God, Evidence, and Knowledge

So in my recent wanderings about the blogosphere, YouTube, various atheist websites, and the like, I've found something bothersome. Many atheists will take quotes (out of context) by philosophers such as William Lane Craig which express the sentiment that Christians need not be aware of good historical, scientific, or philosophical evidences to be justified in their faith. They then proceed to claim "Aha! See! Christians don't care about evidence and reason, and are urged to not care!" But this is patently false and misunderstands what these various philosophers are trying to get across in context.

So, I'd like to take this opportunity to clarify in what sense Christians should and would have knowledge of God in a theistic universe.

Consider the following proposition (A): God desires all men to be saved.

Now consider a second proposition (B): Man's salvation will depend upon their having sufficient evidence for belief.

Upon consideration, the conjunction of A and B is vastly improbable. If man's salvation depended upon their having sufficient evidence for belief, how many would be lost? What of the vast amounts of people in countries where educational resources are scarce? What of the child who has an inability to comprehend such evidences? These and many other obvious considerations render B highly unlikely on A.

But A must depend on something. If God desires all men to be saved, but B is an unlikely condition for this goal, what could be the condition? To answer this question, I will consider two options open to the orthodox Christian. The first is what I will call the "Arminian" explanation, though I use this as an umbrella term for virtually any non-Reformed view of Resistable Grace.

Consider the idea formulated (M): God has insured, in His providence, that every man will have a sufficient revelation in conscience and nature to give him opportunity to accept God's salvation.

If M is conjoined with A, then we have a more likely scenario. In this case, salvation is not dependent upon contingencies such as historical or geographical location. Rather, God provides a common grace via general revelation in nature and conscience so that everyone has a chance at some point in their life to accept His salvation. Also, after this acceptance is achieved, there is the Christian doctrine of the "internal witness of the Holy Spirit". This comes from a Pauline passage which says "His Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are children of God", implying a sort of direct awareness after conversion of God's salvation.

The next route we may take is to deny A. If God does not decree that everyone be saved, but only His elect (as in Calvinism and certain forms of Thomism), then this has consequences for knowledge of God. In the Calvinistic system God has decreed that some receive salvation and that others do not, implying a view of meticulous providence wherein God irresistibly draws the elect to Himself. In this case, God has no need for evidence or reason to bring His elect to salvation, due to His being the sole (efficient) cause of their coming to faith. After they come to faith, He would insure that they have knowledge of Him that is not contingent upon the shifting sands of evidence.

Lastly, all of this is not to say that various sorts of evidences aren't useful. A person should know that they have good grounds for believing Christianity, but this does not mean that they have no grounds for faith if they don't (due to their direct assurance given by the regenerating work of the Spirit). Indeed, I think that God uses philosophical reasoning and etc. in bringing people to salvation on occasion. But again, the ultimate reason for their drawing is not the evidence itself utterly compelling them, but God Himself compelling them through the evidence, using it as a tool.

All of this is an extremely simplified version of an epistemological theory known as "Reformed Epistemology", developed by analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga. If any of this seemed unclear, I'd encourage you to read up on it.