This blog works on the assumption that argument and evidence are appropriate in evaluating Christianity. Many would not grant this assumption, including large swathes of Christians. The usual reason for this rejection is a popular conception of faith as blind and uninterested in rational evaluation, or even opposed to it. But is this the conception of faith that the Christian Scriptures provide?
Here’s a list of Scriptural phrases, occurring in both the OT and NT, that show otherwise.
- Set forth your case, says the Lord; bring your proofs, says the King of Jacob. (Isaiah 41:21)
- Declare and present your case. (Isaiah 45:21)
- Test everything. (1 Thess. 5:21)
- Answer everyone who asks for the reason for your hope. (1 Pet. 3:15)
- We demolish arguments. (2 Cor. 10:4)
- Argue persuasively. (Acts 19:8)
- We vigorously refuted. (Acts 18:28)
- We debated publicly. (Acts 18:28)
- I carefully investigated. (Luke 1:3)
- He gave many convincing proofs. (Acts 1:3)
- He furnished proof to all people. ( Acts 17:31)
It certainly looks as if the New Testament has a different conception of faith from what we commonly assume! This list shows that Christianity is open to rational evaluation.
Obj: What about texts such as John 20:29 and Hebrews 11:1? Don’t they show that faith is blind and uninterested in rational evaluation?
The passages: “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” And from Hebrews 11:1, which defines faith as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
These passages are consistent with the above list. Faith is not being opposed to rational evaluation, evidence, or knowledge--but sight or vision. There are other forms of rational evaluation besides vision. Coherence, prophetic fulfillment, attestation, and testimony all qualify.
This discussion naturally calls for an attempt to give a biblically sufficient definition of Christian faith, which I think has two elements: (a) a propositional element, which is the belief content and (b) a volitional element, which is the act of entrusting oneself to God as revealed in the propositional content. We may add one more condition, as required by the Hebrews 11:1 passage: (c) Faith lacks a direct apprehension of the truth. Notice that the (c) condition does not exclude rational evaluation in its own right, though it does seem to exclude one version of it. “One might say that I have faith in the Hebrews 11:1 sense that the sun will rise tomorrow morning – not because I have seen the sun rise tomorrow (it hasn’t happened yet), but because I have experience of the sun rising every morning in the past, and so I have a rational justification for believing that the sun will rise again tomorrow. In like-manner, the saints of old trusted God with His future promises, which they hadn’t yet seen fulfilled, because they had evidence for God’s faithfulness in the past.” (McLatchie)
What reason could Christianity give for positing (c) as a requirement for believers? Perhaps because it leads to a greater reliance on (b) and calls for us to trust God’s promises on the basis of his character, leading us to depend more on our relationship with him.
Alvin Plantinga suggests that those who do not directly apprehend through vision really are blessed in a unique way as John 20:29 has it, and that’s by us possessing the testimony of the Holy Spirit in addition to the other evidences. But this doesn’t exclude Christianity from being rationally evaluated, it just provides another avenue of knowledge for us. So perhaps (c) is meant to bring out the requirement of the Holy Spirit to work faith in us in a salvific way. In Plantinga's own words:
From the present point of view, [John 20:29] is neither a general counsel commending credulity nor a rebuke addressed to such embryonic empiricists as Thomas. It is, instead, the observation that those who have faith have a source of knowledge that transcends our ordinary perceptual faculties and cognitive processes, a source of knowledge that is a divine gift; hence they are indeed blessed.
Suggestion: Faith as a lack of direct apprehension canvasses a relatively small (but essential) area of Christian theology. It seems as if it concerns trusting the words of God and his promises as promulgated in special revelation, and does not apply to the fundamental aspects of a theistic religion. It does not take faith to believe that God exists, perhaps, but it takes faith to believe the specifics of the Christian religion, like the future resurrection. Note that the (c) aspect of faith seems clearly missing in natural theology: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been *clearly seen*” (Rom. 1:20)
Rasmussen has a good discussion of faith in chapter 13 of his book How Reason Can Lead to God.
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