A Different Kind of Empiricism

"I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked [...] until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I understood their end." Ps. 73:3, 17

"Then Jesus said unto him, 'Except ye see..., ye will not believe.' The nobleman said unto Him, 'Sir, come down before my child dies.' Jesus said unto him, 'Go thy way; thy son liveth.' And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way." John 4:48-50

Faith is a different kind of empiricism: it is about trusting a person rather than observing things. We trust the testimony of the biblical writers because it is the testimony of God (II Peter 1:20-21), His declaration and revelation of Himself. It is often true that our sight experiences will openly conflict with what God says is true. "I was envious of the foolish...until I went into the sanctuary of God," i.e., only when we take our focus off of the temporal and subjective circumstances around us and place it on the eternal and objective God who is there, only then do we know that what He says is true. Only then do we understand because our hearts and minds are centered on a person and not things.
"Except ye see...ye will not believe" echoes the stance of Thomas (John 20:25) and it echoes most of us today. God does not expect us to see and then believe His word; he expects us to believe His word and no more, to trust that He is who He says He is and that He will do what He said He would do. In addition, if we take the book of Job into account, it seems that God actually favors stacking the deck against Himself. "Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him" (Job 13:15), i.e., though my outward circumstances tell me something different, I will trust the word of the Lord. That is the essence of faith.

-Jon Vowell

Christian Empiricism

"O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man that trusteth in Him." Ps. 34:8

Faith as blindness to the facts is a popular idiocy amongst the fashionably skeptical. It is, however, not the way that the Lord described His relationship with His people. "Prove me now," He says (Mal. 3:10); come with your eyes wide open. So Job said, "I have heard of Thee...but now my eye seeth Thee" (Job 42:5), and the Samaritan woman was told by her fellows, "Now we believe, not because of thy saying; for we have heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world" (John 4:42). Our faith is not assured by the testimony of the blind and ignorant, but by those who said, "That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you" (I John 1:3a).

We do not believe because we were told to without explanation or evidence. We believe because someone said, "Come and see," and we came and saw the revelation of God as recorded by eye-witnesses. Our holy writ is not mere maxims and creeds. On a spiritual level, it is a conduit of the fiery presence and power of God (Heb. 4:12); but even on a purely physical level, it is still not a book of maxims or creeds. It is a record of those who both saw and heard that which we never did, so that we "might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that [by] believing, ye might have life through His name" (John 20:31). We do not believe in the goodness of God (or anything of God) a priori, nor does God want us to. His command is that we taste with our mouths and see with our eyes and thereby know with our minds.

-Jon Vowell