C.S. Lewis once said:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Even though this is one of my all-time favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, I’m a bit embarrassed to say I’ve never looked closely at the context of the quote. It doesn’t come from any of his more popular works. Rather it comes as the closing line in an invited paper presented to the Oxford Socratic Club, entitled “Is Theology Poetry?”

This is a wonderful essay. We get in it a nod towards a number of arguments for which Lewis is famous. For example, he gives a version of his argument from reason and his trilemma, at least sort of (he only mentions lunatic or God). Having not chosen the title question himself, he, like a good philosopher, begins by clarifying the question. He takes the question to be asking:

Does Christian Theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations? Are those who believe it mistaking aesthetic enjoyment for intellectual assent, or assenting because they enjoy?

In other words, is Christianity such a compelling story that we assent primarily because of the story and the myth (in the technical sense) it affords? This is interesting because Lewis has inspired a generation of apologists to consider a person’s imagination and deep longings in doing apologetics. Today people are talking about “imaginative apologetics.” So if we’d expect anyone to say that it all turns on the imagination, it would be Lewis. But he doesn’t. In fact, he says as mere poetry or mere story, Christianity isn’t the top of his list of best stories. Moreover, the idea that people come to Christianity primarily because of its attractiveness is, for Lewis, completely far-fetched. He says:

The charge that Theology is mere poetry, if it means that Christians believe it because they find it, antecedently to belief, the most poetically attractive of all world pictures, thus seems to me unplausible in the extreme.

Instead, what sets this story as unique, for Lewis, is its historicity. It’s being grounded in evidence makes it like no other view in all the world. Now I don’t think Lewis would say the story is uninteresting or completely vapid. It’s a big story. It’s an even bigger idea (see my post Christianity is the biggest idea I know). But as a pure story, for Lewis, there are bigger and better.

But it is not just its historicity that leads us to embrace Christianity. Lewis goes on to identify the importance of the Christian worldview for making sense of the reality. At one point, with full Lewisian wit and charm, he says:

The picture so often painted of Christians huddling together on an ever narrower strip of beach while the incoming tide of “Science” mounts higher and higher corresponds to nothing in my own experience.

Now the reason Lewis wasn’t bothered by current science was that the naturalistic and scientistic worldview that reigned in his day and still is, in many ways, alive and well rules out Christianity, but it also rules out science itself. This is Lewis’s argument from reason. The gist of the argument is that there is a radical inconsistency in this naturalistic worldview. It holds reason in its highest regard and yet its ontology doesn’t allow for reason to exist. Lewis says:

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

In fact, it seems that science and reason makes better sense on a Christian theistic picture. On the Christian view, we are not mere atoms in flux. We are embodied souls. Thus, we can make sense of mind (which has immaterial mental states like thoughts) over and above the brain (which only has physical states like biochemistry and neural activity). Now there may be other views in the philosophy of mind that can make sense of reason. However, if we are embodied souls, then we have a plausible framework for explaining mental reasoning. The Christian worldview also makes sense of such things like existence and fine tuning of the universe, moral and other objective value claims, consciousness, intrinsic human value, our sense of cosmic purpose, our fallenness and our deepest longings. Thus, we may believe in Christianity not just because we’ve had a direct encounter with the Trinitarian God, but also because it allows us to understand the world in which we live.

Thus, Lewis concludes:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

We are sometimes told faith is a bad or unreliable epistemology. The idea seems to be that believing something on faith (you know, belief without evidence) is a terrible or unreliable way to arrive at the truth. Now I think this is a hot mess of confusion. First, I agree believing something without evidence is a bad approach to finding truth. But I don’t even think that faith is belief, much less belief without evidence. I think this is a terrible way of thinking of faith and one nobody should accept. Secondly, I don’t think faith is, in any interesting sense, an epistemology. It’s certainly related to epistemological issues (just as many philosophical issues have epistemological issues in the neighborhood), but it is not itself an epistemology and, thus, it can’t be a bad epistemology.

What is epistemology?

Let’s unpack. What does it mean to call something an epistemology? Strictly speaking “epistemology” is the study of the nature of knowledge and justification (or some cognate of justification, such as warrant). But I don’t think this is what a person has in mind here. It seems the term ‘epistemology’ is being used as a way of knowing. So, for example, forming beliefs on the basis of sense perception (such as seeing) is, for most, a reliable way of knowing. It’s reliable even though it is possible we are hallucinating or otherwise mistaken. We don’t typically get straightforward sense based beliefs wrong and, even when we do, the beliefs are still very rational to hold (more on this below). In short, seeing is a reliable epistemology.

So the claim seems to be that faith is a way of knowing and, as such, it is a bad way of knowing. Why think faith is an unreliable way of knowing? This is thought obvious because faith is understood in a way popular among internet atheists and uninformed Christians, namely, faith is belief without evidence. But as I’ve argued before (here and here) this is not the Christian notion of faith (even if some uninformed Christians are willing to embrace it). The Christian (and biblical) notion of faith is, as I’ve argued, ventured trust. It is where we place our lived out trust or faith in God.

Is faith a way of knowing?

When one talks about a way of knowing, one is talking about a basis upon which one believes. A belief can come in a variety of different ways. What makes it one way of (possibly) knowing versus another is upon what the belief is based.  If the basis makes one’s belief likely true, then this is a proper epistemic basis and the belief is justified. If it doesn’t make the belief likely, then it is unjustified.[1] For example, if I believe that p on the basis of wishful thinking, then I have no good reason for thinking that p will be true. It’s too easy (and common) for what I wish to be the case to turn out false. Just ask a diehard sports fan whose team typically doesn’t do well! Despite their wishing it to be the case, year after year, it just isn’t.

Contrast this to visual experience. When I believe that p on the basis of clearly seeing p, it is not easy for my belief to be false. If I look out my window and see a tree and believe, on the basis of this experience, that there is a tree out my window, then it will very likely be true. It’s possible that someone has placed a realistic cardboard cutout of a tree outside my window (in which case, my belief is false) but this is an extraordinary situation.

When we think about faith as a basis for belief, it’s difficult to know what that even means if we think of faith as ventured trust. Think about this. What is it to believe on the basis of faith? It seems this should be reversed. We typically venture on something or someone once we have good reason to believe in its or their trustworthiness. I came to believe that my wife is extremely trustworthy early in our relationship. But this intellectual belief preceded my genuinely placing my trust in her.

Likewise, there are many who have come to the place of Christian belief, but they have never ventured on Christ. They may even believe Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead (showing up to church on Christmas and Easter), but have never made that step of genuine faith.

It all turns on the definition of faith

But this all turns on how we understand the term ‘faith.’ As I understand it, there’s a medieval notion that understands faith as a direct confrontation of God. If that’s how one understands it, then, sure, faith can be the basis of belief. But this has always struck me as a strained use of the notion. If faith is just wishful thinking without evidence, then, again, I’d agree that is an inappropriate basis for our Christian beliefs.

If one thinks of faith as a species of trust, then it seems to follow faith is NOT a way of knowing. That is, faith is not an epistemology.

[1] For my epistemologist readers, I’m glossing over a lot of issues in epistemology for simplicity’s sake.

Is the Bible a book of fables and mythology? For some, this seems all too obvious. After all, there are many fantastic (in the technical sense) stories from start to finish. Given these stories, some think the Bible, and all that it claims, can be dismissed as mere fiction.

But for me, it just doesn’t read that way. When one really sits down and spends time reading the Bible, one notices sensational claims, but one should also notice a general lack of sensationalism in the telling of the stories.

The Ordinary Extraordinary

Overall, the Bible does not lack in imagery. There are sections of Scripture that paint in bright colors and imaginative word pictures. When one reads the Psalms, Isaiah, or Revelation, there is no shortage of literary beauty. However, when a biblical author is describing actual fact, it is typically straightforward and even mundane. This is not to say the narratives lack literary beauty, but just that there seems to be a lack of obvious embellishment in the storyline despite the fact that it may be describing extraordinary events.

A good example of this is the account of Jesus walking on the water. This story shows up in 3 of the Gospels. Matthew provides the longest account:

Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He sent the crowds away. After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone. But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves; for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid” (Matt. 14:22-27).

As can be seen, this is incredible and can honestly be difficult to believe given the supernatural element. A guy is claimed to have walked on the water. It’s extraordinary, but the details here are rather mundane and matter of fact. It doesn’t fill out the account with drama and imagery. It just says “And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea.”

[share-quote author=”Travis Dickinson” via=”travdickinson”] The unreal stories of Jesus are told in realistic ways. [/share-quote]

This seems unusual if these accounts are fabricated. If a person is going to go to the trouble of making up a story about Jesus walking on the water, one would think it would be spiced up a bit with more special effects. Instead this unreal story reads realistically. It is written, well, you know, as if it actually happened. It reads as if the author doesn’t know what to do with the fact that a dude walked on water, but here you go, here’s what happened.

A Mark of Authenticity

Now this is decidedly not a knockdown drag out argument. But I want to suggest it is a mark of authenticity. That is, it does lend some credence to the idea that the authors of the Bible were witness to extraordinary facts and their agenda was to share straightforwardly what happened. It fits as a piece of a broader cumulative case for the veracity of Scripture.

The fact that these stories include miracles is still going to be a stumbling block for many. I do get that. But we should ask ourselves, if one was genuinely witness to miracles, how would we expect these to be reported? I’ve come to the conclusion for a variety of reasons that the Bible contains descriptions of genuinely miraculous events and reports them as witnessed.