Jerusalem and Athens
Honzo February 29th, 2008
This comes from my favorite blogger, April DeConick of The Forbidden Gospels Blog
The question of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus is a fine example of this as we have discussed on this blog and others in the past. As a historian, this is not a historical event because dead bodies don’t rise. It is a faith event. Even the second century Valentinians seem to have understood this. What did the Valentinian teacher tell Rheginus about this? He said quite bluntly, “For, my child, ‘the dead shall rise!’ belongs to the domain of faith, not of argument.”
I don’t want to give it all away here, so go there: What has Athens to do with Jerusalem? My perspective
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I remember you linking to he Forbidden Gospels Blog before. The first few times I didn’t think I like the blog much. The name sounded a bit weird.
It’s pretty good though.
Faith is based on reason. On knowledge. On an idea, or concept. At least in your mind, you must know what you believe in. If you are horribly wrong, that’s your problem. The semantics of Faith remain the same. Faith is based on your reasoning. Your reasons may be wrong, but faith remains pure. Faith follows reason.
I see reason following Faith. Faith is untestable, non-reasonable starting points. Once you have your givens on faith, then you can proceed rationally to work out your belief system.
I cannot prove or reason that Jesus rose from the dead. I think he did, I know he did, but it is not reasonable that he did so. I start on faith and then work out by means of reason.
My question is then this, in light of what has just been commented: how are you defining faith and what is it based upon, its ground? This goes out primarily to postmoderns, but anyone can feel free to answer.
I am talking about intellectual faith here.
Which is what? The adjective doesn’t clarify much. And on what basis does one ground this "intellectual faith"? How does one come to believe such things? The comments sound like one presupposes the faith, like it is just there (sort of like Middle Knowledge), and works out from there.
A few things come to mind here. First, faith in the light of academic history (as opposed to theological history) and science. I am mostly talking about belief. When it comes to belief - in God, in the resurrection, etcetera - at their very core you take it on faith (something unverified) and not on reason. And I don’t see this as a bad thing. I take it on faith that Jesus rose and that both Muhammad and J. Smith did not receive a revelation from God. I cannot verify these things. I can talk a lot about probabilities, but I have no recording to which I can go back. The best thing I have are four highly theologized (and this is a good thing for me) accounts of his life, death, and resurrection that date most likely 30 years after his resurrection.