I have, with the help of several philosophers, reached the conclusion that it is generally justifiable to epistemically trust in authorities. When applying this justification of epistemic trust in authorities onto religious authorities, I have observed that the three-party relationship that is the result of God’s involvement in religious trust and religious authorities, does not fit fully within the realms of general epistemic trust in authorities. I have made an attempt of accommodating for this three-party system with three different models and reached the
116 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Pascals Wager” (2020-12-15)
46
conclusion that it is possible to justify epistemic trust in religious authorities when you leave a moderate amount of space for the layman believer to have a first-hand personal relationship with God. This makes epistemic trust in religious authorities both reasonable and coherent with common standpoints on personal faith. However, living a religious life does not require of you to epistemically trust the religious authority/ies of said religion, it can also be reasonable for you to live this life for pragmatic reasons.
To turn directly to the research questions, we can summarize the findings in the following ways:
1. It is justifiable to epistemically trust in authorities because that is a result of reasonable self-trust and one’s ability of judging when someone else is more likely to be true than oneself is.
2. It is justifiable to epistemically trust in religious authorities for the same reason as it is justifiable to epistemically trust in authorities in general, as long as one takes into consideration that one must have an individual bond of trust between God and oneself in order to account for the three-party situation that is inevitable when trusting religious authorities.
Answer number one is in other words necessary but not sufficient for question two to be answered affirmatively.
Potential future research
The topic of epistemic trust in religious authorities can be extended in many directions. With specific regard to testimony done by religious authority it can be fruitful to examine epistemic aspects of predictions, promises, and prophesies, all three of what are fields relevant to many religious believers. This also is especially relevant since religious authorities (not all, but many enough) testify of what will happen in the future, both in terms of God’s plan for humanity and in terms of what a righteous religious life leads to.
The connection between epistemic and practical authority is another path forward. Trusting religious authorities within the epistemic area has consequences outside of belief, as we have touched on, epistemic trust has both practical and moral implications. Connected to this is the moral responsibility of religious authorities and the dangers of abuse of epistemic power.
47 A couple of last reflections
My experience is that sometimes trust is considered foolish by somewhat obnoxious individuals who value themselves as individual, self-reliant, rational thinkers. Firstly, they probably do not realize that much of what they believe is based on self-trust, trust in others, and trust in authorities, and secondly, they would never get anywhere if they did not have this trust.
However, accepting this situation, it can still be beneficial to reflect upon what trust really is, and how it is justifiable to trust, and maybe that helps us reject other obnoxious people who demand of us to trust them because they see themselves as entitled to a certain authoritative position. It is in other words not the insisting words “trust me, I’m a priest!” that makes them trustworthy, but your own trust in God and yourself.
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