“Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
Was he right to say this? Thomas didn’t tell us his epistemology. We don’t even know his attitude as he said those words. I suspect he was trembling, not indignant.
Was Thomas being reasonable? It seems ambiguous.
Always have a ready defense for the hope within you, says 1 Peter 3:15. What is that defense?
Some Christians will tell you they believe God’s Word, and he is God, and that settles it. But this kind of argument is no defense. It isn’t even logical. It presupposes the very thing it sets out to defend.
Growing up in a variety of churches, I had the chance to hear diverse perspectives. What is faith? Why should we have faith? Some people told me it was wrong to ask too many questions or to have doubts. Others said questions and doubts were part of the process of taking an idea seriously. It’s not bad to doubt, if you work through that doubt and find the truth.
I surveyed the Bible to find its position on the status of knowledge. Does the Bible say knowledge/certainty is impossible to the unbeliever? Actually, I found that sinners can know many things. What they can’t know is the deceit of their own heart. But they can know good and evil. In fact, it is for knowing the good, yet choosing the evil, that people are condemned (Romans 1-2).
Below is a set of verses to help combat the mystical approach to knowledge (presuppositionalism). We see the common-sense view of knowledge: we learn by observation and reasoning. People come to faith because they see evidence; seeing leads to believing.
Knowledge plays a huge role in Scripture. In these verses we find a treasury of insight about what knowledge is possible to man and about how knowledge works. Enjoy!
First Comment!
Hooray for my first reader comment!
I want to encourage interaction at my blog, so I’ll reproduce the comment and my response:
A friend asked:
“What does ‘faith’ mean in this context? To come later?”
He wanted to know what I mean by faith. I wrote back:
“Here faith means trusting God. It means believing that God has spoken, and believing God’s promises. Faith comes at the conclusion of a reasoning process–not as the presupposition to it.”
In this blog I advocate the principle that “if we will live,” we must choose to value our own lives, our reason, and our faith. I seek to reproduce my philosophical convictions in other people. For the sake of clarity, I’ve created an outline of my system. This and future posts will expound my system.
A philosophical system must answer three basic kinds of questions: What kind of world is it? Why am I able to know it? How will I act? The central tenets of my philosophy are epistemological objectivism and a Christian morality of rational self-interest.
