Proper Confidence

Faith, Doubt, and Certainty in Christian Discipleship

LESSLIE NEWBIGIN

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Grand Rapids, Michigan

© 1995 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 978-0-8028-0856-1

www.eerdmans.com

Faith alone is certainty. Everything but faith is subject to doubt. Jesus Christ alone is the certainty of faith.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics

Contents

1. Faith as the Way to Knowledge

2. Doubt as the Way to Certainty

3. Certainty as the Way to Nihilism

4. Knowing God

5. By Grace Alone

6. Holy Scripture

7. Through Faith Alone

1

Faith as the Way to Knowledge

Anyone who attends to the discussions, debates, and controversies among Christians in this last decade of the second millennium is familiar with the issue I wish to address in this short essay. The words “liberal” and “fundamentalist” are used today not so much to identify oneself as to label the enemy. From one side comes the accusation that the mind of the fundamentalist is closed, shuttered against the possibility of doubt and therefore against the recognition of hitherto unrecognized truth. From the other side comes the charge that liberals are so open to new ideas that they have no firm commitments at all, that every affirmation of faith must be held only tentatively, and that every dogma must, as a matter of principle, be challenged. There are terms of moral opprobrium that each side employs to attack the other: the fundamentalist is arrogant, blinkered, and culturally illiterate; the liberal is flabby, timid, and carried along by every new fashion of thought. From the point of view of the fundamentalist, doubt is sin; from the point of view of the liberal, the capacity for doubt is a measure of intellectual integrity and honesty.

In addition to ascribing these accusations, labels, and genuine differences over doubt to both sides in this quarrel, it is also right to ascribe moral virtues to them: Liberalism at its best is marked by an open mind which is humble and ready to learn. Fundamentalism at its best is marked by a moral courage which holds fast to the truth even when it is assailed by counterclaims from without. In the currently prevailing atmosphere of relativism, where one does not speak of “what is true” but rather of what is “meaningful for me”; where one does not speak of right and wrong but of values; it is right and proper that there should be protest, and it is natural that this should lead to demands for absolute standards and certain truth. When everything in religion seems to be reduced to subjective experience, it is natural that there should be a demand for the affirmation of objective truth. Yet how can this affirmation be made without falling into the opposite error of arrogance, obscurantism, and fundamentalism? How can we develop, in respect of religious belief, minds which ...