Jessica: What’s ur biggest reason for believing Jesus is the way. The most compelling reason for believing jesus is the best.[1]
Paul: Meaning!
Jessica: Can you Elaborate!
Paul: You ask for the “biggest reason” and so I use the word “meaning” in the broadest sense. Personal meaning is either partial, absent, or wrongheaded apart from the depth of meaning in Christ. We can find all kinds of meaning apart from Christ, and that may be good or bad or indifferent. Meaning in work, family, or even a variety of religions may give us personal satisfaction. Perhaps our skill at sports, or art, or some other area provides levels of meaning. But these will remain partial apart from a broader ground of meaning. For many, there is no meaning, and Christ is the entry point into meaning. For others, they may find meaning in the military or the mafia or a false religion, but this is the wrongheaded sort of meaning.
Beyond personal meaning but tied to this is just the possibility of meaning in the areas of philosophy, linguistics, and semiotics. Meaning systems derive from a meaningful ground and these various explorations of meaning systems ultimately find their possibility in Christ. Philosophical nihilism, pragmatism, phenomenology, etc. have the same issue as personal meaning. They may be good but incomplete, or wrong and dangerous, or they may simply conclude there is no meaning. So, the term can be applied in every area. No area of human endeavor is complete in itself, though every area may be good or bad, but will always remain partial. Of course, this is not a coercive meaning to be foisted onto us personally, scientifically, or philosophically, but it is like the word itself. It is there to be grasped and to lead us on a journey, but it is not insistent or fear inducing. Like meaning, Christ is healing, completing, and fulfilling. This is my humble attempt at the “biggest” reason.
Jessica: So, the fact that there is meaning at all convinces you of Gods existence?
Paul: I prefer meaning. This is not to say that meaninglessness is not also convincing. Most days I ward off the nihilism, the evil, the cruelty, or the seeming meaninglessness of everything. On these days or these small snippets of time, you might say I am “convinced” of God’s existence. But that does not sound exactly right. I am committed to meaning, to living a meaningful life, to being loving, and to the beauty and goodness of the universe which entails God, but my personal capacity for belief or being convinced is not very great. I feel I can make the moral commitment to the Truth (just the possibility of truth in the Truth) without being personally inclined toward a strong sense of conviction. I am well acquainted with a lack of personal spiritual devotion, with doubts and disbelief, but my own proclivities are not the point. I have never considered either my capacity for belief nor my tendency toward doubt as primary. Belief is no great accomplishment, and to think it is, is the problem in imagining doubt is determinative of salvation or moral engagement. The focus on individual belief misses the New Testament meaning of faith, which does not refer to my faith but to Christ’s faithfulness, of which I can partake. I have no faith in my faith or in faith in general, but the faithfulness of Christ is salvific. Saving, not in the sense of going to heaven and missing hell, but in the sense of delivering from bondage: bondage to my capacity, my thought, myself and the values of my culture.
This is a form of belief and of being convinced, but it is not the form in which we usually discuss these things. Most are thinking of historical and scientific proofs, but this will only lead to the endless need for more and stronger proof. Belief and faith are largely moral commitments that engage us more holistically than typical proofs. I am full of doubt, but this doubt is not the kind that many may find so disturbing, as my faith embraces doubt as part of the reality in which I believe.
The doubt that many have, is grounded in an ultimate trust in reason, in which there is no room for doubt. Thus, apologetics must be airtight. The Bible must be inerrant. Tradition cannot contain fallacy. Doubt is not part of the possibility of this form of faith. Undeniable philosophical arguments and the absolute historical trustworthiness of the texts is required. This foundationalism and Biblicism is focused on rationalism or Scripture rather than Christ. It trusts the authority of history and reason more than Christ. This sort of foundationalism has displaced Christ with reason, Scripture, history, or some other authority as foundation.
Jessica: I think I understand, but you are saying too much too quickly. I have been reading Sam Harris and he has many convincing proofs that Jesus never existed and that God does not exist.
Paul: Sorry, my wife tells me I overcomplicate things.
The issue is not between different sorts of meaning or levels of meaning, but whether there is meaning or no meaning. The new atheists, such as Sam Harris, like fundamentalists, liberals, and modernists of every stripe presume a foundation of meaning and this is their starting point. One can use this foundation to argue for the inerrancy of the Bible, the truth of secular humanism, the self-contained truth of science, or basic principles (“I Think”, there is cause and effect”) or whatever, but all share the modernist foundation. The way in which they build upon this presumed philosophical rationalism varies, but they all share the modern rationalist presumption of a given meaning. This presumed foundation is a parasite on the meaning set forth in Christianity, but it is incorrect (in its atheistic, fundamentalist, and liberal manifestation) in that its imagined meaning floats free of the person of Christ.
Jessica: I have started reading David Bentley Hart’s Atheist Delusions.
Paul: Excellent! Hart quickly and accurately debunks the New Atheists.
I prefer a more hard-core atheism, such as that of Slavoj Žižek, who recognizes the construct of meaning (and self) are easily deconstructed. As a true atheist, he does not argue on the basis of meaning, but he makes the case that beneath the structure of “self” is the reification of language which fabricates the self (and meaning) through the interplay of language – on the order of the Cartesian cogito (“I think therefore I am”). Žižek is Cartesian, not because he believes Descartes is correct in his foundationalism, but because he considers the Cartesian error or lie, the basis for “truth.” That is, there is no Truth, but only the lie which gives rise to truth. This is a better understanding of the choice with which we are faced. True nihilism and atheism do not hold to meaning of any sort, other than that which can be fabricated.
So, I prefer meaning as opposed to no meaning. I prefer love, beauty, and goodness as opposed to hatred and evil, and this entails the world revealed by Christ.
Jessica: But what about the contradictions in the Bible?
Paul: The focus of the Bible is not on itself or its own authority, but it is a witness to the authority of Christ.The founding premise of Scripture is set forth by John: “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has exegeted Him” (John 1:18). The revelation of Christ precedes and makes possible the writing of the New Testament and the formation of the canon of Scripture. There would be no Scripture apart from its formation around the work of Christ. It is not just that Christ precedes Scripture, but faith in Christ (the “rule of faith”) precedes and is the means of exegeting Scripture (and in particular was the early church’s means of incorporating the Hebrew Scriptures into the Christian canon of Scripture). This means that the reality of Christ not only precedes Scripture, but precedes the unfolding political and cultural realities of our day.
The primacy of Christ implies an exegetical method which is not primarily historical, literal, or attached to a book. That is, if we take this passage (John 1:18) literally, this means the rest of Scripture must fit this fact. The primacy of Christ is the means of Scripture and its interpretation, and apart from this primacy the letter is bent in every direction (e.g., Jesus the warrior, the upholder of national and cultural interests). The Old Testament is filled with conflicting images, which if given equal weight (and literality), displace the literal fact of Christ as exegete. Christ brings together the sign and signified, enfleshing meaning, such that to make Scripture the foundation of meaning is to set the sign afloat, separating it from it from its signified. A biblicism or sola scriptura which does not recognize Scripture as derived from Christ has taken images of violence and warfare, images of sacrifice and law, or simply interpretations of history, and imagined that Christ must be made to accommodate this order. The images of God in the Bible (Old and New Testaments), require the Gospel, require that all of the Bible be read in the light of faith in Christ.
As Origen put it, “If you want to understand, you can only do so through the Gospel.” The Gospel (Jesus Christ) makes the Bible the Word of God for each of its contemporary readers. The analogy of faith, or the rule of faith or, to say the same thing, the Gospel, is a hermeneutic or interpretive lens which unveils the meaning of the Hebrew Scriptures (among many other things). As Paul explains to the Corinthians, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3-4). Paul is referencing the only Scriptures he knew, the Hebrew Bible. Apart from these events in the life of Christ, it would be hard to locate such things in the Scriptures, but given the reality of the life of Christ, the Scriptures become a means of understanding these events and these events unveil the meaning of Scripture. Christ is a revelation which inspires Scripture, and this revelation constitutes the center of Christian thought. Apart from this center, it is not clear Christian thought survives. Apart from Christ there is no Bible, there is no authority, there is no meaning, but only a bundle of contradictions. In light of Christ, the contradictions do not completely disappear but they are relatively unimportant in light of the fulness of meaning revealed in Christ.
Jessica: I think I am beginning to grasp some of what you are saying, but have you written anything that might help?
Paul: I will recommend a few of my blogs, which I have referenced above and which expand on the topic.[2]
(Sign up for the class Human Language, Signs of God: using Anthony Bartlett’s two books, Theology Beyond Metaphysics and Signs of Change, as one continuous argument. The course will run from 2025/9/16 to 2025/11/4. Register here: https://pbi.forgingploughshares.org/)
[1] This question arose through messenger and continued on the phone, and I have taken liberties with how it unfolded and have changed the name of the inquirer, but it is based in reality.
[2] Here is a piece on reading Scripture through Christ and the Gospel https://forgingploughshares.org/2025/02/06/the-scriptures-gospel-and-the-exegesis-of-jesus/ I have done several on Hermeneutics. This one is on Origen’s approach: https://forgingploughshares.org/2022/09/22/the-peaceful-hermeneutic-of-origin-the-end-of-deicide/ As is this one: https://forgingploughshares.org/2024/11/07/finding-the-center-in-the-midst-of-despair/