In case you missed it, catch up with the last post: Bob Dylan, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bells, Bells, Bells!
During this Holy Week and Easter, I noticed a particular line in the Gospel of Luke. As Jesus is being harangued by the chief priests and scribes, they ask him, “If you are the Christ, tell us.” Jesus responds, “If I tell you, you will not believe” (22:67).
Although they ask, they do not inquire. Their question is not a question. Regardless of what Jesus might say — and they are perfectly aware of what he has said (John 18:20) — their disbelief is presupposed. There is no proof that can sway their hearts, even while pretending to seek the truth.
This moment has a striking parallel in the Gospel of Matthew. After the resurrection, the disciples go to Galilee and meet the Lord. The author writes, “when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted” ( 28:16-17).
This can’t be the same man. This can’t really be Jesus. Maybe it’s a double. Some doubted.
In both cases, neither Jesus’ testimony nor his bodily resurrection is enough for the skeptic. The goalposts move and the true scotsman is never found.
In Cormac McCarthy’s The Sunset Limited, we encounter a theologically-rich study of skepticism. In one scene, the unflinching atheist (Professor White) is challenged by the believer (Mr. Black) about divine revelation:
Black: What would you do if Jesus was to speak to you?
White: Why? Do you imagine that he might?
Black: No. I dont. But I dont know.
White: I’m not virtuous enough.
Black: No, Professor, it aint nothing like that. You dont have to be virtuous. You just has to be quiet. I cant speak for the Lord but the experience I’ve had leads me to believe that he’ll speak to anybody that’ll listen. You damn sure aint got to be virtuous.
White: Well if I heard God talking to me, then I’d be ready for you to take me up to Bellevue. As you suggested.
Black: What if what he said made sense?
White: It wouldnt make no any difference. Craziness is craziness.
Black: Dont make no difference if it makes sense.
White: No.
Black: Mm. Well, that’s about as bad case of primacy as I ever heard.
For Professor White, even an audible word from God would be insufficient evidence. He would dismiss the experience as delirium and commit himself to an insane asylum (Bellevue). Regardless of the intelligibility of the experience, his presuppositions would make it null and void. God does not exist; therefore, nothing can speak to His presence.
Importantly, Black responds that this is a bad case of “primacy.” Earlier in the play, White pledges his commitment to the “primacy of the intellect.” In his worldview, the principle of reason is self-sufficient, complete, and the exclusive claim to reality. Yet, he ignores that these are beliefs about reason and the intellect. His reason denies its grounding in belief.
Overlooking its theoretical grounding, White’s reason can twist in any direction, even unreasonable ones. His reason dismisses any reality that is not within its self-drawn, circumscribed boundaries. He creates an impenetrable bulwark.
Black recognizes this blindness as a type of sickness, a “bad case.”
In Chesterton’s witty symploce, “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.”
I’ll make a brief suggestion, a stab toward something.
Belief is not a matter of sufficient evidence.
Regardless of evidence, there will always be an inference, a move from evidence to the claim.
It looks like a rabbit. It moves like a rabbit. Therefore (inference), it is a rabbit.
Two plus two has always equaled four in the past. Therefore (inference), two plus two will equal four today.
This inference cannot be removed.
We can be extremely confident in our conclusions, but we cannot be certain. There is always a leap from evidence to claim. This is what Wittgenstein described beautifully and forcefully in On Certainty. Our certainties are always in the mode of belief.
Because of this, any claim can be challenged by the skeptic. The inference can always be decried. No amount of evidence will be enough.
I’ll end with a final example. In Luke 16, Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Recognizing the error of his unloving life, the rich man pleads with Abraham to send back Lazarus, as a ghost, to warn his brothers. Abraham responds, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (16:31). It will not be enough.
What then is belief founded on, if evidence is not sufficient itself? A question for another day.
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Excellent thoughts. The commitment to unbelief reminds me of what Marcel says—that in his age of war and holocaust, there were not in fact more atheists than ever before, but only more anti-theists (such a good phrase); i.e. “There is no God because he would not have allowed WWII/this extermination to happen.” Reasoning that pre-excludes all belief.