[Oe List ...] Some thoughts about faith

[jlepps at pc.jaring.my]

Below are some thoughts about faith. Parts may be 
pretty obscure, but hopefully you can wade 
through it. It's sort of what theologians do in 
spare time! :-) I'd welcome comments.


Faith
April 2012

I’ve met two people recently who have changed my 
view of the role of theology and faith. Both 
people were (as far as can be determined by an 
outsider) persons of faith. Both were also 
theological fundamentalists. That set me 
thinking. I’ve previously tended to regard 
theological fundamentalists as somewhat slow 
intellectually with a tendency towards fanaticism 
and a generally obnoxious personality. These two 
people were exceptionally bright (one, an 
engineer, and the other, an artist) sensitive 
people who manifest humility, gratitude, and 
compassion. They were people of faith, so far as 
any outsider can judge another’s interior 
posture. Meeting these people has set me thinking about faith.

By “faith,” I am referring to the basic internal 
stance of a person. Normally the term is used in 
terms of religious affiliation or belief, but 
this is one possible sub-set of the term. 
Everyone is a person of faith: it’s the type of 
faith that matters: whether it’s life-affirming 
or life-denying. So how would I define “authentic 
faith?” Something like unmitigated appreciation 
of life, just the way it is with all its 
responsibilities and occasions for suffering, and 
a personal stance of humility, gratitude, and 
compassion. There’s nothing particularly 
“spiritual” about faith, and it does not depend 
on ascending a growth curve of spiritual 
maturity. Such a curve may exist, but the issue 
of faith occurs at all levels, not simply at the top.

Here I am assuming that faith is universal, at 
least to some extent, though it is often obscured 
by illusion, denial, or pretense. Arguably, no 
one lives without some degree of confidence in 
life. I do not intend to argue that case here.

This is an attempt to sort out the dynamics or 
functions of faith. There are three:
1. Faith seeks understanding; 2. Faith seeks 
action; 3. Faith seeks expression. These dynamics 
or functions roughly correspond to knowing, doing, and being.

1. Faith seeks understanding. One mode of 
theology understands itself as carrying out this 
function. It was the approach to theology of St. 
Anselm whose theme was “Fides Quarens 
Intellectum.” In this approach the person of 
faith attempts to provide a rational explanation 
of her/his basic life perspective. That 
perspective is assumed, and the role of the 
explanation is to make it intelligible to others. 
It is not so much to convince the other as to 
make sense of one’s stance, both to oneself and 
to another. The starting point in this approach 
to theology is the faith which is believed (fides 
quae creditur) and the one doing the explaining 
(fides qua creditur) is assumed to be operating from that faith.

One’s basic life-stance (faith) raises persistent 
questions for many. Is life really worthwhile? 
What’s the meaning of it all? How can you affirm 
life with all the innocent suffering? Or as a 
comedian put it, "How is it possible to find 
meaning in a finite world, given my waist and 
shirt size?" (Woody Allen) These questions are 
the drivers behind the quest of faith for understanding.

Clearly faith is more important than one’s 
theological understanding of it. In fact, one 
could say that our vaunted RS-1 was not a course 
on theology, but a course on faith. The first 
lecture, which we sometimes termed “The God 
Lecture,” was correctly dubbed “The Question of 
God Lecture,” and it was an attempt to raise the 
question of faith for participants. The rest of 
the course attempted to address that question 
without ever directly addressing the theological 
question of “What verifiable not-me-ness do we 
point to with the word ‘G-O-D’?” And we never got 
into the questions about the historical Jesus, 
the doctrines of incarnation, atonement, 
soteriology, and other theological quandaries. We 
dug in on the question of how one relates to 
one’s given situation, the issue of faith.

There is another mode of theology which does not 
necessarily presuppose the presence of the faith 
which is being explained: I call this 
understanding seeking faith, and it’s quite 
possible that RS-1 addressed that issue as well. 
Many people seem to be looking for a deeper sense 
of meaning in life, but are turned off by the 
expressions of faith promoted by institutional 
religion. While concentrating on faith, RS-1 used 
expressions that “make sense” in the contemporary world view.

So how does one determine the validity of 
theology? It is valid when it provides a rational 
understanding of faith in terms that are 
appropriate to the world view of the believer. 
Christian theology has another dimension: 
integrity. The explanation must not only be 
appropriate, it must also accord with the faith 
expressed in the scripture and traditions of 
Christianity. This does not mean it has to repeat 
them since they are expressions, not 
explanations. But it must translate them into an 
understandable statement, not add to or subtract from them.

Clearly, not every person of faith engages in 
theological discussion. The drive for 
understanding is secondary to the presence of 
faith. While theological understanding may make 
faith palatable to one’s intellect, not everyone 
is driven in that direction. There is more to 
life than intellect. Faith seeks understanding, 
but sometimes that understanding is easily satisfied.

2. Faith seeks action. I am told by Chinese and 
Korean theologians[1] that this is the primary 
mode of communicating faith in the East. 
Apparently people in this part of the world are 
more impressed by what one does than by what one 
says, though “actions speak louder than words” is 
a familiar expression in the West. More important 
is the awareness that one’s actions communicate 
one’s interior stance towards life, whether it be 
one of rejection or compassion or avoidance or 
responsibility or any of the myriad alternative 
perspective on life one may hold.

Humility, gratitude and compassion demand 
embodiment in action. Arguments over the role of 
action in faith have been with us from the 
beginning. Whether actions produce faith or are 
produced by faith is a perpetual puzzle to 
theologians. The classical issue is faith vs. 
works in producing salvation. Clearly, “faith 
without works is dead,” (James 2:20) but good 
works may or may not give reliable evidence of 
faith. “Though I speak with tongues of men and of 
angles, have not love
though I give all my goods 
to the poor and my body to be burned, have not 
love
” (1 Cor. 13). St. James and St. Paul each 
had different ideas about which is primary.

There seems to be no immediate correlation 
between good works and faithful people. This is 
partly because of the nature of works – actions. 
There simply are no unambiguous actions. Our 
network of responsibility is so extensive that 
any action violates some relationship.

Still, faith shows up in action, ambiguous though 
it be. Whether one can actually work oneself into 
a state of faith is doubtful, at least to 
Protestants. But participating in charitable 
actions does have a powerful impact on one’s 
outlook. And participating in harmful actions 
also impacts one’s interior perspective. So while 
the approach of using action to generate faith is 
dubious, faith’s role in generating action is 
not. One’s actions, whatever they are, manifest 
one’s interior perspective. If that perspective 
is one of humility, gratitude, and compassion, it 
shows up in what one does. One may choose not to 
parade one’s faith openly, but still it shows up 
in one’s actions as their underlying motivation.

3. Faith seeks expression. Faith seeks expression 
through rituals, liturgy, creeds, scriptures, 
music, art, drama, worship, and other media that 
attempt to express what is intrinsically inexpressible – faith.

The language of faith, then, is not particularly 
rational; it’s poetic, filled with imagery that 
touches the heart. Faith is the basic content of 
myths, rites, and stories of legendary figures, 
told to express, not factual history, but 
interior stances – values, attitudes, and outlooks.

A momentous error occurs when one takes the 
expressions of faith literally or rationally as 
if they were explanations. Unfortunately many 
have taken the expressions of faith and then 
required literal, rational “belief” in them as 
the content of faith. This amounts to a willing 
suspension of disbelief, which may be appropriate 
to fiction, but is not, either to theology or to 
ritual. Many participants in RS-1 courses were 
shocked when we practiced the Daily Office with 
its full array of symbols and myths which we had 
been demythologizing (explaining) in the 
seminars. But rituals are not intended to produce 
understanding; they aim to express and dramatize 
faith, and so reinforce it at a subliminal level.

Isn’t it possible, though, to express the faith 
in rituals using terms more appropriate to the 
world view of today? Well, in principle it’s 
possible, though I have not found any expressions 
that quite do the job. There’s a difference 
between expression and rationalization. For example, take Hamlet:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”

Stated in more contemporary language, that might go something like this:

“I face an existential quandary:
Would it be more meaningful to endure my finite existence passively
With mute acceptance of its pain and difficulty,
Or to actively engage with the contradictions I face
With the prospect of effectively addressing at least a few of them?”

Though the rational content of the two versions 
is arguably identical, their expressive power is 
not. Shakespeare wins hands down!

Institutional religion is an attempt to order and 
regulate the expressions of faith so that they 
are widely available and maintain some integrity. 
That’s what constitutes religion: ways of 
expressing faith. One authentic role of the 
church is to provide occasions for expression and 
dramatization of the perspective that is the Christian faith.

Faith can exist without rigorous contemporary 
theology, as my friends demonstrated. Can it also 
exist without appropriate means of expression? 
That’s a personal question for me. I’m a ritual 
addict who appreciates the “high church” 
expressions of liturgy, architecture, scripture, 
and music. Emotionalism that passes for depth in 
many churches leaves me cold. It’s difficult to 
find a place that does the job I’m looking for.

4. Reflection. A three-hour History Channel 
program on Easter presented the life of Jesus in 
its original setting with commentary by New 
Testament scholars, archeologists, and 
historians. It was an attempt to “get behind” the 
story and see what it meant to its authors. It 
was generally a fine documentary with realistic 
dramatization. But it had one significant 
failing: it considered the gospels as if they 
were historical accounts rather than considering 
them from the point of view of the writer as 
expressions of his faith. The commentators were 
good historians and pointed out that the links 
between many of the stories about Jesus and Old 
Testament prophecies were intended to stress the 
importance of Jesus, not necessarily to record 
facts. They certainly emphasized the gruesomeness 
of the crucifixion and its contradiction to the 
image of “messiah” in the culture. [One then 
described it as evidence of “God’s philanthropy,” 
a term which left me mystified. It only makes 
sense if you believe in a substitutionary 
atonement theory which, I think, mis-represents 
the meaning of the story. But that’s getting into theology.]

When it came to the resurrection, the historians 
were careful neither to affirm it as historical 
(though they quoted one who thought it was – “If 
you’re going to make up a story to convince 
people Jesus was the Messiah, you certainly would 
not make up one so improbable as this.” ) – nor 
to deny it. But they certainly affirmed that 
something happened to the dispersed disciples 
that forged them into an unstoppable movement. 
What they missed was the fact that this story was 
written at least 40 years after the happening, 
whatever it was, and that it expressed the faith 
of the community. It was not recorded as a 
historical account but as an expression of faith. 
In any case, the pertinent issue is: what does 
the resurrection story say about faith?

I leave that for another paper.


[1] These insights came from a discussion with 
Symond Kock, PhD, and Park Si Won, D.M. We met in 
Singapore as Si Won was en route to Indonesia on 
a mission from his church in Korea. He was 
explaining how, in developing rice barns and padi 
cultivation, he and his Korean church had built 400+ churches in Indonesia.
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