The mainly ontological character of Christian faith

I have been thinking about this issue in relation to some discussions I have had on Google + with a guy who has been pushing me hard on questions concerning my faith. Despite his scepticism about faith in a God of any kind, we seemed to have come to some sort of agreement that faith, mostly, is not so much about knowing something is true through careful observation and ‘pointing’ at it. In other words, faith is not about epistemological certainties and objective truth-finding. Rather, faith is mostly about what goes on inside of you or ‘your being’, and as you encounter God personally. In other words, faith is about ontological experiences which change you and your view of the world.

This distinction between the epistemological and ontological character of faith is a crude and over-simplified one certainly, and it is riding rough-shod over various subtle and nuanced philosophical and theological debates. Nevertheless, it goes someway, I think, to explain the pronouncements of Jesus in the New Testament. More obviously, in his declaration in Luke 17:20-21, that: ‘The Kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say ‘Here it is’ or ‘There it is’, because ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’. Less obviously perhaps, in his response to Thomas’ direct but very profound question to him in John 14:5: ‘Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus’ reply is revealing in verse 6, albeit it has become a cliché in Christian circles, that: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. Non-one comes to the father except through me’. Therefore, whoever Christ is – and Christians believe, strangely, that he is God made a person (and see my post 7^th February: ‘The utterly strange claim that God became a human being and so our friend’) – Jesus is emphasising here the importance of having faith in his being, as a channel for God’s truth, love and life, and not so much in a knowing where to go, and so walking on some kind of ‘true’ path external to him.  

Finally, given this mainly ontological character of faith, how then should you approach Jesus (and God)? In short, you are not required to know or discover for certain the truth of the matter as if it is waiting to be found in a box labelled ‘the truth’, before you say, ‘yes, I believe!’ Instead, you invite Christ and God into your life asking it to be transformed internally, from the inside-out as it were, and then as you experience the results, you start to say, ‘yes, I believe!’. 

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