Self Reflective Faith

A few days ago I quoted Bradley Artson Shavit from a debate with Christopher Hitchens. In that same debate Rabbi Shavit noted that religion, like science, must be self-reflective. I would add that followers of a religion must constantly assess whether their understanding of God and faith fit with their experience of life. If we find a truth in the world we must reflect on how that truth fits into our understanding of the Bible. All truth - is God's truth. Alister McGrath makes a similar point in his book, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life.

For an orthodox Christian theologian, the doctrine of the Trinity is the inevitable outcome of intellectual engagement with the Christian experience of God; for the physicist, equally abstract and bewildering concepts emerge from wrestling with the world of quantum phenomena. But both are committed to sustained intellectual engagement with this phenomena, in order to derive and develop theories or doctrines which can be said to do justice to them, preserving rather than reducing them. Both the sciences and religion may therefore be described as offering interpretations of experience.*

We must not fear an understanding of faith which includes an understanding of science. Our understanding of life must include a thorough reading of the Bible and a thorough reading of God's other revelation: the universe.


*Alister McGrath, Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998) , 88.