At 09:06 PM 01/23/2001 +0000, Glenn Morton wrote:
>Does anyone have any fact that is verifiable about Christianity which makes
>a difference to the central issue of God invading history?
>
>Only by an affirmative, can we totally escape the issue of faith based upon
>faith.
Glenn, I apologize for intruding on the coversation at this point,
especially since others have responded to you in their own way, but I'm
honestly puzzled by what you appear to be asking for. I don't understand
why "faith based upon faith" is a problem, and I certainly don't undersatnd
how we could ever "totally escape" such a condition.
For instance, there seem to be at least a couple of faith claims in your
question above. You apparently believe that there are "facts," and that
these "facts" can be "verified" by some procedure. But how do we establish
the existence of "facts," particularly of the sort that you repeatedly ask
for? What "fact" will demonstrate the existence of "facts"? And how do
we establish what it means to "verify" something? Is there a way that we
can "verify" the proper approach to "verifying"? The difficulty here is an
endless regress, and the most genuine response to that regress is to
acknowledge that our confidence in these things rests on faith. Why think
that "facts" and "verifying" are something other than a set of faith claims?
I should confess that I am something of a direct realist, and not some
slack-jawed postmodernist who delights in catching people up in these
self-referential paradoxes. I do believe in "facts," and (within limits)
some versions of "verifying." But my commitment to them is a faith
commitment, and I don't see how else it would be possible to ground them.
And it seems epistemically appropriate to me that people (including those
who engage in serious scientific inquiry) should be satisfied with
grounding their commitments in this way. I don't see the problem.
The same issues, I think, can be approached from another angle. I know a
lot of Christians who establish their their theological certainties by
holding to propositions such as the following:
*God desires to reveal Himself to human beings
*That revelation consists primarily in the communication of information
*That information is reducible to expression in language
*The basic lingusitic expression is propositions
*Propositions, therefore, convey God's revelation
*Human beings are so created that an orderly assemblage of divine
propositions are intelligible to us
*The most natural place to encounter an orderly assemblage of divine
propositions is in a written text
*The Bible is a written text, purporting to contain such divine propositions
*The Bible is, therefore, an orderly assemblage of divine propositions
*The Bible was, therefore, authored by God
*The Bible contains divine information that is intelligible to human beings
*The Bible is a final and independent authority, inspired and reliable, of
God's revelation
Now, I don't deny any of those propositions. But none of them are "facts,"
and none of them can be "verified." They are all faith statements. Are we
to jettison the Bible as an authoritative source of divine revelation,
then, since our reliance on it is not based on "facts"? All of the
historical data will not ultimately validate the truth of the propositions
above. Historical data, considered as independent "facts," can only make
those propositions more or less probable; they cannot "verify." Historical
data is not useless or irrelevant to Christian faith; it just won't do what
you apparently want it to do. In that sense, I suppose I would not go the
way that George Andrews has suggested, making revelation a contemporary
subjective experience, since the pivotal confession of Christians is not
about what happens now, but about what happened on Calvary. Still, what
happened on Calvary cannot be reduced to a set of public "facts" (if it
were so reducible, I imagine a great many more of us would be clamoring for
another look at the Shroud of Turin, for instance). So in the long run --
2,000 years worth -- we are back to "faith based upon faith."
It makes sense to me that people would trust the central testimony of
Christianity -- the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ -- because there
has been a community of faith that has witnessed to these things for the
past 2,000 years, and that this community, fluid in all its expressions
over the centuries, has created a series of doctrines, documents (including
the Bible) and practices that continue to embody the spiritual power and
hope of the Christian faith. But nothing in that previous sentence
constitutes anything like "facts" that can "verify" the truth of
Christianity, and it likely sounds like a weak mush of meaningless verbiage
to anyone whose faith is in "facts" and "verification." It doesn't seem to
me that there is any way to arbitrate whether a faith in "facts" and
"verification" is any more reliable, or any more suitable, to our
reflections on Christianity than is a faith in the Church and its
traditional claims and practices. And I honestly don't understand why any
Christian would demand more than the latter. Is there any genuine
epistemic advantage to be gained by arguing for "facts" and "verification"
as if they were more than a set of faith commitments? Can you help me with
this?
Tom Pearson
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu
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