The Certainty of Faith
to this question provides the church and theology with their reason for existence. This is what preaching and family visiting are about.
Modern theology, whose achievements we must not underestimate, did not flounder because of the scientific acumen of its enemies. Its impotence became evident in practice. It lost in the pulpit and in family visiting because it had no comfort to offer for either life or death. Not the school but the church, not the seminary but the pulpit, not apologetics but the sickbed and deathbed showed up its poverty. History and experience show us every day what is most expected from theology: it must nurture our certainty of faith.
Otherwise, rather than seek help from an established science that can wax eloquent about illness but which cannot heal, the sick will turn to the first quack who comes along.
The Certainty of Faith But what must we understand by this certainty of faith which is so important to theology? Certainty is not the same as truth, although the two are closely related. Truth is agreement between thought and reality and thus expresses a relation between the contents of our consciousness and the object of our knowledge. Certainty, however, is not a relationship but a capacity, a quality, a state of the knowing subject. One's spirit may assume different states in reaction to different statements or propositions. If it knows nothing whatsoever about the matter, it may be completely indifferent. If in weighing the pros and cons it can come to no decision regarding the truth or falsity of the matter, it may be cast in a state of doubt. If for whatever reason it leans more one way than another, it may find itself in various states of opinion, surmise, or trust. But it can also achieve a state of complete certainty with regard to some statement. Certainty exists when the spirit finds complete rest in its object of knowledge.
Each of our faculties finds rest in what it by nature strives toward.
The will finds complete rest only in the good; our sensibility in the beautiful. So the mind or spirit rests only in the true—that is, more profoundly conceived, only in God, who Himself is the truth. Error and lies, therefore, directly conflict with the original nature of the spirit. Even in a fallen state the spirit honors the lie only under the semblance of truth. Only the truth satisfies and answers to the need of the spirit. There it finds rest. Certainty is rest, peace, blessedness, while doubt, surmise and opinion always involve a certain degree of discomfort and uneasiness. Certainty is the normal and natural condition of the spirit as health is of the body.
Therefore, even the search for truth is beautiful and a precious gift.
But even more beautiful and precious is finding it, enjoying it and walking in its light. Doubt, on the other hand, is never the true condition of man, but is abnormal, like disease. Sometimes, due to the error and lies that beset our lives, doubt is necessary, just as a fever may be good for the body and a thunderstorm good for the atmosphere. But in itself it is always a painful evil. He who doubts is like a wave on the sea, but he who believes is like a rock.
There are, however, different kinds of certainty. The Greek philosophers already distinguished between the certainty provided by the senses and that provided by reason. Within the latter realm
Aristotle further distinguished between the immediate certainty derived from the first principles of science and the mediated certainty derived from demonstration and proof. These three kinds of certainty are recognized by all but the most hardened sceptic. We all feel certain about the things we can perceive with the senses. Nor do we doubt the most basic, self-evident, undemonstrable principles of the various sciences, such as the axioms on which mathematics is based. Similarly, we are also completely certain about the truths that in science are inferred through logical deduction from an established premise and which are therefore based on sufficient proof.
But beside these types of scientific certainty there exists another kind —the certainty of faith. People may differ widely regarding its value, but that it exists is beyond doubt. Even philosophy has had to take faith into account. It was Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who, beside empirical and logical certainties, also made room for moral certainty (Gewissheit). The way in which Kant accomplished this is not our way, but we may be thankful to philosophy that through one of its most perceptive thinkers it has recognized the existence and rights of another form of certainty than the strictly scientific.
One would, indeed, have to deliberately blind oneself to doubt the reality of such certainty, for in the area of religion and morals no one bases his certainty on scientific proof. No one maintains the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the mediatorship of Christ, the authority of Scripture and many other beliefs on the basis of rational argument. People seem to carry within them the knowledge that science may not and cannot have a say in such matters. All higher religions, therefore, claim to be based on revelation, and none of them is the product solely of rational understanding. Proofs come after the fact in every religion; they don't lead the way but trail behind. They are conceived for those who don't believe.
When speaking with an unbeliever, a believer cannot be content to assert: I believe and therefore it is true. He must seek grounds, not for his own faith, but to make it more acceptable to the outsider, to silence criticism, and remove all excuses for unbelief. Apologetics is the fruit, never the root, of faith. The arguments by which the apologist seeks to promulgate and confirm his faith are often rather flimsy. If it had to rest on these arguments, it would be built on a very weak foundation. But it is rooted much deeper than in these after-the-fact reasonings.
We do not obtain and maintain our deepest convictions, our world and life view, by way of scientific demonstration. These are not a product of understanding or of the will. These beliefs are located