Fideism and epistemic priorities

The suggestion that the church's trinitarian identification of God enjoys unrestricted epistemic primacy may prompt a certain unease. To suppose that the Christian community is rationally justified – let alone correct – in rejecting as false any statement which is inconsistent with its own most central beliefs seems to have the whiff of fideism about it. Surely no one wants to be a fideist, so we need to see whether this opprobrious term fits the epistemic outlook so far proposed.

The charge of “fideism” labels the following contention. Far from answering the question of the church's right to hold its central beliefs, the argument so far has not yet succeeded in addressing it. To take the church's central beliefs as epistemic trump is to help oneself to a whole range of trinitarian and christological beliefs, simply assuming that these beliefs are true rather than producing any argument for them. But surely the question which most needs to be answered is why we should think these Christian convictions are true in the first place; the crucial question is what grounds, if any, there are for holding the central beliefs themselves true. By failing even to address, let alone answer, that question, we have taken a wholly fideistic position, the chief aim of which, so an objector might conclude, is to insulate Christian belief from criticism.

This objection exploits our deep conviction – surely correct and important, as far as it goes – that in order to hold a belief in an epistemically responsible way (to hold it rationally, rather than fideistically) we must be able to offer reasons for the belief.