A Funeral Procession for my Procrastination: Part I

Dearly Beloved Throng,

We are gathered here today to witness the demise of my procrastination. So sit back, cozy up to the one you fondle copiously, and hear the most epic analysis of Kreeft and Tacelli ever committed to electronically blogified ink.

The Authors: Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli

The Book: Handbook of Christian Apologetics

The Chapter: 1 - The Nature, Power, and Limitations of Apologetics

Years ago, I listened to Peter Kreeft's Portable Professor lecture series, Questions of Faith, discussing the philosophy of religion. I don't remember any specifics from those discs, except that Kreeft seemed to present the arguments for and against the existence of God in a fairly even-handed fashion. I quite liked him though I disagreed with...well, whatever he said.

Crash-cut to me reading his co-authored book. Some aspects of the first chapter equally demonstrate the even-handedness I beheld in Kreeft's lecture series. Other aspects...er, not so much.


They say that before you tear an author a new a-hole you should begin by saying something sweet and soft and squishy about them. Well I say eff that right in the A. I'll do what I want. And what I want is to take the ideas in this chapter as they're presented. All chronological and shiznatch. But rest assured, at some point I will indeed present some areas in which I agree with Kreeft and Tacelli (KT from here on).

This chapter serves as a kind of introduction where the authors outline their reasons for writing the book, their goals, and their methodology. While not comparing themselves to the genius of Aquinas, they compare their approach to his, in terms of summarizing many arguments for the existence of God in one place. They attempt to present the arguments in a simple way without oversimplifying. One of their goals is to "restore the older notion of reason." By this they mean to present philosophy as "both clear and profound, both respectful of reason and respectful of mystery at the same time, as medieval philosophy was" (14). To do this, they say we must get back to the older, larger notion of reason, where we see our "subjective, psychological, human processes of reasoning as participations in and reflections of an objective rational order, a logos, a 'Reason' with a capital R." Also, they suggest that we should see reason "not as confined to reasoning, calculating...but as including apprehension, intellectual intuition, understanding, 'seeing,' insight, contemplation" (15).

This gets things off to a bad start by priming the reader to relax the strictures of rigorous logic while accepting flawed and troublesome approaches to epistemology. If your goal is to think reasonably and get at what is true (or at least, most plausibly so), then the stated goals of this book are a laundry list full of recipes for disaster. To embrace the subjective, the mysterious, the intuitive, etc., is to set oneself up for failure, to be happily oblivious to one's biases. IMHO, these approaches to understanding truth are deeply defective and have been shown multiple times to be corrosive to the reasoning process. KT seem to give their imprimatur to lower the bar of evidence and argument such that a lack of evidence and faulty arguments can be seen as compelling and sound.

Next, KT assert that faith and reason are allies and that reason should not "usurp the primacy of faith, hope, and love" (15). They quote with approval medieval formulations of classical Christian orthodoxy, such as "faith seeking understanding," and "I believe in order that I may understand." As they say, "when faith comes first, understanding follows, and is vastly aided by faith's tutelage" (16). However, they note that when "properly used," human reason can prove "many of the things God has revealed to us to be believed, such as his own existence and some of his attributes" (16). They offer their fellow Christians the admonishment of 1 Peter 3:15, that once one comes to believe, they should "be ready to make [a] defense."

Umm...I realize this is a handbook of Christian apologetics and all, but KT are also concerned with presenting an honest series of arguments for what they believe to be true. Yet here, they merely assert that faith and reason are allies. They invoke classical quotes to bolster that assertion, but not a single argument is provided to demonstrate that this is the case. In fact, it seems to me that faith, hope, and love actually inject more bias, longing, and emotion into a process that needs to weed out such murky obfuscations in order to arrive at the goal of truth and clear understanding. Faith, hope, and love are precisely the kinds of things which do the most damage to reason, logic, and the assessment of evidence. Of course, I'm not trying to say that these emotions and psychological dispositions aren't important or helpful in many ways, but they don't belong in this particular context. When investigating the question of the existence of God, such emotional appeals can and do lead incredibly brilliant thinkers down many a dark alley, in which they get beaten up and mugged by the thugs of the peer-review process.

Furthermore, KT seem to assume that God exists, when that is exactly the question under investigation. To "believe in order to understand" is to put the proverbial cart before the proverbial horse. Also, if one is attempting to be an honest seeker of Truth (whatever that might be and regardless of the uncomfortable truths that might be revealed along the way), there seems to be something wrong with assuming that the proper use of reason will prove the existence of God. It may or may not turn out to be true, but I don't think one can begin with that as a starting position or a priori predisposition. Here, KT offer a bit of a caveat: "Truth is objective, but people usually aren't! We are obviously living in a fallen world, not a perfect world, one where people's exercise of reason is expressed in various forms of irrationality. An argument that is in itself perfectly rational and valid will often fall on ears deafened by prejudice, passion, ignorance, misunderstanding, incomprehension, or ideology" (16).

I whole-heartedly agree! (Well, except for the obviously living in a fallen world part. Gonna need an argument and some evidence for that. And doesn't it presuppose the literal truth of the Adam and Eve story?) However, KT seem to think these afflictions only apply to their opponents, readers, and interlocutors. Having grasped the Truth as revealed by God, KT suggest that if you disagree with them, you must necessarily misunderstand their arguments, or have some ideological ax to grind, or be swayed by your emotions/passions. Forgive me for raising objections to what are sure to be perfect arguments in favor of absolutely Divine Truth, but isn't it at least possible that KT have erred somewhere along the way? I mean, they are just as much a part of this filthy fallen world as the rest of us, right?

Oooh, weee! This jam's so sick and dope it'll make ya sweat till ya bleed! More comin' soon, so just chill till the next episode...

Rev. Pudgemuffin has left the building!