EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know

Christianity is a historical religion and it has been common for Christian apologists to appeal to the historical evidence of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a verification of its claim to be true. However, the appeal to evidence is by no means limited to the past or historical evidence. Other apologists appeal to the present evidence in the natural world.

And some contemporary Christian thinkers have made appeal to future or eschatological evidence for the verification of Christianity. It is the purpose of this chapter to assess evidentialism as a test for the truth of Christianity.

An Exposition of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Perhaps the most common appeal to evidence by Christian apologists is to the past. The great facts of Christian history including the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ are seemingly irresistible focal points of Christian apologetics. Two examples will suffice.

The Appeal to Past Evidence: Historical Approach of C. H. Dodd

The Historical Nature of Christianity.

Dodd is in agreement with those who react against a pure “historicism” or quest for the bare facts of the historical Jesus. The history of Christianity, he feels, is written “from faith to faith.” Nevertheless, when all this is admitted it still “belongs to the specific character of Christianity that it is an historical religion.” While “some religions can be indifferent to historical fact, and move entirely on the plane of timeless truth, Christianity cannot.”

For “it rests upon the affirmation that a series of events happened, in which God revealed Himself in action, for the salvation of men.” The Gospels of the New Testament profess to tell us what happened. They do not set out to gratify our curiosity about past events “but they do set out to nurture our faith upon the testimony to such events.”¹

As a historical religion Christianity is to be contrasted with both mysticism and nature-religion. The former concerns itself wholly with man’s inner life and rejects the world of nature, and the latter recognizes the external world as in some sense a medium of divinity. And while Christianity neither repudiates God’s revelation in nature nor his work within the spirit of man, it stresses that “the eternal God is revealed in history.”

There is no claim, however, that “the truth about God can be discovered by treating history as a uniform field of observation (like the ‘nature’ studied in sciences), in which it is possible to collect data from all parts of the field, and to arrive by induction at a conclusion.”²

The Meaning of History: Fact and Interpretation. “History” is used in two senses: a series of events or the record of this series which in the wider sense have not merely a private but a public interest. Hence, history cannot be a mere “diary” or “chronicle” without context and interpretation. For even here the selection and context of what is recorded provides some meaning to the events recorded.

A “historical ‘event’ is an occurrence plus the interest and meaning which the occurrence possessed for the person involved in it, and by which the record is determined.” Hence, when we speak of God revealed in history we do not mean the bare occurrences but also the rich and concrete meaning of these events.³

Further, “since events in the full sense of the term are relative to the feelings and judgments of the human mind, the intensity of their significance varies, just as in the individual life certain crucial experiences have more than everyday significance.”

Therefore, we can “understand that an historical religion attaches itself not to the whole temporal series indifferently, nor yet to any casual event, but to a particular series of events in which a unique intensity of significance resides.” So then “this selection of a particular series is not incongruous with the nature of history itself.” For “the particular, even the unique, is a category entirely appropriate to the understanding of history.”

And since “one particular event exceeds another in significance, there may well be an event which is uniquely significant, and this event may give a unique character to the whole series to which it belongs.” According to Dodd, “this is in fact the assertion which Christianity makes.”

For “it takes the series of events recorded or reflected in the Bible, from the call of Abraham to the emergence of the Church, and declares that in this series the ultimate reality of all history … is finally revealed, because the series is itself controlled by the supreme event of all—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.” And, adds Dodd, “this valuation of the series is not imposed upon it from without, but is an integral part of the history itself.”⁴

The Central Facts of Sacred History.

By means of Form Criticism Dodd constructs what he admits is a limited number of facts about Jesus of Nazareth. Nonetheless, the essential elements recovered from the documents “inevitably include both fact and interpretation” about the central facts of Christianity. These include an overall sketch of Jesus’ life, his teaching, as well as his death and resurrection (although Dodd is not sure it involved a physical resuscitation of a corpse).

But “the Resurrection remains an event within history, though we may not be able to state precisely what happened.” So Christianity is not a “massive pyramid balanced upon the apex of some trivial occurrence …” but rather it is a “significant occurrence plus the meaning inherent in it.…” In view of this there is no mere incidental connection of historical events.

For “the connection of events ceases to be ‘accidental’ if the tradition as we can recover it from the New Testament represents in substance a true memory of the facts, with the meaning which they really bore as an episode in history.”

For “either the interpretation through which the facts are presented was imposed upon them mistakenly … or the interpretation was imposed by the facts themselves, as they were experienced in an historical situation … and in that case we do know in the main what the facts were.” Dodd believes that this “conclusion may not be demonstrable but it is not unreasonable.”⁵

The Relation of Sacred and Secular History.

History itself is, according to Dodd, “the whole succession of events in time, in which the spontaneity of the human spirit interacts with outward occurrences.” Part of this succession of events is recorded in the Scriptures. And “part of this record is a source of evidence for secular history, dovetailing into the records of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.”

However, “the events recorded are presented in the Bible as a history of the dealings of God with men, interpreted by the eschatological event of the coming of Christ, His death and Resurrection.” That is, Biblical history is Heilsgeschichte or sacred and redemptive history. But “it is important to bear in mind that the same events enter into sacred and secular history; the events are the same, but they form two distinguishable series.”

The “empirical series which is secular history extends over all recorded time, to our own day, and is still unfinished.” This series is “linked together by succession of time, and by the operation of efficient causes, whether these causes be physical or psychological.” But “the attempt to find a general pattern and universal meaning in this succession meets admittedly with no more than doubtful success.”

The basic reason for this is that “it is impossible in the empirical series to work backwards to a real beginning, or forward to a real end.” Using any process without a beginning or end—just a sheer process—makes it difficult to predict an absolute meaning or value. For “any period or event which we may choose as a standard of judgement—our own period for instance—is only part of the process.”

Likewise, any ideas in our minds we may wish to use as criteria are “in part at least, a product of our particular historical condition.”⁶

The Redemptive Meaning of History.

Dodd believes that this uncertainty about the meaning of history in general may be the reason many turn to mysticism or to nature instead of history as the basis of their religious views. The Christian, however, affirms that there is another series into which historical events may fall, namely, sacred history. Of this redemptive series the Biblical history forms the inner core.

“But the Bible always assumes that the meaning of this inner core is the ultimate meaning of all history, since God is the Maker and Ruler of all mankind, who created all things for Himself, and redeemed the world to Himself.” In this case, “the whole of history is in the last resort sacred history, or Heilsgeschichte.”

And the “principle of the universality of the divine meaning in history is symbolically expressed in Christian theology by placing the history of the Old and New Testaments within a mythical scheme which includes a real beginning and a real end.”⁷

The “Creation and Last Judgement are symbolical of the truth that all history is teleological, working out one universal divine purpose.” Hence, “the story of Creation is not to be taken as a literal, scientific statement that the time series had a beginning—an idea as inconceivable as its opposite, that time had no beginning.”

Neither should “the story of the Fall … be taken as a literal, historical statement that there was a moment when man began to set himself against the will of God.” Both Creation and Fall are “a symbolic summing-up of everything in secular or empirical history which is preparatory to the process of redemption and revelation.” These stories affirm “that in man and his world there is implanted a divine purpose, opposed by a recalcitrant will.

This is universally true … of the entire human race at all points in the temporal process.” And “the myth of a Last Judgement is a symbolical statement of the final resolution of the great conflict. Serious difficulties are raised if we attempt to treat it as a literal and quasi-historical statement that the succession of events in time will one day cease—once again an idea as inconceivable to us as its opposite.”

Nor is the myth to be taken as “a prediction that before man dies out of this earth, or before the earth itself perishes in some astronomical catastrophe, the good will finally and manifestly triumph over the evil in human history.” Rather “this triumph is something actually attained, not in some coming Day of the Lord, near or distant, but in the concrete historical event of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Thus Christianity is a “realized eschatology,” symbolizing by the Last Judgement “the relation of all history to the purpose of God. For the essential feature of the Last Judgement is its universality.” It includes “the quick and the dead,” that is, “all generations of mankind.” It means in essence “that all history is comprehended in that achievement of the divine purpose of which the coming of Christ, His death and resurrection, is the intra-historical expression.”⁸

In summation, history “as a process of redemption and revelation, has a beginning and an end, both in God. The beginning is not an event in time; the end is not an event in time. The beginning is God’s purpose; the end is the fulfillment of His purpose. Between these lies the sacred history which culminates in the death and resurrection of Christ.”

And it is “the task of the Church to bring all historical movements into the context of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in order that they may be judged by the divine meaning revealed in that event.” And this “divine judgement is not a bare sentence, or expression of opinion. It is historical action in the Cross and the Resurrection.”

Thus “full meaning is not reserved for the last term in a temporal series, which supersedes and abolishes all previous stages in the process.” For “every situation is capable of being lifted up into the order of ‘sacred’ history.” So “in any given situation there are factors at work belonging to the empirical order … but the ultimately constituitive factor is neither nature nor the spirit of man, but the Kingdom of God.”

In it “the temporal order, which is the ‘body’ of the human spirit on earth, is ‘raised in glory’ in the eternal order. That is the ultimate destination of the historical process.”⁹

The Apologetic Implications of History.

According to Dodd, certain facts about the life of Christ are historically determinable. These facts are both public and historically verifiable by historical methodology. Central to these is that Jesus of Nazareth died and rose from the dead. These facts come with the interpretation of Jesus’ contemporaries but this interpretation is not arbitrary; it grows out of the facts themselves.

For some facts are more significant than others and these sacred facts stand out as the most significant in history. And by means of these key sacred facts we can give meaning to all of history, that is, to secular history which otherwise has no apparent meaning growing out of its series of events as such. Thus Christian facts are historically discoverable, and on the basis of these facts one can determine the truth about all of human history and destiny.

That is, historical evidence—the cross and resurrection—is the basis and test for truth for one’s life and view of the universe. Evidence from the past, from history, is the basis and test for truth in both the present and the future. Dodd’s view is an example of historical evidentialism.

Others have made a far stronger claim for the evidential value of history than Dodd. John W. Montgomery, for example, appeals to what he believes is the historically demonstrable fact of the resurrection as the verification of Jesus’ claim to be God and thereby of Christ’s attestation of the divine authority and inerrancy of Scripture.¹⁰

From the earliest Christian times Christian apologists have made recourse to historical justification of their beliefs in the miraculous events of the first century. For many apologists it is these historical events that provide the crucial test for Christian truth.

The Appeal to Present Evidence in Nature

Evidence is by no means limited to the past, to history. Apologists often appeal to evidence available in the present. Since the appeal to what we may call internal evidence of experience has already been discussed (see Chapter Four), we will center our attention here on what may be called external evidence, on nature or the external world.

Paley’s Watchmaker. Perhaps the most common appeal to nature as evidence of God is some form of the Teleological Argument. Although the argument has been around since before the time of Plato, one of the more popular modern forms of it was set forth by William Paley (1743–1805). Paley insisted that if one found a watch in an empty field he would naturally and correctly conclude that it had a watchmaker.

Likewise, if one studies the more complex design found in the natural world, he cannot but conclude that there is a world Designer behind it. For a watch indicates that it was put together for an intelligent purpose (viz., to keep time) by virtue of its intricate series of parts from spring to glass cover. And in like manner the natural world has far greater and more subtle adaptations of means to an end. It follows then that if a watch needs a watchmaker, the natural world demands an even greater Designer (viz., God).¹¹

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) saw an important weakness in Paley’s argument. The argument is built on the assumption that similarity in effect implies similarity in cause. But in this kind of analogy, the argument is weaker when the dissimilarity is greater. And there is a significant dissimilarity that weakens Paley’s argument, for watches imply, watchmakers, only because we know by previous experience that watches are things made by watchmakers.

In like manner one would not know that dung was something left by an animal unless he had previously observed animals deposit dung. Mill did feel, however, that a more plausible argument from nature could be stated based on his inductive method of agreement. For example, there is an amazing concurrence of many diverse elements in the human eye. It is not probable that random selection brought these together. The inductive method of agreement would point to a common cause of the eye in some purposing Designer.¹²

Taylor’s Teleological Evolution. Even before Paley, David Hume had proposed a criticism of Paley’s type of argument that many feel is decisive. The apparent “design” may be nothing more than a “happy accident,” Hume argued. Given enough time it is possible that chance reshuffling would produce any given combination of elements including the human eye, the human anatomy, and the whole of the so-called order of nature.¹³

With the rise of Darwinism, a hypothesis to provide the modus operandi of chance, an alternate explanation to design became more plausible to many modern minds. As Bertrand Russell later pointed out: the adaptation of means to end in the world is either a result of intelligent preplanning or else a consequence of evolution. But since it can be accounted for on strictly evolutionary bases, there is no need to posit an intelligent Designer.¹⁴

It is to this type of argument that A. E. Taylor directs his form of the teleological proof for God. Taylor contends that nature reveals an anticipatory design that chance evolution cannot account for. For example the body’s need for oxygen is anticipated by the membranes that provide it. Some insects deposit their eggs where the developing young will have food available in anticipation of their need to eat, and so on throughout nature.

Neither can nature’s advanced planning be accounted for by physical laws alone, since there are innumerable ways electrons could run, but they do invariably move in accordance with an advanced planning that preserves the organisms, whether they are healthy or unhealthy (e.g., antibodies). In fact, mind or intelligence is the only known condition that can overcome the improbabilities against the developmental preservation of life.

Without advanced planning in nature, life would not survive. In short, the order evident in natural development of life is evidence of God.¹⁵

Some purely naturalistic evolutionists have attempted to overcome Taylor’s type of argument by an appeal to natural selection. Julian Huxley, admitting that the mathematical odds against evolution are staggering (one chance in 1,000 to the millionth power, i.e., one followed by three million zeros), argued nonetheless “it has happened, thanks to the working of natural selection and the properties of living substance which make natural selection inevitable.”¹⁶

Another broader attempt to make the mathematical odds appear less formidable is to consider the world in which life has developed a mere “oasis of design” surrounded by a vast desert of chance. That is, in comparison with the immensity of the universe it is not nearly so unlikely, but even probable, that a “happy accident” such as the succession of favorable conditions for the advancement of life would occur in this small pocket of the universe (and perhaps even in others).

Tennant’s Objections to Chance. F. R. Tennant has done more to keep alive the evidence for God from the order of nature than almost any modern theist. He admits the conceivability of the “oasis of design in a desert of chance” thesis but denies its plausibility. He argues that mere possibilities within the unknown world can never be used to refute the probabilities in the known world. And the world as we know it shows marked evidence of adaptation to ends.

For example, there is an adaptation of thought to thing or mind to the world which makes the external world thinkable. Internally, there is the adaptation of the parts of organic beings. Nature is adapted to man’s aesthetic needs, the world is adapted to human moral goals, and the world process is adapted to a culmination in man with his rational and moral status. And in view of the strong probability of design in the known world we have no reason to believe that the evidence for design in the known world is a lie to the unknown world.

Indeed, the second law of thermodynamics (entropy) makes completely random development unlikely. For if the world is tending to disorder, unless there is behind it an ordering power it would be more and more—if not completely—chaotic by now. Nor, argues Tennant, does a mere chance reshuffling of matter by mechanical means account for the origin of mind and personality. In short, the odds against a chance explanation of the world are extremely great. The preadaptive order of the world we now have is good evidence for a Designer (i.e., God).¹⁷

Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Nature. Sometime before Paley, the classic work of Bishop Butler on the Analogy of Religion (1736) presented an important defense of an evidential apologetic based on the natural order. Even the skeptic Hume considered it the best defense of Christianity he had ever read. Butler considered his highest obligation to Christianity that of “examining most seriously into its evidence, supposing its credibility; and of embracing it, upon supposition of its truth.”

Butler’s method was both empirical and inductive. He made constant appeal to the canons of reason to which he believed the wise man must grant assent. Of course, it is foolhardy to demand absolute proof for anything. Rather, “probability is the very guide of life.”¹⁸ The reasonable man will without absolute knowledge guide his life by the trends observable in experience. That is, by analogies drawn from nature one can argue for the probability of the truth of Christianity and live accordingly.

By analogy with nature we can know that God governs the world and that there is a future life. Butler’s argument for immortality is illustrative of his approach. Nature reveals to us that many creatures live in different states of perfection (e.g., worms become flies). Indeed, the doctrine that we shall live on after this life in another state has many analogies in nature.

Further, there is a natural momentum in things that fits beautifully with the persistence of man’s personality after death. There is no more reason to believe that death ends all than that inactivity in sleep implies that one will not awaken to consciousness after sleeping. And just as one carries his powers of personality through the changes of childhood, adulthood, and old age, there is by analogy no reason to believe that he cannot carry them through death.¹⁹

Some have criticized Butler’s analogy or probability argument from nature on the grounds that the improbable sometimes happens. A hunch sometimes pays off. Why then should one always act on the basis of the most probable? Butler’s rejoiner is that probability is the guide of life. It is usually cold in Alaska so the prudent man will take his overcoat. If he does not, he will spend more days shivering than not.

A man cannot guide his life entirely by hunches without eventually running into serious difficulty. Although probable knowledge is not absolute, it is sufficient. In fact, it is all we have. The wise man, then, will base his beliefs on the most probable conclusion to which the evidence of nature points. For Butler, that means the wise man will believe in Christianity, despite the fact he lacks any compelling proofs of its truth.

Appeal to Future Evidence: John Hick’s Eschatological Verification

The appeal to evidence as a means of verifying the truth of Christianity has been made to the past (history) as well as to present experience either internally (as in mysticism) or externally (in nature). But some have also appealed to the future as a source of evidence for the possible truth of Christianity. Such was the suggestion of John Hick in his eschatological verification.²⁰

The minimum demand of linguistical empiricism is that one specify some conditions under which one could know if his religious assertions were true. That is, religious assertions need not be actually verified to be meaningful but they must at least be somewhere, somehow, sometime verifiable in order to be meaningful or true. Hick responds to this challenge by suggesting that it is meaningful to believe in God since this can be verified upon death, if one has an experience of meeting God in a future life.

Hick begins his argument by disavowing a necessary symmetrical relation between verification and falsification. For instance, one’s immortality can be verified if one day he observes his own funeral. But he cannot falsify his nonimmortality if he does not survive death to do so. Hence, it may be that belief in God is not falsifiable by anything in this world or beyond it.

But God’s existence is verifiable in principle if we can state the conditions in the next life under which one would recognize that he had met God. And, of course, belief in God would be verified in actual practice if one actually had this experience of meeting God one day.

Hick admits that “the alleged future experience of this state cannot, of course, be appealed to as evidence for theism as a present interpretation of our experience; but it does suffice to render the choice between theism and atheism real and not a merely empty or verbal choice.”²¹

According to Hick there are “two possible developments of our experience such that, if they occurred in conjunction with one another (whether in this life or in another life to come), they would assure us beyond rational doubt of the reality of God, as conceived in the Christian faith.” These are ”first, an experience of the fulfillment of God’s purpose for ourselves, and this has been disclosed in the Christian revelation; in conjunction, second, with an experience of communion with God as he has revealed himself in the person of Christ.”

Hick wards off anticipated criticism as to how one would know God when he met him by appeal to the incarnation of Christ, claiming with Barth that “Jesus Christ is the knowability of God.” Further, the purpose of life for the Christian is final self-fulfillment and happiness in eternal life. This too would be readily recognized when experienced, says Hick.

And the skeptic cannot press any falsification charge on the basis that thousands of years have passed and such a blessed state has not yet arrived. For “no final falsification is possible of the claim that this fulfillment will occur—unless, of course, the prediction contains a specific time clause which, in Christian teaching, it does not.”²²

Hick concludes with the reminder that his purpose is not to seek to establish that fact or truth of a given religion “but rather to establish that there are such things as religious facts.…” In particular he wishes to show “that the existence or non-existence of the God of the New Testament is a matter of fact, and claims as such an eventual experiential verification.”

In brief, even though the eschatological method cannot establish Christian theism now, nevertheless, one day it can be verified in the eschaton. Meanwhile, it is at least possible to believe the truth of Christianity.²³

Some Characteristic Tenets of Evidentialism

The above analysis indicates some marked differences among evidential attempts to establish the truth of a world view. Some appeal to past or historical events (as Dodd); some appeal to present religious experience (following Schleiermacher); others appeal to the evidence for God in the external world of nature (as Paley or Butler).

And still others (like Hick) call on the evidence of experiencing God in the future for a verification of religious claims. Despite this diversity, there is a characteristic commonality in the evidential appeal that bears exposition and evaluation.

First, evidentialism is empirically or exponentially based. It calls one to the basic facts or events of the world or at least to some of them. Truth must be based in facts, not in ideas or theories, or else it is not grounded at all. Truth is based in facts or events.

Second, evidentialists state or imply a distinction between fact and interpretation. The facts are both separate and distinguishable from the interpretation men place on these facts. It is possible to relate and structure many, if not all, facts in differing ways. But the interpretation does not constitute the facts. Facts stand by themselves apart from frameworks that may be given to them from differing points of view.

Third, the evidentialists believe that not all facts can be interpreted in entirely different ways. They contend that meaning grows out of the facts. Somehow, the facts finally “speak for themselves.” To be sure, facts need interpretation but the interpretation cannot be arbitrarily imposed from without; rather, it arises from the facts themselves in a natural way.

Fourth, evidentialists often appeal to some special or unique facts as being definitive in determining truth. For some it may be past miraculous events, for others it may be a present mystical experience, and for still others it may be a final blessed state. Christians most often appeal to the fact of the incarnation, to the crucial events of the life of Jesus, as definitive for truth.

Fifth, many evidentialists place strong emphasis on the objective and public nature of facts. In this respect they regard private and subjective experience as nonevidential. Truth must be observable and general or it is unsubstantiatable.

An Evaluation of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Evidentialism provides some notable insights into the relation of truth and human events. Among these are several of general interest to the task of an apologist.

Positive Contributions of Evidentialism

Evidentialists are to be commended for anchoring truth to facts or events. In this regard several positive contributions can be noted.

First, evidentialists make a significant point when they stress the objective and public nature of evidence. Completely private and purely subjective events or experiences are not really evidence at all. The subjective and personal may very well be a significant source of truth, but it definitely cannot be a deciding test for truth. If truth is to be tested, it must be available to others.

In point of fact, it is highly questionable, if not completely impossible, even to express or communicate a private “truth.” If language or the medium of expression is always common to a group, then it is impossible for an individual to understand a truth solitary to himself. Publicity or objectivity is essential to verifiability. Truth may be subjectively realized but it must be objectively grounded.

Second, truth is factually based, as evidentialists point out. Facts are not based in theories but theories in facts. Experience is the basis for expressions about it. Events are fundamental to interpretation; the viewpoint does not constitute the factualness of the events. Evidentialism rightly places the horse before the cart. For the actual is not based in and constituted by the theoretical. Rather, the interpretive framework provided by the latter simply gives a certain structure or significance to the facts which stand independently in and of themselves.

Third, given a certain context of facts or events, there is no reasonable basis for saying that meaning is entirely arbitrary to the facts. Such facts cannot be interpreted capriciously. Some meaning is essential to certain series of events in a given context. Given the context of hateful intentions, stabbing another twelve times in the heart must be reasonably viewed as murder, and so on. And no fact should be interpreted out of its intended context, for the meaning and the fact of an event are concomitantly related.

That is, facts are not known to us as bare facts but as interpreted by the context from which or through which they are viewed. In this sense, no facts can be justifiably isolated or arbitrarily interpreted apart from their proper context. For example, given the context of a theistic world, not every series of unusual happenings can be justifiably understood as chance events. Some could very well be miracles.

Some Negative Criticisms of Evidentialism as a Test for Truth

Although evidentialism provides some significant contributions to the apologist’s task, nevertheless, as a test for the truth of a world view it is entirely inadequate. For evidence gains its meaning only by its immediate and overall context; and evidence as such cannot, without begging the question, be used to establish the overall context by which it obtains its very meaning as evidence.

First, facts and events have ultimate meaning only within and by virtue of the context of the world view in which they are conceived. Hence, it is a vicious circle to argue that a given fact (say, the resuscitation of Christ’s body) is evidence of a certain truth claim (say, Christ’s claim to be God), unless it can be established that the event comes in the context of a theistic universe.²⁴

For it makes no sense to claim to be the Son of God and to evidence it by an act of God (miracle) unless there is a God who can have a Son and who can act in a special way in the natural world. But in this case the mere fact of the resurrection cannot be used to establish the truth that there is a God. For the resurrection cannot even be a miracle unless there already is a God.Many overzealous and hasty Christian apologists rush hastily into their historical and evidential apologetics without first properly doing their theistic homework.

Second, contrary to evidentialism, meaning is not inherent in nor does it arise naturally out of bare facts or events. Nothing happens in a vacuum; meaning always demands a context.²⁵ And since the facts are admittedly distinct from the interpretation, it is always possible that in another context or framework of meaning the said facts would not be evidence for Christianity at all.

For example, in the context of a naturalistic world the resuscitation of Jesus’ corpse would not be a miracle but merely an unusual natural event for which there is no known scientific explanation but which, by virtue of its occurrence, both demands and prods scientists to find a natural explanation. Meaning, then, does not really grow out of the event by itself; meaning is given to the event from a certain perspective.

The earthquake that an Old Testament theist believed was divinely instigated to swallow Korah (Num. 16:31 ff.) would undoubtedly be explained by a naturalist as geological pressures within the crust of the earth. What the New Testament claims was the “voice of God” in John 12 was admittedly interpreted by someone standing nearby as “thunder.”

No bare fact possesses inherent meaning; every fact is an “interprafact” by virtue of a necessary combination of both its bare facticity and the meaning given to it in a given context by a specific perspective or world view.

Third, there is no way from pure facts themselves to single out some facts as having special, crucial, or ultimate significance. “Singling out,” “selecting,” “comparing,” and the like are processes of the mind based on principles or perspectives one brings to the facts and not characteristics inherent in raw data. Events simply occur in a series; only one’s perspective or view of those events can determine which one is to be honored over another with special significance.

Not even unusual or odd events as such have inherently more significance than usual or common ones. For if that were so, anomalies would be more important than scientific laws and more human significance would be attributed to freaks than normal people. In fact, in the context of a random universe, even series of odd events bear no more significance than unloaded dice that roll the same numbers on several successive throws.

Of course, in the context of a designed or theistic universe a series of unusual events, such as the point by point correspondence of the life of Christ with a significant number of predictions made hundreds of years in advance, would be an entirely different matter. For if there is a God who can make a series of predictions of unusual events that come to pass as foretold, surely it is not unreasonable to consider them miraculous. But to return to the point, whether or not there is a God is precisely the point at issue.

And it is invalid to appeal to “theistic evidence,” that is, to allegedly miraculous events as a proof that this is a theistic world. That begs the whole question. If this is a theistic universe, of course certain odd series of events can be given special significance. However, the significance does not reside in the events as such but is attributed to them by virtue of the important overall context in which they occur, namely, the theistic context.

But if this is a random natural world rather than a theistic world, neither the life of Christ nor any other unusual series of events has any more special religious significance than an odd series of combinations on a Las Vegas gambling table.

The real problem for the Christian apologist is to find some way apart from the mere facts themselves to establish the justifiability of interpreting facts in a theistic way. No appeal to the mere events or facts themselves will aid in determining which of the alternative interpretations should be placed on the facts. Viewpoints and world views come from without and not from within the facts.

Hence, facts or events as such cannot establish theism. The selection, relation, and relative weight given the facts is not inherent to the facts themselves. Even Dodd reveals this when he appeals to the paradigm importance of the Christian mythological or symbolical structure in order to interpret the events of the secular world. But the question as to the warrant for choosing one myth or symbol over another remains unsettled by mere facts or events.

Fourth, a word must be said about the appeal to so-called order of nature as evidence of God. First of all, this kind of argument makes sense only within the context of design such as was supposed in the theistic or deistic days of Paley and Butler. Since Christianity (with its emphasis on order and regularity) spawned modern science, it is understandable that men speaking out of a scientific context would tend logically to conclude that there is a God.

However, this is a large but vicious circle. For if the supposition and application of a Christian world view gave birth to its child, science, it is not strange that the offspring should naturally pay homage to its parent. Put another way, “order” and “design” are read into, not out of, nature. Indeed, the very word nature is loaded with theistic or, perhaps, deistic connotations.

There is no natural order in a pantheistic world, and in a random world it begs the question to speak of the order of nature. Of course, design implies a Designer and order entails an Orderer. But on what basis does one have the right to label events as “ordered” or “designed,” unless he is already presupposing a theistic view?

Finally, a word is in order about eschatological verification. Simply put, at best it is only a test for meaning (i.e., for the possibility of truth) but not a test for truth itself. At least it is not a current test for truth. Even if in the long run it may serve to confirm a theist’s claim, nonetheless for the present it offers (and Hick admits this) no hope for deciding which world view is probably true vis-à-vis the others.

In other words, it is not really a present test for truth at all. For the present we are left to simple fideism or to find some other test for truth. And what rational man would want to leave the total determination of his lifetime—even eternal—decision on the simple hope that the end will vindicate him! If the future fails him, it may be too late. The wise man will seek a firmer ground now on such ultimately important questions.

Summary and Conclusion

Evidentialism, like experientialism, offers some significant contributions to our understanding of the role of events and facts to religious truth. Truth must be objective and public; it needs a basis in fact. Interpretation is distinguishable from the facts being interpreted. And in a given context not just any interpretation can be given to any fact.

However, there is no way for facts themselves to determine in which context or by which framework they are to be viewed. No meaning is inherently and inseparably attached to a given set of facts. And there is no ultimate meaning or truth attributable to facts unless it is from the overall perspective of a world view. But no fact, event, or series thereof within an overall framework which derives all of its meaning from the framework can be determinative of the framework which bestows that meaning on it.

For no fact or set of facts can of and by themselves, apart from any meaning or interpretation given to them, establish which of the alternative viewpoints should be taken on the fact(s).

SELECT READINGS FOR CHAPTER FIVE

Exposition of Evidentialism

• Burrill, Donald. The Cosmological Argument, pt. II, “The Teleological Argument.”
• Butler, Bishop. Analogy of Religion.
• Dodd, C. H. History and the Gospel.
• Montgomery, John W. History and Christianity.

Evaluation of Evidentialism

• Clark, Gordon. Historiography, especially chap. 6.
• Hick, John. The Existence of God, pt. III.
• Popper, Karl The Poverty of Historicism.
• Van Til, Cornelius. The Defense of the Faith, especially chaps. 8 and 10.

^[1]

¹ C. H. Dodd, History and the Gospel (Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 11–12.

² Dodd, pp. 15, 18.

³ Dodd, pp. 19–21.

⁴ Dodd, p. 22.

⁵ Dodd, pp. 72, 75–77.

⁶ Dodd, pp. 114–15.

⁷ Dodd, p. 117.

⁸ Dodd, pp. 115–17.

⁹ Dodd, pp. 118, 125.

¹⁰ See chap. 16 for a presentation of historical apologetics.

¹¹ See William Paley, Natural Theology, pp. 1–8.

¹² John Stuart Mill, Three Essays on Religion, pp. 167–75.

¹³ David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, pt. VIII.

¹⁴ Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian, pp. 9–11.

¹⁵ A. E. Taylor, Does God Exist?, chap. 4.

¹⁶ Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action, pp. 45–46.

¹⁷ F. R. Tennant, Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, pp. 78–120.

¹⁸ Bishop Butler, Analogy of Religion, pp. 197, 69.

¹⁹ Butler, pt. One, chaps. 1 and 2.

²⁰ John Hick, ed.. The Existence of God, pp. 253–73.

²¹ Hick, pp. 257, 261.

²² Hick, pp. 269, 271.

²³ Hick, p. 273.

²⁴ See chap. 15.

²⁵ See Karl Popper, The Poverty of Historicism (London: Roulledge and Kegan Paul, 1957).

^[1]Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (83). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

EVIDENTIALISM – All you want to know