More Than One Way to Look at Faith

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More Than One Way to Look at Faith
An opinion hath spread it selfe verie farre in
the world, as if the waye to be ripe in faith,
were to be rawe in wit and judgement as if
reason were an enimie unto religion But
Judge you of that which I speak, saith the
Apostle 1 Cor.1015. In vaine it were to speake
any thing of God, but that by reason men are able
some what to judge of that they heare, and by
discourse to discerne how consonant it is to
truth. Richard Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity, 3.8.11-12

• Could it be that our world could use a few more
  Hookers?
• Yes, thats a shameless double entendre.

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• Theres a tendency in our modern culture to
  equate faith with unquestioning belief
• You believe something extraordinary without
  having looked at any reasons for or against
  believing it, and then you treat it as if it
  should be off-limits to questions like that.
• This is what upsets vocal critics of faith like
  the new atheists.
• I think they are right to be upset about this.
• It may be harmless in most cases, but its also a
  breeding ground for fanaticism, terrorism,
  super-patriotism and other ills that beset our
  world.

God finally gets through to Pat Robertson
3
Rowan Williams Marjorie Suchocki
Peter Gomes Marcus Borg
Abraham Heschel

• But I and others like me will never speak of
  faith as a matter of believing without
  questioning, because we see God as the
  ever-present reality who constantly eludes any
  final descriptions, even those of our favorite
  creeds.
• For us faith is not believing in something absent
  but trusting the reality in which we ultimately
  find ourselves, though it remains beyond our
  grasp or control.
• It does not have to wonder about the existence of
  this reality (weve already found ourselves
  there), only about its ultimate character.
• It is an inkling that this reality in which we
  ultimately find ourselves is also our ultimate
  good.
• It is a kind of knowledge, but not the everyday
  kind the more we know of this reality in which
  we live and move and have our being (Acts
  1728), the more we realize that it is both too
  vast and too intimate ever to be adequately
  described.
• We awaken to this reality as people who have
  already been formed by particular traditions,
  scriptures and ritesbut what makes us trust
  these thoroughly human influences is the way they
  do not pretend to be final answers in themselves
  but keep pointing beyond themselves to the
  ultimate goodness of the reality in which we live
  and move and have our being.

Richard Hooker
John Calvin
Paul Tillich
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• Now whenever I say something like this, somebody
  almost always responds that Im offering a
  liberal or ivory tower redefinition of faith,
  not faith as it has traditionally been
  understood.
• That simply is not true.
• It may be a minority voice in a world where most
  people, religious or not, would rather not think.
  
• But its still a voice thats been around for
  quite some time.
• Christian thinkers understood faith in this way
  well before the rise of modern sciencenot all of
  them, but many of them, like the 16th Century
  Anglican theologian Richard Hooker.

Ivory Tower
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• John Calvin, another 16th Century theologian (not
  known for being liberal), concurred in his
  Institutes of the Christian Religion. He claimed
  
• 1) Faith is a form of knowledge, not blind
  belief
• Is this what believing meansto understand
  nothing, provided only that you submit your
  feeling obediently to the church? Faith rests not
  on ignorance but on knowledge It is not enough
  for a man implicitly to believe what he does not
  understand or even investigate (3.2.2).
• 2) Faiths knowledge is not comprehension but an
  assured recognition of something
  incomprehensible
• When we call faith knowledge we do not mean
  comprehension of the sort that is commonly
  concerned with those things which fall under
  human sense perception. For faith is so far above
  sense that mans mind has to go beyond itself and
  rise above itself in order to attain it. Even
  where the mind has attained, it does not
  comprehend what it feels. But while it is
  persuaded of what it does not grasp, by the very
  certainty of its persuasion it understands more
  than if it perceived anything human by its own
  capacity. For very good reason faith is
  called recognition, but by John, knowledge.
  But the knowledge of faith consists in
  assurance rather than in comprehension (3.2.14).

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• Over the past fifty years many people of faith
  have been influenced by Paul Tillichs Dynamics
  of Faith (New York Harper and Row, 1957).
• Faith, Tillich said, is the state of being
  ultimately concerned, an act of the personality
  as a whole, concern, above all, about what is
  experienced as ultimate (1,5,11).
• Faith can of course be idolatrous when misplaced
  In true faith the ultimate concern is a concern
  about the truly ultimate while in idolatrous
  faith preliminary, finite realities are elevated
  to the rank of ultimacy (13).
• For example, it is idolatry to be ultimately
  concerned about my own faith tradition, my
  traditions scriptures, or even my own beliefs.
• None of these are the truly ultimateat best,
  they can help us to participate in the truly
  ultimate, but only when we let them point beyond
  themselves.
• Only the truly ultimate deserves the name of
  God, and if we hear stories about God in our
  scriptures, they are true stories only insofar as
  they point us to the truly ultimate beyond all
  our limited concepts of God (53-55).

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• Now, lets admit, Tillich is most definitely an
  ivory tower figure, and he is perceived by many
  as liberal (though he always rejected the term
  as too bourgeois).
• But is this really an illicit attempt, as Sam
  Harris charges, to change the meaning of the term
  from what pre-modern religious leaders meant?
  (See Harris, The End of Faith New York W. W.
  Norton and Company, 2004, p. 65.)
• As it turns out, ultimate concern with the truly
  ultimate seems to be a theme that Tillich (a
  Lutheran) borrowed from Martin Luther himself
• What does it mean to have a god? or, what is
  God? Answer A god means that from which we are
  to expect all good and to which we are to take
  refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is
  nothing else than to trust and believe Him from
  the whole heart as I have often said that the
  confidence and faith of the heart alone make both
  God and an idol. If your faith and trust be
  right, then is your god also true and, on the
  other hand, if your trust be false and wrong,
  then you have not the true God for these two
  belong together faith and God. That now, I say,
  upon which you set your heart and put your trust
  is properly your godFrom Luthers Larger
  Catechism http//www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/text
  /wittenberg/luther/catechism/web/cat-03.html
• Harris can reject this as a definition of faith,
  but he needs to recognize that this is no modern
  reinvention of the term. Its hundreds of years
  old. It was once required reading for young
  Lutherans.

Paul Tillich
Sam Harris
Martin Luther
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Rowan Williams Marjorie Suchocki
Peter Gomes Marcus Borg
Abraham Heschel

• Harris may of course be right that the majority
  of religious people have always preferred to
  think of faith as unquestioning belief, but
  doesnt that simply confirm Tillichs point that
  we all have a tendency to settle for idolatry?
  Its a human problem, not just a religious
  problem.
• And isnt it a central point of theological
  education to teach people to stop making idols of
  their own cherished ideas?
• Isnt that also a central point of preaching, at
  least in Churches that always required an
  educated clergy? (Alas, many do not require this
  any more.)
• Furthermore, if were going to discuss an idea,
  shouldnt we start with what the most informed
  people say it means?
• If we want to discuss reason and science, do we
  look to childhood impressions for our
  definitions, or do we look to mature reflections
  of people well-versed in both?
• So why is it OK to stick with childish
  impressions of faith and God?
• Again, lets admit, those of us who want to move
  beyond childish impressions may be a minority
  voice, but we are, and always have been, more
  than Tillichs blameless parish of one (Harris,
  65), and we are not giving up or going away.

Richard Hooker
John Calvin
Paul Tillich