Conversations on faith (2). What is faith? July 2, 2012
This is the second post in an on-going conversation with Bill, who is not a Christian although he trained for the Roman Catholic priesthood. I reproduce these exchanges with Bill’s full and kind agreement. The main subject in this post is the nature of biblical faith.
Dear Mr. Andrews
I haven’t finished re-reading your book. When I take notes the read takes much more time; but I’m getting there. I look forward to our continued discussion; this second time through your book has brought me some unexpected insight.
Dear Bill
Many thanks … I think we are now beginning to get to the heart of the matter, which is the nature of (biblical) faith. It will be a few days before I get around to responding to your long and interesting e-mail [see below]. I want to give it the time it deserves but I will be in touch soon.
[Here follows Bill's long e-mail with my replies interpolated in italics]
Dear Mr. Andrews
As I said in my last email, my goto for the Old Testament has always been Hebrew. Since the Jews have been arguing over every jot and tittle for a few thousand years or so, and have a working knowledge of the texts no other body of scholars seems to possess, I trust their translations. I’m a hard-line proponent of “mechanical” translations; no interpretation, no paraphrasing, no “lens” through which one colors the wording with a worldview or agenda. Of course I realize that we all have a perception lens; but I try to eliminate its effects as best I can.
The problem is, and has always been, no original writings for comparison. Now, the Jews are meticulous in the extreme when it comes to the Torah; so I accept their translation from the oldest Hebrew manuscripts as the best extant. Infallible, no; but as close as I think humans can get.
Hebrew is an interesting language, basic yet very sophisticated. I thought of it when you mentioned “logical positivism” in your introduction. Old Hebrew is a solid, or concrete language in that it expresses thoughts and ideas in relation to the five senses; but can express abstracts and contextual nuances using otherwise “solid” words. One must read and understand the words and phrases from the perspective of the folks who wrote it. Coming at the OT from even an Aramaic or Greek background will cause problems. Herein lies, for me, the crux of the situation. We are trying to understand millenniums-old ideas/words from a 2012 perspective. I don’t think that’s possible. The best we can get is close. I’ll talk more about my theory of “close enough” in another email.
You stated “No translation is the word of God and I would only strictly apply this description to the original autographs. Rather, the NKJV is my starting point … on account of its readability and faithfulness to the original-language (OL) mss (being a translation rather than a paraphrase or so-called ‘dynamic translation’). However, it is not infallible.” I couldn’t agree with you more. Without an original to work from, even the most meticulous and accurate work is still a translation of a translation.
Thanks Bill, that’s very clear and I think we are sufficiently in agreement about the text of Scripture to lay that discussion aside (at least for the moment) and move on to the deeper issues you correctly identify, specifically, the issue of faith. You say [the emphases are yours]:
“Now, enter faith. No matter how it is stated, no matter how finely-tuned one’s arguments are, at some point a person must simply admit they have faith that God preserved His original intentions and meanings. You stated “No translation is the word of God and I would only strictly apply this description to the original autographs. However, I do believe that these original documents are the word of God mediated through human writers (see e.g. 1 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:21), that they have been faithfully preserved in the various early MSS and that we do have a close approximation to them in the basic Hebrew and Greek versions used by translators.” Again, you accept on the basis of faith, which is a horse of another color. The same argument could be made for any one of a number of “religions”; each of which, all reduce to faith. I have no problem with folks of faith, as long as they don’t try to present me with “facts” that are thinly disguised, faith-based, religious arguments. I accept what you say —’My authority is thus a “God-breathed” revelation concerning the person and work of Jesus Christ which has been mediated through human authors guided by the Holy Spirit and providentially preserved for us in the Bible through multiple agencies” — as an accurate statement of your belief. What it isn’t, is a convincing argument based on facts.
There is nothing in the above that I really disagree with except the last sentence, but I think there are two distinct points being made. (1) An element of faith is involved in accepting that the original texts have been preserved more or less faithfully; and (2) Even if we were sure we had the original ‘as-written’ texts of Scripture it requires faith to receive them as the Word of God rather than simply the words of men.
In the case of (1) I say ‘an element’ of faith since (as you yourself imply) such matters can be studied by historical and historiographical research. Unfortunately different scholars come up with different answers, so that the interpretation of any factual research findings often depends on the interpreter’s preconceptions (‘faith’?).
In the case of point (2) faith is, of course, fundamental. Do we or do we not accept the original Scriptures as constituting God’s Word — that is, God communicating with us (and thus revealing Himself to us) through the instrumentality of human writers? And if we do accept this proposition, is our faith rational or irrational? You continue:
I have spent many years of my life investigating paranormal, supernatural, and other-worldly phenomena. It absolutely amazes me that apparently intelligent and well-educated folks, in serious scientific fields of endeavor, who would no more accept a poorly-documented statement in their field of expertise, become as credulous as children when presented with faith/religious statements and beliefs. I just don’t get it. As much as I am loathe to quote anyone (argument from authority-logical fallacy), Clark Pinnock stated it best when he said ,”The heart cannot delight in what the mind rejects as false.” Until I see or hear reasoned, factual argument for the validity of scripture, any scripture, I must assume that the writings in questions are the musings, myths, hopes and dreams of Bronze-Age people. What they are not is the word of a God.
I’m not sure what you mean by a ‘factual’ argument in this context but I think it boils down to this; is the faith (that we agree is needed for a person to embrace the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures as the Word of God) rational or not? If it is rational then it passes Clark Pinnock’s well-stated test since it is, by definition, acceptable to the mind and creates no barrier to heart-acceptance. In what follows I’m going to argue that faith, as biblically defined, is fully rational.
Whether this is so, of course, turns on what we mean by ‘faith’. For example, if we adopt the definition offered by the (probably fictitious) little girl — “faith is believing what you know isn’t true” — then faith is both irrational and dishonest. Most atheists would offer a different definition — “faith is accepting as true something for which there is no evidence” — a fine example of this was Professor Lewis Wolpert in the debate I had with him on Premier Radio when he insisted that there is no evidence for God’s existence http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand.aspx?mediaid={17EC0344-2ACF-4908-953D-5732AAF1A144}. [copy and paste]. This is somewhat tendentious of course since there is an implicit restriction on what constitutes admissible evidence. For example, it did not occur to Prof. Wolpert that my own belief in God was evidence that God exists! Not proof, of course, but relevant evidence worthy of examination. Finally, many people use the word ‘faith’ to mean by definition an irrational belief, which of course begs the question completely.
One further point before I come to the biblical definition of faith. When we ask “is faith rational?” we must take into consideration not only objective evidence (from such things as the fine-tuning of the universe to the historical evidence of Christ’s bodily resurrection) but also subjective evidence (the evidence of a personal experience of God). Ultimately, biblical faith is of the latter kind since objective evidence, no matter how strong, can always be explained away and rejected. (e.g. fine-tuning can be attributed to the existence of a multiverse in which some constituent universe will fortuitously possess all the right properties; the resurrection of Christ could be ‘explained’ in terms of mass hysteria among the ‘eye-witnesses’; and so on). When asked how he knew that God exists, Billy Graham apparently replied, ‘I was speaking to Him only this morning’. I would suggest that in the final analysis ALL proof is subjective — we can only ever prove things to ourselves not to others. We can offer them evidence but whether they accept that evidence is, in turn, a subjective choice on their part.
So then, what is faith? According to the Bible faith is spiritual sight, a faculty that we do not possess by nature. ‘The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned [it takes spiritual sight to see them]” (1 Cor. 2:14). In fact the best definition of faith in the NT doesn’t even mention ‘faith’ but states, “we look not at the things which are seen but at the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are temporal but the things that are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18). How can Paul ‘look’ at things that are ‘not seen’ by human eyes or mental discernment? Because he possessed spiritual sight, a faculty imparted by God to the individual and not naturally possessed by man. (There are other verses that confirm this understanding of the nature of faith, e.g. Moses “endured as seeing Him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27) and “By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it [i.e. salvation, including faith] is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8)). According to John 3:3-6 the gift of spiritual sight (faith) is imparted to a person directly by the Spirit of God (not by some ritual of the church) in the process of spiritual regeneration.
If this is the case, then to oppose faith to reason is a categorical error. A blind person cannot see the stars in the sky nor can any other of his senses tell him they are there. Just as our physical eyes tell sighted persons that the stars really are there, so spiritual sight tells the one who possesses it that spiritual realities exist. It is only once we have seen the stars that we can bring our minds to bear upon their significance. We can speculate on their origin, scientifically measure and interpret their red-shifts, devise cosmological theories and so on. But none of these rational considerations can begin until sight has revealed their existence and properties. As long as we are blind to them we cannot begin to reason about them. Faith is thus pre-rational; it cannot be anti-rational. Just as we need sense-data to provide us with information about which we can then reason, so faith (as the Bible defines it) provides us with information about the unseen things of God — upon which we can then bring our powers of reason to bear. Faith is thus pre-rational and cannot be irrational. Indeed, it is only once we have input from our senses that we can think about anything. In biblical thinking, therefore, faith is a pre-requisite of rationality concerning the things of God.
I said a prayer last night and asked God, if He is there and answers prayers, to open my mind and help me understand. I rarely pray, and when I do it’s a brief ceremony. Even though I have a serious problem with Islam, I do think their praying posture to God is appropriate: on one’s face. It reminds me of the gulf between ourselves and a being who can do a universe on short notice.
The Hawaiian’s called heavenly power and grace “mana”, and believed it flowed through the Alii Nui (the one through whom the Mana flows). The Alii Nui always married her brother in order to produce the next Alii Nui. When the Alii Nui died, it was customary for her husband(her brother) to pick Maile leaves, form them into a chain, crawl into her presence, and break the spines on the leaves one-by-one. Maile has a heavenly scent when prepared in this manner. There was a saying that it was a good thing for a man to crawl, face to the earth, and recognize a power greater than his own. I agree.
I heartily agree that it is good to recognize a power greater than our own. But the gospel of Jesus Christ invites us to know that power as a Person, and that surely is far better!