Faith, Doubt, and Reason

Brent A. R. Hege

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781532684005
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

Faith, doubt, and reason are universal human faculties, yet they are frequently misunderstood, denigrated, and even abused. What does it mean to have faith, and what distinguishes faith from belief? Can someone have faith without religious commitments? What is doubt, and what is its relationship to faith and belief? How do we make sense of evil and suffering? What roles does reason play in our lives? What do we do when we have the sneaking suspicion that life is absurd? What do we love, and what do we fear? How do faith, doubt, and reason interrelate? Faith, doubt, and reason not only can work together: they must work together if we are to live lives of meaning and purpose. This book explores the significance of these three universal human faculties and the central role they play in our quest for the meaning of life. Drawing on classic texts in theology, philosophy, literature, and the Bible, Faith, Doubt, and Reason invites readers to delve deeply into the quest for the meaning of life in all its ambiguity, mystery, and tragic beauty.

Chapter 1

Faith

What does it mean to have faith? Is faith synonymous with religion, or is faith something more basic, more fundamental to the human experience? Is faith synonymous with belief, or are they distinct concepts? Are there proper and improper objects of faith? What is the relationship between faith and science and between faith and history? Can faith be lost? All these questions and more are the topic of this chapter.

Faith as Ultimate Concern

If we look up the definition of faith in the dictionary, we will see a number of entries. Most dictionaries will define faith using the word “belief.” Often faith is defined as believing something without evidence, as a type of knowledge that is gained without experimentation or proof. Other meanings of faith specifically mention religion, such as faith being belief in a higher power or faith as a synonym for a particular religious tradition, such as “the Christian faith.” But do these dictionary definitions capture what faith really is?

In the 1950s, the German-American Lutheran theologian Paul Tillich surveyed the typical popular assumptions about faith and despaired that the deeper meaning and significance of faith was in danger of disappearing. Then, as now, he noticed that faith was being discussed in a variety of contexts as if everyone agreed on what they meant by using the term. But he also noticed that “faith” was being used in simplistic, shallow, and even contradictory ways, so much so that its misuse threatened to obscure the deeper meaning and power of faith altogether. He vowed to correct many popular misunderstandings and recover the meaning and power of faith by writing a short book intended for a popular audience, which he called Dynamics of Faith. In his introductory remarks, he explains why he felt the need to write such a book:

There is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions, and questionable definitions than the word “faith.” It belongs to those terms which need healing before they can be used for the healing of men [sic]. Today the term “faith” is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender, rejection of genuine religion and subjection to substitutes. Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that the word “faith” should be dropped completely; but desirable as that may be it is hardly possible. A powerful tradition protects it. And there is as yet no substitute expressing the reality to which the term “faith” points. So, for the time being, the only way of dealing with the problem is to try to reinterpret the word and remove the confusing and distorting connotations, some of which are the heritage of centuries.1

Tillich wrote Dynamics of Faith when church attendance in the post-war years of the United States was heading for all-time highs. Yet he still discerned a fundamental misunderstanding and obfuscation of the meaning of faith, and he worried that such misunderstandings could be catastrophic in the lives of individuals, communities, and nations. Fast-forward to our own context in the beginning of the twenty-first century and the situation has not noticeably improved. Tillich’s diagnosis of the problem applies just as much to our own time as it did to his. If anything, our situation is even direr, as the word “faith” has become even more contested, more misunderstood, and more abused than when Tillich wrote these words.

What, then, is to be done? Tillich proposed that it might be worth jettisoning the term altogether, if not for its deep roots and substantial permeation of the culture. We find ourselves in the same position as Tillich found himself. The word “faith” is just as firmly entrenched in our language and our culture as it was in his, so there is no getting rid of it. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. Faith is a category all its own, as no other term can ever hope to capture the depth and breadth of all that “faith” conjures and connotes.

Tillich famously defined faith as “ultimate concern,” as he wrote in the opening chapter of his book: “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned: the dynamics of faith are the dynamics of man’s [sic] ultimate concern.”2 But what does that mean, exactly? Every person has many concerns in their daily lives. We are concerned with our health, our relationships, our families, our homes, our bank accounts, our communities, our planet, and the list could go on and on. But there is always something that grasps us, something that demands our full attention and our total commitment, something we take absolutely seriously above everything else, something that promises to give us ultimate meaning and fulfillment. This is what Tillich means by “ultimate concern.” It is that one thing we put above everything else, that one thing that orders and orients and relativizes everything else in our lives, that one thing to which we would be willing to sacrifice everything else for the sake of meaning and significance.

If we stop to think about it, it would be difficult to imagine someone not having this ultimate concern. To be human means to be ultimately concerned, to be committed, to be dedicated to something from which we seek meaning and value and significance. What that “something” is might be different for different people, but we all have something we take with total seriousness, something we value above all else. This is what theologians call the “subjective” side of faith (fides qua creditur).

But there is another side of faith: the “object” of faith, or what we have faith in (what theologians call fides quae creditur). What do we take with absolute seriousness? What is it that we commit ourselves to without any reservation? From what do we expect ultimate meaning and fulfillment? What are we unable and unwilling to do without in our lives? What is it that orders and orients and guides our lives each and every day? Whatever that is, that is the object of our ultimate concern, our faith. That is what we worship, what we praise, what we dedicate our lives to following, that to which we are willing to sacrifice everything else.

Here is where we discover the second meaning of “ultimate.” On the subjective side, “ultimate” means that we take something to be the most important thing in our lives, whatever that might be. On the objective side, “ultimate” means whatever is truly highest, absolute, unconditional. In the world’s many religious traditions, this might be called God, or YHWH, or Allah, or Brahman, or the Dao, etc. But what we take as ultimate does not necessarily have to be a deity. It can be justice, or beauty, or love, or truth, or the good. What matters on the “objective” side of ultimacy is that whatever we take with absolute seriousness and commitment is truly ultimate, which means that it is truly absolute and unconditional, that it can “handle” the “weight” we put on it, that it won’t collapse when we demand meaning and value and fulfillment from it.

Idolatry

One way of distinguishing what is an “unhealthy” faith from a “healthy” faith is to reflect on the important distinction between the finite and infinite realms of reality. For Tillich, this is a crucial stage in the process of distinguishing between good and bad types of faith. The finite realm is whatever we can approach through our five senses, whatever is available for experimentation and empirical verification, whatever we can grasp and possess as provable and certain. In its Latin root, the word “finite” means “limited,” whatever has clear and concrete boundaries, a beginning and an end. You and I are finite. Computers and trees and dogs are finite. Governments and political parties and churches and social organizations are finite. Wealth and success and power and prestige and careers are finite. They all have a beginning and an end. On the other hand, in its Latin root the word “infinite” means “without limits,” whatever has no clear or concrete boundaries, whatever has no beginning and no end, whatever cannot be contained and constrained by time and space, whatever is absolute and unconditional. If we can grasp it, control it, understand it, manipulate it, or achieve it, then it is finite, not infinite. If it is always more than we can understand or grasp or control or achieve, then it is infinite, not finite.

When thinking about the meaning of faith, this distinction between the finite and the infinite is crucially important. Only the infinite is capable of handling the weight of our ultimate concern. Only the infinite can support the intensity of our most fervent hopes and dreams. Only the infinite can promise us ultimate meaning and fulfillment. To place that kind of weight on something finite is to court disaster. A person, an institution, an object, a fleeting desire can’t possibly handle the weight of our ultimate concern. Tillich uses a serious word to describe this type of mistaken ultimate concern: idolatry. When we hear the word “idolatry” we often think of golden calves or graven images, which are the idols typically mentioned in the Bible. The First Commandment warns against idolatry: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20:3; Deut 5:7). But what does this mean for us today?

Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer, wrote about the relationship between genuine faith and idolatrous faith in his exposition of the First Commandment in his Large Catechism:

To have a god is nothing else than to trust and [have faith] in that one with your whole heart . . . [I]t is the trust and faith of the heart alone that make both God and idol. If your faith and trust are right, then your God is the true one. Conversely, where your trust is false and wrong, there you do not have the true God. For these two belong together, faith and God. Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.3

For Luther, and for Tillich, what we take with absolute seriousness and devotion becomes our god. If faith is a universal human quality, that means that everyone has faith. The question isn’t whether or not we have faith; the question is what we have faith in. Do we have faith in something genuinely ultimate, or do we have an idolatrous faith?

Idolatrous faith is dangerous because it means we are putting our total trust and confidence and hope in something that cannot handle that level of commitment or devotion. It means that we are placing our ultimate concern in something finite, something less than ultimate. As Tillich points out, this mistake will inevitably lead to “existential disappointment.” What he means by this is that when we place our faith, our ultimate concern, in something less than ultimate, in an idol, we will inevitably experience a catastrophic loss of meaning and significance in our lives, because the finite is incapable of supporting the weight of an ultimate concern.

In our own time, there are many idols we are tempted to worship in place of the genuinely ultimate and infinite reality. We are encouraged to place our ultimate trust and confidence and hope in wealth, success, reputation, career, race, class, social status, political affiliation, nationality, or religious identification. None of these categories can support the weight of our ultimate concern because none of them is genuinely ultimate, infinite, unconditional, absolute. All are finite human inventions, accidents of birth, or products of our own choices and desires. The price of placing faith in these finite realities is existential disappointment: the total collapse and disintegration of our sense of self, our identity, our meaning, our dignity as human beings.

Let’s take an example of a contemporary idol to see a bit more clearly how this works today. For many people in the twenty-first-century United States, a person is defined by their career. At parties, for example, often the first question we ask one another after being introduced is, “So, what do you do?” It is an easy way to determine where we stand on the social hierarchy and it can help us figure out the answers to a host of other questions we might not be comfortable asking directly (how much money they make, where they might live, what kind of house they live in and what kind of car they drive, etc.). Our careers can give us a sense of purpose and of belonging, a sense of satisfaction that comes with using our gifts and talents for meaningful work. All of this is good and healthy!

But what if our career becomes the primary way we define our value and worth as a human being? What if we become so focused on our career that we ignore other parts of our life? What if we obsess about our career to the point that we expect it to give us ultimate meaning and ultimate fulfillment? What’s more, what if we actually accomplish all of our career goals? Then what? Will that prove my dignity as a human being? Will it give me everything I want? Will it make sense of the perennial human questions and concern...