Testing faith and testing God.
I was recently pondering 1 Thes 5:21, where the Apostle Paul instructs us to "test everything", which seems to include God. But according to Deut 6:16 we must not test God. So there appears to be a contradiction.
One way out of this is to appeal to the context of 1 Thes 5:21, to say that Paul was speaking in vs. 20 about prophecies, and so the "everything" in "test everything" should be restricted to refer only to prophecies. Or, we could appeal to the context of Deut 6:16, claiming that the "test" there refers to the behavior of Israel at Massah---which consisted not of "testing", but more of a doubt that God will provide and grumbling against their leader Moses.
But I think there is a better way to resolve the contradiction. It does seem right to me that we ought to have evidence for everything which we believe, and so we ought to test everything, where "everything" refers to everything. And, Deut 6:16 is cited in other situations (such as Matt 4) in ways that make "test" seem to refer to testing.
So, I think it really is improper to test God. And, at the same time, I think it really is proper to use testing to generate evidence for all our beliefs, including our religious beliefs. Here's what I think is going on.
While it is good to have arguments and proof for everything we believe, there are certain sorts of "testing" which violates other moral obligations we have. For example, I have the belief that anything dropped from the roof of a skyscraper will fall and smash into the ground. And I believe that this holds true of, say, my grandmother. But I should not test this belief by throwing my grandmother off the roof. When Paul tells us to "test everything", he does not mean to say that our obligation to test our beliefs can justify any action whatsoever. Certain tests are immoral and should not be conducted. (Bioethics, for instance, is concerned with a large class of moral constraints on proper testing.) Paul assumes that we will conduct our testing in ways which are consistent with our moral obligations.
So the Bible instructs us NOT to test God. We must remember that God is a person with whom we have an intimate and loving relationship. There are moral bounds for how we are to treat him. The scientist, for example, ought to entertain doubts about various hypotheses and construct elaborate experiments to test them. But that same scientist may be acting improperly if he entertains doubts about, say, the faithfulness of his wife and constructs elaborate experiments to test that. This is how it is with God. When we test our religious beliefs, we have to keep in mind that God is a person to whom we have moral obligations, and we have to conduct our tests in ways which are consistent with those obligations.
The problem, then, is to spell out what, exactly, are the moral constraints for Christians as they seek evidence for their faith in God.
One way out of this is to appeal to the context of 1 Thes 5:21, to say that Paul was speaking in vs. 20 about prophecies, and so the "everything" in "test everything" should be restricted to refer only to prophecies. Or, we could appeal to the context of Deut 6:16, claiming that the "test" there refers to the behavior of Israel at Massah---which consisted not of "testing", but more of a doubt that God will provide and grumbling against their leader Moses.
But I think there is a better way to resolve the contradiction. It does seem right to me that we ought to have evidence for everything which we believe, and so we ought to test everything, where "everything" refers to everything. And, Deut 6:16 is cited in other situations (such as Matt 4) in ways that make "test" seem to refer to testing.
So, I think it really is improper to test God. And, at the same time, I think it really is proper to use testing to generate evidence for all our beliefs, including our religious beliefs. Here's what I think is going on.
While it is good to have arguments and proof for everything we believe, there are certain sorts of "testing" which violates other moral obligations we have. For example, I have the belief that anything dropped from the roof of a skyscraper will fall and smash into the ground. And I believe that this holds true of, say, my grandmother. But I should not test this belief by throwing my grandmother off the roof. When Paul tells us to "test everything", he does not mean to say that our obligation to test our beliefs can justify any action whatsoever. Certain tests are immoral and should not be conducted. (Bioethics, for instance, is concerned with a large class of moral constraints on proper testing.) Paul assumes that we will conduct our testing in ways which are consistent with our moral obligations.
So the Bible instructs us NOT to test God. We must remember that God is a person with whom we have an intimate and loving relationship. There are moral bounds for how we are to treat him. The scientist, for example, ought to entertain doubts about various hypotheses and construct elaborate experiments to test them. But that same scientist may be acting improperly if he entertains doubts about, say, the faithfulness of his wife and constructs elaborate experiments to test that. This is how it is with God. When we test our religious beliefs, we have to keep in mind that God is a person to whom we have moral obligations, and we have to conduct our tests in ways which are consistent with those obligations.
The problem, then, is to spell out what, exactly, are the moral constraints for Christians as they seek evidence for their faith in God.
posted by Ang at 9:41 AM
1 Comments:
That is a nice trick of circular yet flawed logic. The bible is full of contradictions, as is the case with most documents compiled from various authors over various periods of time and decided on by a committee.
firslty God is not a "person." this is demonstrated by several facts, firslty the lack of a physical body, secondly God is incapable of having a false belief which is a key quality of singular presence in an environment compared with omnipresence.
The major logical flaw you are making is that if we do not test thinfs then how can we possibly "know" who created what we are choosing to believe in. For instance it could be a "trick" of the devil, using your logic if we are not even to test if it is from God or not then we would follow the creations of the devil with equal conviction as those of god. Surely christianity would not condone this?
nice try yet the logic is circular.
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