1Plato, “Theaetetus,” in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 202c.
2Plato, “Meno,” in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 98a.
3We are not suggesting that the theologian cannot use nature (see chap. 10).
4Edmund L. Gettier, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, Analysis 23, no. 6 (June 1963): 122.
5Ibid., 123.
6Keith Lerher and Thomas Paxson Jr., “Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief,” The Journal of Philosophy 66, no. 8 (1969): 227.
7As will be noted later, reliabilists claim that one does not need to know whether the belief was formed through a reliable process as long as in fact it was formed by a reliable process. It is like knowing a fact is true and the fact actually being true. One is an epistemological issue (knowing); the other is an ontological issue (being).
1Plato, “Phaedo,” in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 57.
2Ibid.
3Plato, “Republic,” in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1130-31.
4René Descartes, Discourse on Method (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 18.
5Paul K. Moser, Dwayne H. Mulder and J. D. Trout, The Theory of Knowledge: A Thematic Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 111.
6Francis Bacon, The New Organum (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 7.
7Ibid., 36.
8John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin, 2004), 109, emphasis his.
9Ibid., 159.
10David Hume, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Charles W. Hendel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 173.
11J. D. Trout, Measuring the Intentional World: Realism, Naturalism and Quantitative Methods in the Behavioral Sciences (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
1Benjamin Myers, “Alister E. McGrath’s Scientific Theology,” in Alister E. McGrath, The Order of Things (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), 11.
2Doug Groothuis, “Truth Defined and Defended,” in Reclaiming the Center, ed. Milliard Erickson, Paul Kjoss Helseth and Justin Taylor (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004), 73.
3Ibid.
4Stewart E. Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied: Examining Postmodernism, History and Christian Faith (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2011), 283-84.
5William James, Pragmatism (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1991), 89.
6Ibid., 36.
7Ibid., 25.
8Paul Horwich, “Theories of Truth,” in A Companion to Metaphysics, ed. Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 493.
9Kelly, Truth Considered and Applied, 284.
10Ibid., 283.
11Plato, “Sophist,” in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 261.
12Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 2:1597.
13David K. Clark, To Know and Love God (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2003), 354.
14John Searle, Mind, Language and Society (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 9.
15Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 110.
16Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001–2003), 2:16.
17Groothuis, Truth Decay, 97.
1Francis Bacon, The New Organum (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 9.
2Ibid., 17.
3Ibid., 8.
4Ibid., 9.
5Duncan Pritchard, What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? (New York: Routledge, 2010), 96.
6Peter Lipton, “Inference to the Best Explanation,” in A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, ed. W. H. Newton-Smith (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), 184-85.
1John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin, 1997), book 2, chap. 8.
2Jonathan Dancy, Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1985), 145.
3Louis P. Pojman, What Can We Know? An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 67-68.
4Ibid.
5Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, book 2, chap. 9.
6Ibid., book 2, chap. 10.
7Jack S. Crumley II, An Introduction to Epistemology (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999), 270.
1This is sometimes referred to as epistemic deontology. Deontos is the Greek word for “duty.”
2Louis P. Pojman, What Can We Know? An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 136.
3W. K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” in Philosophy and Choice, ed. Kit R. Christensen (Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1999), 144. Clifford’s essay has been widely read and reprinted since 1879, when it first appeared in his Lectures and Essays (Macmillan).
4Ibid.
5Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 6.
6One might ask what such a defeater would look like. If someone were to point out that I had recently taken some drugs that tend to affect my memory, then that would constitute a defeater to my claim that my memory is reliable and I would have to doubt it. But in absence of such a defeater or one like it, I am justified in claiming my memory is reliable.
7From noeo, the Greek term for thinking or understanding.
8Both versions are referred to by a number of names.
9Ronald Nash, Faith and Reason (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 82.
10I might be wrong about what color the T-shirt is, but it is not possible for me to be wrong about how it appears to me.
11Ibid., 86, emphasis original.
12W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 88.
1Plato, Republic, in Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 444e.
2Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 1099b.
3Ibid., 1107a.
4Ibid., 1105b.
5Duncan Pritchard, What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? (New York: Routledge, 2006), 58.
6Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, book 2, chap. 1.
7Ibid., 1139b15.
8Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1948), 2.58.3.
9Ibid., 2.58.2.
10W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 20-21.
11Garrett J. DeWeese, Doing Philosophy as a Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 172.
12Robert C. Roberts and W. Jay Wood, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 6.
13Wood, Epistemology, 16.
14Ibid., 57.
15Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski, Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 220.
16Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, 237-50.
1Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1948), 1.45.7.
2John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1.5.1.
3Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.2.3.
4William Paley, Natural Theology, ed. Matthew D. Eddy and David Knight (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12.
5See Emil Brunner and Karl Barth, Natural Theology, trans. Peter Fraenkel (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002).
6All passages are taken from the NKJV.
7Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), 83.
8David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (London: Penguin, 1990), 53.
9Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1990), 1.
10Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), 157.
11Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.2.1.
12Hugh Ross, The Fingerprint of God, 2nd ed. (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1989), 129-31. Some of these include (1) number of stars in the planetary system; (2) parent star birth date; (3) parent star age; (4) parent star distance from center of galaxy; (5) parent star mass; (6) parent star color; (7) surface gravity; (8) distance from parent star; (9) axial tilt; (10) rotation period; (11) gravitational interaction with a moon; (12) magnetic field; (13) thickness of crust; (14) albedo (ratio of reflected light to total amount falling on surface); (15) oxygen to nitrogen ratio in atmosphere; (16) carbon dioxide and water vapor levels in atmosphere; (17) ozone level in atmosphere; (18) atmospheric electric discharge rate; (19) oxygen quantity in atmosphere; (20) seismic activity.
13Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. T. Thomson, vol. 1.1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1955), 368.
14Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1.1.1.
15A similar type of argument has been developed by Norman Geisler in Christian Apologetics (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 2002). Our rationale is similar to his in its goal and the kinds of evidence considered, but it is different in structure and development. We are also indebted to our colleague Bruce Little for the many conversations we have had on this topic, which has allowed this rationale to take form.
16See F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of the Gospels (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007).
17Gary Habermas, The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1996).
18Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (New York: Scribner, 1995).
19Numerous works exist that show the weaknesses of these theories. For a short sample, see Habermas, Historical Jesus, or Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010).
1Diogenes Laertius, “Life of Pyrrho,” in Hellenistic Philosophy, trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 288.
2Sextus Empiricus, “General Principles,” in Hellenistic Philosophy, trans. Brad Inwood and L. P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 303.
3Ibid., 307.
4René Descartes, Discourse on Method (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), 24.
5It is important to note that Hume never denied causality itself. In a 1754 letter to John Stewart he stated that he “never asserted so absurd a proposition as that something could arise without a cause. I only maintained that our certainty of Falsehood of the proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor demonstration but from another source.” David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, 2 vols., ed. J. Y. T. Grieg (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932), 1:187.
6David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 165.
7Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J. M. D. Meiklejohn (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1990), 13.
8Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (Hazelton, PA: Pennsylvania State University Electronic Classic Series, 2010), 128.
9W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 94-95.
10Daniel Taylor, The Myth of Certainty: The Reflective Christian and the Risk of Commitment (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), 21.
11Alan G. Padgett, Science and the Study of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 24.
12Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2003), 32.
13Ibid., 33.
14Alister E. McGrath, Doubting (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 24-25.
15Garrett J. DeWeese, Doing Philosophy as a Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 158.
16Alister E. McGrath, The Science of God: An Introduction to Scientific Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 187. McGrath uses the word closure, and we have substituted the word certainty here, as this is what McGrath has in view.