Conclusion
Conclusion
Recent atheistic writers have ridiculed the idea of “faith.” Only the deliverances of science and reason are to be trusted! For Richard Dawkins, proprietor of the “Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science,” faith “means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence.”1 It is a powerful piece of rhetoric, whose influence is matched only by its superficiality. The truth is obvious, and it is otherwise. Faith is part of the human condition. It is impossible to construct an argument proving the legitimacy of reason without presupposing faith; the conclusion is implicit in the presupposition. As the great feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva put it so trenchantly and clearly: “Whether I belong to a religion, whether I be agnostic or atheist, when I say ‘I believe,’ I mean ‘I hold as true.’“2
To hold that something is true and reliable may be justified without necessarily being proved. I may have good reasons for believing something to be true, yet realize that I cannot prove this is so. That is just the nature of things. Like Charles Darwin, we might believe that we have developed an excellent theory for making sense of what we observe in the world—but not be able to prove it, either to ourselves or to others. Like William Wilberforce, we may believe that slavery is unjust and immoral—but not be able to prove that this is so. Happily, this did not stop Wilberforce and others from pursuing justice.
Christianity may be open to criticism on many grounds, but it is certainly not vulnerable to the charge that, in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on “mere faith.”3 We must be critical of our beliefs, subjecting them to interrogation. As Paul insists in one of his earliest letters, “test everything; hold fast to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). Where Dawkins thinks Christians believe blindly, the New Testament holds them to believe reliably and critically, on the basis of the evidence available.
Christianity may be open to criticism on many grounds, but it is certainly not vulnerable to the charge that, in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on “mere faith.” We must be critical of our beliefs, subjecting them to interrogation.
In this book, we have explored the deep human desire to make sense of things, evident in both the natural sciences and in the Christian faith. We often seem to have a sense of standing on the brink of something greater, lying beyond the horizons of experience and reason. What we do know seems to point beyond itself, to a greater vision of reality. Voices seem to call to us from the ends of the earth, pointing to something deeper and better than anything we presently possess or know. As the poet Matthew Arnold
(1822–88) puts it in “The Buried Life”:
But often, in the world’s most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life.
Our engagement with the world awakens a deeper sense of longing, which goes beyond simply making sense of things. We want to be part of something deeper, to be able to be part of a bigger picture.
The Christian way of seeing things makes cognitive and existential sense of reality, offering us a powerful, persuasive, and attractive account of ourselves and our universe. Christianity does not simply make sense to us; it also makes sense of us. It positions us in the great narrative of cosmic history and locates us on a mental map of meaning. It offers us another way of seeing things, offers us another way of living, and invites us to share these. We need to focus our lives, to have something stable and secure on which we can rest.
It is an important point, famously advocated by Erich Fromm (1900–1980), who was shocked by the insanity and destructiveness of the First World War. He was also distressed by a childhood memory of a young woman who committed suicide shortly after her father’s death, unable to cope with life without him. Fromm began to reflect deeply on what people really needed if they were to remain sane. The answer, he argued, lay in developing what he called a “framework of orientation and devotion,” a way of thinking about the world which endows existence with purpose and significance. The specific framework that Fromm himself developed is secondary to his recognition that we need such frameworks if we are to live and act in the world without going insane. Living purposefully and meaningfully requires and depends upon a frame of reference, which offers us a secure foundation and focus for our lives.
For Christians, this foundation and focus is the living God, the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 1:3). This God makes himself known in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in the pages of Scripture. But he also makes something of himself known through the natural world, the world of creation, as a voice which calls us, beckoning from its depths and mysterious beauty.
The great scientist Isaac Newton expressed this feeling perfectly, when he spoke of a greater reality lying beyond and behind what could be observed:
I seem to have been only like a small boy playing on the sea-shore, diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.4
As we walk along the shore of the universe, we take delight in the pebbles and shells we see around us, wondering what they mean. We need to raise our eyes and see the vast ocean of meaning which lies beyond them, and from which they ultimately came. For things of this world are but signs and pointers; and we must let them lead us to their source.