It greatly disturbs my heart when someone uses irrational, confusing and contradictory statements that are borrowed from existentialism or eastern philosophies and applies them to the Christian faith. Most on Facebook and twitter who share or post these sayings are usually assuming they are promoting ‘deep’ or ‘spiritual’ affirmations of faith. However, they reveal a lack of biblical pursuit to worship the Lord with all of our “heart, soul, and MIND.” (Matt. 22:37) The gospel of Jesus Christ engages the totality of man’s being, including his faculties of reason, emotion, will and intellect.
The Christian faith does not hang with its feet planted firmly in mid-air like relativism.¹ Instead, it is grounded in the propositional truth of Scriptures and in the revelation of Jesus Christ through God’s grace. We must never adopt the ebb and flow of philosophical synthesis in our pursuit of reasonable truth and rational faith. God has spoken. He has spoken clearly. He has spoken in the Bible. And nothing makes more sense than to place our trust in the God who created us and sent His Son to redeem us from our sin.
One such statement is that saving faith or the embracing of biblical truth is a “leap of faith.” Most who would use this term fail to realize that it has its roots in the teachings of Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierrkegard. These two men were responsible for dividing knowledge between reason and non-reason, applying the later to religious conviction and faith, and stating that faith is outside of rational verification and pursuit, and thereby giving rise to what became known as existentialism in the philosophical world, and Barthianism or Neo-Orthodoxy in the theological world. Of course, those who promote these epistemological dangers fail to see that they have committed the error of using reason to discount and reject reason. (Self-defeating) Continue reading “Faith is NOT a Leap”