Belief in God’s Testimony

1. Belief in God’s Testimony Lamont, J. Faith in God’s Revelation in the Bible 2011 pp.1-7

2. What is ‘Revelation’? • Making something known. • God does this through: • The Universe He creates • Human reason which enables us to know truth • Bible, which contains a message from God • We are to have faith in that message

3. SO... • What does ‘having faith in revelation’ mean? • Why should we believe the Bible is revealed? • In order to know this we need to think about the nature of Christian faith • The Church tells us that faith is believing what God has told us, and tells us.

4. What is testimony? • Testimony is believing someone when they make a claim, and believing them because we think they know what they are talking about and are telling the truth.

5. Why is belief of testimony important? • Most of what we actually know is accepted on the testimony of others. We don’t often get the chance to test the truth of what is told to us and yet we base outr life on these things. • (date of birth, identity of parents) • Even scientists accept what others say is so to build new knowledge

6. The autonomy of belief • We choose to believe if the person being believed shows the signs of being trustworthy. • We are inclined not to believe if the indications are that the person does not know what he/she is talking about. (if we believe in that case, we are being gullible)

7. Belief: a moral choice • There are many beliefs that we can choose to accept or not. • Rarely will a normal person believe that they are hot, if in fact they feel cold. The evidence is too great. • In other cases, though, a person can choose whether to believe or not. • e.g. Political choices based on what is told us by persuasive people. We end up choosing one over another

8. Belief: a moral choice • Since belief is voluntary, it can also be a moral obligation • E.g Othello believes Desdemona is guilty of adultery • Desdemona tells him she is innocent of this, and she is worthy of trust. • He has no evidence to prove she is guilty or that she has cause to lie. She has a right in justice to be believed. • He ought to believe her, but chooses not to, because of his jealousy. • He kills her on the basis of her being guilty, which she is not. • He had to choose whether he believed her or not, and his choice has a moral consequence. She was credible. He should have trusted her testimony of innocence.

9. Belief in God’ Testimony Belief in God’s testimony differs in human testimony: • It is more certain than belief in human testimony. • It is more exact than belief in human testimony. • It is more mysterious than human testimony.

10. How do we know the divine message isn’t being made up? • The Catholic belief is reasonable because there are signs that indicate the Catholic church is a messenger from God. • The signs don’t prove God is speaking through the Catholic Church, except that our faith tells us this and we belief this through testimony. • These signs are not the reason for believing the Catholic faith, the reason for believing is the acceptance of the knowledge and truthfulness of the speaker.

11. The absence of proof is necessary for faith, because without it, faith wouldn’t be voluntary and it wouldn’t involve a decision to trust God. • Competing claims to divine revelation is important for people who are not believers who have to decide which religion is true. The Catholic Church has signs where other revelations don’t. • Weighing up signs cannot produce beliefs on its own, to believe you must make an act of will e.g. Baptism.

12. Acts of will need motivation, a benefit the act is supposed to achieve. When seeking for God’s reward that will bring salvation, that is the proper motivation for faith. • The belief in God’s testimony gives us a reason for why Grace is needed to believe. The act of faith must exclude any possibility of falsehood.

13. Catholic Church replies to obvious objections: Objection A) Is this position not a form of totally irrational fanaticism, demanding total blind assent? • The only way the catholic belief system could be called fanatical is if there was convincing evidence against the faith, which there is not. • The moment we come across an objection we can not answer, we don’t just change what we belief in. Catholics that do show this stubbornness towards their faith are not irrational because their behaviour will stop them from accepting objections to their faith and because they are questioning the strongest source of knowledge, God, they can’t be deceived.

14. It’s important to remember when discussing fanaticism catholic beliefs, that our faith is largely about moral teachings and supernatural realities. These intellectual objections are hard to come by as we will never be able to really know. This is when our determination in our faith comes in. If we are certain in the beliefs of our faith we are not likely to question it.

15. Objection B) What are these signs that supposedly show the Catholic faith to come from God? There is not enough space to attempt a proper answer but pointed to a main resource: Against Celsus, By Origen. He was an Alexandrian Christian philosopher and theologian. The book was written to defend an attack made of Christians by a man called Celsus.

16. Origen believes that there is evidence that there are signs that establishes that we should believe, however our beliefs shouldn’t be based on these reasons. • He believes that our belief is simply based on Christ’s authority. • The strongest evidence that we have is the fulfillment in Jesus of the prophecies of Moses and other prophets. • We have Jesus’ miracles that attracted faith in the time of Christ, but now they take on many myths. Origen defends this by saying that Christ wasn’t a sorcerer, he also defends the apostles as they were eye witnesses to these events. They did not just make them up. Christian miracles still happen to this day just not as many as the apostolic times. • The church is more evidence for the truth of Christianity as that’s where his teachings live on.

17. Questions: • How does belief in God’s testimony differ from belief in human testimony? 2) How do we know that the Catholic Church isn’t making the bible up?