The Resurrection Series #22

Warranted Resurrection Belief

In the great halls of Philosophy lies a School of Epistemology which has existed for thousands of years. The question of how we know what we know is discussed at this school and great men have fought and disputed the phenomenon of human knowledge since the dawn of philosophy itself. Sometimes reading through the tombs of essays and anthologies on this subject can make you feel like you are stuck in an MS Escher painting. I will do my very best to present this material as concisely as possible.

Alvin Plantinga really has to be given credit as being the one who has revived interest in the subject of religious epistemology. He laid the groundwork for what might be called an intellectual treatise on faith. Ever since the dawn of the modern era faith has been seen as a hindrance to rational thought. Marx saw it as the opiate of the masses, and the faithful responded by proving him right. Everyday we see stories of people doing the most irrational things for their faith, and for any critical person these tragedies seem so easily avoided should we not all adhere to a simple code of reason. I for one would not ever want to be on the side that tries to limit or suppress rationality.

So the question Plantinga ultimately sets out to answer is; is faith rational? This is not expressly admitted to, but through his technical jargon this is the basis for Warranted Christian Belief, which is the culmination of his Warranted trilogy. What Plantinga offers is a very easy and common sense theory of knowledge, which is refreshing, but his approach is still steeped in the analytical school of philosophy. It can be daunting to try and read through his books. Plantinga’s basic thesis is to identify the cognitive functions that produce true beliefs, and if such functions are working properly then they obtain warrant. Now there are a few more caveats to add to the idea of what it means for a cognitive function to “work properly”, but that phrase is sufficient enough to grasp the general meaning. Thus, a properly functioning cognitive system is a rational one.

Plantinga does very little to elaborate on what neurological components exist in his epistemology to identify cognitive functions, nor does he ever make a connection between faith and cognitive functions in order to truly establish his thesis, but he does go to great lengths to show how principle Christian beliefs demonstrate coherency toward general metaphysical principles. I cannot say for sure why Plantinga drops the ball at the most critical juncture of his argument, but it is still recognized to be one of the great contributions to religious epistemology. My guess is that Plantinga wanted to shy away from over-rationalizing the Christian faith, and to establish a specific cognitive function as representing faith would in the end make our spirituality too banal and natural. Plantinga mentions in his books how his epistemology is a naturalistic one, but can be used for spiritual purposes. So in keeping “faith” shrouded in its religious conclave made it possible for him to simply sidestep the issue and move on to other important theological concepts.

But where Plantinga left off, Paul Tillich gives us great insight into the cognitive properties of faith. Paul Tillich describes faith as ultimate concern. Tillich was not afraid of over-rationalizing the Christian faith, in fact, that was his objective. Which might be to his peril. His Systematic Theology is one of the greatest modern works of Theology, and one of the most sacrilegious. It is pure theosophy on the one hand and Christian mysticism on the other. Tillich gives us a comprehensive Christian faith seen through the eyes of modern intellectualism. One can feel as though they completely understand Christianity and still not know anything about it at all, after reading it, like reading a manual on how to build a car and thinking you can then drive it afterward.

What is ultimate concern? For Tillich ultimate concern was that state of concern that existed ultimately, and I know that sounds repititous, but it is an important distinction. Concern is that state of seeking personal meaning. We show concern, but concern is in a sense non-rational. It is not derived from the inductive or deductive synthesis’ of our noetic structure. The way we think, the way we hold beliefs, the way we arrange information into patterns is all determined by a set of filters already in place we see as our identity. Our identity is who we are. It is not simply knowledge. It is *our* knowledge. We have no rational foundation for our identity is simply is. It exists and everything else comes afterward.

When Tillich proposed faith as ultimate concern what he was doing is saying that faith is our way of finding meaning and purpose for our lives, and his proposal was to argue that since our identities are non-rational we have the epistemic license to seek the transcendent as a source for ultimate meaning. God, in this sense, is the bringer or source of ultimate meaning. So for Tillich, god is a tacit belief for all concerned people. We all just name our gods differently. For some god is popularity. For others it is success, and still have family as their god. The point is that the role is the same as directing our total selves to something we see as beyond or transcendent.

The argument along these lines to direct us to God in the proper sense, is to seek out that one principle which is truly transcendent that can exist ultimately. It does not good to make success our god, for that is clearly a false god. It is no more transcendent then jump rope. It is an idol. Modern Evangelicals have manufactured a term called, “classical theism” and with it they have made themselves sound legitimate as possessing “classical” belief, but the reality is that patristic and medieval theology had a well spring of divergent theological belief that was very accommodating and adaptable to a pluralistic society, and one such idea saw God as Unity. Unity of self and unity of others and unity of nature is a valid transcendent concept that faith can properly call God. It was along these lines that Thomas Aquinas called Truth, Good, and One the Transcendentals of his metaphysical system, meaning that they were in all beings and no being could ever separate itself from these three qualities. He elaborated further to say that these Transcendentals could be condensed further into Simplicity/Unity.

So Warrant and Ultimate Concern can lead us theologically to accepting the reality of God. And if we follow Plantinga’s line of thinking such a process is in a sense naturalistic. In that, it becomes natural to find in God meaning to life for those who come to find meaning in devoting themselves to God. And because we can identify a natural source, albeit a genuine spirituality nonetheless, we can propose that a relatable safe guard exists which can block or provide resistance should we misuse or abuse our faith. We can easily assume that because we can understand faith, we can also understand that something called, “bad faith” exists.

If Plantinga is correct and warrant is conferred through properly functioning cognitive processes, and Tillich is correct that faith is ultimate concern then we have a basis of determining what is good or bad faith, and thusly what would be a good or bad religious experience. This fact alone makes the appeal to religious experience as a basis for the resurrection extremely plausible. From the a posteriori facts alone the resurrection produced some of the most important spiritual insights for Western Civilization, and continues to do so today. So what it comes down to is understanding what an identity is. An identity is a unity. What makes an identity, what it is, is its basic uniqueness while remaining unified to everything else. So what unites us to the world?

Humans have a distinct identity. I would say one that is ontologically different than everything else. As Sarte exclaimed, “Existence before essence”. What he meant was that for humans we first exist and then we have to figure out what we are. For everything non-human, or non-person, what they are comes first and then they are allowed to exist or not exist. Unicorns possess being, in that they are potential. In classical metaphysics unicorns exist, because they exist potentially. Today we would say that unicorns exist in a possible world. What this means is that we lack a basic unity that everything around us has by virtue of the fact that they are a non-person.

This ontic unity is the basis of normativity for all faith activity. Anything “of faith” ought to lead us to a greater inner unity and external harmony. The cult leader who shuns society is intrinsically acting in bad faith. The serial killer who hears from God, may be acting according to some “reason” for his crime, but it is not in good faith that he does so. I would say that the resurrection most certainly increased the unity quotient in those who first confessed that they were witnesses to the Living God present in the New Life of Jesus Christ. The literature that came from this event testifies to their reliance on God and a new awareness of His existence in their hearts and in their being as they live out their lives aware that everything they do, they do for His purpose.

Since we have no instruments which can measure whether or not something was either a hallucination or a vision two thousand years ago. I propose that the a posteriori evidence be considered and meriting genuine religious experience. Since it can then I argue that a spiritual resurrection model has a good chance of success.