Whole Reason

In Why do some Chris­tians become athe­ists?, I dis­cussed five rea­sons why some Chris­tians may have aban­doned faith to become athe­ists — some noble rea­sons, some not.  The ensu­ing com­men­tary helped me see that these same prin­ci­ples can be applied to any faith or anti-faith deci­sion.  Here are those now six ideas, but I wanted to also ask the ques­tion — is Chris­tian­ity pri­mar­ily or first a deci­sion of the heart or head?  I argue that, to the cha­grin of logi­cians and empiri­cists, Chris­tian­ity is a reli­gion of the heart — that is, con­vic­tion of the intu­ition and con­science, not an intel­lec­tual deci­sion of the mind.

You are a Chris­t­ian because (choose all that apply):

1. You were raised that way, and have never seri­ously con­sid­ered any other view­point, nor seri­ously ques­tioned your faith.
2. You made an emo­tional deci­sion to become Chris­t­ian dur­ing a dark time in your life.
3. You felt a deep con­vic­tion and a real­ity in the pres­ence and peace of God that led you to receive Christ.
4. Your con­ver­sion was based on the first good argu­ment you heard,
   and you came from a posi­tion of weak ide­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ment — again,
   you may have never seri­ously con­sid­ered any other viewpoint.
5. You are caught up in the nov­elty of your new Chris­t­ian world view
   mostly because it is dif­fer­ent, and will leave it when the nov­elty
   wears off.
6. Rea­son and expe­ri­ence have led you to your con­clu­sion that Chris­tian­ity is true.

A. My Conversion

For me, it was num­bers 2, 3, and 4 ini­tially.  I had no really well devel­oped intel­lect with regards to mat­ters of faith or phi­los­o­phy, so ques­tions about the reli­a­bil­ity of scrip­ture, the real­ity or unre­al­ity of the super­nat­ural, or the his­tory of the Church did not really inter­fere or com­pli­cate my deci­sion.  How­ever, I also came from a skeptic’s back­ground, so I was not com­ing from any reli­gious background.

Later, I actu­ally left Chris­tian­ity due to being hurt by the church and some overly nar­row doc­trines, as well as some of the tougher ques­tions of God’s fair­ness (eter­nal hell?) that both­ered me.  How­ever, after explor­ing Bud­dhism and yoga, I returned to Chris­tian­ity for intel­lec­tual rea­sons, primarily.

B. Is this typ­i­cal?  Expe­ri­ence first, then mind later, if at all?

To some extent, I think that prac­tially and doc­tri­nally speak­ing, com­ing to faith is by def­i­n­i­tion an expe­ri­ence of intu­ition and con­science first, and mind later. 

While intel­lec­tual argu­ments may clear the way for faith, most peo­ple make a faith com­mit­ment NOT upon ini­tial intel­lec­tual con­vic­tion, but upon a heart con­vic­tion (intu­ition, con­science) and an expe­ri­ence of the Divine upon the heart.

Intel­lec­tual devel­op­ment usu­ally FOLLOWS Chris­t­ian con­ver­sion, but what is foun­da­tional is not merely an intel­lec­tual deci­sion, but an expe­ri­ence of a heart-conviction of truth and expe­ri­enced relationship/peace that begins the journey.

Such emo­tional foun­da­tions and begin­nings can cer­tainly be mis­lead­ing and gone back upon when rea­son comes to bear, and I under­stand why an atheist/unbeliever would be skep­ti­cal of this order of oper­a­tions, so to speak.

But Chris­tian­ity is first and pri­mar­ily a faith of the heart, of per­sonal con­vic­tion of guilt and truth, and of God’s love. As the scrip­tures say, it is ‘the good­ness of God that leads you to repen­tance,’ (Romans 2:4) — that is, it is not first a head thing, but a heart thing.

C. Athe­ists go mad at this order of operations

The thought­ful athe­ists over at Com­mon Sense Athe­ism have a real prob­lem with this.  Chris­t­ian philoso­pher and debater William Lane Craig, when asked about why he thinks Chris­tian­ity is true, has in the past merely said that the base of his belief is not intel­lec­tual, but the con­vic­tion of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

When Craig says that he is sure of his faith pri­mar­ily due to his expe­ri­ence, he is unfor­tu­nately con­fus­ing empiri­cists because they don’t hear what I think he really means.  They hear him basi­cally retreat­ing from their demands for logic and empir­i­cal evi­dence into the realm of the sub­jec­tive — his own experience.

Not only is that beyond argu­ment, they con­tend, how is that any dif­fer­ent from the sub­jec­tive expe­ri­ence of any other reli­gion — be it the ‘warm­ing of the heart’ of Mor­mons or the expe­ri­ence of noth­ing­ness of Bud­dhists?  In the end, athe­ists argue, that is not a con­vinc­ing argu­ment — that is not argu­ment at all!  Faith makes peo­ple so stupid!

But I think what he is say­ing is very pow­er­ful, not just some­thing obvi­ously illog­i­cal or pro­tected in the realm of the subjective.

D. What William Lane Craig is NOT saying

When Craig claims that the root of his belief is in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, here’s what athe­ists might hear, but what he is NOT saying:

1. It is true because I had an experience
2. Logic has noth­ing to do with faith or belief — rea­son can’t touch real faith

Anti-theists who go off on a rant when he says such things are ignor­ing the fact that Craig is an accom­plished debater and philoso­pher — if such a state­ment is such a sopho­moric blun­der on Craig’s part, what is really going on here?  Is he just dumb in this area, or is there some­thing else he is try­ing to get at?

E. What William Lane Craig IS saying

Those of us who have been in these debates a while real­ize some­thing — you can’t prove OR dis­prove the exis­tence of God with rea­son and logic.  Either you remain neu­tral because you real­ize this, or you make a leap of faith towards or away from God.  Some might argue that either leap is greater than the other, but in the end, both the con­vic­tion that God IS or IS NOT is a faith proposition.

When WLC admits that what keeps him in the faith is not his impres­sive intel­lect or rea­son­ing pow­ers, but his expe­ri­ence, he is mak­ing some very strong state­ments that are lost on many skep­tics.  I believe that they are the following:

1. Faith is always a leap beyond rea­son. While intel­lec­tual argu­ments may keep you FROM faith, in the end, pro-faith logic can only take you to the DOOR of faith.  It is still a leap of trust beyond the reach of pure reason.
2. Chris­tian­ity is rea­son­able enough to try.  While Chris­tian­ity is, to Craig and oth­ers, emi­nently rea­son­able, log­i­cal, and true, it can’t be proven beyond ALL doubt.  It is rea­son­able ENOUGH that one ought to take the chance and EXPERIENCE it.
3. Argu­ments are cold, rela­tion­ship is warm (and fuzzy).  Beyond the cold and imper­sonal argu­ments, there is a REAL, LOVING, PEACE-GIVING God whom Craig has expe­ri­enced, and that is as pow­er­ful, if not moreso, than the debates of self-important fools (Craig included)
4. Unan­swered ques­tions do not negate faith.  For many Chris­tians, the EXPERIENCE of God is so real and ongo­ing that the unan­swered ques­tions of faith are not enough to over­ride what pow­er­ful things God has done in their own per­sonal lives.  
5. There are no real show­stop­per con­tra­dic­tions in Chris­tian­ity, and plenty of well-answered ques­tions.  Though there may be unan­swered ques­tions that cause doubt, there are also many many ques­tions suf­fi­ciently answered by and about faith, and it there­fore may be smarter to doubt your doubts until your under­stand­ing and matu­rity grow, rather than to hole up in unbe­lief until all ques­tions are suf­fi­ciently answered.

One thing I really love about WLC is that in his argu­ments for the exis­tence of God, he always makes his per­sonal expe­ri­ence the last point.  While to empiri­cists and skep­tics, this may seem like a weak way to con­clude, he includes it to fill out the pic­ture this way — though his intel­lec­tual defense of Chris­tian­ity and God are for­mi­da­ble, he is claim­ing that God is not just defend­able and rea­son­able in the intel­lec­tual realm, but real.  Real in a way that we can and should expe­ri­ence.  Despite the lim­its of what our rea­son may or may not tell us about God, whether or not we can under­stand all we need or want to, WLC is claim­ing that God is real, and real to him. 

That is a pow­er­ful asser­tion to make it, and he makes it unashamedly. 

Related Posts:

• The Weslyan Quad­ran­gle III — Scrip­ture and Reason
• Pascal’s Wager Part IV — debunk­ing minor objections
• ‘Rea­son is the Devil’s whore’
• Dan­gers in the Search For Truth
• Faith and Rea­son — Link Dump