Queer as it sounds : The historical accounts in the Gospels might, historically
speaking, be demonstrably false and yet belief would lose nothing by this : _not_,
however, because it concerns `univeral truths of reason'!  Rather, because
historical proof (the historical proof-game) is irrelevant to belief.  This message
(the Gospels) is seized on by men believingly (ie. lovingly).  _That_ is the
certainty charactrerizing this particular acceptance-as-true, not something _else_.

A believer's relation to these narratives is _neither_ the relation to historical
truth (probability), _nor yet_ that to a theory consisting of `truths of reason.'
There is such a thing. - (We have quite different attitudes even to different
species of what we call fiction!)

I read : ``No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.'' -
And it is true : I cannot call him _Lord_; because that says nothing to me.  I could
call him ``the paragon,' `God' even - or rather, I can understand it when he is
called thus ; but I cannot utter the word ``Lord'' with meaning.  _Because I do not
believe_ that he will come to judge me ; because _that_ says nothing to me.  And it
could say something to me, only if I lived _completely_ differently.

What inclines even me to believe in Christ's Resurrection?  It is as though I
play with the thought. - If he did not rise from the dead, then he decomposed
in the grave like any other man.  _He is dead and decomposed._  In that case he is a
teacher like any other and can no longer _help_ ; and once more we are orphaned
and alone.  So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and speculation.  We
are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed in, as it were,
and cut off from heaven.  But if I am to be REALLY saved, - what I need is
_certainty_ - not wisdom, dreams or speculation - and this certainty is faith.  And
faith is faith in what is needed by my _heart_, my _soul_, not my speculative
intelligence.  For it is my soul with its passions, as it were with its flesh and
blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind.  Perhaps we can say : Only
_love_ can believe the Resurrection.  Or : It is _love_ that believes the Resurrection.
We might say : Redeeming love believes even in the Resurrection ; holds fast
even to the Resurrection.  What combats doubt is, as it were, _redemption_.
Holding fast to _this_ must be holding fast to that belief.  So what that means is :
first you must be redeemed and hold on to your redemption (keep hold of
your redemption) - then you will see that you are holding fast to this belief.
So this can come about only if you no longer rest your weight on the earth
but suspend yourself from heaven.  Then _everything_ will be different and it will
be `no wonder' if you can do things that you cannot do now.  (A man who is
suspended looks the same as one who is standing, but the interplay of forces
within him is nevertheless quite different, so that he can act quite differently
than can a standing man.)

_Culture and Value_ p.32-33 (1937)