It's called "Fideism", Phil...

Phil Johnson is playing the part of an Orwell character over at TeamPyro. In this post, part of a series on the John MacArthur book "Truth War", Phil wonders how "vital" truth is, and has this to say:

Phil Johnson:
So give him a look like, "Huh?" and remind him that the position you are defending has historically been associated with a point of view that is known for its militant opposition to modernism. Then ask if he understands what "modernism" is.

The irony. What's that pre-modern position called Phil? What's the underlying epistemology you're espousing, here?

Phil goes on, and lets us know how clever he is by zooming right past modernity when talking to post-moderns, and scoffing at their assumptions about his "modern", foundational epistemology. Not so fast, pomos! Phil's not even reached a modern epistemology, something he's quite proud of, even as schedules his next flight on a modern jet, and posts on his modern laptop, relieved from his cold by modern medicine.

Phil Johnson:
He'll most likely respond with a condescending look and tell you in an exasperated tone that—while this all is probably far too complicated for you to understand—you have naively bought into foundationalist epistemology; your worldview has recently been totally discredited; and you need to acquire some epistemic humility.

I don't think there's any problem with complexity here, or mental horsepower. What's in play here is dishonesty and intransigence. Why not just be honest about your fideism, Phil? You eschew epistemology as a discipline. It isn't that you are epistemologically arrogant so much as that you think you are above the discussion of knowledge in the first place.

I'll skip down to the end -- it's just Phil, safe behind his administrative controls, dissembling about the problems of post-modern epistemology. Now post-modern epistemology is problematic; even post-moderns will tell you that. Modernism is fraught with tensions, too. But these are both advanced fighter jets compared to the trike Phil's peddling around, complaining about the comparative weakness of the others.

Here's his finish:

Phil Johnson:
I don't think there's a fancy name for the view of knowledge the Reformers and other biblically-oriented Protestants held, other than "basic Christianity." Call it "Calvinism" if you like. Or you can label it "the Proverbs 1:7 view" to be even more accurate.

"Fideism", Phil. Why not just call it what it is, epistemically?

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Dan Phillips Doubts the Value of Doubt

This morning's post over a TeamPyro is a little riff by Dan Phillips on doubt.

Dan Phillips:
Our unbelief has to be unfathomable to God, as was the disciples' to Christ.

and

To say that God knows and understands all things is not to say that God finds everything understandable, if you take my meaning.

The first sentence is absurd on its face; Dan believes in an omniscient God, right? Of course he does, and the second sentence provides the equivocation on that statement. God understands, he just doesn't like it or sympathize with it.

Pressed on this a bit in the comments section, Dan clarifies a bit:

Dan Phillips:
We generally use "understandable" in the sense of taking something as reasonable, to be expected, and thus worth acceptance. God knows and knows the meaning of everything. That is not to say (to say the least!) that God shares our view of everything, or finds our view reasonable, rational, and acceptable.

Here, the post-resurrection Jesus clearly finds their unbelief astonishing. It isn't that He doesn't know literally everything there is to know about it. Actually, it's that He does, and He knows it to be nuts.

This is thoroughly incoherent. It's double-speak. On the one hand, Jesus is supposed to know all things, and on the other, Dan has Jesus thinking doubts about him are "nuts" -- irrational, crazy, unfounded.

If Jesus knows all things, then he fully understands that from a reasoning standpoint, his resurrection, even preceded by preparatory miracles, is completely without precedent, and violates a set of basic understandings rational minds develop about the world. Jesus would understand that the people around him are thoroughly convinced that when a man dies, he's dead, that's it. It's permanent.

So it's perfectly rational for someone to be incredulous at the news that a person they had be killed at the hand of the Romans and buried in a tomb was once again alive, and making appearances to his friends and family. It's such an extraordinary event that it be would irrational to accept such reports at face value. That nullifies and jepoardies everything we know about human physiology, about life and death. Now, maybe something has happened that calls all that into question, but only a fool would simply abandons the witness of one's experiences, and the collected knowledge of those all around him, at first sign of a report that a dead man had come back to life after three days.

If that's not clear, imagine a colleague informing you over the water-cooler on Tuesday morning that your Jim, a colleague who had tragically died of masive heart attack last Friday, and who you had seen in his casket at a reviewal on Sunday, had come back to life! In fact, Jim was planning to be back in the office by mid-day Thursday.

Would you doubt such a report? What would you think about someone who simply smiled, and believed, and said "Wow, that's great news. I'll be happy to see him."?

We're deeply reliant -- necessarily dependent -- on our ability to observe, establish patterns, and expectations, and apply skepticism and credulity. And yet, Dan Phillips supposes that our basic rational processing of new claims and propositions -- doubt in the face of the extraordinary and fantastic is "nuts" -- irrational. He's arguing that our rational behavior is actually irrational.

But wait! Since Jesus knows the truth, doesn't all that doubt become "nuts" then, to Jesus, anyway? No, as per Dan, Jesus would understand the rational basis (proper function) of man's thinking about such matters, and would be fully aware of the limited information man has to go on, which, Jesus' miracles prior to his resurrection notwithstanding, points completely at the permanence of death. Jesus, understanding all this, should not be the least surprised at this -- it's rational behavior.

Commenter "StrongTower" helps make this point a little further down in the comments, if unwittingly:

StrongTower:
In a court of law we must find quilt beyond a reasonable doubt. A reasoned doubt is based upon some finding of fact. Doubt that is based upon no precedent is unreasonable, and therefore without understanding.

There was no reason for those to whom Christ was speaking to doubt, "If you do not believe my word, believe for the sake of these works..." This then goes to the heart. Unreasoned doubt is bound in the darkness of understanding. Where there is no light there is no reason. They stumble but they do not know over what. Why do you doubt? Seeing as there is no reason to give light to your doubt, it is not understandable that you do.

In a court of law, a man's understanding that death was permanent would be held as perfectly reasonable, overwhelmingly indicated by precedent. StrongTower nicely demonstrate the "black is white" inversion that proceeds from Dan's double-speak.

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Phil Johnson: Certainly Clueless

Phil Johnson from this post over at Pyromaniacs a couple days ago:

Any assertion not so qualified risks being labeled "excessive confidence," which according to Brian McLaren is a "cancer" responsible for practically everything that's wrong in the world.

Except for one thing. When you start seeing what a noxious malignancy certainty is, then it's OK to be really, really confident about uncertainty itself. In McLaren's words, "Thinking along these lines, I became convinced that, yes, many of our world's worst atrocities were indeed the result of overconfidence" (Everything Must Change, p. 39).

You won't hear postmodernists or their Emerging-church cousins saying many things with that kind of settled conviction! But their doubts about certainty per se are unwaveringly emphatic.

You don't have to read very much of Phil's stuff to understand his penchant for projecting his own problems onto his opponents. Here, he's annoyed because Emergent types somehow maintain some certainty in their uncertainty about various theological issues.

You see, certainty for Phil is some thing you do, like mowing your lawn. It's not the result of a process of weighing and evaluation evidences with reason and logic, it's the means to an end, not the end itself, of an inquiry or anything else. A good pyromaniac is certain because being certain is good, so long its about the things a Pyro should be certain about (other things not sanctioned by Johnson demand solipsistic skepticism, but that's for another post).

We're dealing two different objects of scrutiny here, and this is a either a subtlety Phil just can't grasp, or Phil's hard in "spin mode" here. Uncertainty about theological propositions is the natural, rational, default position, if only because for so many theological claims there is no "feedback loop" to provide any objective verification about the basic soundness of the claim. Certainty about doubts themselves is trvial to justify, on the other hand. The doubts may be unfounded, but certainty about the fact that one has doubts needs nothing more than a little introspection to establish. In the case of historical abuses and tragic moral transgressions by Christians, there's little controversy in being certain there either. Can we be certain that murderous abuses of ecclesiastical power by, say, Torquemada or Calvin were, in fact, cases of extreme overconfidence in one's theological views?

Think about what uncertainty in that regard means from Phil's standpoint: Maybe Torquemada was right after all, or the nice folks who put Michael Servetus to death were as right as rain, and entitled to their confidence in it.

Here's a paragraph from a little further on in the post:

Ironically, the canonization of doubt as a virtue is also a clear echo of the very worst tendency of modernism (see the Ronald Nash quote above)—which means, really, that the "postmodern" skepticism of our Emerging friends isn't technically postmodern at all. Their modernist ancestors were fine with so-called scientific certainties; but they despised spiritual certainties—especially certainties grounded in the conviction that the Bible is truly God's Word. Emergent Christianity has expanded (not rejected) the modernist mindset by insisting on uncertainty about everything—except, of course, the infallible dogma of uncertainty.

Setting aside Phil's hyperbole here ("canonization of doubt" -- sheesh, point me to that canon, I'd like to see that!), what we have is Phil's objection to confidence in modernist empirical claims not being extended automatically to similar confidence in pre-modern spiritual claims. This may be news to Phil, but it shouldn't be news to anyone else -- these are claims with completely different epistemic foundations. They have different levels of trust to the reasoning mind because they deserve different levels of trust. Spiritual claims do not and cannot perform and be tested or falsified the way empirical claims can. We trust empirical claims because they are performative, and we reserve confidence in spiritual claims because they are speculative, and afford no validation or verification -- even in Phil's best case -- until after the inquirer is dead.

It's a hall of mirrors, looking through the "Phil Johnson" lens - an inchoate epistemology if there ever was one. That's bad enough, but read the whole post (or any of his posts), and note the supreme confidence Phil has in his perverted certainty.

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