Dr. William Lane Craig is an evidentialist with a difference; while he believes that we can use philosophical argumentation to “show” the truth of Christianity, he does not see reason as the primary route to “knowing” Christianity to be true. He affirms that Christian theists, such as myself, are justified in believeing the “great truths of the Gospel” based entirely on what he calls “the inner witness of the Holy Spirit”.
What this “inner witness” IS exactly, I still have not been able to completely decipher: is it some kind of religious experience, whereby the Christian has a strong emotional feeling, or rational intuition of Christianity’s truth? If this is the case, then I have experienced this “inner witness” after many prayer meanings during my BB’s Camp in the year 2007.
But it is neither the nature or even truth of this “holy spirit epistemology” I intend to briefly comment on. Rather I would just like to point out that it is not nearly as comforting as Bill Craig seems to think. For example, in a popular youtube video circulating starring Bill, he claims this “inner witness” offers peace to a doubting Christian, because it grounds the certainty of his faith in something wholey apart from complicated philosophical arguments. But this simply isn’t true, because the “holy spirit epistemology” itself is a philosophical thesis that must be somehow rationally defended. If this were not so, then why does Craig devote nearly a whole chaper in “Reasonable Faith” and an entire “Reasonable Faith” podcast to doing just this?
It seems to me that Craig’s epistemology is based on Alvin Plantinga’s “reformed epistemology” that treats belief in “the great truths of the Gospel” as properly basic- this is a thesis that has come under attack and has required a vast amount of philosophical argumentation to establish and defend.
My point is that this “inner witness” idea of Bill’s is not comforting in the slightest as it DOESN’T offer us a safe house of certainty in the midst of fiery philosophical mind-storms- rather it only opens up yet MORE doors for serious philsophical dispute and argumentation.
Anyone want to defend Craig here?
Craig’s “Holy Spirit Epistemology” is Not Comforting
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Your objection is that the “inner witness” is no comfort because, in order to defend the claim that there exists an inner witness to another person, ‘the “holy spirit epistemology” itself is a philosophical thesis that must be somehow rationally defended.’
You need to explain why you use the word “must.” It must be rationally defended in order for… for what? The possibility of an experience need not be defended before the experience can be had, obviously (e.g. I don’t need to defend the scientific thesis that my eyes provide reliable information about the outside world before I can have confidence in what i see). So you need to mean that before I can have confidence in the certainty provided by the inner witness, I must be able to ratinally defend to another person the claim that the inner witness is possible, or that basic beliefs can be formed in this way.
But this is clearly a false assessment. If – as a matter of fact – basic beliefs about God can be formed in the way that Plantinga suggests, or God can be experienced in the way that Christians maintain, then this phenomenon itself provides confidence. Why would that confidence only apply to people with enough philosophical nous to explain the epistemological implications?
Certainly, the thesis that such an internal witness can exist needs to be defended if one wishes to persuade philosophical skeptics that it exists. But in order to *have* the confidence Craig speaks of there is certainly no need to formulate such a defense.
Before anyone needs to defend Craig, I think you’d need to first build up a robust, plausible argument for the requirement that you claim exists.
Incidently, there’s no name given for who wrote this blog post on Craig’s epistemology. I like to name those that I’m interacting with. Whose blog is this?
[...] (as yet) unnamed author of the “Thoughts of the Foetus” blog doesn’t think that the inner witness, even if real, can grant the kind of confidence or [...]
[...] (as yet) unnamed author of the “Thoughts of the Foetus” blog doesn’t think that the inner witness, even if real, can grant the kind of confidence or [...]