Tuesday, June 4, 2019

The Evangelical Misconception Of John 20:29

There are sophists who pretend like knowledge about a given matter is possible in the absence of absolute certainty, but any rational person knows this is an impossibility.  No one who believes in something short of a logical proof, the only way to have absolute certainty, is a truly rational person.  Many despise this truth to the point of denying it, lest they be forced to abandon or amend their worldviews--and evangelicals are certainly among them.  A rational and Biblical theology scarcely resembles evangelicalism, and Jesus' comment about belief in John 20:29 is a great example of how evangelical presuppositions interfere with an objective understanding of the Bible.  Evangelicals claim that Jesus affirms the value of belief in the unproven or unprovable in this verse, but a careful examination shows otherwise.

In John 20:29, Jesus notes that Thomas believes in his resurrection because of visual and tactile evidence before he says that others who believe without seeing him will be blessed.  However, Jesus is not saying that belief in the unproven is virtuous or valid; he is merely saying that there is something unique about future Christians committing to Christianity (the Biblical words for belief and faith can denote commitment instead of literal belief in something that cannot be established from reason [1], and any other meaning would invalidate the Bible) without having actually seen the resurrected Messiah.  Similarly, there is something unique about Thomas' privelege of seeing and touching Jesus following his resurrection.  Christians of later generations would of course still have access to historical evidence for the resurrection, but they would not be able to experience what Thomas did.

Since Jesus is saying that Thomas has seen him with his own eyes, the latter part of the verse would have to use the word "seen" in an equivalent way to remain internally consistent.  A consistent use of the words relating to sight would result in a contrast of one group of people who have not physically seen Jesus and a group of people who have (i.e., Thomas and those like him).  Nothing at all about this is contrary to strict, explicit rationalism, the sole legitimate epistemology.  John 20:29 is not praising irrationalism, fitheism, or philosophical assumptions that happen to concur with the Bible, as evangelicals tend to claim!  If the Bible did demand an approach to epistemology that deviates from pure rationalism, though, there would be no such thing as a sound argument for its veracity.

If the Bible prescribed faith in the sense that many (perhaps all) evangelicals mean by the word--not in reference to faithfulness/commitment to that which is reinforced by evidence, but in reference to belief in something that has not been absolutely verified--the Bible would simply be wrong.  It would then be calling for assumptions and irrationality on the part of the reader.  Belief that the entire Bible is true is itself irrational, but not because there is even the slightest evidence that the Bible is false: this is because there is no such thing as a complete verification or refutation of the whole of its contents.  Unless the entire Bible 1) contradicts itself or logical truths or 2) can be demonstrated to be true without the presence of any philosophical assumptions, mere evidence must be considered, as not all of the Bible can be verified or falsified.  The matter is far more complex than all but a minority are willing to acknowledge [2].

There is thus no such thing as a justification for the belief that the entirety of the Bible is demonstrably true.  There is, of course, justification for believing that certain components of the Bible are necessarily true by virtue of being provable strictly with logic (see [2] for specific examples) and for believing that many other parts are supported by external evidences, yet this is quite different from the fallacious stance held by popular Christian apologists.  Intelligent Christians do not have an infallible commitment to Christianity, but one that would evaporate if they were confronted with genuine evidence to the contrary.  The evangelical position on John 20:29 is inconsistent with reason and is therefore asinine.


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/03/commitment-is-not-belief.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2019/01/christianity-and-skepticism.html

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