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Christian agnosticism?
This morning I was wrestling through the (admittedly strange) question - "What is the real difference between agnosticism and the Christian faith?"
The typical first 'obvious' response to this question would be that the agnostic declares he does not or can not know or believe that God exists because of a lack of sufficient evidence, whereas the Christian declares that he does believe in God's existence.
My response to an agnostic would be that his world view is also a form of faith - namely a faith in his mind to be able to decide that there is not enough evidence. Put differently: the agnostic trusts and puts his faith in his own mind telling him the evidence is not enough to trust in a God.
But here is where I started to wrestle through something: how different is that from someone who decides there IS enough evidence to trust in a God. Aren't both in the end trusting in their own minds to weigh the evidence to decide who or what to trust in? If not, why not?
I didn't really come to a conclusion until a bit later when I was reading in 2 Corinthians and I came across the following passage:
For our reason for confidence is this: the testimony of our conscience, that with pure motives and sincerity which are from God – not by human wisdom but by the grace of God – we conducted ourselves in the world, and all the more toward you.
- 2 Corinthians 1:12
Here's what hit me: Our minds can not be trusted unless we have pure motives and sincerity. According to the Christian world view, nobody has pure motives and sincerity, but rather these are given by God's grace, as Paul emphasizes here. This exposes a fundamental difference between the heart attitudes of an agnostic and a Christian.
A Christian is not an agnostic who has received enough evidence to finally make the step of faith. Rather, what we are called to do is to have a heart that honestly says something along the lines of "God (if you exist), grant me pure motives in seeking you, because I need them." An agnostic praying this prayer with a soft heart to an "Unknown God" (see Acts 17), is truly "not far from the Kingdom of God" if you ask me.
The major problem is that this attitude is not an easy one to have, because it hits at the heart of Adamic pride, i.e. the desire to be our own God, to declare ourselves innocent and our motives pure.
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Comments
interesting thoughts. I've had some of those thoughts before, too.
However, I don't quite see how you've solved the problem? It seems more like you've postponed the "rational decision" one step further down the road. That is, instead of the Christian saying "I trust in my mind to weigh the evidence to decide what to trust," he is now saying "I trust in my mind to weigh the evidence - that God has granted me by also granting me pure motives - to decide what to trust." Instead of reducing the rational decision, you are upgrading the evidence that the Christian then can rationally weigh.
This whole question appears to me to a part of the never ending question of free will that has been tinted by modern rationality. Can we really opt for God based on reason? Are we not thereby turning ourselves into gods, if we believe we can choose God? Is not God then the chosen one - the elect? But, conversely, if we cannot choose God, but rather are chosen by him, do we then have any free will?
I believe what you are trying to do, is square the Arminian standpoint with the Calvinist standpoint. It seems to me, though, that it has to either be: "God chooses us" (Calvinist) or "we choose God" (Arminian). Everything else seems contradictory.
I've wrestled with similar thoughts for several years. I have no definitve answers but am reasonably convinced about a few things, that I'd like to mention two.
1.) I am operating under the assumption that there are certain things about God that we simply cannot fully understand. Among these are the nature of the trinity and how our free will fits with God's sovereignty. Think mathematics and geometry for a moment. Imagine you are a centipede who lives in a one dimensional universe. You can move forwards and backwards on a line. But sideways and up and down do not exist. Now try to explain to this centipede how life is in a two dimensional universe, a plane. Such concepts would go beyond the centipedes ability to understand (existentially speaking). A creature in the two dimensional universe would also have the ability to do some neat tricks like appearing before or behind the centipede without having to go through it. This would likely blow the centipede's mind.
My point is. God probably has a few more dimension-like capabilities available to him. These abilities would be not conceivable to us but no less real. As I thought about this further I came to another conclusion. It is almost a deductive logical truism that by definition God must have abilities superior to ours. If we as humans are of the opinion that we must understand everything about God, then one must pose the question if God is still God.
Of course this could lead one to jettison rationalism altogether and simply "believe." However, I think this too would be an error. Just like a two dimensional creature can exist in the one dimensional space of the centipede, so too can God act within the confines of our rational abilities. For me this has the consequence that I use my rational mind to try and understand but recognize that in certain cases I may come upon a limit and somethings must simply be accepted as axioms, even some that may appear contradictory.
2.) I've often wondered if we are to linear in out logical thinking. Why must it be that case that there is always a starting point and an end point. God chooses us and we respond OR we choose God and he responds. Could it not be that certain processes logical physical and otherwise are interdependent and there is no starting point. I alluded to this in my discussion about fides qua and fides quae. If this is true a flow chart would look more like a complex yin-yan diagram. This is the classic chicken or the egg question. If we are to take the creation narrative literally in the sense that suddenly a functioning universe appeared ex nihlo, than there is a precedent for what I am suggesting. Think of how many interdependent processes must have simultaneously come into existence at the point of creation. May both the Chicken and the Egg were created at the same time. I'm just suggesting that our logical think could have a similar nature.