Why Reasonable Faith Matters
Christian faith has never required the abandonment of reason. The Bible does not ask men and women to believe contradictions, close their eyes to evidence, or accept religious claims merely because those claims produce comforting emotions. Rather, Scripture presents faith as a reasoned response to what Jehovah has revealed about Himself, His creation, His written Word, and His Son, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 11:1 connects faith with assurance and conviction, while 1 Peter 3:15 commands Christians to be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks for a reason for their hope. The Greek term apologia refers to a reasoned defense, an answer offered in support of a position when that position is questioned or challenged. Christianity therefore has an intellectual dimension that cannot properly be separated from trust, obedience, worship, and moral responsibility. Biblical faith involves accepting as true what Jehovah has revealed because He is truthful and because His revelation provides sufficient grounds for belief. The Christian does not worship reason as though human reasoning were the supreme authority, but neither does he fear reason when it is employed honestly and subjected to the truth of God’s Word.
The title Reasonable Faith expresses the central concern of this book: Christianity can withstand serious examination. The chapters that follow address questions concerning God, creation, logic, morality, truth, skepticism, Scripture, prophecy, the atonement, the resurrection, secularism, the claims of Jesus Christ, and the philosophical assumptions that shape human thinking. These subjects are not disconnected intellectual exercises, because together they address the foundations upon which a Christian worldview rests. If Jehovah exists, if creation genuinely bears witness to its Creator, if objective moral truth has a foundation in His righteous character, if Scripture is trustworthy revelation, and if Jesus Christ truly died and was raised from the dead, then Christianity concerns objective reality rather than private religious preference. The Christian faith makes historical, theological, moral, and metaphysical claims that can be examined. Some of those claims are known through observation and rational inference, while others depend upon Jehovah’s special revelation in Scripture. Faith becomes unreasonable only when belief is detached from adequate grounds, not merely because its object extends beyond what unaided human reason could discover for itself.
Christianity Does Not Ask for Blind Faith
The popular expression “blind faith” is particularly misleading when applied to biblical Christianity. Scripture repeatedly presents Jehovah as giving people reasons to trust what He says, even though those reasons do not place human beings in judgment over God. Moses appealed to Jehovah’s historical acts when instructing Israel, the prophets repeatedly pointed to fulfilled divine declarations, Jesus appealed to His works and the testimony concerning Him, and the apostles proclaimed events they presented as having occurred in public history. Luke introduced his Gospel by explaining that he had carefully investigated matters connected with events that had been fulfilled and drew upon testimony handed down by eyewitnesses. John explained that particular signs of Jesus were recorded so that readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God (John 20:30-31). Paul grounded the proclamation of Christ’s resurrection in testimony concerning appearances to identifiable witnesses, including hundreds who had seen the resurrected Christ (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). Biblical faith consequently does not operate according to the principle, “Believe first and disregard the evidence afterward.” It receives Jehovah’s revelation as authoritative while recognizing that God has acted within creation and history in ways that leave genuine grounds for conviction.
This distinction becomes especially important because modern discussions frequently create a false opposition between faith and reason. Faith is sometimes defined as believing something without evidence, while reason is presented as the willingness to accept only conclusions established by evidence. Once those definitions are accepted, Christianity has already been placed at an artificial disadvantage because the biblical meaning of faith has been replaced with a definition foreign to Scripture. Abraham trusted Jehovah because he regarded the One who made the promise as faithful, not because Abraham believed that promises fulfill themselves without a trustworthy promiser. The apostles believed that Jesus had been resurrected because they encountered the resurrected Christ, not because resurrection was an idea they wished to be true. Christians trust the promises contained in Scripture because they accept Jehovah as truthful and His written Word as inspired, not because believing without grounds possesses some independent spiritual virtue. Reasonable faith therefore involves knowledge, trust, conviction, and obedient response to divine revelation. It does not mean that Christians possess exhaustive knowledge, but it does mean that uncertainty about some matters cannot legitimately be transformed into the claim that Christianity possesses no rational foundation.
Beginning With God, Logic, and the Cosmos
The first part of this book begins at the broadest level by examining God, logic, and the cosmos. Before asking whether Christianity provides a satisfying way to live, one must confront the more fundamental question of what kind of reality human beings actually inhabit. The universe exists, but its existence does not explain itself merely by being observed. Matter exists, natural regularities operate, rational minds investigate those regularities, moral judgments are made, and human beings continually ask why anything exists at all. Genesis opens with the declaration, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), establishing immediately the distinction between the Creator and His creation. Jehovah is not presented as one object within the cosmos or as an impersonal force emerging from material processes. He stands as the intelligent, personal Creator upon whom the created order depends. The existence of the universe therefore becomes the beginning of an argument rather than the end of one, because calling something “the universe” does not explain why it exists, why it possesses order, or why rational creatures can understand significant portions of it.
This investigation also requires careful thinking about causality, chance, natural law, design, and intelligibility. Chance cannot literally create anything because chance is not a personal or physical agent possessing causal power. Natural laws describe regularities and relationships within the physical order, but a description of how existing realities behave does not itself create those realities. Scientific investigation can explain increasingly detailed mechanisms within creation without answering the ultimate question of why there is a law-governed reality available for investigation. Psalm 19:1 declares that “the heavens are telling of the glory of God,” while Romans 1:20 explains that God’s invisible qualities are perceived through what has been made. Such passages do not discourage investigation of nature; they place nature within its proper theological setting as creation rather than Creator. The Christian therefore has no reason to fear genuine scientific discovery, because discovering a mechanism does not transform the mechanism into the ultimate cause of its own existence. Reasonable faith distinguishes between explaining processes within the universe and explaining why an intelligible universe containing those processes exists at all.
The Moral Universe and the Character of Jehovah
Questions about existence inevitably lead to questions about morality. Human beings do not merely observe physical events; they judge certain human actions to be righteous or wicked, just or unjust, loving or cruel, faithful or treacherous. Such judgments raise a profound question about whether moral obligations describe objective realities or merely changing human preferences. If morality is nothing more than individual desire or collective social agreement, then a society that approves oppression has not become objectively wrong; it has merely adopted preferences disliked by another society. Scripture offers a radically different foundation by grounding righteousness and justice in the unchanging character of Jehovah. Deuteronomy 32:4 describes His ways as justice and identifies Him as righteous and upright, while Psalm 89:14 associates righteousness and justice with the foundation of His throne. Jehovah does not become righteous by submitting to a moral authority greater than Himself, nor does He arbitrarily invent good and evil without reference to His character. His commands express the righteousness, holiness, truthfulness, wisdom, and love intrinsic to who He is.
Truth in an Age of Relativism
The second major movement of this book addresses the reliability of the Word, including absolute truth, modern skepticism, the authority of Scripture, and the historical reality of prophecy. These matters have become especially important in an intellectual climate where truth is frequently confused with perspective, sincerity, personal experience, or cultural preference. A person can sincerely believe something false, just as a person can strongly dislike something true. Sincerity describes the condition of the believer; it does not determine the truth of the belief. Truth concerns reality, and contradictory claims cannot both be true in the same sense at the same time. When Jesus prayed to His Father, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17), He did not present divine revelation as one useful perspective among countless equally valid alternatives. He identified God’s Word with truth, giving the Christian a standard that does not rise and fall with changing intellectual fashions.
Relativism becomes particularly unstable when it attempts to deny universal truth through universal assertions. To declare that there is no absolute truth is itself to make a claim intended to be absolutely true. To insist that no worldview can legitimately claim objective truth is itself to make an objective claim concerning every worldview. Such contradictions do not disappear merely because relativistic language has become culturally familiar. Christianity maintains that truth exists because reality exists and because Jehovah, who cannot lie, has communicated truth to mankind. Titus 1:2 identifies God as incapable of falsehood, while Hebrews 6:18 likewise emphasizes the impossibility of God lying. The Christian commitment to absolute truth therefore does not originate in intellectual arrogance or the claim that Christians individually possess perfect knowledge. It originates in confidence that an omniscient and truthful God knows reality perfectly and is capable of communicating truth accurately through human language.
Doubt Must Be Examined Rather Than Romanticized
Doubt occupies an unusual position in modern religious discussion because it is sometimes treated as though questioning were inherently more intellectually respectable than believing. Yet doubt, like belief, requires examination. A person may doubt something for excellent reasons, inadequate reasons, emotional reasons, moral reasons, philosophical reasons, or because he has misunderstood what is actually being claimed. Merely saying “I doubt” establishes nothing about whether the object of doubt is true or false. Thomas doubted the resurrection testimony of the other disciples, but his doubt did not determine whether Jesus had actually risen from the dead. The truth of the resurrection existed independently of Thomas’s initial willingness to accept it, and his doubt was answered by evidence rather than elevated into a virtue (John 20:24-29). Christians should therefore neither fear honest questions nor celebrate skepticism as though uncertainty were an intellectual destination. Questions should lead toward investigation, and investigation should remain willing to accept whatever conclusion the evidence and the inspired Word properly support.
Modern skepticism also carries assumptions that deserve the same scrutiny skeptics apply to Christianity. Naturalism, materialism, relativism, and secular humanism are not neutral positions produced by the complete absence of philosophical commitments. Each contains assumptions concerning reality, knowledge, human nature, morality, causation, and what kinds of explanations may legitimately be considered. If a person begins by defining supernatural action as impossible, no historical evidence for a miracle will ever be sufficient because the conclusion has already been excluded before the evidence is examined. Such reasoning does not disprove miracles; it establishes a philosophical rule that prevents miracles from being considered. The historical-grammatical interpreter must resist imposing such assumptions upon Scripture and instead ask what the biblical authors actually claimed within their historical and linguistic contexts. The Christian need not demand that unbelievers temporarily pretend Christianity is true, but fair investigation requires that Christian claims be examined as they are rather than rewritten according to assumptions that predetermine their falsity. Reasonable faith therefore asks difficult questions of Christianity while also asking equally difficult questions of the worldviews offered as alternatives to Christianity.
Why the Authority of Scripture Matters
Christian apologetics cannot stop with arguments for a generic Creator because Christianity rests upon special revelation. Creation can testify to Jehovah’s power and divine nature, but the stars do not explain the atoning significance of Christ’s death, and the regularities of physics do not tell mankind what happened at the empty tomb. Jehovah has therefore communicated through inspired Scripture. According to 2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is breathed out by God,” identifying the written Word as originating ultimately with God while being communicated through human authors. 2 Peter 1:21 explains that men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, preserving the genuine human activity of the writers while affirming the divine source of their message. Inspiration does not mean that biblical writers entered mystical states in which their personalities, vocabulary, education, and historical circumstances disappeared. Jehovah employed real human authors while ensuring that the resulting inspired writings communicated what He intended.
Because Scripture communicates through language, its words must be interpreted according to their historical and grammatical meaning. A biblical passage does not possess unlimited meanings generated by the experiences of successive readers. The inspired author communicated meaning through vocabulary, grammar, syntax, literary form, historical circumstances, and context, and responsible interpretation seeks that meaning rather than importing foreign ideas into the text. This is why the historical-grammatical method is essential throughout this book. Scripture must not be made to say what an interpreter wishes it had said, even when the interpreter believes his preferred meaning would support a worthy theological purpose. Neither philosophical fashion nor religious tradition possesses authority to rewrite inspired revelation. The task of Christian interpretation is therefore one of disciplined submission: determine as accurately as possible what the inspired author communicated and then consider how that truth properly applies. Reasonable faith rests not upon a Bible reconstructed according to modern preferences but upon the Word Jehovah actually gave.
Prophecy and the God Who Knows History
Biblical prophecy occupies an important place in the defense of Scripture because the Bible repeatedly presents Jehovah as capable of declaring events before their fulfillment. Isaiah 46:9-10 contrasts Jehovah with false gods by emphasizing His ability to declare the end from the beginning and accomplish His purpose. Prophecy therefore functions not merely as religious poetry but as part of Scripture’s claim concerning the identity and knowledge of God. At the same time, prophecy must be handled according to its literary and historical setting rather than converted into a playground for sensational predictions. Symbols must be interpreted according to their contextual function, historical statements must be situated within actual history, and fulfillment must correspond to what the inspired prophecy genuinely communicated. Christians weaken rather than strengthen apologetics when they force contemporary events into biblical passages without adequate textual justification. A responsible defense of prophecy consequently requires both confidence in inspiration and restraint in interpretation.
The historical character of biblical revelation distinguishes Christianity from systems resting primarily upon private mystical experiences inaccessible to historical examination. Scripture names rulers, cities, nations, wars, journeys, genealogies, political circumstances, religious institutions, and geographical locations because its message repeatedly intersects with public history. Luke situates events during identifiable rulers and administrations, while the Gospel writers locate Jesus within first-century Judea and Galilee rather than an undefined mythical world. Paul likewise places the gospel at the center of events involving the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ rather than presenting salvation as merely an inward philosophical realization. Historical claims can be investigated precisely because they claim to describe events that occurred. Christianity certainly includes realities beyond the reach of ordinary historical investigation, but that does not transform its historical claims into nonhistorical symbolism. The Christian faith stands or falls in significant measure upon what Jehovah actually did within history.
The Cross Must Be Understood Before It Is Judged
The third part of this volume turns directly to the intellectual defense of Christ, beginning with objections to the atonement. Modern critics sometimes portray the sacrificial death of Jesus as morally objectionable because they isolate the cross from the biblical account of creation, sin, justice, human freedom, and redemption. Yet the atonement cannot be evaluated accurately after removing the very theological framework that explains its necessity. According to Scripture, mankind's problem originates in rebellion against Jehovah and the resulting entrance of sin and death into human experience. Romans 5:12 traces sin and death to Adam, while 1 Corinthians 15:45 deliberately contrasts Adam with Christ by identifying Jesus as “the last Adam.” Jesus Himself explained that He came to give His life as a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28), making His death a redemptive act rather than an accidental political execution. The cross therefore belongs to Jehovah’s righteous answer to the human condition and must be evaluated within that biblical framework.
Christ’s sacrifice also demonstrates why divine mercy cannot properly be reduced to sentimental tolerance. If wrongdoing possesses genuine moral significance, forgiveness must address guilt rather than pretend guilt never existed. Jehovah did not cease to be just in order to become loving, because His justice and love arise harmoniously from His perfect character. Romans 3:26 presents God as just while also justifying the person who has faith in Jesus, joining righteousness and mercy within the redemptive arrangement. The ransom provided through Christ supplies what imperfect humanity could never provide for itself. Jesus’ sinlessness is therefore essential, because He was not another condemned sinner attempting to rescue fellow sinners through His own moral resources. His faithful human life and sacrificial death provide the basis Jehovah established for reconciliation. Christian apologetics must explain this doctrine accurately before answering objections to it, because arguments directed against a distorted atonement do not successfully refute the biblical teaching.
The Resurrection Stands at the Center
The resurrection of Jesus Christ occupies an indispensable position in Christian belief. Paul makes this unmistakable in 1 Corinthians 15:14 when he explains that if Christ has not been raised, Christian preaching and faith are empty. Such language would be extraordinary if Christianity were merely a system of timeless ethical principles capable of surviving independently of historical events. Paul instead ties Christian truth to something he claims actually happened to Jesus after His execution and burial. He then appeals to witnesses who encountered the resurrected Christ, placing the claim within the realm of testimony rather than presenting it as a private spiritual metaphor. The earliest Christians did not proclaim merely that Jesus’ teachings continued to inspire them after His death. They proclaimed that God raised Him from the dead. That distinction is fundamental because Christianity does not rest upon the continued psychological influence of a dead teacher but upon Jehovah’s historical vindication of His Son.
The resurrection also explains why the Christian hope concerns future life rather than the natural indestructibility of the human soul. Scripture presents death as an enemy and resurrection as Jehovah’s answer to death. Jesus truly died, and Jehovah truly raised Him, establishing the pattern upon which Christian resurrection hope rests. Acts 2:24 declares that God raised Jesus by releasing Him from death, while Acts 17:31 connects the resurrection with Jehovah’s assurance concerning the future judgment entrusted to Christ. The resurrection therefore carries apologetic, theological, judicial, and eschatological significance at the same time. It vindicates Jesus’ identity and mission, confirms the effectiveness of His sacrificial death, demonstrates Jehovah’s power over death, and grounds the believer’s expectation of future life. A Christianity stripped of the resurrection may retain ethical sayings and religious vocabulary, but it no longer retains apostolic Christianity. Reasonable faith consequently must confront the resurrection directly rather than treating it as an optional addition to a general belief in God.
Jesus Christ Cannot Be Reduced to a Moral Teacher
The claims of Jesus demand examination because the New Testament does not permit Him to be reduced comfortably to the status of an insightful moral philosopher. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, forgave sins, spoke with extraordinary authority, identified Himself as the promised Messiah, accepted responsibilities belonging uniquely to His appointed role, foretold His death and resurrection, and demanded allegiance extending beyond admiration for His ethical instruction. John 14:6 records His declaration, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” followed by the statement that no one comes to the Father except through Him. Such language cannot honestly be transformed into the modern claim that Jesus merely taught one spiritual path among many equally valid alternatives. Acts 4:12 likewise declares that salvation is found in no other name under heaven given among men. Christianity is therefore necessarily centered upon Christ rather than upon generic spirituality. A person may reject those claims, but intellectually responsible rejection first requires allowing the New Testament to state what those claims actually are.
The authority of Christ also determines the Christian attitude toward Scripture, truth, morality, salvation, and discipleship. Jesus consistently treated the Hebrew Scriptures as authoritative and resisted Satan by appealing to what was written rather than by appealing to mystical impressions. He exposed religious traditions when those traditions contradicted God’s Word, demonstrating that inherited religious practice cannot automatically claim divine authority. He called people not merely to intellectual admiration but to repentance, faith, obedience, and discipleship. His teaching therefore excludes a form of apologetics concerned only with winning debates while leaving the moral life untouched. The purpose of defending Christianity is not to produce intellectual pride but to remove obstacles, answer objections, expose false reasoning, and direct attention toward truth. The Christian who can formulate sophisticated arguments while refusing Christ’s moral demands has misunderstood the relationship between knowledge and discipleship. Reasonable faith engages the mind precisely because Jehovah requires the whole person.
Human Philosophy Must Remain a Servant Rather Than a Master
Philosophical reasoning can be useful when it clarifies concepts, exposes contradictions, identifies assumptions, and helps distinguish valid arguments from invalid ones. Scripture itself contains sustained reasoning, rhetorical questions, logical contrasts, appeals to evidence, and arguments moving from accepted premises toward conclusions. The danger arises when human philosophy claims authority to determine beforehand what Jehovah is permitted to reveal. Colossians 2:8 warns against being taken captive through philosophy and empty deception according to human tradition rather than according to Christ. Paul was not condemning careful thinking, since his own letters contain highly structured arguments requiring attentive reasoning. He was warning against systems of thought that become controlling authorities over divine revelation. Human reason is a valuable instrument, but fallen human reason is not omniscient, morally neutral, or entitled to sit as supreme judge over its Creator. The Christian therefore uses logic vigorously while refusing to convert logic into an autonomous worldview detached from Jehovah.
This distinction protects Christian apologetics from two opposite errors. One error fears intellectual investigation and treats difficult questions as threats that faithful Christians should avoid. The other error grants human philosophy such authority that Scripture is accepted only after being reshaped to fit whatever intellectual system currently dominates academic culture. Neither approach honors Jehovah. Christians should welcome honest questions because truth does not become false when examined, yet they must also recognize that human intellectual systems are themselves subject to examination. Every worldview begins with foundational commitments and interprets evidence within a framework concerning reality, knowledge, morality, and human nature. Christianity should therefore be compared with alternative worldviews at the level of their fundamental claims rather than being forced to defend itself before standards that competing philosophies are never required to satisfy. Intellectual fairness requires that skepticism explain its own foundations just as Christianity is required to explain its foundations.
Evidence and Experience in Their Proper Places
The final movement of this book concerns standing firmly on evidence and experience, but those two categories must remain properly ordered. Personal experience can powerfully affect a person, but experience by itself cannot establish the truth of every interpretation placed upon it. People belonging to contradictory religious systems report profound experiences, emotional transformations, answered prayers, powerful impressions, and moments they interpret as encounters with the divine. Since contradictory theological claims cannot all become true merely because they are accompanied by sincerity, experience must be interpreted rather than enthroned as the final judge of truth. Scripture supplies the standard by which Christian beliefs and experiences are examined. Acts 17:11 commends the Bereans because they carefully examined the Scriptures to determine whether what they were being taught was true. Their example demonstrates that religious claims deserve verification against divine revelation rather than acceptance merely because a persuasive speaker delivers them passionately.
Evidence likewise must be understood in its proper role. No finite human being possesses exhaustive evidence concerning every question, and Christianity does not require such omniscience before faith becomes rational. Ordinary reasoning constantly reaches justified conclusions from sufficient evidence without requiring knowledge of every conceivable fact. The relevant question is whether the evidence available provides adequate grounds for the conclusion being considered. Christian apologetics therefore accumulates a cumulative case involving creation, moral reality, Scripture, prophecy, history, Jesus Christ, the resurrection, and the explanatory power of the biblical worldview. No single argument should be forced to perform every apologetic task. The cosmological argument addresses the dependence of created reality but does not by itself establish every Christian doctrine, while historical evidence for the resurrection addresses a particular event without independently explaining the entire doctrine of inspiration. Reasonable faith recognizes these distinctions and allows different lines of evidence to perform the work for which they are suited.
The Responsibility of Every Christian
Apologetics is not reserved exclusively for philosophers, professors, pastors, or scholars trained in ancient languages. Peter addressed Christians when he commanded them to be prepared to give a defense concerning their hope (1 Peter 3:15). The form and sophistication of that defense will naturally vary according to a believer’s knowledge, circumstances, audience, and abilities, but the responsibility to understand and communicate the faith belongs to Christians generally. A believer need not become an expert in astrophysics before explaining why creation points toward a Creator, nor must he obtain an advanced degree in philosophy before recognizing a contradiction. He does, however, need to know what he believes, why he believes it, and where Scripture establishes those beliefs. Careful study strengthens Christians against confusion because vague convictions are easily unsettled by confident objections. The purpose of apologetic preparation is therefore not to manufacture argumentative personalities but to produce Christians capable of responding thoughtfully, accurately, respectfully, and courageously when biblical truth is challenged.
Such preparation also requires intellectual humility because defending truth is not equivalent to possessing perfect understanding. Christians can misunderstand arguments, misinterpret passages, repeat weak claims, rely upon questionable evidence, or answer objections they have not understood correctly. Faithfulness to Scripture requires correcting such errors rather than protecting them merely because they have been used in Christian apologetics before. Proverbs repeatedly praises knowledge, understanding, correction, and careful speech, while James 1:19 counsels readiness to hear before speaking. A strong defense of Christianity therefore distinguishes what Scripture actually teaches from traditions Christians may have attached to Scripture. It also distinguishes strong evidence from exaggerated claims that collapse under investigation. Christians have nothing to gain by defending weak arguments as though the truth of Jehovah depended upon them. Reasonable faith pursues accuracy because truth is served by careful reasoning rather than by overstating evidence.
The Purpose of This Book
The chapters ahead proceed from the broad foundations of reality toward the specific claims of Christianity and finally toward the intellectual responsibility of the believer. The book begins with the Creator because every subsequent question takes place within the reality He created. It moves through divine justice and the testimony of nature before addressing faith and reason directly, establishing a foundation for considering truth, doubt, Scripture, and prophecy. It then turns toward Jesus Christ, examining the atonement, resurrection, endurance of the gospel, and His supreme authority before addressing philosophical dangers and the believer’s final intellectual footing. This progression matters because Christianity should not be defended as a collection of disconnected propositions. Its doctrines form a coherent worldview in which creation, morality, revelation, redemption, resurrection, judgment, and eternal life belong within one unified account of reality. Understanding that coherence allows Christians to answer objections at their foundations rather than merely responding to isolated statements.
The aim throughout is not to encourage confidence in human cleverness but confidence grounded in truth. Jehovah does not need human beings to make His existence true, Scripture does not become inspired because Christians defend it successfully, and Jesus Christ was not raised from the dead because an apologist constructs a persuasive argument. Reality remains what it is regardless of anyone’s willingness to acknowledge it. Apologetics concerns our responsibility to understand that reality accurately and communicate the reasons supporting Christian conviction. When objections are valid, Christians should address them carefully; when objections depend upon false assumptions, those assumptions should be exposed; when evidence supports the biblical account, that evidence should be presented without exaggeration. Above all, the inspired Word must remain the governing authority rather than becoming decorative support for conclusions reached independently of it. The Christian begins and continues with the conviction that Jehovah has spoken and that His revelation deserves to be heard according to what He actually communicated.
Reasonable faith therefore refuses the false choice between thinking and believing. It rejects a faith emptied of rational content just as firmly as it rejects a reason that declares itself independent of the Creator who gave human beings the capacity to reason. It looks at the heavens and recognizes the handiwork of Jehovah, confronts moral reality and recognizes His righteous character, opens Scripture and hears His Spirit-inspired Word, examines the historical Christ and encounters claims that demand a response, and looks toward the resurrection as Jehovah’s answer to death. It does not claim that every mystery has disappeared or that finite human beings possess exhaustive knowledge of God and His works. It claims something both more modest and more substantial: Christianity provides rational grounds sufficient for genuine conviction, while the Bible supplies revealed truth that unaided human reasoning could never discover in its fullness. The believer is therefore called to love Jehovah with the mind as well as with the rest of his being, bringing thought into submission to truth rather than surrendering thought altogether. This is reasonable faith: not belief without thought, not reason without revelation, but confident trust in Jehovah grounded in the reality He created, the Word He inspired, and the salvation He has provided through Jesus Christ.
About the Author
EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
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