I do a great deal of thinking about why I believe what I believe: I wouldn't see myself as a responsible believer if I didn't. The role of apologetics in creating or sustaining my faith naturally comes into my reflections - is the reason that I believe really tied in to the strength of the evidence for the resurrection, or the ontological argument for God's existence? Are those sorts of things really, at heart, why I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? I'm beginning to doubt that they are.
Let me explain. When I ask myself 'why do you believe in the resurrection?', the immediate answer is not that the evidence suggests that the resurrection is the most likely thing to have happened, but simply because God has said it happened and that it is necessary to believe it happened for our salvation. Because I love and trust Him, I therefore believe that the resurrection happened. It's that simple, and, if we are to have the faith of a child, I don't think it needs to be anything else. I remember quite clearly when the reality of the resurrection first struck me, and it didn't happen after reading anything by Tom Wright: it happened on Easter day when I was six years old. My Dad told me that 'Jesus came back to life on this day,' and I was quite taken aback. It was then that I realised that Jesus' resurrection happened on a day (whenever the specific day actually was) - it happened in historical time, and I've been praying and thinking about the implications of that ever since.
Now, don't misunderstand me. I've read my fair share of apologetic books over the years, and I think they're important. I had to seek them out to confirm that there was support for my faith, that it wasn't all just an illusion. But that's the point: I've come to believe that apologetics are only ever a support for faith. The evidence for the resurrection, for instance, can take you as far as believing that something unusual happened which convinced several Jews that their deceased rabbi had been resurrected... but it will never compel you to believe that their interpretation of the events was necessarily the correct one, no matter how unlikely the alternate explanations are. No, to believe in the resurrection, you have to trust the person who was resurrected - and I'm not sure that there is a way to systematise how people gain that trust. Part of it might be through apologetics. But when you fully love and trust God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, I'm not sure that rationality has much to do with it. Although I might be able to give more reasons to support my faith than I could when I was six, I still believe in God for the same reasons as I believed back then. It's out of love, and that will never make much sense in this world. Should we pretend otherwise?
A truly honest blog post Benjamin.
ReplyDelete"simply because God has said it happened and that it is necessary to believe it happened for our salvation"
The big question is this: if you can convince someone that belief in X is existentially necessary, why would they ever dare doubt it? Rather, should we not be even all the more suspicious of the veracity of claims which carry huge (infinite) threats of torture at disbelief?
It was only when I realised that disbelief in hell did not damn me, that I dared disbelieve in hell and was free to reject it rationally. Do you really think Jesus would not save you if you doubted he rose? Why?
Remember not resurrecting does not mean he is not with God (like Abraham, Elijah et al) and the idea of resurrection being salvific does not follow from any Jewish temple/sacrifice theology.
In short, because I believe the Holy Spirit inspired Romans 10:9. More generally, so much is tied to the resurrection - a guarantee of the future new creation, the church's life in the Spirit, and so on - that much of what makes being a Christian worthwhile is gutted out.
ReplyDelete