By adding the tag protestantism do you specifically want a Protestant answer (which is fine)? The Catholic answer might be different.

@GratefulDisciple yes it concerns protestants/protestantism point of view, I should have mentioned it. Edited with thx. I don’t really understand why the question got two minus 1… And at the same time the responses are very dedicated…

@Starckman Please don't be discouraged by the two -1 (who should have provided comments to you, per SE practice). I just added a +1 to neutralize. It maybe that the community doesn't think the question "useful" since faith as "assurance" and the certainty of its object (God and Jesus as Lord) is very well established in Christianity so in the phrasing of your Q the "simply" can come across as a little offensive.

@Starckman I myself understand WHY you asked, and I DO think it's incumbent on Christians to explain the relationship between "faith" and "intuition" & "emotion". FWIW, here's my answer explaining the subjective component of faith as God given "light" that operates in us to be experienced subjectively as "intuition".

@Starckman What I also observe as a tragedy is the predilection of many Christians who refuse to philosophize on their experience of Jesus, in this case their experience of faith; it's a tragedy because those same Christians argue that Christian religion is rational yet tend to refuse to explore the rationality of their religion as subjectively experienced by pointing only to the objective referent outside the self.

Or maybe this C.SE site close vote needs to be revised; so far there are two close votes under "General philosophical or sociological questions are off-topic unless clearly asking for a doctrinal answer."

@GratefulDisciple “ so in the phrasing of your Q the "simply" can come across as a little offensive” ok, it was really not the point so I just erased it. ‘simply’ was meant indeed to ‘to reduce to’ but in a scientific sense, not in a diminishing sense

@Starckman To a Christian "faith" has a very important God-working element, thus you will often hear "salvation is by grace through faith" meaning that God-given grace is operating in you to induce faith experienced as "light" enabling you to intuit the truth of Jesus as Lord and Savior. So eliminating the God-factor is reducing an indispensable CAUSAL ELEMENT of "faith". But I understand your question of faith AS a religious experience that can be scientifically investigated (cf William James) though not reduced; in the Catholic context this question will be treated a lot better.

@GratefulDisciple your second last comment is inspiring, I was alienated from Catholicism, and from there Christianity as a whole (come from a mainly Catholic country) precisely because it was too dogmatic. They are ok you ask some questions about the main tenets, they are ok to debate philosophically about some things related to Christianity or from the p.o.v of Christianity, but debating about the core tenets is not welcome. I found such a great freedom in Reformed Protestantism though, and until now it is quite fulfilling~

@Starckman It's interesting that my experience is the reverse :-) as I grew up Reformed but always come up against a wall once my questions (though welcome) go past a certain stage. Since then I read many books on philosophy of religion and various theologies (both Reformed and Catholic) and I found my answers in the Catholic books.

But yes, Reformed implied less church authority and less dogmatic, and from that angle, it's a better climate. I guess it depends on the people you interact with. There are great Reformed apologists out there, you may like Gavin Ortlund's Truth Unites and there are a few others that I can recommend depending on your concerns. Academic books are the best, so I can recommend a few also.

Replying to your comment below

@GratefulDisciple haha I was astonished when reading your last sentence about the Catholic context ~ there was many debates, and some where people were very honest in their sometimes complicated relation to faith (although they were active believers). Indeed it was the priest who was dogmatic, but as in the last extent the priests somehow embody the Catholic religion, so… Even orthodox Protestant pastors, so very literate in their reading of the Bible and intransigent, didn’t seem to me as dogmatic

when you're among the Charismatic circles (some are Reformed too) their practice CULTIVATE this feeling and the uninformed may conclude (from their practices on the ground) that presence of God can be "brought down" through acts of worship (like singing CCM music) and that they verbalize the resulting feeling as "their faith is strenghtened".

@Starckman As people say on the internet YMMV (your mileage may vary). The Catholics I read on the net (not in person) are Thomists so they explain their faith philosophically very well.

I have an anecdote from 2 decades ago where (in my search) I asked a Catholic priest about Thomism, and he GAVE me his well-worn book of quotes from the Summa Theologica saying that he doesn't need it anymore because he implies it's useless for him. So I had to direct my search elsewhere.

Another anecdote around the same period was when I went to another Catholic parish trying to learn about Thomistic virtues and see how they cultivate it in their religious education, even sitting in in some RCIA classes, but to my surprise they don't use it! So I was disappointed. Now I see this as the result of modern version of Catholic theology.

The reason why I was enamored by Thomistic virtues and his analysis of the human search for happiness is due to a book I came across in a used book store: Josef Pieper's The Four Cardinal Virtues. It was an epiphany to me, so since then I tried to understand my faith from that angle (I was a believer since childhood), and of course my question was bewildering from the Reformed pastors I spoke to. Instead they point me to Reformed systematic theology books such as by Louis Berkhof.

I didn't know any church history, philosophy, theology (as a formal inquiry), and hermeneutics back then, so I spent 20-30 years to learn them on and off. Finally got all my questions answered now. So my search ends and as I look back, I have travelled "a road less traveled" (among my immediate church friends), but found many similar seekers through books and Internet.

@GratefulDisciple but do we agree that Calvin was quite rationalist himself?

@Starckman If by "rationalist" you mean rationalist philosopher like Descartes, it's rather anachronistic. I don't think so. I only started to dig deeper into Calvin as a historical figure (in academic setting, not as a popular figure among Reformed), and his Institutes of Religion is seen as a study done using the methods in the scholastic school, as a response to Catholic scholastic theology of that period.

So if that's what you mean by "rationalist", yes, his theology is scholastic, but on popular level Reformed Christians read his Institutes as THE responsible way to do theology in sola scriptura way, thus imitating his way of interpreting the Bible.

Somehow I also regret that the Reformed Church seems to have a less intellectualist aspect that we can find in Catholicism (so Thomas Aquinas but also the jesuits etc). But really the authoritarian aspect of the Catholic Church… You are obliged to believe in the more magical aspects of the religion, otherwise you are problematic, and because the Church is one and centralized, this is for one and for all. In Reformed churches, we are free to add elements if we wish to, to change pastors, etc…

@GratefulDisciple not in the Descartes sense, I mean to apply reason to interpret the text

@GratefulDisciple here the pastors I listen to tend to say that nobody follow Calvin’s way, although they are in his tradition

@Starckman Sure. Reformed churches and Protestants in general emphatically believe in ecclesia semper reformanda est. I believe this myself too. I regret that they discard the baby with the bathwater (i.e. Thomistic scholasticism) by distrusting Reason's ability to intuit the truths, substituting it with systematic exploration of the propositions in the Bible. Thus they apply "scholastic method" to mine the Bible.

@Starckman Okay, so we're on the same page: we're talking about scholastic method but Reformed theologians are loathe to use that term though.

@GratefulDisciple thx for the clarification

@Starckman Of course. Reformed theologians follow the Calvinistic "tradition" which has gone quite a long way from Calvin himself, but some of his principles are still used. I think there's a debate whether Calvin himself would have believed in TULIP.

In scholarly circles they clearly distinguish the original Calvin from the subsequent Calvinism, see for example summary of this chapter

@GratefulDisciple this is a feeling I started to have recently. But if you tell me that in reality many reformed Churches are also scholastic, then… it is perfect

The latest movement in Calvinism is called New Calvinism.

“Thus they apply "scholastic method" to mine the Bible.” So we lack something where the scholastic method is applied both the faith and Christianity in general (Catholicism), AND the Bible (Reformed Protestantism)?

@Starckman To clarify: it's of course not exactly the same, only the spirit of it. And some Reformed systematic theology books are less scholastic than others. If you're interested in Reformed theology, I would recommend a textbook often used in seminary: Michael Horton's The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way.

@Starckman That's my opinion. Their sola scriptura principle puts Biblical propositions on the top (which is fine, I think it should be this way), but they don't integrate and apply scholastic method the same way to 1) general philosophy of religion (which includes Reason's experience) and 2) patristics. But then, I find some Reformed systematic theologians are better than others. Allister McGrath, for instance, is friendly to the findings of natural theology.

@GratefulDisciple I see.. but on the other hand Thomism is metaphysical, holds the principle of a ‘first philosophy’

But epistemologically I prefer the idea of methodological naturalism.

@Starckman Exactly. And my impression is that most Reformed theologies don't want to start there.

@Starckman So you probably will like Alister McGrath. But please remember that methodological naturalism can only be applied to human experience. Treating the Bible as a source of theology is very different. But we'll go into a debate on which hermeneutics to use. Reformed theologies tend to use grammatical-historical method that does NOT involve the reader/author psyche much.

In any case I agree that it is a pity the Protestant discarded the baby with the bath water: the Protestant was a revolt against the Church, but it should not be a revolt against the Christian tradition which is people dealing with the scriptures (cf scholasticism). I remember reading somewhere Aquinas had to convince Church authorities that him dealing with Aristotle philosophy was not a threat to the religion, which indicates we can distinguish between the Church and its theological figures…

@Starckman Yes, that was his battle to show Aristotle wasn't a threat.

“ But please remember that methodological naturalism can only be applied to human experience. Treating the Bible as a source of theology is very different.” I didn’t get it

@Starckman I meant that you cannot use methodological naturalism to appropriate the Bible for your theology, for this means you'll have to discard the miracles, the prophecies, etc. Reading the Bible follows a different rule than reading philosophy.

Well, my point is just to say that, philosophically, I prefer methodical naturalism (not necessarily as applied to religion).

@Starckman That's all well and good. It's about how you integrate other sources of knowledge. You could go the route of 19th century liberal interpreter of the Bible (Schleiermacher, Bultmann) that treat the Bible AS "merely" a human document and demythologize the content of the Bible. That would be close to using "methodological naturalism" to the Bible, which is of course not appropriate.

@GratefulDisciple I don’t hold a liberal Protestantism in the sense I don’t discard what doesn’t fit reason. But I may adopt some interpretations which come closer with what we know about the natural world, the historical context etc

@Starckman Sure. That would be within the mainstream of conservative Christian theologies in all 3 branches.

I agree that methodological naturalism per se could not be used in reading the Bible (to be honest I didn’t think about this, I only thought myself as a quite rationalist Protestant)

But an argument for not using methodological naturalism to read the Bible, as a rationalist, I could say merely that the Bible is not a ‘natural fact’

@Starckman I think you're doing just fine as a Christian who is inquisitive about our faith and want to think seriously about our experience of Christ.

So we cannot use methods of the natural sciences to dive into. Moreover, it is even not a literary text. So we must use Reason, but in a quite prudent way, not as natural scientists in a Baconinan or Cartesian spirit thinking they can ‘master’ the facts

(Well I didn’t expect I would think over this today but… 😀)

@Starckman Christians say that the authors / redactors of the books of the Bible is "divinely inspired" YET wrote as a human being using the convention of their time, so the result is BOTH divine and human documents (i.e. not dictation), and that God's providence made sure the RIGHT text (though shouldn't be equated with the elusive "perfect manuscript") survive through the ages until today. Otherwise, how can God's inscripturated Word be present to us today?

@GratefulDisciple and I very like this way of thinking btw

@Starckman Okay, now we're in the debate about the nature of the text. How should we read it? Many scholars now read it as a literary text containing divinely inspired theological message, and therefore we are not to use our modern categories to read the text but use an ancient historiography lens, for instance.

@GratefulDisciple It seems it is a bit how I see it

But more fundamentalistic readers want to read the text as timeless propositions, so devalue the cultural context of the author. This is the internal debate going on among conservative Christians: them and against more historically minded and culturally sensitive scholars such as John Walton, Michael Heiser, and N.T. Wright.

To me, this is a matter of degree: how much should cultural context change how we understand the text; fundamentalist readers DO value cultural context too. But you can also go to the other extreme such as what I warned you earlier: treating it as purely a document of a society's religious consciousness.

In the sense people wrote the Bible to testify about what they saw and heard using the culture of their time and place. So there can be some discrepancies with how we would state (the same) things today

@Starckman Yes, that's the proper way to read the Bible, to "decode" the message that has been "encoded" in ancient culture.

Anyway, it's very nice chatting with you. I have to start working now. Feel free to post questions in this chatroom and I'll respond when I can. Have a good day!

Thank you. It was a delight on my side too. Have a nice day!