slaveofChrist

After browsing around this thread for a while and interacting with a few of you before my thread got shut down, I noticed that you all seem to misunderstand Christian Faith as described in the New Testament.
I may be wrong about this, because I am currently severely understudied in Greek, but...
I have often been told that the Biblical word used for faith in the New Testament can be taken to mean trust. This was explained to me by Grek Koukl of www.str.org, an apologist whom I respect. God does not call us to ignore the evidence so that we may believe in Him. He gives us good evidence, and we are asked to trust Him based on that evidence. The Bible hardly calls anyone to ignorance. 2 Timothy 2:15 says to study diligently, Jude 3 says to contend for the faith, and there are many more that advocate developing a reasonable position.

I think this fact lends more respect to Christianity. Many of the other religions that I have encountered do not give logical reasons for why the believe. I know you all disagree that Christian apologists reasons are logical, but we try at least. Mormonsim, for example, discourages apologetics. Many religions seem to discourage the pursuit of answers.

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Celsus

If your focus is on a comparative nature with other religions, then I think this should be moved to GRD. If you wish to focus on the exegetical use of "faith", then it can stay here, but perhaps you'd like to give foundational support for this first:
i.e. Explain why should we believe what the Bible says.

Joel

Goliath

Sorry in advance for this potential derailment, but....

Why should any atheist respect xianity?

Sincerely,

Goliath

slaveofChrist

This was never a matter of wheterher or not the Bible is truth. Atheists/Agnostics have made claims that they know what the Bible says about faith, and they have been wrong.
Read those verses and they, especially 2Tim 2:15, call Christians to know what they believe. Jude 3 implies that we would know what we believe.


Because:
-It proposes arguments for its validity, whether logical or not, is in question obviously
-It is not a religion that was invented to gain power or prestige (assuming that Catholocism is a breakoff of Christianity that deviated from that purpose). Its original members did not gain any power or prestige, but death.


Of course, these are issues of respect relative to other religions.

Goliath

I have no idea what you're trying to say.

Irrelevant. The 9/11 hijackers did not gain power or prestiege, but death. Does that mean that you should respect Islam?

Very true. This raises the question of whether or not you will be so kind as to answer the question that I actually posed.

Sincerely,

Goliath

CX

Your definition of the Greek word PISTIS strikes me as something from an NT lexicon. Very often such resources interpret theological words in light of a particular confessional stance. If you look up the word in a regular lexicon (like LSJ) we see that the defintion of PISTIS when applied to theology is simply "Faith" in the usual English sense. The LSJ entry specifically says that it is opposed to sight and knowledge. Plus the famous quotation from Hebrews makes it pretty clear that Xian faith is belief without evidence. I'm not sure why you consider this an indictment of Xianity but you can't simply define words to mean what you want them to mean.

CX

That's a rather large assumption and in includes the subtext that Protestantism rather than being a modern invention of the Reformation is somehow a more authentic expression of Xianity which isn't justified by the available evidence.

Weltall

So when your holy book is demonstrably wrong what do you do? Pray and have faith that the evil freethinkers will stop showing you the holes in your logic?

I'm not sure what you're getting at, but I don't find the bible to be an acceptable source of proof for the truth of xianity's claims. If you think it is, why isn't the Qu'ran an appropriate source of proof for the truth of Islam?

Actually, catholicism was the branch of christianity that everything else broke off from. They claim they're following the exact wishes of their god and they can back it up with their book. The fact that protestants can do the same just goes to show how worthless the bible is as a meterstick for measuring truth.

Amos

It's there if you look for 'apostolic tradition' on the anathema side of the church. In the bible this tradition is expressed with "the gates of hell [that shall not prevail against her]" and in Catholicism it is the negative stand against which we prosper and bloom, ie. our vision of hell makes heaven a better place to be.

QitALL

If you "know" it, you won't have to "believe" it by faith, whether faith means "trust in God" or "belief without evidence". This is what I don't get about Christianity. The whole theme is faith, but none of its thinking members want to admit that their worldview is based one bit on anything other than logic and evidence.