Christian Faith Properly Expressed
Faith, at least authentic Christian faith for which I am advocating, is not blind, irrational belief in the face of lack of evidence, or evidence to the contrary. That is a caricature – a straw man set up to be easily lampooned. True Christian faith is more complex, nuanced and considered than this caricature. Christian faith is better described as trust, and operates in much the same manner as trust in any other life situation or relationship.
When you board a commercial flight, can reason grant you 100% certainty that you will arrive at your destination safely and in one piece? No. But you trust, you have faith, that you will arrive at your destination safely. This is not “blind” faith – irrational belief without evidence. This is trust based on what you know about modern aviation, technology, pilot training and security. Similarly when you are married you presumably trust your partner (at least in ideal situations) that he/she loves you and will remain faithful. You cannot reach this decision empirically using naked reason alone. And yet this trust is not irrational nor blind. It is based on factors that you already know about your partner and your relationship committment.
Similarly, Christian faith – properly expressed – is trust. Trust in the matters that you don’t know because of what you do already know. Trust in the matters you can never know, because of what you can know. Christian faith is warranted belief – an inference to the best explanation. Christian faith uses reason and is able to be interrogated by reason, but realises that naked reason alone is not enough. A Christian faith based in reason is necessary, yet not sufficient. Reason without faith cannot stand. Faith without reason is foolish. A man without faith cannot know God, and a man without reason cannot understand His true nature. Reason (like science) has its limits. Faith – trust – is able to take you to the limits of reason, and then further beyond.
(Source: http://www.harvardichthus.org/)
shreddakj
on August 3rd, 2011
Let’s play a numbers game with the plane crashing situation. The statistical probability that the plane will crash is lower than 1 in a million. It is lower than the probability that you’ll have a car accident on any given day.
Can we do a comparable statistical analysis on the veracity of a religious doctrine? No. Can we do a statistical analysis on the probablity that a given event was caused by a supernatural being? No. For the plane situation, we have a data set. Perhaps you could have said that for the first passenger flight they would have been taking the mathematicians, physicists and engineers skill on faith, but since then, and increasingly more so, we can rely on probability based on previous instances of planes crashing.
On the other hand, we do not have a data set concerning the supernatural, none, zip, zilch, zero. No one has ever been able to identify even one tidbit of supernatural anything. The analogy between the two instances couldn’t be weaker if you tried.
rogermorris
on August 3rd, 2011
Thanks for your comments,
My analogy is used mainly to demonstrate the acceptable ways of knowing and making decisions in every day life and make the claim that religious knowledge, and the trust committment that it enables, it not very different to other everyday assessments of likelihood and trust-based decisions that we experience. I note that you don’t criticize my marriage relationship analogy and perhaps this is therefore a closer analogy.
Overall, analogies being good or bad, my aim is to expose impoverished and simplistic notions of what constitutes Christian faith and put forward a more accurate and fair model as an alternative.
Julia Fernandes
on August 10th, 2011
Hi Roger,
Could you elaborate what exactly is impoverished and simplistic notions of faith?
Regards,
Julia
rogermorris
on August 10th, 2011
Certainly Julia:
Faith as blind belief in something despite a lack of evidence, or in direct opposition to overwhleming evidence. Irrational, unreasonable, unwarranted and incredulous belief. These I describe as impoverished and simplistic notions of faith.
Julia Fernandes
on August 13th, 2011
Hi Roger,
Is it necessary that we always have to understand everything about God? Is loving Him from the bottom of our hearts and striving to do His will not sufficient enough? No amount of human understanding can truly understand God’s nature.
He only called us to love Him. He never called us to understand Him.
Can I not have the faith of a small girl and yet be close and happy with God? If God wants He on His own will reveal aspects of his nature to me or to anybody hitherto not revealed to the world.
God likes simplicity and that includes simplicity in faith too. Why should we intellectualize our faith? Why Roger?
Regards,
Julia
rogermorris
on August 15th, 2011
Julia,
How can you love someone that you don’t know something about? I am not suggesting that we should, nor that we can, “understand everything about God”. We are finite, God is infinite.
Yet God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ and has condescended to speak to us in simple terms about the nature of God and the cosmos. We have been given just enough to understand what we need to know. Jesus himself said:
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
God calls us to have the faith of a child – a simple faith – but not a simplistic faith. Jesus tells us clearly that a balanced Christian faith must involve heart, soul and mind in equal parts:
“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Luke 10:27, also Mark 12:30 & Matt 22:37).
I am not suggesting that we “intellectualize” our faith – the mature Christian faith properly expressed already contains an intellectual element to it. To reject the mind in the Christian faith over the emotions (or the other way round) is to have only half a Christian faith. I discuss this in more detail in my article “The Balanced Christian – Both…And”.
http://www.faithinterface.com.au/discipleship-spiritual-formation/the-balanced-christian-christian-today-australia
The Balanced Christian must make an effort to balance mind and spirit, reason and emotion, knowledge and faith. Failure to do so renders Christian faith and witness an impoverished one.
Chad
on August 27th, 2011
I would be curious to know what evidence has convinced you that the faith claims of Christianity are true. In the example you gave regarding air travel, I would submit that there is ample data that one can find regarding its safety. Beyond that, one could spend an entire day at the airport and watch the planes land. One could do this every day for years. The point is, the safety of air travel can be empirically observed. Evidence for the claims of Christianity of the same calibur does not exist.
All Christianity has as ultimate backup for its claiims is the Bible. I will not argue that there are lots of manuscripts out there, but just because the original texts were copied over and over again doesn’t mean that the original text was correct.
The claims of Christianity are extrordiany, and the evidence used to support them is anything but.
rogermorris
on August 30th, 2011
Natural theology, and the various arguments for the existence of God, provides rational warrant for my assent to Christian theism. But there are also subjective and existential elements – non-empirical – elements to my belief. One need all of these elements for a healthy, mature and transforming Christian faith.