Skepticism Is Not a Christian Virtue

I’ve never thought of skepticism as a virtue, but we live in a world that seems to demand it. In the fourth grade, I rode home on the bus and traded a piece of amethyst for two small red gems. “They’re rubies,” my friend said. “How do you know?” I asked. “My dad told me,” he said. I got home and asked my dad to validate the claim. He took a hammer, set one of the “rubies” on our garage floor, and tapped it gently. It shattered. “This is polished sea glass,” he said. I’d been certain I stepped off the bus that afternoon with rubies, but I’d been swindled.

It’d be easy to teach a child in this situation to be skeptical: Don’t take people at their word. And that mantra easily becomes a worldview that paints every experience with a shadow of doubt. The same can happen with our faith in Christ. Whether we’re new believers or seasoned saints, we may be tempted to ask if doubt and skepticism are hallmarks of reliable faith.

For example, is it good for me to question my salvation because I professed to believe in Christ as a 7-year-old who was afraid of dying? If I was motivated by a fear of death rather than a love for Christ, does that mean my salvation isn’t sure? Am I called to be a skeptic about the validity of my salvation until I’m absolutely certain of my faith’s purity?

We find an answer to these questions in Herman Bavinck’s little book The Certainty of Faith. Questions of personal assurance can be complex. The Bible speaks about the inner witness of the Spirit (Rom. 8:16). It also makes clear that true faith is evidenced in obedience (James 2:17). But as Bavinck makes clear, our assurance of faith finds its ultimate grounding outside of us in the certain promises of God. 

Bavinck’s Answer

The Certainty of Faith is lesser known among Bavinck’s works, but it shouldn’t be. Though the Dutch theologian had it penned and published in 1901, it reads as if it were written for 21st-century Christians in the age of skepticism.

Bavinck’s discussion of both personal assurance and the reliability of God’s promises is refreshingly biblical and profoundly encouraging. Bavinck declares,

[Faith] is the return of the confidence which right-minded children place in their father. In the disposition and condition of the soul on which Holy Scripture stamps the name of faith, [faith’s] certainty of itself is enclosed. First of all, there is the certainty regarding the truth of the promises of God given to us in the gospel, but then also the certainty that we personally participate in those promises out of grace. . . .  Faith is certainty, and as such excludes all doubt.

For Bavinck, true faith puts aside skepticism in all its forms, whether that’s overactive introspection or doubts about the Bible’s reliability. Moreover, he roots our faith’s certainty not in an internal conviction or feeling, nor in evidence judged by human reason, but in the reliable witness of God’s external work and Word. In other words, our certainty ultimately lies outside us. Here are three reasons that’s good news.

1. Certain faith in God’s promises offers rest from constant questioning.

Many treat skepticism and doubt as virtues. They say these protect us from naivete, from being swindled. But skepticism isn’t good in its own right. When elevated too highly, it leads to soul sickness. While doubt has its uses, it can also deaden us to faith’s life-giving power.

Whether we’re new believers or seasoned saints, we may be tempted to ask if doubt and skepticism are hallmarks of reliable faith.

Bavinck wrote of his generation, “A lust for doubt became the soul-sickness of our age, dragging a string of moral woes and miseries along with it.” He might as well have written that today. What if when we open the Bible, we forget about being swindled and simply receive God’s jaw-dropping promises?

God’s grace will always sound unbelievable, but that’s because the truth comes to rags and offers riches, not because we’re duped by a fairy tale. Bavinck reminds us that we can discard worldly skepticism and take up faith in who God says he is.

What will we find when we do this? Rest. “Certainty is rest, peace, and bliss; while doubt, suspicion, and opinion are always accompanied by a bit of unease and unrest.” Given today’s landscape of anxiety and angst, we’re desperate for the rest of certainty. Thankfully, our constant questioning will evaporate in the light of God’s certain Word.

2. Externally directed certainty shows us the goodness of dependence.

We not only live in a culture that worships autonomy and independence, but we also seem convinced that everything we believe requires internal validation—something we contribute. Our faith depends on our feelings and experiences. We strive to feel full of vigor and hope. When we don’t, we guilt-trip ourselves in despair.

But Bavinck points to the great news that faith’s certainty doesn’t depend on us: “Holy Scripture never leaves believers to depend on themselves. It always binds them to the objective word.” Faith depends on what God says and what Christ did, not on how we feel. Affections are the fruit of faith, not its root.

That’s liberating. We’re not trapped by our emotions and sensations, never fenced in by our feelings. There is always a way out, and that way is paved with words—God’s words. Jesus said that God’s Word is truth (John 17:17). And in that truth is freedom.

As Bavinck put it, “Truth is always life, always sets free, and always causes us to rule as kings over what it irradiates with its light.” Far better to store certainty in the light of God’s revealed truth than in our fickle feelings. It’s good for us to depend on what God says rather than trying to self-validate every belief.

3. Certain faith is the foundation for unity and love.

Though we live today with an acute awareness of how divided and fragmented the church can be, our certain faith can be a gathering place for weary saints.

“What divides the church internally,” Bavinck writes, “no matter how weighty it may be, is always less than what binds and unites her. The more unbelief becomes aware of its power and the bolder its actions grow, the more the Christian church closes her ranks against a common enemy.”

Our certainty makes room for communion, a circle of saints who gather to identify unbelief as the chief evil (Matt. 13:58; Mark 6:6). There we can be “eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). Our certainty in faith has great power to bring us together and to give us concrete opportunities to love and encourage one another.

Our certainty makes room for communion, a circle of saints who gather to identify unbelief as the chief evil.

Bavinck says faith’s certainty “is by nature heroic and fearless, though there be as many devils as tiles on the roof.” Each of us has devils on the rooftop, things prying into the cracks of our hope and faith. But Spirit-gifted certainty can be the broomstick we use to knock on the ceiling and cast down all the devils of doubt. Certainty can bring us the peace we so desperately long for.

We’re all tempted to go looking for validation for our faith everywhere except in God’s Word. That’s what our skeptical age has taught us—don’t take people at their word. But God has something far better for us than skepticism: a certain faith.

Here is good news:

No human word, no result of scientific investigation, no ideal fashioned by the imagination, no proposition built by human reasoning can be the foundation of our hope for eternity. For all these things are shaky and fallible; they cannot support the edifice of hope, and will soon collapse into ruin. By its very nature, faith—that is, religious faith—can only rest upon a word or promise of God.

Thank God for the certainty of his divine promise.

News Source : https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/skepticism-not-virtue/