Philosophy

The Enlightenment thinkers felt that reason had come to age and elevated it above faith. But, mathematics is not the book of life. It is impossible to expel faith. As the wise sage Pascal observed, reason has to be find support on something, and that something can't be reason itself, to avoid circular reasoning. Reason is also based upon faith. Again, he showed that reason cannot irrefutably prove God, but it can neither disprove His existence. It proves nothing. Spiritual skepticism is the willingness to concede that our minds cannot have certainty alone by themselves. This is not to deny certain certainties that are axiomatic and undeniable. For instance, one can't contradict the law of non-contradiction. However, it certainly means that one has no confidence in his own reasoning and wisdom. Only this form of skepticism regarding self can truly set us free to find our fullness and certainty only in Him.

flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. (Matt.16:17) People usually do have reasons for their beliefs, though not all may be able to instantly enumerate all their reasons when asked for. The believer in Chi power might even demonstrate his grounds of belief. So will the homeopath, the allopath, the evolutionist, the Yogi, the Advaitin, and the astrologer. But, it is also possible that one cannot demonstrate proofs and yet decide to go on with what one is convinced about, in whatever sense whatever. The Jews knew that there were no witnesses to incriminate the Christ; however, when He announced who He was, they decided that His statement was proof enough of blasphemy. But, on what grounds? The work of a preacher is certainly to persuade by means of reasoning. For some it may mean persuasion through exposition of scriptures; to others, through spiritual encounter and signs and wonders; to others, through contextually relevant reasoning (as in the cas...

Published in BASILEIA, Itarsi, October 2010 In modern times, the world has experienced what has been melancholically termed “the crisis of faith”. In his book, The Recovery of Faith (1956) ,[1] former President of India S. Radhakrishnan (1888-1975), lists seven reasons behind this faith-crisis: scientific discoveries that disprove popular religious views, studies in comparative religions that discourage any claim to uniqueness by a particular religion, advancement of technology and depersonalization of the human, popularity of logical empiricism and resultant depreciation of philosophy and metaphysics, disappointment with religion that fails in true life despite the many external rituals, religious schisms that hamper world-unity, and growth of irreligiosity. Sadly, in the post-modern era, as the grip of faith loosened, it kicked back against any faith in reason as well. Truth was relativized and pluralized as the absolutes vanished into thin air. The confusion of plurality and the eng...

Excerpt from the book,  Explorations of Faith , 2009 ( Read/Download Full Book ) FAITH in God is of ultimate kind and is, therefore, both unique and absolute. Since it is not concerned with contingent things of this world it is also not like the belief in the contingent things of the world. Further, belief in God is foundational to our common-sense assumptions about this world as both moral and rational. Anyone who denies God must also deny the existence of absolute morals and absolute truth, for both lose their foundation if their foundation is found within this world itself. It would be like trying to place a ball on that ball itself. Without an unchangeable transcendent ground, there can be no absolute point of reference (as in outer space where all bodies hang in positions relative to each other). The unchanging nature and character of God is the foundation of true morality [1] and His veracity is the foundation of all reasonability and truth. Therefore, divine existence is the su...

"building yourselves up on your most holy faith"   Jude 20 In Galatians 3, Paul asks the Galatians how it had happened that they had begun in faith, in the Spirit, but now had been bewitched to end up in the flesh. These believers had not been careful to continue in their faith. Their life had failed to logically relate to their original faith. Historically, the Crusades and the Inquisitions were examples of the Church failing in the logic of Faith. In the personal Christian life, when the believer fails to derive his principles of practice from the originality of Gospel faith, his faith-life has run a shipwreck. It's like the Christian in Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress who is detracted from the path of the Cross by the Worldly Wiseman. In the case of the Galatians, it was the Judaizers who tried to introduce Jewish rituals and rites as mandatory into the Church. If we have begun our Christian life in faith, we can only grow if we keep ourselves in that faith. If we have b...

In an age when "belief" is looked skeptically down, one wonders why people still continue to believe in God. At the same time, there are those who wonder why people aren't able to believe in God. Following may be some reasons why people believe in God: 1. Simplicity.  There is a law in both philosophy and science called Occam's Razor that says that the simplest explanation must be preferred to a more complicated one. Belief in God is simple, therefore, people believe in God. 2. Rationality.  Belief in God answers several questions that may not be, otherwise, answerable. It solves the question of creation and destiny of the universe, the question of justice, morality, and truth, the problem of evil, the question of life after death, and the problem of man's purpose in life. 3. Practicability . Belief in God is practical and useful. It helps one to face life in a positive manner. At the same time, the believer's experience of God's answer to his prayers, of ...

A Matter of Faith ZERO REINTERPRETED Dr. Domenic Marbaniang Professor, CITS.  “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God….”  (Heb. 11:3) One distinctive tenet of Christian faith is the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing. Contrary to many other cosmogonies, the Bible teaches us that God did not create this world out of some primordial substance; the universe is not eternal, but God created the world out of nothing. This is contrary to the natural principle that something cannot come out of nothing. Obviously, this doctrine, though unpalatable to reason, is acceptable to faith. This is not meant to say that faith contradicts natural philosophy, but that it transcends the natural and, therefore, can connect to the reality that gives significance to this universe. Creatio Ex Nihilo The writer of Hebrews tells us here that it is by faith that “we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God”. Obviously, the doctrine of cre...

I am convinced that we can trust the Bible: trust it as the true revelation of God. The pluralism of “revelations” calls for the exercise of the law of non-contradiction. The modern relativistic, pluralistic mood looks at the Bible as another “truth”. But the fact is that there can never be an absolute infrastructure for relative truth. They always differ in their infrastructure though the superstructure might appear to be the same. The trustworthiness of the Bible is a very important issue, since it addresses issues of ultimate concern: Theology, Cosmology, and Teleology (purpose, salvation). And it supercedingly differs from other “revelatory” sources. Either the Bible is true or false; it is either trustworthy or non-trustworthy. How do we know if we can trust the Bible, then? The Philosophical Test of Internal Consistency. In depth study shows that the Bible is never self-contradictory or self-defeating. As a matter of fact, though the books of the Bible were written over a time ...

MDiv, CITS, Sept 11, 2000 THOUGH there may be a way of depending on the Scripture (i.e., the Bible) without any adherence to or trust in its content (e.g. one may depend on the Bible for knowledge concerning what the early Christians believed and how they behaved, etc), dependence on Scripture, here, means dependence on the infallibility of and the reliability of Scriptural truth—and so to live life on the basis of what the Bible says concerning life. I contend, then, that the true basis of depending on the Scripture is the real fulfillment of the ultimate existential necessity of life in experience. It is not what can be known by experience or reason that the Bible is depended for, but more for what it says concerning the unknown – concerning the Infinite, the origin and destiny of man and the cosmos, the significance of life, etc. The Bible, then, is a revelation – and this is generally accepted as a fact. Thus, the accounts of history and other writings are not mere accounts but a r...