In my last post I briefly outlined two prominent historical events (the Reformation and the Enlightenment) which, as I came to discover, had a rather significant impact on how the nature of faith has come to be understood ever since. In particular how, on the one hand, the Reformation began to understand “faith” primarily in terms of “belief” and, on the other hand, how the Enlightenment began to understand “truth” primarily in terms of “fact” (both overly broad generalizations, to be sure, but both sufficiently accurate for my purposes here). The overall impact of these two historical developments, as I came to learn, was that faith became increasingly less focused on the previously central notions of trust, loyalty, allegiance, etc. in/to God and more focused on affirming the factuality of a given set of propositions about God – propositions typically interpreted literally and propositions which, in many cases, were inevitably cast into doubt by the advent of Enlightenment skepticism. As a result of this, Christians began to understand what it meant to have faith primarily in terms of what propositions they believed to be true. A result that not only led many of those who no longer “believed” to reject the Christian faith altogether, but which also led many of those who did “believe” to dig in their heels all the more and, in some cases, to begin defending their beliefs – beliefs having to do with the historical and/or scientific accuracy of many events recorded in the Bible being front and center on both sides of the coin, and which the contemporary debates that persist to this day concerning the Big Bang, evolution, the inerrancy of the Bible, etc., may perhaps be the most recent and familiar of its offspring.

Indeed, it seems to me that the enterprise of contemporary Christian apologetics owes much of its current motivation to the fruit of these two historical developments. An enterprise which seems to have gained considerable steam by first accepting the Reformation and Enlightenment dynamics of “faith = belief” and “truth = fact” and then focusing significant intellectual effort on shoring up the “facts” that undergird the “truths” necessary to be “believed” in order to have “faith” (with the facts, truths, and beliefs seen as “essential” varying quite considerably from one Christian to another, though not surprisingly). Put differently, it is around this time that many people began to think of faith as a sort of mental “leap” that one makes whenever knowledge runs out (read: whenever we can’t prove things as “facts” through historical and/or scientific investigation), and where apologists sought to show that such a mental leap need not be very far, if necessary at all: “Pay no attention to these ‘enlightened’ skeptics, we can prove the essential facts necessary to undergird the foundational truths of Christianity and thereby in turn show belief – and therefore faith – to be perfectly reasonable.” A response which, in one sense, seems to drink deeply from the waters of Enlightenment thinking (by accepting its two-fold emphasis of understanding faith in terms of belief and truth in terms of fact) and yet which, in another sense, seems to spit it right back out (by rejecting its skeptical emphasis concerning such facts). And I say that both as a champion of apologetics and as a passionate apologist myself – albeit an apologist of a slightly different bent than the majority in my experience.

Indeed, whereas many apologists seem motivated to defend the truth of certain facts because they think either a) that such facts themselves are critical to the truth of Christianity, and/or b) that having a correct belief regarding such facts is critical to having the type of faith needed for salvation, I do not. Although I do think there is a significant factual basis for the foundational claims of Christianity, I don’t think the truth of Christianity ultimately hinges upon facts. Why? Because, in short, I don’t think truth is ultimately dependent upon facts (where by “truth” I mean “that which corresponds to reality,” and where by “fact” I mean “that which can be verified to be true through historical and/or scientific investigation”). As such, although all facts need be true, not all truths need be fact (if this distinction still seems difficult to grasp, try thinking of a story you know is true even though it didn’t necessarily “happen that way,” or couldn’t “have been videotaped,” etc.). So do I believe Christianity is true? Yes. Do I believe all of the claims typically associated with it to be factual? No. Do I believe that it is critical that one believe such claims to be factual in order to have faith? No. But do I believe that giving reasons in support of the factual basis for certain claims (where they exist) is worthwhile? That it might help resolve certain doubts that others may be struggling with (even if I don’t)? And that it might help others to draw closer to God as a result? Yes, yes, and yes!

My motivation as an apologist, then, is not tied to a felt need for people to believe the factuality of any particular doctrine or teaching so much as it is tied to a deep-seated belief that Christianity best captures (whether metaphorically and/or factually) the ultimate nature of reality and purpose of life itself, a deep-seated belief that the central claims of Christianity are true and worthy of committing one’s life to. Claims such as a) that there is a God, b) that the person of Jesus shows us what God is like, and c) that the purpose of life is the ultimate transformation of ourselves and the world through pursuing a relationship with God as known in Jesus, a pursuit characterized most centrally by d) loving God and loving people. Those are the reasons why, at bottom, I am a Christian and why, at bottom, I am passionate about the enterprise of apologetics. Not because I think some set of “facts” must be true in order for Christianity to be true, nor because I think people must believe some set of “facts” in order to be “saved,” but rather because I believe there are good reasons for believing its overall vision of reality to be true (facts aside) and sincerely desire others – not simply (or even necessarily) to believe it – but rather (and most importantly) to experience it. To experience its transformational power and to see the value of committing their lives to its ultimate vision, a vision that – if we are willing – has the power to transform us and, through us, the world as a whole.

It is for that reason that I care as much as I do about exploring and sharing the reasons in support of the truth of Christianity, and why I care as much as I do about removing whatever obstacles may prevent someone from pursuing faith and experiencing the transformative power it can have in their lives. Although it is true that doubts about certain “facts” often serve as the kind of obstacles that prevent people from committing their lives to Christ and his vision for the world (and are therefore the kind of obstacles that apologetics typically seeks to address), the chief obstacle in focus in this blog is different. It is an obstacle that I think often gets overlooked or neglected, an obstacle that can serve as just as much of a barrier to “faith” (if not moreso) than “believing” this or that “fact” to be “true”, and it is the obstacle created by the very framework in which the nexus of those terms are often understood in the first place – a framework which sees faith as associated primarily with “choosing to believe” certain things that have become increasingly difficult to believe. An unfortunate scenario in many respects, in part because there is actually quite a bit more evidence in favor of most foundational Christian beliefs than most people probably realize, but unfortunate also because it often causes people who may desire the riches of faith to give up simply because they can’t “believe” something which they’ve been told they must (insert controversial belief here).

Whereas faith was once marked by a radical trust in God combined with a genuine openness to exploring truth wherever it may be found (indeed many of the greatest intellectual/scientific achievements we know today were achieved by Christians who were deeply committed to pursuing the life of the mind and its quest for understanding the created order – cue Isaac Newton, etc.), faith seems in many respects to have lost that sense of openness and to have often become characterized by a sort of anti-intellectual stubbornness of the mind, akin to closing one’s eyes and plugging one’s ears in an act of pious defiance towards the advent of the modern world and everything that comes with it. “We know that faith requires believing in the factual truth of many things that you modern skeptics may cast into doubt,” this outlook would say, “but we will choose to believe what we want regardless, clinging to whatever evidence needed to do so, however minimal or problematic.” Or, on the other side of the fence, “we know that faith requires believing in the factuality of many things that you Christians believe to be true, but we simply don’t/can’t believe those things to be true, so go ahead and count us out.” Why these types of responses? Because the dominant way of viewing faith today requires them, a way of viewing faith that often breeds a willful sense of close-minded ignorance amongst those who “believe” while simultaneously leaving those who find themselves unable to “believe” out in the cold and, ultimately, without hope. Yet, and to bring us back to the topic at hand, a way of viewing faith and belief that turns out to be very different than the way the two had been viewed throughout most of history.

As I touched on last time, prior to the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, the relationship between faith and belief was very much different. Primarily because, as one may surmise, most Christians prior to that time probably took the literal/factual truth of many things in the Bible more or less for granted. Essentially serving as the conventional wisdom of the time, there wasn’t really much of a conflict between Christianity and other fields of knowledge (whether science, history, philosophy, etc.). As such, to “believe” in the truth of Christianity or the Bible was relatively effortless, leading most Christians to see “faith”, not in a way that emphasized “belief” (the way the term is understood today), but in ways that emphasized many of the other aspects of faith that I have mentioned already and will later explore further. Indeed, in a somewhat ironic sense, it didn’t take a whole lot of “faith” (in our sense) for most Christians of antiquity to have a whole lot of “faith” (in their sense). It was only after the advent of modernity that the notion of “faith” came to be understood primarily in terms of mentally assenting to the literal/factual truth of various propositions, an understanding that simultaneously became (by no accident) both much more difficult and, as a result, much more emphasized (both by those who claimed to have faith and by those who didn’t).

It was this understanding of faith that I more or less absorbed growing up and that I really began to struggle with during my own crisis of faith. However, the more and more I thought about it, the more and more such a view came to seem rather strange to me (indeed it still seems rather strange to me). The primary reason was that, among other things, such a view seems to suggest that what God really cares about the most is the beliefs in our heads, as if having the “right beliefs” is what God is looking for the most, as if “believing the right things” is what ultimately “saves” us. As such, to fail to have the “right beliefs” (i.e. think the “right things”) – or even worse to have the “wrong beliefs” (i.e. think the “wrong things”) – was to put yourself in a world of hurt with the “big man upstairs.” Indeed, to think that God cares so much about our “beliefs” (i.e. what we happen to think is true) seems quite bizarre, and yet it was something I truly believed for most of my life. It was only after I discovered many of the other ways in which Christians have seen faith throughout the ages that I came to see faith differently for myself, ways of seeing faith that – though far from anti-intellectual – had more to do with the “heart” than with the “head,” more to do with how one “lives” than what one “thinks.” Ways that revolutionized my spiritual life, ways that in many cases seem to have been forgotten, and ways that I will begin to unpack next time.

Until then, thanks again for reading and – as always – stay curious, seek truth, and love well.

Cheers,