idea that there might be beings in other parts of the universe with cognitive powers that
vastly exceed our own. I term forms of fideism that urge that human reason is limited in
various ways and that those limits should be recognized and taken account of
“responsible fideism.”^3 As we shall see, the kinds of limits that fideists urge us to
recognize are various. Some are linked to human finitude; others are associated with
human sinfulness. We shall examine the limits of reason by looking at faith without
reasons, faith that is some ways above reason, and finally, faith that is in some way
“against” reason.^4
Faith without Evidence: The Limits of Inferential Reason
A common criticism of faith is that it involves belief without evidence or with
insufficient evidence. What is often termed the “evidentialist objection” to religious
belief rests on the assumption that rational religious beliefs must be based
end p.333
on evidence. However, it is far from clear that this requirement of evidence is itself one
that can be rationally defended. Defenders of what has come to be known as Reformed
epistemology have argued instead that religious beliefs can be “properly basic,” not held
on the basis of any inferential evidence at all.
Such an argument can be seen as rooted in a recognition of one of the ways human reason
is limited. If some kind of foundationalist picture of human knowledge is accepted, it is
clear that some beliefs must be accepted as basic by human beings. If all beliefs must be
based on other beliefs, this would require an infinite chain of evidential beliefs, since the
beliefs that function as evidence would require further beliefs as evidence for the original
evidence, and so on. But clearly, finite human beings are not capable of holding beliefs
on the basis of such an infinite chain.
The classical foundationalist, such as Locke, accepts that some beliefs must be basic but
hold that properly basic beliefs must be highly certain. Alvin Plantinga summarizes the
position as the claim that properly basic beliefs must be “self-evident, incorrigible,
orevident to the senses” (2000, 93). However, classical foundationalism seems
problematic on several counts. First of all, as Plantinga has argued, the classical
foundationalist restriction of properly basic beliefs does not pass its own test; it does not
seem self-evident, incorrigible, or evident to the senses that only beliefs of this type
should be held in a basic way, and no one has constructed a convincing argument for
such a conclusion on the basis of beliefs that pass this test. Second, many of the beliefs
that humans appear to possess as knowledge would not appear reasonable on the classical
foundationalist view. We humans surely know that there is an external world, that other
people have conscious minds, and that the world is more than five minutes old, but there
are no generally accepted arguments for such conclusions that measure up to the classical
foundationalist standard.
Philosophers such as Plantinga have argued that even if we have no general criterion of
proper basicality, some of our religious beliefs can be accepted as properly basic.