Relating Faith to Understanding (Discussion of Poll Continued)

Update 12/20/2006: Dr. Chris Heard over on his Higgaion blog has started a series on Dawkins book, The God Delusion. Thanks for doing this Chris! To see the first post, click here. Here is an excerpt from the post: "Religions, however, make propositional truth-claims and prescribe behaviors, and these claims and prescriptions are a matter of public record and should in no way be exempt from public examination and critique."


I'm elevating Dr. Thomas Renz' comment here to a post in hopes of generating further discussion. The comment comes as part of a rather helpful discussion we are having on the poll I am currently running (click here). What do readers think about these issues of the relationship of faith and reason?

Thomas said...
Yes, there is no faith without some sort of understanding. Faith seeking understanding is not "let me believe in something and then try to find a rational basis for my faith". Thinking in terms of world-views has helped me a lot but it is not the whole answer. Christian faith is not simply "believing Christian claims to be true" (with or without evidence). Christian faith involves trust in Jesus Christ. And so our understanding will seek to be never just an understanding of truth claims but also an understanding of a person, indeed three persons. But how do we "understand" persons? How do we come to trust someone? Not usually by running a series of tests although trust can and will be tested. At some point in this context it would be worth reflecting on "paedofaith". Because at Oak Hill we also train some Baptists, we may have more discussion of such things than in some other places. One of my colleagues, who is not Anglican but paedobaptist in a functionally Baptist church, has written up his favourite moments from Rich Lusk's book on paedofaith. If you're interested you find them here (a word document).