From: brown@ncoast.org (Stan Brown)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Apply doubting Thomas to today?  (sort of a summary)
Date: 26 Jul 92 20:22:46 GMT
Organization: Oak Road Systems, Cleveland Ohio USA

Quite a number of folks were kind enough to respond to my article a week
or so ago about the Thomas episode in John 20.  I thought it would be
appropriate to post a summary.

I begin with a disclosure, inspired by a similar one posted here by
someone else a few days ago.  I ask people to bear in mind that "I am
not convinced that what you say is true" is a far cry from "What you say
is false."  There is a ban in this group, quite rightly, on Christianity-
bashing articles, and so I hope that an honest search for truth will not 
appear to violate that ban.  I cannot consider myself a Christian, but
I am not yet ready to dismiss Christianity as (pardon me for speaking
bluntly) a superstition.  There are a number of people I respect
intellectually and morally who are Christians, and I hesitate to assert
that they are all mistaken, since the consequences are so important if
they are correct.

It seemed to me that Thomas's position was relevant to mine.  Thomas was
not closed to belief, yet he was not willing to believe something so far
out of experience as Jesus' resurrection without quite specific proof.
If Christianity is true, that episode must be there for a reason, and it
seems reasonable to ask how it speaks to people today, and specifically
to me.

In summarizing responses I won't use people's names or email addresses,
but rather will try to pick out the themes that seemed most common or
most significant (not always the same thing).  I do appreciate that so
many people took the time and trouble to reply to my article and attempt
to be helpful.  Though not all of them actually did help, all were
clearly prompted by tyhe desire to be helpful and not to condemn.
Several have been kind enough to continue corresponding as we explore
particular points together.

Quite a number of people wrote to say that the truth of Christianity was
obvious to everyone.  I am aware that Paul said that in Romans 1.  All I
can reply is that it's not obvious to me, nor was it obvious to many
people who are far more skilled in these matters than I.  Two points to
note:  "not obvious" is not at all the same thing as "not true"; and
saying someting is obvious doesn't make it so.

More than half mentioned that faith that does not demand proof is better
than faith that does.  I mentioned in my original article that I
understood this to be the main point of the episode, but since it didn't
help me in my situation I was hoping to gain some assistance from its
secondary point.

Several pointed out the important distinction between belief and faith.
Being a Christian is not simply a matter of intellectually accepting as
true the facts laid down in the creeds, or in the Bible; it involves a
decision to give one's allegiance to God.  I understand this
distinction, but it seems to me that before one can declare allegiance
to a lord, the vassal must be convinced intellectually that the lord
exists.  An analogy (not too silly, I hope) might be in bungee jumping.
Being intellectually convinced that, as a matter of physics, the bungee
cord will not part and let you fall head first to the ground must
precede a decision to trust that knowledge and actually rely with one's
life on that knowledge.  There may be some who will make the jump
without being intellectually convinced; there may be others who will
not take the jump without being intellectually convinced.  (Watching
others make the jump and survive may constitute being intellectually
convinced; I don't mean to imply that a formal proof using theorems of
mathematics and laws of physics is required.  Perhaps I should say
"cognitively" rather than "intellectually.")

One writer said that the point of the passage was the transition from a
church that contained eyewitnesses to Jesus' ministry into one that
contained only those who had heard about it at second or third hand (or
greater remove), as the generation of eyewitnesses gradually died.  In
other words, the point of the passage was that Christian faith must then
rely on the written gospels because there were no longer any eyewitness
spoken gospels.  That makes a good deal of sense to me, though it
doesn't really solve my problem.

There were several suggestions that I pray for faith, and indeed I had
done so for years.  If that prayer had been answered I would not have
needed to raise this question.

Several writers pointed to the forgiveness of sins and other spiritual
gifts as evidence of God's work today.  In the nature of things, those
are valuable proofs for those who are already believers, but can only be
taken skeptically by those who are not already Christians.  From the
outside, it's impossible to tell the difference between a genuine
spiritual experience and a mere psychological event in the other
person't mind.

One person brought up an argument that I have heard attributed to
Pascal: If you believe and it's false you've lost nothing; if you don't
believe and it's true you've lost everything.  It seems to me that a
"faith" founded on such a belief is not faith at all, but rather a sort
of attempt to hedge one's bets without actually being committed.  

I think the real resolution of this matter may be what one correspondent
suggested in a second or third exchange of email:  what is best is to
ask friends to tell me as clearly as they can why they are Christians,
then to _not_ be shy about questioning them closely on things that I
don't understand or that seem to make no sense.

Again, thanks to those who took the time and trouble to write (including
those to whom I still owe letters, who will have them soon).  I hope the
length of this article is not excessive given the material to be
covered.
-- 
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems                      brown@Ncoast.ORG

"Tariff, n.  A scale of taxes on imports, designed to protect the
domestic producer against the greed of his consumer."  --Ambrose Bierce

[There is not so much a ban on Christianity-bashing as a ban on
bashing in general.  However I should note that this is sufficiently
hard to define that I make no claims at doing it in a completely
consistent way.  --clh]