Revelation as Testimony

A Philosophical-Theological Study

Mats Wahlberg

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780802869883
• eBook ISBN: 9781467442282
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

According to the pre-modern Christian tradition, knowledge of God is mainly testimonial: we know certain important truths about God and divine things because God himself has told them to us. In academic theology of late this view is often summarily dismissed. But to do so is a mistake, claims Mats Wahlberg, who argues that the testimonial understanding of revelation is indispensable to Christian theology.
Criticizing the currently common idea that revelation should be construed exclusively in terms of God's self manifestation in history or through inner experience, Wahlberg discusses the concept of divine testimony in the context of the debate about how any knowledge of God is possible. He draws on resources from contemporary analytic philosophy -- especially John McDowell and Nicholas Wolterstorff -- to argue for the intellectual viability of revelation as divine testimony.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Testimonial knowledge is knowledge gained from the spoken or written words of other people. If Peter believes that it is raining because he believes his mother’s assertion to this effect, and if his mother speaks sincerely and knows what she is talking about, then Peter has testimonial knowledge of the fact that it is raining.1

Most of our knowledge is testimonial. I have never seen a brain, but I know that there are brains in people’s heads because people have told me so. I have never seen a woman give birth, but I know that children come from women because people have told me so. I know that Barack Obama is the president of the United States, that there once was a man named Winston Churchill, and that I was born on New Year’s Eve, because people have told me all these things — orally or in writing.

Our knowledge of God, according to the historical Christian tradition, is mainly testimonial. We know certain important truths about God and divine things because God himself has told them to us. Saint Thomas Aquinas writes:

In order that men might have knowledge of God, free of doubt and uncertainty, it was necessary for Divine matters to be delivered to them by way of faith, being told to them, as it were, by God Himself Who cannot lie.2

Saint Clement of Alexandria: “We give to our adversaries this irrefutable argument; it is God who speaks and who, for each one of the points into which I am inquiring, offers answers in the Scriptures.”3

Martin Luther: “The Scriptures are God’s testimony of himself.”4 John Calvin: “The first step in true knowledge is taken when we reverently embrace the testimony which God has been pleased [in the Scriptures] to give of himself.”5

The First Vatican Council, in Dei Filius, declares:

We believe that what he has revealed is true, not because the intrinsic truth of things is recognized by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither err nor deceive.6

In this book I will argue, on the basis of insights from contemporary philosophy of testimony, for the viability of the traditional understanding of revelation as divine testimony. God reveals by speaking, and we acquire knowledge of God and divine things by believing what God says.7 That God speaks is not to be understood as a metaphor in this context. The premodern tradition took the claim that God speaks literally, and it regarded the Bible as composed of divine speech-­acts (assertions, commands, promises, etc.).8 This view, which an understanding of revelation as divine testimony presupposes, does not, as I will argue, commit one to holding some naïve and untenable doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

The dominant tendency in modernity has been to either dismiss the idea of revelation altogether or to construe revelation as exclusively manifestational. God does not reveal by performing speech-­acts but only by manifesting himself in diverse ways, for example, through historical events or in transcendental experience. The latter forms of revelation are generally perceived to be more acceptable than the idea of divine testimony. Believing things merely on (what one takes to be) divine say-­so is seen as irrational and reflective of an authoritarian mindset.

Wolfhart Pannenberg, representing this attitude, writes:

Until the Enlightenment, Christian theology was doubtless a theology of revelation in this sense, appealing to revelation as a supernatural authority. The authoritative revelation was found in the “Word of God,” i.e., in the inspired word of the Bible. . . . But for men who live in the sphere in which Enlightenment has become effective, authoritarian claims are no longer acceptable.9

Austin Farrer has the divine testimony model of revelation in mind when he says:

There is nothing superficially less attractive to a philosophical mind than the notion of a revealed truth. For philosophy is reasonable examination, and must resist the claim of any doctrine to exempt itself from criticism. And revealed truth is commonly said to be accepted on the mere authority of its revealer; not on any empirical evidence for it, nor on any logical self-­evidence contained in it.10

The idea that beliefs “accepted on the mere authority” of God (mediated through the Bible or ecclesiastical authorities) cannot enjoy the status of being rationally justified is so firmly anchored in the contemporary theological mind that even a thinker like John Milbank, who is otherwise very sensitive to modern prejudice, seems to take it for granted.

For the more science and politics were confined to immanent and autonomous secular realms, the more faith appealed to an arational positivity of authority invested with a right to rule, and sometimes to overrule, science and secular politics.11

One important purpose I have in this book is to show that the standard contemporary attitude, though understandable in light of historical misuses of appeals to divine authority, is based on inadequate conceptions of the nature of testimonial knowledge.12 Farrer, for example, seems unaware of the circumstance that most of the everyday truths we take ourselves to know are truths that we have “accepted on the mere authority of [their] revealer[s].”13 I do not have a cogent argument from my own personal experience to the truth that Karl Barth was born in 1886. I have just accepted the latter proposition (which I take myself to know) as true on the authority of some author who I know only by name and whose reliability I have no adequate evidence for. I could, of course, check with other sources, thereby acquiring premises for an argument-­to-­the-­best-­explanation, for example, along the following lines: three independent sources state that Karl Barth was born in 1886. The best explanation of this fact is that Barth really was born that year. The point, however, is that I have not done this. I have just consulted one book (which is also the case when it comes to innumerable other beliefs that I have). And even if I were to consult a number of books and find them in agreement, I would still not have a very solid argument for the truth of the proposition that Barth was born in 1886. There is always the rather likely possibility that all the books depend, directly or indirectly, on a common misleading source. In order to exclude this possibility, I may have to do quite extensive research.

But maybe — the critical reader will object — I can be said to possess a justification for my belief about Barth’s birth in the form of the following argument: peer-­reviewed books are usually trustworthy about the birth years of famous people; a peer-­reviewed book states that Barth was born in 1886; therefore, Barth was probably born in 1886. An argument of this type would maybe suffice to give my belief about Barth’s year of birth and similar beliefs the status of knowledge, thereby eliminating the need for me to simply trust an author. But how do I know the minor premise of the argument, that the book about Barth’s birth that I am relying on is peer-­reviewed? Because the publishing company’s Web site says that it is? Then I would be relying “on the mere authority” of the publishing company’s Web site (unless I have independent evidence for its reliability, which I probably do not). And what about the major premise — that peer-­reviewed books are usually trustworthy? This is something that I cannot confirm on the basis of my own personal experience. I have acquired thousands of beliefs from peer-­reviewed books. I have, however, only checked the truth of a very limited number of those beliefs for myself. So I do not know, on the basis of my own firsthand experience, that peer-­reviewed books are usually trustworthy.

Does all this mean that I do not really know that Barth was born in 1886? To draw this conclusion from the considerations above would be disastrous. It would force me to concede that I do not really know most of the things that I think I know. My ev...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Revelation and Knowledge of God
• 3. Theories of Revelation
• 4. Divine Speech
• 5. Knowledge by Hearsay
• 6. Entrance into God’s Own Knowledge
• 7. Responsible Belief
• 8. Faithful Knowledge
• Bibliography
• Index