Faith Isn't Knowing

There are at least two things wrong about Paul Pardi's analysis of Christianity in this article.  He claims that Christianity should be kept private by those who believe it because it's known by an irrational method - faith - that isn't accessible by everyone.

First, we don't know about Christianity by faith.  Everyone knows about the claims of Christianity and the Bible in the same ways other things are known.  Faith isn't a way of knowing. It's trusting in what we have come to know to be true.  Faith is laying hold personally of what is true in the Bible.  Knowledge is the first step and it's no different than coming to know about anything else.  So it can be discussed between those who have faith and those who don't because they're both operating in the same way to evaluate truth claims.  Faith comes after knowing.

Second, Christianity isn't a private topic.  This is a way to subjectivize Christianity - to relativize what Christians believe.  But essential to the what the Bible teaches is that it's not subjective or relative.  It's true for all people.  Things happened in history that were witnessed and reported.  And what the Bible teaches is for all people.  So engage in consideration of the truth claims of Christianity, but don't dismiss them as private, subjective beliefs.

Comments

[ToNy]

Well the prof does sound like a twit. But doesn't sound like he was going after that definition of faith.

"a student wrote on a final exam that despite what she learned in the classroom, her belief in God was "absolute" and no amount of philosophy would ever change that."

This would be equivalent to the student saying:

"I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the creator of the cosmos, and no evidence to the contrary could convince me otherwise."

This is the sort of irrational stance he seems to be battling.

Though, since he's a philosophy prof, i would wager he'd be just as happy to go after anyone wearing a crucifix necklace as well.

[Dave]

One correction: the article is not Paul Pardi's analysis of Christianity, but his analysis of Professor Peter Boghossian's viewpoint. What I liked about the article is his final comment: "And in case you missed it, that's a public truth claim and one that should and will be discussed broadly and deeply as the role of faith continues to evolve." Pardi nearly uses the suicide tactic on Boghossian.

[kpolo]

ToNy, why is it irrational to state once belief in Jesus of Nazareth as creator and that no evidence to the contrary would convince otherwise?

If I said that I believe the earth is not flat but resembles a sphere and that no evidence to the contrary would convince me otherwise, would you call that an irrational stance?

If you wouldn't call the later an irrational stance, aren't you showing your bias against the historicity and claims of Jesus in calling the former irrational?

[Brad B]

I suspect that ToNy wil call both irrational, and I would agree with him if he does. Btw, irrational is just a description of a proposirion that doesn't haved logical justification. Even if what appears to be self evidedntly true can't withstand logical scrutiny, it's irrational until it does[ultimate propositions edxcluded].

Faith, the truth of God inside IS rational if explained properly, but we imperfect reasoners do fail continually to poperly mesh faith and the truth ala Eph 4:11-13.

[Wintery Knight]

That's right Melissa, and it's not just history, but science too. The creation of the universe out of nothing is compatible with some religions but not others (who think that the universe is eternal). So is cosmology - which is a truth-maker for religion - known by "faith"? I think not.

[Wintery Knight]

Melinda! Not Melissa!

[Arnauld]

I am confused. Let "E" denote all of the publicly-accessible evidence relevant to the truth claims of Christianity. E will include, for example, all of the historical documents from the first century AD that refer to Jesus of Nazareth. It will include statistical data about the the proportion of the population who claim to be Christians. It will include the entire text of the Bible. It does not include my own private experience of a burning in the bosom when I read scripture (since this experience is not the sort of thing I can share with the general public. Others cannot access it the way they can access historical documents). E does not include any special sort of revelations of God to individuals.

It is the claim of this post that the detailed core truth claims of Christianity are adequately supported by E alone? That any rational person who considers E impartially will be persuaded of the truth of those claims?

[ToNy]

kpolo,

so if i built a time machine and me and you travelled back in time and saw that jesus was just a drunk who beat his wife on weekends and didn't rise from the dead, you'd still be a Christian?

[Bennett]

ToNy

Philosophy is complicated enough without us introducing time travel paradoxes.

[ToNy]

This is not an example of a time travel paradox.

[Bennett]

ToNy,

I was being a bit facetious, especially since the hypothetical you present is so impossible as to not really warrant much consideration. Time travel doesn't exist (not the kind you mean anyway), Jesus wasn't married, a drunk, nor abusive. It was a rhetorical device by which you meant "What if I could magically produce contrary evidence?" But the key word is 'magically'. You could prove *anything* if you're allowed to magically conjure your proofs.

[ToNy]

>> "What if I could magically produce contrary evidence"

nope

not using magic.

Tell you what... Just write down a piece(s) of evidence that would prove to Bennett that Jesus of Nazareth was not the creator of the cosmos. And assume I showed you that.

[Bennett]

So... now the magic trick is mind-reading?

Incidentally, saying "Jesus of Nazareth was the creator of the cosmos" is a bit of a sticky wicket. Depends on your Christology.

However, that evidence would be pretty contrary to other evidences that I've seen.

I'm willing to grant that if reality were not as it were, then it wouldn't be. But as it is, it ain't.

[ToNy]

what

[Daron]

Hi Bennett,
I may have said this a while ago but if not, I have enjoyed and learned from many of your comments on the recent threads. Thanks for your contribution.

[Bennett]

ToNy,

Exactly.

----------

Daron,

Merci beau coup! You've been a valuable presence as well.

[ToNy]

Bennett,

>> "saying "Jesus of Nazareth was the creator of the cosmos" is a bit of a sticky wicket. Depends on your Christology."

er...

so you don't believe Jesus was God.

ok...

[Bob]

The idea of keeping ones views (non-secular ones only presumably)private and not allowing them to influence how you vote is insisting people act as hypocrites.

It is basically saying "I will allow you to hold whatever position you wish, as long as you keep quiet and pretend you agree with me."

[Bennett]

ToNy,

Nothing quite so trite. It has to do with how we deal with Jesus of Nazareth in relation to his human nature and his divine nature. In some sense, Jesus' human nature (his "of Nazareth" nature if you like) did no such thing.

On the other hand, his Christ-nature, sometimes called the Logos, was indeed the Word of God. From the opening of John's gospel, we read:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made."

This is where the sticky wicket comes in. When you say "Jesus of Nazareth" are you necessarily addressing both natures, or do you strictly mean the human nature? Or do you strictly mean the divine nature?

And thus, your Christology becomes important. You can get into all kinds of messes otherwise, like the obvious issue that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary. That's pretty basic credal stuff. And yet, the Word, clearly, was an uncreated thing.

There's a level of mystery and nuance to this that isn't well-served with blunt simplifications or gotchas.

[Bennett]

Bob,

You hit the nail on the head. It's not much different from saying "You can be pro-choice, as long as you don't say or do anything that isn't pro-life" or "You can be a Republican, as long as you vote and behave Democrat" or "You're free to be a Math major, as long as you only take courses from the Humanities curriculum."

It's a way of neutering a belief by tacitly asserting it as false. The professor's own view, as Dave correctly noted, commits suicide. He says that no unprovable belief belongs in the public square. By implication, then, his argument is that only things which are empirically proven (by which he *really* means "things which are secular") are valid. And yet, he has no empirical proof for that belief. He's on the razor's edge of preaching verificationalism, which died a fiery, tragic death in the halls of academia many, many moons ago, without any help from theists.

[ToNy]

ah so could there exist any evidence at all that would convince Bennett that Christianity is false?

[Bennett]

ToNy,

If Christianity were false, then such evidence would exist. If Christianity is not false, then no such evidence would exist.

Of course I subordinate my beliefs regarding Christian dogma to the truth. In fact, there's even a little hierarchy. For example, I prioritize my belief in Christ over my belief in Scriptural inerrancy, or my specific denomination's creeds. I even place my basic belief in theism as a prefix for Christianity. So if I were no longer persuaded that I could not have charismatic gifts in this age (such as prophecy, speech, etc), then I'd still be an inerrantist, and if I couldn't have that belief, then I would still be in my particular 'franchise' of Christianity, and if that franchise were discredited, I'd still be Christian, and if I couldn't honestly be Christian, I'd still be a theist, and if I couldn't retain theism, I miiiight be a deist, and if I couldn't be a deist, then I'd be a Theravadan Buddhist, and if I couldn't do that, then I'd devolve to a Nietzschean ubermensch bent on my own pleaure and power, and if I couldn't do that then I'd just have a Coke.

I know this, not just because I like to plan for contingencies, but because I did in fact wander down a few other roads before I found the way.

Good question, though.

[Bennett]

That should read "could have" not "could not have" -- I'm still weighing that question, so I wouldn't really come down on either side just yet, though.

[Bennett]

One additional clarification, just in case it wasn't manifest. I obviously would have to concede that the truth was true--if it were. But when you ask "Could I disprove Christianity?" that's a little bit like asking "Could I disprove that the sun is at the center of our solar system?"

At this point, no, you could not. You would need an entirely different set of data, to the point of altering reality, to prove any such thing. It's tantamount to asking "Could I prove that a married man was a bachelor, provided that he had no wife in this hypothetical?" Well, yeah, you could. But that's hand-waving, not a proof.

I could prove anything, provided that I was allowed to decide what hypothetical world we were discussing for the purpose of the thought experiment.

[WisdomLover]

Bennett-

Wouldn't discovery of the bones of Jesus be sufficient evidence of the falsehood of Christianity?

I think it would.

With that said. I'm not too concerned about them being found, since I think they went to heaven at the ascension.

[ToNy]

Bennett,

what WisdomLover said

[Bennett]

WL,

Short answer is yes. But to use one of the old atheist sawhorses, producing bones and saying they belonged to Jesus of Nazareth would be an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence. Like you, I'm not too worried about it turning out to be the case. In such an event, I suppose we'd have to start looking at Arianism and other heresies and scratching our heads.

It's not something I lose sleep over. Now, the evidence against Ryan Braun having used PED's, there's something that I have to sweat.

---------

ToNy,

So... think Jesus' bones went to Heaven at the Ascension?

[Bennett]

Melinda,

Another problem with the article, just by the by, is that the professor seems to be assuming an answer to the Euthyphro dilemma on the part of Christians. Specifically, he assumes that we only believe in the moral values we hold (which we believe to be objective) on the basis that God dictated them as such. And thus, our moral values (pro-life, in particular I think he'd say) have no place in a public square, because they are founded on religion rather than ethics.

What he misses there is that God is neither constrained by the Good, nor does he dictate the Good. He *is* the Good.

If Christians aren't permitted to talk about God in the public square, then we can't talk about the difference between right and wrong, either.

And that, methinks, would suit the enemy just fine. Certainly seems like it would suit the professor.

[ToNy]

"Short answer is yes."

There is hope yet!

[Bennett]

ToNy,

*tsk* Hope of what, ToNy? If you mean there is hope of me having intellectual or moral integrity, then yes I should hope so. If you mean there's hope of disproving Christianity... not really, no.

Again, we go back to what an absurd situation we're talking about. Imagine you and I are debating whether or not my wife would murder me, and came up with some ridiculous convolution that would utterly violate all that we know about her character, not to mention a statistical chance of its occurence that isn't even worth mentioniong.

And at the end of all that, you proudly announce "So there IS a hope that she'd murder you!"

But I suppose this is what I get for not unpacking the assumptions that you built into your question to begin with.

When you ask "Is there any evidence that would disprove Christianity for Bennett?" what you're really asking is a multifaceted.

You're asking "Is Bennett honest?"

You're also asking "Does Bennett believe based on evidence, or preference?"

Furthermore, you're inserting a subtle question of "Is Christianity true, in actual reality, rather than a hypothetical?"

Now, the yes/no to one of those doesn't prove any of the others.

There's plenty of doctrines that I wish were so, but aren't. For example, some part of me would like it if the Prosperity Gospel were true, or Universalism. Both would make my life scads easier and more fun, in ways that appeal to my sinful nature, which desires to be a god, rather than to know and serve God.

You do infinitely more damage to your own atheistic position than to my theistic one when you turn any conversation with you into a game. Frankly it inclines me to just banter and spar, when I'm bored, but otherwise take you as an unserious, uncritical, fatuous thinker who's just out for a chuckle. Which is fine, as far as it goes, I like a good chuckle too.

But don't confuse that kind of non-debate with a reason for belief or disbelief.

[Daron]

""You do infinitely more damage to your own atheistic position than to my theistic one when you turn any conversation with you into a game.""

Exactly.

""Frankly it inclines me to just banter and spar, when I'm bored, but otherwise take you as an unserious, uncritical, fatuous thinker who's just out for a chuckle. Which is fine, as far as it goes, I like a good chuckle too.""

A man after my own heart.

[ToNy]

Bennett,

i dont see the big deal...

If you're open to the notion that Christianity is wrong then thatz cool with me.

Greg says it all the time on the air.

I say it too.

this is sufficiently contrary to the quote in the article:

"a student wrote on a final exam that despite what she learned in the classroom, her belief in God was "absolute" and no amount of philosophy would ever change that."

[Francis J. Beckwith]

But if we are saved by grace through faith, does that mean that someone can be saved who does not know that Christianity is true? If the answer is that knowledge is necessary but not part of faith, then faith alone is not true. On the other hand, if faith is a way of knowing, then faith alone makes sense.

I agree with Melinda that the way in which "knowledge" is understood by many academics, faith is denigrated as a subrational basis for a belief. And I also agree that Christianity is a knowledge-tradition, as our friend J. P. would put it. However, why can't faith be a means of knowing Christianity is true that can be supported by other ways of knowing, e.g., philosophical and historical arguments and so forth?

[Bennett]

ToNy,

First off, I apologize sincerely for a response that was sharper-toned than warranted. We play around, and it's unfair of me to take umbrage.

In a very general sense, I'm open to the idea that almost anything could be possible, or that anything I know could be wrong. I may be in the Matrix, or completely delusional, or just the figment of some dreaming android.

However, it would take more than argument to persuade me of such claims, I'd need, as Othello says, "the ocular proof." Am I open? Sure, at one point in life I was so open that my brain fell out. (And that's how I spent that year in grad school--no, seriously.) If you like Dawkins' scale of Theism, I'd be around a 6.5, depending on what I had for breakfast. I'm not sure that it's healthy to get all the way up to 7, nor below 6.

With regards to the girl's statement, firstly note that it's a paraphrase offered by her biased professor. He could be twisting her words, unintentionally. Much as someone might take Ben Franklin's statement that the best way to help the poor is not to burden them with welfare as equivalent to "I don't care about the plight of the poor."

It's perfectly defensible for her to say that no amount of philosophy could argue her out of the Kingdom, and she's well within her epistemic rights to assert that; especially since I doubt any amount of philosophy would be sufficient to argue the professor *into* the Kingdom. It would require an experience (or several) for either of them to change their position, rather than a syllogism.

After all, a practicing Christian is past the point of just accepting God as a proposition, they actually love him, and feel loved in return. If I love my dad (and have every reason to believe that he's to credit for my existence, to boot) it'd be awfully hard to convince me that he doesn't exist. How could I be here, and be loved, and love in return, if there's no dad to sire me and love me?

Granted, I can see my dad, but it's just an analogy. To some folks, the "ocular proof" is no more convincing than the "spiritual proof." Rightly so, perhaps--if Othello had listened to love instead of his eyes, the play would have been a comedy rather than a tragedy.

[ToNy]

>> "I'm open to the idea that almost anything could be possible"

well thats cool

ya her quote was

"her belief in God was "absolute""

[Bennett]

ToNy,

The only word there that was directly quoted was "absolute", and even that was Paul Pardi directly quoting Professor Boghossian's paraphrase. Another direct quote from Boghossian was that students who profess religious faith "shouldn't be given a seat at the adult table."

I don't know that I'd consider anyone that condescending to be a reliable source for an assessment of a devout student's views--especially since she was probably writing them more to tell off a patronizing professor than to offer a nuanced, accurate assessment of her faith.

That said, you're right that unquestioning, blind adherence to religious dogma is undesirable. It does violence to our reason, our faith, and our integrity.

My trust in my best friend is absolute. I'd literally trust him with my life. That said, if you offered extraordinary and persuasive evidence that he meant to betray me, I wouldn't be so insipidly blind as to not even investigate the issue further.

[Daron]

Dr. Beckwith said:

But if we are saved by grace through faith, does that mean that someone can be saved who does not know that Christianity is true?

I think so. Most Protestants think babies are saved, and Catholics believe that unknowing, baptized, infants are as well. And maybe even those which have not been baptized and are unknowing are saved.

However, why can't faith be a means of knowing Christianity is true that can be supported by other ways of knowing, e.g., philosophical and historical arguments and so forth?

I like this phrase. The way "faith" appears in the Bible it seems quite equivocal and there seems to be a way that faith is the means of our belief, but is not always synonymous with it.

[Bennett]

Dr. Beckwith,

Good question, but do you mean it more rhetorically? I hate to put myself into an epistemic pretzel here, but how do we know if knowledge is a precursor to faith, or faith is precursor to knowledge? I mean, plenty of people are evangelized, or read the Bible, or even grow up in a church, so in one sense they "have knowledge", but they don't know God. They could quote Scripture and doctrine upside and down, but they don't have any faith.

By the same token, perhaps it is possible for people to, without an academic or conscious understanding, to nonetheless form an intuitive saving relationship with Christ through the Holy Spirit, without having to pick up a book.

[Bennett]

Daron,

Bear in mind, the question here doesn't seem to be, can we be saved in any way but our faith in Christ? That's another kettle of kittens.

It seems to be more an issue of whether we can know that Christ's message is true, through faith alone (sola fide) without having a more conventional source of knowledge (authority, books, observation, etc) for it.

[Daron]

If you are right, Bennett, then I missed Dr. Beckwith's point.

[Bennett]

Well, as I admitted to ToNy, I could be wrong. ;)

[Paul Pardi]

I recorded an hour-long podcast with professor Boghossian for Philosophy News that you may enjoy listening to. In it, he expands on the ideas he presented in his original article and talks more about his position. You can find that conversation here: http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2011/12/05/Interview-with-Peter-Boghossian.aspx

[Bennett]

Interesting. Especially interesting is that apparently (it's implied but not stated directly) the Absolutist girl in question was not merely Christian, but had specifically articulated Young Earth Creationism, which she (and the Professor) both conflated as necessarily part and parcel of her Christian faith.

I think the bit that's generating more heat than light is that the debate was, on the surface, about a "4,500 year old Earth" (isn't the usual number 6000+? Ahh, well, can't really count on New Atheists for knowledge of such things) versus a 13.73 billion year old Earth. On that count, point to Boghossian for saying that the girl's belief was not science, and not really valid in the classroom.

Where it gets complicated is that the professor is rather obviously a New Atheist. And the girl is, most likely, an Evangelical Christian. So we have worldviews coming to loggerheads. It isn't enough for him to just try to steer her towards questions about the age of the universe--no, he's got to try to chop this tree down at the roots, and go after God.

This is very bad pedagogy. It goes from being about academic issues to becoming a political struggle--both about professors pushing their religion onto students (I see no way to establish a legal or institutional definition of New Atheism or Secular Humanism that would make it anything but a religion, regardless of the specious, sophistic claims that it's a 'lack of religion') and about Evangelical culture and counter-culture.

He dresses it up as being about 'correcting wrong beliefs', and that's dandy. I agree with him that YEC is unsupportable. The reason for that, however, is that it is both theological *and* scientific poppycock.

Boghossian's just right enough when he points out that doing logic without your brain in gear is deadly. He's also just wrong enough when he assumes (perhaps so as not to disturb his comforting illusions about how the world works) that all religion and all religious people function the same way, and a YEC belief is the same as a belief in the Resurrection, or a Creation of any sort.

After all, many of us have no cognitive dissonance at all about a 13.73 billion year old universe and an eternal God who brought it into being.

This shows us much about the flaws in sola fideism, and New Atheism, as well as in YEC dogma. It doesn't tell us much of anything about the propositional truth of God. Maybe what it tells us the most about is the danger of either side assuming that faith in God entails an anti-rational stance.

[Bennett]

Pardon me, that's a 4.5 billion year old Earth. Mixed it up with the universe. Silly geocentrist me. ;)

Also, I think my favorite statement from the girl, to paraphrase, is that she just told the professor what she had to in order to pass his class, but she was gonna spit out the pill he forced into her mouth as soon as she escaped his academic gulag.

While this is the case in many academic settings where there's an obvious indoctrination (which is to say many academic settings period, especially in the soft sciences and humanities), it shows another problem with this oppositional attitude. If your students think you're "out to get them" because you attack their most cherished values--whether you agree with those or not--they're going to blow you off about other issues as well. You become mere noise.

That really serves no one, wouldn't you think?

[Brad B]

In response to Francis' point, there's an important distinction that we should keep mind of. The phrase "ordinarily" should be kept in mind to avoid going to extremes when answering extreme challenges to the ordinary meaning.

The biblical notion of "faith" is not a propositionally contentless thing, to the contrary it is perfectly rational, because it's author is God and it's host is the Holy Spirit Himself. Just because our rational mind cant fully understand it doesn't mean this isn't true. I'll quote a scripture to make a point.

"Eph 4:11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers,

Eph 4:12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ;

Eph 4:13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

I need to break in here for a sec., I've argued that the comma shouldn't be there between "unity of the faith and the knowledge". This is the NASB, most other translations dont have the comma which allows the sentence make sense in context. The only other version I'm familiar with that has the comma is KJV. The sentence and the context make no sense with the comma breaking up the thought. The NIV, ESV, ASV, YLT, and most others do not have this comma.

Eph 4:14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;"

We see in vs. 11-12 that God gave gifts to the church in apostles, pastors, teachers, and such. Their purpose is to equip the saints for service. This equipping is through teaching as vs. 13 will show, and that there is an end result desired vs.14.

The unity of the "faith" and of the knowledge of the Son of God produces a mature man--in the likeness of Christ. Faith is spirit, it is God dwelling in the truly regenerate. This is all it takes for one to be a saint, propositional head knowledge only adds to the ability of the saint to begin to live like a Christian is told to do. When the faith which is perfect is in agreement with the head, a Christian has unshakeable resolve. When faith is meshed with irrational propositional knowledge of Jesus, or incomplete knowledge of Jesus, resolve is weak.

Not just any propositional head knowledge will do, but knowledge of the Son of God. Knowledge that didn't make sense before being born again[acquiring faith=the spirit of God dwelling inside], now seems inescapably true. The heart of the saint and the head of the saint unified on one single truth produces a believer who's attained a maturity to live like Christ.

Is knowledge "ordinarily" necessary? Of course it is, it's God's way of sanctifying us and preparing us to live godly lives in service to Him out of gratitude. Faith[God's propositional knowledge inside, waiting for understanding] plus true knowledge about Jesus gives faith life in action. The spirit of God living inside a severly retarded person who cannot reason on an intellectual plane is just as saved as a true believer who's able to articulate the most nuanced biblical truths.

I hope the length of this doesn't hinder the point getting through.