I found myself a few weeks back visiting Tim (not his real name), doing Just for Starters. Tim was becoming a friend, now that we’d spent seven or so sessions together, looking at the Bible. First, we went through Simply Christianity—five studies from Luke’s Gospel. Now we were following up with the Just For Starters studies—seven basic Bible studies on key areas in the Christian life. Tim still wasn’t convinced that the Bible was true, but he’d accepted that Christ had died for sins and risen from the dead. We were having lively times of discussion.
This week it was Ephesians 2:8-10. The study was about our salvation being apart from works, by grace and through faith. And Tim didn’t like what he was reading. I had pushed hard the fact that we can’t boast about anything—we can’t even boast about our faith. “God gives us our faith so we can’t even boast about our choosing him”, I might have said. And then Tim really didn’t like it. He said something like this: “So God just rams faith down your throat, and that’s all you need to be saved? Doesn’t seem right.”
What was my next move? In the past, I would have talked about assumptions. “Well, Tim, what we’re doing here is assuming the Bible is true, and working out what it’s saying. I’m just asking if you agree that this is what the Bible is saying.” But for Tim, I thought this was the wrong approach. I’d previously told Tim that I believed the whole Bible was true, but he had scorned this idea. ”You accept it all? Don’t you question your beliefs at all? Or are you just going to tell me I have to take it all on faith?” I didn’t want to have that discussion again;it was time for a new answer.
Thanks to my philosophy class at college, I had a new answer for Tim. Let me start with the background.
In philosophy, we had talked about epistemology. That’s the study of how you know things are true. An epistemic scheme is a model of how humans can come to the position where they say they ‘know’, and how the things they ‘know’ relate to each other. One of the ‘epistemic schemes’ we had learnt was a ‘web network’. In a web network, there are the ‘outer strands’ and the ‘inner strands’. Each strand is something that the person ‘knows’. The ‘inner strands’ are not connected to reality directly. They connect with each other, which shows that they are consistent with each other. But they do not connect directly with reality. This means that they can’t be known directly from reality. However, the outer strands are different. They are connected to some inner strands, being consistent with them. But they also have connection to reality.
This model as a whole explains how for many people, some of the truths that people hold can be cut away, without destroying their whole system of belief. You can cut one outer strand, and the other outer strands will take up the strain as the network adjusts.
So how was this useful? Well we went back to the first week of Simply Christianity. I drew the web network for Tim, then we read Luke 1:1-4 again. “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.” (NIV, my emphasis)
This is a definitive Christian statement of ‘how you know’. Luke’s gospel is written so that one might “know the certainty” of Christian teaching. Its method is to look at eyewitness accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, in particular as they fulfil the Old Testament Scriptures.
So this is loosely how our discussion went: I said “When we were doing Simply Christianity, we were looking at how you can know Christianity is true. We were looking at the outer strands on the web. We considered what the eyewitnesses saw. We know from history that many were killed for proclaiming what they saw. That’s one item rooted in real world reality that convinces us that Christianity is true. A second outer strand we looked at is how these things fulfilled the Old Testament. If we want to go back and consider the truth of the Christian teachings, we can go back and look at more of the Old Testament, and the eyewitness accounts of the gospels.
“But, now in Just for Starters, we’re in the middle of the web. The idea that we can’t boast in our salvation is an inner strand. You might have heard of the Trinity: you can’t test the doctrine of Trinity like you can test the fulfilment of Scripture, or like you can test eyewitness testimony. The inner strands will be consistent with each other—we can test that as we go through Just for Starters. But the way Luke tells us to be certain of the things taught is eyewitnesses and fulfilment of Scripture. So, Tim, yes I question my faith. It can be attacked. But the place to attack is the outer strands. Attack the validity of the eyewitness testimony and the fulfilment of Scripture. You can also attack the consistency of the inner strands. If they cannot stack up against each other, my network falls. You can question, but you need to question at the right place.”
“So what’s the link between the outer and inner strands?”, he asked.
“The outer strands convince me that the Bible is true, and the Bible teaches the inner strands. Jesus, who was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures and seen by eyewitnesses, thought the Old Testament was true. He sent his Spirit in his apostles so the New Testament is true. So the Bible’s all true, and that’s where we get our inner strands from—like not boasting.”
Tim seemed happy with that.
”So, Tim, the question for us now is this: do you want to go back to the outer strands like in Simply Christianity, or continue in the inner strands in Just for Starters?”
He thought for a while. “Nah, let’s keep going with the inner strands.”
May God bring him to salvation through Jesus.
