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On Reasons and Believing the Christian Message Today
David Suryk [2/24/01, Final Version]
Presented to Visiting International Scholars at the University of Il inois (who were given
copies for discussion)
In this talk I investigate whether it's rational or reasonable to believe the Christian
message. Do we need evidence to believe? If not, why not? But if so, what counts as
evidence? Who decides? On what basis?
I want to address the subject of whether bright, thoughtful people--such as
people who teach and study in the universities of the world--people who do not yet
believe the Christian message--people such as these, do they have good reason to
believe? Hopeful y this talk wil help Christians better understand these issues as wel .
For thoughtful Christians, of course, the issue is should they believe what they have
believed?
Some of you here who are stil trying to figure out if you believe or not, have been
involved in Bible studies or Bible discussions for some time already. You wonder why
you should believe what you've been learning. You heard about the loving and holy
creator God of the Bible and his kingdom over al creation, and about human beings
that God created in his image and likeness for fel owship with himself and with one
another.
But then you heard about our human sinfulness and rebel ion against this God
which lead not only to separation from him and therefore spiritual death [a particularly
important kind of death] but also which lead to devastating effects on our relationships
with one another and with God's good creation.
You've heard too about God continuing to work in his creation to bring wayward
human beings into his kingdom or kingship, back under his loving rule so that one day
he wil redeem and renew al of his creation. In particular, you heard about God sending
his only Son Jesus whom, as it turns out, is unique in his being and thus uniquely
qualified to save sinful and rebel ious human beings--you and me included. For we learn
that Jesus is both ful y God and ful y human--yet without the sin and rebel ion that
plagues al of created humanity. [Hebrews 4.15] Jesus, we learn, always did what
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pleases his Father who sent him. [John 8.29] And what's more, to see Jesus is to see
God the Father. [John 14.9]
You also heard the Good Friday message, the news how Jesus Christ died on a
cross, taking on himself the penalty for the sin and rebel ion of the world; how Jesus,
the righteous Son of God, was made to be sin that we, who are sinful and rebel ious,
might in him become the righteousness of God. [See 2 Corinthians 5.21]
And you heard the Easter message, the good news that death couldn't keep Jesus
in the tomb but that Jesus was raised from the dead and that God the Father "exalted
him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the
name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue [whether it be Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, English, etc.] confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." [See Philippians 2.6-11]
Perhaps you also heard about God's purpose and goal in Jesus Christ to remake
human beings into his image and likeness once again [see e.g. Ephesians 4.22-24;
Colossians 3.10; Romans 8.29; and 2 Corinthians 5.17] so that we wil love God with
our whole heart, soul, mind and strength, and love other human beings [our neighbors]
as we love ourselves, and to once again care over God's creation as his representatives
on earth and not as exploiters of it. As God rescues us in Christ, so he sends us back
into his world that we should live for him. [See e.g. 2 Corinthians 5.15; cf. John 17.15-
19]
And final y, you've heard Jesus's words, "The time has come. The kingdom of God
is near. Repent and believe the good news." [Mark 1.14]
What's more you've met many graduate students and faculty members. Some of
these believe the Christian message and try to live as fol owers of Jesus Christ. You
may have heard them say how they became Christians, maybe what they were like
before, and how God has begun to change their lives in wonderful ways. Of course the
Christian message isn't necessarily true because their lives are changed, but these
Christians make the claim that it is God at work in their lives changing them.
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You may have noticed that some very bright and otherwise sensible men and
women take their faith in Christ seriously, not just in their personal lives but in how
they think about the subject matter of their studies. You may have encountered
thoughtful Christians and you wonder how it is that they came to believe.
Wel , you've learned much about the Christian message and you now wonder
whether it's al true. You wonder whether it's rational or reasonable to believe. You're
not alone in raising those very questions.
Perhaps you noticed in the Gospel accounts how people of al kinds and
temperaments and personalities encountered Jesus, how they saw his "miraculous
signs" and heard his words, and how they variously responded.
Some of these very people began fol owing Jesus and over the course of time
came to 'repent and believe' that Jesus was the One whom God had sent into the world
as the Christ, the anointed King, the One who would save the world. Although they
believed, they later came to better understand the One in whom they had put their
trust or faith, and their belief in him deepened and matured.
What's interesting in the gospel of John is that some people who came to believe
did so rather easily, while others came to believe only with great difficulty. Nathanael is
an example of the first kind of person. [See John 1.44-51] On his first encounter with
Jesus he came to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, the King of Israel. But Jesus
seemed to indicate that he believed too easily! Jesus said, "You believe because I told
you I saw you under the fig tree. You shal see great things than that." [John 1.50]
At the other end of the spectrum of belief we have Thomas. After the crucified
Jesus had been raised from the dead, and after hearing from others that the
resurrected Jesus had appeared to them, the disciple Thomas said, "Unless I see the
nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into
his side [where the spear was thrust in], I wil not believe it." [John 20.25] When Jesus
later appeared to Thomas himself, he said to him "Because you have seen me, you have
believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." [John 20.29] I
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see here a mild rebuke to Thomas that he should have believed a little sooner.
Repentance and belief seem to come to people in different ways and at different rates.
Other people, however--others who saw many of the same miraculous signs and
who heard many of the same words of Jesus--did not believe. Some fol owed for a
while but when Jesus's message became too hard for them to bear, we are told "many
of his disciples turned back and no longer fol owed him." [John 6.66] They found his
message appealing up to a point, but only up to a point. And if you look at the whole
of that passage in John 6, you wil see that at some point in their conversation with
Jesus they decided to fal back and rely on their own way of understanding God and his
purposes in the world. They then stopped fol owing Jesus.
Stil others--in particular the religious leaders of the day--sought to arrest Jesus
and have him put to death on the false charges that Jesus was a king in direct
chal enge to the kingship of Caesar, the Roman emperor. But we learn that the
religious leaders of the day, driven along by envy, fear and [therefore??] unbelief,
found Jesus and his message both unacceptable and dangerous [see e.g. John 11.45-
53].
Unacceptable because Jesus didn't fit their pre-conceived ideas of who and what
the Christ would be and do. Jesus didn't fit their conception of reality. Jesus was not
the Christ, the Messiah they wanted. And Jesus was dangerous because many of the
Jewish leaders had come to benefit from the uneasy relationship they had with their
Roman occupiers, and they didn't want to do anything that would cause the Romans to
decide to become even more harsh to the Jewish nation. And so the Jewish rulers had
Jesus kil ed.
Now back to you and me. Why should we 'repent and believe' the good news?
The 'good news' includes al that I've rehearsed above: the good news "that God was
reconciling the whole world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them."
[2 Corinthians 5.18-19] That's the good news we are cal ed to believe. The word
'repent' comes from the Greek word that means 'to change one's mind'. Jesus cal ed
his fel ow Jews to change their minds--about God and his purposes in the world, about
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their own relationship with him, and about Jesus and the demands of the kingdom of
God on them. He cal ed them to believe him--put their trust or faith in him as the One
they had been waiting for al along.
But that summons to repentance and faith was not just for the people of Jesus's
own race, the Hebrew people. And neither was it just for that time. We learn that the
summons to repent and believe is for al humanity. In Acts 17.29-31 the apostle Paul
says,
Therefore since we are God's offspring, we should not think that the divine being
is like gold or silver or stone--an image made by man's design and skil . In the
past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands al people everywhere
to repent. For he has set a day when he wil judge the world with justice by the
man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to al men by raising him from
the dead.
The apostle Paul was an extremely devoted Jew. According to his own admission
he was a Hebrew of Hebrews, very careful to keep the Jewish law, and was so zealous
that he believed it was God's wil to persecute the church, the fol owers of Jesus Christ.
[See Philippians 3.4-11] But Paul had an encounter with Jesus that turned his world
upside down. He came to believe that he was going in the wrong direction with his life.
And he came to believe that true life came only in Jesus Christ. This was no smal
change in his Jewish worldview! Paul had to rethink his entire world on many levels.
The first was that he now realized that in Jesus Christ he came to see who God was al
along. This point is crucial for our thinking here tonight.
Paul thought he knew who God was. God was Yahweh, the creator God who alone
was God; God was the God as revealed in the Old Testament, which was Paul's Bible.
But what Paul came to see was that he now had to rethink his understanding of God
through his new understanding of Jesus Christ. When Paul encountered Jesus he came
to realize that Jesus was al along the One whom God sent into the world as the Savior
of the world and as the King and Lord of al reality. [See e.g. Colossians 1] So when
Jesus told his disciples, "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" [John 14.9] he
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was saying that we are to give content to the concept "God" by seeing and knowing
Jesus.
The apostle Paul had preconceived notions about what God must be like. But he
now had made room for the reality that God had come in the person of Jesus Christ to
redeem the world. What he discovered to his shock and, later to his delight and joy,
was that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. The staunchly strict
monotheist Paul had a conversion experience where his world was now a different
place. He repented and believed the good news. And he came to believe that the
good news of the Jewish Messiah was good news for al the nations [= the
Gentiles/non-Israelites] as wel . That was a dramatic change for Paul and sent him off
in an entirely new direction in ministry. Instead of destroying the church, he believed
he was cal ed by God to start worshipping communities and to build up the church, the
people of God, and further to work for the faith of the Gentiles whom God also included
as his people! The story of the apostle Paul in the book of Acts is a marvelous story of
a man who was changed by God and who then helped change the world.
But I don't think any of us here tonight are Jews who share the Jewish worldview
that Paul held. I think al of us here are non-Israelites. Let's face it; we're al Gentiles!
For those of you who don't quite yet believe there is a being cal ed 'God', your
worldview is very different from Paul's worldview--both before he became a fol ower of
Jesus and afterwards. And the issue for you is why should you repent [have a change
of mind] and believe?
I think it's now time we did some religious epistemology. 'Epistemology' is just a
fun word that has to do with knowledge, what is or what counts as knowledge, or what
turns mere true belief into knowledge, and such related issues. One primary set of
issues in religious epistemology has to do with whether we have justification or warrant
to believe religious beliefs, and if so, to what extent. One reason why I spent so much
time unpacking the Christian message the way I did on the first few pages of this paper
is this. If a non-theist asks me why should she believe that God exists, I must first ask
her which 'god' she is talking about. There are very many gods I don't believe exist.
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Typical y in the philosophy of religion the debate turns on whether the god-of-the-
philosophers exists. This god-of-the-philosophers is typical y a being that is only faintly
recognizable as the biblical God. When the seventeenth century French philosopher
Blaise Pascal 'repented and believed the good news', he made a very startling
discovery. He wrote the fol owing that summed up his conversion: "God of Abraham,
God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and scholars, God of Jesus Christ, my
God and your God. Your God shal be my God." It was not a human conception of god
brought forth from the minds of the philosophers that is at issue, but rather a
particular God, with a particular character, with particular purposes, doing particular
things in human history, etc. whom Pascal had come to believe, and belief in whose
existence is at issue before us this evening.
Religious epistemology, as I said, has to do with the justification of religious belief.
It's reported that twentieth-century British philosopher Bertrand Russel , noted for his
outspoken atheism, was once asked the 'what if' question: What if you die and find that
there is a God, and he asks why you didn't believe, what wil you tel him? Russel
supposedly said, That's simple, not enough evidence! It seems to be about evidence
doesn't it.
Typical y the argument that belief in God is not reasonable or rational goes as
fol ows:
(1)
Person S is rational in believing the proposition "God exists" only if, and to
the extent that, S's belief is based upon strong evidence or good argument.
(2)
There is neither strong evidence nor good argument that God exists.
Therefore (by modus tol ens),
(3)
It is not the case that S is rational in believing the proposition "God exists".
This is known as the evidentialist chal enge. This argument is deductively valid: if the
premises are true, then the conclusion must be true as wel . As I used to tel my logic
students here at the U of I, we must next look at the premises of the argument to see
if we should believe them.
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Theists who see the evidentialist chal enge as legitimate, accept the chal enge.
That is, they accept Premise (1) but deny the truth of Premise (2), and in so doing,
deny the truth of the conclusion. What these theists do then is offer evidence that
they think is strong enough to support belief in the existence of God. Such arguments
might be the ontological argument, or the teleological argument, or the design
argument, or whatever, for the existence of God. But even if such arguments are
successful, they do not show that the particular God of the Bible exists. And
remember, it is this God we are interested in asking whether it is reasonable or rational
to believe in.
But why should we accept Premise (1)? Premise (1) has a long and cherished
tradition. The modern epistemological tradition stemming from Descartes [early
seventeenth century] identifies epistemic justification with having a reason, perhaps
even a conclusive reason for thinking that a belief is true. For those who are not
philosophers, by 'epistemic justification' al we mean is the justification of a belief or
something we say we know. Just as there is moral justification that seeks to justify
why some action or other is moral y permitted, there is also epistemic justification.
Wil iam Clifford [nineteenth century English philosopher and mathematician] so
believed in Premise (1) that he said the fol owing in a little essay entitled "The Ethics of
Belief": "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone to believe anything upon
insufficient evidence." In the same essay he went so far as to say that if one doesn't
have enough time to believe upon sufficient evidence, then one doesn't have enough
time to believe!
Let's work with premise (1) a bit. Premise (1) as you might guess is not meant to
apply just to religious beliefs; it is meant to apply to al beliefs. Wel , do you believe
Premise (1) is true? According to Premise (1), you should believe Premise (1) only if,
and to the extent that, your belief in Premise (1) is based upon strong evidence or
good argument.
What's interesting about Wil iam Clifford's belief in Premise (1) is that it's because
he thinks Premise (1) is a duty we have as rational thinkers in the real world. Why?
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Because beliefs have consequences. Philosopher Wil iam James thus finds Clifford's
affirmation of Premise (1) to be one of passion and not of reason!
What's wrong with Premise (1)? The way Premise (1) is supposed to work is that
you say you have a belief, B, which you assert, is true. According to Premise (1), B is
the conclusion of your argument that requires there to be premises that lead to B as
the conclusion.
I think there are at least these several problems with Premise (1). First, there are
those who do not believe in the existence of the biblical God yet who require the theist
to prove to them that God exists, or they can't believe--and, presumably, the theist
shouldn't believe either. Here the idea is that the theist must offer premises to the
conclusion that God exists. If they find the argument good, then, they say, they wil
believe. Otherwise they wil not believe. Typical y the standard is a very high standard
if not deductive validity with premises they think are true. The theist offers evidence
and the atheist knocks it down. The theist says, "Jesus's body wasn't in the tomb";
the atheist says, "It was stolen." The theist says "But lots people saw the resurrected
Jesus"; the atheist says, "They were hal ucinating"; and on and on it goes.
The problem here is that same requirement the atheist insists on for the theist
must apply to al their own beliefs, otherwise it is mere prejudice to say it must apply
only to theists's beliefs in God. What I've sometimes done in class with a student who
maintains the high requirement is to have him give me an argument that he exists. This
is how it always goes. Student: "Here I am sitting right in front of you!"; Me: "I could
be hal ucinating"; Student: "Wel , here's my birth certificate"; Me: "It could be a
forgery". You get the idea. If that high of a standard of proof is fair game for religious
belief, then perhaps it is so for al of one's beliefs, especial y the real y important
beliefs, such as that other people have minds, or that other people have dignity and
should be respected. And if Premise (1) is correct, we soon find that we are not
rational with very many of our beliefs which we think we are perfectly rational in
holding.
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A second problem with Premise (1) is that a vast number of our beliefs are not
formed the way Premise (1) seems to say they are. Take the fol owing belief and cal it
M (for 'me'): "You see me standing in front of you." I hope you believe M is true! My
guess is that not one of you holds M on the basis that Premise (1) says you must in
order for you to be rational in holding it. Do you think you are rational in believing M? I
think you are. What this il ustrates is that there are many beliefs that you hold without
strong evidence or good argument--and you are rational in holding those beliefs.
Another example: Do you believe that the world has existed for more than five
minutes? If you answer yes, then let's hear your argument if you are to be rational in
believing it! And it won't due to rely upon the fact that I too just happen to believe
this along with you. After al , your argument is aimed at the person who thinks the
universe sprang into being less than five minutes ago. This problem with Premise (1)
is, again, that we are rational in holding a whole bunch of very useful and important
beliefs which Premise (1) says we are not rational in holding.
A third problem with Premise (1) is what wil count as evidence or good reason?
Most people these days agree that one's theory or paradigm picks out say, x, as a fact
whereas y is not a fact. Facts do not come to us uninterpreted; they are not objective
in that sense. One of the ways this problem plays itself out with respect to religious
beliefs has to do with miracles. The atheist claims that miracles are not possible. The
theist says, "Why do you believe that?" The atheist offers arguments having to do
with the laws of nature, or that science has never established a miracle, or what we
don't understand we cannot cal it a miracle, but rather must seek a naturalistic
explanation. If you've ever watched TV's The X-Files and the interplay between FBI
agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scul y, then you've seen this played out between them
time and again. Mulder sees evidence of extra-terrestrial life, and Scul y just doesn't
draw that conclusion; she trusts that there is some other explanation. On and on it
goes through many of the episodes of the series.
But one way or another the issue with miracles is that the atheistic worldview
cannot admit a miracle by definition. You can never start with premises, one of which
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is that God does not exist and have as your conclusion that a miracle of God took
place. Perhaps you've al seen the cartoon of two scientists standing before a large
chalk board fil ed with equations except for a large gap in the argument. In that gap is
written, 'God did it'. The other scientist is not impressed with that reasoning.
A last problem with Premise (1) I'l mention is one that Christian philosopher Alvin
Plantinga at the University of Notre Dame offers. It's more technical so I've tried to
undermine your confidence in Premise (1) in other ways. Instead of accepting the
evidentialist chal enge, what Plantinga does is reject Premise (1). And he does so with
an argument that it is false. The details are complicated and would take us into too
much detail. To put his overal argument simply, Plantinga argues that Premise (1)
depends upon epistemological theories which are false! Having argued that Premise (1)
is false, Al Plantinga says that the evidentialist argument does not give us good reason
to believe the conclusion that it is not the case that S is rational in believing the
proposition "God exists".
What Plantinga and others [e.g. Wil iam Alston and Nicholas Wolstersdorff] do in
their religious epistemology is to argue that one does not need evidence that God
exists for the belief that he does to be rational. According to them, when a person is in
the right environment or under the right circumstances, and one's belief-forming
capacities are functioning properly for forming such a belief, and one does in fact form
the belief, say, that God loves her, then she need not believe it based on strong
evidence or good argument. Plantinga argues that one's belief in God is a properly
basic belief which does not need an argument to be rational y held.
I mention Plantinga because he is a first-rate, world-class philosopher who believes
in the biblical God and who is a fol ower of Jesus Christ. I have recently purchased but
have not yet begun to read his latest in his series of Oxford U. Press books on
epistemology. It's entitled, Warranted Christian Belief [2000]. At a mere 499 pages
with smal print, I heartily recommend it to you.
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At this point I want us to look deeper into the role of evidence, what counts as
evidence, and competing worldviews. I wil also mention something about burdens of
proof, and how and why to believe.
C. Stephen Evans is a Christian philosopher who has made the fol owing
observation. It's an extended quotation but I think it is wel -stated and wil be very
helpful to quote it at length.
People who think [that religious belief is presumed to be guilty until proven
innocent] imagine the religious situation to be something like the fol owing:
Suppose you are having an argument with someone over how many species of
animals there are. Both of you agree that there are many species--cats, dogs,
cows and so on. You, however, believe in one species of monsters residing in the
Loch Ness. Your opponent claims that the burden of proof is on you if you want
to believe in such monsters. Without strong positive evidence you would do
better to refrain from believing in the Loch Ness monster.
Perhaps in this situation the burden of proof would be on you to come up
with evidence for your belief. Perhaps if that evidence is less than conclusive it
would be wiser to suspend or withhold judgment. After al , we don't usual y
believe in monsters if we have no evidence of their reality. But believe in God is
not at al comparable to belief in such a monster.
One important difference is that the Loch Ness monster is merely "one more
thing." The two people who disagree about the monster agree about al the other
animals. God, however, is not merely "one more thing." The person who believes in
God and the person who does not believe in God do not merely disagree about
God. They disagree about the very character of the universe [emphasis his]. The
believer is convinced that each and every thing exists because of God and God's
creative activity. The unbeliever is convinced that natural objects exist "on their
own," without any ultimate reason or purpose for being. In this situation there are
no neutral "safe" facts al parties are agreed on, with one party believing some
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additional "risky facts." Rather, each side puts forward a certain set of facts and
denies its opponents' al eged facts. There is risk on both sides.
A second important difference between the case of God and the case of the
Loch Ness monster is that... religious beliefs imply something fundamental about
how life should be lived. Insofar as religious beliefs embody themselves in actions,
suspending judgment is not possible. Even if it were possible to suspend
judgment intel ectual y, it would by no means enable a person to avoid risk. It is
clear that the faith of the religious believer and the faith of the atheist are equal y
risky. It is hard to see why any special burden of proof fal s on the religious
believer. [From Why Believe? Reason and Mystery as Pointers to God (Eerdmans,
1996), pp. 21-22]
I appreciate what Stephen Evans says in this quote and find it very helpful for our
purposes here. What's at issue between those who believe in God and those who do
not believe in God is the issue of trying to decide which view of reality, which worldview
is correct. Worldviews are basic presuppositions through which and by which we view
the world; they are orientations of the heart. They are presuppositions about the
nature of ultimate reality, of human beings, of morality, etc. There is no neutral place
to stand in the universe where we can hold 'reality' in our left hand and hold, in turn,
each of the various worldview candidates in the right hand to see which worldview is
the correct one. If there were such a neutral place to stand, that, whatever it is we are
holding in our left hand, is not 'reality' but just one more view of reality. What we are
left with at the end of the day is the totality of human experience and us human beings
trying to make sense of those experiences including ourselves as wel . No one can
prove that a worldview is true. No one can prove presuppositions; they are by nature
something we come to believe but do not lend themselves to strict proof. The person
who accepts Premise (1) of the evidentialist chal enge is hard pressed to prove
whatever worldview she holds that wil meet the demands that Premise (1) seems to
require.
How then can we rational y support the Christian message or worldview?
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Contemporary British philosopher Basil Mitchel has written a wonderful and brief
book entitled, The Justification of Religious Belief [Oxford U. Press, 1981]. He argues
that when we are trying to support a worldview, we do so by means of a cumulative
case argument. We do not ignore evidence. Rather we seek to gather it and see what
makes better sense of it than any alternative. The difference a cumulative case
argument makes is that we are not trying to provide a proof that the Christian message
is true. Instead, we are trying to see if it seems to make the best sense of a variety of
evidence we have before us that might be clues to what reality is like.
What Mitchel does is show that this kind of reasoning-to-the-best-explanation is
rational, that it meets the needs of the kinds of issues that are involved in assessing
competing worldviews, and which is used in other realms of knowledge as wel . He
looks at literary critical theory and how debate goes on there. He looks at how
historians with rival conceptions of what has happened in history use cumulative case
arguments to make their own case. He shows how in the natural sciences where there
are competing or incommensurable frames of reference that scientists find themselves
believing a brand new paradigm. And they find themselves believing a new paradigm
not because it was proved to be true, but because they began to see things in a new
light--al things taken together, and thus cumulative.
So it is with an argument for the Christian message. Let me quote Mitchel and,
again, at length:
Prima facie [='on the face of it'] the elements of the theistic scheme [he means
the Christian message] do tend to reinforce one another in a way that is
recognizable both by theists and by their opponents. Thus, although the
cosmological and teleological arguments do not... prove that there must be a
transcendent creator of the world, they do make explicit one way (arguably the
best way) in which the existence and nature of the universe can be explained, if
indeed they can be explained at al . The atheist is entitled, as we saw, to deny
that the universe requires explanation, and so long as the matter is left there, the
theist's far-ranging claims can rest on nothing more than the abstract
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consideration that explanation is to be sought wherever possible. But when there
is brought into the reckoning the claim of some men to be aware of the presence
of God, and of others to have witnessed the action of God in the world or to have
been addressed by him, the case is altered. These claims cannot simply be
dismissed without reason given. It is true that the sense of the presence of God
(for example) involves an element of interpretation and can consistently be
interpreted otherwise by the atheist. Nevertheless it can reasonably be demanded
of any interpretation that it deal adequately with the phenomenon in its ful est
and most impressive forms, in which it has been so strong and so pervasive of a
man's entire life that he himself, at least, could scarcely doubt the reality of his
encounter with God. How others should judge it might properly depend on its
effects on the individual's life. If, as tends to happen, it informs a character of
unusual charity and strength, or effects a transformation into such a character, it
becomes correspondingly hard even for the uncommitted to withhold the name of
saint. The word can be used, as it were in inverted commas, in such a way as to
admit the presence of certain rare qualities while denying the man's own ascription
of them to the grace of God. But to use it in this way, notwithstanding the
individual's own testimony, requires some justification, which would have to be in
terms of some non-theistic worldview, for which conspicuous sanctity must
inevitably pose a problem, associated as it is, on such a view, with manifest
error... To the extent that we are satisfied by such tests as these [e.g. the
person's general truthfulness, observed changes in the person's life which he says
is from God, etc.] we are the more inclined to trust his testimony; but his
testimony makes its own independent contribution to our final judgment.
Again, the theist maintains, if there were a God who had created the universe
in which there could develop rational beings capable of responding to him and to
one another with love and understanding, it is to be anticipated that he would in
some way communicate with them. The existence, then, of what purport to be
such 'revelations' is something which tends to support the belief in a God who has
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in these ways revealed himself; although here too the support would be weakened
if the historical and other evidence appealed to were to be seriously impugned, or
if the concept of revelation were to run into intractable philosophical difficulties.
That there is a variety of claims to be the revealed truth about God does not in
itself show that none of the claims can be justified. We need to ask of each of
them what sort of sense they make of human experience and of one another. It is
also relevant to ask of each of them whether some other interpretation, more
satisfactory than is provided in its own terms, is available to explain its
occurrence, its character and its effects. [Mitchel , pp. 40-43]
What Mitchel is doing in the quotation above is showing how to think about the
various pieces of evidence that theists have for why they think the Christian message is
true. It's being sensitive that no one piece of evidence is conclusive. It's being
sensitive that people with an opposing worldview might see things differently, but how
a theist might help her opponent 'seeing things' from her perspective. It's also being
sensitive to a whole range of data or evidence in the human experience.
The things that theists typical y point to are not only the fact and orderliness of
the universe, and the claims of some men and women that their lives have been
changed by God. Other things that Christians insist are relevant to their belief include
the apparent moral order or sense of 'ought' that we feel; the mystery of persons
including how consciousness [whatever that turns out to be] arose in us and why we
hunger for greater meaning and purpose in life and how such purpose gives guidance to
our lives; the purported miracles both mentioned in the Bible but also as witnessed by
some people to have incurred in their lives or in the lives of their loved ones; the origin
and character of the Christian church [with al it's obvious faults!]; and Jesus himself,
his life, teachings, and resurrection from the dead. If Jesus is indeed raised from the
dead--and I think a good cumulative case can be made that he did--then this too is
something worth investigating with an open mind and an open heart.
I say with an open mind because unless we are wil ing to relinquish the impossible
and hypocritical demand for a proof for the truth of a worldview before you believe,
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you wil never reach outside the box of your own worldview to see the possibility that
the Christian faith may just be the way the world is.
I also say you must investigate with an open heart because of something Jesus
once said to the Jews who initial y believed but who would later stop fol owing. "If you
hold to my teaching, you are real y my disciples. Then you wil know the truth, and the
truth wil set you free." [John 8.31-32] There is a moral dimension to 'knowing' in the
Bible. To those who seek after the truth, and who begin to put into practice Jesus's
teachings, they often find themselves having a change of mind [repenting] and
believing the good news.
I'l close by mentioning Alvin Plantinga's position again. What I appreciate about
his position--I hope to one day work through his latest book--is that he reasons that if
the Christian message is true, then God has created human beings in his image and
likeness in such a way that we are capable of knowing him by giving us belief-forming
capacities, placing us in a good world where we can come to know him and fol ow him
as he intended al along, and where mil ions upon mil ions of people of al nationalities
and levels of income and intel igence have formed the belief that the biblical God not
only exists, but has come in the person of Jesus Christ to be the Savior and Lord of the
world.
Remember Nathanael whom I mentioned earlier. In the first chapter of John's
gospel we read,
Finding Philip, he [Jesus] said to him, 'Fol ow me.'...
Philip found Nathanael and told him, 'We have found the One Moses wrote
about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote--Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Joseph'.
'Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?' Nathanael asked.
'Come and see,' said Philip." [John 1.43-46]
I think the best reason for believing the Christian message is indeed Jesus Christ
himself. If you 'come and see', and you find yourself 'repenting and believing', though
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some people might think you are foolish indeed, you are perfectly reasonable to
believe. And you join what I think is a good company of fel ow believers.
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