It’s an argument that has been going on for some time now. Namely, that “faith” and “reason” are somehow in opposition to each other. Here are some examples I plucked at random from the World Wide Web:

“Behind the political divide in America, there is also a religious divide. The split is not just between people who believe and people who do not; it is between those who see religious faith as society’s foundation and those who see it as society’s bane.”

http://www.reason.com/news/show/116850.html

“In today’s episode we take a look at the relationship between faith and reason in the Catholic tradition and see whether they can work together and what they can tell us about our relationship with God.”

http://catholicunderthehood.blogspot.com/2006/12/95-faith-vs-reason.html

“Many people, like this author, require a firmer basis for their beliefs than a blind appeal to authority. In fact, one can go further, and point out that it may well be immoral to have beliefs without a logical basis.”

http://www.religioustolerance.org/kaiser_01.htm

“Objectivists have a very clear and specific concept of faith. Faith is accepting an idea as true without reason, or against reason. The first half of this is accepting an idea in spite of the fact that there is no justified reason to believe it. Obviously someone can try to rationalize anything, so we’re not talking about just giving an excuse for a belief. We’re talking about actual evidence that leads to that particular belief….

Reason and faith are completely incompatible. Faith is the destroyer of reason. It takes particular ideas and divorces them from reality and from reason. If you accept something on faith, you are essentially saying that you will take it off of the table with regards to reason, and treat it how you feel like treating it. Wherever faith goes, reason is pushed out.”

http://objectivism101.com/Lectures/Lecture15.shtml

OK - that’s enough I think. You can find thousands of similar statements.

So, is “Faith” in opposition to “Reason?” Here’s the trick - all of these quotes DEFINE faith as something opposed to reason. Get it? It’s a silly argument at its core because it is merely a set of a priori definitions that lead to a foregone conclusion.

This wouldn’t be problem except that the word “faith” is used throughout the New Testament. Because of the current definition of faith (belief without evidence), most people never understand what Jesus and His followers were actually talking about. I’ve written extensively about what the Bible means by faith, something completely different from the definitions above. What I want to look at in this writing is where this idea of “faith is blind belief” came from and why it is such a controversial subject.

Here is the key - all of those who argue “Faith vs. Reason” make “Faith” and “Religion” equivalent. The argument is not about faith; it is an argument about religion. Historically, religion has been based on the authority of the Priest, Prophet, Shaman, Spiritual master, etc. The Priest acts as the intermediary between man and the Divine, and ONLY the Priest has that position. Thus, to know what to do, you are required to obey without question the dictates of that authority.

You can see how this idea of religious authority developed in the history of Christianity, and how it changed things. Initially, each Apostle was treated as a “messenger” who brought the “Good News” about Jesus. They were reporters of FACT, in other words, and no one was expected to just believe them. They were obviously effective reporters, because people did believe them, changed their lives, and became followers of Jesus. Over time the facts they reported were written down in books, what we today call the New Testament. We know what facts they reported and can evaluate them today just as the first century listeners did. The point is, Christianity did not start with a claim of “divine inspiration” to a Priest that must be believed without evidence, but with statements of fact that were spread around and accepted as true. That statement itself is a statement of historical fact that cannot be denied. Whether a person believes in Jesus or not, it would be irrational to deny that Christianity started as I have described. It was never a matter of “blind belief” by the followers of Jesus.

The arguments that rose up over time were not over facts, but over interpretation of the facts and what they meant to a Christian. In time, the divisions over interpretation led to Church councils of “experts” who would define the orthodox interpretation. Eventually, the authority of the Church council was centered in the Pope as the “Vicar of Christ” and ultimate authority for correct interpretation. Western Christianity had come to be another religion based on the authority of a Priest.

It was in that context of Medieval Roman Christianity that the current debate of “Faith vs. Reason” got started. The conflict was and is over the obedience of the people to religious authorities. This debate developed and became passionate as literacy spread throughout Europe. Once people had Bibles in their hands and could read for themselves, reliance on Church authority began to diminish. It turned out the authorities were often abusing their authority and a rebellion (reformation) against that abuse began. Because the Church also had significant political power and influence, those wanting to change the political structure also had to contend with the religious authorities. Many of them rejected the Church in part because they wanted to create a new form of political society based on democracy, socialism, etc. Unfortunately, the use of the word “faith” as a euphemism for religious authority remains with us today and has colored the interpretation of the Bible. My argument for some time has been that even most Christians don’t know what Biblical faith is, much less how to live by faith.

If we are to accurately represent Jesus to the modern world, we must do so using language as Jesus did. We must understand faith as reliance on God because God has proved Himself reliable by the resurrection of Jesus and the change that occurs in those who rely on Him. We must understand that, in the teaching of Jesus, faith is always an active principle, involving action by the person, that then makes the power of God manifest in the person’s life.

The contemporary proof that the skeptics look for is the change of moral nature that happens in every true follower of Jesus. (”By their fruits you shall know them.”) Our faith (reliance on God) is proven valid because it changes us by an invisible force (Holy Spirit) rather than by our own will power. That change in a person’s life is a FACT that forms the solid basis of our REASON. However, that change in a person cannot happen until a person is willing to let go and let God direct events in the person’s life. This is why so many never come to know God. It has nothing to do with reason.

In fact, some “rationalists” don’t seem to understand reason at all. Here is a little clue: all logical arguments must start with an a priori premise that is assumed to be self-evident. And, (please pay attention) the only conclusions you can draw are those that are inherent in the a priori premise. Thus, as Wittgenstein pointed out, reason can only help you organize what you already believe to be true. Reason helps us understand the cause and effect relationships of our experience and communicate our understanding to others. That is the proper use of reason. Reason alone can never discover new truths, only develop broader understanding of what we already know. The way you discover new truths is to change your a priori premise(s) and see what you get. Once we know the power of God directly in our lives, we have an a priori premise to start with that will allow us to reason to a better understanding of God’s ways. OK?

What the so-called rationalists mean by “reason” is human will-power. Thus, the conflict is not “blind belief” vs “reason.” It is a conflict between human will and God’s will. That is the contrast described in the Bible beginning with the story of the Garden of Eden. Man wants to be god and will find every excuse to justify that desire. Thus, they change the meaning of “faith” into something that can be belittled and ignored so that they can “do as they desire” without regard to God. Or, they equate faith with religion and demand conformity to a set of rituals defined by a religious/political authority. In both cases, it has nothing to do with faith or reason, only with conforming others and a reliance on man and man’s will power.

This is the conflict between those who live by faith and those who don’t. Those who live by faith in Jesus do not need the approval of others, neither the “reason” of the atheists or the dogma of religious authority. That, unfortunately, makes us the true outcasts in the world. So be it. This is how it has been from the beginning:

“Those who have the desire to seem important in the flesh, put force on you to undergo circumcision; only that they may not be attacked because of the cross of Christ. Because even those who undergo circumcision do not themselves keep the law; but they would have you undergo circumcision, so that they may have glory in your flesh. But far be it from me to have glory in anything, but only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which this world has come to an end on the cross for me, and I for it. For having circumcision is nothing, and not having circumcision is nothing, but only a new order of existence. And on all who are guided by this rule be peace and mercy, and on the Israel of God. From this time on let no man be a trouble to me; because my body is marked with the marks of Jesus.” (Gal 6:12-17)

Just replace “circumcision” with any religious ritual or observance, or with some scientific theory, and you get the point Paul is making in contemporary terms. It is the “new creation” in Jesus that is the mark of a Christian. And, that is what “faith” is - a new kind of existence. And, there is absolutely nothing irrational about it.

Although the doctrine of the Trinity is one of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, there are quite a few who call themselves followers of Jesus yet deny this doctrine. In fact, I was listening to an interview on the Internet recently and heard the interviewer and interviewee claiming that the doctrine of the Trinity is false. That’s not all that rare these days, but what was amazing was the claim that it was difficult to discover where this doctrine comes from. Nonsense. The doctrine of the Trinity was enumerated at the council of Nicea and all we need to do is to understand the historical context and arguments made at that time to see why this the Trinity is central to Christian dogma.

For most of my life I also had the opinion that the doctrine of the Trinity was impossible to prove or even really understand. After making my own study of the history, I found that it is simple, obvious and fundamental to Christianity. When looked at correctly, the Trinity is easy to understand and obvious. As I hope I can show, if you discard the doctrine of Trinity you undermine the foundation of Christianity and open the door to various heresies and ultimately false Christs.

The first thing that needs to be done is accurately state this doctrine. Most of the anti-Trinitarian claims create a straw-man to argue against, and thus it sounds like they know what they are talking about when in fact they are not arguing against the “trinity” at all. The simplistic statement of the Trinity is that it refers to a “triune-god” but that really isn’t what it says. Stated only as “three-in-one” without a full understanding, the Trinity cannot be understood logically and sounds to be in conflict with the Bible. The Bible states that there is one and only one God. All other gods are false. To suggest that there are three “Gods” at first seems wrong. The arguments against the Trinity usually build from this point and argue that Jesus was limited, physical, could die and thus could not be the omnipotent, omniscient, infinite being that we define as God.

We take it as an a priori premise that God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and thus to identify God with something limited seems wrong. However, to say that God is omnipotent but can’t do ‘X’ is inconsistent. The moment you state God can’t do something you have denied his omnipotence. It’s a paradox, then, because if God is truly omnipotent, then that must include the ability to be limited at the same time. Think about it for a bit, because it’s a little confusing at first. The problem is that our system of logic has limitations. We cannot logically describe anything that is “A and not A” and the idea of an omnipotent being that is somehow limited cannot be expressed in logic. All that means is that logical statements are limited to those things that logic can describe, but that cannot be taken as the limit of all truth since that would in effect declare logic as omnipotent. See? There are things about the infinite that cannot be logically described because of the limits of logic. We call these ‘paradox’ and leave it at that.

Another common argument is that the Bible does not describe God as a Trinity. That’s arguable, but not really all that important. The doctrine of the Trinity is not a form of exegesis but is rather a theological conclusion drawn from statements in the Bible. This isn’t a problem because the doctrine of the Trinity is not really “three-in-one” but rather is an attempt to explain the nature of Christ as savior based on statements that are in the Bible. It is a part of Christology, in other words. The best way to understand that doctrine is to follow the same path of philosophical reasoning the bishops at Nicea did. The Trinity then becomes obvious and correct.

There are two areas of philosophy and theology that we need to look at. The first is ontology. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics that deals with categories of being. There are many different ways of dividing being, but the one that is relevant here has to do with created being as opposed to self-existent being. Any person is one or the other. If you are created, you are not self-existent. If you are self-existent you are not created. We state categorically that God is self-existent. All other being must be created if we believe in a monotheistic theology of the the Bible. That was the basic problem. If Jesus is self-existent being and distinct from God is sounds like we have more than one God. Thus the anti-trinitarians defined Jesus as subordinate, created being. The Trinitarians said, basically, you can’t do that and have Christianity.

The reason has to do with the area of theology called soteriology. Soteriology deals with the nature of salvation. Christianity is based on the claim that Jesus is the savior of mankind. More importantly, He is a unique savior of mankind. “No man comes to the Father but by me” in other words. In addition, Christianity states that man cannot save himself. Put in philosophical terms, the ontologically inferior must rely on the ontologically superior for salvation. Thus, logically, obviously, if Jesus is our savior he MUST be ontologically superior to man. Since we only have two categories of being, created and self-existent, Jesus must fall into the category of self-existent. Q.E.D.

Simple, isn’t it? You see, if Jesus is taken out of the category of self-existent being, then you would be saying that any created being could have been the savior. That means, you, me, or almost anyone else could have, hypothetically, become a savior of mankind. What’s more, you could have many saviors, each with the necessary conditions, of course. That opens the door to false-christs and self-saving attitudes by man. It is the idea expressed in Gnosticism and many modern new-age ideas of Ascended Masters, world teachers, etc. If you take the unique divinity of Jesus away, you destroy the foundation of Christianity. Now do you get it?

This is why the Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches have been so adamant about the doctrine of the Trinity. Anyone trying to undermine this teaching is laying the foundation for denying Jesus as the unique savior of mankind.

The actual statement of the doctrine of the Trinity is found in the Nicene Creed. It is that Jesus is “begotten not made” indicating that he is ontologically superior to man and equal to God the Father. He is, therefore, of the same “substance” as God. Although this is a paradox that cannot be logically explained, the necessity of the Trinity can be logically derived from the nature of our salvation.

The doctrine of the Trinity is complex and involves a long history. It should not be casually discarded simply because it seems to go against common sense or because it is difficult to understand. Those still young in faith may not fully understand the importance, and really, as long as you hold to Jesus as savior, it isn’t necessary that you understand all the complexities. Simply put, the doctrine of the Trinity says that Jesus is divine, and thus capable of being our savior. Beware of the wolves in sheep’s clothing that would confuse this issue to the point that it becomes an open door to heresy and apostasy.

For further reading, see the following:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_Trinity#History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea

The word “Lucifer” is only used once, and only in some, English Bibles at Isaiah 14:12. In the KJV it is, “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!” Backing up to Isaiah 14:4, you’ll find this is a prophecy against the King of Babylon: “That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased!” From the context then, “Lucifer” is a symbol for the King of Babylon. Most of the commentaries I have read agree on this. For example, John Gill says:

“Isa 14:12 - How art thou fallen from heaven,…. This is not to be understood of the fall of Satan, and the apostate angels, from their first estate, when they were cast down from heaven to hell, though there may be an allusion to it; …

“O Lucifer, son of the morning! alluding to the star Venus, which is the phosphorus or morning star, which ushers in the light of the morning, and shows that day is at hand; by which is meant, not Satan, who is never in Scripture called Lucifer, … but the king of Babylon is intended, whose royal glory and majesty, as outshining all the rest of the kings of the earth, is expressed by those names;”

That’s fairly typical of the commentaries since the protestant reformation. None of these scholars think this is anything other than a statement about the King of Babylon except maybe by an allusion.

The Hebrew word translated “Lucifer” is Helel and is “hapax legomenon’ (i.e., only used once in the entire scripture.) When a word only appears once in the whole Bible there will be difficulty in translation since there isn’t sufficient usage to get a good idea of what the word should mean. The lexicons state that “helel” is derived from a root “halal” meaning “shining”. When combined with the following Hebrew it is literally, “shining dawn-son” and appears to be a reference to the planet Venus. There are some scholars who think there was an ancient Sumerian or Canaanite myth about Venus and that Isaiah is parodying that myth. Whether that is true or not, the reference to Venus is a poetic symbol of the King of Babylon. Venus appears as a star but is not an actual star. This wanna-be star can never ascend to the heavens and appear permanently among the other stars, but must instead sink back towards the earth. As such, Venus becomes a symbol of the pride and arrogance that leads to the King’s downfall.

Whatever “helel” meant to Isaiah, the Jewish translators of the Septuagint used the Greek word for Venus, “heosphorus” when translating the Hebrew to Greek. When Jerome translated the Hebrew into Latin, he used the Latin term for Venus, “Lucifer.” Isaiah 14:12 in the Vulgate is, “Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris.” That Jerome meant “Lucifer” to refer to the “day star” is obvious when you look at the other two usages of Lucifer in the Bible. One is at Job 11:17, “cum te consumptum putaveris, orieris ut lucifer” which in the KJV is, “thou shalt shine forth, thou shalt be as the morning.” The other place is 2 Peter 1:19. The Latin is, “et lucifer oriatur in cordibus vestris” which the KJV translates, “and the day star arise in your hearts.” Now, if we say that “Lucifer” is a name for Satan then Jerome has 2 Peter 1:19 saying “until Satan arise in your heart.” Obviously that won’t do, so the KJV translators switch and use the “day star” in 2 Peter instead of the transliterated Latin of Isaiah 14 thus hiding this embarrassing little fact.

That leaves us with the question of why KJV uses “Lucifer” instead of “day-star” in Isaiah 14. The reason is – Church tradition. We get the idea that Lucifer is a name for Satan from early Christian commentators. There is a reference in Tertullian from the 2nd century (but I can’t find it right now) and also in Origen (3rd century). Both writers treat Isaiah 14 as a reference to Satan. Here is one example from Origen:

“Again, we are taught as follows by the prophet Isaiah regarding another opposing power. The prophet says, ‘How is Lucifer, who used to arise in the morning, fallen from heaven!’ … Most evidently by these words is he shown to have fallen from heaven, who formerly was Lucifer, and who used to arise in the morning.” (Ezekiel Opera, iii. 356)

In Luke 10:18 Jesus says, “I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” The commentators take that little phrase, combine it with images from Revelation, and then interpret the prophecy against the King of Babylon as an allegorical reference to the fall of Satan. Since the Latin is “Lucifer” in Isaiah 14, that word becomes used as a name for Satan. This idea that Satan was a “bright one” who fell due to pride carries forward throughout the middle ages and forms the basis for works such as Milton’s “Paradise Lost.” The usage sticks and ends up in the KJV in the 17th Century. Modern translators who try to reverse the tradition get accused of trying to hide the name of Satan as dupes of the Anti-Christ. It seems tradition is too powerful a force to overcome by honest scholarship alone.

Unfortunately, the Theosophists, Masons such as Albert Pike, New Agers, and others have picked up on this confusion and make a big deal out of it. They try to turn it around by using “Lucifer” in a literal sense of “light bringer” and thus deny they are “Satan worshipers.” That’s as non-Biblical as treating “Lucifer” as a name for Satan. When Lucifer is used in the Vulgate of Isaiah 14 it is definitely a reference to a king who fell because of his pride. In that sense, it’s a pretty good description of Satan and also anyone who is filled with pride.

What we are left with is a mess. Strictly speaking the Bible never says Lucifer is a name for Satan. On the other hand, common usage in English, built upon tradition, does use Lucifer as a name of Satan. Using Lucifer (“light bringer”) to refer to Satan can only be considered valid when used in a sarcastic sense. However, we have to use the language as it is understood or we won’t communicate very well to others. To me, those who treat the names Satan and Lucifer differently are just playing games with words to try and justify their self-serving beliefs. Unfortunately, others are doing the same thing when they yell and scream about people corrupting the Bible by removing the name “Lucifer.”

Personally, I don’t make an issue out of this. I do try and understand what is truly Biblical as opposed to what is merely tradition. As Jesus warned the Pharisees, “You make void the word of God by your traditions.”