Pulpit Magazine

(Review by Nathan Williams) 

In Search of a Confident Faith by J.P. Moreland & Klaus Issler

There may be no more misunderstood word in American culture today than the word faith. Many people use the term, but few grasp the biblical teaching about what constitutes genuine faith.

In their book In Seach of a Confident Faith, J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler attempt to deal with this misunderstanding of the essential nature of faith. This book seeks to answer a number of significant questions dealing with faith. What is the nature of true faith? Why must we even relate to God in terms of faith at all? Why can’t God just appear to us and tell us up front that He is real and we must obey and follow Him?

In Search of a Confident Faith divides into two sections. The first three chapters discuss the challenges we face to our faith in God. In this section we learn exactly what faith is and why it is so significant. We also begin to understand distractions which keep us from experiencing increasing confidence in God. These distractions cover intellectual obstacles to faith and emotional obstacles to faith.

The next three chapters make up the second section of the book and focus on the growth of faith. Within these chapters we find teaching on learning to trust the promises Jesus makes in the gospels. It’s important to understand that Jesus lived a life of faith also and we can learn much from His example. In these chapters we’re also made aware of two other ways to grow our confidence in God. These are noticing the work which God is accomplishing in the world around us and learning to trust God’s faithfulness as we make life decisions. As I read there were several points which I found to be most helpful and a couple of issues of which I felt the reader needs to be wary.

First, the teaching this book provides on the nature of faith is excellent. The authors go into detail in the first chapter about exactly what real faith looks like. They discuss the three classical aspects of faith; the content of faith, the personal awareness and assent to that content, and the willful commitment to living a life that reflects the content of our faith. Many Christians have probably never thought this deeply through their faith and what it actually looks like. Often, we may forget that faith involves knowing information, assenting to that information mentally, and having that information affect the actions we perform.

The authors also walk the reader through several philosophical aspects of faith that will help as one considers the topic of faith. I found a couple of these to be particularly helpful. First, the teaching on the degrees of faith. Often we believe and act as if faith is an all or nothing endeavor. Someone either believes something or doesn’t believe it. This can be true in certain instances, but often our faith in a propositional statement or a person rises and falls. The stronger the confidence in a particular teaching, the more likely it is that we will act on that confidence. Second, the authors point out that faith does not grow directly, but indirectly. In other words, people do not have direct control over what they believe. This is a fascinating insight into how our spiritual lives work. You can never convince someone of something they don’t believe by simply telling them repeatedly to believe it. They must have some evidence brought to them or some new teaching which changes their mind and increases confidence in some truth.

As I mentioned before, there were a couple of areas of unease which I had as I read In Search of a Confident Faith. I was quite concerned throughout the book to be confronted with examples which indicated an approach taken to care for the soul including secular psychological methods. Many of the examples given looked back to early childhood experiences and concluded that these events had subconsciously affected the individual in an extremely negative way. For example, in a discussion of a roommate who feared he had committed the unpardonable sin, this analysis is given; “Due to early childhood attachment issues, he felt unloved by and disconnected from people in general and God in particular, and rather than face this head on, he projected his emotional insecurity on the unpardonable sin as a more manageable center of focus” (p. 56).

Another area of concern I had was with the strong emphasis given to experience as an authority throughout the book. The last two chapters are meant to increase our faith by noting that God is working in the world and that He can be trusted to guide our lives. Rather than attempting to increase the faith of the reader through the clear teaching of Scripture, the majority of these chapters was given to personal anecdotes which were meant to increase faith.

If Scripture remains our only authority for faith and practice, and faith comes through hearing the Word of Christ, (Rom. 10:17) then a better way to increase faith would have been through clear biblical teaching. Obviously experience is important to our ability to look back and see the faithfulness of God in our lives. But experience can never increase faith in the same way as Scripture. Several of the experiences recounted in the book involved faith healers, dreams as direct revelation from God, and God providing guidance through direct revelation to individuals. Obviously this is not the place for a detailed argument over these issues, but Grace Church’s cessationist position on these things is well known. Thus it is important to make potential readers aware.

Overall, this was a helpful read in many ways, though there were a couple areas in which extra discernment was needed. We are a people of faith and it is vital to understand exactly what we mean when we are calling people to live a life of faith.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS