Faith and First Principles

“Why are you a Christian?”

“Because I believe in God, and…”

“Yes, of course, but why do I believe in God?”

“Because I have faith.”

“But why?”

This is a conversation for which most Christians are woefully unprepared. Christians long to be known by their works (though for many of us this is just as challenging), but dread the moment when they must offer a clear, convincing argument for their beliefs. As such, we really ought to take a moment every now and again to consider how the conversation ought to go.

It is worth considering, first of all, that whenever anyone asks a question like, “Why are you a Christian?” they are not looking for answers that only beg more questions. At least, they shouldn’t be. A person who asks, “Why are you a Christian?” should really be looking for something more fundamental. They should be looking for first principles; they should be looking for an answer that is irreducible and axiomatic. Something observable and undeniable. The same is true in science, for anyone who asks, in a science classroom, a question like “What are we made of?” is not looking for a stopgap answer, but for an answer founded on first principles. Anyone genuinely searching for an answer may be satisfied, at first, with something as superficial as, “We are made of atoms,” but it is only a matter of time before they recognize the obvious next question, “But what are atoms made of?” And, of course, the answer that follows (atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons), leads to yet another question, and another. An infinite regression.

A first principle is what we are left with in those unique moments when the last question has been answered. It is something that demands no further questioning; and it is something that is surprisingly rare, especially in science.  As C.S. Lewis observed, “The laws of physics decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A Exactly equals the momentum gained by B.  This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that.” This is a question of first principles. When we say that something is a law, the law is not a first principle--the first principle is whatever lies behind the law. A first principle is are what is left when every question has been answered--something basic enough to be readily accepted by all. As far as the question, “What are we made of?” the truth is that the first principle remains very much unknown. The first few questions in the series can be answered, but the first principle still eludes us, if, indeed, there is a first principle to be found.

But the question “Why are you a Christian?” is infinitely more important than the question of matter (I would much rather be certain about Christianity than about atoms), and as such we really should be searching for first principles. The genuine seeker who asks “Why are you a Christian?” will only be satisfied for so long (if at all) with any non-absolute answer. “I am a Christian because I feel that it is true.” “I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus.” “I am a Christian because I know that God loves me.” These may be answers, and they may be, in part, true, but they are not the answer. They all lead to still more questions.

Often, the answers given by Christians are founded on faith. “I am a Christian because I have faith.” But faith is not a first principle. Faith cannot (at least, should not) exist on its own merits. It must be founded on something.

“Faith,” as is recited so often that it has become almost cliché, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Further, “…without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Faith is lauded throughout scripture, and we are promised that our faith will be rewarded; consequently, one is often tempted to rely on faith, as if it stood alone at the core of Christianity; further, we come to suspect that true faith requires no foundation of evidence, or, worse, that evidence must be avoided, for it means that faith is no longer needed. But the truth is that faith, while wholly necessary, is not a first principle.  One cannot be a Christian without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Real faith must be founded upon something more tangible. Just because faith is “the conviction of things not seen” doesn’t mean that it is a thing with no basis. Faith isn’t a feeling, and real faith is certainly never blind. This is something that I think is often misunderstood, even among Christians. It is not a burning in the bosom or the result of a vision from a dream. When faith is founded purely on the ethereal it is more often than not a means of justifying one’s own needs and desires. One may claim to act in the name of faith, but the faith is only a manifestation of some deeper desire.

It is clear in the Bible that to have faith is not as easy as just believing in something without reason. If it was that simple, one could simply follow their own urges and claim faith as justification for almost anything (in fact, this is exactly what does happen far too often in our world). The Christian often bristles at the thought that one should need to offer evidence to support Christianity, as if that would somehow circumvent the requirement that one have faith. But faith must be founded on something! It cannot possibly exist without a foundation.

There are matters of fact and there are matters of faith, and they are rarely as separate as they may seem; more often than not it is the fact comes first, and faith is what results. The new Christian takes the final step of faith only after a foundation of fact has been laid. One may scour the scriptures for the great demonstrations of faith, but only rarely (if ever) does one find that faith is not preceded by some fact. Abraham was not acting on feelings or urges when he agreed to sacrifice his son—it was only after hearing, directly, the voice of God, and well after God had already provided him plenty of proof.  Moses did not venture into Egypt to face Pharoah on faith alone—he did so after God Himself spoke to him out of a burning bush. Even Paul, so often lauded for the great faith that allowed him to be persecuted and, in the end, martyred, believed as the result of a face to face meeting with the risen Christ, and though it may have manifested itself as physical blindness, there was nothing blind in Paul’s faith. If Paul was asked why he was a Christian he would not have said, “Because I have faith.” He would have proclaimed, boldly, the facts of what he saw and experienced.

One generally does not begin believing in God by first believing in the parting of the red sea.  Rather, one first comes to believe in God, and only then obtains the faith that God worked that miracle. One does not first come to believe in the strange truth of the trinity and then accept Christianity; Christianity comes first, based on facts, and then one can come to faith that this profound mystery is true.  

Christianity really is based on facts first and then faith.  

Which leads us back, once again, to the initial question: What are the first principles of Christianity? What are the facts upon which the faith is founded?

There are two that seem to stand above the others: the fact of existence and the fact of sin.

I have spent too much of my own life in trying to prove things that ought to be taken on faith (obscure theological principles), and taking on faith things that really ought to be taken as fact (science and history). But it is a fact—no scientist would deny it (though the occasional philosopher might)—that we exist. It is a fact that there are, in fact, things in our universe and that somehow these things came to be, and though science has tried theory after theory, it is a thing with no absolute scientific explanation. That is the fact, and it is faith that leads me to believe that there is no scientific explanation to be found (just as it is faith that leads others to believe in the contrary). As Lewis explains: “…the laws of Nature explain everything except the source of events. But this is rather a formidable exception. The laws, in one sense, cover the whole of reality except—well, except that continuous cataract of real events which makes up the actual universe. They explain everything except what we should ordinarily call ‘everything’. The only thing they omit is—the whole universe.”

So, when someone asks, “Why do you believe in God?” I might begin here--with the fact of existence. Something that science still cannot explain, but which those who believe in God have understood for thousands of years.

Second, it is a fact that man, after coming to exist (see above), found, somewhere along the way, that something was terribly wrong. Man has always been defined most accurately by his imperfections. Is there a single historian who would deny that man is a broken, imperfect creature? The story of the growth of the Roman Empire is grand, but the story of its fall tells us far more about humanity.  Indeed, history offers no ambiguity as to the fact that man has been his own worst enemy for as long as he has been keeping records of his own failures. And it is a fact that evolution has failed time and again in ridding man of his weaknesses or curing society of its ills; we are neither better nor worse than we have always been.

It is a fact, as well, that both of these questions are resolved within the first pages of scripture, and with far more certainty than science or philosophy could ever hope to obtain.

So, when someone asks, “Why are you a Christian?” I might begin here--with the fact of sin, and the fact that Christianity has provided, not only the only clear explanation, but the only clear answer.

All of this, of course, demands greater exploration, and these are by no means the only facts to be found in Christianity, but the principle remains: Christian platitudes aside, faith is beautiful, but it is something that must stand upon a foundation. Every Christian should stop and ask themselves why they believe before attempting to explain it to others.

“Saul,” says the book of Acts, “increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” Paul did not demand of his listeners that they must simply have faith. He understood that his faith had a reasonable basis. He understood that there were facts that could lead his listeners to faith, and that is a beautiful thing.

Jesus and the Kings of Earth

As I read the gospels, the continuous story of Jesus Christ and His Kingdom is a story that captivates me far more than any of the dramatic water-into-wine or healing-the-blind moments, though the latter certainly make for better television. This story does not begin in the Gospels, of course—it begins far before the man ever walked the earth. It is absolutely everywhere in the Old Testament, as we see creation groaning and man failing time and again to create the kingdom for himself. But in the New Testament we see, at last, a kingdom not just being longed for and prophesied about, but a kingdom come!

This startling revelation has perhaps its most poignant roots in the poetic words of the mother of Christ, as the boy who would one day rule over a kingdom that would never end nestled and kicked within her womb. According to Luke’s Gospel, Mary, in the Magnificat, uttered a beautiful song, whose themes would be echoed by her son during His ministry:

“My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.”

Here is the strange and bold truth of a Kingdom that had not yet come, for it would only come with the child in her womb: Jesus would not become mighty, but he would establish a kingdom that would bring the mighty low; He would never be rich, but he would establish a kingdom that would render worthless the riches of the earth. Five chapters and thirty years later, when Jesus gave his Sermon on the Plain, His message was the same as his mother’s: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.”

From the beginning of Jesus ministry—yes, even well before the beginning—the message was the same: the worthwhile things of the earth were not the worthwhile things of His kingdom. All the riches of the world were left worthless when compared to the incomparable riches of His kingdom that will never end.

Jesus knew this, of course, when He was tempted. Had he not understood His own message (as we consistently fail to understand it today) He surely would have given in to Satan’s devious machinations. Malcolm Muggeridge was right in noting that Satan’s great secret in offering Jesus the kingdoms of the earth, is that at its core the offer is bogus. “There are no kingdoms for him to bestow; only pseudo or notional ones presided over by mountebanks masquerading as emperors and kings and governments.” Jesus, who would be called King of kings and Lord of lords, who came to usher in a glorious kingdom, who would send out His forces in the form of a church destined to conquer the earth, was being offered the mirage of earthly rule and authority. Satan offered Jesus nothing more than the laughable, passing pleasure of meaningless authority. Imagine Jesus actually giving in! Imagine Jesus sitting on a paper throne when there was a heavenly one waiting for Him! Imagine the inanity of Jesus ruling over a Potemkin kingdom that, like every nation and kingdom of earth, would be blown away again and again by every light breeze. Jesus declined earthly rule not because he was too humble, but because there is no earthly rule to be had! There never has been. Jesus alone knew that the offer was not just beneath Him; it had no value whatsoever, just as the sustenance of a loaf of bread has no value when compared to the pure, eternal substance of God’s Word. Though truly tempting to we of such little perspective, for Jesus to take these things would not be to accept something good, it would be to lose something of supreme value!

But the Jews failed to understand this in the first century, just as we continue to fail, even though we have the truth at hand. “To what should I compare this generation?” Jesus asked in Matthew 11. “It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, andyou did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” The people of Israel expected something different in their Messiah—and though they may have thought that their expectation was greater than the reality, in truth it was far less. They expected a king, to take a physical throne in their physical palace, for they hadn’t yet learned that every physical throne is destined to collapse; every physical palace to crumble and decay. Jesus may have been truly afraid when, “perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.” (John 6:15) What a mockery this would have been! For Jesus to be lifted up to be king of the Jews would have been the greatest tragedy to ever befall that nation—a greater tragedy, even, than the destruction of the temple a few decades later. To raise up Christ as an earthly king would have been to deny Him the eternal throne to which He was headed. It would have been to sacrifice something unbelievably great for something unbelievably worthless.

The story of Christ’s kingdom reaches its denouement, of course, at Golgotha. On the cross Christ put to death every pretense of Earthly rule; just as in His resurrection He made the first movement to take His seat on His eternal throne. But the truest perspective can be found in the hours leading up to the cross, with the mockery of Jesus by the guards and, surely, the priests of Israel as well. In mocking Christ, they were bringing judgment on themselves; in draping Him with the clothes of royalty and cruelly crowning Him with thorns they were demonstrating Christ’s decisions in the wilderness—they were mocking not just a would-be king, but the man who would be King of Kings. Jesus’ destiny was to rule over everything, bringing low the powers of men, and, ironically, it was His death that made this possible. While mocking Jesus, these people were enabling His rule, helping to usher in His kingdom, dramatically sealing their own fate.

So Jesus was killed, and so He rose, and so did His Kingdom find its foundation, on which it continues to be built today. Since Christ died, ostensibly ending what had been a vibrant, but brief, ministry that might even have led to a revolution had it been allowed to continue, two thousand years have come and gone. With those years, decades, centuries and millennia have come the world has seen the Roman Empire fall from dizzying heights; it has seen the Mongol Empire on the edge of conquering the known world; it has seen a British Empire, a French Empire, Portuguese, Belgian, Japanese Empires all rise and fall. Bitterly and tragically fall. Empires built by human hands, withering and dying with age after just centuries.

Christ’s Kingdom continues to grow; it shows no signs of aging.

Had Hitler been successful in his dream of establishing a German Reich so pure and so powerful that it did indeed last a thousand years, it would still perish and be replaced, in the end amounting to less than nothing when standing before the sheer weight of Christ’s eternal kingdom, which has persisted already for twice that.

If Christ’s Kingdom has indeed persisted, then Mary’s prophecy concerning her son is made even more beautiful, for it is being fulfilled even today, before our own eyes. If Christ’s Kingdom is alive and thriving then His temptations in the wilderness remain both relevant and urgent to every man and woman who has ever been caught up in the things of the world; for, as Dostoyevsky wrote in The Brothers Karamazov, “...in (Satan’s) three questions the whole subsequent history of mankind is, as it were, brought together into one whole, and foretold, and in them are united all the unsolved historical contradictions of human nature.” If Christ does indeed sit on a throne, reigning over an eternal kingdom, then those present at His trial were not mocking their victim by pretending that He was a king, but mocking every king and emperor who has ever lived by pretending that they might be anything like Him. “Who,” asks Muggeridge, “among the motley collection of spectators of so obscure an event could possibly have envisaged that there before their eyes another civilization was being born, which would last for two thousand years, shining so long and so brightly? Not even the Apostles could have thought of that; what they looked for was an apocalyptic Second Coming and the end of the world, not the beginning of Christendom.” God’s ways, we need to be reminded time and time again, are not our ways. They are far, far better.

Human Nature and the Beatitudes

“And He lifted up His eyes on His disciples, and said:

‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven...’”

                                                            Luke 6:20-23

Rejoice when hated? Take pride in poverty, hunger, and sadness? Of the many teachings of Jesus, the “beatitudes” are some of the most beloved, but, quite frankly, also the least understood.

The entire Sermon on the Mount stand as one of the few philosophical statements from Jesus that receives almost universal acclaim as being “good”, even to those who think very little of the man who gave it. Critics who cast endless dispersions upon those who follow Christ, regularly concede that there is some value to be gained from these particular teachings. And yet, unless one believes that Jesus was the Son of God, the Beatitudes amount to nothing.

How can any of these statements possibly be accepted by those who do not also accept Christ? How can anyone holding fast to a humanist worldview, believing in humanist philosophy, hold any regard for a sermon that makes an absolute mockery of all human ideals and utterly disregards the observations of human philosophy? The stream of seeming contradictions that make up the Sermon on the Mount absolutely cannot be appreciated by any true philosopher of man, and it should prove positively idiotic to the social Darwinist.

The poor humanist cannot possibly believe that there is anything “blessed” about their poverty, and they certainly cannot believe in the foolish promise of, not just financial security, but an entire kingdom! The hungry humanist demands bread now, not some casual promise of future sustenance! The mourning humanist cannot imagine how anyone could possibly offer the promise of future laughter!

And, worse, Matthew’s gospel adds something even more profoundly foolish to this list of blessings: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God,” and, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Humanist like these words; they repeat it to themselves over and over, reveling in the gentle warmth of their sentiment; they might even quote them from time to time to support their own arguments. But make no mistake—these statements are absolutely absurd! The meek may be praised, but no rational human could believe that the destiny of the meek is that of conqueror! Not even the greatest writer of fiction could make believable the image of a meek, passive monk conquering the throne of the earth by the force of his gentleness. That the meek might inherit the earth is something that everyone would like to hope for, but which only the Christian can truly believe.

Human nature, as the honest philosophers point out, does not lead toward meekness. It is not to glorify poverty or hunger. It is certainly not to rejoice in persecution or hatred. The honest philosophers of man—Friedrich Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, Jean Paul Sartre are among the few—admit the truth: without God there is no real value in meekness. The destiny of the peacemaker is destruction at the hands of the warmonger; the poor and hungry must necessarily die to make way for those more fit to live. Peacemakers will inherit nothing but the right to be trampled underfoot by the warmongers. This is how things have existed for thousands of years, and the truth shows no signs of changing any time soon.

Christ alone knew that the path to human happiness was for men to behave contrary to our nature; thus, in Christianity, the poor (Matthew adds “poor in spirit”) and hungry truly are blessed, even though the rich might have the power; the peacemakers truly are blessed, even though the warmongers trample them under foot; the meek truly are blessed because of the promise to inherit the earth, even though today it is without question that the proud and the haughty that rule our nations and command our armies. The humanist may like to preach only peace and love, but the reality of the world is that peace and love are weaknesses; the will to achieve power and the willingness to ignore the plight of our fellow men is what allows for success in the world. It is impossible to deny the truth that survival does, in fact, belong to the fittest—and there is really no context in which the poor, the peacemakers, or the meek could be seen as the fittest.

The beatitudes do not amount to “good ideas by a good man.” How can one possibly find value in the promise of inheriting the Kingdom of God without first believing in God? How can one believe in the promise that the mourning shall be comforted when they can simply open their eyes to the reality of this world and see the countless despairing, uncomforted individuals dying each day? I do not believe that the evils of the world ought to lead anyone to reject God; but I strongly believe that they ought to be enough to convince us to reject the foolish notion that Jesus, if nothing more than a human philosopher, had good ideas.

As a human philosopher, Jesus Christ demonstrated an absolute inability to understand humanity; he was no better than any seminar prophet or self-help guru of the 21^st century. As the Son of God, however, Jesus Christ offered humanity the only real hope it will ever know. The beatitudes amount to either terrible, delusional ideas of a man who never understood his own species or they amount to the true words of a God who alone offered the miracle of saving men from themselves.