Debating Christian Religious Epistemology seeks to provide an accessible introduction to the epistemology of religion. After an overview of the field in the Introduction, each chapter presents a candidate account of Christian religious epistemology as outlined by an advocate of that position. These include Classical Evidentialism, Phenomenal Conservatism, Proper Functionalism (or Reformed Epistemology), Covenantal Epistemology, and Tradition-Based Perspectivalism. The chapters then include responses from the perspective of each of the other approaches. I will not here summarize every chapter but will focus on the aspects of the book that seem most relevant to instructors and to the state of the debate in religious epistemology.
In the Introduction, DePoe and McNabb provide a good overview of the subfield. They briefly present the main positions taken on the relevant issues in religious epistemology: justification, knowledge, evidence, and the like. Each section lays out the current debates about these issues (internalism vs externalism, contextualism vs invariantism, etc.). DePoe and McNabb achieve an introduction that is at once up to date and yet accessible for an undergraduate. They also offer suggestions for further reading in each of these areas. This introduction will be of use to students of philosophy and theology. The editors direct the other authors to apply their discussions of religious epistemology to two questions: divine hiddenness and epistemic peer disagreement. This is a useful pedagogical approach, as it keeps the contributions grounded in a concrete pair of questions.
John DePoe contributes a chapter advocating classical evidentialism. He defines evidentialism as the claim that ‘beliefs require sufficient evidence in order to be justified’, and evidence is ‘a person's awareness of good reasons or grounds that imply that the propositional content of the belief is true (or likely to be true)’ (16). DePoe also affirms classical foundationalism: ‘a properly ordered noetic structure, or system of beliefs, consists of beliefs inferentially supporting other beliefs in a single direction . . . which ultimately are based on beliefs that are noninferentially justified’ (16).
The question inevitably arises for the evidentialist: which beliefs are justified in a non-inferential way? DePoe claims that all the properly basic beliefs in one's noetic structure are incorrigible beliefs (17). But what constitutes an incorrigible belief? DePoe claims that ‘incorrigible beliefs are impervious to falsehood’ (17). Furthermore, it seems the most definitive characterization of incorrigible beliefs is that they stand ‘in an uncorrectable position with respect to the truth of that belief’ (17). The thought seems to be that classical evidentialism is defensible because incorrigible beliefs are the only justified non-inferential beliefs, and these incorrigible beliefs are closely or ineluctably tied to truth.
I would like to hear more from DePoe in defence of the above definition of incorrigibility. For it seems that incorrigibility-as-uncorrectability can and does come apart from incorrigibility-as-tied-to-truth. Delusions may be ‘incorrigible’ insofar as they are uncorrectable. The man who believes his thoughts are fed into his mind directly by a nefarious extra-terrestrial will have no method of correcting those beliefs. (Anyone who tries to disabuse him is simply an agent of the devious extra-terrestrial.) And yet his belief falls down at the bar of incorrigibility-as-tied-to-truth. So there seem to be two notions of incorrigibility at work, and this puts in question DePoe's evidentialism. The evidentialist might bite the bullet and claim that even such delusions are justified so long as they are really uncorrectable. That seems a high price to pay, in that it has moved us quite far from the beating heart of evidentialism. For isn't classical evidentialism intended to provide us with a framework that can reliably eliminate delusions precisely by showing them to be unjustified? Admittedly, DePoe makes a further appeal to direct acquaintance to ground this essential tie between our basic perceptual beliefs and truth. But one worries that the well-worn objections of the traditional sceptic will re-emerge when one tries to provide arguments for such an essential connection.
Gage and McAllister's chapter on phenomenal conservatism (PC) in many ways picks up where this criticism of evidentialism leaves off. Rather than stipulating incorrigible beliefs as the only properly basic beliefs, these authors claim that ‘foundational beliefs are not based on other beliefs but on experiences, which have the unique ability to justify belief without themselves requiring justification’ (62). These experiences (or seemings) are the ultimate ground of even our properly basic beliefs. These seemings directly ground beliefs which are epistemically innocent until proven guilty. Put otherwise, these foundational seemings confer prima facie justification upon the properly basic beliefs which directly depend upon them. PC gives the benefit of the doubt to a wide range of experiences: ‘intuitions, introspections, perceptions, and memories . . . PC says that all of these experiences – these “seemings” – are capable of justifying basic beliefs’ (63).
Unlike classical evidentialism, PC insists that theistic belief can be justified on the basis of experiences before any argumentative support for theism is provided. However, unlike proper functionalism or Reformed epistemology, PC holds that a justified theism will usually eventually demand philosophical arguments for theism: ‘In the end, theistic belief may be justified before the possession of inferential support but typically not without it’ (73). The difference between PC and Reformed epistemology appears to be that religious seemings (the sensus divinitatis) are experiences which provide prima facie justification but also tend to be formalizable – and even ought to eventually be formalized – into arguments for theism. PC thus seeks to provide a novel middle way between evidentialism and proper functionalism.
The final chapter – on ‘tradition-based perspectivalism’ – covers perhaps the most novel approach to religious epistemology in the book. Baldwin seeks to extend Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of ‘traditions of enquiry’ to account for the domain of religious knowledge. Baldwin emphasizes that all reflection on the truth or rational justifiability of some belief begins from the perspective of a particular set of intellectual assumptions or salient questions. Rational persons revise both these culturally inherited assumptions and questions, and they can even come to judge that their own tradition (whether religious, ethical, or political) is repudiated and overcome by some other tradition.
However, Baldwin's focused discussion of religious epistemology occurs only on the final three pages of the chapter. It would have been a benefit to readers to have a more sustained application of MacIntyre's thought to religious epistemology – especially to the questions of divine hiddenness and religious disagreement. For MacIntyre's epistemic framework would be particularly suited to these questions. After all, MacIntyre has emphasized the social and historical situatedness of conceptions of rationality, evidence, and the like – even while resisting relativism. If religious traditions have their own conceptions of rationality or of evidence – which may be incommensurable with narrowly empiricist notions of evidence, for instance – then understanding such differences may allow for the adjudication of conflicts between such outlooks. There is much to be explored here, and Baldwin's brief reflections only begin to apply MacIntyre's approach to these issues.
Regarding the volume in general, I believe it provides a welcome and useful text for courses in philosophy of religion or religious epistemology. This is not to say there could not be some improvements. For instance, there could have been a chapter on virtue epistemology and Christian belief. Admittedly, the editors state that they did not intend an exhaustive survey of approaches. But the virtue-theoretical approach is one of the most widely attested in the history of Christian thought, so instructors will naturally want to supplement the volume at this juncture. Finally, some authors spent less time than others addressing the two concrete issues prompted by the editors (divine hiddenness and religious disagreement). The focus on these two issues is an excellent editorial approach, so it is unfortunate that this did not translate equally into the structure of every chapter. Overall, however, this volume makes an important contribution to the teaching of religious epistemology.
