“Are there spiritual laws and forces?”

Sure, we are given many hints at what the spiritual realm is like.

However the question here (and I agree that Dr Howe didn’t make this as clear as he could have) is not whether the spiritual realm exists or whether some metaphysical entities operate according to a regulative principal along the lines of the physical realm. For example mathematics, logic, and love are all metaphysical and yet we know they fit into a clear system we can know at least in part.

The question, however, is whether this metaphysical/supernatural/spiritual realm can be controlled through power words, incantations, rituals, etc. This is the definition of occult practices and I believe these characteristics are clearly shared (if not stolen outright) by the word of faith and prosperity movements respectively. Sure, some people may try to use their magic, err “faith” for various things such as money, healing, social advancement, etc. but the net result is the whether the proponent is a Christian and veils their actions in Christianeese or not.

“If there are spiritual forces that control the physical realm do we allow God to handle that or do we co-labor with God.”

As far as the spiritual realm goes, no. Scripture speaks clearly against our attempts to manipulate the spiritual apart from petitioning God. I believe Jesus provided us a clear example here on earth when he primarily prayed and asked God to bring about miracles rather than Jesus presuming to do them all the time.

Now, does that mean we can’t labor for good in the physical realm in order to alleviate pain and suffering? Absolutely not! In fact, James tells us that helping the poor and needy is what constitutes “pure religion”.

Now, turning to the issue of faith.

Faith is not a force, and faith is not an object in itself. Faith, rightly understood in a biblical sense, is trust. The clear image is of a husband and a wife where good faith is when they remain true to each other.For a more technical treatment of faith I encourage you to read a post I wrote on the subject a while back.

Now, on to Mark 11:22.

Editor’s note, this section was brought about by the following question:
I got this from a website that defends the word of faith movement. Let me know what you think. http://www.victoryword.100megspop2.com/godkind1.html

I find the debate over whether the verse ought to be translated as “in God” vs “of God” to be rather strange and I find the practice of attempting to formulate a regulative and substantial doctrine over the translation of one inflective in one verse to be downright troubling.

The verse in question in Greek is:
και αποκριθεις ο ιησους λεγει αυτοις εχετε πιστιν θεου (Tischendorf’s Eighth Edition GNT)

The phrase in question is the last two words which, transliterated read “pistin theou”. Pistis is the Greek word for faith and theos is the Greek word for God. Where is the “in” or “of”? In Greek, articles such as a, an, the, of, in are generally derived from the word’s inflection. That is, from the case endings of the words. This is also known as morphology and is actually the hardest part of the Greek language (especially for people like us who are not used to an inflected language). In this case, the morphology of pistin is: Noun, Accusative, Singular, Feminine and theou is Noun, Genitive, Singular, Masculine. Pistin being in the accusative case means it is the direct object of a verb.

But wait! Where is the verb this is the direct object of?

For that we need to back up to the word directly before pistis which is ekete. Before we continue, though I feel the need to present a word of caution here in case you wish to study Greek sentence structure: While the verb location is convenient in this case, Greek is not a language where word order conveys meaning (unlike English). At any rate, the verb ekete means simply “to have” and its morphology is Present, Active, Imperative, Second person, Plural.

So we have ekete (to have) as the verb with pistis as the direct object and theou as the genitive modifier (If you’re interested, it’s modifying the previous noun which was Iesous or Jesus. There’s richness in this linkage but alas, we must press on.).

So why did some translators translate this passage “the faith of God” (as in the KJV, Douay Rheims Bible and The Worrell New Testament you mentioned above) while others (most newer translations like the ESV, NET, NIV, NLT, etc.)? Most likely several factors including translation philosophy, better and more extensive manuscripts to pull from, and the translators themselves.

I’ll readily grant that the most literal translation of the phrase ending Mark 11:22 could very well be “have the faith of God”. But so what? We’ve seen above that theon is a genitive modifier of Jesus so the word picture here is really one of modeling the faith Jesus displayed which is also supported by the context of Jesus cursing the fig tree for not producing fruit in accordance with life. As you can readily see, then, such an admonition to model Jesus and follow in His footsteps is nothing new or earth-shattering. And it is certainly not something worth concocting an entire doctrine around.

Aside from rather sloppy exegesis, what also disturbs me is a lack of specificity and carefulness when it comes to the theological implications of viewing God as a being that “has faith”. Sure, Jesus prayed and trusted the Father. But I’m sure we will all agree that Jesus has a unique relationship with God and that no matter how much it pains us, our application to join the trinity has been denied.

As we’ve said before, faith is trusting in someone. God is omniscient and can therefore can not trust in the same sense that we, as finite and foolish beings, can (and are commanded to). God is also all-powerful and can not act in opposition to his nature (ie. God cannot sin) therefore God also cannot “be faithful” in the same sense that we, as imperfect and not-yet-holy humans, can (and, again, are commanded to be).

So, to sum up.

Faith is not a force. Jesus was not teaching in Mark 11 that we could throw mountains around all willy-nilly like. Nor do we have the power to heal anyone.

What Jesus taught was in keeping with the Jewish notion of faith as akin to faithfulness in marriage where we ask God and He (and He alone under absolutely no obligation) will toss around mountains or heal the effects found in a broken world such as sin, death, and spiritual oppression as and if he sees fit.

While the differences may be subtle in the teachings of the Word of Faith Movement, I believe the fruit it ultimately bears shows that it is more man-centered than it is God-centered. And, as Dr Howe pointed out in his presentation through direct quotes from the Word of Faith leaders themselves, if taken to the extreme, Word of Faith teachings ultimately leads one to confusing themselves into thinking they are a god rather than worshiping the one true God.

In other words: It’s dangerous, their theology is full of manure (and that’s the nice way of saying what I’m really thinking), and we ought to encourage anyone who us unfortunate enough to feed on such mess to, instead, seek out “pure spiritual milk” from a source that isn’t heavily influenced by the occult/new age movement.

• Bruce A. Little What is faith? Does belief require Warrant?
• Bruce A. Little The Formation of Belief
• William Lane Craig Religious epistemology
• Alister McGrath Is God a Delusion?

Apply your reasoning to any other area of life, and no one can ever stop believing something that they really believed in. True belief PRECLUDES assimilating newly discovered evidence which causes re-evaluation of what you once would have given your life in defense of????

So an Amazon tribal person who once believed that the sun revolves around the earth, who is shown through diagrams and scientific language he understands, then stops believing that and then believes that the earth revolves around the sun, DIDN’T REALLY BELIEVE IN THE FIRST PLACE THAT THE SUN REVOLVES AROUND THE EARTH????

It’s ridiculous isn’t it? And yet that is the same faulty logic you are applying to us former Christians (in my case, a Th.B. from Multnomah Bible College, several years as a missionary in Europe, and 46 years as a witnessing, praying, worshipping, fervently passionate evangelical.

If you apply your logic to all of life, no held belief can ever change, and if it does, it was never a true belief. The only infallible test of true belief is DEATH. If you can make it to the grave without ever denying a belief, then that proves it was “true”. There is NO OTHER WAY to prove whether the belief was genuine, according to your test of belief.

I started penning a response but it quickly grew past the size that could be comfortably included or contained within a comment field. So I’ve chosen to include my response below and post it outside of my normal post schedule. Enjoy!

You raise some interesting questions, and I’ll do my best to answer them in the following.

I think it would be a useful exercise to step back and define what we mean by terms such as belief, faith, and knowledge. Generally these terms are the concern of epidemiologists and admittedly there is not, strictly speaking, widespread consensus even among them.

Since greater men than I have been exploring this subject longer than I have been alive I must apologize in advance for any confusion I may inadvertently bring into the discussion and encourage you to, instead, seek out works by epidemiologists such as Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Flint, etc. if you seek a more academic discourse on the matter.

At any rate, I’ve written elsewhere in regards to how beliefs are formed and would like to simply cite the following from Alvin Plantinga’s “Warrant” series as the basis of how “true beliefs” are formed:

A belief has warrant (and can thus be considered true) if and only if:
1. it is produced by cognitive faculties functioning properly,
2. in a cognitive environment sufficiently similar to that for which the faculties were designed,
3. according to a design plan aimed at the production of true beliefs, when
4. there is a high statistical probability of such beliefs being true

With that definition in place I would like to turn to your underlying question of objectively claiming to have held a belief or not. Specifically I would like to examine the case of the African bushman you mentioned above.

I freely accept that the bushman held a belief in the sun’s rotation around the earth and that he believed such a belief to be true. However one factor was working against him and at least one more, I believe, likely played a part in working against him which caused his resulting belief to not be true and thus not to constitute knowledge.

1.) He lacked the epistemic faculties (or access to the proper epistemic sources, rather) required to detect the truth regarding the relationship of the earth and the sun.
and
2.) He lacked an environment that was geared towards the production of true beliefs. That is, his culture more than likely played a role in the continuation of the belief that the sun revolved around the earth. Thus the environment he was a part of was not, strictly speaking, wholly interested in the pursuit of truth and thus not geared towards the production of true beliefs, at least in this instance.

Absent these crucial pieces we can see that there was a clear breakdown in the epistemic process which, while producing many other true beliefs, failed to obtain to the production of a true belief in this case.

Now I want to apply the same criteria to the subject of whether a person who no longer believes in Christianity (or Christ moreover) ever was a Christian in the first place.

This is a fairly complex subject and I apologize if my initial treatment of the issue failed to be as well defined as it could have been.

Let me begin by saying at the outset that not being omniscient I cannot, of course, know what epistemic warrant you or anyone else who has since renounced their once-held belief in Christianity has had access to. That is, I do not know how your belief was formed, what it was formed on, or how it was sustained for such a lengthy amount of time. However I am curious since, as a person who holds Christianity to be objectively true, if sufficient defeaters were to exist (along with sufficient positive competing explanations) for the facts Christianity is based upon (specifically the resurrection of Jesus Christ) then it would stand to reason that no one ought to be a Christian and we ought to prefer the competing explanation over the one we currently hold.

Were you a believer at one time? I believe you were, and I would further concede that your actions at least appear to back up your claims. However this does not answer the question as to what your beliefs regarding Christ were or were based on. Many times I run across even professing Christians who are unable to clearly articulate what they believe much less why. If these believers were to renounce their faith tomorrow I would be hard pressed to make a case of their ever truly having held a clear and objective belief in Christ in the first place.

Now, to switch gears slightly.

So far I’ve dealt with this issue primarily from an epistemological and philosophical standpoint. However I would like to turn to the theological standpoint since I believe it also has some bearing in this discussion. After all, Christianity is not merely about the cold acceptance of facts, but also work of a being we hold to have objectively occurred at one point in history which opens the door for a real relationship with this same being.

I’m speaking, of course, about Jesus and his work on the cross. Now I’m not sure where you’ve come from theologically, but what I am going to outline I believe is a fairly orthodox position ascribed to by most of the major creeds down through Christendom.

What saves a man?

Is it merely our mental assent to a cold hard fact? While I believe such a mental assent and acceptance of at least a bare minimum of facts is required (such as the ones outlined by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8), I do not believe that our mental assent to the facts alone is what saves us or brings us into relationship with Christ. What saves us is the righteousness imputed unto us from Christ in such a way as to be irrevocable . Such an event, I would maintain, is also an irreversible event in time in much the same way as the decision to jump off of a cliff or walk through a door.

So the question becomes: Could you have been imputed Christ’s righteousness at one point in the past and still be saved even though your current belief structure no longer affords the same degree of warrant you once held? Possibly.

You see, one of the curious things about mankind’s ability to form, change, and reform beliefs is that while we do grow in our epistemic capacity and acquisition of new beliefs (and rejection of previously held beliefs) we don’t reject ALL of our beliefs. If that were the case we would never be able to grow at all since we would merely be in a constant state of flux.

The same holds true when it comes to Christianity and it all hinges on how our beliefs in Christ were formed and what our basis was (if any) for the rejection of those beliefs.

We must also keep in mind that when 1 John 2:19 was written, there weren’t such things as cultural Christians who had grown up on the church. Believers in that day, for the most part, either accepted or rejected the claims of Christ’s objective historical actions and claims. In John’s case the people who “went out” were (according to the context of the letter) not even claiming what Paul proclaimed as a minimum criteria of one being a Christian in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 and were, instead, attempting to essentially hijack the Christian religion for their own ends (and we later see from the Gnostic movement that many were unfortunaly successful in their efforts).

So, the answer to “was I ever a Christian in the first place” is a lot more complex and more often than not it cannot be answered by a simple “yes” or “no”, even by the person asking the question. The evidence of a person’s present state of unbelief, while making it very hard to accept that the initial state of belief hard to accept, is ultimately not a question that is of no import if asked of a fellow human.

You see, the final question here must be directed at God.

It is his answer that ultimately matters and if you no longer believe that he exists then I suppose you will have to wait until you meet Him (or not) after you die in order to ask Him.

The path Alyosha chose was a path going in the opposite direction, but he chose it with the same thirst for swift achievement. As soon as he reflected seriously he was convinced of the existence of God and immortality, and at once he instinctively said to himself: “I want to live for immortality, and I will accept no compromise.” In the same way, if he had decided that God and immortality did not exist, he would at once have become an atheist and a socialist. For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth. Alyosha would have found it strange and impossible to go on living as before. It is written: “Give all that thou hast to the poor and follow Me, if thou wouldst be perfect.”

Read the whole chapter here.

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. -CS Lewis, Mere Christianity

Faith is not opposed to reason. True Biblical faith, the kind Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 15, is based squarely in truth, facts, logic, and reason and not in blind flights of fancy based in emotions and wish-fulfillment. Not that our faith is devoid of emotion or that our life in Christ is detachable from powerful experiences. However we must remember that our faith is first of all grounded in truth which is both rational and testable.

[HT Brian]

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

- Robert Jastrow

(God and the Astronomers, W.W. Norton, New York, 1978, p. 116)

Many people are completely unaware of their philosophical presuppositions which is unfortunate since awareness of our philosophical presuppositions helps us better understand the arguments made by others who are often approaching a topic or subject from a completely different philosophical presupposition. Being aware of our presuppositions also helps us address the root of our differences with others rather than the outlying branches or surface issues.

Without addressing the fundamental differences in our world views what we end up managing to produce is more confusion and hard feelings than meaningful communication with others who hold fundamentally different presuppositions than we do.

Why? Because I learned a long time ago that the people worth listening to the most are generally your harshest critics because their criticisms usually contain some bit of truth worth pondering.

However, one of the most recurring themes I’ve run across when listening to and reading “de-conversion testimonies” has been the notion that the person who “de-converted” was, at one time, a “true believer”.

I’ve heard this more times than I can count so, in an effort to consolidate an answer to this oft-used phrase I want to spend some time on the whole notion that someone could be a “true” or “devout” believer in Christ one day (after years, decades in some cases. I’ve even read many testimonies from former deacons, pastors, even apologists!) and a “died again” heathen the next.

So here’s my simple response to those who claim to have been true believers:

No you weren’t.

Lets back up a second and examine why you claim to have been a “true believer” in the first place.

My guess is that your beliefs weren’t based on intellectual conviction of facts. My guess is that they were shaped more by your environment and the influence of those around you more than they were by your sincere efforts to study and understand what Christianity teaches and what the alternatives are (such as the paradox of infinite regression).

Whatever it was, your beliefs probably weren’t based on facts, since facts are required for a belief to have warrant (among a few other factors). In short, this is simply an epistemological issue, not a theological one in the vein of the “no true Scotsman fallacy“.

Oh you can choose to accept or reject Christ all you want. You can even claim to have been a Christian at one point and not at another point. In fact, I claim to have been a proponent of several incompatible religious and philosophical systems at one point or another in my past. I am merely taking exception with your assertion that you were a “true believer” or that “true believers” require blind faith as opposed to evidence¹.

For example, you are obviously a “true believer” now in the theory of Darwinian evolution² and I imagine you base your belief on what you deem as credible facts and evidence, not blind faith.

Some people³ do base their beliefs on blind faith, however we wouldn’t call them “true believers” no matter what they claimed to believe. We may call them fanatics and passionate, but we all know that fanaticism and passion can only get you so far before you are forced to rationalize and harmonize your belief with the rest of your life.

“True belief” requires much more than intense feelings, a deep desire, encouragement from others, a conducive environment, etc. “True belief” can only come from evidence, argument, and clear reasoning on a subject. That’s why “true belief” endures even when everything else (environment, people, etc.) is against it.

Or, as John so eloquently put it:

They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. -1 John 2:19

1. now, whether that evidence is, itself, true is another story
2. Don’t get sidetracked with the mention of the topic of Darwinian evolution right now, I merely use it as an illustration.
3. Theist and atheist alike.

What is faith?

In Bruce Little’s lecture What is faith? Does belief require Warrant?, he asserts that faith is, in a nutshell, a conclusion one makes based on reason and evidence. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Notice this verse tells us that faith is the certainty of things we do not see, not the things not known. The difference between the two is a rather large leap. Consequently we are told in Romans 10:14-15:

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Faith, then, requires knowledge. Or, to put it the way Paul did in the preceding verse: “How can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard?”

How are beliefs formed?

One of the most common misconceptions today is the notion that we can directly and causally will ourselves to believe something. A favorite thought experiment I like to use is this: Imagine I offered you a suitcase with a million dollars if you would believe that the moon were made of cheese. You would certainly have the incentive and desire to believe that the moon is made of cheese but until you were able to amass enough evidence¹ you would not be able to form the belief that the moon were made of cheese.

The point is this: We can’t directly control our beliefs.

So then, how are beliefs actually formed?

Drawing sources

In another lecture by Bruce Little titled The Formation of Belief, he argues that beliefs, while not formed directly as we’ve seen above, are formed indirectly by what we choose to accept as credible evidence. This lends itself to the wisdom found in Proverbs where we read that wisdom is gained through a plurality of counselors². While we cannot directly control our beliefs, we can choose what we will and won’t allow ourselves to be persuaded by. What we allow ourselves to be persuaded by indirectly determines what we place our faith in and shows what we value the most.

This also lends itself to the repeated assertion in Scripture that what one feeds on (that is, information and influences) is what one will eventually start resembling. This is also why Proverbs again warns us that those around us have a profound influence on us either for good or for ill.

Conclusion: The nature of faith

Faith is built on evidence, real or imagined.

Faith is not an object, it is a conclusion drawn given evidence.

Faith is only as strong as the evidence it is built on.

Faith is only valid insofar as the conclusion is true.

In short, everyone has faith.  And while we cannot directly will ourselves to believe anything, we can choose what we will and won’t accept as evidence which indirectly determines what we will and won’t have a foundation to place future beliefs on.

Consequently, most people are afraid of questioning certain central beliefs they hold out of fear that if their prior beliefs are shown to be invalid their subsequent beliefs will change. Regardless of this danger, if we are honest in our pursuit of truth we ought to be willing to objectively³ examine all forms of evidence, both physical as well as metaphysical. We also ought to fight to maintain consistency among the beliefs we hold as we grow which means we must constantly be willing to re-examine our beliefs from time to time.

Further reading

For more resources regarding the epistomoligical warrant for belief in God in general and the God of the Hebrew Scriptures in particular, I highly recommend William Lane Craig’s lecture on Religious epistemology and Alvin Plantinga‘s 3-volume “Warrant” set which includes: Warrant: the Current Debate, Warrant and Proper Function, and Warranted Christian Belief.

1. Notice that the evidence here does not necessarily have to be valid and true in order for the belief to be formed.
2. Proverbs 15:22, Proverbs 11:14
3. That is, use the same high standard of measurement for all evidences that present themselves.

While the axioms that make up the core of this movement are quite sound, I believe we are missing one key to actually bringing about a resurgence or making ourselves as Southern Baptists agents of change in our culture. Specifically, how we do evangelism.

I’m not talking about methods or programs, I’m talking about how we prepare and train for engaging a culture that is increasingly hostile to the objective claims of the gospel. The risks we run rushing unprepared into a world that, as Francis Schaeffer once said, is unable to even process the epistemic notion that there could be such a thing as objective truth and that we as mere mortals could dare to know it.

In short, we need to step back and make sure we do some serious preparation among our own members before we send them out. We need to encourage an intentional investment by local churches into apologetic training. Learning both the tactics and the information necessary to stand firm on the rock solid foundation of the faith that many throughout history have died defending.

Interestingly enough, the North American Mission Board has a program well-suited to the task of assisting local churches in their efforts to train and equip their members to “contend for the faith” as Paul encouraged Jude¹ . This is known as the Certified Apologetics Instructors program directed by Mike Licona, a well known and respected defender of the faith.

If churches are serious about taking up the Great Commission Resurgence challenge and truly wish to engage the world around them, to storm the gates of Hell as it were² , I hope they make use of the fine apologists who belong to this program and who are ready, willing, and able to serve their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in equipping them with sound training.

1. Jude 1:3
2. Matthew 16:18