In the recent months, I have struggled with the idea
that people can believe in God without taking into consideration the arguments
that are in favor of God's existence such as; The Cosmological Argument,
the Moral Argument, the Argument from Contingency and so on. In my ignorance,
I thought that people needed to be enlightened by these augments
to fully cherish and appreciate God's glory and power. For example, I have
some friends in college that do not engage in apologetics but yet still exhibit
faith and live very Godly lives. How is this possible? I have kept myself up
late at night sometimes doubting, thinking and wondering whether God exists and
more specifically that he has revealed him-self in Jesus Christ and they just believe it?. It baffled me
that people just dismissed this seemingly important aspect of being a
Christian. In this post, I am going to sort through this idea of belief in God
without implementing arguments.
Dr. William Lane Craig teaches a class entitled Defenders. In this class, he instructs
them through a plethora of different issues that pertain to the Christian
faith. To my surprise, this very issue was discussed in Defenders. Dr. Craig offers an argument to help deal with this
issue.
1.
Beliefs which are appropriately grounded may be rationally
accepted as basic beliefs not grounded on argument.
Dr. Craig expounds on this premise by saying,
Philosophers
call beliefs like this, that are part of a person’s foundations of knowledge,
“properly basic beliefs.” These are beliefs that are not based on some other
beliefs. They are not inferred from those other beliefs. Rather they are part
of the very foundation of your system of beliefs. Other examples of properly
basic beliefs would include things like belief in the reality of the external
world around you and the physical objects in it, belief in the reality of the
past, that the world was not created just five minutes ago with built in
appearances of age, or the presence of other minds besides yourself. [1]
Dr. Craig is saying that there
some beliefs that you cannot prove or falsify. Some beliefs are just a part of
foundation as human beings. One of the examples he gives is the reality of the
external world around us. I cannot prove the world around truly exists but I know based on my experience that it does. This kind of reminds me of my youth and trying to catch the
refrigerator light turning off. No matter how quick I thought I was, it always
seemed to be on. With no way of knowing the truth, was I rational to believe
that the light inside the refrigerator was always on?
Dr.
Craig offers this answer,
Although
this may be a basic belief which is not provable, nevertheless, it is not an
arbitrary belief. It is grounded in my experience. It is perfectly rational to
hold a belief like this unless you have some overriding reason to think that
you are deluded. That is to say, unless you have some sort of defeater of this
basic belief. In the absence of such a defeater, you are perfectly rational to
entertain these basic beliefs.
Dr. Craig says that unless we
encounter some defeater of our belief, we are perfectly rational to believe
whatever it is that we believe. So although I know now that the light in my
refrigerator does indeed turn off when I shut the door, I was perfectly
rational, as a child, to believe that the light was always on, based off of my
own experience. Now that I know there is a button that turns of the light when the door closes I am no longer incline to believe that the light is always on. But this does not give me permission to start believe in
anything I want. These beliefs would be based off my own experience even though
they may not be proven to be true by argumentation. Understanding this concept
helped me come to terms with people believing in God without arguments. We have
seen that believing in something based on experience is rationally acceptable (unless disproven)
but this premise does not answer the question of why my college friends believe
in God without the knowledge of arguments for the existence of God. This brings
me to Dr. Craig’s next point.
2. Belief that the
biblical God exists is appropriately grounded.
Dr. Craig in this premise takes
into account the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit. This is what he means,
I mean the experience of the Holy
Spirit is veridical – that is to say, it is an experience of a genuine reality…
I also mean that such a person doesn’t need to have supplementary arguments or
evidences in order to know, and know with confidence, that he is, in fact,
experiencing the Spirit of God… I also mean that this experience doesn’t
function as a premise in an argument for God from religious experience… Rather,
the idea here is that this is the immediate experience of God himself, so that
belief in God is formed in a properly basic way… I also mean that, in certain
contexts, the experience of the Holy Spirit will imply that we apprehend
certain truths about God like “God loves me” or “I am guilty before God” or
“God forgives me through Christ” or “I am reconciled to God through Christ” or
“Christ lives within me,” and so forth… And I mean that such an experience
gives a person not only a subjective assurance of Christianity’s truth – it is
not just that he feels confident – but rather that he actually knows that
Christianity is true… And finally, I mean that arguments and evidence which are
incompatible with these truths are simply overwhelmed by the experience of the
Holy Spirit for the person who fully attends to it.
Dr. Craig believes that the Holy
Spirit working in the heart of the believer is enough to validate one’s belief
in God. Notice that, Dr. Craig is not saying that the Holy Spirit should be used as a means
to prove God’s existence but that it is rational for someone to believe in God
without arguments because of the Holy Spirit’s self-authentication. Dr. Craig
points to Scripture to help his case. He looks as 1 John 2:20-27,
But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all
know. . . . but the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you
have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about
everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in
him.
Here,
John says that Holy Spirit will teach us Truth. The work of the Holy Spirit is
enough to believe in God in a properly basic way. Dr. Craig also looks Galatians 3:26 and 4:6, Romans 8:15-16, Colossians
2:2 and 1 Thessalonians 1:5. This is where my ignorance laid. I did not take into
account the work of the Holy Spirit. In times of doubt, the Holy Spirit is
there speaking to us the truth of Christ. Going through this study I have grown
a much deeper appreciation for the Holy Spirit and his workings in my and the
lives of others. Dr. Craig tells the story of a young man in Russia with
nothing more than his Bible, struggling to give a defense of his faith. He told
Dr. Craig that there is no book that he knows of in Russia that offers
arguments for the existence of God every book that he came into contact with
only attack the idea of God. But this man was indeed driven for Christ. Dr.
Craig believes it’s the Holy Spirit’s witness that has kept this young man’s heart
for God alive.
3.
Therefore, belief that the biblical God
exists may be rationally accepted as a basic belief not grounded on argument.
Although there are many areas
that can be explored regarding this topic. I wanted to deal with Christians
being Christians without arguments. I felt I have put to rest (for now) this
issue in my head. This study has changed the way I look at Christians. If I’m
honest with myself there was a small part of me that was ashamed of my fellow
Christians who did not study the evidences for God. It goes without saying that I no
longer feel that way. I have come to the conclusion that God’s presence in the Holy Spirit is enough to validate
someone’s faith in God whether or not they know the arguments.
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