Jared- I've thought extensively about my reason for faith these last few days. Last summer I told Susan I believed in the triune God because of little miracles in my own life. This remains one of the reasons yet it is terribly complex. I have a host of reasons for believing and a host of reasons for doubting, so I do some of both. I don't see any reason why it should continue this way. I guess I think faith is "beyond reason, never contrary to it." Fundamentally I believe the complexity of this world and of each human points to a creator (who may well have worked by means of evolution). The more I've learned about the world's complexity; space-time, up quarks, down quarks, despair, joy, repentance; the more I'm convinced that there is an infinite source to our temporal nature. If one peers deeply into a well he will see the stars.

It's a constant challenge to not take my inherited faith for granted, much as it must be to appropriate an inherited skepticism. It there is a God it seems intuitive that he is greater in every aspect than his creation. So I believe God is moral, rational, emotional, and spiritual. Jesus, who was a historical figure, was a Jewish apocalyptic prophet proclaiming a kingdom of God. His moral teachings in the Gospels (particularly the Sermon on the Mount) have led me to the few blessed moments of my life.

The scholarship of grammar, archaeology and the rest of science’s tools have not discredited the Jewish and Christian canons, which is all science can do. I’m about to start reading the writings of N.T. Wright, a universally respected Anglican, that endeavor to prove this in the face of contemporary objections. The authority of these writings comes from their authors. In the Old Testament the writers were men who boldly and accurately prophesied and were later trusted by Jesus, in the New, those who directly knew and were commissioned by the historical Jesus. In a word, proper Christianity is rational and there are rational people who believe.

As I implied, I think reason is a sort of Virgil who can take us to heaven’s gate but not through it.
In this I cite the Apostle Paul who wrote to the church at Collosae, “My purpose is that they may be u encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.
I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments…See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. For in Christ lives all the fullness of the Deity, and you have been given fullness in Christ.�

Kierkegaard, in all his rational self-contradiction, points out the absurdity of philosophy’s and science’s ambition to contain the whole truth. It seems eminently rational to me that something as great as the truth can be contained only in a divine man seeming full of contradictions. How could truth be contained in anything less than a man who was God? It is by encountering him that any person of any intelligence can know the Truth and be set free. Equal access.

Frankly, there are moments when I doubt all this. Confronting doubts and looking more deeply has made the stars shine more brightly. Sorry for the long (hopefully not too preachy) posts.

posted by Matthew Schmitz   [8:24 PM]

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