Tom Jonard's Faith Page

.When I started to put together this web site it seemed natural and necessary to have pages dedicated both to Faith and Science. Faith and Science are two intertwining threads that form the warp and woof of the fabric of my life. The pattern of this fabric may seem to casual observers to be Technology and Science alone but it is the crossing strands of Faith that hold the whole together.

W.For me the Christian Church has played a crucial role in the embodiment and expression of that faith. Whenever I have needed help, whenever I have needed support and whenever I have needed forgiveness I have found the Christian Church to always be there. Thus has God been manifest for me: in humble human institutions that I have no problem in calling The Communion of Saints and The Body of Christ, The Son of the Living God.

W.Here is my Brief Statement of Faith.

W.Here are some more thoughts on Faith.

W.Here are some thoughts on the relation of Religion and Faith.

W.Here are some thoughts on the relation of Science and Faith.

W.Here are some thoughts on proving God.

W.Just as the Reformed tradition to which I belong maintains the Priesthood of All Believers, so do I offer a corollary: We are all theologians. Here are some of my theological thoughts:

W.Statements of faith.

W.Knowing Jesus

W.The Historical Jesus

W.What is Prayer?

W.The Blighted Rose NEW February, 2010

W.The Bible and the Christian faith are replete with images and metaphors that are strange to our modern experience. Kathleen Norris describes her book Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (Riverhead Books, 1998) as an attempt to deal with the "scary words" of faith. Dealing with the scary or strange words of faith is an important task of faith lest these become stumbling blocks to it. In an interesting play on words the Greek for stumbling block is skandalon (transliteration: skandalon) -- the etymological root of scandalous. What Christian faith believes is quite literally scandalous.

W.There are two possible ways of dealing with words of faith with which we have trouble:

Understand them
Change them

W.There may of course be a third strategy that combines these two. In the pages linked to below I offer some of my struggle to understand these difficult ideas:

.The Kingdom of God and Lordship of Christ

.Sacrifice and Atonement

.Soul and Spirit

.Sheep and shepherd

W.Finally here's some advice to those who think that structured faith is irrelevant to their lives:

To attempt to be religious without practicing a specific religion is as possible as attempting to speak without a specific language
-- George Santayana

W Grace and peace to you. W

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Created April 27, 2001,