What is the Relationship of Faith and Reason and How Does this Relate to Salvation through Faith?

In our last post we discussed what the nature of faith is and whether or not the concept of faith (as it is used in the Bible) is rational. In short we determined that the popular concept of what faith means is not how the Bible uses that terminology. Faith, in the Bible at least, is really the idea of trust or having confidence in something or someone. We then determined that whether or not faith in an object is rational depends on the circumstance and reasoning that one has for placing their faith in that object. Furthermore we determined that faith without an object is inherently irrational whereas faith in something or someone is not inherently irrational and that faith in the God of the Bible is demonstrably rational.

With all of that established there now comes another question, what is the relationship of faith and reason/evidence as it relates to obtaining salvation? Now, in our last post, we killed the idea that faith and reason are opposites. This would only be true if faith were defined as believing against or contrary to reason and evidence or if it were defined as something that is above reason and not comprehensible by it. But because the Bible uses faith so as to communicate the idea of having confidence or trust in God, these definitions of faith are irrelevant as it relates to biblical Christianity. So then faith is not something that is inherently opposed to reasons and evidence, rather, it is something that can exist apart from it or strengthened by it. Let me demonstrate what I mean when I say faith can be something apart from reasons and evidence, but can also be strengthened when it has reason and evidence.

Imagine a frozen pond before you. Is it safe to walk on? The answer is ‘C’ not enough information, right? But let’s say you decide to walk on it anyway, you think you’ll be okay if you do. Essentially you’ve place your faith/trust in the strength of that ice to hold your weight. Will you be okay? It just depends on the reality of the situation. If it has been cold enough for a long enough period of time so as to allow the water to freeze and the ice to thicken to a dense enough state then, yes, you’ll be fine. But if it hasn’t then, no, you’ll fall through and you may just drown.

Now if you say to yourself, “I have all the faith in the world that this ice will hold me!” Does this affect the density of the ice? Not at all, but your belief may determine your willingness to walk on the ice. In the same way, perhaps you say to yourself “I’m scared to death that this ice won’t hold my weight but I am willing to take my chances and trust it.” Does your meager faith affect the density of the ice? No again. So what is the crucial issue? Is it the amount of faith one has in the ice or is it the whether the ice itself is sufficient to bear your weight? Obviously it is the latter.

This illustration of the frozen lake will serve us well to demonstrate the relationship of faith, reason and how they relate to salvation. Imagine that the frozen lake represents a religion, philosophy or worldview. You might look at the frozen lake and call it Buddhism, Islam, Atheism, or Christianity, etc. People all around the world have chosen to place their trust in a certain worldview (frozen lake) and many, if not most, have done so without sufficient reason or evidence to be certain that the metaphorical ice will hold their weight. In other words the majority of people in this world are skating on ice that they don’t know for sure will hold them. They may believe very strongly that it will hold them; they may have unwavering confidence that it will hold them but they don’t have sufficient reasons or evidence to support their faith in the ice they are. In these cases then I would agree with the idea that they have a faith that is irrational. It does not follow, however, that all faith is necessarily irrational just because many people don’t believe for rational reasons.

Now if we take the metaphor of the frozen lakes to be that only one of them is actually capable of bearing the weight of people walking upon it which correlated to only one religion is actually true and able to offer people salvation and eternal life, then a lot of people are in very real danger of falling through the ice right now because they are believing without sufficient reason that they are on the right ice. All people, in fact, are in danger except those who happen to be walking on the right frozen lake. As we have established already the level of one’s confidence that the frozen lake will bear their weight doesn’t strengthen or weaken the integrity of the ice. So what is the primary issue for that person’s safety? The issue is that they are on the right frozen lake which has thick enough ice to support them.

This is also true of religion. A person can fully believe that Islam is true, or Buddhism, etc., but because it is indeed false they will eventually fall through the ice. But because Christianity is true (which I will not here defend but for the sake of this article we are taking for granted) then people on this frozen lake are safe even if they had only the weakest faith but just enough to put their lot with Jesus. The degree of faith/trust/confidence is not what brings about salvation, rather, it is picking the right belief system that will actually save you.

In this way there are many Christians who believe in Jesus for salvation for just as insufficient of reasons that the Muslim believe in Allah and the Qur’an, however, the Christian will fare much better at the judgment because they have just so happened to trust in the one frozen lake that will bear their weight. It is in this way that faith can exist apart from reason and evidence and if a person happens to have put their faith in the right object that they will still have salvation whereas others who have just as much faith but chose the wrong object will not have salvation. So faith can be irrational, even faith in the right object (Jesus) can be irrational but the issue of whether or not that faith saves a person leans wholly upon whether they chose the right object of faith. So saving faith can exist apart from reason and evidence but it is a dangerous game of Russian Roulette and not one that I recommend people play. So then, a person ought to have a faith/trust informed by reason and evidence because this is what can lead them towards safety and away from danger, show them that they need to get off the thin ice they are on or that they happen to be standing on thick ice.

Imagine once again that you are standing before a frozen lake and pondering walking across it. You can decide to blindly place your confidence in it and hope you are going to be okay, or you can do some research. You can pull out your smart phone and look up the weather report for the last month or two and see how cold it has been. You could then find out how long it takes ice to form under certain temperatures and you could try to figure an approximate volume of the lake, you could even take a heavy rock and hurl it onto the ice and see whether the ice cracks. There are lots of things you could do to try and determine the strength of the ice before blindly walking on to it. You could then determine with some level of confidence whether or not this frozen lake is safe to walk on. And the level of your confidence in the ice should be proportional to the evidence and reasoning that you’ve established.

So the relationship of faith and reason are not polar opposite so that if you have one you cannot have the other but nor does faith necessarily entail reasons and evidence because a person can believe without them (have irrational faith). But the wise person will investigate what they are considering believing/trusting in before they step out onto the ice so that they may know if it will support their weight. As a Christian, given that our religion is actually true, reason and evidence will serve to support and strengthen your confidence that you are on strong ice whereas for other religions it will hopefully encourage them to get off the thin ice before they fall through.

While faith can be irrational, and if you’re lucky it may even save you from your sins if you’ve haphazardly ended up on strong ice, this is not the kind of faith the Bible would commend us to. If we as Christians blindly believe then we are no different from the sincere Muslim, Mormon, Buddhist, etc., who blindly believes other than being luckily on the right lake. So inform your faith, look into it and see how solid the ice is beneath your feet. If you’re a Christian you’ll find you’re in luck and standing on solid ice, but if you’re not I think you’ll find you have reason to be less confident about where you’re standing.

Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6). Also “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16). The intensity of your belief doesn’t make this true or false, rather, the fact that Jesus actually lived, was crucified and died and then rose back to life in history makes it true. How much better to not just believe in Jesus but to actually be able to say “I have good reasons to believe that Christianity is true!”? Christians your irrational faith may save you but you are much better off with having reason and evidence to support why you believe you’re in a safe place with Christ. Let’s put aside irrational faith and trade it in for reasonable faith.

What is Faith & is the Christian Faith Rational?

Some recent discussions I have been involved with have led to a critical question about the nature of Christian faith. Is faith irrational? Is it super-rational? Or is faith perfectly rational? If faith is irrational then it is for those who want embrace the absurd and implicit, if not explicit, contradictions in concepts. If this is right then we are asked to believe in spite of good reasons not to. If faith is super-rational, meaning that it is above our ability to reason with, although not necessarily contradictory and irrational, then it is of a blind nature where one is asked to believe apart from sufficient reason. But if faith is rational, meaning that it is logically coherent and corresponds to reality, then we are asked to believe in something or someone for good reasons.

Admittedly, Christians of different stripes throughout the history of Christianity have contended for all of these different ideas of what faith is. But to simply point out that there have been significant disagreements about the nature of faith should hardly lead us to the conclusion that there is no right view and that all of the views are equally valid or invalid. Although some Christians have embraced the idea that we should believe against reason and that evidence and reason are actually the opposite of faith (indeed they are mortal enemies according to some) I would contend that this is not even close to how the Bible asks us to believe in Christ nor anything else.

When the Scripture says “believe in the Lord Jesus”, what is it saying? The most natural understanding of this command is that we are to “trust” in the Lord Jesus. Or to put it another way, we are to have “confidence” in the Lord Jesus. When Jesus said “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” what did he mean? The Bible is explicitly clear what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean to believe in Jesus in the sense that we are merely to give mental ascent to the proposition that Jesus was a real person. James 2 tells us that even demons believe factually accurate statements about God, but this has no salvific effect for them nor does it mean that they have endearing feeling towards God. Rather the most obvious sense in which Jesus communicates that we should “believe” in him for eternal life is in the sense that we should trust him, rely on him, have confidence in his ability to save us.

So let’s take all of the mystery away from the concept of “faith” as though it is a thing in itself that has existence. Faith is by necessity tied to an object. When people use faith in our culture today as some sort of mystical word by saying “I just have faith that everything will work out” but that faith has not object to which it is attached, this is admittedly absurd! But this is not how the Bible uses faith. Faith is always attached to an object in the Bible, indeed more than an object, a person…God.

Take Abraham as an example (indeed we ought to because the apostle Paul in Romans 4 makes him the archetype example of salvific faith). In Genesis 15 God promised Abraham that he would give him a son through whom he would give Abraham many decedents and make a great and powerful nation. The Scripture tells us that Abraham believed God and it was counted to Abraham as righteousness. Paul expounds on this in Romans 4 saying that Abraham was made right with God by his faith in this instance. Now was Abraham irrational in his faith in God? Some would say yes because he was believing something that seemed impossible since his wife was barren and well beyond child bearing age. Abraham would indeed have been irrational if he had simply believed that he would have a son apart from that belief being tied to anything but just shot in the dark optimism. But this is not what Abraham did, no, Abraham believed/trusted/ had confidence in God that he would have a son. This wasn’t a blind leap this was trusting in the character of a capable person who was able to bring about the promise that he had made. So likewise when we trust in Jesus, we are not believing in pure optimism that everything is going to be okay, we are trusting a person, a divine one at that, who is able to save us just as he says. This is not a non-evidenced trust, but a trust built on a reputation that God has shown himself to be faithful and worthy of our confidence.

So faith, as the Bible uses the concept, is not inherently irrational because it is tied to an object. Were faith used in a subjective sense without any external attachment then it would be irrational to begin with but, again, this is not a biblical usage of the term although it may be used this way in popular culture and even by Christians at times. Since biblical faith carries the concept of trust or confidence in a person (God or Christ) then it is not inherently irrational. The question then turns to whether ones reasons for faith in God are rational or irrational. Someone could approach you and tell you that there is a tree in their yard that is the source of all life on earth and it is truly a deity and they might invite you to come and worship the tree with them. If you were to then sell all your possessions and buy the highest grade fertilizers to bring as an offering to this tree and devote yourself to worshiping the tree and making new disciples for the tree, then I would argue you have made an irrational decision to place you faith/trust/confidence in this tree in your neighbor’s yard. Why? Because there does not seem to be any evidence that supports your neighbors claim that this tree is anything more than a normal tree and now you have attached you faith to this object for no good reason whatsoever.

But is this picture similar to that of your neighbor inviting you to have a relationship with God through faith in Jesus of Nazareth? To the person hearing the message of Jesus for the very first time it might seem so, but under investigation of the claims of the Christian worldview (such as God exists and made the universe, made mankind in his image, our rebellion hurled the world into sin and chaos, we have lost our relationship with God, God still loves us and made a way back to him through Jesus his son, and by faith/trust in Jesus we can be restored to a right relationship with God) it would seem like there might be some good reasons to believe this is so. When one considers the solid arguments in favor of God’s existence from the origins of the universe, the existence of objective morality, and design in the universe and biological things, as well as, the unique nature of the Bible and its preservation and historical reliability, to the evidence that suggests Jesus really did rise from the dead, deciding to trust in Jesus is not irrational at all.

Now I will grant you that some will not find the evidence and reasoning in favor of the Christian worldview to be compelling enough for them to go ahead and believe it is true and place their faith in Jesus, but to call it irrational (apart from or in contradiction to reason) is really not accurate at all. In fact, even if Christianity turned out to be wrong that still would not mean that Christians were irrational for having believed it. How many things have rational people throughout history believed for good reasons just to later be shown that they lacked sufficient information to have formulated a correct belief? It would hardly be fair to have called a person irrational for believing the sun rotated around the earth before we had sufficient technology to determine otherwise. At the time, given the information they had, this was a rational inference.

So as a Christian, perhaps I am wrong but I am not irrational. But as an atheist, perhaps you are wrong. I am not going to call your position irrational. I do think that that the evidence is in our favor that our beliefs are the correct ones about the way things really are in the world, but if you can put one logical foot in front of the other and present a respectable case for your point of view I will not stoop to calling your position irrational, I will just continue to offer counterpoints and hope that by God’s grace you will come to see things as I believe they really are.

For our next post we will continue this discussion into a different nuance and interact with the question “What is the relationship of faith and reason and how does this relate to salvation through faith?

On Facts, Beliefs, Knowledge and Certainty

What is a fact? Is something only a fact if you can prove it or is it merely something that is the way it is whether you can prove it or not? I was talking with an individual recently who told me that in order for something to be a “fact” it has to be absolutely uncontested. The problem with that definition is that I contest it! There is a real difference between the nature of a fact (facts are that which correspond to the way something really is or was) versus determining what the facts are.

Let me ask you a very simple question. Who is your mother? Now that you have responded let me follow that up with another simple question. How do you know she is your mother? Likely you answered “I know my mom is my mom because she told me so, my dad confirmed, my grandparents confirmed it, everything I know about the woman and my past life experiences seem to confirm it.” So then, is it a fact that (your mother name here) is your mom? Well, that depends on reality. If indeed the woman you called mom carried you in her womb for 9 month and gave birth to you then yes it is a fact. If she didn’t, then no it is not a fact. (Please note that I am not trying to be insensitive to adoptive parents and adopted children. I certainly recognize that as valid motherhood!)

It could be that your mother breaks the news to you tomorrow that you were adopted and that your birth mother is someone else. But even though that is possible, is it unreasonable for you to have a real amount of certainty that your mother is really your mom? Of course not. You have taken it on reasonable authority and it has been corroborated by many lines of evidence and you belief that you mom is in fact your mom is completely rational.

Now notice that I just did something funny in that last sentence. I dared to use the word “belief” and “fact” within the same sentence together. But aren’t beliefs and facts opposites? This is what many in the world would like to tell you today in an attempt to completely invalidate the truth claims of “religious believers.” Yet I would submit to you that this idea that “belief” (faith, confidence, trust) is the opposite of “fact” is a foolhardy use of the term belief. In fact epistemologists (philosophers who study in the area of knowledge) suggest that knowledge should be understood as a “Justified, true, belief.”

In other words, if I am to be able to say “I know that Lori is my mother” then that statement must be justified by the evidence that I can come up with to support my knowing, it must indeed be true that she is my mother (corresponding to the way things really are), and I must believe she is my mother. All three of those components are necessary for me to “know” that Lori is my mom. Sometime we think we have knowledge when in reality we don’t. If I said “I know Lori is my mom” but then found out today that I was adopted then it turns out I didn’t know what I thought I knew. Or if, perhaps, I said my friend Michael Licona is my mom then I wouldn’t have knowledge in this instance because it is neither true (corresponding to reality) nor is it justified because I could come up with no evidence to support it. If all I have is a belief about Michael Licona being my mother then I don’t have knowledge. At least when I said “Lori is my mom” that was justified it just didn’t end up being true. Finally, Lori could be my mom in reality, I could have ample justification for acknowledging this as a fact, but I could still not believe it and then it wouldn’t be knowledge. So knowledge is constituted by these three things in harmony, that what I claim to know is 1. Justified 2. True and 3. I believe it. Otherwise I don’t have knowledge.

What this means is that it is possible to think we have knowledge about certain things when in reality we don’t. What we think we know can be undermined suddenly when new information appears. Furthermore we can cease to know true things if we stop believing them. Let’s say for instance that a person knows that Jesus rose from the dead. They have justification (evidence), it is true (it really occurred) and they believe it. If it is proven that Jesus never rose from the dead then they didn’t actually know what they thought they did. On the flip side, if a person stops believing Jesus rose from the dead (even if it is a historical reality) then they cease to have knowledge concerning this fact.

So let us come full circle to our original question. What is a fact? A fact is something that is true (it corresponds to the way things are or were). A fact is a thing that has brute existence and my belief in it doesn’t make it any more or less real. That is what a fact is. How can we determine what facts are? We determine them by investigation of evidence so as to form justification for why we believe something is a fact. And if we have end up with justification for our belief that something is a fact (true) and we are correct that it is a fact (true) then we also have knowledge.

Now, with all of that being said, what about certainty? As we have already stated, it is reasonable for you to assert as a fact that the person you call “mom” is indeed you mother but, even so, it is not beyond any possibility that this is false and you do not know what you think you know. Indeed all kinds of things we take for granted as facts are not above being questioned. Rene Descartes’ famous thought experiment involved doubting everything one could possibly doubt in order to find some base line of knowledge that was absolutely certain. He asked questions like how can we really know that we as individuals exist, or other people outside ourselves exist, the external word exists, etc.? Could not these be mere illusions, or perhaps I am only a figment of a demons dream? Philosophers have even posed questions like “How can we know that the world wasn’t created 5 minutes ago with all of your memories and experiences just implanted into your mind?”

The “fact” of the matter is that we all take certain things on faith. That is not to say we take things on some mystical blind leap but, rather, that we decide to trust something for a set of reasons. For instance it could be that my senses are wrong and that although I perceive the external world and other persons and object in it that they are in reality not there at all. But a better question is, given what I perceive why should I believe that my senses are generally unreliable? Common sense dictates that my senses seem to tell me the truth most of the time. Not that they cannot ever be fooled, they can, but generally they are reliable and enough so that I was able to drive to work today without dying.

Some things we may hold as more certain than others. For instance when Descartes proclaimed “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” he decided that this was the most certain thing there is. If I am thinking then it is necessary that I first exist in order to think. Regardless of whether Descartes achieved his goal of getting from this starting point back to rational belief in the external world and even God, he makes a fair point here in his famous statement.

As such my degree of certainty that I exist is extremely high. My degree of certainty that my friend Jeff Piepho exists is slightly less certain although highly certain. My degree of certainty that my mom is indeed Lori is pretty high, albeit less certain than the fact that Jeff exists at all. Not that I doubt my mother exists but the certainty that I have that she is truly my mother is logically less certain than that Jeff actually exists. I am highly certain also that the pyramids in Egypt exist although less so than all of the things I’ve mentioned before because I have never seen them myself, nor touched them myself. Even so, I have very good reasons to believe in the pyramids of Egypt because they are so well documented, I know people who have been there; I’ve seen pictures, etc.

So then, after all of this mental exercise, here is another question: Is it a fact that God exists?

If you’ve been paying attention then you know the answer is “It is a fact that God exists if indeed God does exist”, because your belief or your evidence doesn’t actually affect the brute nature of facts. A better question then is “Can a person have reasonable certainty that God exists?” To which we can answer “Yes!” There is indeed ample evidence in support of idea of God’s existence to make belief in God rationally justified. Furthermore if you have justification for God’s existence, you believe God exists, and he really does exist then you can say “I have knowledge that God exists.” Indeed I would argue to say “I know God exists” is perfectly rational just like saying “I know  ______ is my mom” or “I know that there are pyramids in Egypt.” It’s not that any of these things are beyond contestation or that something couldn’t ever disprove what I think I know, but I am well within my reasonable mind for saying I know these things.

All of this is said to establish that there is a difference between the existence of a fact and the acquiring of certainty that you or I or we know that fact. Whether a certain claim is contested or uncontested that has no bearing whatsoever on whether or not that claim is factually accurate. The only thing that makes a fact a fact is if it really corresponds to the way things are or were (it is true). It is our job to have justified beliefs about things that we deem to be true if we want to argue that we have knowledge, it is not our job to make facts uncontested. I have reasonable certainty that I know God exists.