Short Summary:

David initially delineates between two distinct forms of authority. An authority figure typically possesses expertise in a particular domain. A deontic authority directs actions, dictating what one should do. For instance, a police officer issues commands based on laws that individuals are obliged to obey. Conversely, an epistemic authority denotes an individual well-versed in a specific field, whose expertise one appeals to for guidance.

While David acknowledges deontic authority as the highest governing force, he raises questions about whether it constitutes the ultimate epistemic authority. He leans towards perceiving testimonial evidence as secondary or indirect, inherently inferior due to the potential for intermediaries to introduce falsehoods.

This prompts him to distinguish between authorities and their role in justifying beliefs. Although authorities may contribute to justification, he refutes the idea of a single highest source of justification, foreseeing a regression or circularity in such a notion.

Pallmann eventually arrives at what he thinks most presuppositionalist apologists contend, positing scripture as the “primary source of knowledge.” He contends that comprehending and believing certain propositions necessitates familiarity with scripture. However, he challenges this claim by highlighting a paradox: one seemingly knows certain propositions without initially recognizing scripture’s authority, thereby complicating its designation as the primary source of knowledge.

Pallmann employs an analogy, likening divine testimonial evidence unsupported by external validation to a situation involving a used car salesman. In this comparison, he underscores the similarity between accepting divine testimony solely based on its self-proclaimed authority and trusting a salesman who urges reliance on his trustworthiness without providing any external evidence to support his claim.

Furthermore, David questions whether justifying belief in God through reference to something other than God implies the superiority of that intermediary. He dismisses this notion by citing examples: knowing a person’s marital status through a ring does not render the ring greater than the person; similarly, using Facebook to know a friend doesn’t elevate Facebook above the friend. He challenges the idea that the means of knowing must surpass the entity known, pointing out the absence of a justifiable basis for such a claim given clear counterexamples.

Response:

1. Pallmann’s analogy likening God to a used car salesman falls drastically short of a valid comparison. To label it a false equivalence would be an understatement. The salesman, as a human, is confined by the limitations of human psychology—an aspect irrelevant to God.
   
   Unlike the salesman, God isn’t subject to forgetfulness, deception, or any human frailties. His omniscience and sovereignty separate Him vastly from human fallibility. Furthermore, the salesman, driven by personal motives and susceptibilities to dishonesty, stands in stark contrast to God, who is inherently truthful and beyond temptation.
   
   While the salesman’s expertise is limited to a specific domain, God’s omniscience extends to every facet of existence, given His role as the Creator of all things.
   
   Considering these disanalogies, Pallman’s analogy falls woefully short. His borderline blasphemous comparison of God and a used car salesman in defense of his epistemological stance discredits his viewpoint as theologically impoverished. After all, if you mistake God for a creature, you’re bound to misjudge His authority in epistemological matters.
   
2. David overlooks the intricate connection between epistemology and ethical authority, notably evident in Scripture’s moral teachings. If the Bible isn’t the supreme authority, what prevents its ethical principles from being refuted? The Bible claims an enduring, unerring wisdom, yet Pallmann’s perspective implies that someone could present evidence to overturn this claim.
   
   Societal perspectives on moral issues, such as homosexuality, transgenderism, racial biases, and international relations, continually evolve. This raises questions about Pallmann’s stance, suggesting the reduction of biblical teachings to transient, subject-to-change positions open to constant challenge, rather than timeless truths. This overlooks the Bible’s assertion of enduring wisdom and opens it to perpetual reinterpretation based on evolving societal norms or contemporary objections, a departure from its proclaimed unwavering stance.
   
   
3. The assumption that testimony is inferior to “evidence” suffers two problems. The lesser issue is just that this suffers confusion. After all, testimony is a kind or subset of evidence, and so is no more categorically removed from evidence than a basset hound is from dogs. Whatever evidence is, testimony is an instance of it, even if there were stronger instances.
   
   The bigger issue is that Pallmann has been unable to provide any explanation why challenges to testimonial evidence will not resurface for other types of evidence. At the very least, he has not been able to show why any given obstacle to testimony won’t have a correlate obstacle to evidence in general.
   
   In this way, we can see that Pallmann’s skepticism is unfair, a case of special pleading. He wants to hold testimony in contempt, but his reasons for doing so are, in principle, reasons to hold evidence in contempt generally. So his skepticism is self-undermining.
   
   By way of illustration, consider the problem of the priors for Baysianism. Humans struggle to select the right priors when evaluating evidence, whether because of innocent or sinful mistakes, or as a result of misfortunate circumstances. It just goes to show that challenges to knowledge acquisition aren’t confined to testimony, but in fact, whatever would be a challenge to testimony is just a specific application of a more general problem of knowledge.
   
   
4. David appears to misunderstand what Vantilians think it means for Scripture to be the ultimate authority. Specifically, he seems to misconstrue Vantilians as thinking that the bulk of human knowledge originates with the Bible. In fact, we believe divine revelation broadly is the ultimate source of knowledge, not that the narrower instance of revelation in Scripture is.
   
   
5. Pallmann’s construct implies that all testimony demands validation through external evidence. If this holds true, then divine testimony seemingly loses its uniqueness and becomes indistinguishable from any other testimony. Without its inherent authority, it diminishes into just another claim seeking validation. Preserving Sola Scriptura necessitates rejecting the idea that all testimony requires external validation; otherwise, divine testimony loses its authoritative essence. The alternative paints a picture of a God who never speaks authoritatively on any matter, thereby losing significance by default.
   
   
6. Pallmann overlooks the fact that all knowledge is testimonial in nature. All knowledge is contingent on social facts, on interpersonal relations, on the ethos of knowers and communicators. This deserves an article on its own, but consider briefly the testimony of three sources arguably present in any knowledge transaction.
   
   First, the testimony of the self. Any putative evidence for Pallmann requires that he entrust that aim to his own mind. This is why we speak of the testimony of the senses or of reason, because they are metonymically tied to the person to whom those faculties belong.
   
   Second, the testimony of others. Pallmann shows great concern for linguistic and logical precision, both tools he’s inherited from other human beings. Indeed, he even notes his indebtedness to the likes of John DePoe. This goes to show that to do any philosophy at all, Pallmann has been possessed of a culture and society that enables him to pursue that enterprise.
   
   Finally, the testimony of God. Insofar as God testifies on the topic of evidence, testimony, knowledge in general, He’s just going to be the best expert on the topic. This would stand to reason even before we reach the Vantilian intensity of this idea, where God’s testimony is self-sufficient.
   
   To that extent, Pallmann has taken for granted at the outset that God has not somewhere disagreed with him. If that were the case, even if we knew not the reason why God disagrees with Pallmann, a Moorean shift is motivated against Pallmann, since we expect God to know how knowledge works better than an internet apologist.

Random Notes:

Pallmann faces a dual quandary: he might question the credibility of literature on the subject— a doubt I share— or he might boldly embrace a moral non-realist stance, possibly akin to a divine emotivism. This position would propose that scriptures condemning certain actions merely reflect God’s sentiments toward human behavior. However, this stance would still require an explanation for shifts in God’s sentiments over time, prompting queries about discerning divine will without revelation. Additionally, embracing divine emotivism raises concerns about its compatibility with moral realism, especially if God’s thoughts and desires directly dictate moral standards without needing any independent moral reality. In the video, Jimmy Stephens argues why this just collapses into moral realism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHoJqV2KGWg&t=3s