QUOTATIONS ON THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE

Every philosopher who attempts to build a metaphysic is ultimately dependent upon some “faith-principle,” whether he is a Christian or a non-Christian, religious or anti-religious. […] even philosophies which claim to be based upon reason alone without admixture of faith, always turn out upon examination to be elaborate rationalizations which conceal the initial act of faith upon which they are based.
Alan Richardson; Christian Apologetics; 1947; p230

Mankind would remain in the deepest darkness of ignorance if the path of reason were the only available way to the knowledge of God.
Aquinas; Contra Gentiles; Bk I; Ch IV.

Alan Richardson; Christian Apologetics; 1947

p76- No part of human nature escaped the consequences of the Fall of man, and his reason did not remain unimpaired […] the Christian […] is in disagreement with the liberal-rationalist assumption that human reason is an effective instrument by which objective philosophical, ethical and historical judgments can be made.

p77- The Christian takes belief seriously; the rationalist tries to dispense with it. The Christian says that without believing there is no knowledge; the rationalist says that where there is believing there cannot be knowledge. […] Reason does not precede faith, as rationalism supposes, but faith precedes reason.

p99- In the understanding of history, as in other matters, faith precedes understanding.

p115- It is not true that mankind “naturally” arrives at a noble conception of a righteous and loving God, who is apprehended in the sincerity of faith, as a result of following the leading of its own religious consciousness; it is only where the Christian Gospel has been preached that the one true God is known.

p129- The actual situation is that, until we accept the truth of special revelation, the truth as it is in Christ, we do not clearly see any portion of the truth as it really is […]

p130- […] apart from faith in Christ, there is no undistorted knowledge of God or of truth at all.

p132- Reason itself must be justified by faith.

p165- Revelation, whether general or special, results from the unconditional grace of self-giving of God, without which we could know nothing about Him or His truth […] it is a miracle of grace, not a triumph of human discovery.

p174- The skepticism of the modern mind concerning the Gospel miracles actually arises not from any historical understanding but from a garbled view of the “conclusions” of “science.” […] The view that physical science can solve the problem of the miracles can be justified only by the assumption that the only forces in the universe are those which physical science can measure and describe, but that is a philosophical and not a scientific assumption.

p211- The authenticity of the Scriptures is sealed upon the heart of believers by the “secret testimony of the Holy Spirit.”

p213- […] the Bible is authoritative to the Christian believer because the Spirit of God commands to him the message in his heart; the authority of the Bible is the authority not of men, or of churches or of councils, but of God.

p224- […] the Word of God judges us, not we the Word of God. Either we accept by faith the divine truth of the Bible, or by unfaith we reject it.

p225- […] the ability to see from the divine perspective is conferred upon the human understanding through faith […] the Bible itself consistently regards the divine bestowal upon the human mind of the capacity to apprehend the truth when it is revealed, as no less important than the actual giving of the revelation itself. […] We must receive not only the truth but also the capacity to receive it. (Ps 119:18,130,169)

p226- […] the prophets look forward to the coming of the Messiah as the day in which the blind eyes shall be opened […]  Faith itself is the gift of God, by which seeing is made possible. Jesus is known to be the light of the world because He has brought to men the gift of sight.[…] To become a Christian does not mean to renounce reason; by becoming a Christian one may become in the true sense of the word a philosopher.

p227- Reason by itself cannot discover the truth about God and human destiny, and even when it stumbles upon particular truths, it cannot with certitude know them to be true.

p230- Every philosopher who attempts to build a metaphysic is ultimately dependent upon some “faith-principle” whether he is a Christian or a non-Christian, religious or anti-religious.
[…] even philosophies which claim to be based upon reason alone without any admixture of faith, always turn out upon examination to be elaborate rationalizations which conceal the initial act of faith upon which they are based.

p233- Faith is a light and guide without which reason cannot work. It is an indispensible condition of understanding. A man must believe in order that he may understand.

p235- […] faith is not a mere guessing at indemonstrable truths which may be dispensed with when a rational structure has been built; […] Faith […] is not a substitute for understanding, but a condition of it. “Blind faith” is a contradiction in terms, as far as Christian faith is concerned, for faith is the source of light and understanding.
Nor is it a believing apart from or in opposition to evidence […] Between faith and reason there can be no conflict […] faith cannot oppose reason; it can oppose only other faiths […] such as humanism or rationalism […] for rationalism operates only through the employment of a concealed faith-principle which is […] as necessary to it as is faith to Christian philosophy.

p240- Christian faith has always maintained that faith is a virtue and that lack of faith is sin.

p241- Error in the use of reason […] arises not only from the weakness and finitude of our human intellect and the deficiencies of our empirical knowledge, but also– and more dangerously– from the distortions occasioned by human sinfulness and self-interest.

p247- […] apart from the grace of saving faith, the intellect is a slave of sin, self-interest and pride– and therefore the begetter of false theories, rationalizations and of all forms of error. […]
The uselessness of saying that reason has merely to follow the laws of its own nature in order to arrive at truth is that this is precisely what it cannot do; its own nature has been corrupted by sin.

p248- The whole of us, including our reason, must be justified by faith.

p249- Apart from the biblical revelation we should have been very ignorant of the source and nature of knowledge and truth.

> Faith is not the antithesis to knowledge, nor to reason.
> The opposite of knowledge is ignorance.
> The opposite of reason is irrationality.
> The antithesis to faith is doubt.
Herbert Henry Wernecke; Faith in the New Testament; 1934; p5

Herbert Henry Wernecke; Faith in the New Testament; 1934

p10-13- [Faith] is basic to human existence and progress. […] Not only do we trust in the forces of the material world, we likewise depend upon the reliability of our fellow men. […] The fact that we believe places to exist that we have never seen is an indication that we trust the reports of others. […] Society’s very foundations depend upon faith. […] In business affairs we have to lean upon one another’s honesty. Human relationships demand mutual trust for its very existence.
Science and religion, both ultimately rest on faith, inasmuch as both of them are forced back upon convictions which are beyond the possibility of further analysis or proof.

p14- […] the scientist does not prove that he has a mind, certain intuitive powers of thought and observation, but proceeds at once to use them.

p15- But reason itself must rest at last upon authority; for the original data of reason do not rest upon reason, but are necessarily accepted by reason on the authority of what is beyond itself. […] in the last resort, we must, perforce, philosophically admit, that belief is the primary condition of reason, and not reason the ultimate ground of belief.

Before science can proceed to investigate a single question, she must make a number of pure acts of faith.
1- Faith in the trustworthiness of human reason.
2- Faith in the trustworthiness of human memory.
3- Faith in the trustworthiness of the senses.
4- Faith in the unprovable principles on which all of science is founded.
These acts of faith are not only not proved by science, but never can be proved.
Herbert Henry Wernecke; Faith in the New Testament; 1934; p13,14

[…] many [writers] make a sharp contrast between faith and knowledge, while some […] identify them. Augustine and Anselm made faith the basis of knowledge– “I believe in order to understand.”
Gordon Clark; Logic; p21,22

Believing is consenting to the truth of what is said.
Augustine; De Spiritu et Littera; 54; Augustinian Synthesis; Przywara; trans. 56

Faith is the conviction that something is true.
Unknown

Exercising faith is a tacit admission of a lack or need for knowledge beyond one’s reach or ability to discover.
Unknown

Reason, says the sceptic, is the only judge of truth, and you ought to throw off every opinion and every belief that is not grounded on reason. Why, sir, should I believe the faculty of reason more than that of perception? – they both came out of the same shop, and were made by the same artist; and if he puts one piece of false ware into my hands, what should hinder him from putting another?
Thomas Reid; (1710-1796); An Inquiry into the Human Mind; 1764 [J. Bennet; 2017; p102].

CLARIFICATIONS
Reason cannot acquire new knowledge. Neither can it judge between truth and error.
It is an organizing and relating tool. It comes into play only after faith has acquired knowledge. It tries to find connections between bits of information that the mind already possesses.
A=B is acquired thru faith
B=C is acquired thru faith
A=C is realized by reason […]
[…] only if the mind remembers the first two relationships, reason then is able to conclude that A=C.
This does not mean that reason has acquired new knowledge, because the first two equalities already contained the knowledge of the conclusion.
Reason has done its job of relating A to C, but this in no way guarantees that A=C is true. If either or both of the first two statements are false, then reason’s conclusion is automatically false.

‘I believe’ means ‘I trust’. Trust is the act in which a man may rely on the faithfulness of another. p18
God is hidden to us outside His word. But is manifest to us in Jesus Christ. p20
Knowledge of God is a knowledge completely effected and determined from outside of its object, from the side of God. p24
Karl Barth; (1886-1968); Dogmatics in Outline; 1949

Belief is the voluntary mental assent to a given and understood proposition.

[…] we may begin to understand why the Holy Scriptures have so much to say about the vital place of faith and why they brand unbelief as a deadly sin. Among all created beings, not one dare trust in itself.
[…] Unbelief is actually perverted faith, for it puts its trust not in the living God, but in dying men.
A. W. Tozer; The Knowledge of the Holy; p42

[…] we shall not seek to understand in order that we may believe, but to believe in order that we may understand.
A. W. Tozer; The Knowledge of the Holy; p65

Faith is not in itself a meritorious act; the merit is in the One toward Whom it is directed. Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.
A. W. Tozer

Everything that is not of faith is sin.
Romans 14:23

p11
I know only two ways by which God’s purpose and God’s person may be known.
First there is the process of reason. As a good detective can, for example, tell you many things about my skills, habits & character just by examining something I may have made or handled, so much can be learned about God by  a careful examination of the universe, the work of His hands.
But the detective who examines only what I make can never say that he knows me. He may know some things about me, but before he can say that he knows me, there must be a process of revelation:   I must communicate with him. I must tell him what I think, how I feel and what I want to do. This self-revelation may be in conversation, in writing or in some other way. Only then does it become possible for him to know me. Just so, if God is ever to be known and His thoughts, desires and purposes perceived, He must take the initiative and make at least a partial revelation of Himself to men.

p28-29
It is a mistake to think that faith is opposed to reason. Faith & reason go hand in hand, but faith goes on when reason can go no further. Reason, to a great extent, is dependent on faith, for without knowledge it is impossible to reason, and knowledge is very largely a matter of faith in human testimony.
For instance, I believe that strychnine administered in a large enough dose will poison a human being, but I have never seen the experiment performed. Yet I have such faith in the written testimony of men that I would not take a large dose of strychnine for any reason.
[…] 9/10s of the things you know are a matter of faith in human testimony, written or spoken, for you have not verified them for yourself.

The Reason Why; Robert A. Laidlaw; (1885-1971); 1981

All men live by beliefs. Travelers believe that they will go back home; patients believe that their physician will heal them; the philosophers who think that all is water believe that Thales was right; others believe what has been said by Plato, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Zeno or Epicurus. Even those who think that man knows nothing, believe Carneades on this point. You believe in Plato, Arnobius says, or in Numenius, or in somebody else; we believe in Christ.
Etienne Gilson; (1884-1978); History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages; p48

[…] in the doctrine of Augustine, sense cognition is not perfectly safe. First, its proper function is to warn the soul of some changes that take place in the body rather than to represent to it the nature of things. Secondly, this nature of material things is itself a changeable one. For these two reasons, no pure truth can be expected from sensations.
Etienne Gilson; (1884-1978); History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages; p75

What is Faith?
Gresham Machen

p51-The Bible teaches that God has given to man a faculty which is capable of apprehending truth about God. […] That does not mean that we finite creatures can find out God by our own searching; but it does mean that God has made us capable of receiving information which He chooses to give.
[…] the area that we know is infinitesimal compared with the area of what we do not know. But partial knowledge is not necessarily false knowledge.

p177- The basal fact about faith is that all faith has an object; all faith is not only possessed by someone, but it consists in confidence in someone [or something].

p180- The efficacy of faith, then, depends not upon the faith itself, but upon the object of faith, namely Christ. Faith is not regarded in the New Testament as itself a meritorious work or a meritorious condition of the soul; the NT never says that a man is saved on account of his faith, but always that he is saved through faith or by means of his faith; faith is merely the means which the Holy Spirit uses to apply to the individual soul the benefits of Christ’s death.

p181- Faith is in one sense a very simple thing; it simply means that abandoning the vain effort of earning one’s way into God’s presence, we accept the gift of salvation which Christ offers so full and free.

p235- Faith is always, if it be true faith, a way of obtaining knowledge; it should never be contrasted with science.

Every man lives by faith, the unbeliever as well as the saint; the one by faith in natural laws and the other by faith in God.
A. W. Tozer; The Knowledge of the Holy; p25

The learner should take things on trust.
Aristotle; On Sophistical Refutations; Great Books, Vol 8; p228a

Not only religion but the greater part of our life and knowledge is already based upon faith in this sense. Scientific activity, for example, depends upon faith in the “uniformity” of nature; all social intercourse upon faith in the characters of our friends; and the simplest maneuver in the physical world upon faith in the reliability of our sense organs. We cannot then […] either as scientists, as social beings or as practical men, throw dialectical stones at those who profess to live by faith. For in this respect we all dwell in equally brittle glass houses. And if science and ordinary life can properly be based upon faith, why not religion also.
John Hick; Faith and Knowledge; p54

Christians are not the only people who walk by faith and not by sight. We all do it, and must do it every moment of our life. […] whether of common life or of the abstrutest scientific argument.
Henry M. Gwatkin; The Knowledge of God; I; p16

And why should it not be more reasonable, seeing all human things are dependent upon faith, to believe God rather than them? For who enters on a voyage, or contracts a marriage, or becomes a father of children, or casts seed into the ground, without believing that better things will result from doing so […]
Origen; Contra Celsus; Bk I, ch XI, ANF 4; p401

[…] you read from time to time on subjects placed beyond human knowledge. Does not each one trust this author or that?
[…] what kind of judgment, is this, so unjust that you mock at faith in us, while you see that you have it in common with our readiness of belief?
[…] How unreasonable it is, that when we both abide by teachers and have one and the same thing, belief, in common, you should wish it to be granted to you to receive what is so said by them, but should be unwilling to hear and see what is brought forward by Christ!
Arnobius; ANF6; p437

It is generally taken for granted that the appeal to faith is a uniquely distinguishing feature of religious belief. Certainly religious thinkers do not hesitate to declare that faith is a valid source of belief in religion […] the author of Hebrews speaks of faith as the ‘evidence’ of things unseen. […] Of the other systems of belief it is popularly assumed that scientific beliefs rest on empirical evidence exclusively. Religion seems to stand […] apart from […] other systems by unashamedly resting its beliefs on faith. […] I will try to show that religion is not alone, but that all systems of belief are in the same boat, all floating on the […] waters of faith.

[…] why do I believe in the existence of independent physical objects? Because I believe it. Why do I believe that other people exist? Because I believe it.
One reason why in the case of both science and philosophy the element of faith is unnoticed is because the commitments are unconscious […] the air of important demonstrations in science and philosophy is dissipated as soon as we notice that both make assumptions as to what constitutes evidence […]

That science must rely on memory is obvious; we are obliged to remember the evidence of the senses obtained in the past, on which we base our present theories. […] I submit that reliance on memory is sheer trust or faith.

It is said that religious belief in the existence of God rests on faith. But natural science too entails an undemonstrated belief in the uniformity of nature– a belief […] that nature has the kind of structure which justifies our taking its behavior in the past as a clue to its behavior in the future. Thus, not only in their source, but in their content too, the two systems of belief seem to me to be analogous, in that both seem to be beliefs in the existence of something like an order of nature.

[…] I would say that the religious belief is no more of a faith than is the belief that nature is uniform. They are both acts of faith. […] The formalization of religious belief is theology; the formalization of natural science is naturalism […] They both rest on faith.
Raphael Demos; Are Religious Dogmas Cognitive and Meaningful? in Academic Freedom, Logic and Religion; 1953; pp71-74

He may compare Scripture with Scripture until he has discovered the true meaning of the text. But right there his authority ends. He must never sit in judgment upon what is written. He dare not bring the meaning of the Word before the bar of reason. He dare not commend or condemn the Word as reasonable or unreasonable, scientific or unscientific. After the meaning is discovered, that meaning judges him; never does he judge it.
A. W. Tozer; The Knowledge of the Holy; p28

All our knowledge has its origin in our perceptions.
Leonardo da Vinci

There is no exit from the circle of one’s beliefs.
Keith Lehrer; Knowledge; p188.

Erroneous views of faith.
Faith is the ultimate evil; it is belief in something absent evidence, or in the face of contrary evidence.
Faith is the triumph of emotion over reason.
Faith is belief in the irrational without regard for fact, logic or observed reality.
Faith is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.
George Seaton

The faith you have is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge you have.
The scientist tries to rid himself of all faiths and beliefs. He either knows or he does not know. If he knows, there is no room for faith or belief. If he does not know, he has no right to faith or belief.
A. J. Carlson

I do not want faith, I want knowledge. I do not want hope, I want truth.
Sean Baltz

It is true, of course, that scientific hypotheses are ultimately verifiable by sense-experience. If we took the trouble, we could have the same sense-experience as expert scientists have: for instance, we could look through telescopes, conduct chemical experiments and so on, But we trust scientific experts, not only because we know that we could have similar experiences to theirs if we wished, but also because their statements usually turn out to be reliable. p86

Empirical statements are verified, in the last analysis, by sense-experience.  Analytic statements are verified by our experience and knowledge of the rules of logic. p87

We disagree about the criteria for human values, because we do not know much about human beings, and because we do not admit our ignorance, preferring prejudice instead. The sciences which are supposed to give us the information we require are, of course, psychology, sociology (which amounts to mass psychology), anthropology, and history. Of these sciences, none have yet reached the stage of advanced development where they can give unerring and useful information, and the first three are still in their infancy. p91
John Wilson; Language and the Pursuit of Truth; 1958

The nature of reasoning is that the axioms on which it is based cannot be proved by reasoning.

INSIGHTS
• Faith and knowledge are not the same thing.
• Faith is the tool or path through which to acquire knowledge. Our goal is to acquire knowledge.
• Every act of faith does not lead to knowledge because we can be easily deceived.
• Afflatus= Divine input of knowledge by “blowing” into the mind. [First seen in Our Mathematical Heritage p164]
• There are only two entities about which we can have knowledge, the Creator and the creation.
• Creator= Spirit, independent, perfect, eternal, immutable, omniscient
• Creation= material/spiritual, dependent, fallible, temporal, mutable, ignorant

Faith References

Rom 1:17- For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed— a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
5:1- Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we[a] have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
10:17-  Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.

Mark 11:22- “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered.

Eph 2:8- For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith— and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

IITim 4:7- I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Heb 11:6- And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
11:13- All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.

James 1:6- But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

IIPet 1:1- Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,  To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours:

IJohn 5:4- for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

Jude 3- Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people.

Christ asks Not for a great faith in God, but for a small faith in a great God.
The saving power of Faith does not reside in the act of faith, nor in the attitude of faith, nor in the intensity of faith, but in the OBJECT of faith, which for the Christian is Jesus Christ.
The helper is not the faith of the one helped but rather the Helper in whom faith is placed.

The ultimate ground of faith and knowledge is confidence in God.
Charles Hodge