Monday, November 09, 2009

Faith and Parasailing


How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
(The Swing, Robert Louis Stevenson)




Last month my wife and I were in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. In the back of my mind I thought it might be fun to parasail. I've seen people parasail in Florida, saw videos of people doing it, it looked like the pleasantest thing that ever a guy could do! But would I actually do it? It could be expensive. Perhaps it was dangerous.


The moment of decision came one morning as we were relaxing on the beach. I short Mexican guy (who called himself "Shimp") stood on the beach near us flying a small parachute kite indicating he was selling parasailing rides. I then pondered whether or not to do it. Lots of thoughts raced through my mind. Was it too expensive? No -- I asked Shimp and he quoted a price that was a lot lower than I expected. The weather was nice, no storm, no winds, no lightning to fry me while up in the air. The parachute looked big. The boat that would pull me liked tiny -- but the engine looked big. Wait, I'm overweight, is the engine big enough? I looked again, yes maybe the engine was big enough. This was going to be a beach takeoff and landing. Could they do it? I saw Shrimp's crew pull someone else in a parachute -- but wait, did I? I saw the parasailing the previous day from my hotel balcony and I don't know if these were the same people. Could I do it? Land on the beach. I gulped and decided I could.


As I took that step off the beach, I thought of Kierkegaard's "leap of faith." In many ways I had put my life into the hands and equipment of a guy I knew only for only 10 minutes, a crew I never meet before, a boat and equipment I wasn't sure I'd seen do this before.

Was I warranted to put my trust in these people and their equipment? Considering the risk of my life and limb, was I justified in putting my faith in them?

Faith in the Christian life is often modeled in the way I approached parasailing. I look at the world around me. I have some basic beliefs about this world. I look at the possibility of placing my faith in Christ. I marshal the evidence, reason it out and then make my leap of faith. Is that how it works? Am I warranted in developing beliefs about Christ? Am I justified to do so?

The model I used for faith in parasailing does not fit with what actually happens in a Christian's life when she turns to Christ with faith. I need to explore a few more issues to narrow in on a model that better describes what happens when a Christian places her faith in Christ.

Monday, November 02, 2009

Cold Pizza and Basic Beliefs

In the previous post on faith I wrote that there were some inadequacies with what I wrote. What was incomplete? I'll get to that, but first I want to explore the idea of basic beliefs that Alvin Plantinga writes about in various books.

Imagine that I am walking on a beach in Florida and musing over some thoughts.



Okay, I don't normally stroll on the beach thinking the thought 1+2=3, but these thoughts in this contrived example illustrate the concept of basic beliefs. Normally, basic beliefs fall into the following categories:


  • A priori -- self evident beliefs that are always true. The basic facts of arithmetic, such as 1+2=3, 5x4=20, or modus ponens (if a then b, so given a is true, then b must be true).

  • Senses -- belief of things derived from the senses. When I am walking on the beach, I sense I am walking in water, on sand and feel the warmth of the Sun shining on me.

  • Memory -- belief in things or events that I recall from my memory. Let's say I ate some left over cold greasy pizza slices for breakfast that morning. My memory presents the events to me of what I did and I simply believe it.

  • Internal -- Belief in the things I feel about internally about myself. If my stomach is out of sorts I feel sick.


Basic beliefs are not a fixed set of beliefs. The self evident beliefs can change and grow in time. When I was 5 years old, I knew 1+2=3, but 4x5=20 was not a basic belief yet. As I grew older, my set of self evident beliefs grew. There is much more to say about basic beliefs. For instance, when I look out the front window of my house I see a tree. That is a basic belief based on what my sight presents me. How I grew as an infant to learning the properties of treeness from my parents and others can be an interesting discussion that I will not get into this series.

The next post will explore using basic beliefs to build other beliefs.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Faith, a Traditional but Inadequate View

My wife and I vacationed the previous two weeks of October. This was a time of physical relaxation and a time I finally read Alvin Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief. This entry will start with some basic traditional thoughts about faith I posted sometime ago. It follows some thoughts of the late John Murray of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia. In upcoming entries I'll get to some interesting insights that Dr. Plantinga discussed in his book. There is an interesting distinction between the typical traditional discussion of faith that Dr. Murray presents and the insight Plantinga presents (or to be fair and probably more accurate, my take on what Dr. Murray said). Plantinga has thought deeply on what justification or warrant a Christian has in her beliefs. His treatment is not novel, it has a firm foundation in the history of the Christian Church, such as Augustine, Aquinas and Jonathan Edwards -- but I think aspects of the enlightenment philosophy of the past few hundred years has subtly influenced my view on faith.

If you hang around relig­ious people, you'll soon­er or lat­er come across the word faith. What exact­ly is faith? This entry will intro­duce the concept of faith used in the Christ­ian faith. Faith is defined in various ways1. This discussion will use the term faith as defined in historical Protestant Christianity that has its roots in the German, Swiss, English and Scottish Reformation. Originally when I wrote this article I said, faith means being satisfied to the reality of something because of certain reasons. If we use the word faith with respect to a certain event, we mean we believe that the event has occurred. If we use faith with respect to an object, we are saying we believe that the object is trustworthy for the purpose we have in view. I now think this definition of faith is inadequate in some ways. I will continue in this vein for the rest of this post and point out some issues in following entires.


This judgment about the reality of something may be the result of deliberate, careful and conscious reasoning. It may also be the result of very quick reasoning that appears spontaneous and intuitive. This judgment may also come from a very long process where we are unable to reconstruct the series of steps that caused us to arrive at that judgment. The judgment can be based on good, sufficient evidence, or be based on poor and unjustified evidence.


Another characteristic of faith is that it is compelling. Faith is forced consent2. The evidence is judged by the mind to be so sufficient that belief or faith is the inevitable outcome. We may will to the contrary, have a desire to the contrary, even an overwhelming interest to the contrary, but it cannot make us believe to the opposite of our judgment with respect to the evidence.


Faith, specific to the Christian faith, has by its nature, three elements that compose it. These elements are not a time ordered sequence, but all are present in what is called saving faith.

Notita

Knowledge -- this is the cognitive foundation. Faith has as its base the knowledge of the content of the Christian faith. It understands that the content of this knowledge is propositional truth about the Christian faith. Elements of this propositional truth include: the perfection and holiness of God, the fallen and rebellious nature of every living human, the just results of the fallen and rebellious nature is eternal judgment and death, and that Jesus' death paid for the punitive eternal judgment for all who depend on Jesus.

Assensus

Assent -- this is (a) the intellectual or cognitive conviction that all the knowledge that one has acquired about Christ is indeed factually true, and (b) that this applies exactly to one's spiritual needs.

Intellectual knowledge and assent to the propositions of truth is not sufficient for saving faith.

Fiducia

Trust -- this consists of entrustment to Christ. "In faith there is the engagement of person to person in the inner movement of the whole man to receive and rest upon Christ alone for salvation. It means the abandonment of confidence in our own or any human resources in a totality act of self-commitment to Christ."3

Roman Catholic theologians have historically defined saving faith as notitia (knowledge) and assensus (assent). The Protestant Reformers put an emphasis on faith as fiducia in opposition to Rome, which taught that faith was assent.

Perhaps an example will help illustrate the difference with these three aspects. When my wife and I had small children, we had a difficult time leaving our children with baby-sitters (partly because of some terrible experiences people we knew had with some baby-sitters). When we got to know some mature teenage girls, we intellectually got to know their character (notitia). When we knew them well enough, we knew that they would be good baby-sitters and that they would fit in the needs of our family when we needed to go someplace without our children. However, we were still reluctant to leave our children with the potential baby-sitters. Even though we intellectually knew the baby-sitter and agreed in our minds that the baby-sitter could do the job and provide the needed service, we could not entrust our very precious children to her. Finally, there came a time when we felt we could entrust our children to the baby-sitter. This is when intellectual assent passed into entrustment (fiducia) with our children.

Even though this discussion divides faith into three parts, these parts are so intermingled together that we really cannot conceive of saving faith without any one of these components. Neither is saving faith a process of walking through one of the parts chronologically into another. All of these parts work together. Murray writes:

"There is an interpermeation of these various ingredients. Even in assent there is incipient trust. And in trust there is the full assent to the veracity of God's promise and to the word of Christ. But what we need to appreciate in connection with these elements is that faith, however simple it is as an act of trust, is a complex act and that diverse factors enter into its constitution. The trust that the infant may be said to be simple but, after all, it is complex, and we soon find out if we try to substitute for the mother."4

Finally, there is diversity in the individual temperament with respect to faith. For some the intellectual aspect is more predominant, in others feeling, in others will. So as various people come to initial faith, some will see the outstanding feature in their act of faith as the intellectual understanding where they came to see the light of understanding in their reasoning. Another person may have had an emotional crisis that is prominent in their coming to faith. In each of these people, no matter what the temperament, these "coalesce to make faith the proper exercise of intelligent, confident, loving trust."5

Footnotes:

1 In this discussion I am summarizing insights of John Murray, in the chapter, "Faith", in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol 2: Systematic Theology.

2 Murray, p. 237

3 Murray, p. 258

4 Murray, p. 260

5 Murray, p. 261

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Evangelical Confessions

This is a first draft of Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms used by Protestant Evangelical churches over the centuries. Not all Evangelical churches use these documents, but many have found these useful in outlining what they believe the Bible is teaching. Some denominations have moved away from officially endorsing their historic confessions, while others have kept to these confessions.

Early Confessions and Creeds



Lutheran Confessions



Reformed Confessions


Continental Europe


Presbyterian

The official documents of historical Presbyterianism are the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Westminster Larger Catechism, and the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The Scots Confession was the original confession of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) but was superseded by the Westminster Confession and Catechisms. The Children's Catechism does not have official standing but is a useful document to teach young children the basics of the faith.

Congregational


Anglican/Episcopal


Baptist


Modern Statements



Monday, July 27, 2009

Hazards of Being a Software Engineer

I know computer languages C++, C, Java, Fortran, Lisp, Perl, and JavaScript exceptionally well. I know databases, currently most familiar with Oracle programming and DBA management, but am also comfortable with PostgreSQL and MySQL. I know various flavors of UNIX operating systems, especially Linux, IBM AIX, Sun Solaris. I am on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.4 days a year (got to get that leap day in) to fix our on-line systems when the first levels of support and trouble shooting cannot deal with the problem.

But I do not know Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Vista, the machinations of Microsoft Word. I am passable on Blogger, but I don't do nearly a quarter of the features others in the household do. However, I am considered an expert, and when I shrug my shoulders at a problem, being perplexed at it, I get the perception that the others think I am lazy and just want to blow them off.

This other side of the software world, Microsoft, Windows, Vista, Word, Blogger, Facebook -- I find mystifying. It took years of long days of working with the technology I am an expert in to gain that expertise. I haven't had the time -- and frankly the inclination to spend inordinate amounts of time -- to learn this other world.

So, if you have a UNIX problem, trouble with C++ or Java -- I'm your guy to help you through that world.

Windows? Word? Google Blogger? Well, I might be able to give you some help, but you might know more than I do on those subjects.


Saturday, July 04, 2009

Happy Aphelion!

July 4th, at 10am Eastern Daylight Time in the USA, the earth will be at its furthest point away from the sun as it orbits around the sun. The technical term for this position of the earth is aphelion. In six months the earth will be at its closest point to the sun in its orbit -- and that is called perihelion. The picture on the left shows the difference in size the sun appears to us on earth at perihelion (left side of the picture) and aphelion (right side of the picture). Tom Lindholtz, an Internet friend, humorously suggested as we reach and pass the aphelion:
If you REALLY want a thrill, hold your hands up as we go over.


Friday, July 03, 2009

Aseity

Geek word for today: Aseity -- The word comes from the Latin, "a" from, and "ity" self. It is the description of an entity being underived from anything else. This is in contrast to being derived from other things. In Christian theology, only God has the attribute of aseity.