Loftus: Damned if you don't, too! (faith, again)

One gets whiplash, trying to follow anti-Christian arguments some days. 

A week ago, I posted a response to a fellow calling himself "A Unicornist," who criticized Chapter Ten in True Reason.  My goal in that chapter was to show that by "faith," Christians generally mean something reasonable, something supported by logic and evidence.  Skeptics sometimes quote the New Testament, usually the "Doubting Thomas" passage in the Gospel of John or Hebrews 11, to claim that Christian faith is somehow at odds with reason.   I argued the converse:

In fact, the New Testament emphatically ties faith to reason in at least seven ways: historical investigation, rational argument, critical accounts of Jesus' life, miraculous 'signs' . . . prophecy, convincing depictions of Jesus' character, and the resurrection.

Mike (A Unicornist) refused to interact with any of the exegetical evidence I offered.  Instead, he sneered at me for citing the Bible at all to demonstrate a point about Christianity:

But Marshall thinks that Christian faith and reason are inseparable. How does he plan to demonstrate this? . . . Yeah. He's gonna quote the Bible.

Today, John Loftus criticizes Christians for exactly the opposite error.  Our problem, he claims, addressing myself, along with Randal Rauser and Victor Reppert, is that we DON'T cite the New Testament in defining faith!

Most all modern Christian definitions of faith are not biblically based. Others are irrelevant or superfluous. But regardless of they way they define faith I want a straight-up answer from Christian apologists like Drs. Victor Reppert, Randal Rauser and David Marshall who haunt these halls (it is the Halloween season ya know). Should we think exclusively in terms of probabilities, or not? If so, then why can't you admit faith is irrelevant, unnecessary, superfluous, unreasonable, irrational, and dangerous? If not, then why not? Come on boys, pony up. Put up or shut up!

I doubt Lofus is thinking of anything I've written here, since I've never so much as mentioned "probabilities" when defining faith.  And the definition of faith I've given many times IS biblically based, which is the whole point of Chapter 10 in True Reason, and the supposed defect of that chapter in the eyes of A-Unicornist and several rather dense atheists who praise his post on his site and (I've found) elsewhere. 

So we're damned if we do cite the Bible, and damned if we don't.  Which ought to be a warning sign to skeptics about their motivation. 

But Loftus continues:

Christians cannot agree on a definition of faith because faith cannot be consistently defined except that it is an irrational leap over the probabilities.

 

This is like saying, "Scientists disagree about the origin and geology of the moon, because it cannot be consistently defined except as green cheese." 

 

Well of course faith can be consistently defined. As I showed in Faith and Reason, for two thousand years Christians have defined faith in a mostly coherent manner.  Of course scholars always find a slightly different slant on things, so "mostly coherent" doesn't mean "exactly the same."  Reppert, Rauser and myself, like most Christian scholars, all agree that faith is and should be supported by reason and / or evidence.  But I find Randal's definition of "faith" a little minimalistic, and I don't use the word "probability" in my definition, as if personal relations were all about cold mathematical calculations. 

 

By contrast to these slight differences, Loftus and A-Unicornist make claims that are completely and irrevocably incompatible: (a) That Christians are completely wrong to cite the NT to define Christian faith, and (b) That we would be completely wrong NOT to cite the NT. 

So to copy one of John's favorite rhetorical gambits, I guess that means we Christians should wait until all the atheists have argued among themselves and produced a champion for the Gnu perspective, to debate us in a final playoff? 

 

On citing the NT, John is obviously right and Mike is wrong: Christian definitions of faith SHOULD be based on the Bible.  And that's what I do in Chapter 10, read the NT.  Which shows that John's definition of faith, based on his own interpretation of one single verse, is bogus. 

For our lesson today let's look at what Jesus said about faith, and compare it with what Reppert said about it.

Matthew 17:20 has Jesus saying:

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.

Modernized Christians take this metaphorically so I will too. Presumably what's meant is that with faith prayer can change the overwhelming probabilities.

 

Presumably?  Well that leap is indeed rather presumptuous! 

 

If God wants a mountain moved, why would it be "overwhelmingly improbable" that it would move?  On the contrary, that rock would "presumably" find it impossible not to move!  

 

So by this sleight of hand, Loftus is in effect begging the question.  I guess Loftus is borrowing language here from Hume's question-begging chatter about "uniform experience against every miraculous event:" 

 

Since moving a mountain is extremely improbable, or even virtually impossible, faith can change the odds. Faith can make the virtually impossible happen. That's how Jesus defined faith (pistis). That's why exercising faith is hard, since it demands of believers to go against the odds. Faith is therefore, at a minimum, a leap over the probabilities, and since that's the case I argue it's an irrational leap over the probabilities.

 

Of course "faith" can do no such thing.  Faith means believing in God, or some other agent, who can do things we cannot.  We believe for what we take to be good reasons, as I show was true in the NT, hold to and act on that belief in the face of difficulties. 

 

There is nothing in this passage that contradicts this definition, and much to support it.  Of course if God, he can help us do things that without Him, would be impossible.  Peter walked on water by faith -- faith in someone he had just witnessed walking on water.  The disciples healed the sick -- by faith in the teacher whom they had already witnessed healing the sick.  They later died martyrdoms for their faith -- following the Master who first died, then rose again from the dead.  This is the stuff of faith, and ALL of it is presented as rational.  The spread of Christianity to six continents, the risks people have taken to pursue the kingdom of God, and the changes it has wrought on the world, can be taken as further examples of what Jesus was talking about. 

 

Faith is therefore unreasonable. A reasonable faith is therefore an oxymoron.

 

Not at all.  Consider the diary entry of the famous martyr, Jim Elliot, one of five missionaries murdered by the Waodani Indians in South America:

 

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

 

That's faith.  In some ways, yes, a calculation, but a heroic one, based on personal knowledge of the One you trust.  And millions of Christians have died, and hundreds of millions have lived, out their reasonable but risky, even dangerous, faith in God. 

 

Christians don't sell all and give to the poor. They don't even tithe. They don't usually wait on a mountaintop for the return of Jesus.

 

It is a fundamentalist error to read what Jesus said to one person, as always expressing a universal rule for everyone. 

 

And what they think can happen in the world has changed as science progresses. Now they take their children to doctors and use medicine to heal their ills.

As they also did in the First Century.  Ever hear of St. Luke?  He wrote two of the longest books in the New Testament.  He was also a doctor.  Now John seems to expect all Christians to be Jehovah's Witnesses or Christian Scientists. What church did he used to go to, again?    

 

Now contrast this with C.S. Lewis's definition of faith, embraced by Reppert:

Faith is that art of holding on to things which your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. Unless you teach your moods where they get off, you can never be either a sound Christian or a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and for, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather or the sate of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.

Is this definition even remotely close to what Jesus was describing? I see no connection at all.

Then read Chapter Ten of True Reason.  I show that whatever fits of quote-mining and straw-manning you may suffer, John, Lewis' definition is, in fact, very much what the NT consistently describes. 

 

Why should any of Jesus' followers have trusted in God, or in Jesus himself?  After he healed the sick?  Raised the dead?  Walked on water?  Fed thousands of hungry people with a few loaves and few fishes?  Fulfilled prophecy?  Demonstrated divine compassion?  Broken down ancient social barriers in love?  Brought the Kingdom of God visibly to life before them over a period of three years? 

 

But even with all those good reasons to believe, the disciples later suffered doubts and fears, and ran away when the men in white sheets came to haul Jesus off for a low-tech lynching.  The "habit of faith" was still unformed in them, and weak.  They did not want for reasons, they wanted for courage. 

 

For one thing, C.S.Lewis cannot possibly offer a definition of faith that is authoritative for most all Christians without an argument showing this is what the Biblical writers agreed on and at the same time what theologians have agreed on down through the centuries . . .

What is remarkable about this to me here, is Loftus' arrogance. 

 

Who was C. S. Lewis?  Let's forget that he was the most widely-read and cited Christian thinker of the 20th Century.  Let us forget that he is quoted by Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Anglicans, and evangelicals, authoritatively, which suggests that Christians of all denominations find that what he is saying rings true. 

 

Lewis was also Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, one of the five best schools in the world.  He was described as the "best-read man of his generation."  He was author of the Oxford History of the English Language volume on 16th Century poetry and prose, which includes a massive and detailed bibliography at the end, with personal notes about the hundreds and hundreds of Medieval books he cited.  He read modern English, Old English, German, Italian, modern French, Old French, Latin, Greek (including the New Testament, assiduously), and I believe some Norse, in great quantities. 

 

Is it not probable that C. S. Lewis forgot ten times as much about "what theologians have agreed on down through the centuries" as John Loftus has ever read? 

 

Lewis was also one of the greatest literary critics of the 20th Century.  Is it not probable that he understood what he read pretty accurately? 

 

What force of hubris animates Loftus to so eagerly dismiss Lewis' considered opinion on this subject, with no sense of hesitation or uncertainty? 

Back your way down that plank, John. 

Alas, I argue in vain since, as Stephen Law argues, "Anything based on faith, no matter how ludicrous, can be made to be consistent with the available evidence, given a little patience and ingenuity."

Alas, I think that is one corner into which modern skepticism has argued itself, and will refuse to leave, at any cost to credibility.  A clear and consistent understanding of faith is visible in the New Testament.  It has been elucidated by some of the greatest figures in human history -- Origen, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Ricci, Kepler, Calvin, Descartes, Locke -- along with modern figures like Lewis, Pope John Paul II, Swinburne, and Polkinghorne.  But all this goes in one ear and out the other, because "however ludicrous," skeptics like Law and Loftus are determined to believe Christian generally define faith fideistically, no matter much evidence turns up to the contrary. 

So with "a little patience and ingenuity," they twist and turn and look for an angle from which Christian faith can be seen as how they want to see it. 

The sheer contradiction between A-Unicornist and John Loftus on whether Christians are wrong to cite the Bible, or wrong to fail to cite the Bible, is a symptom of that desperation, and ought to cause them to do some serious soul-searching.