ARTICLE: Faith or Facts by Greg Koukl

[STR Ambassador]

Faith or Facts

I don't like the word "faith." Not because faith isn't valuable, but because it's often deeply misunderstood. "Faith" in this twisted sense is what you use when all reason is against you. It's religious wishful thinking, in which one squeezes out spiritual hope by intense acts of sheer will. People of "faith" believe the impossible. People of "faith" believe that which is contrary to fact. People of "faith" believe that which is contrary to evidence. People of "faith" ignore reality.
I think part of the confusion is because Christians are often told to ignore circumstances, meaning that we're not to get overwhelmed or discouraged by them because God is bigger than our troubles. "Have faith in God," we're told. I think that's good counsel as far as it goes, but sometimes it breeds misunderstanding, implying that faith is a blind leap that has no relationship to fact.
Some suggest we cannot find facts to support our faith, nor is it preferable to try. Faith is not the kind of thing that has anything to do with facts, they say. If we have evidence to prove what we believe, then that takes away from real faith.
Somehow these people think that genuine faith is eviscerated by knowledge and evidence. We've made a virtue out of believing against the evidence, as if that's what God has in mind for us. This is all wrong.
Think about it for a moment. J.P. Moreland has suggested that if this is really the Christian view of faith, the best thing that could happen to Christianity is for the bones of Jesus to be discovered. Finding His bones would prove He didn't rise from the dead. When Christians continue to believe that He did, then, they would be demonstrating the most laudable faith, believing something that all the evidence proved was false.
This is silly. We're enjoined to have faith in part because we have evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. If we're encouraged to believe because of the resurrection, then that proves this other view of faith is false. It may be the view Christians hold in many cases, but it is not the view of the Bible. It is not the view of Christianity.
Frankly, if religion is merely an exercise in wishful thinking for me, I wouldn't wish up Christianity. It's far too inconvenient. Indeed, it seems that's part of the reason people hold many of the ludicrous religious views they do. They're appealing. They wish God was impersonal, because an impersonal God can't make the kind of demands on them that a holy God can. An impersonal divine force doesn't cramp their style on Saturday night. Eastern religions are high on individual liberty and low on individual responsibility. That's appealing.
No, biblical faith isn't believing against the evidence. Instead, faith is a kind of knowing that results in action. Let me explain what I mean.
If we want to exercise biblical faith--Christian faith--then we ought first to find out how the Bible defines faith. The clearest definition comes from Hebrews 11:1. This verse says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Now, there's something very important in these words. We see the word "hope," we see the word "assurance," and we see the word "conviction"--that is, confidence. Now, what gives us confidence?
If you buy a lottery ticket, do you hope you'll win the lottery? Yes, of course you do. Do you have any assurance you'll win the lottery? Absolutely not. You have no way of knowing that your ticket is any better than the millions of other lottery tickets out there competing for the same pot.
But what if you had x-ray vision, and you could see through the gray scratch-off coating on the lottery tickets you buy at the supermarket? You'd know if you had a $100, $200 or a $1,000 winner, wouldn't you? In that case, would you merely hope you'd win? No, you'd have assurance, wouldn't you? You'd have assurance of those things you previously only hoped for. It would be hope with conviction, not a mere hope, but a hope buttressed by facts and evidence.
That's why the Christian faith cares about the evidence, friends. For the biblical Christian, the facts matter. You can't have assurance for something you don't know you're going to get. You can only hope for it.
This is why the resurrection of Jesus is so important. It gives assurance to the hope. Because of a Christian view of faith, Paul is able to say in 1 Corinthians 15 that when it comes to the resurrection, if we have only hope, but no assurance--if Jesus didn't indeed rise from the dead in time/space history--then we are of most men to be pitied. That's what he says: We are of most men to be pitied.
This confidence Paul is talking about is not a confidence in a mere "faith" resurrection, a mythical resurrection, a story-telling resurrection. Instead, it's a belief in a real resurrection. If the real resurrection didn't happen, then we're in trouble.
The Bible knows nothing of a bold leap-in-the-dark faith, a hope-against-hope faith, a faith with no evidence. Rather, if the evidence doesn't correspond to the hope, then the faith is in vain, as even Paul has said.
So, faith is knowing, and that knowledge is based on evidence leading to confidence or conviction. But biblical faith is more than that. There's another element. Faith is not just knowing. Faith is also acting. Biblical faith is a confidence so strong that it results in action. You're willing to act based on that belief, that faith.
Many of you know that my engineer, Bobby the Bouncer, got married today. Bobby has believed in marriage for a long time, but Bobby never exercised faith in marriage until he walked down the aisle and said "I do" to Jennifer. That's when he put his life on the line for what he believed to be true. He exercised faith.
It's the same way with biblical faith. It's not just intellectual assent. It's not just acknowledging that certain facts about Jesus, the Bible, the resurrection, or whatever, happen to be true. It's taking your life and putting it on the line based on your confidence in those facts.
Consider a guy who pushes a wheelbarrow across Niagara Falls on a tightrope every day. You've seen him do it so many times it doesn't even occur to you he won't make it. You believe with all your heart he can do it.
One day he comes up to you and asks, "Do you believe I can push this wheelbarrow across the tightrope without falling?" And you say, "Of course I do. I've seen you do it hundreds of times." "All right," he says, "get in the wheelbarrow."
Well, now we're talking about a whole different kind of thing, aren't we? The first is an intellectual belief, an acknowledgment of certain facts. The second is active faith, converting your knowledge to action. When you climb into the wheelbarrow, your belief in facts is converted into active trust.
Faith is knowledge in action. It is active trust in the truth. You go to the airport. You say, "This plane goes to New York. I believe it. I'll get on the plane. I'll invest myself in the things I believe to be true." That is biblical faith.
So, when someone asks me the question, Are faith and science compatible?, I'm going to immediately ask for a clarification. What do you mean by faith? If you think faith is mere fantasy and science is complete fact, well then, fantasy conflicts with fact, doesn't it? If faith is a blind leap in the dark, if faith has no concern for the facts, you're in trouble.
If, however, your faith is an intelligent trust in what can't be seen that's inferred from evidence that can be seen—if your faith is a commitment to reality, to acting on what you have good reason to believe is true—well then, there doesn't need to be any conflict at all.
Friends, Christianity is not denying reality. Some people think it is. I'm sympathetic to them because some Christians act as if faith is a kind of sanctified denial. But that isn't what biblical Christianity is about. Biblical Christians don't deny reality, they discover reality. And once they've discovered it, they act on what they've learned.
Indeed, if Christianity is true, in the deepest sense of the word, then it must fit the facts of the real world. So, when we discover the facts of the real world, they can only support Christianity—if Christianity is true—given that you've interpreted the facts of the world correctly and you've interpreted the scriptural teaching correctly.
Christianity does comport with the facts. If science and religion both have truth as their ultimate goal, then there's no inherent conflict between the two.

Stand to Reason - Training Ambassadors for Christ in the areas of knowledge, wisdom, and character - www.str.org

This commentary can be viewed at - http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/science/faithand.htm

[Da Lone-Warrior]

Didn't Alisdaire Macintyre declare that Facts, like powdered wigs, are an invention of the seventeenth century?

Clearly, there is still faith involved in the social construction of facts and many historical elements of the Bible have withstood protracted attermpts to establish them as myths.

So we do believe some things and should free to step out in action based on those beliefs. But on what basis should we be willing to reconsider what we believe? If people point to some scriptures that suggest we are in the wrong, can't we find our own scriptures to justify our actions. If one works at it, the Bible can be made to support almost anything. Consider the institutionalization of slavery in our country.

Mark Noll has written extensively on the history of the Christian thought in our country and how it has drawn from the Scottish englightenment tradition with its "common-sensical" emphasis.

However, such views do not help us in reconsidering what it means to be Christian. How do we keep the US from largely becoming another Europe, with pockets of belief interspersed or "Evangelicals" whose lives don't differ that much from the mainstream but who do use a lot more evangel-speak in describing their situations?

Facts not Faith seems to imply we have a steady base for what we believe and regarding what is required for salvation we do, but regarding how we interact with the world around us, we have a host of different responses to consider.

dlw

[Da Lone-Warrior]

Starting with Barth, there has been the abduction of understandings from "Science" into Theology. As known with T. F. Torrance and more recently Alister McGrath.

However, methodological thought about Science, seeking to apply it to the rest of life has not proven to provide certainties. There is no one correct infallible "scientific method" for the production of facts. And scientific findings rely on community-bases of experts for the determination of what is to be seen as truths.

But one big difference between Science and Theology is that Science is more tentative in what it holds to as truths and often accepting of much ontological diversity as is currently the case with Physics.

Theology tends to hold to much of its Truths as timeless as God is timeless. There also is a circle around what is considered orthodox as opposed to being "Outside the Bounds" of orthodoxy.

The same is commonly observed among "evangelicals" as is illustrated by this article.

http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=6

and so one can wonder what of classical or mere Christianity it is that can be prove factually, and if so is that enough.

C.S. Lewis' book/radio-dialogue under that name was geared at trying to call back the people of England to Christianity after the horrors of WWII. In doing this, it doesn't seem he had much success with the general populace of England. Although, among intellectuals, more evidence of success is apparent. It doesn't seem that mere christianity answered the questions people were asking.

dlw

[Sher]

Great article! :thumb:

I am always impressed by Greg Koukl's writings, and this one definitely follows suit.

On faith, another point is that Jesus stated (Luke 17:6), "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea'; and it would obey you." The point we should note that the faith is not wishy-washy, it is a stern belief that what we had faith in will happen.

And this stern belief ... this conviction ... only comes from true knowledge, as evidenced by Rom 10:17, "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ."

That is why so many of us are called to defend the Word, being "shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves" in the "the midst of wolves" (Matt 10:16) ... so that the faith of others is allowed to grow in this knowledge ... and not allowing people who either outright deny the Word, or are wolves in sheep's clothing, to white ant of the foundations of our fellow Christians.

Because once Biblical compromise begins ... once man's fallible interpretations are allowed to overshadow the true word of God ... then the foundations cannot help but crumble, and there can be no true faith.

God bless you for your ministry!
Sher

[STR Ambassador]

Sher,

It's frustrating to often hear the common depiction of faith as the opposite of reason. Christians often do this, too. But that's not what the Bible requires, nor how the faith has been depicted throughout history. The early centuries of the church were marked by incredibly sophisticated efforts to work out the content of our fatih in a reasonable way; and early apologetics was done in the same way.

We shouldn't ask people to make a "leap of faith." A leap won't be necessary when the proper foundation is laid. Trust is necessary, but it's based on sound knowledge.

You might be interested in another article wrote along this vein called "Knowledge, Assent, and Trust" at http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/apologetics/other/kn_as_tr.htm. And another called "Curing the Intellectual Assent Problem" at http://www.str.org/free/reflections/theology/curingth.htm.

STR Ambassador

[tgb_1974]

It is important to state that many facts are social constructions but it is often assumed that society's historians are properly "detached" or "objective" and therefore the facts constructed by historians are pure facts.

Objectivity is required for the honest epistemelogical subject, or knowing subject. But is epistemelogical subject the one who informs the mind on spiritual matters?

Ever since Descarte broke the world into subjects/objects (this language, this ontological structure, was not used before Descarte) where subjects are minds that contain personal streams of experiences about objects, the proper method to describe phenomena was epistemelogical. And to know meant to reason, to gather facts, to formulate theories based on disinterested facts. The subject informed by this kind of knowledge I call the "epistemelogical subject" and is characterized by minds that hold information in memory.

I want to contrast this epistemelgical subject with something else. But it is difficult to name this type of subject since Cartesian dualism has been stamped onto our consciousnesses. So I will call it the "phenomenological subject" The phenomenological subject is informed by the knowledge grounded in experience. The phenomenological subject holds not "information" (and therefore learned historical facts) but holds experiences in memory.

The phenomenological subject includes the epistemological subject, is greater, incorporates the latter. This is easy to show since even knowledge of historical facts are appropriated to the individual as an experience of learning, or of knowing. In other words, everything is an experience, even knowing facts.

I like the response about the scientific production of historical facts. What this writer recognizes is that both scientific and historical facts are products of inductive reason. In order for a theory to be correct in Science we follow inductive methods for gathering information, or data. The Scienctific method works pretty well for deciphering the natural world. The method for producing historical theories is less formal. For the historian, rather than the scientist, historical propositions are theories and are decided to be true if the theory "accounts for the bulk of the evidence" (M. Smith).

Modern Anglo Historiography supposes that history is that which can be video-taped. If it can be recorded by a machine it is history. If it can be audio taped, video taped, credible witness testimony, pretty much anything that counts as "evidence" before a court. Modern history is supposed to be devoid of legend or myth. Furthermore, to us postmoderns, we recognize that some myth always creeps into the historical account. Read the patriotism in the American Revolutionary War period. Read the German Nationalism in the German WWII period. This mythos has always been in our historical writings or else history would simply be a chronological list of historical facts.

This is what we "get out of" history when we read it ourselves. We have to recognize that pre-modern historians simply wrote history differently. Some cultures included myth and legend into their histories all in an attempt to reach the reader. Jewish historians were famous for thier comportment of spiritual belief into their histories to produce theo-history. They had a whole genre of these histories called Midrash.

But what does the knowing subject learn from their history? The epistemelogical subject sets out to learn historical facts with modern inductive methods that can never produce "certainty" or "proof". Proof is saved for deductive knowledge.

But the phenomenal subject experiences something when he reads the Jewish histories. He finds the mythos of salvation. He understands suffering, death, and the joy of ascension. He experiences, if it is truly an experience of the Christian God, a foreign power that propels him in life, changes his being, shines on every object and divine color. This has been called grace and is follows the "logic of the gift" phenomenology.

The experience alone allows the phenomenal subject to speak with certainty while the epistemelogical subject attempts to reason his way with historical facts. Facts are about as motivating as 2+2=4. This experience of "conversion" is the true test of a Christian, not how much information you retain in memory. Of course these two fields are not mutually exclusive. It is possible to retain maximum information and still "understand" the experience Christianity has to offer.

The epistemelogical subject detaches itself from life, from existence, from lived experience long enough to decided on a set of propositions then returns to being the phenomenal self, the living being, the one that has to do their dishes, and fails to notice that they operate in these two modes.

To put it simply. History is inductive and cannot provide certainty. The experience of Christ is a phenomena that is not based on information. The history of Chrsitianity simply provides a language for understanding the conversion expeirence, for "inviting Jesus into your heart", for "taking him into your life". This is the "true knowledge" the previous post writer mentions.

Monotheism can never be correct as long as it is based on competing versions of history.

[scottatiwu]

I really enjoyed TGB's post, that was good. I suppose I will react here differently than I have before when the subject has come up. I'll cover three issues: the Biblical perspective, the perspective of the church through history, and the nature of apologetics; all three of which I think may have been misrepresented in Koukl's article. Just as a note I'm not trying to tear down the article in order to establish my opinon, but just to present it as a vaild option, one which I personally believe is more acurate. Before I touch on those issues though, I just want to touch on a miniscule issue regarding the nature of reason, and that is, I think, the neccesary seperation between facts and interpretation. For the sake of simplicity, lets define a fact as something which is experienced by a human being. Something which is presented to them by their senses. You can certainly define it using much broader terms if you like, but I'm more illustrating that proving a point, and this seems to be a solid definition. Now, if that is a fact, then interpretation, consisely defined in the same manner, would be the persons understanding of the event which just occured; ie their definition of it as well as any explanation for it. This is pretty Hume-ish but I think it'll help once I get to the topic of apologetics.

Anyway, the Biblical perspective. The top three passages which come up when debating blind-faith tend to be: 1.) (the one you mentioned) Faith is assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) 2.) For we walk by faith, not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7) and 3.) Jesus saith unto him, Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed. (John 20:29)

So, for Hebrews 11, we could take the discussion in any number of directions. We could cover the use of the word translated as assurance. It occurs rarely and is either associated with boasting which may or may not be warranted, or is translated as "substance or person" as it is occasionally for this passage. We could discuss the sentence structure and how it could be interpreted to mean that it is faith which gives us the confidence with no neccesary connection to evidence supporting that faith. However, what interests me is the context of the passage, and that for two reasons, one which I will mention later when discussing the historical position of the church, just know now that it is based on verse 11:3. The other is that there is no direct mention of the ressurection made before or after (aside from it being implied but not stated when Christ sits at the right hand of the Father after having offered the sacrifice,) until verse 11:9, when discussing Abraham's offering of Issac, believing God could raise him from the dead. Yet Abraham had never seen the empty tomb, rather "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." (11:13). Now obviously, the second passage, 2 Corinthians 5:7, doesn't throw around a whole lot of weight considering the fact that there's not a lot of context to base it on. However, I think with some work it is possible that a case could be made that the passage implies a disjunct between man's reason and faith. This could be supported by any number of other passages, but I am not the man for the job, so I'll leave it where it is and pray that someday someone will pick it up, or maybe it already has been. Anyway, I think the third passage plays a significant role in determining the relationship between faith and experience rather than faith and evidence.

As for the churches understanding of faith throughout history, and this will have a bearing on my understanding of historical "apologetics" (esp. the arguments for the existence of God), I propose that the historical model of the church in theology until recently (the past 2-3 centuries) has been the model of "faith seeking understanding," and not vice versa. Here's the tie in to Hebrews 11:3 "By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which appear. " I covered this when discussing the issue with JP, however the challenge then was to find anything related to the assertion that faith is above reason prior to the reformation, but I'll give you the info I posted then on the historical position anyway
--------------------------------------------------

Augustine-

Obviously, the vast majority of Reformation theology centered on the works Augustine and his interpretations of scripture. Luther was an Augustinian monk, and Calvin's formulations of predestination (not high-calvinism, which was really a later development) were an extension of Augustines' conclusions. In Augustines treatise on Faith and the Creeds, he states this in his opening chapter:

"Unless ye believe, ye shall not understand."
Though this statement is not made in direct relation to connection between faith and reason, it is made in relation to the fact that the core tenets of Christianity are incomprehensible unless one already believes them. Thus they can not be proved prior to the existence of faith. Augustine develops his conception of the relation between reason and faith based on his understanding of the fall and total depravity. Because of the fall, the image of God in man is obliterated, and reason is a part of that image. Not that man no longer has the capacity to reason, but that his reason is marred. Because of this, man's reason is unable to reach knowledge of God, so knowledge of God can only come from revelation. Revelation thus being higher than reason, does not seek it's justification in reason, and of course, all revelation is most fully expressed in Christ. It is by Christ that we know the Father, this being why Christ is The Word.

Anselm-
Anselm was most famous for his version of the ontological argument, but, contrary to what many might believe, this argument was not intended as a basis for faith, but an assistant to faith. In comes down to the fact that in the early church, faith was not brought about through reason but through the "inner testimony of the Holy Spirit." After faith had been accepted, reality could be percieved as being in reasonable congruence with Christianity, but this only assisted the believer in seeing God in their life, not in providing a substitute basis for faith apart from the inner testimony. So, in his Proslogion, the book in which he outlines the ontological argument, Anselm states:
"I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this I also believe- that unless I believed, I should not understand."

Tertullian-
Oftenly mistaken as a complete irrationalist and fidest, Tertullian actually may have been appealing to Aristotle's maxim that some stories are so unlikely that they must be held as true.(www.tertullian.org/articles/sider_credo.htm) This is where Kierkegaard most likely wanted to take us when he stated that Abraham believed on the strength of the absurd. Tertullian did however oppose the invasion of philisopical explanations of Christian core beliefes.
"What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"
from "De Praescrptone Haereticorum"
"The Son of God was crucified: I am not ashamed--because it is shameful.
The Son of God died: it is immediately credible--because it is silly.
He was buried, and rose again: it is certain--because it is impossible. "
(often quoted as- "I believe because it is absurd.")
from "De Carne Christi"

Aquinas- though most would hail him as the champion of reason in this debate, Aquinas actually addresses the subject in his writings on Ephesians. Though Aquinas believed that certain issues of general revelation could be understood through the use of human reason, he claifies the issue by stating that objective reason is insufficient for faith. He states that faith involves the will and reason does not persuade the will. Thus here he states:
"...the contents of faith are above reason."
Following the example of those who came before him, Aquinas presents his arguments for the existence of God as things which can assist in defending the faith against attack, but are not of themselves able to establish faith, and ultimately are for the benefit of the Christian.
--------------------------------------

A book which has been highly recommended to me concerning the issue is "Justification" by Thomas Oden.

Lastly, the nature of apologetics. First, I'm not aware of any point in time in which the intent of apologetics was to win converts. Apologetics achieve one purpose; they establish Christianity as a valid option. They present what are considered to be the facts and then present an interpretation of those facts.

Conclusion- Biblically: faith may not be blind in the sense that it has no basis, but it certainly doesn't seem to have anything to do with the scientific method and proof (doubting Thomas); historically: the issues of faith are above the issues of reason and thus at times can appear not only to be unsupported by reason, but even contradictory to reason (ie paradoxes- "Infinite God fully present as a finite man"); apologetically: a case can be made for the leap being a valid one, but it is still a leap, it is still uncertain.

Well I suppose I could write more, but that's all for me for now.

God Bless,
~Scott

[tgb_1974]

Regarding my last post. I think there is still some ambiguity in the language we are attempting to use in common. We are attempting to use words like “faith” and “facts” in common and therefore we set out to agree on common definitions of these words. Then we add things like distinctions among types of facts, such as historical ones and social ones, and distinctions among types of faith, a faith related to reason, a faith related to experience. I don’t think I even gave my definition of “faith”.

I also flip flop terms around when I say things like “the facts constructed by historians are pure facts”. Another term applies to what historians do. They hypothesize about the past and then collect “evidence”. So we must distinguish between historical facts and historical “hypotheses” or “theories”. At least that’s what modern historians do. I pointed out that historians of past cultures did not apply this rule.

In other words historians construct “theories” and not “facts”. But historical facts in modern American historiography are meant to be brute facts. We would never deny that certain events have occurred. There are such things as historical brute facts.

The story of Jesus is considered historical brute fact by Historical Christianity (thus the name). They hypothesize things like the credibility of the transcription and transmission of the text and then set out to show, by means of rational argument, that these historical theories are true. This chain of events depends on the stories being eyewitness testimony to preserve the chain of evidence all the way back to a few incredible events when a Jew resurrected himself and ascended to heaven.

Now let the interpretation of these historical facts begin. Up to now there is no such interpretation of these events. There are only cold, brute, historical descriptions. To formulate an interpretation required Paul. Even though Paul is a controversial figure since some speculate that Paul’s universal dying god-man theology of “Christus” was later adapted by the Roman Catholics into a “historic faith”, influenced by the prevailing dying godman stories of Sandes in Tarsus. Paul tells how he instructed the disciples to go about preaching the gospel in the book of Galations.

Historical Christianity is based on one set of historical facts being brute. God came to earth manifest as an historical personality, was persecuted, died, resurrected and ascended. Each one of those events are brute historical facts that can be determined through empirical research. If Historical Christians are successful in convincing us that these events are brute facts then our search for the truth is over.

It seems the last place we would think to find truth is in the realm of historical brute fact. But there are advantages to positing truth among historical brute fact, we can convince other people and achieve universality in our understanding if others would simply acknowledge these historical brute facts about Jesus. As I said, its about as convincing as 2+2=4. What do we do with this empirical knowledge?



What about the knowledge of the meaning behind these events? What if these events are not brute historical facts. What other possible basis would there be for a religion that has supplied countless lives with joy?

Kierkegaard addresses this when he talks about “believers at first hand” and “believers at second hand”. If you are reading this you are a believer at second hand. You rely on testimony, which is a perfectly normal thing to do, to inform your spiritual beliefs. If you are one of these Historical Christians at sencond hand you rely on the historicity of the events itself. I would say you have “faith in history” and not “faith in God”. Faith in history results from achieving measure of confidence in historical arguments. Faith in God results from achieving “certain” knowledge of God by the experience of becoming a Christian.

Let me explain the difference again using different terminology. I want to use the language of epistemology to distinguish between types of knowledge. Knowledge at second hand comes from Reason whereby a rational process culminates in supplying knowledge to the mind. Of this “reason” there are two types: inductive and deductive.

Science proceeds by induction. Science is empirical, materialistic, and natural. In other words Science’s project is empirical Nature. Science cannot comment on the non-empirical. The inductive method Science uses is known to everyone as “the scientific method”. The knowledge gained through science are called “theories”.

Historical Christians claim that we can know God by way of inductive reasoning. Their project is archeological. They attempt to show that the second hand knowledge supplied through historical evidence is all that is necessary to understand Christianity.

What about knowledge at first hand? Let’s call this “experience”. What about the experience of becoming a Christian, of being a Christian? This is not inductive. By experience alone we base our religious beliefs. Kant went out of his way to show that we necessarily base our religious beliefs on experiences and not on theories.

It seems our culture has always had a hard time getting these two things together, knowledge gained by experience, and knowledge gained by theory. The Greeks were the discoverers of “theory” and were rightfully impressed by the power the possessor of theory wielded. He was able to convince himself and others of the universal nature of knowledge acquired through reason, second had theoretical knowledge.

Plato thought that you could have a theory about anything including Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics. And the way to know anything about these things was to get disinterested or detached from the subject of your investigation, in order to think about universal things our individual desires or passions did not figure into the process.




Thus through the power of theory we could have theories about Metaphysics and achieve universality in Religion, we could have theories about Epistemology and achieve universality in knowledge, we could even have theories about human behavior and achieve universality in Ethics.

So Plato posed the question whether something was good because God commands it or if even God was subject to the universal good. For Plato, God was the universal good, (The Good, the Beautiful,and the True) and could never command anything unethical.

Now contrast this with the Judeo-Christian understanding of Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics. Was God ideal? No, God was something in history. We knew God by our experience of Yahweh in history, leading the Jews out of Egypt, a pillar of fire, a cloud, God even walked amidst the garden, conversed with the Patriarchs, and these were all historical events with particular significance to the Jews.

And to Yahweh, something was definitely good because he commands it. This is seen when God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac. Augustine turns this story into the general idea of obedience to God, but it seems to have lost something important. God didn’t say just “obey me” he said “kill your son”. Kierkegaard muses over this in his famous “Fear and Trembling” when he asks “Is their a teleological suspension of the ethical?”

So you have both the primacy of Greek theory (Rational, objective, and detached) and the primacy of Judeo-Christian experience as two pillars of our inherited Greco-Roman-Judeo-Christian culture. No wonder we have the problem of getting theory and experience together in the right way so that they do not contradict each other but support each other.

Since the two cultures combined there have been several attempt to bring the two together. Even before Athens knew anything about Jerusalem the debate raged over the primacy of ideality vs experience. According to Plato’s metaphysics, there was a reality that was “more real” than lived human existence, an ideal realm. To Plato the ideal was more real than everyday lived experience. However Aristotle felt that the most real things were embodied. We actually have more reality when we have our bodies.

So Augustine incorporated Platonic metaphysics, actually Plotinus’ “Neo-Platonism” which was en vogue, into Christianity in order to put Chrsitianity on sound philosophical gounds. But he couldn’t make much sense of the creation nor the incarnation. If God was ethereal there was no need for all these objects getting in the way. If we existed in this realm instead of the embodied realm we could presumably go straight to God. Furthermore God was not required to be embodied in order for us to know about him. God did not have to be embodied in the first place, but chose to for our sake.

So in order for Jesus to fit into Neo-platonic philosophy he had to become the logos. Except the Christian logos was an embodied historical personality rather than the greek notion of logos which was embodied physical law.

Obviously there was a problem casting the Neoplatonic trinity as individual personalities. Plotinus was not constrained by nature of persons, who have personalities and individual minds, when describing a trinity. But Augustine had to somehow make three “persons” into one entity, just like Plontinus’ mystical understanding of the trinity as God, Logos, and Spirit, as One entity. Still all those at Nicea agreed that God was “one in mind and will” despite some scriptural references where Jesus denies being one in mind with the Father.

So it wasn’t until Acquinas that a theologian teamed up with the right philosopher. Acquinas incorporated Aristotle’s metaphyisical theory into Christianity and it seemed to work much better. In order for God to know everything he had to know what it was like to experience things like an embodied human. God achieved more validity by being embodied. And of course everything was created and ordered by god into individual bodies of all kinds, plants and animals.

The greeks dealt with the relation between Reason and Emotion in Aeschylus’ Orestia. Here Apollo represents the Kantian, super enlignment fanatic, comprised of Reason alone. And the Furies represent the emotional, or the passionate. Since Orestes’ mother Clytemnestra, killed his father and King, Agammemnon, both Reason and Emotion staked a claim on him. In their culture, anyone who killed the king was subject to punishment by rule of law, anyone who killed a blood relative was subject to punishment by way of familial revenge. Clytemnestra was subject to both executive capital punishment and furious bloodthirsty revenge. Unfortunately Orestes had to fill the role of public executioner, in effect, and it was important to the Greeks which aspect he killed his mother, either the Apollo (Reason) reason or the Furies (furious) reason.

Orestes is ultimately motivated by Reason. But even Apollo knew that in order to get him to do it, he needed the Furies. This played itself out in the Enlignment when Hume said that “Reason is the slave of the Passions”. Kant, the enlighment fanatic himself, objected to this outrage. He declared Reason sovereign and Reason can have its own motivation, namely respect for the Moral Law.

I believe Kant when he defined autonomy as not listening to the Pope or the King unless I choose to for reasons I give myself. I believe Kant when he defined “Maturity” as “giving a law unto yourself” and that we know morality because we are tuned to the divine. With only one caveat, that human being are sufficiently old enough to achieve this understanding and that children are not autonomous or mature. And I believe Kant that respect can motivate as well as passion.

Man this post is getting long. I haven’t even gotten around to a definition of faith. There is so much that has to be out on the table first. I’ll stop here for comments then pick it up again later.