Assurance of Faith

How do we know what we know (or claim to know)? It's a question that no thoughtful Christian can avoid, relevant as it is to Jesus' Great Commission. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine any way to avoid confronting this issue when engaging people with worldviews vastly different from our own.


So how do we know what we know?

I like how Albert Mohler puts it:

Are we capable of knowing truth? Is truth, in any objective sense, accessible to us? How is it that different people, different cultures, and different faiths hold to such different understandings and affirm such irreconcilable claims to truth? Does truth even exist at all? If so, can we really know it? ... The good news is this—just as we are saved by grace alone, we find that the starting point for all Christian thinking in the grace of God is demonstrated to us by means of his self-revelation. (Mohler, "The Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God")

Doesn't that just make you want to praise God? We cannot know anything until God enters into our lives and shows us the truth about Himself. Everything else follows. (See Ephesians 2:1-10, for example)


DA Carson expresses a similar thought in his article, "Can There Be A Christian University?" In it, he argues that for Christians, the pursuit of knowledge "means embracing the Bible as God’s revealed Word, and a focus on him who is the Word incarnate."


The Limitations of Rationality


Carson and Mohler (same articles) each talk about two strands of non-Christian thought, which I would simply call "modern absolutism" and "postmodern relativism." From the Christian perspective, these are perversions of the truth in the sense that each affirms some parts of God's revelation while rejecting others. Modern absolutism affirms that there is absolute truth and that it can be known, but it slights divine revelation and trusts only in the scientific pursuit of knowledge. Postmodern relativism, on the other hand, affirms the inability of human intellect to determine absolute truth. In this sense, it is unbelievers' recognition of their own radical finiteness. Unfortunately, relativism still scoffs at the notion of God as the all-encompassing reality.


Now let me draw from personal experience. An atheist professor of mine, whose honesty I admire and respect, once admitted in class that his faith in reason and science was irrational, just like (at least from his perspective) others' belief in God. Similarly, I was also in a class discussion where another professor asked us whether we thought her dream of developing a purely secular morality was possible. Then one member pointedly asked, "Ma'am wouldn't you have to believe in some things you couldn't prove?" My professor then replied, "I believe in the value of all human life." It was an incomplete response, but the resignation in her voice filled in the gaps.


These and other like episodes simply show the limits of rationality. To those who trust in it, God says, "You have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters and have hewn out for yourselves broken cisterns that can hold no water." (Jeremiah 2:13, paraphrased)

No Grounds for Boasting


To conclude, Christians can be sure of their faith because of... well... faith--that is, a personal, experienced and continuing relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To the secular thinker, this will sound like a circular argument, but only because he has denied God's right to come uninvited (or conversely to not come, though invited) into the world of finite humanity and to give of His infinite Self.

P.S. Merry Christmas everyone! We celebrate Imannuel, God with us!