Epistemology or Methodological Amnesia?

In today’s post, we begin with a quote from Christian apologist John M. Frame:

Scripture actually has a great deal to say about epistemology, or theory of knowledge. It teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 9:10; 15:33) and of knowledge (Prov. 1:7). “Fear” here is that reverent awe that yields obedience. It is based on the conviction that God is Lord, and we are his creatures and servants. He has the right to rule every aspect of our lives. When he speaks, we are to hear with the profoundest respect. What he says is more important than any other words we may hear. Indeed, his words judge all the affairs of human beings (John 12:48). The truth of his words, then, must be our most fundamental conviction, our most basic commitment. We may also describe that commitment as our most ultimate presupposition, for we bring that commitment into all our thought, seeking to bring all our ideas in conformity to it. That presupposition is therefore our ultimate criterion of truth. We measure and evaluate all other sources of knowledge by it. We bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). (Five Views on Apologetics, pp. 208-9)

Frame assures his readers that the Christian bible (“Scripture”) “has a great deal to say about epistemology,” and immediately cites several passages from Proverbs and the Psalms.

"He walked among us"

I recently had a discussion with an acquaintance of mine about beliefs, worldviews, religious assumptions, the whole shebang. It was a fascinating conversation, and frankly I wish I had a recording of the whole thing. A number of topics came up and I both listened and provided some of my own points. This person, whom I’ll call Bill, identifies himself as a Christian and has, from what I could gather, at the very least dabbled in apologetics. So while it was not a full-blown debate, we did enjoy an engaging discussion and I hope to pick it up again sometime.

One of the points I did emphasize, as in my writings, was the believer’s need to rely on imagination as a substitute for knowledge acquired and validated by means of reason in order to be a faithful believer. It was clear from context that when I spoke of the role of imagination in religious belief and when Bill spoke of faith, we were essentially talking about the same thing. It’s as though this natural correspondence between the two had an irresistible centrifugal force of its own.

The Metaphysics of Wishing

If religious apologists deny that their worldview finds its basis in the metaphysics of wishing makes it so, it is incumbent upon them to articulate what a worldview that is based on the metaphysics of wishing would look like and how their religious beliefs can be reliably differentiated from such a worldview.

This would be particularly difficult (I would say impossible) for those who believe that a supernatural consciousness created the universe by an act of consciousness –  an entity available to us only by means of imagination which essentially wished the universe into being. 

Faith and Imagining

One of the more prickly topics in debates between Christians and their critics, at least in my experience, is the issue of faith – what it means, how it works, what it does. Apologists will scold non-believers for misunderstanding the meaning and nature of faith, presumably contorting it intentionally to malign it. Then again, biblical and apologetic sources are not only unhelpful, but in fact contribute to the fog which perpetually shrouds the topic of faith in obscurity and haziness. It’s no wonder that apologists typically don’t raise the issue of faith in their dialogues with non-Christians. 

More on Hearing Voices in His Head

In this post, I pick up from my previous entry and explore Anderson’s appraisal of the objections that he considers in response to apologetic appeals to “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit.”

Before doing so, it may not be necessary to point this out, but I will in case it slips anyone’s mind, namely that appeals to “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” as Christianity informs this notion logically assume the existence of the Christian god. So if this assumption is disputed, then appeals to the “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” are premature at best. At any rate, it is viciously circular to appeal to “the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit” in an attempt to validate the claim that a god exists in the first place, for such an appeal assumes what’s needed to be validated in the first place. And as I have pointed out numerous times in the past, we have no alternative but to imagine any god one claims to believe in.

Even when it comes to apologetic arguments, we have no alternative but to imagine the god whose existence those arguments are intended to prove when we come to their conclusions.

For example, consider the following argument:

Premise 1: If the universe was created, then God must exist in order to have created it.  

Premise 2: The universe was created.  

Conclusion: Therefore, God must exist in order to have created it.

Here it should be clear that, even if we accept the premises that the universe was created and that a god must have created it, we have no alternative but to imagine said god when we arrive at this argument’s conclusion. The same problem afflicts all apologetic arguments, thus serving as a great equalizer of sorts in leveling all apologetic arguments to useless rubble.

So if apologists cannot overcome weaknesses such as this, then I submit that there’s no hope for any defensive artifice they may attempt to erect on behalf of their religious beliefs. This does not bode well for Anderson’s defense of the notion of enjoying “internal testimony of the Holy Spirit,” for while I can in fact imagine that Anderson’s god exists and that he has in fact received revelatory transmissions from that god, I am nevertheless acutely aware of the facts that I am merely imagining these things and that I have no alternative to doing so if I am to contemplate his god-belief claims.

Theism and Thumb-sucking

Steve Hays of Triablogue is fond of trying to turn secular criticisms of religion back on themselves. In the case of poorly considered criticisms, this can certainly be effective against the criticisms in question, or some questionable premise upon which they may rest. Of course, to suppose further that this somehow implies that any particular secular worldview is therefore invalid or untrue, or that religion is beyond criticism, is simply wishful thinking masquerading as a lofty conclusion. It is also amusing when such efforts backfire (e.g., see here).

In an entry posted in late November this year titled Outgrowing God, Hays tackles the view that theistic beliefs are a childish indulgence and therefore should be abandoned as one matures along with other childish occupations, such as bed-wetting, thumb-sucking, sulking when one does not get his way, pretending that Middle Earth really exists, etc.

"I'll pray for you"

It’s not unusual for defenders of the Christian worldview to close a conversation with non-believers with the words, “I’ll pray for you.” I’ve heard this many times, and I’ve also seen it written in correspondence many times. Quite often this final adieu comes out as a last gasp signaling, not so much a defeat as surrender or even a sign of intellectual resignation, as if the believer had come to a dead end in his thinking. It may be nothing more than code for, “I don’t know what else to say,” which would embody a kernel of honesty.

At the same time, the believer parting with these words from a conversation which has proven evangelistically futile, may just be trying to get under the non-believer’s skin in an effort to rankle his nerves and drive home the point that, as a non-believer, he doesn’t have recourse to supernatural power, while presumably the believer does.

Walking on Water vs. Reality

A famous passage in the gospel of Matthew goes as follows:

And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away. And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God. (Matthew 14:22-33)

A number of issues could be raised in response to this passage.

The Hideous Rigors of Christian Salvation Doubt

Apologists routinely present their religious faith as though they were as certain of its alleged truth as rock is hard. In fact, the bible even likens faith to rock. But even the biblical imagery is at odds with itself: faith as solid as a rock is a virtue, but a heart of stone signifies vice; and yet a heart of flesh is the mark of piety and righteousness, but at the same time the flesh is spiritually weak and sinful.

But going by the bravado which apologists present in their debate performances and the tone of unflinching certainty they never fail to project in their writings, one might never suspect that, in the private corners of their minds, they are in fact shivering frenetically in a chilly, endless winter of persisting doubt. The tough exterior of certitude and sureness might in fact be nothing more than a tenuously thin shell concealing a frightened hollowness that is all that is left behind once the Christian devotional program has done its task in getting the believer to reject himself, surrender his virtue, and eviscerate his own character.

Craig’s Eight Arguments for God, Part VIII: “The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists”

We now come to William Lane Craig’s seventh argument. This comes from his set of arguments which were published in the Nov/Dec 2013 issue of Philosophy Now (as opposed to some other time). I have already examined the previous six arguments which Craig published along with the one we’ll be looking at presently. The blog entries in which I interact with those previous six arguments can be found here:

Part I: Introduction 

Part II: “God is the best explanation why anything at all exists”  

Part III: “God is the best explanation for the origin of the universe” 

Part IV: “God is the best explanation of the applicability of mathematics to the physical world”  

Part V: “God is the best explanation of the fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life”  

Part VI: “God is the best explanation of intentional states of consciousness” 

Part VII: “God is the best explanation of objective moral values and duties”

In his seventh argument, Craig seeks to defend the claim that “The very possibility of God’s existence implies that God exists.” Now as absurd as this sounds, Craig is apparently wholly serious (after all, he’s got a reputation to keep as well as an audience to entertain), and he does put forward a case of sorts on its behalf.

My examinations of Craig’s previous six arguments have not gone well for him at all. Will Craig finally score a point with his present case? Let’s dive in and find out.

I Reject Christianity Because It’s Not True, Part III

This is the third of four installments that I am posting in response to comments made by James Anderson’s reactions in response to “four common objections” to Christianity that can be found in the Gospel Coalition’s article I Reject Christianity Because _______________. (The two previous installments can be found here: Part I and Part II.)

The third common objection to Christianity found in that article has to do with the resurrection of Jesus and is presented in the form of a question:

On what basis do you believe Jesus actually—physically—rose from the dead (besides blind faith, of course)?

Anderson responds:

I have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, but it isn't a blind faith, because there's good reason to believe he did.

At least Anderson does not say “on the basis of assuming that Jesus really did rise physically from the dead.” But what he does offer is not much better than this. Rather, the impression seems to be that Anderson (like so many Christians) accepts the gospel story first and then seeks for some way to rationalize that acceptance by coming up with “reasons” which are typically not at all persuasive, but which people who have already accepted the belief claim in question would already find acceptable.

A Reply to Matthias on Subjectivism and the Believer

This is the sixth and final installment in my interaction with a comment which Matthias McMahon of Choosing Hats posted on my blog Confessions of a Vantillian Subjectivist. In this entry, I explore the question of how subjectivism may express itself in the believer’s worldview affirmations. My original blog entry explains how subjectivism in metaphysics is indispensable to the Christian worldview: it affirms the existence of a conscious subject which creates its own objects, zaps physical things into being, alters their identity, controls their actions, etc., all by an act of will. Thus in terms of the subject-object relationship according to such teachings, the subject of consciousness holds metaphysical primacy over its objects. In previous interactions with Matthias’ comment in this series of blog entries, I have explored this matter further and cited additional evidence to confirm this observation of Christian metaphysics.

Of course, subjectivism in metaphysics leads to subjectivism in epistemology. Man’s knowledge needs a source of inputs informing it. How does he acquire these inputs? The objective approach is the epistemological model by which man looks outward at the facts of reality which exist and are what they are independent of his conscious activity. The task of consciousness in this case is to perceive, identify and integrate the facts he discovers by looking outward. This approach is called objective because it rests explicitly on and is guided by the recognition that the objects of consciousness exist and are what they are independent of conscious activity. In terms of the subject-object relationship, then, the objects of consciousness hold metaphysical primacy.

But, as has been indicated so far, and as we shall see confirmed below, the believer does not acquire input for his god-beliefs by looking outward at the world. When we look outward at the world, we do not find any gods or consciousnesses which can zap physical things into existence or alter the identity of objects by an act of will. On the contrary, to find these things, the believer must look inward, consulting the contents of his imagination, his preferences, his wishing, his emotions, etc., and calling it “revelation.” In such a way we find that subjectivism in metaphysics necessitates subjectivism in epistemology.

Below I will explore how subjectivism can manifest itself in the believer’s worldview claims, survey various expressions of subjectivism, and highlight examples from the Christian bible which both model and encourage subjectivism in the believer’s own interaction with reality.

A Reply to Matthias on "Analogous Knowledge"

I continue now with my reply to Matthias McMahon. In the present installment, I explore some of the premises and implications of the Christian view that man’s knowledge is somehow “analogous” to the “knowledge” which the Christian god is said to have. Drawing on some points which I have made in previous responses to Matthias (see here and here for example), I focus on two major areas: namely the issue of metaphysical primacy (i.e., as it pertains to the relationship between the subject of consciousness and its objects) and the nature of conceptual identification.

In my blog Confessions of a Vantillian Subjectivst, I noted that “there are fundamental qualitative differences between man’s knowledge and the Christian god’s so-called ‘knowledge,’” focusing on the antithetical nature of their respective subject-object relationships (namely the primacy of existence in the case of man, and the primacy of consciousness in the case of the Christian god, given Christianity’s descriptions of it).

In essence, I argued that

(a) since man is neither omniscient nor infallible, he needs a means of gathering and validating his knowledge, and since the objects of his knowledge are not creations of his conscious activity or conform to his conscious intensions, he need to look outward at the world to acquire knowledge of these objects, which means that the method by which he acquires and validates his knowledge must be objective in nature (e.g., not based on his emotions, preferences, likes or dislikes, wishes, commands, imagination, dreams, etc.), and 

(b) since the Christian god is supposed to be both omniscient and infallible, it would not need any means of gathering and validating knowledge, and since the objects of its “knowledge” are supposed to be creations of its conscious activity and conform to its conscious intensions, it would not need to look outward for the content of its “knowledge”

there is therefore no analogous relationship between human knowers and the objects of their knowledge of them on the one hand, and the Christian god and the objects of its “knowledge” of them.

Reason vs. Faith

A favorite question which many Christian apologists like to pose to atheists is “How do you know?” When challenged by such apologists to identify any item of knowledge that the atheist knows with certainty, an atheist might say something such as “I know that the sky is blue,” “I know that turtles are reptiles,” or “I know that I got up this morning and had breakfast.” And as though the apologist really had no way of dealing with an atheist who does have full confidence in at least some items of his knowledge, the apologist retorts as if by trained reflex: “How do you know that?”

Now, we should understand that the apologist’s line of interrogation here is not motivated by some deep love of knowledge and how the mind works. Quite the opposite is the case: the apologist is on a mission to undermine any non-believer’s confidence in his own mental faculties. Such simple questions are thus intended to accomplish three things:

Hodge's Hedgings

In the comments section of my blog Presuppositionalist Pseudolosophy, NAL, a frequent visitor, posted in its entirety the blog entry of a Christian blogger named C.B. Hodge. Hodge runs the blog Theological Sushi and the blog entry in question can be found here: Objectivism Refuted

I read through Hodge’s brief entry and posted my own reaction to it in two comments on my own blog, where NAL had originally drew attention to it.

A little later, Ydemoc, another frequent visitor to my blog, posted a comment over at Hodge’s blog entry informing him of my critique of his refutation of objectivism (note the small ‘o’ here – it appears that Hodge has some generic understanding of objectivism in mind here; he makes no reference to Rand, Peikoff or other Objectivist author, and he does not interact directly with any of Objectivism’s own stated positions; moreover, he apparently expects his readers to “just know” what he’s addressing, since he provides essentially no explanation of what he’s trying to refute; in his blog entry, Hodge confines his refutation to an attack on the senses, and he presumably expects his readers to learn of his position by perceiving and interpreting the little marks he’s created on his webpage).

So my initial response to Hodge can be found there, in my comment on my blog.

Now Hodge has replied to me, in the comments of his own blog, in reply to Ydemoc’s comments drawing attention to my interaction with Hodge’s piece. So here is my interaction with his response to my criticisms of his “refutation.”

Faith as Hope in the Imaginary

I have already demonstrated how Christian faith involves belief without understanding. There is another component to Christian faith which is often ignored, especially by those who seek to defend Christian dogma. The New Testament itself tells us that Christian faith is aligned with hoping. Hebrews 11:1 makes this clear when it says that “faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Hope by itself is akin to wishing, only stronger, while the hope that informs faith is like the down payment on a major psychological investment. It is putting your heart into what you wish for, making a commitment to that wish as if it were real, bankable and imminent. The more unbelievable the better.

And what does the faithful believer hope for? According to the bible’s own teachings, he does not hope for things that he has perceived and knows are real. Romans 8:24 confirms this:

“For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?”

When a person hopes, he hopes for something he “sees” in his “mind’s eye,” that is, he hopes for something which he imagines. In the case of the Christian believer, he sets his hope on an afterlife, an eternity in a magic kingdom. Are these things real? Has he seen these things? According to Romans 8:24, he wouldn’t hope for them if he had already seen them. No, he imagines these things, and he has no alternative to imagining them. To have faith that these things are real is not simply to believe that they are real. Contrary to popular parlance, faith is not mere belief. One has faith when he puts his hopes in the things he imagines and purposes to act on those hopes. This way one can doubt, as most believers frequently do, but he can still have faith. Even if he does not always believe that his god is there looking out for him and guiding his steps through life, the believer can still act on the hope that the deity he imagines is really there, right beside him, the ultimate imaginary friend.

A hope that is continually indulged can easily become an obsession, and Christianity pressures the believer to invest himself in its faith program as an all-consuming obsession. Rick Warren, bestselling Christian author and mega-church pastor, explicitly incorporates obsession-generating practices into his teaching:

The Bible tells us to "pray all the time." How is it possible to do this? One way is to use "breath prayers" throughout the day ... You choose a brief sentence or a simple phrase that can be repeated to Jesus in one breath: "You are with me ... You are my God." Pray it as often as possible so it is rooted deep in your heart. (The Purpose-Driven Life, p. 89)

Prayer is the means by which the believer can commune, albeit one-sidedly, with an imaginary being. Talking to the imaginary makes it seem more real. If practiced consistently, the believer begins to feel like someone is actually listening. And he will take anything – even the barking of a dog – as a sign from the supernatural back to him.

Now apologists of course become noticeably squeamish when the topic of prayer comes up in debate. There are all kinds of reasons, we learn from them, why we should not expect prayer to make any actual difference in the world. But we already know this. For amusement, ask an apologist whether or not prayer can alter “God’s plan.” It’s a yes or no question that will typically not be answered in a yes or no fashion. Rather, what you’ll often get is cheap, uninformative ridicule from an incensed defender of hopes in the imaginary who suddenly finds himself incapable of affirming absolutes. Then we are told that prayer is about building a relationship between the believer and the ruling consciousness. In fact, it is a means of taking the propagandistic tactics from the church hall out into the street in the form of a reiterative verbal self-inducement device. The effect is to replace values-oriented motivation, which is worldly and selfish, with the motivation to stay on good terms with an imaginary being, regardless of the cost to one’s values.

John 12:25: “He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.”

Luke 14:26: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.”

Clearly, for the believer, the imaginary is more prized than the actual, even when it comes to the human beings that are closest to him.

The purpose of getting into the habit of constantly praying to an imaginary being is to lose sight of the fact that what the believer is praying to is in fact merely imaginary, and also to marinade his mind in the depths of the devotional program with the hope that eventually he'll be convinced its teachings are true. Conviction is never perfected, which is the reason why constant repetition and reinforcement are needed. A significant philosophical outcome to this is that the believer loses the ability to distinguish between what is real and what is imaginary. If it is written in the holy storybook, then it’s true no matter what reason, science and technical experts have to say on the topic. And defending the holy storybook from criticism is a means by which the believer can become even further invested in its confessional demands. By this point, the believer has lost touch with genuine knowledge, and is suffocating in fantasy.

Now of course the believer still perceives and interacts with real objects in the real world, but the devotional program requires him to imagine supernatural powers "back of" those objects. The believer is not encouraged only to pray, but to “watch and pray” (cf. Mk. 13:33, Mt. 26:41, Lk. 21:36). The word “watch” here is code for imagining invisible magic beings “back of” everything in the universe. As Van Til put it, "I could believe in nothing else if I did not, as back of everything, believe in this God." (“Toward A Reformed Apologetic,” 1972) Anyone can imagine anything “back of” the objects he perceives, and if he lacks the philosophical principles by which he can distinguish between what is real and what is merely imaginary, he’s a prime candidate for Christian indoctrination, a fish waiting to be hooked, gutted, filleted and canned by the ministry of fishers. It is because anyone can imagine invisible magic beings “back of” the things he sees, touches and hears, that anyone can become a Christian. Just imagine that Jesus is real, and you’re on your way to faith. As John Frame acknowledged, “a person with a wish to be fulfilled is often on the road to belief.” (Apologetics to the Glory of God, p. 37) The gospel formula of promising the unearned to men, lures those who seek the unearned into its tangle of traps. And those who are trapped by Christianity’s confessional devices, end up steeping in resentment of those who still roam free.

The believer does not imagine only good invisible magic beings “back of” everything he sees and touches. Not in the least. Indeed, there are demons, devils and other evil magic beings “back of” the things the believer experiences too. These malevolent forces are blamed for the stubbornness of those awful non-believers, spoilsports as they are for them who prefer the imaginary over the actual. Every non-Christian, the believer is encouraged to imagine, is infested with these evil invisible magic beings who have beguiled them with worldly wonders and despicable delights. They are obsessed with non-believers, because the very existence of non-believers poses an incriminating challenge against their devotional program. For if its teachings were really true, how do you explain non-belief? The devotional program makes its attempts to explain this annoying fact, but they’re far from convincing, so by themselves they would not be enough. Non-believers are thus treated collectively, generally characterized as afflicted souls seeking deliberately to do evil, deliberately rejecting “truth,” as people without hope. Again, it’s all about hope, hope in the imaginary.

This is where the fear kicks in. The Christian devotional program requires the believer to take fear seriously. But he doesn’t fear the possibility of mundane accidents or common criminals. Rather, he fears things that are imaginary. He fears what he is told can happen after people die. And more than this, he wants other people to be consumed with this kind of fear, just as he is. So just as he puts his hopes in the imaginary, the believer also puts his hopes in fear. He hopes that by instilling fear in non-believers, they’ll either be converted or silenced, for he cannot stand their presence, and this is because he cannot stand being reminded that he’s been had. But to instill this fear in a non-believer, the believer’s going to have to get the non-believer to start imagining things, just as the believer did when he started out in the faith. Imaginative scenarios are often conjured to concretize the peril of the non-believer's imagined spiritual situation. Consider the following:

Suppose you were exploring an unknown glacier in the north of Greenland in the dead of winter. Just as you reach a sheer cliff with a spectacular view of miles and miles of jagged ice and mountains of snow, a terrible storm breaks in. The wind is so strong that the fear rises in your heart that it might blow you over the cliff. But in the midst of the storm you discover a cleft in the ice where you can hide.... (Why Faith Alone)

Now, I have never been to Greenland, and I have never attempted to explore a glacier, either known or unknown, even in good weather. Such things really do not interest me; I have better ways of spending my time. But I can certainly imagine myself in such a situation. By imagining such a situation, I can project myself into the perilous danger described here, an emergency in which the whole universe seems to have turned malevolently against me, with no course of action available for rescuing myself. The analogy is of course acknowledged by the Christian to be marginal, for in such a situation the danger is "merely physical," and the peril which the Christian has in mind is supposed to be "spiritual" - i.e., supernatural, with “eternal implications,” affecting one's "soul," etc.

So even if I imagine myself at the edge of an arctic glacier during a violent ice storm with neither shoe nor shelter, that’s not really enough imagining. I’m supposed to imagine something even worse than this. The believer wants me to wade deeper into my imagination, for only there will be found the kind of fear that he wants to take seriously. But how do you concretize something as woeful and dreadful as what the Christian wants you to take seriously? A materialist would not likely be impressed with the glacier scenario. He could easily say to it, “it would be the ride of a lifetime! The chest-pounding exhilaration of my last moments of life would be worth it all! And it would end as suddenly as it began. After all, when I’m dead, I’m worm bait anyway.” So such imaginative scenarios are in fact rather self-defeating for the apologist, for unless one blurs the distinction between the real and the imaginary, they tend to accomplish precisely the opposite end that is desired.

But the point that non-believers do not accept the believer’s religious premises seems to be lost on the believer. Instead, the believer, who dutifully recites the dogma that he has no righteousness of his own, casts himself in the dire scenario he describes, and there he imagines himself standing before a self-sufficient and holy deity, thinking "What command would I rather hear than this: 'Hope in my love!'?" Of course, it is easy to imagine that an imaginary being has demands and is capable of love, that it loves and provides and protects. Imaginary beings are capable of whatever the imaginer imagines it to be capable of. And if the only condition for salvation from the utter deficiency and depravity that believers imagine for man, is that the believer pretend that an invisible magic being will be there to save him and that its terms are that he put his hope in it, he will naturally want to call this "good news." For it really requires nothing from him other than that he desire the unearned and go along with the devotional program’s pretenses. It has no initial material cost, but it demands that he sacrifice his conscience and live a lie. It’s all downhill from there.

But it is not only good news for those who imagine themselves filthy, impotent wretches. It is also the glory of the imaginary deity to make only this demand upon the believer. Why? Because when he hopes in the imaginary he shows that the imaginary is strong and he, the believer, is weak; that the imaginary is rich and he is poor; that the imaginary is full and he is empty. For in fact, a man who substitutes the imaginary for the actual is in fact empty. When the believer hopes in an imaginary deity, he shows that he is the one who has needs, not the imaginary deity itself (Psalm 50:10-15; 71:4-6, 14).... Of course, the imaginary has no needs anyway, so the believer is on safe ground here.

The beauty of the gospel is that in one simple act of imagination (hoping that an imaginary deity exists and has cosmically taken custody of one’s soul), an individual can pretend that the religious message he hears is “good news” and that his deity gets the glory. That is why the believer can imagine that the deity takes pleasure in those who hope in his love – because in this simple act of imagining, he can imagine that his deity’s grace is glorified and that he as a filthy wretch has been rescued. This is the command of the gospel that keeps the object of imagination at the center – the center of its own affections and of the believer’s.


So why faith alone? Because in the mind of the believer, faith validates fantasy through his hope in what he imagines. The Christian devotional program provides, in the form of biblical verses intended to reassure the believer that the imaginary is real and comfort him in times of doubt and distress, the formulae for reinforcing the delusion that Jesus is real and in the believer's life. For this to be successful, it is crucial that the believer imagine that his god is present with him at all times, observing what the believer observes, and empathizing with his situation on a day to day basis.

"Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you." - James 4:8

If you imagine that Jesus is close to you, then, like any imaginary friend, Jesus will be close to you. As with anything imaginary, however, the imaginer has to make the first move. He needs to do the imagining first, and then the fantasy will reciprocate. This is why Christianity requires the believer to become as a little child. Children love to imagine. Only for the Christian, imagining is more than just playtime. He imagines, but also hopes that what he imagines is real. He hopes this so much that after a while, it almost does seem real to him. The result is a waking fantasy. For a notable example of this, see Carr vs. Cole.

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” – II Cor. 5:17

The believer imagines that by simply adhering to the prescribed Christian devotional program, he has been metaphysically transformed from his old self to a new being, not simply refurbished, but wholly renewed. Of course, he's still the same person in reality, but he imagines he's different. He's still a biological organism, still needs to eat and sleep, still needs to put forth effort to achieve corporeal values without which he would die. So no change is visible, but that's because the change is imaginary. The imaginary and the invisible of course look very much alike.

"...lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." - Mt. 28:20

The believer is to imagine that Jesus is always with him, and so long as the believer imagines that Jesus is with him, it seems to the believer that Jesus is really there, just like an imaginary friend. Interestingly, when believers in other deities imagine their deities, they do essentially the very same thing that Christian believers do: they imagine. A Muslim, for instance, imagines Allah. A Zoroastrian imagines Ahura Mazda. A Hindu imagines Brahma. A Lahu tribesman imagines Geusha. Etc. There is an unlimited constellation of invisible magic beings that can be accessed through the imagination. And just as the Muslim, the Zoroastrian, the Hindu and the Lahu tribesman have no alternative to imagining as a means of "knowing" their deities, the Christian believer has no alternative to imagining as the means of "knowing" his deity. And when he urges non-believers to "come to Christ," the Christian is in fact demanding that non-believers imagine Jesus and pretend along with him that Jesus is actually a real being existing in a supernatural realm, but also right there next to them too. The imaginary can be wherever the imaginer wants it to be. The reason why Christians become so upset with non-believers when they refrain from indulging in the imaginary, is because anyone can imagine anything he wants and believers are disturbed when people don't go along with the pretense. The believer wants his religious beliefs to be true, so he can't understand why others wouldn't want this as well and why anyone would resist confusing the imaginary with the real. And because he wants his religious beliefs to be true, he resents those who don't go along with the pretense that they are true. By its very nature, non-belief pours heaping coals on the mind of the bible-believer. This is why internet apologists have acquired the reputation for condescending attitudes, vitriolic defensiveness, contentiousness and pettiness.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.” – Mt. 28:26-29

In the communion ritual, when the believer drinks wine, he's supposed to imagine that it's really Jesus' blood that he's drinking. And when he eats a wafer, he's supposed to imagine that it's actually Jesus' flesh that he's eating. In reality, he's really only drinking wine and really only eating a wafer. But in the Christian worldview, reality bends to serve the imagination.

“Don't you know that you are slaves of anyone you obey? You can be slaves of sin and die, or you can be obedient slaves of God and be acceptable to him.” – Rom. 6:16

Christians view all human beings as slaves, either as slaves to a good imaginary being, or to an evil imaginary being. Some strains of Christianity are more or less consistent with its overt deterministic implications and even characterize human beings as puppets in service to one or another imaginary being. It is good to let Christians speak for themselves on such matters, for in fact they are slaves to the imaginary. A Christian ministry, then, is an organization devoted to enslaving its members to imagination.

“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” – Mt. 10:28

The believer loves to imagine that an invisible magic being is waiting to judge and condemn people, especially spoilsport atheists, after they die. The believer obsesses over death just as he obsesses over fear and guilt. Death is so important that it occupies a central concern in his worldview. It serves as the standard to which he measures everything in life. This seems benign to him, even sensible, because he imagines death to be another realm, a realm of vindication for himself as a devotee of the imaginary, and vengeance on those who have the audacity to recognize that reality does not conform to anyone’s imagination.


Is this an unlikely analysis? Unfortunately not at all. Frightening situations, like the Greenland scenario we saw above and many teachings from the bible, can provide the mind with a working model for squelching one’s knowledge of reality to comport with what is imagined. We see this in Cornelius Van Til’s autobiographical account of his own childhood experience of investing himself in the theistic confession. Van Til tells us:

I can recall playing as a child in a sandbox built into a corner of the hay-barn. From the hay-barn I would go through the cow-barn to the house. Built into the hay- barn too, but with doors opening into the cow-barn, was a bed for the working-man. How badly I wanted permission to sleep in that bed for a night! Permission was finally given. Freud was still utterly unknown to me, but I had heard about ghosts and "forerunners of death." That night I heard the cows jingle their chains. I knew there were cows and that they did a lot of jingling with their chains, but after a while I was not quite certain that it was only the cows that made all the noises I heard. Wasn't there someone walking down the aisle back of the cows, and wasn't he approaching my bed? Already I had been taught to say my evening prayers. Some of the words of that prayer were to this effect: "Lord, convert me, that I may be converted." Unmindful of the paradox, I prayed that prayer that night as I had never prayed before. (Why I Believe in God)

There really was no one “walking down the aisle back of the cows,” and there really was no one “approaching [young Van Til’s] bed.” This was all something he imagined, and as he imagined, the distinction between what really was the case and what he imagined to be the case became increasingly blurred. This is evident from his own admission: “after a while I was not quite certain that it was only the cows that made all the noises I heard.” And as he lost sight of reality, he naturally became frightened, and it was here, in his highly charged emotional state, that he made his lifelong decision to surrender his mind to the imaginary. It is on this basis that he turned to his parents’ religious preachings, in prayer delving even deeper into the imaginary – an imaginary fix for an imaginary problem. Later in life Van Til was proud to tell us that “I had not in the least given up the faith of my childhood.” (The Defense of the Faith, p. 191) Which means: Van Til never learned how to distinguish the real from the imaginary, even as an adult. This is what Christianity does to the minds of human beings if allowed.

by Dawson Bethrick

Lord Oda on Faith

Attentive readers will recall my response to the commenter “Singh” where the commenter assumes that I “despise Christians.” On numerous occasions I’ve had to correct this common misperception. For if there were no Christians, my blog would probably lose some of its entertainment value. Indeed, at Incinerating Presuppositionalism, Christians provide the entertainment, for they are the entertainment.

Recent comments by a visitor to my blog, who posts under the moniker Lordodamanor, are no exception. This fellow kindly dropped by to offer his comments, and they are well worth exploring. Also, although I think his moniker is quite creative, I decided to shorten it for the purposes of my interaction with his comments.


Now, in my essay Faith as Belief Without Understanding, I had written:

One is that the bible is painfully ambiguous in its use of the word 'faith'.

Lord Oda lifted this one statement from my essay and offered the following response to it:

Thanks for proving that you've never read, or have never understood Scripture. Unequivocably Jesus states, "You will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free."

And I thank Lord Oda for proving that he has to ignore everything else I said beyond what he had quoted in order to conclude that I have “never read, or have never understood Scripture.” Believers love to accuse not only non-believers of failing to “understand Scripture,” but other believers as well. This naturally implies that he accuser believes he understands it in order to make such statements about others. Unfortunately, however, because of overuse, it loses credibility quite quickly.

But I will say that knowing the truth has in fact set me free. Learning just how false Christianity is has indeed set me free from the psychological sanctions and cognitive disabilities which this horrific worldview uses to decapitate man’s spirit.
Lord Oda continues:

You quoted Hebrews 11.1, but inacurately expound it. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Estin de pistiv elpizomenwn upostasiv, pragmatwn elegxov ou blepomenwn. To unpack this: Pistis is derived from a root that means immovable, the foundation, the rock, the essential, basis, elemental, base knowledge. Hupostasis means that which is the substance, again, elemental. Elpizo, is the thing expected. To put this back together, faith is faith is faith, or knowing is knowing is knowing, or faith is the essence of hope. Or, faith is the possession of the thing hoped for.

Here Lord Oda clearly thinks that “faith” has to do with “knowing,” for his summary of his interpretation of the Greek text of Hebrews 11:1 equates “faith is faith is faith” with “knowing is knowing is knowing.” But the definition given in Hebrews, even Lord Oda’s parsing of the original Greek, does not support this interpretation. Immovable foundations (let alone rocks!) do not necessarily mean “knowledge” or “knowing”; nor does “substance” or “the thing expected.” It says nothing about “knowing” or “knowledge” (and even less about conceptualization). Christians are habit-prone to casually assuming this is the case (as common parlance clearly indicates this), but even the several models of faith that the rest of Hebrews 11 holds up as examples of faith are not examples of “knowing”; on the contrary, most are examples of acts of will.

For example, look at Hebrews 11:4:

By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain

Making an offering is an example of an act of will. It states nothing about “knowing” something or acquiring “knowledge.”

Look at Hebrews 11:7:

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house

Again, we have another example of an act of will. “By faith Noah... moved with fear, [and] prepared an ark...” This is an example of action, not “knowledge.” Moreover, fearing something is not the same thing as knowing something. Emotions are not knowledge, nor are they a means of validating knowledge claims.

Hebrews 11:8 is especially damning for Lord Oda’s association of faith with “knowing”:

By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.

Here we have as an example of faith an act of will (“By faith Abraham... obeyed...”), and it states explicitly that this act of will was performed without the benefit of knowledge (“not knowing whither he went”). In fact, the only instance of any form of the word “know” which occurs in all of Hebrews 11 (the so-called “faith” chapter) is specifically to indicate a lack of knowledge rather than a possession of it. If this example of faith is any indication, it is better defined as the willingness to act on an assumption even though you don’t know it’s true or simply don’t believe it.

The example of Abraham’s faith, which Hebrews upholds as a model for all believers to emulate, shows just how dangerous faith is. Hebrews 11:17 makes this crystal clear:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,

Here the author of Hebrews alludes to the story found in Genesis 22, where Abraham is ordered by his god to prepare his only son as a burnt offering, a sacrifice to a deity that wouldn’t need any offerings in the first place. With such stories the bible shows that when a person guides his life by faith (in this case, action without understanding), it poses a direct threat to one’s values. (See also my Notes on the Story of Abraham and Isaac in Gen. 22.)

Now none of what Lord Oda states here challenges what I had stated in my essay Faith as Belief Without Understanding.

Curiously, Lord Oda also said:

Analogously, water is H2O.

I guess I fail to see the analogy between faith and "water is H2O."

Now, if faith is best defined as "the possession of the thing hoped for,” as Lord Oda has indicated, why doesn’t the bible define it in this manner rather than in the manner that Hebrews 11:1 defines it? Blank out.

Lord Oda continues his parsing of the Greek in Hebrews 11:1:

Pragma, means fact, a proven thing done. Blepo, has a wide variety of meaning, but for this context it simply means to observe and coupled with Ou meaning not, ou blepo expresses the unseen.

Same problem here: “fact” does not mean “knowledge” or “knowing,” and neither does “the unseen.” Indeed, what Lord Oda gives us here simply shows us that whatever faith does mean, it slashes off one avenue of objective input by which knowledge of reality is gained by human beings, namely eyesight.

Now, it is clear that Hebrews associates faith with hoping, and Lord Oda goes so far as to suggest that “faith is the essence of hope” or “faith is the possession of the thing hoped for.” There is in fact an intimate correlation with hoping when someone affirms a religious position on faith (he affirms it actually because he hopes it is true). But that correlation, as we shall see, is not quite as Lord Oda would have it, nor does this correlation comport with Lord Oda’s association of faith with knowledge. It must be stressed that hoping is not the same thing as knowing. In fact, we have to know something before we can hope for anything, but when we hope for something, that is not the same thing as knowing it. As I pointed out in my essay,

Hoping for something does not produce assurance. I could hope for a million dollars, but there’s no assurance in this of receiving it. Needless to say, my hoping does not assure its own fulfillment.

Christian faith, then, is the hope that the gospel story is true, nothing more. It is the hope that Jesus was real, that Jesus really died for the sinner’s sins, that Jesus really rose in resurrection, that there really is an afterlife, and that the promise of living in paradise for eternity is really the reward for devotional worship, etc.

Of course, one can hope all he wants, but reality prevails; reality will not conform to one’s hopes. Pointing such facts out, however, simply makes atheists a bunch of spoilsports in the minds of those who would prefer to indulge these hopes. But in fact, it is better for man’s life and his need for values that he conform his hopes to reality as much as possible (e.g., I hope the business meeting I have this afternoon goes smoothly), rather than breaking from reality in preference for hopes which are simply untrue and have their basis in mystical fantasies (e.g., I hope an invisible magic being will guide my steps and vanquish all my enemies). With the latter he invites the cognitive hazard of confusing his fantasies with reality, and such misidentification of reality can easily lead to destruction. But perhaps destruction does not concern Christians; after all, they are taught to pray “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (cf. Mt. 6:10), which of course - on most interpretations - would entail the wholesale destruction of the earth as it is now. And as I have already pointed out, the lesson of the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis chapter 22 shows just how dangerous faith in invisible magic beings can be.

Also, Lord Oda’s interpretation of Hebrews 11:1 as suggesting that “faith is the possession of the thing hoped for,” seems difficult to harmonize with Paul’s understanding of the essence of hope, which he gives us in Romans 8:24-25, where he writes:

For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

Now first off, it should be clear that this verse is entirely compatible with my interpretation of Christian faith as “the hope that the gospel story is true.” But is it consistent with the view that “faith is the possession of the thing hoped for”? It would not at all be unnatural, in light of what Paul writes here, to suppose that “hope that is possessed is not hope: for what a man possesseth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we possess not, then do we with patience wait for it.” This would be a natural reading because both Paul's version as given in Romans and the version I have proposed here reduce to the same common principle: we don't hope for what we already have in hand. Ironically, what Paul says of hoping, the same can be said of coveting. For one does not covet what he already possesses.

So Paul and the author of Hebrews – if Lord Oda’s interpretation of Hebrews 11:1 is correct – seem to be quite out of sync with each other. But this would not be a first by any means.

Lord Oda then states:

So, the bible is not "painfully ambiguous." It is exacting, expansive, extensive in its definition.

Unfortunately for Lord Oda, parsing Hebrews 11:1 is not sufficient to remove ambiguity from the bible’s use of the notion of faith. When I say that “the bible is painfully ambiguous in its use of the word ‘faith’,” I mean the bible as a whole. I am certainly not restricting my evaluation to merely one verse of one chapter of one book of the bible (e.g., Hebrews 11:1) as Lord Oda seems to think. And it’s true, various passages in the bible use the word ‘faith’ to indicate a wide assortment of things. So explaining how just one passage in the bible conceives of faith, does nothing to address the larger picture as I have indicated.

For instance, some bible verses treat faith as an act of will (e.g., the examples of faith given in Hebrews 11), while others as a kind of force endowing believers with some special power or ability. Examples of this would include the episode in Mt. 9 where a woman who “was diseased with an issue of blood twelve years” (vs. 20) was healed when she touched the hem of Jesus’ robe; the author of the gospel has Jesus say to her, “thy faith hath made thee whole” (v. 22; see also Mk. 5:34, 10:52, Lk. 8:48, et al.); elsewhere the ability to receive miraculous healing is affirmed as an expression or result of faith (e.g., Mt. 9:29, Acts 14:9); or the ability to cast mountains into the sea (cf. Mt. 17:20). Peter’s ability to walk on the sea with Jesus (cf. Mt. 14:28-30) is also suggested to be made possible because of faith, for when Peter grew frightened and began to sink as he was trying to walk on the sea, Matthew has Jesus rebuke Peter with the oft-repeated slogan “O thou of little faith,” indicating that had Peter more faith, he wouldn’t have been able to walk on the sea just as normally as Jesus did.

Other passages suggest that faith is a kind of epistemic faculty. For instance, in II Cor. 5:7 the apostle Paul famously notes that Christians “walk by faith, not by sight.” Let’s hope they stay off the streets if that's the case. This is how faith seems to be understood in much common parlance among Christians themselves in their daily walk as Christians. Very frequently I have myself heard Christians speak as if they “know” some truth on the basis of faith. Lord Oda’s own interpretation of Hebrews 11:1, where he suggests a semantic kinship between “faith is faith is faith” and “knowing is knowing is knowing” indicates that he may be this kind of Christian himself. Just how faith is supposed to work as an epistemic faculty is never explained, either in the bible itself (which tends not to explain much of any use of the word in the first place) or by Christians who employ the term in this manner. Faith is thus used as a kind of non-cognitive putty which shores up gaps of ignorance in order to underwrite one’s affirmations with an air of piety. Often the goal is to fetch a series of "Amen, brother!" exclamations from one's peers, thus signaling the verification of club membership. Agreement with other minds is often more valuable to the devoted believer than actually validating his verdicts.

Sometimes ‘faith’ seems to denote an entire belief system taken as a whole. For instance, we read in Romans 1:5 where the apostle Paul writes of “obedience to the faith”; and in Acts 6:7 where “a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.” In Acts 13, we read of a sorcerer who sought to turn a believer away “from the faith” (v. 8).

Interestingly, according to some gospel passages, faith is something that can be seen (cf. Mk. 2:5, Mt. 9:2).

And yet other passages use the word ‘faith’ to indicate the degree of commitment adherents might have to the devotional program of the religion (cf. II Cor. 1:24, I Thes. 3:5, James 1:3, Rev. 13:10).

Of course, there are times when ‘faith’ seems to equate ‘belief’ – especially belief that is approved and commanded to be accepted as true (apparently the command of an invisible magic being is supposed to serve to “justify” such beliefs). For instance, it is telling that some versions (e.g., the KJV) translates Mk. 6:6 to say “he marvelled because of their unbelief,” where others (e.g., the NIV) translate the same passage as saying “he was amazed at their lack of faith.” Similarly, in Jn. 20:27 (the only verse in the KJV version of this gospel to come back as a result in a search for the keyword ‘faith’), the evangelist has his Jesus console Thomas the doubter with the words “be not faithless, but believing.” Apparently on this view, faith as "believing" is subject to command.

What’s clear, however, is that Hebrews 11:1 is the only point in the whole bible where an author attempts to provide an explicit understanding of what faith is supposed to mean. Virtually all the other passages, while contextually indicating a wide variety of meanings, clearly assume that the reader “just knows” what is meant by the term in question. Many passages simply repeat faith-based slogans (e.g., “O thou of little faith”), and others similarly emphasize the supposition that there are various degrees of faith; faith can be great or weak, increased, etc. Such passages offer nothing in the interest of understanding just what faith is supposed to be, thus perpetuating the ambiguity I and many other active-minded critics have observed.

So in fact the meaning of the notion of faith is indeed shrouded in ambiguity throughout the bible, and this ambiguity is a result of varied usage in widely disparate contexts conveying different meanings which no single definition (e.g., the one found in Hebrews 11:1) can suit. In fact, the variety in meanings of ‘faith’ is a result of many authors working from different theological assumptions and backgrounds contributing works which were later stitched together as if they were all affirming the same “truths.”

Lord Oda also wrote:

Calvin in his Institutes takes an entire book, along with many references elsewhere to explore the meaning, not obliquely, but rather exegetically, with incurrence, understanding the critical nature of faith's percise definition and operational application.

I'm aware of the fact that various theologians throughout history can spend volumes slicing and dicing words and phrases ad nauseum as they contend for their desired outcome in the battle to see who can fit the most angels on the head of a pin. But that just underscores the problem here: If the bible were so “exacting” as Lord Oda asserts, why would Calvin need to devote a whole book to “explore the meaning” of faith? The volume that a theologian seems to need to get to the bottom of an issue only suggests that the issue in question is not quite as simplistic as popular defenders might like to make them out to be.


Personally, I see faith as a covering term for a most unsightly symptom which is inherent particularly to religious practice. That symptom is the believer’s devotion to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics as expressed in various religious talking points, such as mystical belief in the supernatural, prayer, affirmation of so-called “religious truths” like the resurrection, the afterlife, the existence of invisible magic beings and places like heaven and hell, etc. As a covering term, its function is to disguise the fact that such mystical beliefs and practices have their basis in hopes which make a sharp departure from reality and turn inward into one’s own imaginative fantasies. Passages such as Mk. 11:22 where Jesus commands his disciples to “have faith in God,” suggest that faith is a kind of make-believe switch that the believer can flip on when things get emotionally difficult. The word ‘faith’ thus acts as a kind of signal for the believer to disengage from reality and turn on his religiously-infiltrated imagination to effect the mood swing that is Jesus. Corporately, use of the word ‘faith’ is a signal for other believers nearby to retreat into the imaginary realm of religious devotion, for only in that realm will they see “the truth” of what is being spoken; for what religion considers "truth" is not of this world, not of this reality, but of a fantasy that has no basis in fact. Faith is thus the doorway to the cartoon universe of theism.

by Dawson Bethrick

Faith as Belief Without Understanding

Let's ring in the New Year with a little Bahnsen burning...

A Deliberate Ambiguity

It should not be a surprise that presuppositional apologists tend to avoid the issue of faith in their skirmishes with Christianity’s critics. When it does come up in debate, it is typically glossed over as casually as if it were no more than a preposition. It is as if the believer expects everyone to “just know” what is meant by the word. Why elaborate on something everyone “just knows” already? However, the reason why presuppositionalists are happy not to elaborate on the issue of faith is that it is riddled with so much confusion and conflict, and unlocking this confusion and conflict is sure to give away the game. Indeed, there are few things in Christianity that are riddled with more lack of clarity than the meaning and role of faith (those which are even more confused would be the issues of salvation, justification, atonement, etc.). Some apologists often like to blame non-believers for this confusion, treating them like spoilsports who stubbornly refuse to just go along with the scheme by asking troublesome questions. But occasionally an apologist will acknowledge that believers themselves are often responsible for the persisting and embarrassing quagmire arising from the bible’s total and unflinching embrace of faith. But even those occasional few are powerless to remedy the situation.

Both as a former Christian and now as a critic of Christianity, my long-held impression is that Christians themselves are confused about the nature and function of faith, given their own statements as an indication of their level of understanding. There are two basic reasons for this confusion.

One is that the bible is painfully ambiguous in its use of the word 'faith'. It uses ‘faith’ in a wide variety of contexts with no consistent meaning. Even when we get to the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, which is often cited as providing an authoritative definition of ‘faith’, it gives us confusion or worse. It defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (v. 1). This definition seems to have been designed to play a trick on the mind of the eager believer. Hoping for something does not produce assurance. I could hope for a million dollars, but there’s no assurance in this of receiving it. Needless to say, my hoping does not assure its own fulfillment. Similarly, “things not seen” does not give a man conviction. Objectively speaking, I do not “see” myself breathing water one day if I should happen to drive my car into the frigid waters of the Columbia River, but imagining (“seeing the unseen”) that I will breathe water does not give me the conviction that I will have this ability should my survival require it. O me of little faith? Elsewhere the word faith seems deliberately vague and tends to have a new meaning with each author, sometimes signifying belief (cf, Mt. 8:5-10, Rom. 4:5), sometimes implying the means by which belief or knowledge is acquired (cf. I Cor. 2:5f; II Cor. 5:7), sometimes meaning a mental power to alter a present state of affairs (cf. Mt. 15:22-28; 17:20, etc.), sometimes referring to an act of will (cf. Heb. 11), sometimes suggesting a mystical faculty by which one allegedly receives revelatory transmissions from supernatural sources (cf. Rom. 1:17, 10:6). Still other passages, such as those telling stories of miracle cures of blindness, palsy or other ailments, give the impression that believing something (e.g., “having faith”) will make it so. For instance, apparently if I believe (or "have faith") that my nearsightedness will be corrected, it should be corrected. If it is not corrected, it must be due to my not believing strongly enough – i.e., having too little faith. But when Christian believers themselves were invited to pray for this correction, no correction came about. Perhaps they did not pray, or perhaps they did not have sufficient faith. Or, it could be that their teaching is simply wrong. At any rate, with such a wide variety of meanings, given its varying use, it is no wonder that Christians would be confused by what faith is supposed to really mean.

The other reason for their confusion is that Christians are not honest to themselves about the nature of their beliefs and the means by which those beliefs are accepted as secured truths. Indeed, it is this same dishonesty which conflicted the authors of the bible and led to their use of the term as we find it in their stories and teachings. They are not honest about their beliefs because they are not honest about reality. At the most fundamental level of knowledge they want to believe that reality conforms to the consciousness of a being they can only imagine, which constitutes a double error. First they confuse their imagination with reality by supposing that what they imagine is actually real, and second they assume the metaphysical primacy of consciousness by granting to the being they imagine conscious power over the universe. Believers as well as non-believers can sense this dishonesty, but few acknowledge it, and even fewer are willing to put their finger on it. The pathological dishonesty comes in the form of trying to defend and propagate such a view. This is where the trickery of theological casuistry, which I will briefly survey below, comes in. Judging by what Christian theologians, apologists and believers say about faith, one can easily get the impression that faith is a very complicated matter. The truth of the matter, however, is not at all so complicated. In fact, all the confusion that Christians have built up around the word faith over the decades and centuries is intended to hide a truth that is too uncomfortable for them to bear.

Now it must be borne in mind that faith is always viewed positively in the bible, for it never seems to allow faith to be the instrument of the damned. The bible’s fantastical stories and teachings associate faith with "the righteousness" of the Christian god (cf. Rom. 3:22, 4:5, 13, Phil. 3:9), which is seen to be the source of all virtue, while the damned are associated with deceit and deception. So we should expect Christians to defend the doctrine of faith, regardless of how confused and complicated the bible's and their statements may be, for this is a major pillar in their worldview and thus integral to the confessional investment that they are determined to protect at all costs. They have to defend it, because the bible affirms it. I would not be surprised if a lot of apologists would secretly prefer that the bible not be filled with so many mentions of faith, for it makes their task not only insurmountably difficult, but in fact quite embarrassing to adult thinkers.

For the Record

In seeking the definition of faith that is assumed by presuppositional apologetics, I turned to Greg Bahnsen’s mammoth Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings & Analysis. There, I thought, I would find the definitive presuppositionalist ruling on the matter. I flipped to the index, and under the heading “faith” I found a reference to its “definition” on page 115, footnote 83. When I saw this, my hopes were stoked, and I thought “Aha! Maybe Bahnsen does give a definition of ‘faith’ in his master tome!” I quickly turned to page 115 and read the following statement under note 83:

Notice here how all claims about ‘faith’ are taken as referring to the same kind of thing, namely, adopting an outlook that is mysterious, unreasoned, or unprovable. Different people do not necessarily mean the same thing by ‘faith’ any more than they do by ‘love’.

This is very disappointing, but unfortunately not at all surprising. As I pointed out above, many Christians mean different things by “faith,” and I think this is ultimately the bible’s fault. One would expect if not simply hope that those Christians who want to spread Christian belief and who also acknowledge the fact that “different people do not necessarily mean the same thing by ‘faith’,” would make an effort to bring both clarity and finality to the issue. But notice that note 83 on page 115 of Bahnsen’s book does not even give a definition of ‘faith’! This was the only point referenced in the index of Bahnsen’s massive tome as giving a definition of ‘faith’. Presuppositionalists like Bahnsen seem to complain a lot when thinkers, whether Christian or non-Christian, mean something by ‘faith’ that they don’t like (for instance, they spit and stammer when non-believing critics view faith and reason as mutually opposed). But why merely complain? Why not try to correct the record? Why not lay out a clear definition of ‘faith’? I know what reason is, and I have a good idea of what faith is. Fundamentally, reason stands on the primacy of existence, while faith assumes the primacy of consciousness. The fact that faith’s metaphysical premises contradict those of reason is what is responsible for the millennia-old conflict.

Even John Frame, in his A Van Til Glossary, does not give an entry for defining ‘faith’. When faith appears, it is in the definition of a term denoting a view that presuppositionalists verbally reject, which is fideism, the “belief that God is known by faith and not by reason.” Of course, the glossary does not include a definition of ‘reason’ either, and neither does the bible, so we may never know what Christians mean when they use the word ‘reason’. By not offering definitions of their key terms, Christian apologists can always respond to their critics by saying "that's not what we mean." But what they do mean always remains shrouded in mystery. One can be forgiven for getting the impression that they don't know themselves what they mean.

Belief Without Understanding

Let’s have a look at some other statements by Bahnsen to see just what a confused mess presuppositionalists are standing in. Remember, my task here is to find out just what Bahnsen thinks faith is, what its role might be, how it works in the believer’s epistemology, and what inferences can be drawn from what is stated.

For Bahnsen, faith is essentially just another word for belief. He writes:

To ‘have faith’ that something is true (e.g., that Elvis is alive and residing in Idaho) is the same as ‘believing’ that the claim in question is true; these are different semantic ways of expressing the same thing. Accordingly, when a person says he ‘believes’ something ‘simply on faith’ (without specifying further), he has merely told us that ‘he believes because he believes’. (Always Ready, p. 202n.1)

It should be noted that Bahnsen does not cite any passages from the bible to support his equation of faith with belief, and some Christians might even find this move objectionable. The examples of faith in Hebrews 11, for instance, do not seem to be examples of belief, but rather powers of will (and as such, they are examples of Christianity's commitment to the primacy of consciousness). Nonetheless, Bahnsen has made his position clear for the record. He also states that faith (which now we understand to be belief) is fundamental. He writes:

Faith is the precondition of a proper understanding... faith precedes knowledgeable understanding. (Ibid., p. 88)

So, faith is belief, and this belief must come before “a proper understanding” since it is “the precondition” thereof. This could only mean that, as a belief, faith must be accepted before one understands what it is he is accepting as truth. Thus faith is belief without understanding, for it comes before any understanding. So, accordingly, the Christian starts out accepting as truth a belief claim which he does not understand and thus could not know whether or not it is true. On this measure, it makes no difference what the content of that belief may be, for at this point the believer is in no position to tell the difference between truth and falsehood. It is at this point, before the believer can distinguish between fact and fiction, that Christianity seeks to nab human minds and invest them with its belief program. This is why Christian adults are so eager to get a hold of people’s children, for it is while they are children that a human being is suggestible, moldable, vulnerable to fictitious beliefs and defenseless before the presumed authority of predatory adults who have themselves fallen for Christianity’s deceptive gimmicks.

Believing a claim before understanding it (and thus before knowing whether or not it is true) is the basic model of conversion: get the new convert to make a belief commitment before he understands everything. Then slowly unravel the “mysteries” in small doses, so that he doesn’t question them or, worse, exit the front doors of the church in an act of self-preservation.

Christians do not want to admit that they have no understanding, they simply want to make their faith a fundamental requirement to understanding. While faith is belief without understanding, the “understanding” comes later, after the commitment has been cinched. Why believe it? Well, not because it is thought to be true, but because of fear, specifically the fear of any consequences which might occur if it is not believed. John 4:18 explains the motivation for believing without knowledgeable understanding:

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

If an individual does not believe the religious man’s claims (regardless of whether or not he understands them or thinks they are true), he is “condemned already,” as if he were utterly worthless because of his “failure” to believe. This is the primacy of consciousness making its debut into epistemology: what one believes is eternally all-determining, for believing is sufficient to make it so. If one believes, he is “not condemned”; if he does not believe, he is “condemned already.” One's actions and choices are of no moral consequence, for what one believes trumps what one does. This helps explain why so many believers in Christianity are found on the wrong side of the law.

Notice how Bahnsen’s interpretation of Proverbs 1:7 corroborates my analysis. He writes:

"The beginning (i.e., the first and controlling principle) of knowledge is the fear (or reverent submission) of the Lord" (Prov. 1:7). (Always Ready, p. 87)

Submission is an action, one performed by choice unless one is forced against his will. If an act of submission, whether chosen or forced, is itself “the beginning of knowledge,” this could only mean that the act of submitting was undertaken without the benefit of knowledge, for it purportedly comes before any knowledge has been acquired. Thus it was a mindless act of submission, and this mindless act is the foundation of the believer’s “knowledge.” Knowledge of what? Who knows. Does it really matter at this point? The believer sure doesn’t know (cf. Frame), for what his worldview calls knowledge, is nothing close to real knowledge, for real knowledge does not base itself on mindless actions of will. As Frame admits of Christian believers, “We know without knowing how we know.” (Presuppositional Apologetics: An Introduction (Part I))

Frame makes this statement when trying to answer the question “How did Abraham come to know that the voice calling him to sacrifice his son (Gen. 22:1-18; cf. Heb. 11:17-19; James 2:21-24) was the voice of God?” Frame’s own ignorance of how one can know that the voice he might hear in his head are “the voice of God” should not surprise us. But it is not an accident when Bahnsen tells us “There can be no doubt that Scripture sets forth Abraham to us as the paradigm of faith.” (Always Ready, p. 91) Even though the Old Testament story in Genesis 22 of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac nowhere chalks up Abraham's actions to faith, Abraham is seen in the New Testament as the exemplary model of faith, but how did he know that the voice in his head commanding him to sacrifice his own son was “the voice of God”? Who knows! The underlying message here is: it doesn’t matter how one knows (i.e., epistemology is for the dogs), what matters is that he believes. Knowledge and faith are thus contrary vehicles of cognition.

Now of course, all this explains why thinkers throughout history have considered faith to be opposed to reason, for reason does not threaten individuals to accept its conclusions on the basis of fear. Reason enables a thinker to think for himself, allowing him to draw his own conclusions and form his own judgments independent of any threats that others might pronounce against him. Of course, this independence of one’s mental self-conduct is condemned by presuppositionalism as “autonomous thinking,” and rightly so given what’s at stake for Christianity: intellectual liberty will only break the spell of god-belief if allowed to flourish. Theologians and apologists, however, look for ways to conceal their animosity for intellectual liberty while posing as the mind's defenders.

A Hapless Contradiction

But is Bahnsen himself consistent with his own conception of faith as a precondition for knowledgeable understanding? Other statements from the same book indicate that even he was prone to forgetfulness when it comes to keeping the party line straight. The issue which throws him is, ironically, the hierarchical nature of knowledge itself, for it is here where we find Bahnsen’s constant breaching. I say “ironically” because the alleged thrust of “presuppositionalism” is to peer below the level of casual assumptions one takes for granted, to dig into the soil of those “presuppositions” which underlie beliefs resting at the surface of one’s worldview. When presuppositionalists themselves are so clumsy with the knowledge hierarchy, it can only indicate that something is wrong.

Consider the following statement by Bahnsen:

As J. Gresham Machen boldly put the matter in his book, What is Faith?, “we believe that Christianity flourishes not in the darkness, but in the light.” Machen wrote that “one of the means which the Spirit will use” to bring a revival of the Christian religion “is an awakening of the intellect.” He fervently resisted “the false and disastrous opposition which has been set up between knowledge and faith,” arguing that “at no point is faith independent of the knowledge upon which it is logically based. (Always Ready, p. 195)

Notice that last statement in particular: “at no point is faith independent of the knowledge upon which it is logically based.” This explicitly affirms that some knowledge logically precedes faith, and that faith logically depends on that prior knowledge. How can this be integrated with the view expressed earlier in Bahnsen’s book that “faith is the precondition of a proper understanding,” that “faith precedes knowledgeable understanding” (p. 88)? These statements tell us that there can be no knowledge which precedes faith, but the Machen statement that Bahnsen approvingly quotes tells us that there’s no faith without the prior “knowledge upon which it is logically based.” In one moment faith is fundamental, in the next is not fundamental.

Bahnsen devotes a whole chapter in his book Always Ready to discussing “The Problem of Faith” (pp. 193-203). But it is most unhelpful. In it Bahnsen seeks to challenge the well-warranted suspicion that faith and reason are in conflict, but he fails completely in defending the claim that "the content of our faith is what any reasonable man should endorse" because accepting that content on the basis of faith, by his own admissions, can only mean that he is in no position to even know whether what he accepts is fact or fiction, or "completely accords with logic," or that "without the Christian worldview 'reason' itself becomes arbitrary or meaningless - becomes unintelligible" (p. 196). Christianity's own commitment to the primacy of consciousness metaphysics guarantees that Bahnsen's view is false. Moreover, Bahnsen does not even give a clear indication of what faith is, other than that it is merely another word for belief. So why do we need two words to mean the same thing? Earlier in his book, as pointed out above, he claims that “faith is the precondition to a proper understanding” and that it “precedes knowledgeable understanding” (p. 88), but neither there or in the present chapter does he explain why this is the case, nor what exactly faith is. Is he merely saying that belief is a precondition to understanding? If so, why doesn't he just say that?

Faith and Imagination

There are strong, repeated indications that the word 'faith' is used as a disguise for relying on one's imagination instead of reason to justify his claims and beliefs. It is clear enough from examples in the bible, such as when Peter learns that he can walk on water by having sufficient faith (cf. Mt. 14:26-31; this pericope is obviously one of Matthew's elaborations on the more primitive model found in Mark 6), that imagination is involved in faith. Peter, seeing Jesus walk on the water, had to imagine himself doing the same thing. And reality obeyed accordingly, so long as he kept up the imagination in his mind, i.e., so long as he had "faith."

Bahnsen unwittingly corroborates this point when he writes:

Faith does not rely upon man’s autonomous thinking and what it “sees” but rather begins with a presuppositional conviction about the veracity of God’s word. That which is not seen in human ability is seen by faith which submits to the Lord’s self-attesting word (Heb. 11:27).

Now what faculty of the mind can “see” something “which is not seen in human ability”? Walking on unfrozen water, healing the blind by spitting into their eyes, turning water into wine, feeding 5,000 people with just a handful of bread loaves and fishes, casting mountains into the sea, and raising the dead from the grave, are “not seen in human ability.” So we cannot objectively look out at the world and find evidences of such things (i.e., we cannot "see" these things through "autonomous thinking"). To “see” these things, one must turn inward, into the subjective contrivances of the imagination. There “anything can happen,” which is the signature notion of god-belief (cf. the cartoon universe of theism).

Faith, then, is code for granting belief the power of altering the believer and/or the believed. Since "autonomous thinking" - i.e., relying on one's own perception and reasoning to identify reality according to facts gathered from the objects of perception and draw inferences about what is real in the world on the basis of objective inputs - is to be regarded as "foolishness" (cf. Bahnsen, Always Ready, pp. 55-57 et al.), an alternative approach is called for. In place of objective inputs gathered from the world around us by means of sense perception, faith lets the imagination loose on one's cognition, supplanting facts with fictions wherever it sees fit. If the facts that "autonomous thinking" discovers do not fit the religious doctrine, well, to hell with facts! Faith sees to it that facts need not get in the way of belief. On the Christian view, faith has the power to turn everything around. Simply by believing a prescribed set of claims, one can be cured of all kinds of ailments, both physical and moral, whether it is drug addiction, wife-beating, brain tumors, incontinence or irregularity. Just believe, and everything will be alright, is the lesson we are to learn from Christianity.

For instance, consider the following:

Rom. 3:22: “Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.”

Rom. 4:5: “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.”

Just believe - or "just have faith" - and you're automatically included in the league of the just, just like that. It doesn't matter what you've done or the damage you may have caused others. You can be "justified" simply by signing on with the bandwagon of faith. That's an irresistible incentive to "believe" for those who seek the unearned in redemption.

Now consider: if one wanted to claim that the unreal is real, and he was called to explain (cf. “account for”) how he knows it, what answer could he give which both conceals and protects his deception? He would not come out and admit that his claims are not true, for he wants others to believe what he claims. To the extent that he would identify his means of knowledge, he would also have to conceal the fact that he was trying to evade reality. And since there is no means to identify other than his imagination and desire to deceive, his answer will need to appeal to something other than reason, maybe even come up with ways of discounting reason, such that his audience is discouraged from using reason as a means of evaluating his claims. A lie needs an additional lie to support it, so he makes up a fictitious means of knowledge by claiming to have received this knowledge from an unreal source, stamped with the guarantee of that unreal source’s alleged authority. Christianity provides a blueprint for just this kind of intellectual fraud.

Faith-talk, then, signals the call to retreat into the imagination of god-belief, and along with this a long tradition of deceit. It is when one insists on taking an objective approach that one finds himself on the wrong side of faith. See for instance the following passage in Romans 9:31-33:

But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumblingstone; as it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

The “stumblingblock” in mind here is encountered when one misses the cue to dive into his imagination in order to “understand” the doctrinal point in question, for “faith is the precondition of a proper understanding” and “faith precedes knowledgeable understanding” (Bahnsen, Always Ready, p. 88). If "to 'have faith' that something is true... is the same as 'believing' that the claim in question is true" (Ibid., p. 202n.1), then as a "precondition for a proper understanding" faith is belief without understanding. And since faith is said to be "the substance of things hoped for" (Heb. 11:1 ) and this enables enables one to see "that which is not seen in human ability" (Always Ready, p. 92), the substance of faith can only be imagination.

by Dawson Bethrick