I recently read Augustine's The Trinity with some friends. I was once again struck by Augustine's rational theology. Edmund Hill, the editor, noted that Augustine did not distinguish between faith and reason. What? That is such a common distinction today or, as most moderns would like to think, a separation. For Augustine, reason was a subset of faith. In other words, every bit of our knowledge begins with faith in something that will lead us to knowledge.
In a debate on the existence of God (I recently watched on-line), atheist Richard Dawkins said his opponent had to rely on faith, whereas he proceeded according to reason alone. His insightful opponent responded by saying that Dawkin's position on God's non-existence also involved faith. When Dawkins insisted that his position was based on reason alone, his opponent asked him, "Well, don't you believe it?" Dawkins then back-peddled to try to answer on other terms.
I think it is inescapable that we must assume first principles that we cannot prove in a laboratory. The Christian believes that the Bible is a revelation from God and puts his faith in it. The Rationalist, on the other hand, assumes his reason as the starting point and basis of all knowledge. If the Rationalist wants to pretend that his approach is purely rational, it must be pointed out that it is an act of faith to trust in reason or any of our senses. I don't deny that reason should be trusted. I'm only pointing out that there is an element of trust, and that reason is trustworthy because it comes from God. Without God, the atheist has no ultimate basis for trusting in his reason or his five senses. He may say, "Well, they work." Yes they do, but why should they work if not given by God for unlocking the secrets of his created order? Reason itself is a mystery, especially if God does not exist.
Augustine held to the principle credo ut intelligam, or "I believe in order that I may understand." This means that we all must start with unproved presuppositions, if we are to understand anything. The only question is: "Are they the right presuppositions?" Our presuppositions can always be tested against the evidence as we go. If our presuppositions begin to block our understanding, then we can try new ones, like switching from the earth as the center of the solar system to the heliocentric solar system.
While Augustine, and the rest of us, start with faith or unproven assumptions, it is not the same as being irrational. I said earlier that I was impressed by Augustine's "rational theology." Indeed, as Calvin would later say, "Reason is a receptacle of revelation." Augustine does not use his reason to give rational proofs for the Trinity. The Trinity is beyond that. But he does give a rational account of the Trinity. In other words, he shows how the revelation of the Trinity makes sense and is not contrary to reason.
For instance, there is nothing irrational or contradictory about saying God is one in essence and three in person. But this doesn't dispel mystery either, for how can we have three persons who are God and yet avoid having three gods? All Augustine can suggest is that "person" is our best way speaking about the three-ness of God. When asked "three what?" all we can say is "three persons."
Augustine unapologetically appeals to revelation to avoid "tri-theism." He simply says that on the divine level, God's substance or nature is such that his persons constitute one being instead of three. C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity says that on the creaturely level three persons equals three separate beings, but on the divine level it's different. God's divine nature is such that three persons are unified in one being. It's a mystery to us, but not an irrational one.
Hill sums up Augustine's approach well when he says: "Never is he [Augustine] so naive as to think he can 'prove' the mystery without recourse to faith." I hope that we as Christians won't be ashamed to call faith a virtue, and that Dawkins will be led to see that reason is a mystery that points to the one true God.
5 comments:
Dr. Heckel, do you have the URL where you found that debate with Dawkins?
It's a debate w/ Dr. John Lennox who's a mathematician. Here's a link to one of the segments. You can find the rest on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2J_bSyJxuA
Sorry for the delay in making a comment, but an idea I've been thinking about lately seems to coincide both with this most recent topic as well as the previous one wherein Dinesh D'souza petitioned Christians to be "bilingual".
First, in the debate Dawkins had with Lennox, Dawkins was questioned (and rightfully so) as to whether or not his atheism, at its base, was rationally based, or based on faith. His not being able to answer that question fully brings up two (2) more questions, at least to me: "Does the fact that we are unable to argue for or against the existence of God without some faith mean that there truly is no way to completely understand the noumenal (in the Kantian sense); Which god is true if there even is one?" and "Does Dawkins' inability to answer that question, by not appealing to the rationalism he says he supports, show that he is no longer an atheist because he knows it through evidence, but rather because he believes it through faith?".
To the former, I am unable to provide an answer which would be adequate. Others can do better than I. To the latter, however, I think I have some of an answer (and this is where "Bilingual Christianity" comes in).
Second, when Dinesh speaks of Christians as needing to be bilingual, I don't think it's solely an appeal to science and reason. I think the broader thought is an appeal to the honest atheist (irony?). What I mean by "honest atheism" is this: those who genuinely think of God as being nonexistent due to inductive reasoning and are not threatened, rationally, emotionally, or spiritually, when the evidence shows to the contrary. This idea is similar to that of Antony Flew who became a theist on those grounds alone, inductive grounds.
"Dishonest atheism" is different. It argues deductively in a way similar to Christianity (and theism). It starts with the premise "God does not exist" (as theists start with the opposite) and proceeds to draw conclusions from that premise and fights for that first premise's validity despite evidence showing to the contrary. A counter-argument is no longer an argument but a threat. This is similar to the thought process of Sartre; all the logical conclusions are assumed with the first premise, "God does not exist", being true.
Therein lies the Freudian slip (and the smoking gun). They don't solely follow the evidence, but rather their evidentially ungrounded beliefs (possibly even dogmatically *gasp*).
This is not to say that all atheists are dishonest (there are those who are honest), but there are those who have their hearts in the wrong place; they are asking questions not so much to find answers, but to find excuses (personally, those who want excuses don't really deserve an answer). Dinesh argues this point well in "What's So Great About Christianity?"; sexual freedom (hooray celibacy!).
Well... what do ya'll say? Pretty good? Bad? Redundant? Repetitious? Long? I don't think this is a comment anymore. I'll be quiet now.
Good comments doubleaabros!
I think Dawkins is a true atheist even though he cannot prove his starting point. He must simply believe in the reliability of reason. I just hope that he and others can admit that instead of pretending they are rational while theists have "blind faith."
I also think there is a sense in which all atheists, even the good ones, are at least "in denial." Paul says in Romans 1 that everyone knows that God exists and is all wise and powerful just from observing creation, but they suppress the truth in ungodliness. The empirical evidence is there but the inductive reasoning is flawed by sin. It is flawed by the desire to escape accountability.
I think Kant has a point about our inability to know the noumenal realm. The noumenal realm is above the senses. Our senses are limited to the phenomenal realm or the physical world. But Kant hasn't actually proved that we cannot know God who is Spirit. He has actually proved that to know God personally we need revelation from the noumenal world.
Kant was willing to accept one kind of revelation but not the most important kind. He said that we know God exists b/c of "the starry host above and the moral law within." This is God's revelation in the phenomenal realm.
But God's special revelation, his becoming flesh, is what we need to know the "noumena" or spiritual truths about God and ourselves. That is: we have a mediator in Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose for our justification and reveals himself and his Father in Scripture, etc., etc.
Human beings must believe things and make doctrines or philosophies. It is a fact of life. The question is credibility. I believe that God's existence is credible and that the claims of Jesus of Nazareth are unique, mind-boggling, and credible beyond hope. The Christian faith is both reasonable and romantic and I think we SHOULDN'T admit it, we should, as I said before, revel in it!
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