Looking at the basic Christian doctrine of Faith in God as found in Hebrews 6 I have broken what might be one doctrine into two because I think the second half needs its own effort in terms of our understanding.  Faith in God is connected to our understanding of Dead works however, because you can not separate the bad news, that all of our works are dead, from the good news, that Jesus Christ has performed a good work on your behalf.  Christ’s good work is central to Christianity and what you believe about Christ is central to your Christianity.  Christian Faith, by definition, is what you believe about Christ.

The Greek word from which we get our definition of faith is pistis, which means… “persuasion, i.e. credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), espec. reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstr. constancy in such profession; by extension. the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself:—assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.”  It comes from the Greek word pĕithō, which means… “to convince (by argument, true or false); by anal. to pacify or conciliate (by other fair means); reflex. or pass. to assent (to evidence or authority), to rely (by inward certainty):—agree, assure, believe, have confidence, be (wax) confient, make friend, obey, persuade, trust, yield.

To have faith then is to be convinced of something.  But it is more than being convinced, it is being convinced by a convincing argument.  Your pistis is built upon your pĕithō.  To be convinced of Christ is to believe a convincing argument about Christ.

The first problem with this line of thought is that you and I are post enlightenment thinkers.  The enlightenment reduced reason to a kind of strict empiricism.  What was reasonable could only be determined if it could be tested and measured.  It was this same spirit of empiricism that reduced the validity of the miraculous because miracles, by definition, cannot be empirically verified.  Once the miraculous and that which could not be tested and verified was removed from the realm of reason not only was faith and reason divorced from one another, but the divorce has never been seen as amicable.  Reason and faith are placed against one another in the family court of philosophy.  And if the enlightenment was the judge then reason got almost full custody.

However, as the children of the enlightenment have matured, they are starting to discover that the underlying causes of the divorce were built on a lie.  That lie is that empiricism is better suited to answer the questions of ultimate reality.  David Hume, a philosophical proponent of empiricism, argued that if knowledge were based on experience then anything that could not be experienced could not be established as real beyond a probability.  But is something is known with a high enough probability then to experience it becomes redundant.

I am reminded of the joke that starts by asking how you tell the difference between a mathematician and an engineer.  You have to put them both together on one side of a room and on the other you place a very attracted woman.  You tell them both that they can get to her only by going halfway.  Once they have gone halfway, they can then go half way again.  The mathematician will throw up his arms in frustration because you will only ever get halfway.  The engineer will set off immediately because he understands that you only have to get within working distance.  This is the lie of empiricism.  You may have so much evidence about something you have never experienced that the probability is high enough to be a “working” certainty.

It turns out that the ultimate meanings of this reality must be discerned by a shared custody of empiricism and what I call the “soft sciences” of philosophy.  When we ascribe faith to something, we ascribe that faith on not just the empirical evidence, but empirical evidence gets a vote.  Additionally, when we find ourselves unable to empirically evaluate something, we haven’t found ourselves outside of reason.  Astonishingly the laws of reason apply to that which cannot be measured.  For example, it is not unreasonable for the creator of the laws of physics to violate the laws of physics.  The fact that the creator of the laws of physics would be the only one who could break the laws of physics makes it impossible for anyone else to test the theory.  It is only unreasonable for a creator of the laws of physics to violate the laws of physics if you assume away the creator of the laws of physics.

Bottom line, if you want to have real faith you must have a convincing argument about that which you have faith in.  Empirical evidence is convincing.  It would be a challenge to convince Moses that the bush he saw burning in the desert was not what he saw.  But we are not limited by empirical data.  It is possible to be so certain of something that you have not experienced that it the evidence that makes you certain counts.  Faith, to avoid becoming wishful thinking can not be divorced from the evidence for that faith.  Do you know the evidence?

That brings us to the second problem.  If the definition of Christian Faith is tied to that which you believe about Christ, then it would be important to believe the right things about Christ.  It would be misleading to say that you are great person of Christian Faith if your understanding of Christ was equal to that of the Easter Bunny or Santa Clause.  No, to put your faith in Christ is to put your faith in Christ.  I call this the second problem because often the Christ who is is not the Christ that we desire.  The Christ who was, and is, and is to come is a Christ who we must submit to.  The Christ we desire is usually a much more comfortable Christ.

Mature faith then must answer a more robust question; why do I believe in Christ and do I believe in the real Christ?  The first part is about really believing, and the second part is about believing something that is real.  But it is still not enough because, as I said in the beginning, this doctrine is connected to the first.  What you believe about Christ must be relevant to the reality that both your good works and your evil works are dead.  For a faith in Christ to produce any kind of real hope the Christ we have faith in must be able to solve the problem of our dead works.  That would be good news indeed!

Paul had to remind the Corinthians of the good news that he had preached to them (1Co 15:1).  “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1Co 15:3-5).”  That he appeared to Cephas is almost empirical.  It was for Cephas!  But for you and I our evidence for the Christ who appeared to Cephas rests on the reliability of the testimony of Paul and its transmitting to our time.  Is the truth of that testimony probable enough for Cephas’ experience to count as “working”?  I think that it is, and the evidence backs up my conviction!  Do the Scriptures say that Christ died for my dead works, my sin?  They do!  What about the testimony of the resurrection?  It’s validity rests on the validity of the Scriptures as well and the probability of their truth.

For the skeptic there will always be room for doubt.  Just as the mathematician who can never get to where he wants to be the skeptic will always find space for doubt.  But Christian faith is based on evidence and if you want to have a stronger faith pursue the evidence.  One day, when you are hoping on God to be true to His promises you evidence will be the source of your faith and the substance of your hope.

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This post is part of a collection of posts about the basic doctrines of the Christian Faith as found in Hebrews 6. If you would like to read the others you can find them here.