The answer is Yes; yes, and…

Recently, somebody dear to me said, “You know, for all of that you talk about God, I still don’t know whether you believe in Him, or if you just view Him as some sort of metaphor.”

Fair enough. “I do believe in God,” I said. “But it’s also so much more than just belief.”

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This is the question that Prof. Peterson has famously refused to answer. Are you a Christian? “I suppose the most straight forward answer to that question is yes, although I think it’s – it’s – let’s leave it at ‘yes’.” Do you believe that Jesus rose again from the dead? Literally? “I find that – I cannot answer that question. It depends on what you mean by Jesus.”

As for me, I believe that something impossible happened. I believe that roughly 2000 years ago a man died, that his body was a corpse for three days, and then on the third he rose from the dead; and that this is the most important event in the history of the Universe. More important than the creation of the Universe, more important than the appearance of life, more important than the first sapient mind capable of knowing that it existed. It is an event of such importance that – without it – the rest of creation fails to have a coherent meaning or purpose.

Christian Idiosyncrasies

But while I believe this, I don’t like to leave things there. Belief, it seems to me, is such a tawdry thing. Belief is for matters profane, for the merely physical; it is a Bayesian probability assessment of how accurately a statement reflects physical reality. And I can’t help noticing two particular things about Christ’s death and resurrection which makes the question of belief so central to Christianity.

The first is that this belief is about an event which is both natural and supernatural. It is natural in that it supposedly happened – there was a crucifixion, there was a tomb, there was a dead body. There was a documented man named Jesus, who objectively existed. And yet, it was also supernatural. We know (and ancient people knew) that people don’t come back from the dead. That initiation rituals which simulate death and rebirth – whether it be a Native American buried in a grave overnight, or an initiate in the cult of Mithras washed of his sins in the blood of a bull – that they are experiencing a metaphorical resurrection, not a literal one. For a man to literally die, and literally come back to life – that is impossible. As impossible as encountering a perfect platonic solid, as opposed to a cheap imitation composed of rough edges and indeterminate atoms. As impossible as ever finding ‘two’ of something – as opposed to two very similar, but distinct spatial/temporal phenomenon which we lump together for the sake of taxonomy. For a man to come back from the dead is a miracle, something which only exists in the supernatural realm where numbers and ideas dwell. And yet, the impossible happened.

This makes Christianity the only religion which can be scientifically disproven. Should we devise a tool to look back in time, we might see Siddhartha Gautama sitting under the Bodhi tree, but find no trace of Mara’s armies of Desire assailing him. But this lack of physical manifestation would in no way diminish the Enlightened One in the eyes of his followers. We might look back and see Mohammed, scribbling madly in a cave and addressing the empty space above him as St Michael; but this would do nothing to disprove that his writings were a revelation from God. But should we look back at Christ’s body, and find out that he didn’t rise from the dead – or that he’d merely gone into a healing coma – Christianity would be immediately discredited.

1 Corinthians 15:12-14 Now if Christ be preached, that he arose again from the dead, how do some among you say, that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen again. And if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.

In the minds of many moderns, it seems odd that the scientific method developed in Europe, despite our embrace of such an ‘irrational’ faith. But they have the causality backwards; it is that very ‘irrationality’ – the ability of science to, theoretically, disprove Christianity – which created the groundwork for science in the first place.

The second thing which stands out to me about Christ’s death and resurrection – that there’s just enough physical and historical evidence to make belief reasonable, without being so overwhelming that only the pig-headed would refuse to believe.

There is some evidence that Christ existed, but it’s far from overwhelming. A casual mention by a historian here, some events which suggests His involvement there – but the Biblical Christ? The one who came back from the dead? Nobody can seriously doubt the existence of Julius Caesar or Mohammed without positing some massive conspiracy to push the existence of these historical personages. But of the resurrected Christ, the two strongest pieces of evidence (in my mind) are readily debatable.

The first is the Shroud of Turin. In it we find a perfect photonegative of a three dimensional shape; something which ought to have been impossible for a forger to create in the fifteenth century. Nonetheless, NASA has gone to great lengths to attempt to explain away the strangeness of this anomaly. (Yes, NASA. Why a space organization – one which was staffed by Nazis imported after WW2 by Project Paperclip – should be trying to disprove historical relics is a speculative exercise I’ll leave to the reader).

The second is the actions of his followers. Of the 12 apostles, only John died of natural causes. Judas died by his own hand, while the remaining ten died as martyrs. Unlike Christ, the apostles are well documented; we know where they went, which churches they founded, and under what circumstances they died. Perhaps Christ was just a story the lot of them decided to invent – I suppose stranger things have happened. But dying by torture for the sake of a practical joke seems a bit far to go.

There are solid grounds to assert one’s belief in Christ’s death and resurrection; but not to the point where it would undermine our free will. It’s as if God made sure that we’d have a choice in the matter; as if He wants us to take a leap of faith.

The Difference between Faith and Belief

It comes as a surprise to many moderns when they learn that Pythagoras – yes, that Pythagoras, he of the Theorem – was the leader of a religious cult. Today he is viewed as ‘merely’ a mathematician, and it’s not obvious why mathematics would be viewed as part of the ineffable. And yet – what else is so obviously holy? The realm of mathematics is perfection manifest. That mathematics provides so many useful tools for everyday life – engineering, physics, economics – is the least of its gifts. For every useful application in the physical realm, there are a myriad of pure constructs to dazzle the mind.

How could the ancients not have worshipped mathematics? It is an aspect of creation rooted firmly in the metaphysical. It calls us to understand the mind of God.

And yet, in the 20^th century something curious happened. Doubly curious, given the rampant atheism and reductive materialism of our time. In 1931 Kurt Gödel proved – and this is a perfect mathematical proof, not the fuzzy indeterminate thing that is a ‘scientific proof’ – that the tree of knowledge has limits. That no matter what axiomatic system you use to engage the ineffable, there will be a remainder left over. There will be true statements which you cannot prove true, and false statements which you cannot prove false. Known unknowns and unknown unknowns. That no creature within the universe can fully perceive the laws governing the universe.

There are only two rational responses to this revelation, neither of which is materialist atheism, which was nothing but a Spinozian conceit of the 19^th century which should have died in the trenches of the Great War. The first is that nothing exists. That truth is a fiction. That communication is tyranny, and that the only reasonable pursuit is the unbridled Will to Power. This is the stance of the post modernists, and I am convinced that the leaders of Gnostic Marxism believe it as well – though they’ll never admit this openly.

The second is – that God exists. That He is able to stand outside of it all, and affirm those truths which we cannot see. That His Love and Will sustains the order of the universe.

Both of these stances require leaps of faith. The first – nihilism – crushes hope, but grants license. Love and grace are lies which we’ll never achieve, but we’re free to pursue our pleasures and crush our enemies. The second – Christianity – indicts us as falling short of the Glory of God, but offers us a path to salvation.

Faith as an Act of Will

Thus do I distinguish belief from faith: the former is an assessment of the profane world; the latter a moral decision as to how you’ll orient yourself to the ineffable.

In Christianity we see the intersection of the profane and the ineffable, the Christ who was man and who was God. A physical event of metaphysical proportions. Something which can be believed in or not, with equivalent evidence on both sides, because the important decision isn’t of the mind, but of the soul. Do you choose to pursue the good, the true, and the beautiful, even though the blinding light of this goodness reveals all your myriad shortcomings and sins? Or, do you hide from it – deny it – and decide that you will be your own deity? One who calls his vices virtues?

Let us step back from the Nietzschean abyss for a moment, and look at a matter more appropriate for creatures of our station. Do you believe in love? Do you believe in marriage?

To the post-modern materialist, love is nothing but a chemical reaction, a temporary infatuation fueled by an oxytocin cascade in the brain. We are but animals, and to promise marriage until ‘Death do us part,’ is an absurd superstition.

Or – perhaps we believe that we have the capacity to choose love, every day, for the rest of our lives. In sickness and in health, during the good times and the bad, we will choose to love our partner and support them, to see the best in them even when we don’t particularly like them. We will have faith in them, and in the marriage.

So: do I believe in God? Yes – but the reason I believe is because of my faith. I freely made a decision to orient myself towards that which is good and beautiful and true; even though this humiliates me by comparison. I faithfully maintain that orientation through trying times, and when one of those trials causes me to trip and fall – I reorient myself and return.

Faith is a decision which happens in the soul, a decision which cannot be ignored. All men must confront it. Belief without faith is hollow, fragile, and frequently shatters; but once faith is chosen, belief will grow.