The Reasons to Believe #24

Our Reasons to Believe quote for today is from Blaise Pascal. He said, "There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."

Our Reasons to Believe Scripture passage for today is Isaiah 50:4. It reads, "The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned."

Our Reason to Believe powerpoint today is titled "Faith and Reason" (part 5) from "The Handbook of Christian Apologetics" by Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli:

Faith begins in that obscure mysterious center of our being that Scripture calls the "heart." Heart in Scripture (and in the church fathers, especially Augustine) does not mean feeling or sentiment or emotion, but the absolute center of the soul, as the physical heart is at the center of the body. The heart is where God the Holy Spirit works in us. This is not specifiable as a kind of interior object, as emotions, intellect, and will are, because it is the very self, the I, the subject, the one whose emotions and mind and will they are.

"Keep your heart with all vigilance," advised Solomon, "for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23). With the heart we choose our "fundamental option" of yes or no to God, and thereby determine our eternal identity and destiny.

The faith-works controversy that sparked the Protestant Reformation was due largely to an equivocation on the word faith. If we use "faith" as Catholic theology does and as Paul did in 1 Corinthians 13 --- that is, if we mean intellectual faith --- then faith alone is not sufficient for salvation, for as James 2:19 says, "Even the demons believe---and shudder." Hope, and above all love, need to be added to faith. But if we use "faith" as Luther did, and as Paul did in Romans and Galatians, that is, as heart-faith, then this is saving faith. It is sufficient for salvation, for it necessarily produces the good works of love just as a good tree necessarily produces good fruit. Protestants and Catholics agree on this. The Pope even told the German Lutheran bishops so over a decade ago, and they were startled and delighted. The two churches issued a public Joint Statement on Justification, a statement of agreement. Protestants and Catholics do not have essentially different religions, different ways of salvation. There are real and important differences, but this most central issue is not one of them.