PAPER NO. 70

SOURCES OF FIDEISM

Popular, Theological, Personal

Fideism is holding a belief without proof. Proof is seen either as not relevant or not possible or may not actually be present. Fideism may occur on both sides of an assertion. It may be both theistic and anti-theistic. It may be naturalistic or supernaturalistic. It may be sophistic or simplistic. Fideism assumes basic things are not clear. Belief without proof based on understanding loses all meaning.

  1. Sensus Divinitatis: Is knowledge of God immediate or inferred?

“Deep down everyone knows that God exists.”

Response:

  1. What is the content of this knowledge? Is it the same as Romans 1:20—God’s eternal power and divine nature? The account from upholders of the SD view is varied and generally bare.
  2. If one has this knowledge, one should be able to prove it.
  3. SD assumes a common sense realism or intuition (see Paper No. 69).

When arguments arise against this immediately held belief, it is not self-evident that intuition must override reason. How can one rationally choose between two prima facie justifiable beliefs? Reason and argument (strong justification) is necessary for knowledge (see Paper No. 72 and Paper No. 75).

  1. Knowledge and Accountability: What is the basis of inexcusability?

“Because they really know deep down (and suppress it), they are without excuse.”

Response:

  1. This view assumes that if one does not have knowledge, one cannot be held responsible (vs. culpable ignorance—responsible for the failure to seek and understand/know what is maximally clear about God).
  2. Failure to seek and understand describes a universal, basic, moral failure. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,” assumes ignorance is culpable.
  3. This view assumes that knowing the truth does not set a person free from moral bondage.
  1. The Magisterial vs. Ministerial Use of Reason: Is reason to be understood as only servant, and not judge of the truth of revelation?

“Reason cannot and should not be the judge of the truth of revelation.”

Response:

  1. Some are willing to use reason in its formative, interpretive, and constructive use, but not critically with respect to their own revelation (truth). To apply the critical use of reason to other revelation and not to one’s own is arbitrary in the extreme.
  2. Since reason is necessary to receive and to understand revelation, revelation must necessarily pass the minimal test of intelligibility. What is actually contradictory (vs. apparently) is unintelligible and cannot be thought, and therefore cannot be believed. Reason used critically, as the test for meaning (which is more basic than truth), is necessary to understand revelation.
  1. Ontology and Epistemology: Can reason grasp ultimate reality?

“Reason cannot grasp ultimate reality.”

Response:

  1. Reason is ontological—it applies to all being, to the highest being, to God’s being (God, in his being, is not both eternal and not eternal, in the same respect and at the same time). If God’s being is eternal, then reason is eternal, and therefore uncreated, and unlike the laws of nature which began at creation.
  2. Human knowledge is and will forever be finite (even though it may grow). But, by reason and argument, we know in part. And since thinking is presuppositional, we begin with what is most basic, without having exhaustive knowledge.
  3. The basic things (about God and man and good and evil) are known by revelation through the acts of creation and providence (necessarily, intentionally, and exclusively).
  4. Reason is transcendental (authoritative and self-attesting)—it cannot be questioned but makes questioning (intelligibility) possible. Since reason applies to the being of God, it need not be, nor can it be, established by appeal to God’s being or will which already presupposes reason.
  1. Faith and Reason: Are faith and reason compatible?

“Faith is other than reason; it goes beyond and sometimes is opposed to reason.”

Response:

  1. Does not truth presuppose meaning? Can a belief be held more strongly than the understanding of the meaning of its content? If not, then faith is understanding, and “I believe in so far as I understand” (vs. “I believe in order that I may understand”).
  2. As truth cannot be separated from meaning, so faith cannot be separated from reason. It is by reason that meaning is grasped. Faith grows as understanding grows. Faith is tested as understanding is tested.
  1. Reason and the Testimonium Spiritu Sancti: What is the role of reason and the work (witness) of the Holy Spirit with respect to faith (salvation)?

“Reason is finite and fallen. Reason cannot persuade; the Holy Spirit does. Salvation is by grace, not works.”

Response:

  1. Is reason the most basic form of the Word of God that comes to man (the life of the Logos in man, as light, by which man sees/understands all of the revelation of God)?
  2. If so, does the Holy Spirit (HS) work by and with reason (the Word) or apart from reason? Does the HS work to convince, persuade, enlighten, and illuminate the mind with sound argument or apart from sound argument?
  3. Does the HS make an argument sound by a supernatural act? Or is the argument sound by its own characteristics?
  4. Is the purpose of a sound argument only to persuade, or can it also compel a person to shut their eyes (turn off their mind) to avoid the force of a sound argument?
  5. Is it reason that is finite and fallen, or is it man that is finite and fallen? Is it reason that fails to understand, or man who fails to seek and understand through reason?
  6. Is the use of reason opposed to or independent of grace, or itself a work of grace? Is the use of and proper response to sound argument a purely natural occurrence, or is it itself something of a miracle?
  1. Reason and the Particular: Can reason grasp the particular/individual/unique or only the universal and abstract?

“Reason grasps the universal and abstract, not the particular concrete (known only in existential encounter). Faith must suspend and leap beyond reason, the universal, and the ethical, to grow in faith and obey God (as seen in Abraham, the man of faith).”

Response:

  1. The individuality/uniqueness of Abraham is comprehensible only in understanding all the particulars of his life story in its entirety. Abraham’s particular act of offering up Isaac (obedience in faith) should be seen in the continuity of his faith (understanding), developed and expressed throughout his life.
  2. The elements of his faith (understanding man’s origin and destiny, God’s purpose in world history, sin and death, the curse and promise, the necessity for the resurrection) were in place before leaving the city of man for the city of God.
  3. These elements (universals) were deepened through all the particulars of his life (the meaning of world history, sacrifice, circumcision, the name ‘Isaac,’ and the promise/blessing being through Isaac—himself, a sinner).
  4. From this faith, Abraham reasoned that God could and would raise Isaac from the dead to fulfill the promise God made. This was a deepened understanding (faith) of what he already believed when he first received the call and promise in Ur.
  1. Reason and Rationalism: Can we escape the bi-polar mindset between faith and reason, between fideism and skepticism, between the right and left?

“Religion leads to wars, abuses, and superstitions. Therefore, it’s reason without God.”

“Reason removes God from creation and providence (seen as unnecessary), leading to extreme immorality, dehumanization, and nihilism. Therefore, it’s God without reason.”

Response:

  1. No one is obligated to choose between reason without God or God without reason (antinomies).
  2. There is a common failure to use reason to understand the clarity of general revelation on both sides (in the name of reason and in the name of God). Both rationalists and fideists fail to address the problem of evil (the latter, from both general and special revelation—which gives them more light).
  3. A deeper sense of reason as the Logos in man, and a deeper use of reason in light of clarity, would shatter pretentions on both sides and get us past the dangers of competing idolatries.
  1. Reason and Hermeneutics: Is reason/how is reason to be used in interpreting the Scripture?

“God’s Word means what is says and says what it means; the words are right there; God says it and I believe it. We shouldn’t add our own interpretations/imaginations to the Word of God. The Bible should be read literally.”

“The Scripture is much deeper in meaning with its very symbolic and metaphorical language. Reading the Bible literally leaves it bare and boring and it often becomes absurd. The Bible should be read allegorically.”

Response:

  1. Interpretation of Scripture should be by contextualism (applying all layers of context with a presuppositional hermeneutic—understanding the logically less basic in light of the more basic). This is opposed to the antinomies of literalism (one word, one meaning) and allegoricalism (brings in arbitrary/unwarranted assumptions to the text).
  2. Taken strictly, the Reformation principle of Sola Scriptura becomes literalist, excluding the use of external and internal context of interpretation.
  3. Sola Scriptura should be understood as a principle of authority set against all other claims based on special revelation. It is not set against, but presupposes, reason (in making good and necessary consequences) and the clarity of general revelation as its most basic context. Therefore, it should be consistent with this context.
  1. Piety and Intellect: Can we allow for an anti-intellectual split in human personality or piety (head/heart split)?

“The Scripture warns against vain philosophy and being puffed up by knowledge. God hides truths from the wise but reveals them to babes, and uses the weak and foolish things to confound the strong and wise. He desires us to not lean on our own understanding, but to be like little children in simple piety, for which He will reward us in heaven face-to-face in a beatific vision.”

Response:

  1. One is called to love God with the whole heart, including the mind, beginning with the understanding.
  2. One is called to go on to maturity from infancy in understanding, in order to attain to the fullness of God.
  3. One is warned against zeal without knowledge and called to piety (holiness), which comes from knowing the truth.
  4. One is reminded that all suffer under natural evil as a call to stop and think, to earnestly seek God.
  5. One is called to take every thought (raised against the knowledge of God) captive to the obedience of Christ.
  6. The wisdom literature exalts understanding and warns against the folly of fools and the complacency of the simple.
  7. The outcome (the goal) of life is not an individual beatific vision in heaven, but the earth being filled with the knowledge of God through a corporate, cumulative work of mankind in history.
  1. Reason and the Mysteries of the Faith: Are mysteries of the faith beyond or against reason?

“Mysteries are beyond and against reason; they are supremely objects of faith.”

Response:

  1. How can it be known what is to be believed within a religion or between religions, if reason is to be suspended in matters of faith?
  2. Mysteries are things formerly hidden and now revealed (in special, not general, revelation). They arise first from the reading of Scripture. Then, as differences in understanding arise, a consensus is reached through a process of much discussion (by leaders and teachers in councils). Through the use of reason (good and necessary consequences), faulty and contradictory misunderstandings of doctrine are removed for a more precise confession of faith. Future generations who neglect this often repeat old questions and old errors.
  3. The differences are often misunderstandings rooted in uncritically held assumptions from general revelation used to interpret special revelation.
  4. In the course of progressing in understanding, what appeared to be against reason (paradox) is seen to be not against reason, but in accord with reason, and eventually it may be seen to be what reason should expect.
  1. Reason and Personality: With the diversity in human nature, is there hope for unity?

“Some people are inclined to the life of thought, some to feeling, and some to action. We are just different.”

Response:

  1. There is a real diversity among persons, but properly understood it is the basis of unity, not disunity.
  2. There is a natural unity and a natural order for unity in each person—3 functions: intellect, emotion, will (in that order). Unity among persons begins with unity in a person.
  3. Our personality inclination (to the life of thought, or feeling, or action) has an epistemological lifestyle implication (to rely on reason, or intuition, or sense experience as a primary source of knowledge).
  4. Through proper education, self-examination/discipline, and wise guidance, knowledge of oneself and of the good is cultivated. Knowledge of the good is the source of unity (within a person and between persons), through which the good is fully realized. Reason as the source of the knowledge of the good is the primary source of unity.

This paper is posthumously published based upon the original work of Dr. Surrendra Gangadean

and has been edited by The Logos Foundation editorial board.


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