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Course 25 · Lesson 5.4

Auditing your own commitments: reasons, evidence and uncertainty

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 25 outline

Module 1: Integrating Scripture and History

  1. The four theological disciplines and the questions each asks
  2. Biblical theology: the story of Scripture from creation to new creation
  3. Historical theology: how doctrine was formed, tested and defined
  4. Tracing one doctrine from Scripture through the councils

Module 2: Integrating Doctrine and Philosophy

  1. Systematic theology: coherence among doctrines
  2. Philosophical theology: clarifying and testing concepts
  3. Faith and reason: four historic accounts of their relation
  4. When the disciplines seem to conflict

Module 3: What Is Real and What Is a Human Being

  1. Creation, contingency and the God-world relation
  2. Christian metaphysics compared with materialism, pantheism and dualism
  3. The image of God and the dignity of the person
  4. Body, soul, the fall and the hope of resurrection

Module 4: How We Know and How We Live

  1. Christian epistemology: revelation, Scripture, tradition, reason and experience
  2. Christian ethics: command, virtue and natural law
  3. How doctrine shapes prayer, worship and conduct
  4. How practice tests and sometimes corrects doctrine

Module 5: Tensions and Commitments

  1. Stating a theological tension precisely
  2. Case studies: divine sovereignty and human freedom, one God and three persons, faith and works
  3. Telling a firm conviction from an open question
  4. Auditing your own commitments: reasons, evidence and uncertainty

Module 6: Building a Coherent Worldview

  1. What makes a worldview coherent: consistency, comprehensiveness and fit with experience
  2. Independent faith and historic Christianity: where they agree and differ
  3. Outlining the synthesis
  4. Drafting, testing and revising the synthesis

All courses

Program / Course 25: Theological Synthesis / Lesson 5.4

What you will learn

  • List your central theological commitments and write the reasons behind each.
  • Distinguish reasons you have examined from beliefs you inherited.
  • Identify the evidence, the possible defeaters and the level of uncertainty for each commitment.
  • Write an honest audit that records what you hold, why and what would change your mind.

The big idea

An audit is a careful accounting. Applied to belief, it asks of each central commitment: What do I believe? Why? What evidence supports it? What would count against it? How certain am I? Where did I get it? The purpose is not to cast doubt on everything but to know one’s own mind. A belief that survives examination is held with better grounds, and a belief that does not may need to be revised. Both results serve the truth.

Key terms

Commitment
A belief or value that a person holds as central and acts upon.
Warrant
What turns a true belief into knowledge: good reasons, a reliable source or properly functioning faculties, depending on the theory.
Defeater
A consideration that, if true, would weaken or overturn a belief. It may be a counter-argument or a new fact.
Credence
A degree of belief, often described as a number between zero and one, expressing how confident a person is.
Confirmation bias
The habit of noticing and remembering evidence that supports what one already believes and overlooking evidence that does not.
Inherited belief
A belief received from family or community and not yet examined. It may be true, but it has not yet been tested by the person who holds it.
Humility
An accurate view of one’s own limits, including the possibility of error.

Background

Paul writes, Prove all things; hold fast that which is good (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and the people of Berea are praised because they examined the Scriptures to see whether what Paul said was true (Acts 17:11). Augustine in his Confessions describes years of questioning before his conversion, and many other Christians have recorded periods of doubt that led to deeper conviction. Examination has a long place in Christian life.

Some fear that examination leads away from faith. Others fear that faith that cannot stand examination is not worth holding. This lesson takes the second view without dismissing the first: honest examination can be done with prayer and with respect for the tradition, and it may strengthen faith as much as unsettle it. It will also be uncomfortable at times.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: List the commitments

Write down your central commitments in plain sentences. For example: God exists and made the world. Jesus rose from the dead. The Bible is the word of God. Human beings have dignity because they are made in God’s image. I should love my neighbor. Aim for ten to fifteen. Do not edit them to sound orthodox. Write what you actually believe, and mark any you are not sure you believe.

Step 2: For each, record the reasons

Beside each commitment write the reasons you hold it. These might include an argument, a reading of a passage, the testimony of someone you trust, an experience or the authority of your church. Be specific. A reason such as it feels true is real, but should be marked as an experience, and a reason such as my church teaches it should be marked as an authority.

Then mark whether the reason is one you have examined or one you received. The second kind is not wrong. Most people hold beliefs on testimony, and rightly. But it is valuable to know which they are.

Step 3: Identify the evidence and the defeaters

For each commitment, ask what evidence supports it, in Scripture, history, argument or experience. Then ask what would count against it. What is the strongest objection? For the resurrection, one might name the claim that the accounts are late or legendary. For the goodness of God, the problem of evil. If you cannot name the strongest objection, you have not yet understood your position.

Be honest about how you have treated the objection. Have you read the best case against, or only weak versions? This is where confirmation bias shows itself.

Step 4: Assign a degree of confidence

Mark each commitment as certain, confident, leaning or uncertain. These are labels for your own state, not for the truth of the belief. A person may say, I am very confident that Christ rose and moderately confident about my view of the millennium. This ties back to the scale of the last lesson, with firm convictions at the core and open questions at the edge.

If your confidence is much higher than your reasons, note that. If it is much lower than your reasons, note that too.

Step 5: Decide what to do next

For each commitment, choose one of four actions: keep it as it stands, study it further, revise it or suspend judgment. Write the date and one concrete step, such as reading a particular book or speaking to a particular person. Some commitments will change over time. An audit is not a verdict for life but a record to return to.

Finally, note how the commitments relate. Are any in tension? Does one rest on another? This prepares for the coherence test in the last module.

  1. Which of my beliefs have I never examined?
  2. What is the strongest objection to my most important belief, and have I read it in its best form?
  3. Where is my confidence higher than my reasons?
  4. Which belief would be most painful to give up, and does that affect my judgment?
  5. Who could I ask to challenge me honestly?
  6. What would change my mind?

Examples

A sample entry

Commitment: Jesus rose from the dead. Reasons: the New Testament testimony, the early belief of the disciples, the rise of the church, and personal trust. Source: partly examined (I have read two books) and partly received. Strongest objection: the claim that the accounts developed over time. Confidence: confident. Next step: read a scholarly case on the other side. (A constructed example.)

A belief found to be inherited

A man who has always believed that a certain practice is required of Christians finds that he cannot say why, beyond that his family did it. After study he finds that his tradition gives reasons, and that other traditions give reasons against. He moves it down to a level three belief and keeps it as his tradition’s practice. (A constructed example.)

Confidence higher than reasons

A student feels certain about a detailed schedule of future events but finds, on examination, that it rests on a chain of contested interpretations. She does not drop it, but marks it as leaning and studies it further.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching values the examination of faith, as in the saying that faith seeks understanding, and holds that a person’s assent should be free and reasonable. It also teaches that the church’s definitions are a firm guide, so that an audit proceeds in the light of the church’s teaching, not independently of it. Newman wrote that ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers stress that knowledge of God comes through repentance, prayer and the life of the church, and that detached analysis alone cannot reach it. Doubt is treated seriously but pastorally, and spiritual guides advise humility. This does not rule out honest questions, and the fathers raised many.

Protestant

Protestants, with the Berean example in mind, have often urged examination of the teaching of any church by the Scriptures. Pietist and evangelical traditions stress personal faith and conviction. The risk, noted by critics, is that each person becomes the final judge. Many Protestants answer that the examination should be done within a community and with the help of the creeds.

Secular and philosophical views

Philosophers of belief urge proportioning confidence to evidence. Some, such as W. K. Clifford in the nineteenth century, held that believing without sufficient evidence is always wrong, while William James argued that in some matters it is permissible to believe in order to find out. The debate shows that the question of what counts as sufficient is itself disputed.

Why it matters

An unexamined set of beliefs tends to break in a crisis, and a set that is held only out of habit is easy to lose. An audit does not guarantee a result but it ensures that the student knows what is being held and why. It is also the foundation for the final synthesis, which asks for the reasons, evidence and uncertainties behind each position.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Doubting a belief means losing faith.

Correction: Many Christians describe doubt as part of faith seeking understanding. The psalms and the book of Job contain questions. What matters is what one does with the doubt.

Misunderstanding: If I cannot prove a belief, I should not hold it.

Correction: Most of what people believe, including trust in other people and the past, cannot be proved. The question is whether the belief has adequate grounds, not whether it has proof.

Misunderstanding: An honest audit must end in doubt or unbelief.

Correction: It may strengthen, revise or reduce a belief. There is no fixed outcome, and Christians who have audited their beliefs have ended in many different places.

Misunderstanding: Beliefs I inherited are suspect.

Correction: Inherited beliefs are often right. The point of the audit is to make them one’s own by examining them.

Knowledge check

What questions does the audit ask of each commitment?

What is the belief, what reasons support it, whether the reasons were examined or received, what evidence supports it, what is the strongest objection, how confident the student is, and what step comes next. The aim is to know one’s own position accurately, not to doubt everything.

What is a defeater, and why name one?

A defeater is a consideration that would weaken or overturn a belief, such as a strong counter-argument or a new fact. Naming the strongest one tests whether the position is understood. If a person cannot state the best objection, the belief has not been properly examined.

Why should confidence be compared with reasons?

Because confidence that is higher than the reasons may signal an unexamined belief or a bias, and confidence that is lower than the reasons may signal unnecessary fear. Matching the two makes a person more honest and more stable when challenged.

What are the four actions the audit may lead to?

Keep the belief as it stands, study it further, revise it, or suspend judgment. The student should write the date and one concrete next step. The audit is a record to return to, not a final verdict.

Think it through

  1. What stops you from examining a belief you care about?
  2. Who in your life could examine your beliefs with you without trying to win?
  3. What would honest humility look like in the way you hold your most important commitment?

Independent assignment

My audit

In your own notebook, write an audit of at least ten commitments, following the five steps. For each, give one line of reasons, one line of the strongest objection, a confidence label and a next step. Add a page (about 300 words) reflecting on what the audit showed you, including one belief you now see differently. This audit is the base of your final synthesis. Keep it in your own notebook.

Further study