What I know and what I believe

Some matters I believe and some matters I have to take on faith. Yet the categories of belief and faith are not as clearly defined as one might think. Sometimes we speak as if science deals with facts, while religion deals with blind trust. It’s not that simple.

            I might say, “I know there is a Key West, Florida” and “I know there is a Kathmandu, Nepal.” But these statements are not equal. I know there is a Kathmandu as my wife and I spent two months there on our honeymoon. It’s not too much of a statement of faith to say that the city continues to exist even though we haven’t been there for 22 years. The same sources of information that told me the place existed before I visited, tell me of its continued existence.

On the other hand, I have never been to Key West. But I do know people who have and I believe the things I have both heard and read about the place and feel like I know something of that place as well.

These matters were considered more thoroughly by an intellect I can’t pretend to match in the fourth century by Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was a promising student in the Roman Empire. Though he was from North Africa, he was sent to Rome and trained in rhetoric at a time when the best and the brightest studied rhetoric. He knew logic and philosophy. And when talented rhetoritician came to faith in Jesus Christ, he brought his God-given gifts of reason with him into the church.

Augustine pointed out in his work from the year 389, “De Magistro,” that we know things through personal experience and our senses of perception such as sight, sound and smell. He said that we can also come to believe things if we trust the source of information. I know the taste of chicken and I can choose to believe or not believe someone when he tells me that rattlesnake “tastes just like chicken.” I wouldn’t mind finding out for myself. But for now, I have to choose whether to take that on faith or not depending on whether I believe the person making the claim.

For Augustine, belief is the sole way of knowing about Jesus of Nazareth. No great problem there as we only believe in Julius Caesar. He would agree that we today can only take it on faith that there was ever a North African Christian named Augustine who used all the powers of the logic and reason of the Roman Empire in the service of the church. We can’t know there was an Augustine. But we believe the sources that tell us of Augustine in the same way that we know there was a Roman Empire, when we can only prove it by offering sources whose authority we trust.

Do you believe that the source of your information is an authoritative one? For Augustine, scripture proved itself to be an authoritative way to find out more about God. This was proven out by scripture accurately describing some things which met up with Augustine’s experience. The Gospels told him many things that he did not know attested to by reason and shown to be reliable in his experience. So he came to trust in the authority of scripture and trusted that it was right in areas where he, as of yet, had no proof.

I do not know that the sun will rise tomorrow. I do know that the sun has always risen and take it as a matter of little faith that I believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I assume that spring will follow winter and that the moon will continue to wax and wane as it always has. All of this because I assume that there is an underlying order to the universe. That the world has worked this way in the past is something I know about. That the world will continue to do so is something I choose to believe.

I take the existence of atoms and molecules on faith as those who have described them to me have proven themselves as reliable authorities. In that same way I believe that Jesus was and is the son of God and a unique revelation of God. And this too is no leap of faith. That there was a Jesus of Nazareth is a settled fact of history as much as the existence of any other person of his time. That Jesus started a group his influence continues to this day is as unimpeachable as any fact I know.

The question for the non-believer is whether the claims the early Christians made of their teacher Jesus can be verified. Yes, Jesus existed. Yes, we know something of what he did and taught. But Jesus did more than teach. For any person who teaches that he and God are one in some unique way is as likely deluded as not. Are we willing to accept the truth claims made for this historic person as having any validity for today?  Can one come to trust the authority of scripture as fully we trust a map of Florida showing Key West dangling out in the Gulf of Mexico?

This is where belief comes in. If you accept that reason can bring you to the point of knowing that it might be true, then you take the step of saying “I believe, help my unbelief.” First you trust the people who have told you of their experiences of faith. Then you step out in faith. In the process, you become not a skeptic seeking proof, but a believer seeking confirmation that your faith is based on something real. And I can say that billions of people who have taken that step have found the ground firm.

Many people have been to Key West and described the experience similarly. Others have splashed over into faith and found the baptismal waters fine and added their testimony to the evidence of Christians’ claims about God.

I won’t pretend that I can reason you all the way to heaven. I only ask that you at least understand that when I say “I believe Jesus is the Son of God,” you hear me as saying it with the same conviction that I say “I believe there is a Key West, Florida” and “I believe the sun will rise tomorrow.” I won’t act as if I “know” something which is taken on faith, but please understand how strongly I mean the words “I believe.”

 (The Rev. Frank Logue is pastor of King of Peace Episcopal Church in Kingsland.)