Faith as The Mode for Knowledge

…but the righteous shall live by faith. –Hab. 2:4

I graduated from Seattle Pacific University just over a year and a half ago with a Bachelors degree in Philosophy. One thing I learned in the Philosophy program was how to develop an argument. I learned how to respond to those with whom I was arguing and how to win, either by pointing out faults in their arguments, or crafting better arguments myself.

This was an invaluable education and I have profited greatly from it, but I learned another lesson from this experience as well. As a Christian, I hold the unpopular view that Christianity is the only true religious system and that hell is real and lasts forever and all humans are going there unless they accept Jesus Christ as Lord of their lives and receive the benefits of His death, burial, and resurrection. As a Calvinist, I hold the unpopular and controversial view that God is in sovereign control of the entire course of history. These two views together account for many of the philosophical arguments I have engaged in over the past few years.

The lesson I have learned over the years is this: no matter how great the argument, no one is going to be convinced that God exists or that He is sovereign over every detail of history. There is simply no argument known to man that will convince anyone of these two truths. Yet the paradox is that they are true and must be known.

So, if two of the greatest truth’s of life are unavailable via argumentation, yet everyone needs to know them, how can anyone learn them?

The answer is faith! “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Cor. 1:20-21).   

The great truth’s of life are only accessible by faith, which is God’s gift to His people. One cannot know or accept His Providence except by faith. I know this on a personal level. I have not always held so strictly to the Reformed view of Providence and, when approached for the first time with the doctrine, violently rejected it. Yet the Lord did work in my own heart to convince me of the truthfulness of the doctrine both by the testimony of the Scriptures and of the Holy Spirit working in my own heart.

Though these truths are only available through the discernment of faith, they are not devoid of logic and reason. Indeed, I do believe that as one is revealed these truths, the reasonableness of them becomes apparent for the first time and they do seem far more reasonable than the other options.

Philosophically, the position described above is referred to as fideism, fide being the Latin word for faith. It is not a blind leap, as many would argue. Rather, in my own experience I see it as a longer process whereby God, in His patience, has borne with my weakness and led me to the truth after a while of questioning. This seem to be the normal mode, though there are many cases where, in an instant, God has revealed the great truth’s of the Gospel to a person in a moment.  This whole process is a wonderful display of God’s condescending to humanity to reveal Himself, the Creator and Sustainer of all. 

The Good Fight

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

-1 Tim. 6:12

Growing up, I always thought that fighting the fight of the faith meant to white knuckle my way through temptation and try really hard to do good things. Recently, however, I am learning that the fight of the faith is not a fight for a morally better life; Christ has achieved the morally best life for us because we couldn’t. The fight, then, is for Christ.

Every battle has an antagonist and a cause. We fight against the antagonists and for the cause. In the faith, we fight every moment of every day against unbelief and we fight for Christ.

This formulation has always sounded vague and “churchy” to me, offering little practical help for the day-to-day life of the Christian. Yet I have been learning how essential this battle is. Every day I must fight against the unbelief, apathy and lethargy in my own heart, the hardness towards God that exists there, living a life of constant repentance.

The curious thing about all of this is that the strength and the desire to fight do not lie in me; they flow as gifts from God. He gives me the desire to fight and the strength to do so. The great preacher, John Piper, put this well in his sermon “Going Hard After the Glory of God” where he says, “The evidence that you have [God] is that you want more of him. Continued indifference to growth in grace is a sign of no grace.”

As I have been learning this lesson, about the importance of the Good Fight, I have also been learning how hard it actually is. This is not a one-time deal! We do not fight one battle and then rest for the remainder of our lives. The battle is not at our conversion, but every day after. Every day I have to wake up and seek God through prayer and the Scriptures, asking Him to draw me closer to Christ and to see His goodness.

Though hard, this fight is essential. We have all been made in God’s image and we have been made to be in relationship with Him. When we do not seek Him we are actually rebelling against our design. When we do seek Him we are living the way we were meant to live and will live lives that are more fulfilled; our lives will not necessarily be easier as a result, they will actually get harder. We will have to make hard decisions as we refuse to follow the world, to give into temptation, and to listen to Satan. In fact, it will be a battle every moment of every day. But we have a Savior who gives us strength and fights for us.   

I have learned a large part about fighting from The Memoirs of Thomas Boston, the reflections of a 17^th Century Scottish Presbyterian minister. Every page of his life is filled with the evidences of this battle. On a side note, this is why the practice of reading biographies of great Christians is so important. Through the testament of their lives they show us how the Truth of Scripture is lived our in every day life. Let us, then, surround ourselves with many seasoned veterans in this Good Fight as we push forward by God’s grace.

Two Men, Two Heads

For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. –Rom. 5:17

I have been thinking about headship a lot lately. Not in the sense of male headship and the relationship between men and women. No, I have been thinking about original sin and new birth.

In Genesis, Adam is responsible for the fall of mankind. He is, in a word, the representative of mankind. In my mind I imagine a triangle, at the top is Adam and the volume proceeding from him to form the rest of the triangle is the mass of humanity. All of humanity, every single person, is counted as being in Adam; this is the doctrine of original sin.

As the representative of humanity, when Adam sinned, the rest of humanity was considered to have joined in that sin, thus we are all guilty of original sin and death rules over us, since the wages of sin is death.

This is a hard concept to grasp. Consider this, when President Bush declared war on Iraq, or when Congress declared war on Iraq, America declared war on Iraq. It was not these few men themselves declaring war on a nation, but an entire nation declaring war on a nation.

In the same way, Adam stands as a representative for the entire human race, much like a king or a president or an emperor. In effect, what he did was declare war on God. Sin is an act of rebellion against God who has created all that exists, who loves His creation, who is almighty. In effect Adam, through his actions decided that he no longer wanted to be governed by God, but wanted to govern his own life.

We see this same characteristic in our own hearts; at least I know I do. So often I want what I think is best rather than trusting that what God has given me is the best. I am not innocent in this; we are not innocent in this. Our sinfulness is almost like a gene that we inherited from Adam that we still bear full responsibility for. We have all declared war on God and must now surrender.

So far the picture is bleak, but the Good News is this: Jesus Christ is the new Head! Just like Adam represented humanity, those who were born into his lineage; so too Christ represents those who are born into His lineage: Christians. This is not a physical birth, but a spiritual birth. In Adam we are dead to God but alive to sin, when we accept Christ and put our faith in Him as our Savior, our old self is put to death on the Cross with Christ and we are resurrected like Christ so that, in a very real but a very mysterious sense we no longer live, but Christ lives within us.

There are also practical implications to this doctrine, it is a key argument against those who say that everyone goes to heaven. They would argue that, if Adam is the old head and Christ the new, then all those who were under Adam would come under the headship of Christ, but that is simply not the case. Adam is head over those who proceed from his lineage, that is, natural man born naturally. Christ is the Head over those who proceed from His lineage, spiritual man born spiritually. One must be born again to have Christ as Head and receive the benefits thereof.