Faith & Math

Faith isn't mathmatical certainty, because the Gospel isn't about numbers. Faith is confidence that the Gospel writers' testimony is true. Testimony cannot be like a math sum, because there is no possibility of the normal element of human variability creeping into numbers. Two "x"s plus two more "x"s equal 4 "x"s. It doesn't matter what the "x" stands for -- "x" is nothing more than a countable object. And no matter how much time and distance lies between the writer of 2 + 2 = 4, and the reader, the sum remains the same. Not only that, you can sit down at your own kitchen table and reproduce the formula for yourself. But when the Gospel writers testify that Jesus was born of a virgin, there is no way for any of us to observe the original event, and, by the very nature of a miracle, we can't reproduce the event. Unlike math, we have the combined testimony of four men (who rercorded the various testimonies of many other people) about Jesus. They did not provide us with the findings of a lab test. But this should not shake us. Atheists might mock faith, but no atheist lives his life by mathmatical or syllogistic certainty. They depend on the authority of testimony just as much as anyone else. If the four Gospels are rejected because we don't have photos or recordings of the events, then every other historical testimony is nullified, including all historical testimony about science. We don't need mathmatical certainty to have faith. The Spirit of God directly convinces us that the Gospel is true. He does not convince us that the logically-impossible is possible, and He doesn't convince us contrary to the historical evidence. But the Spirit doesn't depend on our powers of natural reason. Sometimes faith results from the Gospel proofs (as C.S. Lewis did), sometimes faith learns the proofs later (as I did, by reading C.S. Lewis). This is why children and fools can be saved.