Justification-Maker: Some state involving agent P that provides P with justification for some belief c but does not provide P with an argument for belief c.
Justification-Shower: An argument for belief c that can be shared by agent P with others and provides them with reason to adopt belief c.
Speaking vaguely, I think we can classify the justifiers for Christian belief into these two categories:
1. Justification-Makers:
a) The testimony of the Holy Spirit
b) The pull and tug of the Christian life, or Christian experience
2. Justification-Showers
a) Bayesian formed historical argument for the resurrection
b) Arguments from prophetic fulfillment and (improbable) typological interlock
c) Increasing the prior probability of central Christian claims through natural theology
d) Miracles
These categories aren’t neat. There’s ways to formulate Christian experience in a (weak?) justification-shower way, and perhaps the testimony of the Holy Spirit works (or can work) by empowering one of the justification-showers, but I still think it’s helpful to divide the justifiers in this way.
Lately, my interest has been in increasing the prior probability of Christian claims and in the typological interlock between the Old and New Testaments. McLatchie takes it that the latter provides some of the best justification for Christian belief. I eventually want to make a post detailing this claim, but for now I want to get clearer on the former move.
I’ve discussed the idea of increasing the prior before, and what I mean by it is that, in light of what we know about God’s character from natural theology, we can increase the prior probability of God undertaking certain actions such as his becoming incarnate and providing atonement even apart from any historical knowledge that he has in fact undertaken these actions.
For instance, if I know independently that my wife really enjoys Hershey chocolate bars, then I have a higher prior for believing that she may buy a chocolate bar on some occasion than I would have had otherwise. Prior knowledge of her character diminishes the amount of posterior evidence required to rationally believe that she’s bought a Hershey chocolate bar. Or, think of the converse: If I know my wife hates chocolate and is allergic to it, then that diminishes the prior probability of her having bought a chocolate bar, which in turn increases the strength required for the posterior evidence to warrant rational belief that she has bought a chocolate bar.
If the source of this knowledge of God’s character is knowable via natural theology (or public reason) alone and not dependent upon specifically Christian revelation, and if this knowledge matches up with God’s behavior as described by Christian revelation (such as becoming incarnate, providing atonement), then it seems that we’ve increased the prior probability of these events having actually happened. If the prior is increased sufficiently, then the strength required for the posterior historical evidence is lessened. We don’t need an overwhelming powerful posterior historical argument to warrant belief in central Christian claims.
"When I give these reasons, the reader will be right to feel that I would not have given them if I had not derived them from the Christian tradition. Indeed, I shall be arguing later that neither Jews nor pagans of the first century ad expected an incarnation of the sort I shall describe. It needs the Christian tradition to make us aware of a theory—a particular theory of the divine nature and of what a being with that nature might be expected to do, to be found in the New Testament but articulated more fully by such writers as Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas—before we can judge whether or not, by objective standards, the evidence supports that theory well. Most physicists could never have invented the general theory of relativity for themselves, but once it has been proposed for discussion, they can then assess whether in fact the evidence supports it." (Swinburne)
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