Holy Spirit Is No Skeptic

Excerpt from CT -- Mollie Ziegler Hemingway post:  In Praise of Confidence

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While the researchers argue that enthusiastic evangelism indicates a lack of confidence, others say that doubt is precisely what Christians should embrace.

 

"The opposite of faith isn't doubt—it's certainty," wrote Pastor Peter Marty in the August 2010 issue of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's magazine, The Lutheran. Equating certainty with self-righteousness and arrogance, Marty encouraged everyone to open their minds. "Doubt is really quite beautiful. For too long we have been denying doubt the respect it deserves."

That would have been news to Martin Luther, who also disliked self-righteousness. In his Preface to Romans, he wrote, "Faith is a living, unshakeable confidence in God's grace." In a 1525 debate with Erasmus, who praised doubt and accused Luther of seeking certainty, he said, "To take no pleasure in assertions is not the mark of a Christian heart; indeed, one must delight in assertions to be a Christian at all …. Take away assertion, and you take away Christianity." Luther pointed to the words of Paul, who so often called for "full assurance," or the highest degree of certainty and conviction.

"The Holy Spirit is no skeptic, and the things he has written in our hearts are not doubts or opinions, but assertions—surer and more certain than sense and life itself," Luther said.

Does that mean that with the knowledge of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, we won't face doubts? Hardly. Scripture is full of stories of people, from Eve to Thomas, who doubted the promises of God. But just because it's human to doubt and we all do it does not mean it should be celebrated so much as endured.

Shortly after the Transfiguration, in which Jesus shone with the glory of his divine nature, he came upon an anxious father. When the father asked Jesus to deliver his son from demonic possession, Jesus told him, "All things are possible for one who believes." The father responded, "I believe; help my unbelief!" Jesus cast out the demon. What a beautiful reminder of how Jesus delivers us from a world of despair and doubt.