Leaps of Faith

During my time at university and the years following my introduction to Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity, there were two other particular influences which affected my thinking and the direction of my philosophical and spiritual journey. Particularly in the area of what can we know and what we have to take on trust.

At University, I was introduced to books by Francis Schaeffer who gave a Christian response to the philosophical trends of the 20th Century including the Existentialist movement.

In his book, “The God who is there” [1], he labels the existential philosophy of Soren Kierkrgaard and those who followed him as an “anti-philosophy” which has crossed a “line of despair”. The reason for this was the idea that there were things which could not be known by reason and logic alone and which could only be taken on faith or trust.

My reaction to that was, “what is his problem with that?”. To me it seemed clear that we had to start with some beliefs which were not rationally provable. It is little different from saying “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” [2] which is self-evident.

Schaeffer’s point is, however, well made when seeing how Kierkrgaard’s ideas have been interpreted and led to an “anything goes” ethos where it is believed that there are no absolutes. But the underlying idea that we all have no choice but to live by faith, whether faith in the God of the Bible, faith that there is no God, or anything else is simply part of our situation. Such ideas can also be found in Emmanuel Kant.

The problem seems to arise from making the leap that because there are things we cannot know for certain, these things do not exist or do not matter. There is no reason to assume that.

The question which is posed is, if we are “condemned to be free”[3] and we have to take a “leap of faith”, in which direction do we choose to leap? We cannot logically answer that question but we can find pointers which will help us so that it is an informed leap, not a blind one.