Read this Quote
John Hick hits the mark. In the quotes below he has clearly defined the faith — the confidence and experience — of the believers of the Bible. Although he is not a Christian, Hick has written extensively on belief and religion. Here’s the quote…
“For the man of faith, as he is depicted in the Bible, no theistic proofs are necessary. Philosophers in the rationalist traditions, holding that to know means to be able to prove, have been shocked to find that in the Bible, which is supposed to be the basis of Western religion, no attempt whatever is made to demonstrate the existence of God.
Instead of professing to establish the divine reality by philosophical reasoning, the Bible throughout takes this for granted.
Indeed to the biblical writers it would have seemed absurd to try to establish by logical argumentation that God exists. For they were convinced that they were already having to do with him and he with them in the affairs of their lives. They did not think of God as an inferred entity but as an experienced reality [through His Word in their minds]. Many of the biblical writers were as vividly conscious of being in God’s presence as they were of living in the material world. It is impossible to read their pages without realising that to them God was not a proposition completing a syllogism, or an idea adopted by their mind, but the supreme experiential reality [through the Word in their minds].
It would be as sensible for a husband to desire a philosophical proof of the existence of the wife and family who contribute so much of the meaning and value of his life as for the man of faith to seek for a proof of the existence of God within whose purpose he believes that he lives and moves and has his being. In other words, the man of faith has no need of theistic proofs, for he has something which for him is much better.
It has also often been pointed out that the God whose existence each of the traditional theistic proofs profess to establish is only an abstraction from and a pale shadow of the living God who is the object of biblical faith.
In order to investigate this subject we must consider what counts in an analogous case. The analogy that I propose is that between the religious person’s claim to be conscious of God and any man’s claim to be conscious of the physical world as an environment, existing independently of himself, of which he must take account.
If then we consider the sense of living in the divine presence as this was expressed by, for example, Jesus, Paul or the great prophets of the Old Testament, we find that their awareness of God [through the Word] was so vivid that He was as undeniably a factor in their experience as was their physical environment. They could no more help believing in the reality of God than in the reality of the material world and of their human neighbours. Many of the pages of the bible resound with the sense of God’s presence as a building might reverberate from the tread of some gigantic being walking through it.
God was known to the prophets and apostles as a dynamic will interacting with their own wills and a clear personal reality. [God was as real to their religious experience as the following was to their physical experience]: a destructive storm or a life-giving sunshine. [The experience of God was as real through the Word] to them as the fixed contours of the land, or the hatred of their enemies and the friendship of their neighbors.
The apostle, prophet or saint may be so vividly aware of God [through the Word] that he can no more doubt the veracity of his religious awareness than of his sense experience. During the periods when God is to him the divine Thou, the question whether God exists simply does not arise.
God was not, for Amos or Jeremiah or Jesus of Nazareth an inferred entity but an experienced personal presence [through the Word]. If this is so, it is appropriate that the religious man’s belief in the reality of God should be no more temporary than his belief in the reality of the physical world. The situation is in each case that, given the experience which he has and which is part of him, he cannot help accepting as “there” such aspects of his environment as he experiences. He cannot help believing either in the reality of the material world which he is conscious of inhabiting, or of the personal divine presence which is overwhelmingly evident to him. And as I have been suggesting that it is as reasonable for him to hold and act upon the one belief as the other.”
That is a clearest definition of faith I have read outside the Bible in a loooong time!
Over the next few day, I’m going to back-up Hicks’ statements with Scripture.
Comments (2)
So, Andrew, you agree with Hicks that the material world is just as real as faith in God? I look forward to your Scriptural back-ups for this! Are you at all familiar with G. Clark’s annihilation of Empiricism?
Regards,
Reinhard
I am willing to bet you are no longer on Xanga, since I’ve neither seen nor heard from you in months. I count this a blessing. I would like to point out a discovery I’ve made. As I stumbled upon this site again tonight, I wondered who you were at first. Then I found a comment I had left. Questioning why you so boldly “expose” errancies, and yet are so quiet with preaching the truth. Then I remembered how I’d come to the conclusion that you were in fact revealing yourself as not being led by love, hope, joy, peace, meekness, longsuffering, brotherly love, etc. I started reading all the comments on all your posts, and was thankful I was not the only one, from a Biblically based Theology, getting this impression.
Why am I commenting on this post? Because it’s the final nail in the coffin.You attack endlessly faithful, yet fallible men of God post after post, AND THEN YOU AGREE WITH AN UNREGENERATE.
You shall know them by their fruits.
Repent sir. Repent.