“No one has seen the Father at any time but the Son…All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him…If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him”…with…John 17

Our faith goes beyond forensics. Yes there is evidence, for we have not followed cleaverly devised fables. But, Christ himself did many miracles, and was not believed though he provided proof. The remedy for unbelief is no mere existential knowledge, outside of us attested to by some bit of evidence. But, it is in us, as Jesus said:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God…with…John 16”

Our knowledge, eido, is a vital knowledge, not in the past, but is now alive, it is as we see. By union with Christ we become first party witnesses. It is in this that it is not mere faith of the world which is often term blind faith. For ours is one that has been given eyes to see first hand the risen Christ.

Looking back, I did kind of make it seem as though our faith wasn’t so much faith. I will attempt to correct that in further discussions. Of course, we do have real faith, and of course it is granted to us by the Spirit –which is impossible for the unregenerate to understand.

Our knowledge, eido, is a vital knowledge, not in the past, but is now alive, it is as we see. By union with Christ we become first party witnesses. It is in this that it is not mere faith of the world which is often term blind faith. For ours is one that has been given eyes to see first hand the risen Christ.

Dear Thomas
How can you be sure that your inner religious experiences are a genuine encounter with God and not merely a product of your brain/mind? When someone is repeatedly exposed to a particular ideology in a positive context, the human mind may subconsciously create whatever inner subjective feelings endorse that ideology, in order to bond oneself to that ideology’s group of followers …. who may be a group you wish to be associated with in order to fulfill a personal need (such as to feel a sense of belonging). The human brain is constantly and subliminally being bombarded by various factors, which shape our thoughts and beliefs, and which may subtlely generate perceptions and impressions that we could misinterpret as being objective. I used to know a Muslim who said she experienced a beautiful inner relationship with Allah during her times of praying and reciting the Qur’an. How would you explain to Nathan’s anthropology class that your inner relationship with Jesus is a first-hand witness of the supernatural but that my Muslim acquaintance’s experience was a psychological delusion?
Respectfully, …. Phil

How can I know unequivocably? Because I do, as Paul would say, I know him in whom I have believed.

How do you know the things that you have not experienced are true? How do you know you are you? All you have had to say about the mind could apply to your self-perception. You have no proof external that you are truely perceiving reality, only your own inner witness, testifying that you are you, or that the things you know are true, and as you said the sublties of your mind may be deceiving you. Do you know your mother, father, friends; do you know them? How is it that you do? Couldn’t your mind just be fooling you as to your external experiences, and perhaps what you perceive is not reality. Surely then, the things that others have told you about which you have not experienced first hand are even more suspect. How would you know? The reality of Christ follows along the same lines of reason. We know because we know, it is not just that we have been told, either. If you begin to challenge the means by which you know anything you will fall prey to your own rationalizations. You could say that anything others said, such as the anthropology instruction that Nathan is receiving, is invalid because it is not a direct experience, and that others might just be misperceiving their reality and you would not be able to trust the transmission of information, whether they experienced it or not. A schizophenic is convinced of his reality, even the external witness is perceived as he sees it. Others may be able to observe that he is not of his right mind, but how would he know whether they are right about him, seeing that the mind may subtly allow him to believe that they are deceiving him?

My father died when I was five. Was he real? The reality of knowing him is still in my present. I can confirm my father by the testimony of those who also knew him, which is what Nathan was speaking of in illucidating the external witness. That however is inadequate, because, if I do not have eye witness in myself I would have no way of confirming that reality. For you it may not make sense, but we have been given the mind of Christ. So that, we do not merely have the external witness that claims for itself to be the only truth, we have the testimony of another who was an eye witness, and beyond that, we have been made one with that witness so that it is not just external, nor is it a delusion, but a present reality of having been observed personally.

Sure, people have all kinds of experiences, and I do not doubt that they are real, but they are not all the truth. We can examine that reality. Two things may be asserted as true. But if they contradict one another when speaking about the same reality, then, a cannot be non a, all other things being equal; either one or the other is true, or they may both be false. So, how do we know? The external witness is one. We can confirm the Bible without contradiction. We cannot do the same with the Koran or any other religious text outside of Scripture. But, that is still inadequate. Just knowing that truths and that falsehoods exist means nothing if it is not possessed as reality for the individual. We still need an independent witness. That takes something that is beyond the natural. Simply because we are not examining the physical, but spiritual. No examination by physical means without can rule out the experience within, nor can it necessarily confirm it. It is bound by the physical. By necessity confirmation requires a supernatural witness, one from without the nature of the physical bounds of human existence, that establilshes that which is within. The final declaration of truth, must then come from a transcendent source, outside the reality that is being examined. The examining agent cannot be itself, as you astutely point out, because it is confused, if only by its own bias. As with any forensic evaluation we need an unbiased third party witness. But, since it is things which cannot be seen nor tested by natural means, it requires the supernatural.

To answer your question, there is no way to convince the unbeliever. Propositional truths do not work. No one, even Christ’s disciples believed his Word. Evidences do not work, they put Christ to death despite the miracles that testified of his Deity. It takes something else. But, the natural mind cannot receive this truth. To receive it, it must be changed, supernaturally. But, as you have explained, the mind can be self-deceiving, so then, how would one know that one reality is the truth as opposed to another? All inquiry into truth proceeds upon the presupposition that truth exists. But, if we approach epistemology by saying all experience is invalid, we have no basis for proceeding in inquiry. Likewise, if we say that all experiences are valid, the same thing results, we cannot tell the left from the right. We then seek to disprove and rule out what is not true so that we might discover the truth. Still, when all evidences are on the table, we will be one step removed from knowing, because as you said, the mind is wicked and deceitful, who can know it.

The question you ask is then how do we know one from the other? What I said to Nathan then comes into play; it appears to the unbeliever that we have lost our minds. That is exactly what was said of Christ. And the truth is, we have lost ours, and have been given his which is renewing the way we think about all other things.

We can demonstrate what is false in the religious experiences of a Muslim, externally. When it comes down to it then the very thing that we cannot prove, namely, the internal witness of the Holy Spririt, becomes the prover that is sought after by those who do not know Him. We testify that you cannot know what we know, nor can we convince you of it. To paraphrase Morpheus:

…no-one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

But better yet, to quote our Lord:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Thank you

How does one come to support that claim while rejecting the claims of other religions who make similar but competing claims of divine authority from other holy books? What does one look for? Consistency? Historical accuracy? It just “feels” more right?

Well, in addition to what I have already said, that Jesus claimed Divine authority and attested to that by raising from the dead (per Paul’s argument in Acts 17), I’d also answer and say that the Bible is the word of God because it claims to be the word of God. No other evidence is necessary because the Bible is the highest authority; to appeal to something else would be to abandon the very faith I profess.

James said: How does one come to support that claim while rejecting the claims of other religions who make similar but competing claims of divine authority from other holy books?

Well, Jesus raising from the dead is one answer. But ultimately, I’d go to the other religions and try to demonstrate how they are internally inconsistent. The Bible is perfectly consistent with history, man kind, and the world around us.