Alister McGrath : Doubting

Quotes from the book and an outline of the points made:

From the forward an amusing example of why it is that a commitment to philosophical scepticism doesn't add up. Coming out of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment the hallmark of education today is skepticism, going back to Rene Descarters' belief that the only thing we can be certain of is doubt. However now, since people don't believe in God, we are all alone with our doubts. Searching for some level of certainty in his world of doubt Descartes coined the idea: cogito ergo sum "I thknk therefore I am." David Hume then chiseled away further at the certainty to say that we can only be sure of the thought and so it became 'I think therefore thinking exists.'

All this is reminiscent of the student at New York University who intimidatingly asked his professore, 'Sir, how do I know that I exist?' A linguiring pause preceded the professor's answer. He lowered his glasses, peered over the rim and riveted his eyes on the student. His simple response finally came, 'And whom shall I say is asking?' Fortunately or otherwise, some things in life are just undeniable. -- Ravi Zacharias in the foreword

Doubt is a struggle and a natural part of life. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that we 'see through a glass dimly'. Even C.S. Lewis struggled with doubt it seems. In a Christmas Eve letter to friend Arthur Greeves, he wrote:

I think the trouble with me is lack of faith. I have no rational ground for going back on the arguments that convinced me of God's existence: but the irrational deadweight of my old sceptical habits, and the spirit of the age, and the cares of the day, steal away all my lively feeling of the truth, and often when I pray I wonder if I am not posting letters to a non-existent address. Mind you I don't think so - the whole of my reasonable mind is convinced: but I often feel so. -- C.S. Lewis

Chapter 1 : Doubt
What it is and what it isn't

In the first place doubt is not skepticism - the decision to doubt everything deliberately, as a matter of principle.

In the second, it's not unbelief - the decision not to have faith in God. 

McGrath says this about the presence of doubt in the life of a Christian:

Doubt is probably a permanent feature of the Christian life. It's like some kind of spiritual growing pain. Sometimes it recedes into the background; at other times is comes to the forefront, making its presence felt with a vengeance.

Coming to faith with unresolved doubts

Here's a great quote from a 17th Century philosopher named Francis Bacon from his 'Advancement of Learning':

If a man will begin with certainties, he will end in doubts; but if he is content to begin with doubts, he will end in certainties.

Doubt - a reminder of human sinfulness and frailty

And on the nature of salvation: The story is told of a little girl who asked a bishop whether he was saved: 'I have been saved from the penalty of sin, I am being saved from the power of sin, and one day I shall be saved from the presence of sin.'

We are still frail and sinful and our hearts and minds are prone to wander. Doubting God, like other sin is an ongoing lifelong struggle and natural part of a life that doesn't deal with absolute assurances and victories.For Paul, McGrath says, grace and sin are like two powers, battling it out within us... and faith is not just a willingness and ability to trust in God - it is the channel through which God's grace flows to us. Doubt then needs to be seen within its proper context - that of our struggle against sin.

A great story about Augustine watching a little boy on a beach is told to illustrate that we cannot expect to know with certainty everything about God:

Augustine found himself pacing the Mediterranean shoreline of his native North Africa, not far from the great city of Carthage. While wandering across the sand, he noticed a small boy scooping seawater into his hands and pouring as much as his small hands could hold into a hole he had earlier hollowed in the sand. Puzzled, Augustine watched as the lad repeated his action again and again.

Eventuall his curiosity got the better of him. What, he asked the boy, did he think he was doing? The reply probably perplexed him further. The boy informed him that he was in the process of emptying the ocean into the small cavity he had scooped out in the hot sand. Augustine laughed. How could such a vast body of water be contained in such a small hole? But the boy shot back his reply: how could Augustine expect to contain the vast mystery of God in the mere words of a book?

...There are limits placed on the human ability to grasp the things of God. And because we can't fully grasp something, we sometimes doubt that it is true. We misinterpret our inability to understand something as a sign that it is not true, or not real.

MCGrath then goes on to say explain this further: Of Course we have difficulties in trying to understand God and the world - but this doesn't mean that our faith is misplaced!

The stars don't need darkness to exist - but we need darkness if we are to see them and convince ourselves that they are still there! 

The above is a great quote and a very helpful illustration. He then says this: We need to understand what those limits are because in the end, doubt arises partly on account of our unrealistic expectations about certainty. 

The way we see things isn't necessarily the way things really are. Doubt often reflects a sense of unease about the way in which experience, reason, feeling and faith relate. 

I find that to be a very helpful idea. He separates our 'knowing' of things and our faith in things into four things:
             Experience
                            Reason
                                        Feeling
                                                  Faith
Understanding how they relate to one another and work together to form my view of things is crucial to understanding doubt.

Chapter 2 - Doubt and the vain search for certainty

Continuing on from where the previous chapter left us...

The things in life that really matter cannot be proven with certainty - whether they are ethical values (such as respect for human life), social attitudes (such as democracy) or religious belief (such as Christianity).

The beliefs that are really important in life concern such things as whether there is a God and what he is like, or the mystery of human nature and destiny. These - and a whole host of other important beliefs - have two basic features. In the first place, they are relevant to life. They matter, in that they affect the wat we think, live, hope and act. In the second place, by their very nature they make claims that cannot be proved (or disproved) with total certainty. At best we may hope to know them as probably true. There will always be an element of doubt in any statement that goes beyond the world of logic and self-evident propositions.Christianity is not unique in this respect: an atheist or Marxist is confronted with precisely the same dilemma. Anyone who wants to talk about the meaning of life has to make statements that rest on faith, not absolute certainty. Anyway, God isn't a proposition - he's a person!

Notice those two points about the -isms and beliefs we hold to and the questions we ask:
1 - They are relevant to life
2 - They cannot be proven with absolute certainty

Belief and non-belief both require faith, a leap one way or the other. Here's how God is involved in our faith:

God the Father makes those promised; God the Son confirms them in his words and deeds; and the Holy Spirit reassures us of their reliability and seals those promises within our hearts.

Here's a beautiful description of how one American writer named Sheldon Vanauken became a Christian whilst at University in Oxford:

There is a gap between the probable and the proved. How was I to cross it? If I were to stake my whole life on the risen Christ, I wanted proof. I wanted certainty. I wanted to see him eat a bit of flesh. I wanted letters of fire across the sky. I got none of these... It was a question of whether I was to accept him - or reject. My God! There was a gap behind me as well! Perhaps the leap to acceptance was a horrifying gamble-but what of the leap of rejection? There might be no certainty that Christ was God - but, by God, there was no certainty that he was not. This was not to be borne. I could not reject Jesus. There was only one thing to do once I had seen the gap behind me. I turned away from it, and flung myself over the gap towards Jesus. 

I love that. It really encapsulates the nature of deciding from Christ and choosing to commit oneself to follow him - beautiful.

Martin Luther said: Faith is a free surrender and a joyouse wager on the sunseen, untried and unknown goodness of God.

Chapter 3 - Doubt in other worldviews
The case for atheism  

You can't prove either by rational argument or by scientific investigation, what life is all about.

Why are people atheists? One reason could be because of their desire for autonomy.

Cultural historians have pointed out for many years, based on their analysis of European history from about 1780 to 1980, people often reject the idea of God because they long for autonomy - the right to do what they please, without any interference from God.

This point has been well made by the Polish Philosopher and writer Czeslaw Milosz, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980. Parodying the old Marxist idea that religion was the 'opium of the masses' he remarks in The Discreet Charm of Nihilism that a new opium has taken its place: rejectionof belief in God on account of its implications for our ultimate accountability. "A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death. The huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders we are not going to be judged."

Sire Peter Medawar won a Nobel Prize for medicine and describes in his paper 'The Limits of Science.'

The existence of a limit to science if, however, made clear by its inability to answer childlike elementary questions having to do with first and last things - questions such as 'how did everything begin?'; 'what are we all here for?'; 'what is the point of living?'

That's a great quote. It's true of course. When Riley starts wondering about life's meaning science has nothing to say to him and therefore he ventures into the realm of ideas and things that cannot be proven one way or the other.
McGrath says: The sciences can be spun in ways making them support disblieif in God, belief in God or skepticism. He's right of course as our recent teaching on God Vs Science has shown...

Stephen Jay Gould (widely regarded as America's greatest evolutionary biologist) was no religious believer but he wrote in Darwin's Revolution of Thought:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time (from college bull session to learned treatises): science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God's possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can't comment on is as scientists.

Interestingly a survey was done in 1916 on the religious belief of some of the world's top scientists. 40% of them were theists. The same survey was done in 1996 and again 40% were theists.

McGrath writes again about the nature of faith:

Any worldview - atheist, Islamic, Jewish, Christian or whatever - ultimately depends on assumptions that cannot be proved.

A final quote from the chapter:

Everyone who believes anything significant or worthwhile about the meaning of life, does so as a matter of faith. 

Chapter 4 - The personal aspects of doubt

Who we are, where we've come from and what we've experienced affect us more than we care to admit. Being honest about this and aware of this is key:

Who you are and the experiences you've been through can have a quite definite effect on the anxieties and doubts you have in relation to your Christian faith.

...Our doubts, anxieties and difficulties often reflect our individuality. You may see things in a different way to your friends, simply because you are who you are.

Let's consider the nature of doubts. McGrath helpfully breaks them down into two types of doubt:

Type 1: Cognitive and intellectual
Type 2: Personal and relational

Type 1 is 'doubt-it' problem, Type 2 is a 'doubt-you' issue.

Chapter 5 - Doubt in the Bible
Analogies and images 

There are four main images used in the New Testament, each of which illustrates on angle of the concept of doubt:

1. Hesitation. Mt 28:17 resurrection appearances 'but some doubted' means 'to hold back'. Hesitation betrays a lack of trust.
2. Indecision. Mt. 21:21, Ro. 4:20, Acts 11:2 - the word here means 'to argue with yourself'.
3. Being in two minds. James 4:8 Doubters are described as 'double-minded' (dipsychos)
4. Doubt as a state of mind. Thomas in John 20:27 'do not doubt but believe.' This means 'keep on believing' to Thomas Jesus is saying 'stop doubting now, once and for all. And keep on believing.'

Two images are particularly helpful in thinking about the nature of doubt and belief:

- Walking in the dark. 

- Romans 13:11-12 'salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.'

- 2 Cor. 5:7 'we walk by faith, not by sight.'

- Illustration: Going for a night hike and trusting the path only to look back in daylight and see the hazards you missed.

- Pascal: In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

- Martin Luther King Jr: Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

- McGrath: Even when we travel through the valley of the shadow of death, he is there. We may not fully understand the details of that journey, but we know he is with us, by our sides, as we travel.

- Rough sea.

- James 1:6 'the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.'

- Doubt is like seasickness and faith is an anchor that holds us.