Our Reasonable Faith

OUR REASONABLE FAITH

Warsaw Christian Church, 9/7/25, Richard Bowman, Pastor Emeritus

Is it reasonable to believe in Christianity, or is it a matter of blind faith? I hope to convince you in this sermon that the Christian worldview can be supported by reason. If Christianity is unreasonable and irrational, why would anyone want to be a Christian? If the God of the Bible is the true and living God, I would expect the Christian revelation to withstand intellectual scrutiny. I have no interest in embracing a religion that is simply a matter of blind irrational faith.

Jesus commanded us to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. You will notice that we are to include the mind in our love for God. And remember 1 Peter 3:15: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have. The Greek word for “answer” is “apologia.” It means to provide a reasonable, logical explanation for why you believe in Jesus. If we fail to give a reasonable explanation for the faith that is in US, several pernicious results are sure to follow.

The first negative result will be a stunted faith. If we are uncertain whether Christianity can stand up under intellectual scrutiny, we will forever have nagging doubts about the claims of Jesus. Many live with the fear that perhaps their Christian faith is not true, an idea that is reinforced in our society by intellectuals in the scientific and philosophical communities regularly. Once we are convinced that Jesus not only lives in our hearts but also that Christianity makes sense to the mind, our faith will be significantly strengthened.

The second negative result is that the harmony between faith and reason is undermined. I have often heard on TV that faith is one thing and reason is another. Our secular society wants to convince us that it is OK for Christians to have faith, but people of reason cannot embrace Christianity. I hope you don’t buy into that lie. While faith and reason are two distinct categories, I hope to persuade you that having faith in the God of the Bible is perfectly reasonable and that denying the God of the Bible is perfectly irrational.

The 3rd negative result is that we open ourselves up to ridicule from the secular world. Atheists enjoy ridiculing Christianity. They see Christianity as a mere superstition, and if we cannot convince the world that our faith is reasonable, the world laughs at us. I have mentioned before that I once sat in a philosophy class at the University of Minnesota, where the professor challenged us. He said, “If you believe in God, give me your reasons, and I will show you how foolish your faith is.” While many of us attended church, no one dared take on this Goliath of unbelief. I am sure that almost any PhD philosophy professor can dismantle the arguments of a college freshman. While I joined the others in keeping my mouth shut on that day, I would now like to answer that professor.

I begin with the ontological argument. This argument for the existence of God takes various forms and has evolved over the years as theologians have wrestled with the problem of accounting for being or reality. Ontos is the Greek word for being. The first to advance the argument was Anselm, who died in 1109 AD. The great theologian of the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, also presented the ontological argument as one of the five arguments that he believed proved the existence of God. We cannot delve into all the intricacies of this argument, as this is not a course in philosophical theology, but rather a brief sermon. This will be the Richard Bowman version of the argument, based on my reading of several ancient, medieval, and modern theologians.

Most of us have at times thought about the origin of reality. We would probably all agree that reality exists. We are surrounded by things that have being. This lectern has being; it exists. I experience the reality of all of you. You have being. You exist. While Hindu theology posits that all reality is an illusion, most of us assume that reality is objective. We look before we cross the street because even if oncoming cars are an illusion and the pain we experience when struck by a car is another illusion, these are illusions we try hard to avoid. It all seems very real to us.

I recall learning a lesson in philosophy from my dad many years ago when I was in college. One evening while we were sitting in the living room, he asked me to turn off a lamp. I decided to try some of what I learned in college on him. I said, “How do you know that the lamp is real? It could be an illusion?” My dad, lacking the sophisticated education I possessed, responded, “How would you feel if I picked up that illusory lamp and hit you over the head with it?” In the end, his common-sense approach prevailed over my courses in philosophy, and I decided not to push the argument any further and turned off the lamp.