From: jcarroll@ferris.cray.com (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Defending the Faith through Fear (was Inerrancy)
Date: 11 Sep 92 04:26:16 GMT

Rex says:
>Faith is never founded on faith.  Give me one example.  We do not get on an
>airplane using faith in faith.  We do not walk out in front of a moving car at
>a stop light using faith in faith, not do we walk the Xian life using faith in
>faith.  Faith is always built upon knowledge.  Always.  The stronger our
>knowledge base is, the stronger our faith is.  This does not marry to say that
>if I have a PhD in theology that my faith is stronger than a lay persons who
>reads his Bible daily and applies it daily to daily experiences.  That would be
>a western concept of knowledge.  Rather, the closer we are to God (throught His
>revelation) the stronger is our faith.

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not
seen... By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of
God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible...
By faith  Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WAS
GOING" (Heb. 11:1-7; emphasis mine)

All the definitions of "to know" in the dictionary I have at hand make it
a transitive verb. In other words, in order to know, one must have something
which one knows. Use of the word "know" as an intransitive verb is meaningless
in English.

This raises the question, "What is it that is known by the person who has
faith?" We don't know the specific date on which creation happened. We don't
know how many of each animal God created. Abraham didn't know where he was
going.

To say that faith is based upon knowledge is an abuse of language. If I tell
you that the sky is falling, it wouldn't be wise for you to claim that you
know that the sky is falling; the only thing that you could prudently say
is that you believe that the sky is falling because you trust me.

If you were to go farther, and say that you have faith that the sky is falling,
that faith would be founded on your trust in me, your judgment of my possible
motives  for lying for you, and your appraisal of the possibility that I am
myself deceived. It would not be valid for you to say that you *know* that the
sky is falling until you went outside to see for yourself.

After you came  back inside, you probably wouldn't say that you have faith that
the sky is falling. You would say, simply, either "The sky is falling", or
"The sky is not falling; that's ridiculous". You would only continue to say
"I have faith that the sky is falling" if you trusted my eyes more than your
own.

Imagine the following conversation:

Alvin:		The sky is falling!

Simon:		How do you know?

Alvin:		Theodore told me!

It's clearly implied here that Alvin doesn't have direct empirical evidence of
his own for making that claim; his "knowledge" is based upon his faith in
Theodore. Thus "knowledge" can be based upon faith, but not faith upon knowledge;
if you *know* something, you *don't need* faith in it. Faith is belief in 
something of which you have insufficient objective evidence.

When you get on an airplane, you do so with faith which is by no means based
on knowledge. Your faith is based on:

a) your belief that the pilot is not drinking or taking illegal drugs
b) your belief that the wings have been properly deiced, if necessary
c) your belief that there are no terrorists on board
d) your belief that the air traffic controller will guide the plane safely
	away from the airport
e) your belief that the aircraft has been properly maintained
f) your belief in the functioning of the avionics, and the manufacturer's
	understanding of the laws of fluid mechanics.

Unless you are a friend of the pilot or an engineer, you aren't likely to
*know* anything about any of these things. (Some are still in the future
when you get on.) You take *all* of these things on faith.

Walking in front of a moving car involves similar assumptions about the
brakes of the car, the sobriety of the driver, etc.

When you walk by faith, you are walking BY FAITH. You may believe that God
has revealed to you where you are going and what you are doing, but you can't
prove it objectively to me or to anyone else. Sure, it's quite common for
Christians to say that they have intangible "knowledge", but such knowledge
is all the more easily claimed for its intangibility.

When you tell me that you have knowledge from God, and you can't tell me
specifically and succinctly what that knowledge is, you're engaging in
doublespeak. You're claiming a mantle of authority for something that isn't
authentic knowledge at all, or maybe just using "know" as an intensive form
of "believe". Either way, you're not communicating very clearly.

Unfortunately, in English, we have only one word for two quite different
concepts which are distinct words in German (the foreign language in which
I happen to be most fluent): _wissen_, "to know", and _kennen_, "to be
familiar with". This ambiguity helps to muddle just exactly what is meant
when someone claims to "know" something. One can claim to know God in
somewhat the same way that Bo knows tennis, but this is different
from  saying that God is an objective verifiable fact.