COMBINATIONALISM – All you want to know

The failure of the traditional tests for the truth of a world view such as experientialism, rationalism, evidentialism, and pragmatism shifts hope for an adequate methodology to the combinational approach. There are many approaches, varying according to the number of factors included in the test. However, each view incorporates some presupposed model or framework by which the whole of experience can be understood.

And the means of testing the model often includes consistency, coherence, factual adequacy and/or existential relevance. An examination of several important examples will indicate just how combinationalists employ their tests.

An Exposition of Several Major Presuppositional Methodologies

Combinationalists come from various epistemological backgrounds. And although there is no necessary logical connection between their test for truth and their supposed source of truth, nonetheless there is sometimes a carry-over from one to the other. For instance, Ian Ramsey’s empirical background carries over into his emphasis on empirical fit as a test for truth. The important thing, however, is the fact that whatever the epistemological source of truth, each combinationalist feels that a combination of tests for truth is necessary to establish the truth of a world view.

The Test of Religious Models: Ian Ramsey and Frederick Ferré

As was evident in the analysis of evidentialism (see Chapter 5), experience or facts alone are not self-interpreting; a framework of interpretation is necessary for meaning. Bare facts bear no meaning. Only when they are placed in a meaningful framework or model do they convey more than mere facticity. C. H. Dodd acknowledged that history, for example, was fact plus meaning. And for him it was the Christian myth or model that provided the framework to make meaning of history.

The Qualified Disclosure Models of Ian Ramsey. Ramsey approaches the problem from an empirical rather than from a historical direction. First, he seeks to clarify what a religious experience is. It is a discernment-commitment situation. A discernment situation is an ordinary empirical experience that suddenly “comes alive” when the “ice breaks” or the “light dawns.” For example, “eye meets eye” when a judge suddenly recognizes that the one he is sentencing is his long-lost lover! A commitment situation is one that calls for a response, a total response.

It is like Kant’s “duty for duty’s sake” or a patriot’s “my country, right or wrong.” There are some partial commitments to the whole of the universe (as mathematics), and there are some total commitments to part of the universe (as a hobby). But a religious response of commitment is a total commitment to the whole universe.¹ It is, as Paul Tillich said, an ultimate commitment to the Ultimate. Hence a religious experience is an empirically grounded disclosure experience in which the “more” or “beyond” disclosed therein calls for a complete commitment. It is a disclosure-commitment situation.²

Various models and qualifiers can be used to evoke religious disclosure. By “model” Ramsey means a disclosure model, not a picture model. For religious models do not describe God but merely evoke religious insight. For instance, “When we speak of God as supreme love we are not making an assertion in descriptive psychology.…” Rather we are simply modifying the model “love” by the qualifier “supreme” so as to evoke religious insight and commitment. And by use of models and qualifiers one can build up “family resemblances.”

And from the tangential meeting of these many religious models one can build a religious macromodel, that is, the concept of “God.” So the word God serves as an integrator term for religious experience similar to the way in which the word I serves as an integrator word for all our self-awareness.³ Not all God concepts or macrometaphors need be the same. Indeed, models can be qualified endlessly, providing new insights and evoking further responses. But models do help us to be reliably articulate in theology.

Furthermore, the adequacy of one’s God models can be tested by what Ramsey calls its “empirical fit.” That is, (1) “in all cases the models must chime in with the phenomena; they must arise in a moment of insight of disclosure,” and (2) “a model in theology does not stand or fall with the possibility of verifiable deductions. It is rather judged by its stability over the widest possible range of phenomena, by its ability to incorporate the most diverse phenomena not inconsistently.”

This God model “works more like the fitting of a boot or a shoe than the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ of a roll call.” In short, the truth of religious language is empirically anchored and experientially tested. “There must be something about the universe and man’s experience in it which, for example, matches the behavior of a loving father.… ”⁴ That is, even though there is no strict verification of religious truth there is an experiential confirmation. And the wider the range of experience that can be consistently incorporated into the model of God, the better is the model.

Each additional disclosure consistently incorporated makes the model fit more perfectly, in a manner similar to the way a polygon fits more perfectly into a circle the more sides that are added to it. In sum, the truth of the Christian theistic model is judged by its empirical fit over the entire range of human experience.

Frederick Ferré: Metaphysical Models. Contrary to many contemporary religious language analysts, Ferré claims that religious language cannot be purely noncognitive. He believes that there are models which can provide cognitivity and truth to religious language. He defines a model as that “which provides epistemological vividness or immediacy to a theory by offering as an interpretation … something that both fits the logical form of the theory and is well-known.…” Models are to be judged by their type, scope, and status.

The type is the degree of concreteness, that is, its ability to be “built” of “picture.” Scope is a model’s degree of inclusiveness, that is, how much reality it purports to represent. And the status of a model indicates how much importance is attributed to it, such as its dispensability or indispensability.⁵

Religious models are characterized by four factors:

1. In contrast to scientific models, religious models do not achieve separation between reality and the observer.
2. Scientific models are only more or less helpful, but religious models cannot be separated from the truth question.
3. Religious models draw upon a different set of facts than do scientific models. In theism the facts are composed of characteristics like personality, will, purpose, and love. And in Christianity, the facts center in the “creative, self-giving, personal love of Jesus Christ.…”
4. In theology, theories (which tie models with other cognitive areas) change occasionally but high-level models are quite resistant to change.⁶

The high-level religious model may serve as a metaphysical model, that is, to represent the “ultimate character” of the universe. The theistic model is built on imagery taken from Scripture. And Christians justify the ascription of truth to the theistic model by building an all-inclusive system around this model and incorporating data from all other areas of knowledge into its synthesis.

Technically speaking, one cannot test the truth of a theistic model itself but only the truth of the synthesis that results from applying the theistic model to the whole range of human experience. There are really three levels of the total account of things:

1. the proverbial metaphysical model or symbol taken from the imagery of Scripture,
2. the set of propositions that attempt to express this symbol in a cognitive way, and
3. the whole range of functions cognitive and noncognitive that make up the religious language game.

Since the third cannot be evaluated directly and the first is precognitive, only the second can be tested for truth. These propositions on the second level do two things: they explicate the primary model and give structure to the totality of the third level.⁷

Ferré offers five tests for the truth of the theistic model:

1. consistency or the freedom from contradictions among and with the key statements,
2. coherence or external consistency extending in a unified way to all bodies of knowledge,
3. applicability or relatability to individual experience,
4. adequacy or applicability to all domains of feeling and perception,
5. effectiveness or usableness as an instrument to cope with the total environment of human experience.⁸

Elsewhere Ferré summarized these tests under three headings: consistency, coherence, and adequacy. In short, a metaphysical synthesis is valid only if it is able “to put all experience into a pattern that is whole, that is pervasive, and that is adequate.”⁹

The application of these tests to the theistic model yields the following results for Ferré:¹⁰

1. Christianity has been effective in the past but there is doubt about its effectiveness in the future.
2. There is little doubt about the applicability of love and reverence but these are only minimal tests.
3. Christianity meets fairly well the very complex test of adequacy.
4. No definite contradictions have been demonstrated in Christianity but neither have the proposed solutions to lesser problems gained universal acceptance.
5. There is a striking internal coherence in Christianity, but external consistency with other bodies of knowledge is not as obvious.

Almost surely Scripture contains some empirical statements which are false, says Ferré, such as its claim that the sun stood still for Joshua. All in all one’s conclusion must be tentative; but since commitment is integral to any way of life, we must make our leap of faith based on what seems to be the most adequate religious system arising out of one’s religious models.

The Test for a Propositional Scriptural Model: Edward J. Carnell

One of the most creative combinationalists among evangelical apologists was Edward Carnell. Firmly believing in the divine authority of Scripture, Carnell began with the Christian theistic model of the triune God propositionally revealed in sacred Scripture. From this presuppositional starting point he proceeded to test the truth of the Christian system by a combination of methods which he at first labeled “systematic consistency.”

The Rejection of Other Tests for Truth. Carnell reviews and discards other tests for truth.

1. Instincts “cannot be a test for truth, since they cannot distinguish between what is legitimately natural to the species and what is acquired. Only the mind can do that.”
2. Custom is an inadequate test for truth because “customs can be good or bad, true or false. Something beyond and outside of custom, therefore, must test the validity of customs themselves.”
3. Likewise tradition, which is a more normative body of customs handed down by a group from early times, is insufficient. For “there are in existence so many traditions, so conflicting in essentials, that only in a madhouse could all be justified.”
4. Consensus gentium, or the consent of the nations, fails as a test for truth for all men once believed the world was the center of the universe. “A proposition must be true to be worthy of the belief of all, but it does not follow that what is believed by all is true.”
5. Neither is feeling sufficient, for “without reason to guide it, feeling is irresponsible.…”
6. Sense perception is rejected by Carnell for at best it is “a source for truth, not its definition or test. Our senses often deceive us.”
7. Neither can intuition test truth “since intuitions cannot detect false intuitions (and there are many).…”
8. The correspondence of an idea to reality cannot be a test for truth for “if reality is extra-ideational, then how can we compare our idea of the mind with it? How can the piano be brought into the mind to see if our idea is like it?”
9. Pragmatism is likewise inadequate, for on a purely pragmatic ground there is no way to distinguish between materialism’s and theism’s opposing views of the highest ultimate (whether matter or spirit).

Furthermore, a pragmatist has no right on his theory to expect his theory to be verified by future experience, since he has no basis on which to believe in the regularity of the world.

In conclusion, Carnell argues that deductive proofs are inadequate because “reality cannot be connected by formal logic alone.… Logical truth cannot pass into material truth until the facts of life are introduced into the picture.” And inductive proofs are invalid tests for truth, for “here one cannot rise above probability” for “a premise is demonstrated only when it is the necessary implication of a self-evident premise of when its contradiction is shown to be false.”¹¹

Systematic Consistency Is an Adequate Test for Truth. Since all we find in history is probability and all we find in logic is formal validity, we cannot have complete truth until we unite them. “Truth is the properly constructed meaning of all experience. Perfect coherence always involves two elements: the law of contradiction to give formal validity, and concrete facts of history to give material validity.”

For “without formal validity we have no universality and necessity in truth, and without material validity we have no relevance to the world in which we live.” Systematic consistency as Carnell conceives of it involves two elements:

(1) first, there is “horizontal self-consistency” so that “all of the major assumptions of the position be so related together that they placate the rules of formal logic, chief of which is the law of contradiction.”

(2) Second, there must be a “vertical fitting of the facts.” This means then that “coherence involves an interpretation of the real concrete facts of human history—rocks, bones, and plants.” Carnell sees “facts” as including both “external experience,” that is, history and “internal experience,” namely, man’s rational and moral experience.¹²

(3) In another work Carnell develops this last point into what he calls a “third method of knowing.”

Not all knowledge is by acquaintance or inference. Some knowledge comes by “moral self-acceptance.”¹³ This he describes as “personal rectitude, knowledge by moral self-acceptance, and moral responsibility.” Since Carnell admittedly derives this third way from Sören Kierkegaard, we may call it the test of existential relevance. Summarizing then, there are three tests for truth in Carnell: consistency, coherence, and existential relevance.

Or, since the second category is subdivided into internal and external, there are actually four tests for truth: logical consistency, internal personal coherence, external empirical adequacy, and existential relevance. At this point, there is a marked similarity between Ferré and Carnell on tests for truth. However, once the tests are applied by Carnell, his conclusions clearly differ from those of Ferré.

Testing Christianity by Systematic Consistency. Carnell claims that systematic consistency “as a proof for any world view that is worth talking about, cannot rise above rational probability.” The first reason that Christianity cannot rise above probability is that “it is founded on historical facts, which by their very nature, cannot be demonstrated with geometric certainty.” The second reason why “Christianity cannot formally demonstrate its truth is that it is based upon moral values.”

And “value is a point of personal interest and appreciation beyond which there is no further ground of appeal.” Just “as you can lead a horse to the water but you cannot make him drink, so you can lead a man to Christ but you cannot make him trust in Him.” However, one can gain moral assurance which “grows out of a conviction that a proposition is coherent, not that it may be geometrically demonstrated.” And by moral assurance Carnell means that “apprehended strength of evidence which causes us to be convinced of the truth of a given meaning-pattern, and to act upon its strength.”¹⁴

With this understanding of the probability of proof and moral certainty in mind, Carnell proceeds to apply his tests to Christianity. He begins with a systematic analysis of starting points. For “the Christian believes that starting points control both the method and conclusion. Philosophy is like a railway without switches—once a man is committed to a given direction, he is determined in his outcome.” Carnell sees three possible starting points:

(1) A temporal starting point or natural conditioning that one receives from adolescence to adulthood. This he rejects because “it is common to all men and therefore cancels out.”

(2) A logical starting point or coordinating ultimate which gives being and meaning to our experience is also rejected, for “all logical ultimates must be tested,” since there are radical differences between Thales’ Water, Plato’s Good, and the Christian’s Trinity.

(3) A synoptic starting point is necessary for it is “the answer to the question, ‘How do you prove the logical starting point?’ ”¹⁵

Carnell views three possible synoptic starting points:

(1) Internal ineffable experience or that “which brings an immediate assurance to the soul of the reality that is overwhelming and ineffable, as the mystic experience of being swallowed up in God.” “We must pass over this,” says Carnell, “for reasons stated earlier. Truth is systematic consistency and must be expressed in communicable propositions. But this is impossible in mysticism.”

(2) Likewise external effable experience is rejected. For sense, whether of Aristotle or Aquinas, must be rejected “because of its inability to provide immutable truth. Truth, like water, rises no higher than its source.” Agreeing with Hume’s skeptical empiricism, Carnell argues that despite Aquinas’ five futile attempts to prove God, “if truth is to be universal and necessary, it cannot be derived from an analysis of sense perception, for from flux only flux can come.”

(3) This leaves us with internal effable experience as a starting point, that is, with “universal and necessary principles, which are independent of sense perception.” For in order to test the truth of a system we must have resident in the soul some unchanging principles that are capable of being expressed in words.¹⁶

The only alternative to empiricism, then, is a kind of “Christian rationalism” like Augustine’s teaching that “the mind by natural endowment from the Creator, enjoys immediate apprehension of those standards which make our search for the true, the good, and the beautiful meaningful.” For “to speak meaningfully of the true, the good, and the beautiful, … we must have criteria; but criteria that are universal and necessary must be found other than in the flux of sense perception.”

Otherwise, “how do we know that a thing must be coherent to be true, if the soul, by nature, is not in possession of the conviction?” And “how is it that we are able confidently to say that what is good today will be good tomorrow, unless we lodge our theory of the good in something outside the process of history?” In brief, “how can we know what the character of all reality is, so as to act wisely, unless God tells us?” “Revelation, then, is a condition sine qua non for our soul’s well-being.”

As the psalmist rightly said, “Man can see light only in the Light; that all truth is the reflection into the soul of the truth that is in God.” This revelation can be either “natural” or “special,” but “the data which special revelation supplies is needed to supplement that data which natural revelation displays.” For the intellect of man “is incompetent to complete a philosophy of life without special revelation from God.

Because of our sinful hearts, which vitiate the evidence of nature, a more sure voice is needed to lead us into a theory of reality which is horizontally self-consistent and which vertically fits the facts.”¹⁷

Within natural revelation Carnell includes the knowledge of himself and the knowledge of God. For in “knowing what truth is, we know what God is, for God is truth. God is perfect consistency.” But Carnell hastens to say, “This argument for God does not constitute a demonstration; rather it is an analysis.… Proof for God is parallel to proof for logic; logic must be used to prove logic.”

With regard to the latter Carnell believes the laws of logic to be innate, for “if we have not innate knowledge of the rules for right thinking, right thinking cannot start; but right thinking can start; therefore, the rules are innate.” For “apart from the God Who has revealed Himself in Scripture, we could not meaningfully say that murder will be wrong tomorrow; but we can so speak; therefore, God, the Author of our moral nature, exists.”

There is even a knowledge of God through nature. For “to be sure, the world is regular; it is conducive to our happiness; and it is harmonious; but it will do little good so to speak until we first possess those standards in relation to which such statements are significant.” But again we are reminded by Carnell, “This is not a formal demonstration of God’s existence; it is simply proof by coherence.” That is, there is no other way to make sense out of our experience except by this presupposition.

But general revelation, however helpful in these regards, is insufficient to give us knowledge of salvation. As Calvin said, general revelation “ought not only excite us to the worship of God, but likewise to awaken and arouse us to the hope of a future life.… But, notwithstanding the clear representations given by God in the mirror of his works … such is our stupidity, that, always inattentive to these obvious testimonies, we derive no advantage from them.” We must then make recourse to special revelation.¹⁸

The appeal to special revelation, that is, to the “full and whole sixty-six canonical books, which make up the Bible,” is—like any other hypothesis—“verified when it results in an implicative system which is horizontally self-consistent and which vertically fits the facts.” But Carnell stresses one point: “When we leave natural for special revelation, we are not bifurcating epistemology; the Christian operates under one major premise—the existence of the God Who has revealed Himself in Scripture.”

And, he continues, “we are not exchanging reason for faith …; rather we are seeking to strengthen the faith which we already have, for faith is a resting of the soul in the sufficiency of the evidence.” The Bible is needed to give us more evidence. For “truth is systematically constructed meaning, and if the Bible fulfills this standard, it is just as true as Lambert’s law of transmission. Any hypothesis is verified when it smoothly interprets life.”¹⁹

Carnell defends both the fact and necessity of special revelation. On the first point he contends that “no cogent philosophical argument can be introduced to preclude the possibility of revelation.” For “one can know whether God has revealed Himself or not only after examining all the facts of reality, for any one fact overlooked may be the very revelation itself.…

To track God down, therefore, one must at least be everywhere at the same time, which is to say, he must be God Himself.” In essence, “if a man says there is no God, he simply makes himself God, and thus revelation is made actual. If he says there is a God, the only way he can know this is by God’s having revealed Himself, for the Almighty is powerful enough not to give any clues of His existence if He so elects; and again revelation is actual.” And “if we have succeeded in showing that generic revelation is possible, the same argument holds for special revelation.”

For “the fundamental reason why we need a special revelation is to answer the question. What must I do to be saved? Happiness is our first interest, but this happiness cannot be ours until we know just how God is going to dispose of us at the end of history.” If Carnell is asked which revelation one should accept, he replies: “Accept that revelation which, when examined, yields a system of thought which is horizontally self-consistent and which vertically fits the facts of history.”

And in view of all the facts, “the Christian does not arbitrarily accept the Bible as the word of God; he feels he cannot be restrained from so making that hypothesis, for to elect any other position would be to fly in the face of the facts.…”²⁰

Some Essential Tenets of Combinationalism

The starting points of combinationalists often differ. Some begin in empirical experience (as Ramsey) while others start with the revelation in Scripture as known through innate rational and moral principles (as Carnell). But the test for the truth of their system is essentially the same, namely, a combination of consistency, factual adequacy, and moral or religious relevance. From these similarities emerge several common emphases in combinational methodologies.

1. First, combinationalists agree that no one test for truth (such as logical consistency or empirical adequacy) is an adequate test for truth. At the minimum, both facticity and rationality are necessary, and existential or religious relevance is often included as well. Truth tests must be horizontal (logical) as well as vertical (factual). Combinationalism attempts to be comprehensive.
2. Second, combinationalists are usually presuppositional in their starting point. Starting points are all-important and are not self-justifying. One ends on the track on which he begins. Starting points are not neutral or natural; or, if they are, they must at least be justified. Certainly there are no apodictic starting points either in pure reason or in unstructured sense experience. Formal logic is empty and sense experience alone needs structure or meaning.
3. Experience is not self-interpreting. A model or an interpretive framework is necessary for meaning. Without presupposing a world view there can be no meaning or truth. The very possibility of speaking meaningfully depends on an ordered structure within which the discourse can take place.
4. Truth is modeled after a scientific hypothesis. That is, the hypothesis proposed must be tested by consistency and its ability to fit the facts of experience. If it lacks either consistency or factual adequacy, it is falsified.

An Evaluation of Combinationalism

Positive Contributions of Combinationalism

There are a number of noteworthy dimensions in the combinationalistic test for truth. Before undertaking a negative critique it will be profitable to point out some of the contributions made by combinationalists.

First, the recognition of the need for an interpretive framework or metaphysical model is an important insight. Facts do not speak for themselves. Truth does not reside in facts as such. Only fact plus meaning can be the basis for truth. And the meaning does not arise naturally out of facts. Rather, meaning is something attributed to facts from the outside.

It is necessary to presuppose a world view or framework within which a fact can have meaning. Otherwise, one is left with bare, meaningless facticity. Facts and experience may be the basis for meaning, but the data alone cannot provide what meaning should be given to it. Unless the “stuff” of experience is structured by a meaning-model, then it is not possible to speak of the meaningfulness or truth of that system of interpretation. One must indeed presuppose a metaphysical model of the universe before it is even possible to make ultimate truth claims.

Second, combinationalists move in the right direction by the attempt to be comprehensive in the test for the truth of a world and life view, that is, with what in German is called a Weltanschauung. Merely one dimension of the truth question is not enough. World view truths must cover all that is in the world. To single out either the rational element or the empirical element alone in order to test the truth of a world view that includes rational, empirical, and even existential elements is decidedly narrow and inadequate.

Both Ferré and Carnell saw clearly the need to test the truth of the entire Christian system. Both saw at least three basic elements in this test: the rational, the empirical, and the existential. Ramsey speaks of at least two, consistency and empirical fit, and implies the religious relevance in the nature of the disclosure model. Combining the various aspects of reality in the truth question does, indeed, seem to be a valid insight.

For even though truth itself may be formally limited to the prepositional statements, nonetheless the realities and dimensions discussed in a Weltanschauung are not limited to propositions or statements. Feelings, attitudes, virtues, and interpersonal relations—to name a few—are all part and parcel of a complete world view and must be accounted for when one is assessing the truth of the overall system. Value and livability cannot be bifurcated from truth, even though they may not be a complete or even adequate test for truth in themselves.

Finally, combinationalism does serve as an adequate test for truth within certain contexts. Granted a certain perspective, there is sometimes only one systematically consistent way to interpret all the facts. Granted, for example, the context of a football game, then tackling another intentionally is not morally culpable. But grant the serious context of life, sometimes knocking another down cannot be reasonably interpreted in any other way than as a morally culpable action.

Or grant the context of testimony under oath in a courtroom, then intentionally falsifying information can never be reasonably justified as “jesting.” Likewise, grant that this is a theistic universe in which a miracle can be defined as an unusual, naturally uncontrollable and unrepeatable event, then it may become unreasonable to conclude that the resurrection of Christ is not a miracle. However, grant the overall context or framework of a naturalistic world, then the resuscitation of Jesus’ corpse could not possibly be interpreted as a miracle, for miracles can occur only where there is a God.

No acts of God are possible unless there is a God who can act. But in a purely naturalistic universe there is no God; nature is, as it were, “the whole show.” Facts, then, cannot be handled with complete arbitrariness within a given universe—at least not when all the facts are considered. But when one is in reasonable possession of all relevant facts, then, as in a courtroom context, there can sometimes be a decision “beyond reasonable doubt” as to which interpretation best fits the stated context.

Ignoring or overlooking important or relevant facts can lead to the wrong interpretation in some contexts. For instance, any reasonable person of good sense with all the facts about smashed cars, broken glass, skid marks, and bleeding people, and so on, should reasonably conclude that an accident had occurred, provided that what he observed was in the context of an everyday happening at an intersection, and not, for example, on a stage in Hollywood. In short, given a specific context, logical consistency and empirical adequacy may be a very adequate test for truth.

Negative Criticism of Combinationalism as a Test for Truth of World Views

First, the foregoing contribution of combinationalism leads to an important criticism: when testing world views we cannot presuppose the truth of a given context or framework, for that is precisely what is being tested. Combinationalism cannot be a test for the context (or model) by which the very facts, to which the combinationalists appeal, are given meaning. An apologist, for example, cannot legitimately appeal to the miracle of Christ’s resurrection as a proof for the existence of God.

Unless there was already a God to perform that miracle (or act of God), the resurrection could not be a miraculous confirmation of God’s existence. Acts of God presuppose a God who can act. And to presuppose a God who can act in order to prove by one of his acts that he exists is viciously circular reasoning. On the other hand, grant that God already exists, then the resurrection may very well be a miraculous way of confirming that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God.

But this is precisely what cannot be granted by nontheists, for it is the whole theistic world view that is in question, and the opponent cannot grant the entire issue under question. Facts make sense only in granted contexts. Theism is an overall context or model of meaning for the universe. Hence, no theist can rightfully appeal to a theistic interpretation of facts (such as an interpretation of a resuscitated corpse as a miraculous resurrection) as a test for the truth of the theistic way of interpreting the universe. Total world views cannot be tested from facts within the world view which gain their very meaning from the world view itself.

Second, combinationalism is a form of the “leaky bucket” argument. It says, in effect, that empiricism is not an adequate test for truth, existentialism is not an adequate test for truth, and rationalism is not an adequate test for truth. However, if one leaky bucket does not hold the water, then two or three leaky buckets will not do the job either. Just adding together inadequate solutions does not make an adequate solution.

Unless there is some way to correct the inadequacy of one test for truth by another, then simply adding tests will not provide an adequate test for truth. But the problem with rationalism as a test for truth is not corrected by evidentialism. Rationalism does not fail simply because it provides no factual referents for thought, but because in its strong form it provides no rationally inescapable arguments, and in the weak form it is only a test for the possibility of a system’s truth.

The law of noncontradiction can show only that a system is wrong if it has contradictions in its central tenets. But there may be several such systems that are internally noncontradictory. Likewise, as we have seen, there may be many world views that account for all the data of experience. Hence, once one steps inside another world view he may find that its major tenets are consistent, that it accounts for all the facts of experience as interpreted through its framework, and that it is existentially relevant to men within that life style.

It is noteworthy in this regard that Ferré recognizes this very fact, admitting that other models, even nontheistic ones, may be of equal or even greater weight than the Christian model when tested by his criteria.²¹ And if Western theists admit this, then surely the sophisticated Hindu or Buddhist could adequately apply a combinational test for truth and thereby avoid discarding his world view in favor of theism.

Further, the problem with factualism or experientialism is not corrected by adding an interpretive framework—not at least when there are competing models that may likewise be applied to all the facts. It merely shifts the question again to the justification of choosing one model over another.

No mystical intuition of models or alleged divine revelation of them will solve the problem, for that either begs the whole question or else it opens the door for all competing views to claim divine revelation for their models (see Chapter 2). Nor will it help to claim that one model “fits” the facts better than another. For the facts take their very meaning from the “fit” given them by the interpretive model, as the next critique indicates.

Third, empirical fit is inadequate to test a world view because “fit” is something cut out for the facts by the overall pattern of the world view. That is, the very meaning a fact has as a fact within a system is not found in its bare facticity but by the way it is modeled or incorporated by that given world view. The following diagram illustrates that from one viewpoint the same lines may be conceived as two square legs but from another perspective they may form three round legs. In both interpretations of this figure the facts are identical; only the modeling of them differs.

A similar problem emerged in some ancient languages which did not divide letters into words but left the reader to decide from the context. For example, HEISNOWHERE, as a postmortem announcement on Jesus, could mean two entirely different things depending on how one structures the letters. No appeal to the bare facts alone can solve the problem; only a context, model, or framework from outside can do it.

And when one framework works as well as another, then there is no way to adjudicate the problem by appeal to differing models that each in its own way accounts for all the facts. Or, at least differing systems may account equally well for an equal number of facts, while having difficulty with others.

The temptation to simply choose the system which best “works” or fits one’s life needs has already been discussed under pragmatism (see Chapter 6). But as we saw, a pragmatic test will not suffice for it proves only what “works,” not what is true. But differing systems may work equally well for different persons, at least in the short run or in this life; and no one but God can predict the long run with certainty. Yet to wait until after death for verification is too late to settle the truth question now. It would seem, then, that all roads away from the dilemma are dead-end streets.

Combinationalism has no way to know whether the model fits the facts best because the facts are all prefitted by the model to give meaning to the whole from the very beginning. So it only begs the question to speak of, say, the facts of religious experience best fitting a theistic model if the facts were gathered in the first place from those having theistic religious experiences.

In like manner, the fact of the resurrection of Christ is already a theistic “interprafact” and as such it will naturally fit better into a theisic scheme of things than it will into a naturalistic world view. However, if one speaks merely about the anomalous or unusual event of a resuscitated corpse in the framework of a naturalistic world view, the bare fact also fits the framework.

Combinationalism is at best a test only for the falsity, not the truth, of a world view. For more than one view may be both consistent and adequate. However, those that are not both consistent and adequate will be false. Hence, Combinationalism would at best eliminate only false world views (or, aspects of world views). It cannot establish one world view as true over all opposing world views. This is so because more than one world view may be both consistent and adequate.

Summary and Conclusion

Combinationalism provides some significant insights into the truth question. Models or interpretive frameworks are necessary for meaning, and meaning has both logical, factual, and perhaps even existential dimensions. However, as a test for the truth of an overall interpretive model or world view, combinationalism will not suffice. For by simply adding together inadequate tests for truth one does not get an adequate test. The second leaky bucket or the third one does not hold any more water than the first one.

Furthermore, since opposing models may do the rational, factual, and existential job equally well, vindication of one truth claim over another will not emerge from the test of combinationalism. Indeed, the very claim that the facts fit better in one system than another begs the question. For the facts gain their very meaning from the system or overall model. And once the facts are “precut” to fit the pattern, then it should be no surprise to anyone that they fit better in that system. Opposing systems can account equally well for all or equal numbers of facts.

Hence, combinational tests are insufficient to exclude opposing systems, in which case they are ineffective in establishing the truth of any one system over others.

SELECT READINGS FOR Combinationalism

Exposition of Combinationalism

• Barbour, Ian G. Myth, Model and Paradigms.
• Carnell, Edward J. An Introduction to Christian Apologetics.
• Ferré, Frederick. Language, Logic and God.
• ———. Exploring the Logic of Faith.
• Ramsey, Ian. Religious Language.
• ———. Models and Mystery.

Evaluation of Combinationalism

• Hackett, Stuart. The Resurrection of Theism, pt. III, chap. 2.
• Lewis, Gordon R. Testing Christianity’s Truth Claims, chaps. 7–11.
• Popper, Karl. The Poverty of Historicism.
• Yandell, Keith. Basic Issues in the Philosophy of Religion, chap. IV.

¹ Ian Ramsey, Religious Language, pp. 20–55, and Models and Mystery, passim.

² Ramsey, Models and Mystery, p. 20, and Religious Language, pp. 104, 99.

³ Ramsey, Prospect for Metaphysics, pp. 153–64, 174.

⁴ Ramsey, Models and Mystery, p. 16.

⁵ Frederick Ferré, Basic Modern Philosophy of Religion, pp. 373 f., and “Mapping the Logic of Models in Science and Theology” in The Christian Scholar, XLVI (Spring 1963), pp. 13 f.

⁶ Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic and God, pp. 164, 36.

⁷ Kent Bendall and Frederick Ferré, Exploring the Logic of Faith, pp. 165–66.

⁸ Bendall and Ferré, pp. 166 f.

⁹ “Science and the Death of God,” in Science and Religion, ed. Ian Barbour (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 147.

¹⁰ Bendall and Ferré, Exploring the Logic of Faith, pp. 153 f., 172 f.

¹¹ Edward J. Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, pp. 48–53, 105.

¹² Carnell, pp. 105–12.

¹³ Carnell, Christian Commitment, pp. 22, 29.

¹⁴ Carnell, Introduction to Christian Apologetics, pp. 113–17.

¹⁵ Carnell, Introduction, pp. 123–25.

¹⁶ Carnell, Introduction, pp. 125, 126, 139.

¹⁷ Carnell, Introduction, pp. 152–57.

¹⁸ Carnell, Introduction, pp. 159–72.

¹⁹ Carnell, Introduction, p. 175.

²⁰ Carnell, Introduction, pp. 175–78, 190.

²¹ Bendall and Ferré, Exploring the Logic of Faith, pp. 153 f. Even more recently Ferré has argued for a “polymythic organicism” which allows divergent religious models to be equally adequate. See his Shaping the Future: Resources for the Post-Modern World.

Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (117). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

COMBINATIONALISM – All you want to know