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    Jun 12, 2019

    Questioning Christianity - Week 7 - Hope

    Questioning Christianity - Week 7 - Hope

    Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

    Series: 2019 Questioning Christianity Q&A

    Category: Questioning Christianity

    There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach. - Sam Gamgee in Tolkien’s The Return of the King

    There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.
    -     Sam Gamgee in Tolkien’s The Return of the King

    Talk: Tim Keller, founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, NYC

    What makes this series--this conversation--warranted and necessary:

    • As there’s no definitive proof either for or against belief in God, all live by some kind of faith.
    • Believe only what can be empirically-proven (logical positivism), and you believe a premise that itself can’t be proven
    • Believe that all beliefs are only a point of view (perspectivalism), then you believe something that defies your own premise. (cf. Peter Berger)
    • Even if no position can be proven, beliefs can be examined and compared with one another for which are most consistent on the basis of experience, evidence, and within themselves.
    • None can live without meaning, satisfaction, identity, morality, or justice. So which beliefs best address those fundamental needs--including the need for hope?


    Question: If hope is essential to living, on what basis do we live with hope?

    Works Cited/Further Reading