"The History of Apologetics" Released by Zondervan

You can purchase it here:  History of Apologetics

My Essay On B. B. Warfield in the History of Apologetics (Zondervan) Coming in June

Here's the publisher's blurb and list of contributors:

The History of Apologetics follows the great apologists in the history of the church to understand how they approached the task of apologetics in their own cultural and theological context. Each chapter looks at the life of a well-known apologist from history, unpacks their methodology, and details how they approached the task of defending the faith.

By better understanding how apologetics has been done, readers will be better able to grasp the contextualized nature of apologetics and apply those insights to today's context. The History of Apologetics covers forty-four apologists including:

Part One: Patristic Apologists

• Justin Martyr by Gerald Bray
• Irenaeus of Lyons by Stephen O. Presley
• Athenagoras of Athens by W. Brian Shelton
• Tertullian of Carthage by Bryan M. Litfin
• Origen by A. Chadwick Thornhill
• Athanasius of Alexandria by Jonathan Morgan
• Augustine of Hippo by Chad Meister

Part Two: Medieval Apologists

• John of Damascus by Daniel J. Janosik
• Theodore Abu Qurrah by Byard Bennett
• Timothy I of Baghdad by Edward L. Smither and Trevor Castor
• Anselm of Canterbury by Edward N. Martin and Steven B. Cowan
• Saint Thomas Aquinas by Francis J. Beckwith and Shawn Floyd
• Ramon Lull by Greg Peters
• Gregory Palamas by Byard Bennett

Part Three: Early Modern Apologists

• Hugo Grotius by Bryan Baise
• Blaise Pascal by Tyler Dalton McNabb and Michael R. DeVito
• Jonathan Edwards by Michael McClymond
• William Paley by Charles Taliaferro
• Joseph Butler by David McNaughton

Part Four: 19th C. Apologists

• Simon Greenleaf by Craig A. Parton
• John Henry Newman by Corneliu C. Simut
• Søren Kierkegaard by Sean A. Turchin and Christian Kettering
• James Orr by Ronnie Campbell
• B. B. Warfield by Kim Riddlebarger

Part Five: 20th C. American Apologists

• J. Gresham Machen by D. G. Hart
• Cornelius Van Til by K. Scott Oliphint
• Gordon Haddon Clark by Robert A. Weathers
• Francis A. Schaeffer by William Edgar
• Edward John Carnell by Steven A. Hein

Part Six: 20th C. European Apologists

• A. E. Taylor by Michael O. Obanla and David Baggett
• G. K. Chesterton by Ralph Wood
• Dorothy Sayers by Amy Orr-Ewing
• C. S. Lewis by Alister McGrath
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer by Matthew D. Kirkpatrick
• Lesslie Newbigin by Krish Kandiah

Part Seven: Contemporary Apologists

• John Warwick Montgomery by Craig A. Parton
• Charles Taylor by Bruce Riley Ashford and Matthew Ng
• Alvin Plantinga by James Beilby
• Richard Swinburne by Greg Welty
• Ravi Zacharias by Jo Vitale and Vince Vitale
• William Lane Craig by R. Keith Loftin
• Gary R. Habermas by W. David Beck and Benjamin C. F. Shaw
• Alister E. McGrath by James K. Dew and Jordan Steffaniak
• Timothy Keller by Joshua D. Chatraw

 You can purchase it here:  History of Apologetics

Simonetta Carr on B. B. Warfield -- "Not a Solitary Life"

Simonetta Carr's short essay on B. B. Warfield's circle of friends was posted at reformation21.  Well worth a read.

B. B. Warfield – Not a Solitary Theologian

Due to a need for brevity, many articles on Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) focus on his theology and his devotion to his wife, whose illness kept the couple close to home. Because of this, he is often seen as a solitary man leading an uneventful life. This view is compounded by the fact that we have a very limited access to his letters (the scholar who holds his correspondence is currently working on a long-due biography).

In reality, while it’s true that Warfield spent much time at home and in his study, he was deeply invested in the lives of those around him: students, family, and friends.

Young Warfield

Warfield grew up in a farm near Lexington, Kentucky, learning about his father’s work as cattle raiser, collecting butterflies, moths, and rocks, memorizing the Westminster Catechisms (with Scriptural proofs), complaining about having to study Greek, reading books, and dreaming to become a scientist.  

At 17 years of age, he began his studies at the College of New Jersey (later known as Princeton University), where he was generally a good student. Like other boys his age, he got into his share of mischief, most famously a fist fight with another student who was offended by an unflattering picture Warfield drew of him during a lecture. This incident, without serious consequences, earned him the nickname of “pugilist.”

You can read the rest here:  "B. B. Warfield -- Not a Solitary Life"

Apologetics in a Post Christian Age (Audio) -- Making the Case for Christianity (B. B. Warfield, Part Three)

Here's the audio from the Wednesday night Bible Study: 

Making the Case for Christianity -- The Apologetic Methodology of B. B. Warfield -- Part Three

"Thomas Reid and His Common Sense Philosophy" -- (Part Two)

Here's the audio from the Academy lecture on Thomas Reid (the second of a two part series).

In this lecture, I address the decline of Thomas Reid's "common sense philosophy" along with its recent resurgence.  I also address Reformed critics of Reid as well as consider Reid's influence upon the "Old Princeton" apologetic of B. B. Warfield.

I then offer four conclusions as to why Reid's "first principles" and "common sense" tests for truth can undergird a powerful transcendental argument for Christianity, as well as help us recover confidence in the place of Christian evidences in apologetics.

The Common Sense Philosophy of Thomas Reid -- Part Two

The Common Sense Philosophy of Thomas Reid -- Part One

"Thomas Reid and His Common Sense Philosophy" -- (Part One)

Here's the audio from the Academy lecture on Thomas Reid (the first in a two part series).

I cover Reid's life and history, the role of first principles and his understanding of "common sense," and also the differences between Reid, Hume, and Kant, and Reid's critique of what he identifies as the "ideal theory."

I also discuss how Reid's "realism" undergirds the Old Princeton evidential apologetic, and how Kant's views on perception have influenced Kuyper and Van Til.

The Common Sense Philosophy of Thomas Reid -- Part One

"The Lion of Princeton" -- Podcast Discussion on B. B. Warfield

I was recently a guest on the podcast "Equipping You in Grace" hosted by Dave Jenkins

You can listen here:  The Lion of Princeton -- Podcast

Here's some of the ground we covered:

A brief sketch of B.B. Warfield’s life and importance to American evangelicalism and the greater Body of Christ. 

What can we learn from how B.B. Warfield’s approach to dealing with and responding to criticism? 

How Warfield’s work on the doctrine of Scripture helps Christians respond to attacks on the doctrine of Scripture today.

What Christians today can learn from B.B. Warfield’s response to attacks on the person and work of Christ along with his approach to engaging these and other issues.

What B.B. Warfield can teach those deeply committed to the task and work of theology in the local church about loving and caring for our wives and families.

What contributions the Old Princeton theologians like Warfield made to the Church of his time and continued to make on the Church today.

Recovering Reid’s Common Sense Epistemology–the Implications for Doing Apologetics (Conclusion)

Recovering Reid’s Common Sense Epistemology–the Implications for Doing Apologetics

I hope that the points which follow will serve to place Reid, and by implication, Old Princeton, in a more objective and favorable light, and as a consequence, help Reformed Christians recover confidence in the proper use of Christian evidences when engaging in the apologetic enterprise.

First, Reid was a Christian philosopher whose necessary and contingent first principles and common sense notions of the truth of the external world and the importance of ordinary facts have profound theological implications.  Reid’s Christian commitments are well-worth noting.  Throughout his writings, Reid makes consistent appeal to God as the author of human nature, and without whom, the external world and human nature would not exist.  Ontologically, we must assume God’s existence as the basis for all things.  Epistemologically we must start with ourselves, assume the certainty of the external world, and operate with the awareness that we are creatures with agentic powers.  Reid is right, I think, when he argues that this is how ordinary people actually live their daily lives.

There is in Reid’s common sense epistemology, the basis for an effective transcendental argument.  When non-Christians argue against the Christian truth claim, they must invoke Reid’s common sense first principles (or categories much like them) to argue against Christianity.  How is such a thing even possible on non-Christian presuppositions–especially those of materialism?  How does logic work in a chance universe with no creator or designer?

Several additional points are worth making.  Plantinga frames Reid’s first principles in terms of belief in God as “properly basic.”  If we can believe that other minds exist without any reasons whatsoever–a belief we cannot prove–on what basis then is belief in God declared irrational?  Plantinga uses this “unprovable starting point” to argue against “foundationalism” (i.e., the notion that we must have sufficient evidence which “proves” the validity of our starting point).  But is not Reid’s "soft" foundationalism much better?  When we seek to get behind our common sense first principles, we immediately encounter the God who made us capable of using them.

I am also of the opinion that Reid’s doctrine of first principles helps clear up the primary weakness permeating Van Til’s version of presuppositionalism.  Van Til’s apologetic is built upon the conflation of the order of knowing (epistemology) and the order of being (ontology).  I agree fully with Van Til, when he insists we could know nothing properly if there were not a God who created all things and made us as his image-bearers.  Van Til, however, insists that a truly Christian epistemology begins with the ectypal knowledge of God given in and through God’s self-revelation (Scripture).  

But this raises two seemingly insurmountable problems.  The first is that it is psychologically impossible to begin the knowing process outside of ourselves, apart from any prior self-consciousness.  Only God can start the knowing process with himself in this sense.  As his creature, and despite Van Tilian protests to the contrary, I simply cannot start where Van Tilians insist that I must (with the revelation of God).  As a creature who receives this revelation externally, I can only begin with self-awareness, knowledge of the world around me, and of my own agentic powers.  Unless the knowledge of God which Van Til insists upon is innate and hard-wired within me, and is available and clear to me from the first moments of my self-consciousness, I need all such external revelation confirmed as revelation coming from God.  Descartes’ ugly question resurfaces at this point.  “How do I know this revelation is from God and not from the devil?”  My own doubts will emerge as well.  “How do I know this knowledge is from God and not the product of my own vain imagination?”  Completing religious claims also surface.  “Why the Bible and not the Book of Mormon or the Koran?”

At this point, it is helpful to distinguish general from special revelation.  Paul speaks of God’s revelation in nature as plain to all (Romans 1:19-20) as well as God’s law as written upon the human heart (Romans 2:14-15).  This is general revelation.  Furthermore, we bear the divine image and retain the sense of divinity.  But does such knowledge of God given through the natural order include knowledge of the Trinity, the person of Jesus and his redemptive work on my behalf?  No.  The nature of God and his saving work in Christ is revealed to me externally in God’s word, which is the record of his redemptive words and deeds (special revelation).  As B. B. Warfield once put it when addressing this very issue, “it is easy, of course, to say that a Christian man must take his stand point not above the Scriptures, but in the Scriptures.  He very certainly must.  But surely he must first have the Scriptures, authenticated to him as such, before he can take his standpoint in them” (Warfield, “Introductory Note,” to Francis Beattie’s Apologetics, 98-99; note: this same statement appears almost word for word in Warfield’s “Review” of Bavinck’s De Zekerheid des Geloofs,” 115).  

As Van Til made plain his allegiance in this regard, declaring “I have chosen the position of Abraham Kuyper” (Van Til, The Defense of the Faith, 264-265), so too, I must declare that I have chosen the position of B. B. Warfield.

Reid does not ask us to begin with a theory of ideas or a priori categories (as with Kant), or even by presupposing the entire system of Christian doctrine (Kuyper, Bavinck, and Van Til).  Instead, Reid asks us to start with an epistemological method, or better, with a particular kind of awareness of the external world and how it works common to all.  When John Frame raises the presuppositionalist challenge that “`starting with the self’ leaves open the question of what criterion of truth the self should acknowledge, so `starting with reason’ leaves open the question of what criterion of truth human reason ought to recognize” (Frame, “Van Til and the Ligonier Apologetic,” in The Westminster Theological Journal, Volume XLVII, Fall 1985, number 2, 285-287), Reid would likely answer, we utilize “those criteria [first principles] we are born with, given us by our Creator.”  These criteria are not a matter of a choice of a priori interpretive categories, but rather an appeal to recognize those rational faculties with which we are born, and which we spontaneously utilize.

Embracing Reid’s common sense first principles allows us to begin the knowing process with human consciousness, while at the same time asserting that such would not be possible apart from a creator.  This is, I think, a healthy corrective to Van Til’s presuppositionalism.

Second, although there are several areas in Reid’s thought which orthodox Reformed Christians might find problematic–especially Reid’s endorsement of natural theology, along with the telling absence of any discussion of the effects of Adam's fall upon human nature–we do not need to follow Reid in every area of his thought to appreciate and draw upon his insights regarding first principles and the related common sense tests for truth.  As Paul Helm points out, there is nothing intrinsic to Reid’s common sense philosophy which is antithetical to Reformed doctrine (Helm, “Thomas Reid, Common Sense and Calvinism,” in Hart, Van Der Hoeven, and Wolterstorff, eds. Rationality in the Calvinian Tradition, 86-88).  Whatever theological weaknesses may exist in Reid’s overall philosophy can be mitigated by considering how the Old Princetonians (especially Warfield) were able to utilize SCSR as modified in light of the Reformed doctrine of the noetic effects of sin, and the necessity of regeneration as prior to faith.

Warfield was, to my mind, on the right track when he argued that the certitude of the truth of Christianity “is at bottom nothing other than the conviction that God is in Christ reconciling the world with himself . . . . It is only by the direct act of faith laying hold of Jesus as redeemer that we may attain either conviction of the truth of the Christian religion or the assurance of salvation.”  Such a faith is not a blind or ungrounded epistemological leap into the dark.  “For ourselves,” Warfield writes, “we confess we can conceive of no act of faith in any kind which is not grounded in evidence: faith is a specific form or persuasion or conviction, and all persuasion or conviction is grounded in evidence” (Warfield’s “Review” of Bavinck’s De Zekerheid des Geloofs,” 112-113).
      
We can hear the loud echo from Thomas Reid in Warfield’s conception that faith requires sufficient grounds in evidence.  But this echo also requires additional biblical qualification.  The reason why people do not believe the gospel is not that there are insufficient reasons given by God to provide grounds for faith.  God gives evidences which meet the needs of our “common sense” tests for truth–Jesus was raised from the dead, or he wasn’t.  This claim is intelligible to Christian and non-Christian alike.

The reason why people reject a gospel with sufficient grounds to believe it is because of human sin–a point not directly addressed by Reid.  The biblical record is crystal clear that all the members of Adam’s race inevitably suppress God’s truth in unrighteousness (to use Paul’s language).  Like Reid, Warfield believed that all humans possess the innate capacity to believe the gospel because the evidence demonstrates that Christianity is objectively true.  But Warfield also understood full-well the damage wrought upon us by the Fall.  Warfield speaks to this directly when he describes the pre-fall consciousness of humanity as reflecting a “glad and loving trust” in the Creator.  After Adam’s fall, human consciousness was distorted to the point that it now reflects a profound sense of distrust, unbelief, fear, and despair in relation to the Creator.  As a consequence, we sinful humans no longer possess the subjective ability to respond to Christian truth claims in faith (116).  

The problem is not a lack of evidence for the truth of Christianity, but rather a universal and sinful unwillingness to believe that the facts of God’s revelation which are in themselves worthy of our trust.  It is the Holy Spirit’s supernatural work to give the sinful human heart a new power to respond to the grounds of faith given by God (i.e., Christian evidences), which are sufficient to persuade anyone and already present in the mind (115).

The subjective certainty of faith of which Scripture repeatedly speaks therefore must be supplied by the Holy Spirit in the hearts of the elect, through the preaching of the gospel, a message grounded in the God-given evidences for the truth of Christianity.  The Holy Spirit creates this subjective ability not through additional evidences for the truth of Christianity (as though the evidences God has given are insufficient), but through a supernatural act of new birth.  People who are dead in sin will not believe until made alive.  Yet as Warfield reminds us, “the Holy Spirit does not produce faith without grounds” (115).  Those grounds include those Christian evidences associated with the preaching of the gospel.
      

Third, Reid’s “common sense” tests for truth fit quite nicely with the kind of truth claims the biblical writers actually make when they use arguments from contingency and causality (God made the world) as does Paul in Acts 14:15-17.  Reid’s stress upon the objectivity of facts (grounded in our direct perception of the external world) seems to square with Paul’s appeal to Jesus’ resurrection as confirmation of the truth gospel he preached to the Athenians (Acts 17:31).  The biblical writers never seek to prove the existence of God, although they do point out that God is the ultimate cause of all things and the Author (to use Reid’s term) of human nature.  Paul is not shy about telling the Athenians gathered on Mars Hill that one of their own poets had declared, “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Neither Paul, nor any other biblical writer for that matter, asks his audience to “assume Christian presuppositions for the sake of argument,” so that they can understand the content of what is being proclaimed.  Paul’s appeal is to a God whom his audiences already know and to a knowledge they presently possess but which is sinfully suppressed.  When Paul proclaims that the resurrection (as an historical event) is the proof that his preaching about Jesus is true, Paul need not explain what he means, nor defend the possibility of miracles.  It is a very “common sense” kind of claim to preach that Jesus was crucified on a Friday and raised bodily from the dead three days later.  Everyone who heard Paul preach–without prior critical reflection or philosophical sophistication–grasps the significance of that claim.  

Impossible as it may seem, if Jesus was raised bodily from the dead, then Paul and his gospel are vindicated.  His message is to be believed and embraced.  His claims can be rejected, or dismissed, only upon on self-consciously prejudicial grounds.  People do not like the implications of Paul’s preaching precisely because they do understand the all-encompassing nature of Paul’s truth claim.  People, then, as now, do not like to acknowledge they are guilty before God and in desperate need of a Savior.  They may reject Paul’s gospel, but Jesus' tomb is still empty.  The “proof” which God has given still stands over them like the proverbial “Sword of Damocles.”  This fact alone establishes the truth of Paul’s claim and will convict those who reject until they die, or they manage to shove it from their consciences, or until they embrace it.

Finally, Reid’s notion that common sense is universal gives us an important way to establish non-neutral common ground with non-Christians.  Instead of the “us” (regenerate) against “them” (unregenerate) a priori categories, Reid begins with universal common ground–the external world and everything which happens in it.  But the non-Christian must live and operate in a world which cries out that it was created by God and we as creatures can navigate that world only because this is how God made us.  There is common ground (as Paul was able to find with Jews and Greeks) but no neutrality (also seen in Paul’s direct challenge to Greek pagans).  This opens wide the range of effective apologetic arguments.

Conclusion:

Although long overlooked, Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense offers a very useful way of establishing non-neutral common ground directly in human nature.  This is important in an age of supposed self-authenticating religious truth claims such as ours.  Transcendental arguments such as Reid’s are especially helpful because they force non-Christians to justify their arguments against Christianity.  From where do these arguments against Christianity come, and how can they be justified?  Non-Christians struggle to answer these questions.  Reid gives us a helpful and practical way to exploit this weakness.

Reid’s notion of truth as objective and immediate (i.e., apart from a priori categories and ideal theories) clearly echoes the approach taken by the Apostle Paul and provides an epistemological footing for the chief argument in defense of Christianity, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.  For those who wish to integrate apologetic arguments into evangelistic contexts, Reid offers a suitable (and non-philosophical) epistemological justification for Christian truth claims.  Should someone predict their own resurrection and then rise again (Jesus), the only conclusion is that proclaimed by Paul; God has given us proof, proof which is grounded in the facts of revelation (Acts 17:31).  The declaration "He is risen!" requires nothing but "common sense" to fully understand.  But only the Holy Spirit can enable those who understand to truly believe.

May the Reid resurgence continue!

The series can be found in its entirety here:  Thomas Reid and His "Common Sense" Philosophy

Reformed Critics of Reid (Part Seven)

The Resurgence of Reid and Common Sense

Reformed Critics of Reid -- Reid and Warfield v. Kant and Van Til (Round Two)

When I mention Thomas Reid in the course of teaching apologetics, or in connection with the philosophical influences of SCSR upon Old Princeton (and the principal theologians who taught there–Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield), many people admit that they have never heard of Reid, or know very little about him.  This is not surprising–given Reid’s unfortunate obscurity.  Others in conservative and confessional Reformed circles have a quite negative impression of Reid, describing his philosophy as “rationalistic” or as a species of Thomism.  These responses are an indication that the party is not very familiar with Reid’s philosophy, has not read Reid, nor understands him correctly–not a surprise given the bad press Reid often gets.  Reid, as we have seen, is not a rationalist, anything but.  With the recent re-discovery of Reid among Reformed Epistemologists, Roman Catholic defenders of Thomism have sought to distance themselves from Reid’s epistemology, seeing his “common sense” formulation as incompatible with the foundationalism of St. Thomas (Russman, “Reformed Epistemology,” in Thomstic Papers IV, ed., Kennedy, 200).

Much of this criticism of Reid and SCSR comes from the camp of the followers of Cornelius Van Til, who contend that Reid’s philosophy lay behind B. B. Warfield’s unwitting compromise of the defense of the faith through Old Princeton’s advocacy of an apologetic method naively grounded in Christian evidences.  Van Tilians are quite correct right to connect Warfield to Reid and SCSR (with certain modifications in the direction of Reformed orthodoxy made by Warfield).  Yet, they regard Warfield’s approach as necessarily entailing an appeal to “right reason” which, to their minds, is an impossibility in light of the damage done to humanity (and to our a priori categories and interpretive abilities) as a consequence of the fall.  Unregenerate people cannot utilize reason “rightly.”  Warfield, supposedly concedes too much to unbelieving thought–a self-defeating move.

To make the case that Van Til’s call for a correction of Old Princeton’s apologetic was necessary, Van Tilians often embrace the critical scholarly consensus (Ernest Sandeen, Jack Rogers, Donald McKim, and John C. Vander Stelt) which concludes that Warfield was a rationalist of sorts who departed from the biblicism of Calvin, even echoing the ill-founded critical observation that Warfield’s endorsement of "right reason" amounts to an implicit exaltation of human reason over divine revelation.  

But Warfield’s comments about right reason fully comport with the way in which the Reformed orthodox of prior generations (i.e., Turretin) spoke of an “ministerial use” of reason which was necessary to interpret the revelation which God gives, while at the same time rejecting a “magisterial” use of reason which determines the content of revelation (Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1:  Prolegomena to Theology, 243).  Warfield’s appeal to right reason amounts to nothing more than the proper utilization of those rational powers given us from birth by our Creator.  To use “right reason” rightly, we must operate within an epistemological framework like that set out by Reid.  Christians can make appeal to those evidences given by God through divine revelation, i.e., our Lord’s resurrection and self-attestation to be the very Son of God, because the Apostles did.  The Christian evidences marshaled by Warfield for Christ’s resurrection have their origin in God’s revelation, not in human reason.  

Reid, Old Princeton, and Warfield are also sharply criticized by American church historians Mark Noll and George Marsden, who both follow the critical and Van Tilian party lines in assuming that Reid’s SCSR has rationalist tendencies which, they contend, are incompatible with Reformed orthodoxy (Riddlebarger, Lion of Princeton, 247-253).  Marsden contends that SCSR was simply not up to the challenge raised by Darwinians regarding what it was exactly that was entailed by primitive common sense beliefs (Marsden, “The Collapse of American Evangelical Academia,” in Plantinga and Wolterstorff, eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, 244).  Because Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield failed to realized this, Marsden and Noll conclude Old Princeton’s apologetic was severely, if unintentionally, handicapped by their failure to more closely follow Calvin and his true theological heirs, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck–both of whom B. B. Warfield highly regarded, yet openly criticized for abandoning apologetics altogether.

The Resurgence of Thomas Reid and "Common Sense" (Part Six)

The Decline of Scottish Common Sense Realism

Reid’s On-Going Influence and Resurgence

Reid and SCSR may have been relegated to the philosophical backwater by Kant’s Critique, but Reid’s influence never entirely abated, especially in America, where Reid was widely read and greatly appreciated.  Thomas Jefferson was glowing in his praise for Dugald Stewart, the Scottish philosopher who did much to popularize Reid and SCSR throughout the English-speaking world.  Several early United States Supreme Court cases make appeal to the “eminent Dr. Reid” when wrestling with the nature of facts and their interpretation.  Scottish-American philosopher and president of Princeton College, James McCosh (1811-1894) and Yale professor and president Noah Porter (1811-1892) maintained strong interest in Reid and SCSR since both were concerned about the “objectivity of truth,” especially in matters of moral philosophy.

Since Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophical systems never became mainstream in America (with several notable exceptions such as Josiah Royce), it was the uniquely American school of philosophy, Pragmatism, which ultimately displaced Reid’s SCSR in America.  Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), the father of American pragmatism, agreed with Reid to a point, and argued that a universal common sense (as expressed by Reid) was worth recovering as a philosophical category, although Pierce thought common sense should be tied to experimental verification and the scientific method in the evolutionary sense of unfolding truth, and not grounded in first principles.  

Following Pierce, the emerging pragmatists understood that outcomes in philosophy and the sciences were directly tied to verifiable consequences, most notably experiential “cash value.”  William James (1842-1910), perhaps America’s most notable pragmatist, gave a well-received lecture on “Pragmatism and Common Sense” (James, Pragmatism, 63-75).  James argued that common sense was compatible with pragmatism because James believed that without any prior self-reflection on such matters people naturally tended to gravitate toward ideas and systems of thought which produced concrete results.  Since pragmatism is grounded in outcomes, there was little interest in anything like Reid’s first principles among the pragmatists.  Pragmatism may make appeal to “common sense,” but such an appeal is actually a negation of common sense as understood by Reid.  Yet, it was an easy intellectual move for Americans to give up SCSR for pragmatism, the nouveau cutting edge philosophy of the day.

Reid’s common sense was popularized on the Continent by French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1867) and was begrudgingly praised by Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), a moral philosopher in the utilitarian tradition and the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge.  G. E. Moore (1873-1958) one of the founders of the analytic tradition, cites Reid throughout his works.  Reid’s work also had a significant influence upon American philosopher Roderick Chisholm (1916-1999) who trained a number of leading American philosophers, and who acknowledged that his own defense of common sense was indebted to Reid.  More than one philosopher (i.e., Lehrer, Wolterstorff) has noted that in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, Wittgenstein is addressing what he calls “our shared world picture” in a manner strikingly similar to Reid’s “common sense” but without making appeal to our nature (first principles).

Perhaps those who have done the most to rescue Reid from the irrelevance of the philosophical backwater, are the so-called “Reformed Epistemologists,” Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff.  Along with philosopher William Alston, they done much to rekindle current interest in Reid and SCSR, especially within the broader Reformed tradition.  Reformed epistemologists contend that belief in God is “properly basic.”  That is, it is rational to believe in God without any evidence or proof for doing so.  According to Plantinga, religious belief is grounded in what John Calvin identified as an innate human awareness of God’s existence (the so-called sensus divinitatis).

Looking for philosophical antecedents, Reformed Epistemologists make appeal to Reid’s notion that beliefs arise in us spontaneously because we are born with them.  These basic beliefs function like “common sense”–people believe in God without any prior reflection–but such simple belief can be further cultivated through instruction and maturation through the experiences of life.  We may not be able to give a reason for God’s existence, and any reasons we might offer to prove God’s existence, presuppose the very capability of reasoning with which we have been created by God.  For the Reformed Epistemologist, belief in God as properly basic functions as a first principle.  Such belief is rational (and therefore “warranted”) every bit as much as are our belief in the existence of other minds, or our memory of past events.

Reformed Critics of Reid