Chapter 1 – Can Faith Ever Be Knowledge?
2 Corinthians 4:6 – For it is the God who said, “let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Questions, questions, questions; DW asks a lot of questions … really good questions … questions about important stuff. Most importantly, he makes me ask a lot of questions of myself and I love that!
• What is knowledge?
• What is faith?
• What is belief?
• What is the relationship between knowledge, faith and belief?
• Faith vs. belief – how are they different?
• What are some of the main differences between belief and knowledge?
• Does knowledge strengthen faith? Or does it eliminate faith?
• Does knowledge make people intolerant? Must one not know in order to be tolerant? Is tolerance, as a moral virtue, to be based on ignorance?
Knowledge
Dallas Willard (p15.) – We have knowledge of something when we are representing it as it actually is, on an appropriate basis of thought and experience. Knowledge always involves truth. Truth secured by experience, method, and evidence that is generally available. There is a body of uniquely Christian knowledge.
Faith
Dallas Willard (p.20) – Faith is a commitment to action, often beyond our natural abilities, based upon knowledge of God and God’s ways. An act of faith in the biblical tradition is always undertaken in an environment of knowledge and inseparable from it.
Contrast this with contemporary definitions of faith:
• Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing
• Firm belief in something for which there is no proof
• Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence
(note absence/exclusion of knowledge from definition of 2nd and 3rd bullets)
Belief
Beliefs are mental constructs, conclusions about reality that condition our actions and reactions; however “beliefs have no necessary tie to truth, good method, or evidence. We can believe what is false and often do (kids often believe in tooth fairies, and Santa Clause; and adults are not exempt either. They often place beliefs in things that are false — the world is flat, the second coming of Christ was imminent in the early 1900’s, and numerous times prior to that). To believe something, involves a readiness to act, in appropriate circumstances, as if what is believed were so (p.16).
I invite you to share your comments/reactions on what I have shared about Knowledge, Faith, and Belief above, as well as your perspective and insights on the remaining questions:
• What is the relationship between knowledge, faith and belief?
• Faith vs. belief – how are they different?
• What are some of the main differences between belief and knowledge?
• Does knowledge strengthen faith? Or does it eliminate faith?
• Does knowledge make people intolerant? Must one not know in order to be tolerant? Is tolerance, as a moral virtue, to be based on ignorance?
The contemporary definitions of faith are what hit me the hardest. “Firm belief in something for which there is no proof” and “Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence”. We let our culture get away with that definition without challenging it. Just because The Book of Hebrews tells us that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” does not mean there is no evidence for our belief in God or in Christ. As we know, the hope spoken of here is not “I wish” but “I know”. And our certainty is born of the knowledge we have of God, his unchanging nature and the way he has behaved in the past.
I was also glad for the distinction between knowledge, faith, commitment and profession. Obviously they are not equal in their requirement of knowledge as a backing; but we often treat faith, commitment and profession as synonymous.
Page 18 – Belief does not turn into knowledge, though we sometimes come to know what we previously only believed. Rather, belief and knowledge are different kinds of things with different roles in life. Belief does not necssarily disappear when knowledge comes.
I have a friend whose faith journey is reflected in the paragraph above. He believes, however tentatively, because he sees the validity of God’s values and the voracity of God’s Word in the lives of the believers around him. In associating with these friends/believers and listening to the teaching of the Word, he is acquiring knowledge of God, which I believe is producing a foundation for his faith (before, he scoffed at Christians as pie-in-the-sky ritualists) and will, in the end, strenghten his belief.
Couldn’t agree more with Willard’s assessment of faith as a blind leap (page 20) as “leaping without faith”. And to think, I used to have an affinity to the writings of Soren Kirkeguard. The idea WAS romantic when I was in college and trying to justify a belief in God in the face of what I thought was “scientific evidence” to the contrary. But the idea of leaping places faith on shaky grounds, if knowledge of God and his sufficiency is not attached to it. It’s like throwing yourself off a cliff without “knowing” there is a net below. Romantic, yes, but sad and tragic as well–especially tragic for those following me off the cliff.
Wow. I did not realized the church as a whole, left and right, has distanced itself from knowledge. Again, it’s magical and mystical and appeals to our romantic natures, but we are also created rational beings. So, without support of knowledge of God, we are trying to live the Christian life like a man trying to walk on one leg.
(Page 29) Tolerance–is a generous regard for those who differ from us on points we deeply care about, solidly grounded in knowledge. Well said. That kind of tolerance promotes discussion in the public sector while preventing those engaging in the discussion from being like the doubter described in James– “like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
What a revelation that tolerance based on knowledge led to abolition of slavery–what a reversal from the culture’s view of Christianity as intolerant. (Page 29)
Good observation Page 33, Knowledge is never sufficient…otherwise science would be all we need.
End thought good: Faith and science complete each other (Page 34).
Faith is belief in action. Until we actually apply a truth or belief to our lives, we cannot claim to believe it- at least not with any personal integrity.