Warranted Belief

“A community of faith usually traces its history back to what may be called a ‘classic’ or ‘primordial’ revelation. This classic revelation, a definite disclosive experience of the holy granted to the founder or founders of the community, becomes as it were the paradigm for experiences of the holy in that community. A revelation that has the power to found a community of faith becomes fruitful in that community, and is, so to speak, repeated or re-enacted in the experience of the community, thus becoming normative for the experience of the community. Yet only because the primordial revelation is continually renewed in present experience can it be revelation for us, and not just a fossilized revelation.” John Macquarrie, “Principles of Christian Theology,” Second Edition, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons,1977), pages 8-9.

In the past two postings I have discussed the importance of community and the fact that we belong to communities that, in a sense, believe in the things that we believe in or believe in the things that we want to believe in. These communities represent how we would like to live, both within the community itself and in relationship with the world outside of the community. Today, the emphasis is not upon the founder or founders of the community, but in those that come later. Our emphasis is upon those that ‘repeat or re-enact‘ the community’s primordial revelation in their present activity so that the revelation is constantly renewed and alive.

The ‘classic’ or ‘primordial’ revelation of the community essentially creates a ‘possibility for life,’ a ‘worldview,’ a ‘hypothesis.’ The classic revelation presents something that must be and will be tested over time. Of course, it is not complete, in and of itself. It needs to be reflected on. Its meaning needs to be explored. Interpretation is required to place it into a context that can be understood. And, then people need time to see how it works, refine the message, and build a framework or structure around it. The process is one of going from the unknown to the known and this is not easy. At first, we don’t really know all the ramifications and consequences that surround the revelation. These must be worked out.

In words that we have used before, this primordial revelation results in the creation of a model. We are not always sure about what this model does or should be applied to. Yes, there are some immediate applications of the revelation because the revelation generally provides an explanation for something we did not understand before. The recipient of the revelation had asked a question, implicitly or explicitly, and the revelation is, in some way, an answer to that question. We assume that the revelation must be quite rich if a community of faith is founded upon it. By rich we mean that we find many more applications of the revelation when we live with it for an extended period of time and we use the model on a regular basis. That is, we must, over time, find that the model or models that are derived from the revelation fit with experience; the world and the revelation, we find, ultimately are consistent with one another.

In other words, the community finds that as it continually renews the revelation in present experience, the model or models related to the revelation work. They provide relatively adequate predictions that can be used by the members of the community, as well as the community itself, to solve problems and make decisions that lead to the life that those in the community would like to live. The model or models used by the community ‘work’ in the sense that they produce desirable and sustainable results. The community comes to have ‘faith’ in the revelation or revelations it subscribes to.

A ‘classic’ or a ‘primordial’ revelation that does not achieve success in this way over an extended period of time will not survive. And, we observe in history, that communities are founded that survive for a period of time as the models used by the community are satisfactory for a ‘local’ or ‘regional’ situation, but do not possess a more universal message and so tend to fade as they come into competition with other communities whose revelation is broader and more robust. Thus, part of the relevance of the revelation, and the survival and growth of the community, depend upon the ability of the community’s model or models to expand or adapt to more and more universal conditions. That is, the model or models must allow the community to solve more and more difficult problems that apply in more and more different situations. This is what the community does as it renews itself in the ‘present experience.’ The primordial revelation is alive and does not, as Macquarrie writes, become ‘fossilized.’

This is how faith is built and grows. It is because of our action, our decision making. Action is, ultimately, the source of our perceptions and our general belief. More generally, a belief is warranted if there is sufficient experience that the model or models believed in can be relatively successful, either as seen in others, such as other members of our community, or as actually experienced by ourselves.

This is an important point for a couple of reasons. First, humans tend to focus just on current or short term outcomes. This response has been built into them because of the need to respond to immediate danger in order to act in a way that optimizes their chance for survival. However, as human beings evolved and came to live more and more in civilized communities reliance on an immediate response did not always result in the best outcomes over time. In this respect, the community helps the individual member of the community by showing that its models do produce favorable results. This is one of the fundamental reasons we belong to the community. But, the community also helps the individual member persist in the use of the models, even though the results may not turn out to be, in the short run, the outcomes that are most desired.

This emphasis on process allows the individual member of the community to move away from the concentration on short term results. The only way a belief can become warranted is that it must lead to the ‘expected results’ over the longer run. But, how long is ‘long term’? It is subjective and there needs to be some consideration of ‘balance’ concerning the tradeoff between staying with the model or quickly dispensing of the model to get a new one. We must accept the fact that our models are tentative. Still, we must not be too willing to get rid of a model too quickly. Our communities help us to make a reasonable decision about staying with a model.

A belief that is warranted is a belief that is justified. But, one belief may not be as strong as another belief. That is, beliefs are subject to varying degrees of belief. In some instances, we have a very high degree of belief in a model and consequently we may feel very confident in using that model. In this sense, the degree of belief influences how far we should act using a particular model. The probabilistic models that we use really are just projections of our degrees of belief; in this our models are but predictive instruments.

We must accept the fact that we don’t know everything and we will never know everything. This was the point of my post on January 19, 2008 titled, “What is Missing?” As a consequence of this we will never know the ‘truth’ about anything. Especially if everything is connected in some way to everything else even our ‘reductive’ science cannot provide us with knowledge of the ‘truth’. Creation is just too sophisticated and complex and the minds of human beings don’t have the processing power to model all of the world in order to be able discern what the ‘truth’ is. We do construct models to help us make the predictions we need to solve problems and make decisions. But our models are limited, our knowledge is bounded. They are tentative because we can’t know everything. Since we can’t know everything, our predictions can only be probabilistic. Faith in our models, therefore, is a necessary condition of our life and we develop more and more trust in our models as our belief becomes more warranted. That is the best we can hope for.