The Reasonableness of Christian Faith
Is it reasonable to believe that Christianity is true? This is a question which everyone, both Christian and non-Christian, should seriously ask themselves at some point in their lives. Billions of people throughout the world, including millions of intelligent, educated people, sincerely believe that Christianity is true. Yet, there are millions of people who are aware of the claims of Christianity and yet reject it in favor of other religions, belief systems, and worldviews. Are there good reasons for accepting Christianity rather than these other ways of understanding reality?
Skeptical critics of Christianity argue that believing in Christianity is unreasonable because it is based on faith, which is fundamentally irrational. However, as I argue in this previous philosophy post, faith and reason are not opposites; rather, they are complementary. Virtually all of our beliefs about any subject are based on faith: faith in what others have told us, faith in the authority of experts, faith in the authority of tradition, faith in our own philosophical assumptions. It is possible to have an unreasonable faith. But it is also possible to have a reasonable faith.
By claiming a positive role for faith in the pursuit of truth, I am advocating a critical realist understanding of truth, which conflicts with the standard modernist understanding of truth.
According to the modernist view of truth, there is a set of indubitable truths universally accessible by the reason of any human being which can provide the foundation for certain knowledge. Upon this foundation, we can then build our other beliefs, secure in the knowledge that our beliefs are certain and reasonable. In this way, faith in authority and tradition can be replaced by a universal Reason.
The problem is that there simply is no such set of indubitable, universally accessible truths. There is no universal Reason that can give us a completely objective perspective on reality. Rather, we are always viewing reality from a subjective viewpoint. We are always operating based on assumptions that are accepted by faith. All “facts” which we believe have already been placed within an interpretive framework. There is no neutral, abstract, universal Reason.
This demands that we abandon modernism’s naive realism in favor of critical realism. Human reason does not give us direct access to objective knowledge of reality as it is in and of itself. We do have knowledge of reality, but it is imperfect, mediated through our subjective perceptions of reality and the theories which we use to make sense of these perceptions. As we seek to understand the truth about reality, we cannot view reality from a standpoint of neutral Reason, but only from particular perspectives, theories, and worldviews. This does not mean that truth is merely subjective, however, since it is possible for us to become convinced that another theory or worldview has greater explanatory power than our current perspective, and to undergo a paradigm shift, changing our perspective to that of this other theory or worldview. By doing so, we can arrive at a more truthful understanding of reality, even as our understanding will always be to some extent imperfect.
As a Christian, I believe that the Christian worldview provides the most reasonable way of understanding reality. Christianity is something I believe by faith, but I believe it is a reasonable faith.
The Relationship Between Christian Faith and Reason
What is the proper relationship between faith and reason? Different Christian thinkers have provided various answers to this question.
Some Christian thinkers, such as existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, have argued that, in order to know the truth, we must begin with a nonrational leap of faith, and then reason from there. This is a position known as fideism. The problem with this is that there are many different religious faiths. Which one should we leap to? We first need sufficient good reasons for believing the Christian faith over others before making a decision that it is the faith we should leap to.
Some modern Reformed Christian philosophers, such as Alvin Plantinga, have argued that Christian theism is a “basic belief,” and so Christians do not need to provide evidence for the truth of Christian theism in order to reasonably believe it. Basic beliefs are philosophical beliefs which all reasonable people must assume in order to discuss anything rationally, even though, strictly speaking, they cannot be proven to be true to a skeptic. Properly basic beliefs include beliefs such as: our memories are basically reliable, other minds exist, and a real, external world exists. Some Christian philosophers seek to add Christian theism to this list of basic beliefs.
I think a reasonable case could be made that theism is a basic belief. That is, I think one can reasonably argue that, in order to believe that the universe is intelligible and that human reason can arrive at objective truth about the universe, one must implicitly assume that a Supreme Intelligence is responsible for the existence of the universe (I will return to this argument for God’s existence from reason in a future post).
However, it is difficult to see how Christian theism, the belief in a loving, Trinitarian God, can be a properly basic belief. The belief in a loving, Trinitarian God is based upon a belief in certain specific historical events: that God became Incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth in the first century, that Jesus demonstrated God’s love by dying and rising again for us, that God sent His Holy Spirit on the Church to continue the mission of Jesus, etc. And there is no way that beliefs about particular historical events can be properly basic beliefs.
Catholic thinker Blaise Pascal famously made an argument for Christian faith known as Pascal’s Wager. He argued that, if one believes Christianity, and it turns out to be false, one has lost relatively little, but if one rejects Christianity, and it turns out to be true, one has lost something infinite: eternal life. Therefore, it is more reasonable to believe Christianity, “wagering” one’s life on the possibility that Christianity is true, even if the truth of Christianity cannot be proved with certainty through reason.
The problem with Pascal’s Wager is that Pascal assumes that there are only two options: Christian faith and unbelief. However, there are not only two religious options. Rather, there are many religious options. For example, there is Islam, believed in by hundreds of millions of people today. Muslims believe that Christians are blasphemous idolaters who are going to Hell. So, if Islam is true, then one has quite a lot to lose by believing in Christianity. By itself, then, Pascal’s wager fails to make a convincing argument for Christian faith. In order for the Wager to work, one first would have to provide reasons for thinking that believing in Christianity is more reasonable than believing in other religions.
However, I do think that there is some value in Pascal’s Wager insofar as it makes an argument against religious indifference. If Christianity is true, then believing it or not believing it could make the difference between eternal life and eternal death. So, everyone owes it to themselves to carefully examine the claims of Christianity and to assess whether they might be true.
In a famous essay, “The Will to Believe,” philosopher William James argued that, under certain circumstances, it is reasonable to believe in a religion, even if one cannot prove with certainty that it is true by reason alone. James argued that, just as we cannot be neutral about moral beliefs, we cannot be neutral about religious beliefs; thus, believing in a particular religious perspective is a forced decision. So, if there is a religion which is a live option for us, we can be justified in choosing to believe it, even in the absence of certain proof that it is true.
James makes a persuasive pragmatic argument for the reasonableness of religious faith. However, we still must answer the question of which religion we should believe in. A religion can only appear as a live option for someone if they think there are some good reasons for believing in it rather than in other belief systems. So, in order to show that Christian faith is reasonable, one must make rational arguments for why the Christian worldview is more reasonable than other alternative worldviews.
Christian Apologetic Methods
Christian apologetics is a reasoned intellectual defense of the reasonableness and coherence of the Christian worldview. There are three main approaches used by Christian apologists: presuppositionalist, classical, and evidentialist.
The presuppositionalist approach presupposes the truth of the Christian worldview, and then seeks to show how the Christian worldview is coherent and internally consistent. While it is valuable and important to show the internal coherence of the Christian worldview, this approach by itself seems to be lacking. It doesn’t answer the question of why someone outside the Christian faith should believe in Christianity in the first place.
The classical approach begins by making philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Then, from this foundation, it goes on to make arguments for Christian theism specifically. The problem with this approach is that it implies that the truth of Christianity stands or falls with the success of philosophical arguments first being able to prove that the god of the philosophers exists. But in fact, people can and do become convinced that the God of Christianity is real without ever considering these philosophical arguments.
The evidentialist approach skips over philosophical theology and begins with making arguments for the truth of Christianity based on evidence of God’s miraculous acts in the world, often focusing on the historical evidence for Jesus’s resurrection. The problem with this approach is that there is no neutral, objective standpoint from which to assess evidence, since evidence is always interpreted from a particular perspective. Thus, evidence by itself cannot prove or disprove a worldview. There needs to be a broader approach.
Thus, I advocate a more integrated, cumulative case approach to Christian apologetics. In order to assess the reasonableness of a worldview, one must consider it as a whole, comparing it to other worldviews, and asking which worldview overall is more probable. Through various appeals to internal coherence, philosophical arguments, and evidence, one can try to convince another person that the Christian worldview is, overall, more coherent and has greater explanatory power than their current worldview. By doing so, one can bring about a paradigm shift in the person’s “control beliefs” by which they interpret all evidence, as they convert intellectually (and hopefully spiritually) to Christianity.
Over the course of this series of apologetics posts on my blog, I will attempt to make a cumulative case for the reasonableness of the Christian worldview. I will begin by answering some preliminary questions regarding the relationship between reason, science, and Christianity. Then, I will deal with various questions regarding the coherence of Christian theological beliefs. Then, I will deal with various issues regarding the relationship between the Bible and history. Then, I will address the issue of the relationship between God and morality. Finally, I will make some philosophical arguments for God’s existence. Hopefully, by the end, I will have made a convincing case for the reasonableness of Christian faith.
A final note: In these blog posts, I will most often address intellectual attacks on Christianity from an atheist perspective. This is not because I believe atheism to be a neutral or privileged religious perspective, but because, in the particular context of contemporary American culture, atheism is de facto the chief rival to the Christian worldview. I have written a critique of some of the common arguments against Christianity made by New Atheists in this previous post, but will go into much more detail in the following posts.