Re: Why ICR "wins"

Dennis Feucht (dfeucht@toolcity.net)
Wed, 28 Jan 1998 13:11:20 -0500

> Moorad Alexanian wrote:
>
> > You are right. It is the nature of faith to doubt.
>
> No, it is in the nature of faith to trust. (I mean "faith" in
> its most important theological sense, which is deeper than believing
> certain propositions.) Doubting God is a violation of the First
> Commandment.
> AND - Christians do doubt. Just as Luther says that we are "at
> the same time justified and sinner", we are "at the same time trusting
> and doubting." & the reason we can have confidence in spite of that is
> not because we can summon up some heroic faith which annihilates doubt
> but because, as with all sins, we are forgiven for Christ's sake.
> Doubting doctrinal propositions is another matter. While doubt
> for the sake of doubt should not be encouraged, it is important to be
> willing to think about theological formulations in order to see if they
> give adequate expression to the faith in a given context.
>

Walter Thorson once made a distinction in one of his epistemology lectures
between doubt, which is an inescapable component of belief, and unbelief,
which is a lack of commitment. When we commit ourself to believing
something, we realize that we could be wrong, and our assessment of that
risk is doubt. However, we assess risks in what we believe without
relinquishing our commitment to those beliefs. It is only after a massive
case has built up against our commitment that we consider abandoning it.
But if this consideration is "doubt" it is a different form of doubt that
the former.

When the KJV NT quotation said, "Some doubted," in the above sense they
were simply not believing to start with, and not assessing the risk of any
presumed commitment.

(I haven't been reading this thread, so pardon me if I'm repeating an old
point of the discussion.)

Dennis L. Feucht
Innovatia Laboratories
American Scientific Affiliation Newsletter Editor
Great Lakes Rocket Society
14554 Maplewood Road
Townville, Pennsylvania 16360
(814)789-2100
dfeucht@toolcity.net