Here’s why I think that my concern is relevant: we are talking about a believer who is struggling with her faith, one who has accepted Christianity, but has some doubts for one reason or another. I’m not so much concerned with the specific arguments for Christianity, as what doctrines of assurance could possibly offer this person. This person, in starting to doubt Christian claims, would also thereby doubt her salvation. She might see herself as possibly part of the reprobate, but without being able to simply look to God for relief because of the specific problem besieging her.

Also, while I have been separating out general Christian truth claims from claims about salvation, this is not really how it is; the truth claims entail certain things about this believer and her own salvation. Therefore it seems that either a) we’re getting the doctrine of salvation wrong (which we won’t get into here), or b) doubting one’s salvation simply is a doubting of certain Christian truths. Therefore, I don’t think that it is a different kind of problem, merely a different degree of doubt.

It seems to me that assurance in your definition, then, necessarily entails assurance in mine. Here’s my position:

(1) Assurance means that “someone confident (and certain?) in her faith is certain of salvation through God’s promises and covenant relationship,” as agreed in the last post.

(2) One can only be as confident in God’s promises as one is that these promises are actual.

(3) Assurance means that one is certain of God’s promises, from (1).

(4) Assurances entails that one is certain that God has promised, from (2) and (3).

And so, assurance implies that I am certain (and not merely that I believe, but with doubts) that the truths of Christianity are real. This is the point at which I am stuck. For this reason, I consider it a pastoral problem as well as an intellectual one (in general, intellectual problems are for me practical ones; I wouldn’t really be struggling with it if I didn’t care about the answer). Now, perhaps many people in the church do not have to worry about these issues, and for them what you have outlined is enough. But is assurance only for those who stay ignorant of the competing truth claims, and the force behind them? For these, we are not bringing in Pelagianism; the problem is already there, and telling them to look to God’s promises is only covering over the issue rather than solving it, and asking of them an impossible work, one possibly even immoral insofar as it asks them to deny what they see of the truth for some peace of mind. (Side question: would a view of assurance in which it is granted in inverse proportion to ignorance render it suspect?)

I guess the alternative would be that someone has existential certainty in God’s saving grace; this person would know that there are competing views, other people with as much in the way of rational backing, other people who feel just as certain with as much grounding for their own views, and yet this person would have subjective certainty. I guess this would be possible, but it seems to throw up the spectre of fideism. At this point, I would have to ask as an outsider who does not enjoy such assurance, why your view instead of something else? Or, why hold to any view of assurance at all?

Coming from my standpoint, then, telling one to look to God when a loved one dies, could be just plain cruel without more said. The way much of the church runs with regard to this matter effectively shuts many out of its life, which is why I talk about this as a pastoral problem. The assurance of the faithful, if it is only fideistic, effectively renders that faith unshareable, ungiveable to those seeking help, unless God waves his hand and makes everything better (which brings in the charge of arbitrariness, as well as raising the question of why any of the natural struggle of life has a point).

So, that’s why I think that the question concerning certainty of faith is important to the question concerning assurance, and why this is an issue for the practical life of the church as well as professional philosophers. Of course, I’m not terribly keen on the Reformed perspective and its cousins, so we’ll probably simply disagree; even so, however, I would like to hear your perspective on these matters.

I take assurance to be certainty in one’s faith, where that faith is in the gospel promises of salvation. One can have faith without assurance: such a person would have doubts, but on the whole would be better considered as a believer than not.

Now, it seems that you consider assurance to be the following: someone confident (and certain?) in her faith is certain of salvation through God’s promises and covenant relationship. Someone without assurance would be someone who has a stable (and even possibily certain?) faith in the overall Christian message, but lacking it with regard to their own salvation. Is this correct, or how off am I?

Thank you guys very much for continuing to interact with me on this important issue. I think that we may be differing on what is the problem when one is confronted by doubts and shaky faith. I’m not talking about someone who merely has trouble believing that they are fit to receive the Gospel promises; I’m talking about someone who has significant doubts about the truth of the Christian story at its roots, who really wonders whether a God exists, whether Christ was our Saviour, whether God has spoken (and if God has, then what God has said). Given this, what could help this person come to assurance (and you’re right, James, in saying that the theologian and the philosopher are coming from different ngles here).

Jim – So, my problem is this: when one is concerned over whether God has even spoken in the first place, what can be said? I guess I would define fideism not as holding that belief makes something true, but as assuming the Christian message to be true in the first place in order to show that it is true, and that assurance is warranted. So, S.K.’s leap of faith does this to an extent (there is a gap between eternal truths and truths of history which reason cannot bridge), although he does significant work showing why one should make that leap (in particular, everyone else is victim to despair).

In order to escape this, however, I would need to see that there is a rational basis for believing that God has spoken, that not only is God faithful to His promises, but that God has given them in the first place, and the the rational evidence for this beats out evidence for other faiths. Perhaps this is not possible, but if it is not, then one really does have to make an irrational leap for assurance’s sake.

P.S. – Concerning the comment about being a “heathen philosopher,” I was simply noting my different stance on these issues from the theologians in the room, and my training largely in philosophy rather than theology or biblical studies.

James – You said, “What counts it seems is not our knowledge of whether we have met certain criteria, but ultimately whether God has in fact saved us.” I’m having trouble getting beyond the “us” part in that last statement; as long as that is there, I’m not sure how we can escape knowledge of self as part of assurance. And it would seem that although assurance is not reducible to propositional knowledge (a point against which I have no argument), it still must rely on some content. If, for example, I were to believe propositionally that there is no God but Allah, and that Muhammad is his prophet, I would assume that I would not then be able to have assurance in Jesus Christ (though if we were to take an “anonymous Christian” approach, perhaps this could be possible).

There then always seems to be a set of “us,” which contains the saved, and the complementary set which contains everyone else. So, the set of “us” might be saved completely in virtue of God, but my assurance still is dependent on whether I am in that set. Maybe my being in that set is dependent on whether I simply look to God for my assurance, but in order to have assurance in this assurance, to know that I can take this step, I need more grounding. Does this make sense?

Thanks for your persistence on the issue of assurance….I believe it is critical, and not just a “secondary” issue.

You did throw me a curve, however, with your aside about “heathen philosopher ears”; since I don’t know you like James does (from your TEDS days together), I’m not sure how to “digest” that comment (!).

So, let’s try a philosophical tangent: You posited,
“Of course, I can say [my assurance] is actually grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but unless I take the fideist leap, my own assurance is only as strong as my claims that JC actually died for our sins, died, and rose again on the third day.” [emphasis added]

I’m not sure if you were alluding to Kirkegaard when you used the phrase “the fideist leap.” Perhaps a good “lay” definition of fideism would be, the mindset that “If I believe strongly enough in a given proposition, it is true.” It was Kirkegaard who made famous the phrase “leap of faith” to characterize the existential crisis that confronts the individual who has traversed the “aesthetic” and “ethical” stages of life yet still cannot find lasting meaning beyond the grave. However, I do not at all equate Kirkegaard’s “leap of faith” with the notion of fideism, which is not rational faith and therefore cannot be accompanied by true assurance.

My understanding (and I am not an expert on K.) is that his “leap of faith” denoted releasing one’s trust in the inauspicious “aesthetic” or “ethical” promise of lasting significance in favor of believing the promises of God. Kirkegaard’s ingenious way of sharpening this distinction was his legendary thought experiment about the various hypothetical responses of Abraham to the promises of God when he was instructed to sacrifice Isaac (I believe it was entitled Fear and Trembling).

Romans 4 is the biblical counterpart of Kirkegaard’s thought experiment; it explains the relation between faith and assurance in Abraham’s case, and how that then becomes paradigmatic for all those who believe after Abraham’s pattern—it clearly is a rational faith based on a real communicative act of God and accompanied by assurance: When Abraham “believed God, it was credited to him as righteousness” (Rom 4:4), “and being fully convinced that what He had promised He was also able to perform. And therefore ‘it was accounted to him for righteousness’” (Rom 4:22-23). Faith and assurance are both spoken of as the human counterparts of Abraham’s justification in the eyes of God.

Abraham was asked to believe in the promises of a God who speaks—it wasn’t a matter of how “strong” his faith was but rather what he believed or didn’t believe. Once he believed in the “what” of God’s promise he was assured. The promise of a “seed” in Isaac who would propagate Abraham’s line was “backed up” by God’s implied promise of resurrection if Isaac should die (Heb 11:17-19). God’s promises to Abraham were later followed by his unprecedented deliverance of Israel from death through the Passover and Exodus—a tangible picture of death and resurrection.

As far as I know there is nothing comparable to these kinds of communicative acts by a divine being in the study of comparative religion. Now that Christ has died and been raised by God from the dead, we have another unprecedented and unparalleled communicative act in the person of Jesus that we can believe or not. When we truly believe—yes or no—we have assurance, because it is the Spirit who at once regenerates and assures us the moment we believe. That doesn’t mean we can’t subsequently lose our assurance when we don’t “walk according to the Spirit.”

I see in this construct neither divine arbitrariness nor universalism. We are trusting in a promise of a God who has acted, not in some “character attribute” like justice that may or may not also be seen in Buddha or Allah or some other deity. We are not trusting in “my claims that JC actually died for our sins, died, and rose again on the third day.” We are trusting in a speaking God’s claim to provide eternal life in His son. Once we believe that, we then come to recognize God’s attributes through his spoken revelation and that we have been comissioned to exemplify his love and mediate his redemptive purposes to a fallen world, just like Abraham and the nation Israel.

Have I again committed “obfuscation”? I pray not.

I think that this is my problem with the claims of assurance and trust in God: they seem (at least to my heathen philosopher ears; I’m probably not exactly the ideal test case for pastoral counseling issues) to be avoiding the problem, rather than solving it. So, Jim, when I claim to have assurance in Christ, what grounds that assurance? In other words, how do I have assurance in that assurance, without taking the fideist road out and saying that it’s simply true, and that since it’s true I can trust it? Of course, I can say that is actually grounded in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but unless I take the fideist leap, my own assurance is only as strong as my claims that JC actually died for our sins, died, and rose again on the third day.

And similarly with the promises of God: as long as they have anything to do with our belief (again, even though that be the work of God in us rather than our own work), that belief is relevant. Even if Christ as the object of that faith is the most important part, the conditions which bring it about that Christ is the object of faith are essential. So, we’re either back to hoping in God’s more general goodness and justice, or we’re struggling over whether we ourselves are part of the covenant and so part of the redeemed; the function of the statement “Look to Christ” would seem to be merely perlocutive, that is effecting a greater faith in Christ without solving the intellectual difficulty for those who have trouble taking that step.

The alternative would seem to be that for assurance, Christ alone irregardless of our faith is what matters. But then, this ends up either in divine arbitrariness, where there is no correlation between life and judgment (and so, a cause for fear and dread), or in universalism (which appears to me to be substantially more attractive, though not without problems).

Anyhow, that’s where I’m coming from right now. I’d looking forward to hearing everyone’s insight into the matter; I’m probably overlooking something.

P.S. James – I’ve started Beauty of the Infinite a couple times, but never finished it. Is that where Hart talks about the whole ontological thing? While I find him to be an interesting read, I don’t think that my analytical side would be quite satisfied with his approach, other than as a starting place.

Jim – Thanks for the stuff on assurance. I’m not quite sure that I’m following your answer, but it’s really getting into apologetics and epistemology and stuff, so I’d rather not hash it out on this post.

Kent – Also, thanks for your response. I’m all for a view of God in which God is on an ontologically different plane than us; I just am still trying to work out how that avoids the problems associated with the free will debates. It seems to me that most “solutions” really just end back at compatibilism of one sort or another (although whether or not this is itself a problem is another concern), or unite the levels of being through vagueness (and therefore do not explain how things work, or even if they could work). In particular, both instrumentality and final causes quite easily lend themselves to a disguised determinism. I am currently trying to work through the thought of Duns Scotus, though, since if his plan is coherent, I think it would succeed.

In general – While I’ve seen many people talking about simply trusting in the promises of God concerning the state of the person, I would like to know more specifically what these may be. Now, I would think that we could trust God’s justice, in that whatever God does will be just, and according to Biblical notions of justice unopposed to mercy. We could also trust God’s goodness, that whatever God will do will be maximally good. Beyond this, however, the more specific promises concerning salvation seem to rely on the individual’s actions (whether brought forward by the individual, or by God, or by both), and so we seem to end up back where we started. Are the promises of God his general nature as outlined in Scripture, or something more specific?