 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Theological Q&A > re: Modes distinction "fides qua" vs "fides quae" | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 1/27/2005 6:41 AM (GMT -6) |   | MephEternal said...
Laika:
Mephi, I thought Corey and Selah were asking you what the basis/grounds of your faith was, now that you've been chucking hugh chunks of scripture out the window. No one is questioning your faith or zeal for or anything, just what are you basing it on now?
Hmmmm...I know I've said this before. My faith is fundamentally grounded on my EXPERIENCE with a being that I have reasons to believe is the Risen Christ. Kind of a "Paul on Damascus Road" experience. The context (sociolinguistic context, time in my life, etc) in which I had the experience (and from whence I interpreted the experience) seemed to validate that is WAS the Triune God I was experiencing. The experience dealt with a powerful force and speech...thus my fundamental belief in a speaking, ACTING God. After looking at the Christians scriptures, I gathered that the Biblical God would INDEED act in this way. In short, my experience not only VALIDATED my belief in God's reality, but also allowed me to further grant authority to scripture...even as being in a Christian community of faith historically, in some way, informed the very interpretation of my experience.
Longer story short, because this experience--and continued experiences--ground my faith, I have absolutely no problem being as critical as I am with scripture and theologizing from it. My experience forms the innermost core of the content of my fides quae. [Digression: This, I feel, is by NO means new. I bet Abraham's innermost core was God telling him to get out of his father's house. I bet Moses' innermost core was his experience at the burning bush. I bet Paul's innermost core was his Damascus experience. In this way, I feel like my experience is par for the course] From there, my central fides quae in which I place total fides qua lies in the existence of a speaking, acting triune God revealed in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, who is also the Christ.
Everything else (the historicity of Adam and Eve, Jonah, or Esther, inerrancy, etc) is up for discussion.
Because my very faith is not BASED on certain views of inspiration, modernistic apologetics, or a theological system...I can feel free to VERY CRITICALLY examine a lot of the sacred cows out there and have my beliefs challenged without fear...which, unfortunately, makes me to some people a "loose cannon"...
And...I...love...it. [img]/emoticons/cool.gif[/img]
How's this for explanation.
[img]/emoticons/devil.gif[/img]
hmmmm. If I had a nickel for every mormon who claimed their "experience" proved the book of mormon true... I'd have about 2 bucks! ha.
"You may have experienced feelings of peace, hope, comfort, or happiness as you’ve read. If so, you have already felt the Holy Ghost telling you that these things are true. http://www.mormon.org/learn/0,8672,1106-1,00.html
come on...really? This is what grounds it for you?
 >>>>feelingsssss woe woe woe feeeeeeeeeeeeelings...
mt. 5:17 "Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 "For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 "Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
psalm 108:4 | | Back to Top | | |
 |
selah
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2001
Total Posts : 1210
| Posted 1/27/2005 7:44 AM (GMT -6) | | Alan: Forgive me, but I'm not sure I follow, Selah. I do not think the being/doing distinction precisely captures or parallels the quae/qua distinction. Active trust (qua) does of course involve an act of will, but I don't think this has to manifest itself in constant activity or business. Sometimes just being still and leaning on God can be an expression of our trust in God. Similarly, both mere believing and active trusting can be modes of being--we might say of someone, for example, that they ARE trusting in God.
selah: Ok. forget the being/doing idea. I think what I'm getting at is the single-mindedness and solidification thing. By "being" I meant solid, consistent, still. (I shouldn't read and write in a hurry!)
Alan: As for "solidification of our qua", I would suppose that to mean that our trust in God can become more stable, more consistent, less wavering. I think this unlikely to happen if the content of our faith, what we believe (quae), is not genuinely in sync with and supportive of what we are actively trusting in (qua). As someone has said, the heart cannot long rejoice in what the mind rejects as sheer fantasy.
selah exactly.
Alan: On the idea of single-mindedness, I think God wants our head and our heart (and our whole being) to be in sync with each other and with the reality of God and His creation. Anything less reflects, I think, a kind of insanity, a kind of cognitive, affective, and existential dissonance.
selah Right. Cognitive dissonance. The scripture I was referring to when I suggested the idea of "being" was James 1:4-7 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. 6 But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; 7 for the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.
FAITH that will have its "full effect" be "mature and COMPLETE" and "lacking in nothing" doesn't seem to include cognitive dissonance. Hyperbole or not, I get the sense that through time we should become more solidified not more confused. (my experience seems to confirm this...rather than the other way around.)
Thanks for your help!!!
love
selah
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Modes,
Hey, thanks for belaboring. Really. I'm takin it all in.
I think Alan hit it on the head when he said "cognitive dissonance." (well, he also used "insanity" but... I'm not touchin that  ) Maybe you can help me understand how we can have faith AND cognitive dissonance at the same time...
Please understand that I "get" the reality that we all ebb and flow to some degree. I'm speaking of a persistent mind-set though - a center. One that is solidified through time and experience.
Check out your words from the other thread - this is where I get confused:
Modes: To my mind, true faith must have fides qua but may be quite wrong about much in the fides quae area. Though there must be some content to the faith being expressed.
selah: just sounds double minded to me...
love
selah
For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches to the clouds.
psalm 108:4Post Edited (Selah) : 1/28/2005 4:03:53 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/27/2005 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
Laika:
Mephi, I thought Corey and Selah were asking you what the basis/grounds of your faith was, now that you've been chucking hugh chunks of scripture out the window. No one is questioning your faith or zeal for or anything, just what are you basing it on now?
Hmmmm...I know I've said this before. My faith is fundamentally grounded on my EXPERIENCE with a being that I have reasons to believe is the Risen Christ. Kind of a "Paul on Damascus Road" experience. The context (sociolinguistic context, time in my life, etc) in which I had the experience (and from whence I interpreted the experience) seemed to validate that is WAS the Triune God I was experiencing. The experience dealt with a powerful force and speech...thus my fundamental belief in a speaking, ACTING God. After looking at the Christians scriptures, I gathered that the Biblical God would INDEED act in this way. In short, my experience not only VALIDATED my belief in God's reality, but also allowed me to further grant authority to scripture...even as being in a Christian community of faith historically, in some way, informed the very interpretation of my experience.
I bet Abraham's innermost core was God telling him to get out of his father's house. I bet Moses' innermost core was his experience at the burning bush. I bet Paul's innermost core was his Damascus experience. In this way, I feel like my experience is par for the course] From there, my central fides quae in which I place total fides qua lies in the existence of a speaking, acting triune God revealed in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, who is also the Christ.
Experience first, scripture "informed" your experience, OK. Buddhists, for example, could say the same thing, obviously.
But I'm OK with it. I know a Pakistani lady who reasoned that the Zorastrianism of her parents was not true, reasoned that the Catholicism she'd encountered was not true and eventually found Jesus through some Protestant missionaries. God is working in many different ways.
MephEternal said...
Because my very faith is not BASED on certain views of inspiration, modernistic apologetics, or a theological system...I can feel free to VERY CRITICALLY examine a lot of the sacred cows out there and have my beliefs challenged without fear...which, unfortunately, makes me to some people a "loose cannon"...
How do you do evangelism and apologetics in the service of evangelism?
 Post Edited (Laika) : 1/27/2005 7:08:24 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 1/27/2005 8:32 AM (GMT -6) | | While I share the concern that our faith must not be primarily grounded in experience, I think it's clear that miracles (which would be both factual evidence and experience) were considered signs confirming the message of Christ in the New Testament period.
I know that for me personally, the fact that our family has experienced some totally astounding miracles that could never be explained by any other means than divine intervention (like my older brother's cleft palate defect being healed by new flesh and bone growing over the defect after he was prayed for at a healing crusade when he was seven) has always made atheism or even deism totally absurd to me.
I also know that my own experiences with God have produced in me an absolutely unshakeable faith in His existence, power, and benevolent character. That said, I haven't had any experiences with God that I couldn't find scriptural support for.
Not saying experience alone is enough, but for me at least, I have never been able to take seriously the idea that God doesn't exist, that he isn't all-powerful, and that he isn't benevolent. When I read stories of former evangelical Christians who have turned their back on the faith due to what they found to be irreconciliable discrepancies in scripture, I am always reminded of the undeniable ways God has revealed himself to me in my life, always consistent with scripture.
I think it would be more accurate to say that our faith is to be grounded in GOD. People whose faith is grounded only in scripture (in a fundamentalistic fashion), tend to lose their faith entirely when they find out there is even just one factual inaccuracy in scripture.
John Post Edited (JEE) : 1/27/2005 7:38:23 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 1/27/2005 8:42 AM (GMT -6) | | | In the first few verses of 1 John, commentators I've studied have all said that what John was aiming at by referring to their handling, seeing, etc., of Christ was incipient docetism (the idea that Christ was only an apparition and not truly flesh and blood). | | Back to Top | | |
|
Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/27/2005 8:53 AM (GMT -6) | |
MephEternal said...
Laika:
Mephi, I thought Corey and Selah were asking you what the basis/grounds of your faith was, now that you've been chucking hugh chunks of scripture out the window. No one is questioning your faith or zeal for or anything, just what are you basing it on now?
Hmmmm...I know I've said this before. My faith is fundamentally grounded on my EXPERIENCE with a being that I have reasons to believe is the Risen Christ. Kind of a "Paul on Damascus Road" experience.
Perhaps surprisingly, I am actually quite sympathetic to this description. This may be what Plantinga had in mind with his argument that theistic belief can be properly basic. If Meph had such an encounter with God, it would be improper (nay, nearly impossible) FOR HIM to doubt it. This is a proper basis for personal faith (fides qua).
Now, for the rest of us, we who don't have direct access to what Meph experienced, we are not obliged to be so compelled. As Modes has described to me, while it was proper for Abraham to proceed toward sacrificing Isaac (since this command was given to him in a properly basic way), for the rest of us it would be our duty to tackle the bastard and lock him up as a deranged man intent on killing his son!
Post Edited (Corey) : 1/27/2005 8:23:19 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/27/2005 9:24 AM (GMT -6) | |
Corey said...
MephEternal said...
Laika:
Mephi, I thought Corey and Selah were asking you what the basis/grounds of your faith was, now that you've been chucking hugh chunks of scripture out the window. No one is questioning your faith or zeal for or anything, just what are you basing it on now?
Hmmmm...I know I've said this before. My faith is fundamentally grounded on my EXPERIENCE with a being that I have reasons to believe is the Risen Christ. Kind of a "Paul on Damascus Road" experience.
Perhaps surprisingly, I am actually quite sympathetic to this description. This may be what Plantinga had in mind with his argument that theistic belief can be properly basic. If Meph had such an encounter with God, it would be improper (nay, nearly impossible) FOR HIM to doubt it. This is a proper basis for personal faith (fides qua).
Yes, but in a marketplace of competing ideas, who's experience is based on something valid and who's isn't?
Amida Buddha met me on the Tokaido, why do I need Jesus? Corey replies, ".............."
| | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 1/27/2005 9:27 AM (GMT -6) | | Corey: (emphasis mine)
Perhaps surprisingly, I am actually quite sympathetic to this description. This may be what Plantinga had in mind with his argument that theistic belief can be properly basic. If Meph had such an encounter with God, it would be improper (nay, nearly impossible) FOR HIM to doubt it. This is a proper basis for personal faith (fides qua).
EXACTAMUNDO.
That's why, in my opinion, rationalistic apologetics can ONLY get one so far. This is why I believe that faith is NOT a deduction from logical theories. Yes, they can help remove unnecessary barriers to faith...but they can't take us al the way there. Evangelism is ultimately BEARING WITNESS to Christ....living out the faith one has received from that.
Good show, Corey.
[Digression: I think this is why so many evangelicals spend so much time trying to erect these electric fences around the bible's total veracity. Because to them, WITHOUT THAT, there is no sure foundation. I wish more people were neo-orthodox when it came to this. They'd be better off. Reading scripture truly CAN BE an experience with God.]
"I've been converted three times. The first was to traditional Christianity; the second to honesty and the third was to the Love of God and man (humanity) The third was the real conversion. The first two were preliminary."
--Nels Ferre, a theologian speaking of his spiritual journey with the Triune God
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/27/2005 9:31 AM (GMT -6) | |
Laika said...
Yes, but in a marketplace of competing ideas, who's experience is based on something valid and who's isn't?
Amida Buddha met me on the Tokaido, why do I need Jesus? Corey replies, ".............." Corey replies: "Bullsh__"
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/27/2005 9:34 AM (GMT -6) | |
Corey said...
Laika said...
Yes, but in a marketplace of competing ideas, who's experience is based on something valid and who's isn't?
Amida Buddha met me on the Tokaido, why do I need Jesus? Corey replies, ".............." Corey replies: "Bullsh__"
That's how you evangelize?
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/27/2005 9:46 AM (GMT -6) | |
Corey said...Sorry, it was a weak attempt at a little humor. Of course I would not be that rude! But my basic position would be intense skepticism.
Because it didn't match up with your experience or because of some rational basis for your faith, external to you?
Yes, fides quae without experience is worthless, but so is fides qua based on error.
"Yoko lured 'im away"
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/27/2005 10:02 AM (GMT -6) | |
Laika said...
Because it didn't match up with your experience or because of some rational basis for your faith, external to you?
Yes, fides quae without experience is worthless, but so is fides qua based on error. I would be skeptical because for me this belief would not rise to the level of having warrant. I am sympathetic to Meph because I too have directly experienced God (hasn't any Christian, really?), and it seems entirely plausible that others have experience this too. I myself have not experienced Amida Buddha, so I don't have any grounds such a an experience exists.
I KNOW this rationale would not compel the buddhist to abandon his beliefs. What I believe the buddhist WOULD find compelling is if had a direct experience himself of God, and usually this starts by experiencing God's love reflected through us.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
JEE
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2004
Total Posts : 1466
| Posted 1/27/2005 10:08 AM (GMT -6) | | I have personally known several Buddhists who were absolutely firm in their conviction that their religion was truth, whether they believed in God or not; not all Buddhists believe in a deity, though all believe in karma, dharma, chanting to effect a change, and so forth.
Point being, virtually every believer in every religion makes claims based on their experience. In some way, it could be simply a reflection of self-fulfillling prophecies, but in the end it would appear that basing one's faith on one's experiences alone is simply what everybody does, regardless of their particular religion. Given that, who's to say the Christian faith is truth?
JohnPost Edited (JEE) : 1/27/2005 9:12:52 AM (GMT-6) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Corey
Five with a Four-wing
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1893
| Posted 1/27/2005 10:15 AM (GMT -6) | |
JEE said...
I have personally known several Buddhists who were absolutely firm in their conviction that their religion was truth, whether they believed in God or not; not all Buddhists believe in a deity, though all believe in karma, dharma, chanting to effect a change, and so forth.
Point being, virtually every believer in every religion makes claims based on their experience. In some way, it could be simply a reflection of self-fulfillling prophecies.
John
Granted.
But when such a person is confronted with a true experience of God, they will see for themselves that they were wrong/deceived before and either harden themselves or repent in faith.
I'm coming out of a long tradition of doing evangelism by attempting to convince people to accept Christ. Today, I want do evangelism by helping people encounter Christ.
| | Back to Top | | |
|
Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 1/27/2005 10:27 AM (GMT -6) | |
Corey said...
JEE said...
I have personally known several Buddhists who were absolutely firm in their conviction that their religion was truth, whether they believed in God or not; not all Buddhists believe in a deity, though all believe in karma, dharma, chanting to effect a change, and so forth.
Point being, virtually every believer in every religion makes claims based on their experience. In some way, it could be simply a reflection of self-fulfillling prophecies.
John
Granted.
But when such a person is confronted with a true experience of God, they will see for themselves that they were wrong/deceived before and either harden themselves or repent in faith.
I'm coming out of a long tradition of doing evangelism by attempting to convince people to accept Christ. Today, I want do evangelism by helping people encounter Christ.
Any encounter they have with God, they will attribute to the god they've already had an encounter unless you get them to engage their mind as well. Prove to them that it's your God they've encountered, not theirs.
You need both, an experiential faith along with a rational basis for it.
And, you need to present both, imho.
I can see where people get their strong emphasis of just providing aid and assisstance.
But to people who have no needs, have their shite together, what do you present to them?
Not hungry, not homeless, not lonely, not shoeless, not sick...... don't need any assisstance. What do you offer to them? 
I mean, besides that!
| | Back to Top | | |
| 87 posts in this thread.
Viewing Page : 1 2 3 4 |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:48 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|