Читать книгу So They Say - Robert H. Mounce - Страница 9

Alfred Lord Tennyson noted, and I accept it — although not without certain reservations — that, “there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.” It all sounds so intellectually correct. “Check your sources” is the mantra of the academy. And you should. Especially in the age of the Internet, nothing should automatically be accepted as true (even Snopes!). Truth seems to be increasingly elusive. In the first edition of my commentary on Revelation I wrote, to my chagrin, that Antipas was roasted to death in a “brazen bull” (p. 97). That’s what all the scholars writing on the Apocalypse said. Then it was discovered that the place of martyrdom was a “brazen bowl” (see 2nd edition, p. 80.) Even though I had written “bull” (in the 1st edition) I never could actually picture a person being roasted in an animal, but that’s what the authorities said.

So doubt plays a genuine role in scholarship and life itself. But when you check the use of “doubt/doubted/doubting” in the NT you will repeatedly find statements like, “If you have faith and do not doubt” you can move mountains (Mark 11:23) and, “When you ask, you must believe and not doubt“ (James 1:6). I was unable to find a single statement in scripture that encouraged doubt.

Hmmmmm. What now? Since truth by definition does not contradict itself, there must be a tertium quid (a third way) that embraces both. Tennyson is right (I believe) and so also is God (if I am allowed to put it that way). In the realm of possible verification, doubt will clarify and serve to direct us to truth. But in the significantly larger realm, where the rules of intellectual verification are inadequate, faith calls on us to believe. Doubt becomes inconsistent with faith. My mind always goes back to that Old Testament invitation, “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). In spiritual matters the “seeing” (the understanding) always follows the “tasting” (the act of faith). Doubt may hinder the decision but not the result. I tasted the Lord and can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that he is “good.”