It may be said that a man who loaned $5000 to an old friend did so in “good faith” or that he ventured into business with his younger brother in whom “he had faith.” Both occurrences imply one thing: that the man had reason to place his faith in his brother or his friend. Sure, the reasons may or may not be sound, but one thing you could not readily say – at least, not just on the bare outlines that I’ve given here – is that the man acted purely on “blind faith.” Why is it, then, that when that man’s faith is in his belief in God that the world goes stir-crazy? Suddenly, the man is held to have no rationale for his belief; his faith in a deity borders on the absurd. Therefore, in the common vernacular, such a man’s faith is his folly, not the act of a thinking mind.

Hence, faith is the new f-bomb.

Culturally, faith is broadly understood as something to be ridiculed, to be discounted and pushed aside merely as one’s personal belief (such is a common usage amongst Christians in today’s churches) or one’s personal delusion (such is the charge of most skeptics). But both the Christian and the skeptic, should they hold that faith is nothing more than fanciful thinking or a clinging to something without sound reason, overlook not only the historical founding of Christianity but also the texts of the Bible itself. Both should take a closer look – the skeptic in order to be more intellectually honest in his objections to Christianity; the Christian in order that he may more fully appreciate and affirm the strengths of what he believes in.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus quotes from the Book of Deuteronomy, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This, Jesus says, is the greatest commandment (Matt 22:37, 38). God, therefore, desires our every fibre of being to be in an act of worship to Him – what an insult against God it is, then, to leave one’s “brains checked-in at the door” when Jesus Christ himself reinforces the notion that our minds – as well as our hearts and souls – are to be engaged in worship also. The Apostle Paul appeals that his faith is based on knowledge (2Tim 1:12) and also encourages us to test everything and to hold fast to what is good (1Th 5:21). The physician and historian Luke, in his gospel, notes that he himself had critically examined the testimony of eye-witnesses on which he wrote his account, speaking of a certainty of events (Luke 1:1-4). None of these men had “blind faith” – even if you don’t believe that their reasons are sound, they cannot be charged with a faith that is devoid of rationale.

Unwittingly, however, this is precisely what today’s New Atheists[1] trumpet from their well manicured positions within society. Writing in Eternity magazine, Greg Clarke, co-founder and director of the Centre for Public Christianity notes that Sam Harris labels faith as “unjustified belief”, AC Grayling calls “a commitment to belief contrary to evidence and reason” and that Richard Dawkins describes faith as “blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.” Mr Clarke then writes:

As a Christian, I don’t recognise any of these definitions … Faith for Christians is a response to experience (seeing, hearing, feeling) and to knowledge (i.e. thinking, reasoning). This fits remarkably well with contemporary theories of epistemology, whereby it is widely acknowledged that beliefs are formed not merely by abstract reasoning, but by a complex amalgam of these things. As philosopher Alvin Plantinga describes it, ‘This is no leap in the dark, not merely because the person with faith is wholly convinced but also because, as a matter of fact, the belief in question meets the conditions for rationality and warrant’.[2]

I am reminded of an explanation of what faith is by Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft. Dr Kreeft illustrates faith as a process of reasoning, so that the object being believed is reasonably the most probable outcome based on our knowledge, experiences and logic. To paraphrase Dr Kreeft, I’ll recount (to the best of my memory) the example he used: Say I was addressing a crowd and I reached into my pocket and pulled out an object that could be held and obscured in a clenched fist. If the question was then asked as to what it was that was being held in my hand, one’s mind would begin cycling through the possibilities. Certainly, any number of objects thus small as to be obscured in a clenched fist could be the answer but using our own experiences we can limit the possibilities significantly. What do we carry around in our pockets from time to time? What do others? A USB stick? A coin? A key? The mind is engaged as we search for possibilities: it is foolish to simply assert that the object being held is a penny without pondering if that is a wise decision – even if the assertion were correct, it remains an example of blind faith, transgressing the greatest commandment (Deut 6:5). No – we are to study, investigate, reason and then conclude. This was the journey that Josh McDowell embarked on. In his book, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, he writes:

I am not saying that I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the Son of God. What I did was to investigate the evidence and weigh the pros and cons. The results showed that Christ must be who He claimed to be, and I had to make a decision, which I did. The immediate reaction of many is, ‘You found what you wanted to find.’ This is not the case. I confirmed through investigation what I wanted to refute. I set out to disprove Christianity. I had biases and prejudices not for Christ but contrary to Him.

Hume would say historical evidence is invalid because one cannot establish ‘absolute truth.’ I was not looking for absolute truth but rather for ‘historical probability.’[3]

Thus, the purpose of faith is not to know something with absolute certainty, but to draw conclusions as to what is most probable. The word “faith” then, within the Christian biblical context and understood properly within such a framework, in reality translates as “trust.” We trust what we find credible; we trust those things in which there is reason for. Much like the man I wrote of at the beginning of my article, him loaning out $5000 to an old friend may well be done in “good faith” based on the fact that his friend has given him security or has a record of faithfully repaying loans; he may venture into business with his younger brother in whom he “had faith” because of the fact that his brother has prior successes in business. May his friend never repay him his money or could his brother crash the business and leave him with the debt? Sure. But this is not to say that he had blind faith.

To contrary, such a man holds a faith that mirrors the description of biblical faith, one that “is the assurance of things hoped for [and] the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1).

Christianity is likewise a due-diligence, historically based faith – something our New Atheists would heed well to acknowledge, For Faith’s Sake.

Notes:
[1] The term “New Atheist” has always made me wonder what exactly was wrong with the “old” atheists? Will the next generation of atheists be the “new and improved” versions of the current? Yes – I say this with tongue-in-cheek, but it’s no more so than what these self-professed new atheists do to describe themselves. The “Brights” anyone?

[2] Dr Greg Clarke, “The new f-word”, Eternity, Issue 7 June 2010, p. 12

[3]Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, Here’s Life Publishers, 1999, p. xxxiii. Emphasis in the original

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