communication. This way of discovering truths to men we call
> *Revelation*. (*Essay Concerning Human Understanding*,
> IV, xviii, 2) 
> 
> 
> 



However, testimonial justification, for Locke, is reducible to
argument from evidence.


#### 2.3.1 A Probabilistic Argument



In order to see the general strengths and problems of inferential
models of justification, it will be helpful to focus on a paradigmatic
example in the tradition of Tillotson and Locke. Perhaps the most
influential evidentialist account of the justification of revelatory
claims is the one proposed by Richard Swinburne. His argument can be
formalized using probability calculus and Bayes Theorem (Swinburne
2007: 345-356), but the discussion below will proceed
informally. After a presentation of Swinburne's argument, some
critical and complementary perspectives will be addressed. 



For Swinburne, rational acceptance of a revelatory claim must be based
on evidence, and how strong the evidence needs to be depends on what
background beliefs we have. If we have good reason to believe,
independently of any purported revelation, that God exists and that a
revelation from him is to be expected, then rational acceptance of a
revelatory claim can be based on more modest evidence than would
otherwise be the case. It is hence important for Swinburne to build a
case for the existence of God based on natural theology, and then
establish the likelihood of a revelation on the basis of *a
priori* reasoning about what God is likely to do.



Swinburne thinks that natural theological arguments make God's
existence at least as probable as his non-existence, and that *a
priori* reasoning about God leads to the conclusion that a
revelation is to be expected. A God who has made rational creatures
would want to interact with them, and for this to be possible, they
would need to know more about God's nature and character than
what is naturally accessible to them. Furthermore, it would be good
for humans to receive moral enlightenment from God, and encouragement
to live morally good lives. Since God is good, these considerations
make a revelation likely. Moreover, Swinburne argues that a good God
would have reason to become *incarnate* in order to atone for
sin and to identify with our suffering. If this is to be effectual, a
revelation that tells us about the incarnation and atonement is
necessary. It is also to be expected that a divine revelation would
not come with overwhelming evidence in its favor but require some
searching activity on the part of humans. This would encourage human
cooperation and co-responsibility and strengthen desire for the goal
of salvation. Since a revelation would have to be translated between
different cultures and across time, there must also be included in the
revelation some means of continuing guidance--a church that can
ensure that interpretations and translations are correct (Swinburne
2007: 103-104. For a more fully developed perspective on the
ecclesial mediation of revelation, see Levering 2014).



Armed with the purported background knowledge that a certain kind of
revelation is likely, Swinburne suggests four "tests" or
criteria for credible revelatory claims (Swinburne 2007: Ch. 6). The
first criterion is that the content of a purported revelation concerns
things that are important for our deepest well-being, and that this
content is not very improbable on grounds independent of revelation.
This "content test" must be complemented by a
"miracle test", which is the second criterion. If God
wants us to be able to identify a divine revelation as such, he must
deliver it in a way that only God could do. This requires a divine
signature in the form of a confirming miracle, in the sense of a
violation of a natural law. Third, if a revelation is to have a
determinate content that is not endlessly open to interpretation, a
genuine revelation must contain instructions for how an interpretive
church is to be constituted, and the interpretations of this church
must be plausible as interpretations of the original revelation. The
fourth test is that the church's interpretations of revelation
must not be very implausible on other, independent grounds.



When applying these tests to the great world religions, Swinburne
claims to find that the purported Christian revelation is the only
serious candidate. No other religion can point to a reasonable amount
of evidence for a foundational, authenticating miracle like the
resurrection of Jesus, nor does any other religion satisfy the other
three tests. This shows that the coincidence of the satisfaction of
all four tests (even to a moderate degree) "is an extremely
unlikely event in the normal course of things" (Swinburne 2007:
337). Since Christianity satisfies all four tests, according to
Swinburne, it is very probable that its purported revelation is true.
In order to show that Christianity satisfies the tests, Swinburne
produces a complex argument based on evidence from many sources (for
example, historical arguments about the acts and teachings of Jesus,
evidence for the resurrection, arguments for the moral goodness of
Christian teachings, etc.). It is the cumulative force of the total
evidence that makes belief in the Christian revelatory claim
justified.



A general criticism that can be directed against Swinburne's
account--as well as other inferential accounts (e.g., King
2008)--is that it seems to draw on the Christian religion as a
kind of intuition-pump for what are supposed to be "*a
priori*" features of any genuine revelation. For example,
Swinburne argues that it is *a priori* likely that God will
become incarnated and atone for human sin, and that this therefore is
a part of the content-criterion by which to test purported
revelations. Many would argue, however, that this reasoning is
"*ad hoc* and *post eventum*" and biased in
favor of the Christian tradition (Abraham 2006: 73. See also Stump
1994: 740; McLean 2013).



Swinburne's argument invites detailed objections on practically
every point, but he has also defended every step of the argument
extensively in separate works about natural theology, the incarnation,
atonement theory, and the resurrection (2004a; 1994; 1989; 2003).
Especially the historical argument for a resurrection is crucial for
Swinburne's case. The debates generated by criticism of
Swinburne's historical claims and claims about natural theology
cannot be addressed here. However, the very fact that
Swinburne's argument, in order to succeed, needs to establish
many controversial propositions has been seen, by some, as a fatal
weakness (Plantinga 2000b, 271-280; Hasker 2002: 256-257).



Appealing to a general "principle of dwindling
probabilities", Plantinga has argued that complex inferential
cases for Christianity of the kind Swinburne presents must necessarily
fail. Such complex arguments chain together a number of logically
independent propositions, most of which are merely probable given the
evidence. For every merely probable proposition that is needed to
reach the conclusion, the probability of the hypothesis as a whole
will decrease, since the probabilities at each stage of the argument
must be multiplied. Plantinga argues that even if the probabilities of
the individual propositions are given a very generous
estimate--for example, if we assign the probability 0.9 to the
proposition that God exists (on our background knowledge)--the
overall conclusion about the Christian revelation will still have a
probability well below 0.5. Plantinga, therefore, concludes that the
inferential case for the Christian revelation 



> 
> 
> isn't strong enough to produce warranted belief ... at
> most, it could produce the warranted belief that the main lines of
> Christian teaching aren't particularly improbable. (Plantinga
> 2000b: 271)
> 
> 
> 



Plantinga's argument seems to threaten the whole inferential
project. In response, however, it can be argued that it proves too
much. All historical arguments (even secular ones) link together
propositions that are merely probable. If the principle of dwindling
probabilities is valid and has the implications that Plantinga claims,
it could be applied to all historical arguments, with the result that
no historical argument could succeed. This, however, is a conclusion
that many would be reluctant to draw (Swinburne 2004b: 540; 2007:
356).



Tim and Lydia McGrew have provided what many take to be a strong
response to Plantinga's argument from dwindling probabilities
(McGrew 2004; McGrew and McGrew 2006). Basically, they argue that at
least the steepness of the "dwindling" is an illusion
created by the way Plantinga (mis)represents the
inferential-historical case for a Christian revelation. Among other
shortcomings, Plantinga's construal fails to bring out how
evidence for a proposition that is "downstream" in the
argument (such as "God raised Jesus from the dead") is
relevant for assessing the probability of a proposition that is
"upstream" (such as "God exists"). While
Plantinga concedes ground to some of the critique (2006), he
nevertheless stands by his general argument (2015: 262. For an
overview of the debate, see Nickel 2015: 225-235 and Crisp
2009.)


#### 2.3.2 Holism



Another response to the purported threat of dwindling probabilities is
suggested by Menssen and Sullivan (2007). They defend a basically
Swinburnian inferential project, but criticize Swinburne for being
insufficiently holistic, in a sense to be explained below (2007:
55-56). With respect to the argument about dwindling
probabilities, they acknowledge that a complex proposition cannot have
a greater probability than any of its constituent claims. However,
they argue that in certain cases, the complex proposition "could
still be more *believable*" (2007: 61). For example, the
claim that "there is a heavenly body beyond Uranus that is
perturbing its orbit" is more complex than the weaker claim that
"there is a heavenly body beyond Uranus". Nevertheless,
scientists did not first attempt to prove the weaker claim, and then
went on to prove the stronger (more complex) claim. Instead, they
established the truth of the weaker claim *by* establishing the
truth of the stronger.



The lesson to learn from this, according to Menssen and Sullivan, is
that the project of justifying revelatory claims should not await the
establishing of God's existence by means of traditional natural
theology (as suggested by Swinburne 2004b: 538 and Mavrodes 1988: 102). Instead,
revelatory claims should be investigated as part of the project of
justifying theism--the only condition for such investigation
being that the existence of a world-creator is not highly unlikely. In
fact, 



> 
> 
> a negative conclusion concerning the existence of a good God is not
> justified unless the content of a reasonable number of leading
> revelatory claims has been seriously considered. (Menssen and Sullivan
> 2007: 63) 
> 
> 
> 



This is because the "problem of evil" counts as evidence
against God's existence. To exclude putative revelations from
consideration before God's existence has been established would
be to refuse to "listen to the voice of the accused". What
if a putative revelation contains an acceptable explanation of evil,
that blocks or weakens the atheistic arguments? Not to take this
possibility into account would, arguably, be to handicap the
evidentialist project by forcing it to proceed without a "full
database" (Kwan 2011: 472). Hence, the "holistic"
approach of Menssen and Sullivan might be seen as an improvement in
relation to the more traditional, "layered" approach of
Swinburne. (However, Swinburne's distinction between
"bare" and "ramified" natural theology point
in a holistic direction, see 2004b: 533-535.)


#### 2.3.3 Voluntarism



Other critics of Swinburne point out that he ignores the role played
by emotions, desires and the will in coming to faith (Hasker 2002:
257-258). Is belief in a divine revelation only a matter of
Bayesian calculation of probabilities? This lacuna in
Swinburne's thought--as well as in much evidentialist
reflection in general--has been addressed by Paul Moser, who
introduces an existential-affective dimension in the inferential
project. His central claim is that our access to evidence for
God's existence might depend on our volitional and affective
states (2008; 2010. See also Wainwright 2006).



Moser believes that God is "hidden", at least for some
people some of the time, in the sense that his existence is not beyond
reasonable doubt. This fact should not be taken as a reason for
skepticism, however, since it is to be expected that a perfectly
loving God would only make evidence of his existence available when
this is likely to elicit the right human response. God does not reveal
himself simply in order to slake our curiosity, but only with the
purpose of accomplishing, in a non-coercive way, a moral
transformation of humans to align their wills and character with
God's character and purposes. We should hence expect evidence
for God to be purposively available.



Moser claims that his emphasis on the volitional element in our
epistemic responses to divine revelation constitutes "a
Copernican Revolution in cognitive matters about God's
existence" (2008: 4). However, it would be more accurate to say
that he revives a classical theme, found in the church fathers and
Aquinas (Macdonald 2009a: 137). For Aquinas, for example, it is the
will that moves the intellect to the assent of faith (as emphasized by
the "voluntarist interpretation", see
 section 2.1
 above).



Another philosopher who stresses the personal dimension of faith and
its epistemic relevance is Abraham, who notes that revelation is a
"threshold concept". By accepting a revelatory claim,
one's perception of the world changes in a fundamental way. This
is a "profoundly self-involving experience" and a
"massive cognitive and spiritual revolution" (Abraham
2006: 87, 89). 


#### 2.3.4 Hybridism



Finally, it must be considered whether a "hybrid" approach
to revelatory claims--combining inferential and non-inferential
modes of justification--might be fruitful. Abraham (2006 and
1982) suggests that this is the case. Inspired by Plantinga's
theory of a *sensus divinitatis*, Abraham claims that we come
equipped with an *oculus contemplationis*, "a
spiritually discerning eye" that allows us to discern
God's presence and activity in nature and history through a
"basic cognitive act" (2006: 69). 



However, Abraham considers arguments from evidence to be
"supplementary to the appeal to the *oculus
contemplationis*". Miracles, for example, have a genuine
epistemic freight and the kind of data appealed to in evidentialist
reasoning about revelation can 



> 
> 
> operate as corroborating evidence that coheres with and thus
> strengthens the initial beliefs legitimately formed independently of
> propositional evidence. (2006: 72, 77)
> 
> 
> 



Abraham's portrayal of revelation as a "threshold
concept" also seems to open up the possibility of a kind of
"retroactive" justification: Once a revelatory claim has
been accepted, the new perspective one has gained will make one
capable of seeing the cognitive errors of one's previous
position. Charles Taylor has described this kind of retroactive
justification as a "supersession argument" (2005:
340-341).


### 2.4 *Sui Generis* Approaches



A possibility (or purported possibility) that has not been considered
so far, is that belief in divine revelation could be justified in a
way that is totally *sui generis*. Inspired by Kierkegaard,
Karl Barth seems to suggest something like this. Human nature is not
in any way adapted to receive knowledge of God, according to Barth,
and hence there can be no philosophical explanation of how knowledge
of God comes about. However, God himself could provide such knowledge
without respecting the criteria of any epistemological canon. Barth
writers:



> 
> 
> To say "God with us" is to say something which has no
> basis or possibility outside itself, which can in no sense be
> explained in terms of man and man's situation, but only as
> knowledge of God from God, as free and unmerited grace. As the Bible
> bears witness to God's revelation and as Church proclamation
> takes up this witness in obedience, both renounce any foundation apart
> from that which God has given once and for all by speaking (Barth
> 1975: 119-120).
> 
> 
> 



Critics have accused Barth of portraying revelation 



> 
> 
> as something having full authority over the insights of reason and
> sensibility, and as not in any way subject to them. (Quash 2007: 334)
> 
> 
> 
> 



According to Pannenberg, this is equivalent to fideism. 



> 
> 
> Barth's apparently so lofty objectivity about God and
> God's word turns out to rest on no more than the irrational
> subjectivity of a venture of faith with no justification outside
> itself. (1976: 273)
> 
> 
> 



In response to this kind of criticism, theologians in the
"postliberal" tradition (inspired by Barth) have argued
that revelation is not an epistemological concept at all. The
Christian doctrine of revelation does not purport to explain how
Christina beliefs are justified. Instead, it provides an
intra-theological explication of God's prevenient grace
(Thiemann 1985: 4). Some have even gone so far as to say that
"the very idea that the Bible is revealed ... is a claim
that creates more trouble than it is worth" (Hauerwas 1981: 57).
For postliberal theologians in general, Christian beliefs are
justified by being part of a coherent web of beliefs (Marshall
2000).



However, perhaps a better way of defending Barth is suggested by Hans
Urs von Balthasar. He shares Barth's general view of revelation
as epistemically self-authenticating and as providing its own warrant,
independently of human preconceptions (Chapp 2004: 11). However,
Balthasar attempts to make this view intelligible by suggesting an
analogy with aesthetic experience. In Mozart's *Jupiter
Symphony*, for example, every note seems to be necessary in the
sense that any change would make the symphony less beautiful. However,
nobody (except Mozart himself) could have said in advance that
precisely *this* combination of notes is necessary in order to
produce such beauty. Hence, our recognition of the beauty or
perfection of the symphony happens without reference to any criteria
or rules that we could have stated independently of encountering the
symphony itself. In a similar way, revelation possesses its own
intrinsic credibility, rooted in the self-authenticating glory of God.
"Divine love", writes Balthasar, 



> 
> 
> can appear in such an overwhelming way that its glorious majesty
> throws one to the ground; it shines out as the last word and leaves
> one no choice but to respond in the mode of pure, blind obedience.
> (Balthasar 2004: 53, 57) 
> 
> 
>