What is fallibilism?

288 Science knows, alone knows, this lowest kind of knowledge - the sequence of facts where there is no will; all else is unknowable to it, because it is necessarily for man thinkable, flowing from the natural conclusion innate in man, and necessary to govern his conduct naturally, i.e., in material things (but no further) - that, if one thing has followed another ten times, it will the eleventh, I conclude to a law of nature from natural effects, but it is only a conclusion thinkable - practical, not absolute certainty; quite sufficient for action, but no absolute certainty - that is only by testimony, assuming the testimony to be absolutely true. It is not the question whether it cannot be false, but of the nature of the certainty. If true, it is absolutely true, there is no thinkableness nor conclusion about it.

But this system of general laws, which in ordinary material things no one denies, is assumed to be the only possible existing cause for anything. Yet no one can go one step beyond observed facts with which reason has nothing to do, save classifying and binding them together by experience as cause and effect, from which man has an instinctive habit of thought that they will continue. But it is only what is observed, and continuously observed. Take such a thing as death. It was only after centuries - if the patriarchal ages are true, many long centuries - that death could be taken to be a law of nature. Seeing a man die, or a world destroyed, would not prove it, as Mill so illogically states. Man must have seen (what was practically) all die, to make it a general law. Till then life was the general state, and death might be casual. Thus the conclusion as to anything could be only after a regularly consecutive experience of facts not known by reason at all, but by sight or testimony - facts which (in its very nature, as I have said, and it is all-important to observe) reasoning never gives. It gives conclusions, or the natural tendency to think that what is, as a general law, will go on as it has because it has hitherto; which, while sufficient to act on, and no doubt meant to be acted on, yet can only give probability, which is never a fact, but necessary if the principles are true. That is, reasoning never can, in any case, give us a fact or truth, but a conclusion by deduction, or by induction a mere probability.

100 Again (p. 165) we arrive at no truth by reasoning, but only at conclusions; if the premises are just, then the conclusion is necessary. The name denotes the thing, and in reasoning by means of the name, I reason about the thing, man being so constituted as to think of things by words. He cannot invent a thought; I believe he may put them together, as a centaur or a griffin, but he thinks a thing in doing so. He seems to me always to forget that human knowledge and definition is drawn from phenomena. Thus a circle is not learned by "may exist," but from what I observe and know, even if not physically described, but thought of according to certain known qualities. The whole of the statement in pages 165-7 is absurd.

26 It cannot be pretended that God cannot reveal anything (that is, state anything with certainty as to the past, as to the future, or as to what is unseen). Only man, according to Mr. N., has no criterion by which to judge that it is such. That is, man is incapable of judging with certainty of it; he is capable of uncertainty in such a case, and that is all.

The whole subject may lie beyond the reach of our reasoning faculties; or

We are far from exalting human reason as a standard or test. We rather affirm that man's reason, like every other part of him, has suffered as the result of his fall. His reason has become fallen reason, and hence is peculiarly unreliable, when dealing with the things of God. Even when, as the result of conversion, the Christian's reasoning powers are restored to something at least of their proper use, they are by no means infallible; yet there is absolutely nothing about the Christian faith that is unreasonable, or that puts a strain upon reasonable intelligence as do false religions or the corruptions of Christianity. If we view items of truth as isolated fragments we may perhaps find intellectual difficulties, but never when once we gain some conception of the truth in its entirety — in the wide sweep of its majestic circle.

Knowledge also, in the way in which we gain it today, shall be done away. It is not that we shall no longer be intelligent, but that at present there is constant exercise necessary in gradually gathering the knowledge of spiritual things, learning from the viewpoint of our own imperfect, partial knowledge. Not one of us can see things totally objectively, from the viewpoint of the perfect, overall knowledge of God. And our prophesying too is "in part." It should humble us always to remember this, so that we do not dare to make the ministry of any man a set standard for doctrine or practice. We are only servants, limited to a very small sphere.

And again, I observe that there is to be a measure in our expectations about this knowledge; for it is told us that our present knowledge, compared with what it shall be, is that of mere childhood; that we know only in part, and see as through a glass darkly (1 Cor. 13). And Peter intimates the same. For while he speaks of the prophetic word as a light or a lamp, he gives us to know that the lamp does not shed the morning, for the day-dawn is to spring in another season* (2 Peter 1). And it is morally important to remember that our expectations are to be thus measured, for it will help us to a lowly mind, and rebuke a spirit of authority and self-complacency.

The views to be given out are quite open to criticism, for they present only the method of research, without insisting that the steps by which conclusions are reached are strictly to be relied on. One can say however on this subject what cannot be said on all Biblical ones, that a mistake can do but little harm, whilst the very detecting of it is sure to lead into new fields of thought.

Is there no means then of getting further light? Certainly, and here we have a little help in the margin; for God takes care, in His grace, to raise up persons who, perhaps, spend a great deal of a long, laborious, and uninterrupted life in many of these pursuits; but even this would enable them, you may depend upon it, only to speak with considerable moderation. I think you will find that persons who know most are apt to speak most moderately. They are diffident, after all, as to their own judgment; and although they would give it where it is called for, they would not pronounce so dogmatically as a learner. Through such helps God corrects mistakes for His people.