Welcome to the Summer 2006 study for the Koinonia Class of Calvary Baptist Church, Denver, Colorado. We’re looking at the issue of Jesus and Salvation, using the book “Is Jesus The Only Savior” [James R. Edwards, Is Jesus The Only Savior? (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: 2005)]. We encourage each person to buy a copy and follow along.
Choosing Faith
This email that I received is a good follow-up to my last post about the Gospel In A Pluralistic World. The writer gave me permission to post it. A little background about him is helpful. TR retired as pastor of an American Baptist church in a college town. He was also my pastor when I was in college, so our dialogue about theology goes back over 40 years. He also has a PhD in history, and has taught university classes in history. All this is to say that this email comes after much thought and broad exposure to life outside the church.
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Hi Rudy:
After reading your lessons pertaining to the views of Jesus, my thinking has been re-stimulated about our Messiah. Given my teaching courses (one of which is Comparative Religion for senior honors students), I have been led into a serious study of textual criticism of all religious documents--our scriptures, Koran, Bhagavad-Gita, etc. Given the enormous variations in the texts, I have come to the conclusion, for now at least, that "proving" one's faith by empirical physical validation is not in one's best interest.
To quote your quote of Edwards: "The conclusions of the Jesus Seminar about Jesus-indeed, anyone's conclusions about any figure of history-are ultimately questions of faith based on the best evidence possible. That being the case, the proper question to ask is which reconstructions best fit the evidence we possess."
I have had a tendency in recent years as I study ever more intensely to question physical, intellectual knowledge and rely on/depend on my personal faith. Robert Penn Warren, a fine writer wrote some thing that connects with me: "But with the willing suspension of dis-belief life is thus the richer, even if we are fed, and know it, on a meat of shadows."
There is much of shadows in our biblical texts, conflicting theologies, and religious traditions, but I come back to choosing Jesus as my personal faith. I agree with your statement "For me the choice is whether to believe almost 2,000 years of Christian faith and doctrine from those who tend to believe the Bible is reliable, rather than almost 200 years of the faith and doctrine of those who tend to believe the Bible is not reliable." Sometimes the reliability of certain scriptures comes into question, but what I accept is that God in Christ reconciling the world is that which is behind the thrust of the scriptures and I choose to follow that God.
So, I continue to move from the proving, knowledge, and claims of absolute Truth, to "Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief"--periods of questioning and doubt.
Thanks for the series of lessons. I feel spiritually rejuvenated by turning faith-inwardly.
TR
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In a phone call after receiving this message, TR and I talked more about the relationship between faith and knowledge, coming to the conclusion that since there is so little that we can "prove" about our faith, we ultimately must rely on pistis over epistemology.
How true again the scripture sounds: "We live by faith, not by sight." (2 Corinthians 5:7) We all go through the experience of questioning and doubting. All the study of this summer about the theories and opinions of various scholars is interesting and challenging, but it is not ultimately satisfying. What is satisfying for me is how the questions are put into perspective when I choose faith in Jesus Christ.
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