A Faith for All Seasons

Ted M. Dorman

• Publisher: B&H Academic
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9781433674693
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

In response to the questions most asked by students in his theology classes at Taylor University, Ted M. Dorman revises his textbook, which introduces and explains the classic doctrines of the historic Christian faith. While systematic in organization, the book remains written for students, aiming to bring them to an understanding of the central doctrines of the Christian church including the doctrines of Scripture, God, creation, humanity, atonement, salvation, and eschatology.

Our Knowledge of God

1. Faith and Knowledge

In what sense can we speak of faith in God as having anything to do with knowledge and truth? Some would say we cannot. Consider, for example, the traditional Sunday school tale that includes the following dialogue:

Teacher: “Johnny, what is faith?”

Johnny: “Faith is…believing something you know isn't true!”

The radical dichotomy between faith and knowledge humorously set forth here is, in fact, serious business. For if religious faith has nothing to do with knowing that something is true, then theology (literally, “Godtalk”) is little more than a glorified form of anthropology (“Man-talk”).

Much modern Christian theology is based upon this sort of faith-knowledge dichotomy. God, according to this perspective, is beyond human understanding. Therefore we can know nothing about who God is in himself. We can only speak of our experience of God. In the words of Rudolf Bultmann, one of the twentieth century's most influential biblical scholars, “Any speaking of God…is only possible as talk of ourselves.”¹ For Bultmann, theology is anthropology.

This in turn is part of modern Western culture's intellectual debt to the Enlightenment, the eighteenth-century European philosophical movement that regarded humanity as the measure of all things. In particular, the Rationalist wing of the Enlightenment tended to define knowledge in terms of statements that could be verified through an empirical process of inference from evidence to conclusion. But God by definition transcends the empirical realm, and thus cannot be known by empirical processes. On the basis of Rationalist methodology, then, we cannot have knowledge of God. Faith finds its basis in nonrational elements of human experience, not in knowledge.

Historic Christian belief, on the other hand, has generally regarded faith as an essential component of knowledge. Augustine of Hippo (354–430), perhaps the most influential theologian in the history of Christianity since the Apostle Paul, spoke of the relationship between faith and knowledge as one wherein faith in God seeks understanding of God. For example, Augustine noted that

in matters of great importance, pertaining to divinity, we must first believe before we seek to know. Otherwise the words of the prophet would be vain, where he says: “Except ye believe ye shall not understand” [Isa. 7:9 LXX]. Our Lord himself, both in his words and by his deeds, exhorted those whom he called to salvation first of all to believe. And no one is fit to find God who does not first believe what he will afterwards learn and know.²

The French philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) likewise took note of the inextricable relationship between human reason on the one hand and faith-commitments (which he called “the heart”) on the other:

We know truth not only through reason, but also by the heart; it is in this way that we have knowledge of first principles, and it is in vain that Reason, which has no share in it, tries to dispute them.…And it is on the knowledge supplied by the heart and intuition that reason rests, founding thereon all its utterances.³

The knowledge that issues forth from faith is not limited to present realities, however. Faith also includes a future orientation, that of banking one's hope upon the promises of God, as well as the conviction that spiritual realties exist which transcend the scope of the scientific method. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1 NRSV).

Note carefully what the biblical writer says: faith is the conviction that certain things are true. Specifically, Christians confess that God has done, is doing, and will do certain things in human history, not merely in the realm of human psychological experience. At the center of this confession is the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whose life, death, and resurrection are attested to by the writings of Holy Scripture.

At the same time, the consensus of Christian theology is that God can be known to a degree apart from Christ and the Bible. This is because God has revealed himself not only by means of Christ and Scripture, but also through his creation. The term general revelation refers to what God has revealed to all humanity via the created order, while special revelation refers to what God has revealed to a limited number of people through the events of redemptive history, especially Jesus Christ and the Bible. We shall deal with the two principal components of special revelation in chapter two (Scripture) and chapters 8 through 10 (Christ). The remainder of this chapter will deal with what human beings know of God by means of general revelation.

2. Knowledge of God through General Revelation

All People Know God

The Christian doctrine of general revelation teaches that all people in all places at all times know God to a greater or lesser extent, whether or not they have access to the Bible. Theologians have traditionally divided general revelation into two broad categories: outward general revelation and inward general revelation. The former consists of the realities we perceive in the world around us, while the latter consists of the realities we sense within us as moral and spiritual beings.

Outward General Revelation

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands” (Ps. 19:1).

“Since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made…” (Rom. 1:20).

The creation reveals something of the Creator, even as a work of art reveals something of the one who made it. People who do not worship the God of the Bible nevertheless can know some basic truths about the Creator. The apostle Paul acknowledged this (Acts 17:28) when he quoted two Greek poets to his Athenian audience to the effect that “in [God] we live and move and have our being” (Epimenides the Cretan), and that “we are [God's] offspring” (Aratus of Cilicia). At the same time, Paul considered such knowledge as incomplete, a fact witnessed by the Athenians themselves, who built an altar dedicated to “an unknown God” (Acts 17:23).

What does creation reveal about God? “His eternal power and divine nature,” says Paul. God's power is evidenced by the fact that something exists. God's divine nature is evidenced by the fact that this “something,” the created order, is indeed a created order and not random chaos. This implies that God has a character that gives order and purpose to creation. We shall deal with the character of God and the purpose of creation in chapters 3 and 4.

Inward General Revelation

Christian apologist C. S. Lewis began his most famous work, Mere Christianity with a chapter entitled “Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.” His argument was that our moral sentiments testify to a Supreme Moral Governor of the universe. When we tell ourselves or someone else that a particular activity is right or wrong, we are saying that people are accountable not merely to human laws or customs, but to a higher law: the Law of God. Right and wrong are words that deal not merely with values or virtues (which express personal preferences) but with morality (which expresses obligations to one another and, ultimately, to our Creator).

In our dealings with one another as moral agents, we evaluate both how we behave toward others, and how others behave toward us. The moral faculty that judges a person's thoughts and actions toward others is commonly called the individual's conscience. The moral faculty which judges the acts of others toward oneself has been termed the judicial sentiment.⁴

Conscience. The apostle Paul viewed conscience as a person's awareness of how well he or she obeys the Law of God. In Romans 2:15 the apostle speaks of conscience as both “accusing” and “excusing” an individual's behavior toward others. Paul says that even Gentiles without the Law of Moses practice (to a greater or lesser degree) the requirements of the Law, thereby demonstrating that they have God's Law “written on their hearts.” Their consciences then tell them whether or not they are living up to that Law.

At the same time, however, both Scripture and everyday experience indicate that conscience is by no means an infallible guide for evaluating one's own behavior. People's consciences may condemn them for doing something which is not necessarily wrong (1 Cor. 8:7ff.). On the other hand, one may commit heinous acts for which one feels no remorse. C. S. Lewis

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Clive Staples (“Jack”) Lewis (1898–1963) was a highly respected literary critic and Oxford don before converting to Christianity and joining the Church of England in 1929. A brilliant and prolific writer, Lewis mastered a variety of genres including novels, children's books, poetry, theology, and apologetics.

Lewis combined clarity of language, reasoned argumentation, and a sharp wit to articulate and defend what he called “mere Christianity,” (the title of his most famous book). By this phrase Lewis meant the doctrines that have been common to almost all Christians throughout history. In an era of theological novelty, when new ideas were consistently praised at the expense of orthodox Christianity, Lewis attempted to say nothing new. Even the phrase “mere Christianity,” which has become indelibly associated with his name, was not original. He borrowed it from the seventeenth-century English Puritan preacher Richard Baxter.

Lewis's brand of Christianity, while disowning denominational distinctives, was fundamentally in the tradition of Augustine and the Reformers. Among other things, he shared Augustine's tendency toward synthesizing biblical theology with the philosophical tradition of Plato. In an essay entitled “Myth Became Fact,” for example, Lewis argued that Christianity was the unique mythology of human history in that it actually happened. All other myths were but shadows of the universal truth revealed in Jesus Christ.*

In addition to Mere Christianity (1943), Lewis's most famous works include The Screwtape Letters (1941), a delightful satire depicting correspondence between a master demon and his unfortunate nephew in the underworld; The Problem of Pain (1940); The Abolition of Man (1943); The Great Divorce (1946); and Miracles (1947). He also wrote a science fiction trilogy that set forth a Christian worldview: Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). His seven-volume children's series, The Chronicles of Narnia, has been enjoyed by three generations of young people.

In 1956 Lewis, a lifelong bachelor, married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American Jewish convert to Christianity. When she died of cancer four years later he experienced unprecedented grief, which became the subject of his most poignant work, A Grief Observed.Three years later Lewis himself passed on from what he called the “Shadowlands” of this world. In spite of his popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, Lewis's death was noticed by few in the United States. For on November 22, 1963, the day Lewis died, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas.

*See Lewis, God in the Dock, 63-67.

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Paul speaks of such people as having their consciences “seared as with a hot iron” (1 Tim. 4:2). The picture here is of a person without moral feeling, much as when one suffers a severe burn and thus has little or no feeling on the burned portions of the skin. It would appear that cultural factors, as well as general revelation, determine whether and to what extent our conscience functions properly.

Judicial Sentiment. Such cultural conditioning does not appear to affect our judicial sentiment, however. That is to say, whereas our conscience sometimes lets us off the hook when we behave badly toward others, our judicial se...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Notes
• Glossary of Theological Terms
• Bibliography of Works Cited
• Name Index