The Nature of Faith

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, in writing your systematic philosophical theology, which you are very busy doing, you revisited the definition and nature of faith. This article^[1] by a skeptic that we are going to look at gives us a chance to discuss it and perhaps apply it. As we begin, tell us about your lecture at the Evangelical Philosophical Society conference. Because there are certain things that this article mentions that you were talking about in that lecture – “Does Christian Faith Imply Belief?” You talk about things like saving faith.

DR. CRAIG: My question that I was posing was whether Christian faith or saving faith implies belief. I distinguished between what I call personal faith and propositional faith. Personal faith is trust in a person. Propositional faith is belief in a proposition. It seems to me that saving faith implies both personal trust in God and in Christ, but then also propositional faith – belief in certain propositions. For example, Paul says, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Here Paul mentions two propositions that should be believed as conditions of salvation, namely that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. So in my paper I argued that the nature of biblical faith is that it's more than just personal trust. It is also propositional belief.

KEVIN HARRIS: Richard Miller, who describes himself as “a humanistic critic of contemporary religion and a trans-disciplinary research scholar exploring the cultural and literary nexus between classical antiquity and the social origins of earliest Christianity,” wrote this article. We can sum up the first two paragraphs as his saying that Roman classical mythology was replaced by Christian mythology and that both were just accepted on blind faith. He says,

Epistemic “knowledge” argumentation and evidentialist ground for any rational propositional case were conspicuously absent (not merely non-central) in the early Christian apologetic tradition. But why???

The only rational and satisfying answer to this question comes as the first and most obvious: Earliest Christians did not proffer a knowledge system, but a belief system.

Do you think he's right? Were early Christians just interested in a doxastic faith rather than emphasizing facts and evidence?

DR. CRAIG: No. I think that Miller is quite wrong and that he's clearly misread the New Testament. The Christian religion is a knowledge tradition, not just a blind faith tradition. The claim is that we have knowledge of certain propositions about the existence of God, the person of Christ, and how to be properly related to him. I detected in Miller's article a really ugly kind of animus against Christianity that is more characteristic of Internet infidels than academic scholars. There is absolutely no grounds for thinking that what happened in the ancient world was that Roman classical mythology was replaced by Christian mythology. That's very pejorative, and New Testament scholars are well aware that the category of myth or mythology is an irrelevant category when it comes to the Gospel narratives of the life and teachings of Jesus which formed the foundation for the Christian movement that followed him.

KEVIN HARRIS: OK. By the way, I used the term “doxastic.” We're familiar with the term “doxology,” but what is that, if you would clarify that for us real quick? Doxastic faith.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. That has to do with belief. There are three doxastic attitudes that you can take toward a proposition. You can believe it, you can disbelieve it, or you can simply have unbelief (or not believe it). You neither believe it nor disbelieve it, you just have non-belief with regard to it. Those would be the three doxastic attitudes that you might have toward a proposition. There are many other sorts of propositional attitudes that one can have. For example, you could fear that something might be true, or you could be happy that something is true, or you might be worried that something is true. But those would be non-doxastic. The doxastic attitudes are belief, disbelief, or non-belief.

KEVIN HARRIS: Miller goes to the New Testament next. He cites two passages that you've talked about many times, Bill. John 20:29 and Hebrews 11:1. He says,

So, once Thomas asks for such a sign, the protagonist’s response makes the distinction rather explicit: “Blessed are those who believe without having seen [any evidence]” (Jn 20.29). Indeed, the grand New Testament “faith” chapter, defines the term pistis quite unambiguously:

Faith (pistis) is an assertion of things for which one hopes, the testing of matters not visible. (Heb 11.1)

How should we understand these verses?

DR. CRAIG: In context, when Jesus appears to Thomas and says, “Do not be faithless but be believing,” the problem that Thomas had was he refused to believe the apostolic testimony of the other apostles who had seen Jesus risen from the dead. Thomas wasn't there that day, and so he was skeptical. Jesus challenges Thomas's skepticism. He shows him his wounds, that he is risen from the dead, and Thomas comes to believe him. Jesus says, “Do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who believe without having seen.” Now Miller interprets that to mean without having seen any evidence. That's not what it says. What that is saying is that those who are not members of the first generation (Jesus’ contemporaries) who do not have the advantage of having known the historical Jesus personally can nevertheless confidently believe on the basis of the apostolic testimony to Jesus. And they are blessed for believing even though they haven't had the advantage of being eyewitnesses themselves. John goes on to say that Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples that are not recorded in this book, but he says these are recorded so that you can believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and by believing have life in his name. So John is rooting Christian faith (here at least) in these signs that the historical Jesus performed revealing his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God. Similarly, in the faith chapter in Hebrews 11, what the author seems to be saying there is that faith is having a confidence in things that you can't see. He's thinking here of things in the past (because you're not there contemporaneously with those events), and he's thinking of things in the future – things that have not yet happened. You don't see those. But you can have faith that those either did happen or will happen, and you can have good reasons for that faith. For example, Christians have, I think, a solid basis for faith that Christ will come again and that we ourselves will be raised from the dead to life-eternal. Our faith is rooted and based in Jesus’ historical resurrection from the dead. So in neither of these cases is the author saying that faith has to be in the absence of good evidence.

KEVIN HARRIS: Miller continues. I just want to point out to our listeners and viewers that some of these quotes here from this article are rather pretty thick and pretty complicated. We'll parse them out.

DR. CRAIG: One of Miller's weaknesses is that he has a very prolix writing style. It's almost as though he wants to impress us with his big words and complicated sentences. I think you're quite right to warn our listeners about that.

KEVIN HARRIS: The article continues,

As with today and throughout the history of Christianity, early Christian conversion essentially arose as a fideist transaction, a willful indulgence in a fantastical alternate reality as a means or strategy of spiritual enlightenment. Early Christian converts were not presented with proofs or evidential cases for the historical or ontological veracity of their belief system. Rather, they embraced the cultic framework of tales and cast of metaphysical figures as their conversion rite into the cultic community. Many New Testament scholars today have utterly failed to recognize this radical foundation for the religion, instead supposing that the Gospels were written and utilized as historiae. . .

What’s the word there?

DR. CRAIG: History! And he’s right that New Testament scholars refuse to recognize his mischaracterization of New Testament Christianity. In his expressions like “a willful indulgence in a fantastical alternate reality” you see the pejorative nature of his characterizations. Now, certainly from the standpoint of the naturalist, our belief in the existence of God and of his incarnation in Christ, and his resurrection from the dead as an atonement for sin, these must appear fantastic to the naturalist. But of course I don't think that there's any good reason to think that naturalism is true. We would have to have good arguments from Miller for thinking that naturalism is true before we dismiss Christianity as a fantastical alternative reality. And this gets back to his point earlier – he seems to think that Christianity is some sort of a mythology that was adopted to replace Greco-Roman mythology. And that's quite mistaken. As he seems to recognize in his last sentence, New Testament scholars today recognized that the Gospels were written and utilized as historical documents. The genre of ancient literature that they most resemble is not myth; it is ancient biography (like The Lives of famous Greeks and Romans written by Plutarch). And ancient biography quite definitely had a historical interest. When the Gospels are read in this way their historical credibility emerges to the forefront. These are not of the character of myths like Greco-Roman stories of Zeus or Hercules. Rather Jesus of Nazareth was a bonafide historical person who actually lived and wrought, and most New Testament scholars would say that we are able to have a pretty confident knowledge of the life and teachings of the historical Jesus including his crucifixion, his burial by Joseph of Arimathea, the discovery of his empty tomb, the post-mortem appearances of Jesus to various individuals and groups, and the transformation in the lives of his earliest disciples. So he's completely wrong today in thinking that the foundations of the Christian system is just a kind of reworking of mythological tales rather than being grounded in the facts of what at that time was very recent history in the memory of the eyewitnesses.

KEVIN HARRIS: At the first of that paragraph, he just says that early Christians were fideists. That the whole thing was just a blind faith thing.

DR. CRAIG: Did Jesus and the apostles simply go about preaching and inviting people to believe without grounds? Did they? No. The historical Jesus understood that his claims were radical and therefore he appealed to his miracles and his exorcisms of demonic beings in order to show tangibly and clearly the in-breaking of the kingdom of God in his person and ministry. The apostles followed up with that same sort of approach. They would appeal to fulfilled prophecy and to Jesus’ miracles and especially to Jesus’ resurrection from the dead as grounds for thinking that Jesus was in fact the Lord and Messiah. A perfect example of such an apologetic to a Jewish audience would be Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost recorded in the book of Acts. Peter first appeals to fulfilled prophecy, then he appeals to the miracles that the historical Jesus did, and finally he appeals to the eyewitness testimony to Jesus’ resurrection as a basis for thinking that Jesus was indeed Lord and Christ. Now, you might not think that those are very good arguments. Maybe you think those are weak. That's fine. The point though, against Miller, is that they did appeal to arguments and evidence. They didn't just invite people to blindly believe. When it came to dealing with Gentile audiences (those who were not Jews) the apostles would typically appeal to God's handiwork in nature to show that there is a transcendent creator and designer of the universe. See Paul's exposition in Romans chapter one. You mentioned Acts 17. And then they would appeal to the testimony to the resurrection of Jesus to show that this creator God had specially revealed himself in the person of Jesus. So these early apostles were well aware of the availability of evidence that could be given in support of the message that they proclaimed. They weren't fideists, in other words.

KEVIN HARRIS: Next, the article says,

Western philosophical terminology has regrettably often served to compound this pervasive delusion, applying the term “belief” as the common epistemological operation inherent to common knowledge and the sciences. We may use the English term in that fashion, but this has obscured the New Testament term and the peculiar posturing of ancient cultic make-believe as integral to ancient religious pietas. Classical Greek pistis, in lexical terms, most closely denoted the dictional notion of “belief-in” rather than “knowing” or “comprehending” (e.g., belief in Santa or reincarnation), and entailed an a priori admission of content into one’s worldview apart from sufficient evidence.

You talked a lot about some of these very terms in your lecture. The term pistis.

DR. CRAIG: He is so mistaken. He recognizes that the term “belief” is employed in both common knowledge and the sciences as well as in religious belief. The term is neutral. It just means “to affirm” or “assert” a proposition. That's what we were talking about with regard to doxastic attitudes toward propositions. I've heard humanists or unbelievers say that they don't have any beliefs. In my dialogue with Lawrence Krauss in Australia, he asserted, “I have no beliefs.” I said, “Lawrence, surely you believe that you're Lawrence Krauss.” He immediately backed away and said, “Well, yes, I do, but I have good reasons for my beliefs.” And I said, “Fine. I have good reasons for my religious beliefs as well.” You see, the people like Miller think that belief in the religious sense has to mean that it is devoid of any evidence for it, and that's simply a mistake. With respect to the way the word pistis, or “faith”, is used in the ancient world, it is used not only in the sense of trusting in someone, but it is also used in the sense of propositional belief, as I explained in my lecture. While I don't expect our listeners to go out and read the following book, I want to at least mention it as a decisive treatment of this subject in case anyone challenges them on this point. This is a book by Teresa Morgan called Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (pistis and fides are the Greek and Latin words for faith), published by Oxford University Press in 2015. Morgan makes and clearly discerns this distinction between personal belief and propositional belief, and she points out that propositional belief is associated in the New Testament with knowledge. For example, in John's Gospel over and over again belief in certain truths is associated with our having knowledge of those truths. As I've already explained, this is not at all incompatible with having good reasons for what you believe.

KEVIN HARRIS: Here is how the article ends. I just want to warn everybody. This really gets wordy here. Here we go.

Turning attention to Bayesian appraisal of New Testament mythology, perhaps one may see the problem. Bayesian logic is meant to evaluate the possibility of some knowledge proposition as being true. The cultic posture of the New Testament, however, has set forth faith propositions, not knowledge propositions. Indeed, such modern "proofs," when applied to New Testament “faith” claims, even if considered successful, invariably become self-refuting. The (deluded) mental success of the apologist merely serves to remove their one requisite “virtue,” that of belief, replacing their salvific pistis with evidentialist certitude, however ill-founded. In the very act of proving the religion to be true in any modern scientific rational sense, the apologist falls out of faith and thus out of salvific grace, a matter of devastating irony and incomprehensible self-deception. Nothing here should surprise anyone. All religions stand on that common ground, namely, that of willful belief rather than evidentialist authentication, as the mental ritual admittance to their respective cultic societies.

Am I to understand him to say that offering facts and evidence for Christianity mitigates against saving faith and so it defeats the purpose?

DR. CRAIG: Yes. You're quite right. In this vitriolic passage, what Miller seems to be saying is not that you cannot provide good evidence for Christian truth claims (you could use Bayesian probability calculus to show that Christian beliefs are very probably true, as many Christian philosophers have tried to do), but he characterizes this as deluded. This would be deluded mental success because what it would mean is that you've gained evidentialist certitude of your beliefs and thereby removed any salvific value from those beliefs. He thinks that in order to be efficacious in winning your salvation, your beliefs have to be groundless! They have to be arbitrary. They can't have good reasons or evidentialist foundations. Notice how he simply asserts this. He gives no evidence for this at all. He's talking about evidence constantly, and yet his own position is a tissue of groundless assertions.  I would defy anyone to show from the New Testament that if you have good reasons to place your faith in Christ that somehow your faith in Christ is now null and void and that you will be lost and damned rather than saved.

KEVIN HARRIS: I want to encourage our listeners and viewers to check out your lecture at EPS. We need to discuss that on some future podcast. I thought it was just great. “Does (Christian) Faith Imply Belief?”^[2] We’ll talk about that again in a future podcast.^[3]