The assumptions of faith.

A recent intellectual epiphany I had was that to debunk religion one cannot look “forward,” but rather “backward.” What this means is that if you are going to try to debunk a religion (or philosophy or ideology, etc.) you cannot further argue within the context of that religion (philosophy, ideology, etc.). You merely abide by the rules laid out by said religion and in doing so get into semantical arguments that never resolve anything.

No, one must go BACKWARDS and ask basic elementary questions about the entire religion (ideology, philosophy, etc.) itself, challenging the PREMISES by which the entire religion is founded upon. And once those premises are proven to be false or at least unfounded or immoral, then the entire belief system itself can be called into question, if not, completely debunked.

Captain Capitalism has taken a while to learn what I knew by the time I was 19. There is some use in sitting in meat works (industrial slaughter houses) over the summer holidays while at high school. You meet Marxists. You learn how they think. And you learn that their words have different meanings, but the assumptions that they have are in error, and as a result there is something false in their life.

Now if yesterday we noted that there is no inner Goddess, we then need to ask is there a God anywhere and how can we make him known. What are the assumptions of this Christian faith? How is it defensible? How should we deal with those who deny it?

Well, simple. The faith is based on the incarnation and resurrection of Christ. That Christ was the Messiah — and died. (Which the Talmud testifies to) but then that he rose. Paul in one of his letters says that there were around 500 witnesses, directly, to this — some of whom were alive as he was writing. As he said some 30 years after this sermon, these things did not happen in secret: they were known.

If there is no resurrection, there is no faith. But it there is, then we all have to confront the faith.

And when Peter saw it he addressed the people: “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And his name—by faith in his name—has made this man strong whom you see and know, and the faith that is through Jesus has given the man this perfect health in the presence of you all.

“And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”

(Acts 3:12-26 ESV)

What happened in the Church is that the assumptions that the believers had — both the Jewish and Gentiles — were blown apart by Christ. We struggle with the concept of the incarnation: it destroys our neat, mechanistic idea of this world. It breaks our ideas of biology, if not physics. And the resurrection is an offense to those who consider that we should be concerned about the Ummah, the tribe, the volk, or the progressive project towards the new Soviet man.

It confronts out tendency to evil, to the sins we like, because we now need not be enslaved by them. It gives us a choice and a hope: this world does not want us to have either.

But the Church will withstand this. Because in the end, the faith is not about my model of God, but God: not about my strength, by Christ’s, not about how flawed my Church is, but that Christ rose.

So when the Church is corrupted by those who infiltrate it, or becomes as one with the Kiwanis, a place where people meet but do not believe, I grieve, but I do not lose hope. When women are promoted beyond their God-given role and competence, or Fornicatory relationships celebrated, I anger, but I do not despair.

Because the faith is founded on a bloody cross and an open tomb. No resurrection, and we are deluded and without hope. With a resurrection, then we have a mystery that stretches the brain of the most gifted of us, and a God who redeemed us.

And one who has done more than what is right. One that is truly worthy of worship.

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1. There are arguments for the existence of God from the beauty and order of nature, and the idea that the presuppositions around theology — which Francis Schaeffer famously discussed in his first three books. However, theory is trumped by facts.

2. Yes, this means I have a realist view when it comes to epistemology, and very little to no patience with post modernists, or as they are better called, Barbarians.