Valmont

From here...

Just a quick disclaimer before I address this one: I don't intend to defend my beliefs here. I have already done so elsewhere and I'm kind of tied up with the 'Problem of Evil' at the moment. I am happy to answer questions but I won't attempt to rebut challenges.

So the first thing is that I have faith, like all Christians, in a loving God who died upon the cross and rose again on the third day that I might be saved from death. The existential aspect of the equation relates not to what it is I have faith in but my justification for that faith.

My thinking owes a considerable amount to the Danish philopher, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, the first existentialist philosopher. This is not to say I agree with him on every point. In particular, I strongly disagree that faith and reason are antithetical. I believe they are reconcilable, and indeed must be for faith to be spiritually fulfilling. On the other hand, his insight that reason will always fall short of giving a full account of human existence is fundamental to my own thinking.

I think that there are three justifications of Christian faith in common usage: the logical, the empirical and the existential.

The former, the logical, attempts to prove the existence of God by recourse to pure reason. The Ontological Argument and the Kalam Cosmological Argument fall into this category. For my part, I think that a logical justification of Christianity fails on two different levels. For a start, such arguments are not very convincing. They are more word games than real proofs. Nobody hears the Ontological Argument without feeling that they've been had. The second reason is that the 'greatest non-contingent being' (or whatever) demonstrated by such arguments strikes me as so unlike the personal and loving Saviour of Christianity as to be as antithetical to Christian faith as the atheism they purport to dismiss.

Empirical arguments for Christianity rely on physical evidence. Both archaeological and exegetic cases for Christian faith fall into this category, as do the reports of various miracles. The problem with the former is that the documentary and physical evidence for many of the events reported in the Bible is wanting. The Gospel accounts of the life and works of Jesus Christ do not represent independent accounts. The evidence we have is insufficient to decide the question one way or the other. Attempts to substantiate miracles within Christian churches are likewise unsuccessful.

So then, in terms of the actual epistemic existence of God or truth of Christianity I am properly described as agnostic. I do not know if God exists nor do I believe that it is possible to know one way or the other. It is here that reason fails us. As Saint Paul wrote, The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand because they are spiritually discerned.

My faith then is existentially justified. Christianity, for me, is not so much out what the world is like but what I am like. Faith is part of who I am. It is self-affirming. For me, this is the level on which Christianity has always been supposed to work. We do not have faith because of contorted philosophising or spurious, and sometimes fraudulent, archaeology. We have faith because it offers spiritual succour, because reaching out to God enriches us. The only justification for Christianity that works is that it exists as a personal reality.

IrishGuy

Thanks, I think I understand. Do you believe that the Bible is the word of God?

Valmont

I believe that the word of God runs like a vein of silver through the Bible. We recognise it because it strikes a chord in our soul not by reason. However, the Bible was written by men who, although they were party to teachings of God, were still men.

The Old Testament was written for many reasons. It is as much a national epic as a religious work. However, I believe that God's coming amonst us as Jesus Christ was an intrinsic part of His creation. As such, the religious beliefs that arose amonst His chosen people did so to prepare the way for the teachings of Jesus Christ. We cannot simply dismiss the Tanakh as Semitic mythology.

Similarly, although the New Testament was probably written by people who did not necessarily know Jesus Christ in person, it was recorded from a tradition that can be clearly traced back to Him. What He taught had such a powerful effect on those who heard, what He accomplished had such a powerful effect on those who witnessed it, means that it is not at all unreasonable to consider it Divinely inspired. However, we should also not be blind to existence of human biases and misconceptions within it.

Again, as Saint Paul said, Spiritual truth must be spiritually discerned. The true message of God speaks through the Bible directly to our hearts.

IrishGuy

You said that you don't wanna defend your beliefs, thats fine, I understand, and there's no harm done if you don't reply to this.

I've always been curious about people that accept some parts of the Bible are true, and others are false. I'm not just talking about hyperbole, figuritive, and literal writing methods, but actual made up stories and true stories.

From what I understand, you don't believe that there's any proof for the Bible to be true. Nonetheless, you believe in Jesus and whatnot becuase you have faith. Why, then, don't you have faith in, say, Noah and the Ark or the genesis account? Do you see what I'm saying? How do you pick and choose which stories are true and false out of a book you're not sure is actually true for false?

Valmont

It is a very reasonable question and one I would love to have the opportunity to answer and debate with you. However, the time I can devote to this forum is rather limited at the moment. Let me wrap up my Problem of Evil thread and then I'll come back to this one. So you don't miss it, I'll private message you when I do.

Is this okay?

Mageth

IrishGuy, believe it or not, the idea that stories in the Bible such as the Genesis creation accounts and the Noahic Flood accounts should be (or must be) taken as literal, linear historical accounts is a relatively recent development, one that's occurred since (and in response to) the "Age of Reason" and the rise of Rationalism and modern Science.

Before then, people generally had a much more attuned sense of mythos, and could easily accept those tales as mythological/metaphorical and not necessarily as literal accounts.

Indeed, insisting that the accounts are literal history guts them of much of their intended metaphorical significance.

If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend Karen Armstrong's excellent book The Battle For God.

Albert Cipriani

Then large swaths of the bible consist of dross? What you wrote may sound good, but it means that God packaged His Word in crap. The theological censure for such a notion is that it is “offensive to pious ears.�?

Since, unlike the angels, we are a composite of matter and spirit, no thing strikes our soul without rationally striking our senses first. Just as no one comes to the Father except through the Son, so too, no soul is struck except through our brain. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Chili

It probably means that his mind can only pick up a streak of silver in the bible and the rest comes across in his mind as crap . . . which really is better than some people around here to whom it was all crap but were forced to believe it anyway.

IrishGuy

Okay, thanks.

IrishGuy

Man, that sentence is really cool.