Faith and Reason Problem

[fakename]

Perhaps the problem is you are reading Aquinas as if he was God speaking.

Faith is simply belief and trust in something. We can of course have reasons to have faith/belief in something.

I believe in the Trinity because of what Jesus did/said and because of what is written in the bible and what the Church has said.

Why is that wrong?

If you are trying to say that faith must be believed for no reason or must be blind faith or something like that I would disagree. Likely Paul and certainly John would too. John’s purpose in writing his Gospel was to give us reasons to believe in / have faith in Jesus. That is what he explicitly stated.

In acts Luke states that Paul’s MO was to try to convince people in the synagogues by way of argument that they should believe in Jesus. Acts 17:1-4

“When they took the road through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they reached Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. Following his usual custom, Paul joined them, and for three sabbaths he entered into discussions with them from the scriptures, expounding and demonstrating that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that “This is the Messiah, Jesus, whom I proclaim to you.” Some of them were convinced and joined Paul and Silas; so, too, a great number of Greeks who were worshipers, and not a few of the prominent women.”

Then what does it mean to say that , “The Trinity’s existence is indemonstrable.”? I think it means unprovable as in -no argument will establish that it exists. If that is true then the “God said it” argument is not capable of establishing the fact.

So my new question is how is the Trinity not capable of being demonstrated?

 

[fhansen]

No. I’m not sure why you would think that.

You should understand that “proof” is a subjective thing. When anyone says “prove it” you should ask prove it to whom? A jury, a judge, the person asking, other scholars in the field? Because how you go about “proving it” will often vary depending on who you are proving it to.

I can give someone a sound argument but if they don’t believe the premises (despite the fact that they are true) it will prove nothing to them. So you want to find proofs that involve using arguments whose premises the provee already believes.

I don’t know that all proofs are subjective, other than to say that all our perceptions are subjective, ultimately. But some proofs are more compelling than others in any case.

If someone tells me that there’s a crescent moon out tonight and I don’t believe it until he points it out to me then he’s concretely proved his point. In a court of law, if the prosecuting attorney in a murder trial produces direct evidence from several eye-witnesses, then the proof will be quite compelling. If the evidence is only circumstantial, perhaps the proof is less compelling. But if someone tells me that the Bible is the word of God, on what authority should I believe it? The nature of the claim is also important. If I’m told that several eye-witnesses, who seemed to be of sound mind and people of integrity, testified that they observed a man who rose from the dead 2000 years ago, again, why would I believe this? How could I ever believe this? Resurrections? You’ve got to be kidding!-I don’t care what “proof” you may think you have. While history and reason can play a supportive role, without grace it would be absolutely impossible to believe many or most of the claims of Christianity. Faith, itself, is proof to a Christian, because faith doesn’t come from us-it’s a gift.

 

[TWilson121]

I always think that we witness a big war in our minds everyday and that war is"Faith vs. Logic" and this has always been a big problem in the ‘spiritual’ way.

In this world, do we question Engineering marvels and Great inventions that are based on hypothesis and Mathematical calculations which we cannot see… we just believe in it and have faith in it…
Then why not in what God said?

To my opinion, Faith is far - far beyond Logic and Reasoning…

 

[joemccarron]

Then what does it mean to say that , “The Trinity’s existence is indemonstrable.”? I think it means unprovable as in -no argument will establish that it exists. If that is true then the “God said it” argument is not capable of establishing the fact.

So my new question is how is the Trinity not capable of being demonstrated?

I really don’t know. Why do you believe that it is indemonstrable?

Christ proved he was God by the miracles, he also said there was a Holy Spirit or counselor that would come, and he referred to God the Father as well. He “demonstrated” or “proved” to my mind that God is Trinitarian. I don’t see why that should be an issue.

 

[Betterave]

Then what does it mean to say that , “The Trinity’s existence is indemonstrable.”? I think it means unprovable as in -no argument will establish that it exists. If that is true then the “God said it” argument is not capable of establishing the fact.

So my new question is how is the Trinity not capable of being demonstrated?

As Joe suggests, your premise is false. The Trinity’s existence is demonstrable. It is just not demonstrable by means of natural reason.

 

[joemccarron]

I don’t know that all proofs are subjective, other than to say that all our perceptions are subjective, ultimately. But some proofs are more compelling than others in any case.

If someone tells me that there’s a crescent moon out tonight and I don’t believe it until he points it out to me then he’s concretely proved his point. In a court of law, if the prosecuting attorney in a murder trial produces direct evidence from several eye-witnesses, then the proof will be quite compelling. If the evidence is only circumstantial, perhaps the proof is less compelling. But if someone tells me that the Bible is the word of God, on what authority should I believe it? The nature of the claim is also important. If I’m told that several eye-witnesses, who seemed to be of sound mind and people of integrity, testified that they observed a man who rose from the dead 2000 years ago, again, why would I believe this? How could I ever believe this? Resurrections? You’ve got to be kidding!-I don’t care what “proof” you may think you have. While history and reason can play a supportive role, without grace it would be absolutely impossible to believe many or most of the claims of Christianity. Faith, itself, is proof to a Christian, because faith doesn’t come from us-it’s a gift.

Faith is belief and trust in God. Hebrews demonstrates that based on how God reacted to the ancients who trusted God our trust in him is justified. The faith of the ancients was indeed the evidence we have for faith in what we can not see - ie God. That “cloud of witnesses” should convince us, God is trustworthy and that we should believe and trust God. That is have faith ourselves.

John wrote of many of Christ’s miracles so that we might have faith in Jesus. That was the stated purpose. Now some may not be convinced based on his and other writings we have. But others are.

Bottom line, some people are more accepting of the possibility that there is a God.

 

[Betterave]

Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi:

1. We must return once more to the New Testament. In the eleventh chapter of the* Letter to the Hebrews (v. 1) we find a kind of definition of faith which closely links this virtue with hope. Ever since the Reformation there has been a dispute among exegetes over the central word of this phrase, but today a way towards a common interpretation seems to be opening up once more. For the time being I shall leave this central word untranslated. The sentence therefore reads as follows: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen”. For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia*. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads:* Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium*—faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas4], using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a* habitus*, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see. The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence. To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: *Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht *(faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchos) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Prot- estant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable”5]. Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future.

 

[fakename]

As Joe suggests, your premise is false. The Trinity’s existence is demonstrable. It is just not demonstrable by means of natural reason.

What else does this mean though? I think you mean to say that humans can’t deduce the existence of the Trinity without God revealing it? But afterwords you can deduce the Trinity’s existence by means of God’s revelation? As to the latter part, isn’t that a demonstration of the Trinity through natural reason? Or is it not?

 

[Betterave]

What else does this mean though? I think you mean to say that humans can’t deduce the existence of the Trinity without God revealing it?

Yes, and…

But afterwords you can deduce the Trinity’s existence by means of God’s revelation?

…they can’t assent to revelation without the help of grace and…

As to the latter part, isn’t that a demonstration of the Trinity through natural reason? Or is it not?

…because the super-natural assistance of divine grace is required, such a demonstration is not a demonstration through merely natural reason.