Mavrodes on the Bible and epistemology of religion

I think that one of the most elegant writers on the epistemology of religion is George Mavrodes, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan. One of his books, Belief in God: A Study in the Epistemology of Religion, is as profound as it is concise and full of clarity, and is the starting point for much of my own thinking about religious epistemology.

Mavrodes had an exchange with Gordon Clark, a practitioner of “presuppositional apologetics,” which it seems to me deserves the criticism it so often receives. Their topic was Clark’s axiomatic view of the authority of Scripture. You can read Mavrodes here, and Clark’s reply here. I’ll post two of my favorite passages from Mavrodes, both of which occur in the latter half of his critique.

Passage #1:

The fact is that every consistent epistemology which assigns a role to the Bible in the acquisition of theological knowledge must assign a role of equal scope, and in precisely the same area, to sense perception. For whenever the Bible forms a link in an epistemological chain, then sensory contact with the Bible must form the very next link. This point is perhaps worth emphasizing. The Bible is not a magic talisman that makes men “wise unto salvation” merely by containing true propositions and standing upon a shelf. It has epistemological results when men read it, study it, hear it preached and expounded. Missionaries understand this well enough. They do not merely carry the Bible in their pockets. They translate it, print it, sell it, give it away, and preach it. In short, they bring the people into contact with the Bible and its message, and they make this contact through sight and hearing, through sensation. A Christian epistemologist (at least one who includes the Bible in his system) has by no means finished before he has incorporated sense experience into his system. And he cannot relegate such experience to an appendix, as the mode whereby we obtain “worldly” knowledge (or opinion). To whatever extent God has chosen to make His revelation available in the Bible, to that same extent He has chosen to funnel exactly that same revelation through the senses. Sensation must therefore be just as central to the acquisition of theological knowledge as is the Bible itself. It is therefore of no use for the philosopher to tell us that the senses are weak, variable, fallible, etc., unless he also has the courage of his convictions and allows that the knowledge he derives from the Bible is infected with this same weakness and fallibility. For the Bible is not an epistemological competitor of, or substitute for, sense experience. On the contrary, its epistemological function is dependent upon sense experience. If God has chosen to reveal his truth in the Bible, then he has chosen to reveal it through the senses, and the Christian philosopher must make his peace with them. If they are fallible, then they are fallible, and it will be the task of a true epistemology to show how the fallible senses fulfill their role in conveying to us the sure knowledge of God. If to do this is to be empiricist, then Christian philosophy must be empiricist.

Passage #2:

[Clark's] epistemology, as expressed here, is like that of the Westminster Principle in a fundamental way. We might call them “linear” epistemologies. If they were to be pictured, they would represent the process of knowledge, or of revelation, as a line or chain in which everything hangs from a single link. In Clark’s essay, the single link is the Axiom; in the Westminster Principle it is the Bible. I find myself dissatisfied with that tradition. Let me therefore conclude by suggesting a different picture. My picture is that of a net which is attached to God at many points, all around its circumference. In its center is the present man, who also touches it at many points. The net is formed of many strands, and of many kinds of strands; the Bible (no doubt one of the more important), history, tradition, science, scholarship, sense experience, mystical experience, logic and deduction, joy, pain, crisis, and perhaps many others. They cross and recross each other, knotted, twisted, braided, spreading apart, converging and diverging many times before they span the gap between God and man. And God’s contact with the man, His speech to the man, is communicated through the whole net, through the whole world and life that He has created. It is, of course, only a picture. But perhaps for someone it will help to break the domination of the picture of the chain. That in its turn may lead us to a fuller understanding than we have yet achieved of the way in which God speaks, not only to our fathers, but also to us.

I like these excerpts; that’s all.