Is it impossible to avoid circular reasoning when talking about religious authority? Many Protestants would argue yes. “It is inevitable, it is inescapable to argue in a circle when you are talking about the issue of authority,” argue Reformed podcasters Jacob Stabler and Paul Liberati in an episode of their “Protestant Podcast” from last year.
Nor is this an uncommon position among prominent Protestants. Scholar Matthew Barrett—who recently garnered headlines for moving from the Southern Baptist Convention to Anglicanism—in God’s Word Alone: The Authority of Scripture, argues, “Any appeal to an ultimate authority is necessarily circular. After all, there is no higher authority to appeal to. If there were a higher authority outside of Scripture to appeal to, then Scripture would no longer be the highest authority.” Dutch-American Reformed professor Cornelius Van Til argued something similar: “[The] position we have sought to outline is frankly taken from the Bible. . . . From the non-Christian point of view our position with respect to God and Scripture is the product of ‘circular reasoning.’” And Wayne Grudem asserts in his popular evangelical textbook Systematic Theology, “All arguments for an absolute authority must ultimately appeal to that authority for proof: otherwise the authority would not be an absolute or highest authority.”
If this is true, it means that the logical fallacy of question-begging—in which an argument is made that presumes precisely what is in question—is acceptable when we make an appeal to an ultimate authority. This is a curious position to take, because it would mean that in certain circumstances, God is free to flout the logical principles that govern creation, and that even define his essence. Jesus Christ is, after all, the Logos, reason itself (see John 1:1-3). For God to commit logical fallacies would be to act contrary to his being.
Another problem with this argument is that it implicitly grants that there is no means of actually debating the veracity of claims of divine revelation—be it in Scripture or anywhere else— because those who make such an argument are effectively asserting that they are permitted to commit a logical fallacy. Yet that amounts to nothing more than simply asserting that Scripture is an ultimate authority, as if our interlocutors are simply supposed to accept our opinion regardless of whatever concerns those interlocutors might have.
Moreover, the claim that all appeals to an ultimate authority are circular amounts to what is called fideism—the idea that faith is informed not by reason, but simply by an exercise of the will. But if that’s the case, then the contest among competing claims to ultimate religious authority is either one of coercion (who possesses more power to exercise his will over others) or sentiment (who is able to make the more effective appeal to our emotions, which then inform the will). I doubt that many Protestants would want to accept that their religious beliefs are ultimately determined by force or feelings.
That leaves us with reason. All arguments are mediated to us through our intellects. Certainly we can allow sentiment to override reason, but I hope most of us would agree that reason and not feelings should carry the day. For example, we believe that the three sides of a triangle equal 180 degrees because this fact conforms to reason, and our intellects, properly formed, are capable of grasping it. It is not because the nature of triangles is “self-evident” to us, nor because we “feel” it. Again, the existence of God can be proved because his existence conforms to reason communicated via arguments, not because he is “self-evident.” Indeed, classic Thomistic arguments for the existence of God (“the Five Ways”) are appeals to an ultimate authority that are not circular, but rather argue from effects to God as first cause.
The basis for our reasoning is something the Western philosophical tradition calls “first principles”: foundational propositions or premises that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or premise, at least not directly. First principles include such axioms as that the whole is greater than the parts, or that contradictory propositions cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time (the law of non-contradiction). To argue otherwise would be self-defeating for any attempt to think reasonably. They are also things even children intuitively appreciate.
Belief in Holy Scripture as an ultimate authority that operates in the same way as reason—as if the Bible’s authority is itself a “first principle”—is self-defeating. Otherwise, why not believe in the Quran or Upanishads, Buddha or Odin, if their veracity or divinity is established by mere arbitrary assertion? If we abandon reason as the means by which we evaluate arguments regarding Scripture or God, all we have left is either emotivism (e.g., “I believe X because X feels right to me”) or purely random arbitrary choice, a cast of the dice.
Christians should believe in the veracity and divine origin of Scripture because they are persuaded by reasonable arguments, not simply because we assert them based on our interpretation. And, in truth, those who claim that Scripture is self-authenticating cannot help but undermine their own position by making arguments. They appeal to the historicity of the Bible, to its internal coherence, to its remarkable relevance to the human condition across millennia. The Westminster Confession of Faith, an English post-Reformation-era document, declares,
The heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God (1, 5).
Of course, if the Bible “evidences itself” by appealing to criteria such as efficacy, majesty of style, and coherency, then we are evaluating it based on criteria external to itself that are defined and understood apart from the Bible, meaning that reason would still be the operative force.
To anticipate a possible objection, does not making reason, rather than the Bible, the means of authenticating its divine origin result in deifying man’s reason, effectively placing man above God? No, it does not. As I’ve noted above, God is reason itself. Man participates in God’s reason whenever he thinks logically. (The Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition refers to this as analogy.) To go back to our triangle example, God created the triangle, and when we perceive the triangle accurately, we analogically participate in God’s conception of it. Thus, by reasoning about what constitutes divine revelation, we are doing precisely what God intends for us to do as creatures created in his image and bestowed with intellects and wills.
Let me anticipate one more Protestant objection: doesn’t the Catholic Church engage in circular reasoning with regard to its magisterial authority, because, as some Protestants claim, people should trust the Catholic Church because it claims to represent God? Yet, as I’ve argued elsewhere, the Catholic Church never teaches that people should trust the Church simply because it asserts that they should—rather, the Church relies on what are called motives of credibility, which are various pieces of evidence about its authority that are accessible to human reason. These include such things as miracles, prophecies, the holiness of the saints, and the Church’s stability.
In sum, circular reasoning is not necessary to believe in an ultimate religious authority. But reasoning is.