[Oe List ...] Some thoughts about faith

Thu Apr 12 03:09:39 EDT 2012

Thanks, John.

So, is there, actually any historical writing that is NOT an expression of the faith of the community or author?

Jim Wiegel

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--- On Wed, 4/11/12, Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org> wrote:

From: Jack Gilles <icabombay at igc.org>
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] Some thoughts about faith
To: "Order Ecumenical Community" <oe at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 9:11 PM

John,
Wonderful writing John.  Your capacity to have a focus and yet fill in the critical space around it is amazing.  Your categories are spot on and I really appreciate your "yes" to those of Faith who still hold mythic literalism but are people of compassion (humility and gratitude) is very insightful.  All in all you've done a great job and a great service.  If I have some more reflections I'll share those with you later, but as of now I just enjoy your writing.  
Thank you so much.
Peace,
Jack
On Apr 11, 2012, at 1:50 AM, jlepps at pc.jaring.my wrote:

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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