Where faith met its reasons
Finally, I think it's time to sit down and mull through this topic which I have been holding on for a while. Some of my readers have been anticipating this also.
A few months ago, I contemplated about the issue of faith and reason and presented a few posts on my preliminary thoughts and views. Even before this, sometime last year, I wrote three posts about the same topics. In Post 1, to recap, I argued the case that we need to be thinking Christians and not just Christians who just simply listens to what we are told without working out the logic ourselves. In other words, it's our call to be theologically rigorous about our faith. In Post 2, I questioned the possibility of faith and reason co-existing together. In summary, my case built upon the fact that reason has brought certain people to Christ. In Post 3, I qualified that faith has to be built upon the experiential evidence, and not just the intellectual evidences as per se.
As I re-visited this issue, I was struck by the multiple ways that authors have approached this issue. And I think I would want to go back to the most basic and examine what faith really is. The best place is to look into the scripture. As always, people will quote me this to tell me what faith is:
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. - Heb 11:1 (NIV)
I sometimes wonder if it is as simple as what it means here. And I am wary of Christians who quoted me this verse without considering the context. Now the same verse:
NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]. - Heb 11:1 (AMP)
Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it - Heb 11:1 (NCV).
Both translations talk about faith believing in something that is real. This has real implications. If something is real, even if I dun see it, it will leave something of a trail or some ways that we can detect its reality. The bible says this:
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. - Rom 1:20 (NLT)
A cursory flip over the pages of the bible will make it clear that heaven and earth declares the glory of God. This means the trail of God can be detected in these creations, and they are left there for us to realise His glory. Hence, it appears to me that the Heb verse is not really talking about a fidelistic type of faith.
Before I move on from this, what I understood from the verse Heb 11:1 and its immediate context is that when we talk about faith here, it's actually faith in THE CHARACTER of God, not in the existence of God. There is an important distinction here which I want to address. Essentially speaking, what the characters mentioned in Hebrews struggled in was really trusting and believing in the promises of God, that God is trustworthy in His character, instead of the existence of God. A brief survey through the bible will show that the existence of God was taken as a given in the lives of the biblical characters, whether they were really obeying Him or not. So we need to be clear what they were exactly struggling in, and this has real implications to the philosophers who argued that it is pointless to prove the existence of God, cos you cannot prove it.
I concede it cannot be proved 100%, but the trail makes it clear that it can be proven. And we need to be clear about this here. By proving, what I mean is really the formulation of an argument for a conclusion, based on the premises and evidences, that is more plausible than its negations, and these premises logically imply the conclusion. This therefore presents a possibility for rational premises for the existence of God and therefore an intellectual warrant for a reasonable faith.
So what really is faith? It is not just a will to believe, but according to Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig and the likes of Norman Giesler, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power so that when this power does not make sense towards my ends, my confidence is in who He is.
This necesarily means faith and reason needs not be antithetical to one another. Because the confidence in the person of Jesus Christ can be established through my observations and empircal studies into scientific, philosophical, historical evidences. Of course it cannot stop there, but that can be a starting point.
And it is useful to make use of William Lane Craig's model to understand the relationship between faith and reason. Basically, he distinguished the difference between knowing that Christianity is true and showing that Christianity is true, and the role of reasons and Holy Spirit and this is where, I believe, he put forth a convincing argument where faith finally meets its reasons.
Without dwelling too much into his argument, and I encourage you to read his book on Reasonable Faith, or at least his article in 5 Views on Apologetics, the main crux of the argument is this: it is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that convicts and assures us, as believers, of the truth of Christianity.
As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him. - 1 Jn 2:27 (NIV)
But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt[a] in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. - Jn 16:7-11
Therefore, reasons and arguments should never become the foundation and basis of our faith. Likewise for the non-believers, it is the Spirit who plays the role of convicting him of his sins, of God's righteousness and of his condemnation before God. Therefore, it is never due to the lack of evidence. It's the intent, which is prior to the content, that counts. Aldous Huxley once said, "We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom...." Bertrand Russell once commented that if he sees God when he died, he will rebuke God and say that God has not given him enough evidence to believe him.
This will mean that reasons and arguments play a subsidiary role when it comes to us knowing whether Christianity is true. It becomes a ministerial tool for us to better understand our faith, reinforce and confirm the Spirit's witness, and provides a dual warrant for our faith, and an independent warrant for non-believers to come to faith.
When it comes to showing Christianity being true, the role of reasons play a more crucial role. Given the intellectual climate of the educational arena currently, it can be used to show that Christianity has a better epistemic position for discerning truths about matters such as sense perception, rational self-evidence etc. It creates an objective difference between individual epistemic positions and veridical experience. This, of course, has to bear in mind that we cannot argue people into conversion. Effectively, it is still the job of the Holy Spirit to do so, though we should not be afraid to show that Christianity is reasonable.
That sort of sums up Craig's position and I found this a useful one. The employment of this model naturally means that going into apologetics and philosophy to prove Christianity as a more plausible and reasonable option is essentially a necessary venture. There are a few reasons for suggesting so.
Firstly, Soren Kierkegaard's proposition that belief in God is a (not reasonable) leap of faith is an inadequate (if not false) one. This is an argument that is marked by serious flaw. His example of Genesis 22 is an interesting treatment and commentary of Abraham's faith, but it is very much misused. Abraham, in that particular episode, was able to follow through on the instruction because (I highly suspect) he knew God will bring him out of the predicament that He had brought him into. This was betrayed by his comment to Issac that God will provide the sacrificial lamb. Moreover, the fidelism that he was identified with and the contempt for reason were an unwarranted and a contradictory one. This is because he had to 'reason' his way out to 'prove' that God cannot be proven by reason. Somemore, to make things worse, and a last comment, he has failed to provide a 'truth test' for his proposition. (more on this later) This means that we need more than a leap of faith in this spiritual journey.
Second, when we are talking about Christianity, we are actually looking at a worldview. A worldview can be defined as the frame that we use to view the world. Every worldview has to deal with the problem of suffering and evil - assumed in every answer is the purpose of life assigned to that worldview. According to Ravi Zacharias, there is a need to establish the truth claims of a worldview, because this is essential for us to live a coherent life. There are three ingredients for establishing if a worldview is coherent. We need to look into the logical consistency, its relevance to our experience and its empirical adequacy.
Logical consistency means that the claims of the worldview have to be logical consistent with one another and adhere to the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, this means that if two different worldviews claim different things, both cannot be right at the same time. It also means that the worldview has to be internally consistent as well. Similarly, the worldview has to be able to explain our existential questions and experiences and correspond to our reality in order for it to be relevant to us. Also, if a worldview is true, there'll be proof in the world to authenticate its claims scientifically, philosophically, historically and empirically, which we have talked about earlier.
Essentially, the worldview's truth claims will also need to 1) have a strong foundation in correspondence, 2) have a high degree of coherence and internal consistency, 3) have explanatory power, 4) be neither too simple nor complex, 5) have cumulative evidence converging from multiple sources of data and 6) able to refute contrary worldviews.
The issue of a worldview means that venturing into a world of reason and navigating through evidences becomes a necessity, not something that is not desired in our pursuit for faith. If a worldview is so important to our life purpose, then shouldn't its truth claim be established? It comes back to our original point, this is part and parcel of knowing and showing that Christianity is true.
Thirdly, we need to bear in mind that apologetics is an expression of loving God with all our minds to show non-believers the truth of our faith, to confirm the faith to believers and to reveal the connections between Christian doctrines and other truths. William Lane Craig has called it discipling of the mind.
Fourthly, apologetics and philosophy have the role of shaping culture. We need to bear in mind that the Enlightenment had provided thoughts that led to non-Christian conclusions with its non-theistic assumptions, which resulted in the gospel being in the backdrop of cultures. Think about it, if culture is the conduit on which we receive the gospel and preach the gospel, it is therefore important for the culture to be favorably inclined towards the gospel, which is actually not happening. Apologetics will hence be in a position to do the shaping of a culture, presenting the gospel as an intellectually viable option for people. I know this first hand that this has to be done as university professors are not really teaching students the right things objectively from my university study.
Fifthly, apologetics and philosophy can play a role in strengthening believers. As mentioned earlier, it provides an intellectual warrant for believers and I have read multiple testimonies on how this helped Christians to remain in the faith. Therefore, this shows there is a role for reasons in the Kingdom of God.
Sixthly, in terms of evangelising to non-believers, history has shown that believers who came to know Christ through reasons, apologetics and philosophy eventually become people with great influence over Christian scholarship. These people include C.S Lewis, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, etc. You can further read this interesting case of A.N Wilson. It's another classic case.
I'm presenting all these to show that there is essentially no conflict between faith and reason. Reason is a complement of faith, but we need to maintain that it should never become our faith. Ravi Zacharias has commented that if we have not experience the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to withstand the assault on our faith. Again, it comes back to J.P Moreland 's advice to Lee Strobel: the experiential evidence. Faith is not really the presence of a complete set of evidence. Norman Giesler wrote that our commitment to God is not proportional to the amount of evidence available. Essentially, Ravi Zacharias also said that God leaves enough into the world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing, and he has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone. Philip Yancey has also said a person who lives in faith must proceed on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse. All these authors have not excluded evidences or reasons but have not made them the basis, suggesting something more than just evidence.
I believe that that 'something more' is the commitment to the truth that we know, which allow us to come back to our defninition of faith. To end off, here's a story to illustrate the point: there was a high wire expert who walked over Niagara Falls. To the amazement of all, he walked a wheelbarrowed-filled with 150 pounds of potatoes over the rope to the other side. His 120 pound assistant removed the bags of potatoes and placed his foot in the wheelbarrow and asked, "how many of you believe that I can place a human in the wheelbarrow and walk that person safely to the other side?" Everyone yelled, "We believe!" Then he said, "who will volunter to get in the wheelbarrow?"
Faith is a commitment of the confidence in Christ.
A few months ago, I contemplated about the issue of faith and reason and presented a few posts on my preliminary thoughts and views. Even before this, sometime last year, I wrote three posts about the same topics. In Post 1, to recap, I argued the case that we need to be thinking Christians and not just Christians who just simply listens to what we are told without working out the logic ourselves. In other words, it's our call to be theologically rigorous about our faith. In Post 2, I questioned the possibility of faith and reason co-existing together. In summary, my case built upon the fact that reason has brought certain people to Christ. In Post 3, I qualified that faith has to be built upon the experiential evidence, and not just the intellectual evidences as per se.
As I re-visited this issue, I was struck by the multiple ways that authors have approached this issue. And I think I would want to go back to the most basic and examine what faith really is. The best place is to look into the scripture. As always, people will quote me this to tell me what faith is:
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. - Heb 11:1 (NIV)
I sometimes wonder if it is as simple as what it means here. And I am wary of Christians who quoted me this verse without considering the context. Now the same verse:
NOW FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]. - Heb 11:1 (AMP)
Faith means being sure of the things we hope for and knowing that something is real even if we do not see it - Heb 11:1 (NCV).
Both translations talk about faith believing in something that is real. This has real implications. If something is real, even if I dun see it, it will leave something of a trail or some ways that we can detect its reality. The bible says this:
For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. - Rom 1:20 (NLT)
A cursory flip over the pages of the bible will make it clear that heaven and earth declares the glory of God. This means the trail of God can be detected in these creations, and they are left there for us to realise His glory. Hence, it appears to me that the Heb verse is not really talking about a fidelistic type of faith.
Before I move on from this, what I understood from the verse Heb 11:1 and its immediate context is that when we talk about faith here, it's actually faith in THE CHARACTER of God, not in the existence of God. There is an important distinction here which I want to address. Essentially speaking, what the characters mentioned in Hebrews struggled in was really trusting and believing in the promises of God, that God is trustworthy in His character, instead of the existence of God. A brief survey through the bible will show that the existence of God was taken as a given in the lives of the biblical characters, whether they were really obeying Him or not. So we need to be clear what they were exactly struggling in, and this has real implications to the philosophers who argued that it is pointless to prove the existence of God, cos you cannot prove it.
I concede it cannot be proved 100%, but the trail makes it clear that it can be proven. And we need to be clear about this here. By proving, what I mean is really the formulation of an argument for a conclusion, based on the premises and evidences, that is more plausible than its negations, and these premises logically imply the conclusion. This therefore presents a possibility for rational premises for the existence of God and therefore an intellectual warrant for a reasonable faith.
So what really is faith? It is not just a will to believe, but according to Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig and the likes of Norman Giesler, faith is a confidence in the person of Jesus Christ and in His power so that when this power does not make sense towards my ends, my confidence is in who He is.
This necesarily means faith and reason needs not be antithetical to one another. Because the confidence in the person of Jesus Christ can be established through my observations and empircal studies into scientific, philosophical, historical evidences. Of course it cannot stop there, but that can be a starting point.
And it is useful to make use of William Lane Craig's model to understand the relationship between faith and reason. Basically, he distinguished the difference between knowing that Christianity is true and showing that Christianity is true, and the role of reasons and Holy Spirit and this is where, I believe, he put forth a convincing argument where faith finally meets its reasons.
Without dwelling too much into his argument, and I encourage you to read his book on Reasonable Faith, or at least his article in 5 Views on Apologetics, the main crux of the argument is this: it is the self-authenticating witness of the Holy Spirit that convicts and assures us, as believers, of the truth of Christianity.
As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him. - 1 Jn 2:27 (NIV)
But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt[a] in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. - Jn 16:7-11
Therefore, reasons and arguments should never become the foundation and basis of our faith. Likewise for the non-believers, it is the Spirit who plays the role of convicting him of his sins, of God's righteousness and of his condemnation before God. Therefore, it is never due to the lack of evidence. It's the intent, which is prior to the content, that counts. Aldous Huxley once said, "We objected to morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom...." Bertrand Russell once commented that if he sees God when he died, he will rebuke God and say that God has not given him enough evidence to believe him.
This will mean that reasons and arguments play a subsidiary role when it comes to us knowing whether Christianity is true. It becomes a ministerial tool for us to better understand our faith, reinforce and confirm the Spirit's witness, and provides a dual warrant for our faith, and an independent warrant for non-believers to come to faith.
When it comes to showing Christianity being true, the role of reasons play a more crucial role. Given the intellectual climate of the educational arena currently, it can be used to show that Christianity has a better epistemic position for discerning truths about matters such as sense perception, rational self-evidence etc. It creates an objective difference between individual epistemic positions and veridical experience. This, of course, has to bear in mind that we cannot argue people into conversion. Effectively, it is still the job of the Holy Spirit to do so, though we should not be afraid to show that Christianity is reasonable.
That sort of sums up Craig's position and I found this a useful one. The employment of this model naturally means that going into apologetics and philosophy to prove Christianity as a more plausible and reasonable option is essentially a necessary venture. There are a few reasons for suggesting so.
Firstly, Soren Kierkegaard's proposition that belief in God is a (not reasonable) leap of faith is an inadequate (if not false) one. This is an argument that is marked by serious flaw. His example of Genesis 22 is an interesting treatment and commentary of Abraham's faith, but it is very much misused. Abraham, in that particular episode, was able to follow through on the instruction because (I highly suspect) he knew God will bring him out of the predicament that He had brought him into. This was betrayed by his comment to Issac that God will provide the sacrificial lamb. Moreover, the fidelism that he was identified with and the contempt for reason were an unwarranted and a contradictory one. This is because he had to 'reason' his way out to 'prove' that God cannot be proven by reason. Somemore, to make things worse, and a last comment, he has failed to provide a 'truth test' for his proposition. (more on this later) This means that we need more than a leap of faith in this spiritual journey.
Second, when we are talking about Christianity, we are actually looking at a worldview. A worldview can be defined as the frame that we use to view the world. Every worldview has to deal with the problem of suffering and evil - assumed in every answer is the purpose of life assigned to that worldview. According to Ravi Zacharias, there is a need to establish the truth claims of a worldview, because this is essential for us to live a coherent life. There are three ingredients for establishing if a worldview is coherent. We need to look into the logical consistency, its relevance to our experience and its empirical adequacy.
Logical consistency means that the claims of the worldview have to be logical consistent with one another and adhere to the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, this means that if two different worldviews claim different things, both cannot be right at the same time. It also means that the worldview has to be internally consistent as well. Similarly, the worldview has to be able to explain our existential questions and experiences and correspond to our reality in order for it to be relevant to us. Also, if a worldview is true, there'll be proof in the world to authenticate its claims scientifically, philosophically, historically and empirically, which we have talked about earlier.
Essentially, the worldview's truth claims will also need to 1) have a strong foundation in correspondence, 2) have a high degree of coherence and internal consistency, 3) have explanatory power, 4) be neither too simple nor complex, 5) have cumulative evidence converging from multiple sources of data and 6) able to refute contrary worldviews.
The issue of a worldview means that venturing into a world of reason and navigating through evidences becomes a necessity, not something that is not desired in our pursuit for faith. If a worldview is so important to our life purpose, then shouldn't its truth claim be established? It comes back to our original point, this is part and parcel of knowing and showing that Christianity is true.
Thirdly, we need to bear in mind that apologetics is an expression of loving God with all our minds to show non-believers the truth of our faith, to confirm the faith to believers and to reveal the connections between Christian doctrines and other truths. William Lane Craig has called it discipling of the mind.
Fourthly, apologetics and philosophy have the role of shaping culture. We need to bear in mind that the Enlightenment had provided thoughts that led to non-Christian conclusions with its non-theistic assumptions, which resulted in the gospel being in the backdrop of cultures. Think about it, if culture is the conduit on which we receive the gospel and preach the gospel, it is therefore important for the culture to be favorably inclined towards the gospel, which is actually not happening. Apologetics will hence be in a position to do the shaping of a culture, presenting the gospel as an intellectually viable option for people. I know this first hand that this has to be done as university professors are not really teaching students the right things objectively from my university study.
Fifthly, apologetics and philosophy can play a role in strengthening believers. As mentioned earlier, it provides an intellectual warrant for believers and I have read multiple testimonies on how this helped Christians to remain in the faith. Therefore, this shows there is a role for reasons in the Kingdom of God.
Sixthly, in terms of evangelising to non-believers, history has shown that believers who came to know Christ through reasons, apologetics and philosophy eventually become people with great influence over Christian scholarship. These people include C.S Lewis, Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, etc. You can further read this interesting case of A.N Wilson. It's another classic case.
I'm presenting all these to show that there is essentially no conflict between faith and reason. Reason is a complement of faith, but we need to maintain that it should never become our faith. Ravi Zacharias has commented that if we have not experience the Holy Spirit, we would not be able to withstand the assault on our faith. Again, it comes back to J.P Moreland 's advice to Lee Strobel: the experiential evidence. Faith is not really the presence of a complete set of evidence. Norman Giesler wrote that our commitment to God is not proportional to the amount of evidence available. Essentially, Ravi Zacharias also said that God leaves enough into the world to make faith in him a most reasonable thing, and he has left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason or observation alone. Philip Yancey has also said a person who lives in faith must proceed on incomplete evidence, trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse. All these authors have not excluded evidences or reasons but have not made them the basis, suggesting something more than just evidence.
I believe that that 'something more' is the commitment to the truth that we know, which allow us to come back to our defninition of faith. To end off, here's a story to illustrate the point: there was a high wire expert who walked over Niagara Falls. To the amazement of all, he walked a wheelbarrowed-filled with 150 pounds of potatoes over the rope to the other side. His 120 pound assistant removed the bags of potatoes and placed his foot in the wheelbarrow and asked, "how many of you believe that I can place a human in the wheelbarrow and walk that person safely to the other side?" Everyone yelled, "We believe!" Then he said, "who will volunter to get in the wheelbarrow?"
Faith is a commitment of the confidence in Christ.
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