Comments on: Functional Faith (4) - Meaning

By: Gil

Gil — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 14:19:51 +0000

I agree with Ryan. I would add that I do believe the God revealed in Jesus Christ is the most authentic revelation of God available. If I didn’t believe that, why I would call myself a Christian. But that certainly does not authenticate every ‘experience’ that claims to be Christian’.

By: ryan

ryan — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:20:59 +0000

I think it is important to note that calling a religious experience “Christian” does not thereby authenticate that experience. Most of us who have grown up in some dialogue with the Christian tradition can probably point to numerous instances where people claimed to be having an experience of God when on most other people’s views that was quite clearly not the case.

I think that Christians can have false experiences of God and non-Christians can have true ones. Our ability to properly identify or label these experiences does not affect the truth value of the experience. If a Christian has a ‘religious experience’ whereby it was divinely communicated to them that they needed a Lexus to boost their self-esteem (I’m not making this up, believe it or not!) I would say that this experience is false, just as I would say that someone who claimed to have a ‘religious experience’ from some non-Christian source which told them to love God and love their neighbour as themselves, had a true experience of God. I think that there is a fairly strong stream of thinking within Christianity that would affirm that God does not restrict his revelation or influence to those within the confines of institutional Christianity.

By: jc

jc — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 03:26:17 +0000

then i suppose if you believe the christian God to be the only true God then only experiences of Him would be authentic. people of other faiths who claim experience would be claiming false experiences. so that may be what is unique about the christian faith… authentic religious experience. agree?

By: Gil

Gil — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:33:48 +0000

JC,
I think that referring to faith as ‘trying to understand the idea of God’ would not be enough. I was meaning our knowledge of God along with our experience of God (however pronounced or limited that experience might be).

By: Jared

Jared — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:22:38 +0000

watch out gil! someone might hold you accontable for what you say, who knows you might even get sued!!

By: jc

jc — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 08:05:22 +0000

what do you mean by ‘human experience of the divine?’ is that the same thing as experiencing the presence of another human or do you mean trying to understand the idea of God?

By: Gil

Gil — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 22:15:22 +0000

Jessica,
I agree that the term ‘faith’ in this kind of context can be very ambiguous. I don’t hold the term ‘faith’ to be one that would refer only the the Christian faith. I think we’ve gravitated toward ‘faith’ as a culture because it seems more ‘neutral’ than actually mentioning the name of God.

I’m not sure there’s a way to avoid this in a context of pluralism. ‘Faith’ will always refer to the human experience of the divine. I worry a bit about the long term effects of this shift in vocabulary - if our conversations about religion focus exclusively on the human dimension of that reality, then God eventually becomes a figment of our imaginations (at least in our public conversations).

By: Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 16:22:36 +0000

Just a question that popped into my mind from reading your last few posts - and I know you’ve kind of answered this already…
Do you think that the actual term/word “faith” is unique to Christianity? Can one correctly refer to the beliefs of another religion using the term “faith”? I think that the Christian meaning of faith is definately unique, but I wonder if the word itself is somehow unique to Christianity…