Faith and Reason

Their Roles in Religious and Secular Life

Donald A. Crosby

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781438436142, 9781438436135
• eBook ISBN: 9781438436159
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Few words are as widely misconceived as the word "faith." Faith is often set in stark opposition to reason, considered antithetical to scientific thought, and heavily identified with religion. Donald Crosby's revealing book provides a more complex picture, discussing faith and its connection to the whole of human life and human knowledge. Crosby writes about that existential faith that underlies, shapes, and supports a person's life and its sense of purpose and direction. Such faith does not make a person religious and being secular does not mean one rejects all forms of faith. Throughout the book Crosby makes the case that faith is fundamentally involved in all processes of reasoning and that reason is an essential part of all dependable forms of faith. Crosby elaborates the major components of faith and goes on to look at the mutually dependent relationships between faith and knowledge, faith and scientific knowledge, and faith and morality. The work's final chapters examine crises of faith among several noted thinkers as well as the author's own journey of faith from plans for the ministry to pastor to secular philosopher and religious naturalist.

EIGHT

MY PERSONAL JOURNEY OF FAITH

The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.

—Thomas Berry¹

My present stance of faith is that of what I call “Religion of Nature.” I have described and defended it in a number of recent writings (see esp. Crosby 2002, 2008). It is a version of a recently re-emerging movement of thought, especially in the United States, called religious naturalism.² Bart D. Ehrman's journey of faith, sketched in the previous chapter, wrenched him away from the supernatural focus and assurances of Christianity and brought him to an entirely this-worldly faith. For him, it was a reluctant but necessary journey. My journey has been equally unavoidable and has taken me by progressive stages away from an earlier commitment to Protestant Christianity toward new naturalistic faith of Religion of Nature. Whether this destination is final or not, I cannot tell. I feel strongly that it is, but I do not know what the future may bring in the way of doubts, trials, revisions, new insights, or crises concerning my present form of faith. None of us can possess such knowledge, despite whatever current confidence we may have.

In this chapter I first say something about my upbringing and my original commitment to Protestant Christianity. Then I indicate some of the milestones marking the route of my eventual departure from it. In the last section of the chapter I provide a summary characterization of the faith hold today and indicate some of my reasons for holding it. I do so in the interest of providing yet another example of the dynamic character of existential faith and illustrating some of the ways in which it may change over the course of a person's life.

In my own case, I think that the primary impetus for change was intellectual, but it also has had had an important emotional or motivational aspect that I explain in due course. In describing my own journey of faith, I do not mean to suggest that all forms of faith must undergo as drastic a change as my own has, and I certainly do not mean to suggest that all must take the specific path I have taken. But I do mean to say that all healthy forms of existential faith should be open to the possibility of needed revision or change as persons mature and develop in their stances of faith.

I think that strong and convincing reasons can be given in support of my present stance of faith, but I am also aware that there is a sense in which these reasons, or at least some of them or aspects of some of them, are rooted in and give expression to my faith. As I have argued throughout this book, there is a relation of codependence and reciprocity between faith and reason, each informing and influencing the other at critical junctures. I allude to some of these supporting reasons in this chapter, and I have developed more detailed defenses of Religion of Nature in other writings. But this does not mean for a moment that I regard all other stances of faith as wholly misguided or as entirely lacking in cogency and reasonableness appropriate to their distinctive perspectives. There is plenty of room and need for alternative responses of faith and different ways of viewing and living one's life in an incalculably complex, precarious, bewildering, and enchanting world. There also is patent need for proponents of different faith stances to engage in ongoing dialogue with one another for the sake of mutually enriching and broadening criticism, challenge, and insight. I offer the description of my path of faith in this chapter with this awareness and in this spirit.

THE CHRISTIAN STARTING POINT

I was a senior in college and a candidate for the Presbyterian ministry when I was visited by an official of my Presbytery in northwestern Florida who was charged with keeping in touch with candidates from the Presbytery during their college educations. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned to him that I had been diligently studying the New Testament in English translations and in its original Greek language. I indicated that I had not found a clear and unambiguous basis there for formulations of the doctrine of the Trinity by the great church councils of Nicaea and Constantinople in the fourth century, and I asked what he thought about this matter.

His answer surprised me. He remarked that, in light of the nature of my question, I should change my plans and not endeavor to enter the Presbyterian ministry. Apparently for him, a doubt of this particular kind was simply not appropriate or allowable. It was even too impertinent to be acknowledged or discussed. I did not take his advice because I considered it to be insensitive and unreasonable. I could not see why it was illegitimate to raise questions about theological beliefs relating to my faith, including this important question about the biblical basis of the doctrine of the Trinity.

This episode shows the Presbytery official to have had a dogmatic and inflexible conception of the nature of faith, one that could make little allowance for the role of critical reasoning or for the questions that might naturally be raised by undergraduates as they reflect on the nature of their faith. But the episode gives insight into two things. The first is the rather stubborn, unbending fideism and authoritarianism of many pastors and laypersons in the Southern Presbyterian Church in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida, and elsewhere in the Deep South when I was coming of age in the middle decades of the last century. It was the strict, single-minded, and largely close-minded atmosphere in which I first learned about the teachings of Christianity, was powerfully drawn to it, and came to accept it as my personal faith. It also was the atmosphere in which I was inspired to make the significant step of studying to become a Presbyterian minister. For a long time I took the atmosphere for granted and did not think to question it. The second thing this episode shows is that I had begun to have some doubts about my Christian faith in my later college years, staunch and generally unquestioning though that faith still was, doubts that were to grow more persistent and troubling in the years to come.

The religious context in which I was reared was not of the thoughtful, reflective, articulate religious type. It was more of an instinctive, taken-for-granted, and rarely discussed type. My stepfather³ had one year of college education, and my mother had none. Ours was not a household in which sustained intellectual discussions about religion took place. My mother attended a neighborhood Presbyterian church regularly and saw to it that her children went to Sunday school and, later on, to church on a regular basis. My stepfather's commitment to church attendance was not as ardent, but he supported her and went to church with her at her request. His brother was a Methodist minister who became progressively well known as he served large churches in Florida. My maternal grandfather attended a large downtown Presbyterian church faithfully and enthusiastically, but my maternal grandmother did not. My stepfather's mother and sister, who lived nearby, were faithful churchgoers in the Methodist denomination.

I was a nominal Christian as a child, but in my high school years I became active in the youth group of the downtown Presbyterian church my grandfather attended. The advisors of the group were a couple who had been missionaries in Asia for many years. They were always available for discussion, encouragement, and advice and were greatly loved by the youth under their care. I also regularly attended two Sunday and one weekday services in this church and came to admire and be inspired by the sermons and warm personality of the pastor of the church, who was of Scottish heritage and delivered his clear, imaginative sermons in a pleasing brogue. In company with a male friend who was one class behind me in high school, I joined the church and affirmed a Christian faith.

Both of us eventually decided to study for the ministry. We had deliberated on this possibility for some time and discussed it at length. We felt that this was the appropriate route for us to take, given our particular interests and our strong desire to devote ourselves to Christian service. We were no doubt influenced by the examples of the pastor and the husband and wife youth group leaders (and former missionaries) whom we had come to love. I preceded my friend in attending Davidson College in North Carolina, a Presbyterian liberal arts college. My college years put me in touch with a stimulating world of history, culture, and intellectual inquiry.

We attended required daily chapel in the auditorium and a required worship service each Sunday evening there and later in the newly built campus church. We were required to take two semesters of Bible, and all our professors were Christians. Every Sunday evening after worship there were open houses held by the professors, and the students could attend any one of these they chose. There were about eight hundred male students in all. We knew everyone by name and greeted one another by name as we walked across the campus. Our classes were small and taught by dedicated faculty. It was a warm and nurturing Christian community. But the college also had high educational standards and was intellectually demanding. Davidson greatly expanded my outlook and understanding, and I became more deeply informed about many aspects of the world of which I had previously known little or had been unaware. My Christian faith was broadened and nurtured as well, and it remained generally unquestioned and intact.

After completing my four years of undergraduate education, I enrolled in Princeton Theological Seminary. Although some people in the Southern Presbyterian Church regarded this seminary as suspiciously “liberal,” it stoutly adhered to the Reform tradition and to what in my own time there was the neo-orthodoxy and avowed antiliberalism of theologians such as Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The biblical concept of sin was taken with utmost seriousness in the seminary, and we were taught that only Christ could deliver us from the bondage of our sin.

The ancient Christian creeds tended to be taken for granted at the seminary and there was a firm insistence on the biblical foundation of Christian faith. We learned to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek (I had already studied Greek in college) and devoted ourselves to careful exegesis of biblical texts. The techniques of Higher and Lower Criticism of the Bible were readily employed. We learned about the Documentary Hypothesis of the origins of the Pentateuch, about redactions and additions in other ancient texts, and about the different dates, settings, and characters of the four gospels, the writings of Paul, and other writings in the New Testament. We also learned about the numerous variant readings of biblical texts, especially those in the New Testament, and about the fact that there were no extant original manuscripts of any biblical text. Biblical literalism was rejected. We were taught to focus on the Word of God behind the words of the text, to appreciate the hand humans had had in bringing the texts to their present forms, and to see the Bible as bearing witness to the acts of God in human history during the biblical epoch, which covered well over one thousand years and reached its consummation in the saving death of Jesus Christ on the cross and his climactic resurrection from the grave.

This was all pretty exciting stuff. I lived and breathed the biblical epoch and the early history of the Christian church. I had a strong dislike for John Calvin, more of an appreciation for Martin Luther, a liking for the writings of Emil Brunner, and a marked interest in the works of Reinhold Niebuhr. I also was fascinated by the writings of Søren Kierkegaard and immersed myself in number of his imaginative and beautifully written works on my own. And I remember reading with interest and excitement Paul Tillich's newly published book The Courage to Be, but I realized years later when I re-read the book that I had actually understood little of it then.

Still, a fly had landed in the ointment of my developing and more knowledgeable Christian faith. It was the fly of Biblical Criticism and its exposure of the all-too-human character of the Bible. The Bible, I came to see, was not the unquestionably authoritative text I had once viewed it as. It was a fallible document that had undergone many changes over the years. The authorship of its books was generally unclear, and there had been modifications to the texts over the centuries. The originals of many of its books had been handed down orally for some period of time before they came to be written down, and the written texts had sometimes been altered, as was evident by different styles of writing and references to different historical periods. I submitted an exegetical essay for an award at the seminary, went away for the summer, and was surprised on my return to learn that I had received the award and the small monetary payment that went with it. The essay focused on the highly problematic textual and early manuscript evidences relating to the ascension narratives in the gospels. There was no entirely dependable external biblical authority, then, to which I could turn for the content or confirmation of my faith. I had to think and reason for myself. Nevertheless, my basic Christian faith remained strong.

Upon graduation from the seminary, I became the pastor of a small church in a tiny town near Wilmington, Delaware. I was ordained as a Presbyterian minister shortly thereafter. In this church I endeavored to preach and practice my faith in the ways in which I had learned to augment and understand it in the seminary. I fear that my sermons were often abstract, academic, and too laden with theological jargon. At twenty-four years of age, I had a considerable amount of book learning but little experience of the rough and tumble of daily life outside of an academic setting. I had had little opportunity or need to test my faith among laypersons or to learn how to communicate effectively with them. They often came to me with questions I did not know how to answer and felt inauthentic or incompetent in trying to answer. I did not feel confident enough in the receptiveness of these laypeople or in my own role as their minister to share honestly with them my own religious questions, some of which were becoming increasingly pressing for me.

For example, one young man who was not a member of my church came to me and asked that I hold a memorial service for his brother who had killed himself with a shotgun. I readily agreed to conduct the service. This young man was greatly disturbed and asked me many searching questions about the meaning of life, the nature of God, the prospects of an afterlife, whether his brother would be saved in heaven despite having committed suicide, and so on. I knew the standard theological answers to such questions, but I was not altogether satisfied with them and did not know what better answers to give in their place. In some ways, I was as disturbed by his questions as was he, especially in their relation to the tragedy he was experiencing firsthand.

A faith once nurtured in solitude or in a community of like-minded professors and fellow students now had to be brought into a public arena, shared in that arena, and brought to the test of probing questions, problems, and concerns raised by people of various ages as they went about trying to live their lives. There were issues of child abuse, suicide, and racism to be dealt with. There were marital problems, losses of loved ones, grave illnesses, and feelings of despair. There were deep theological problems about the efficacy of prayer, interpretations of perplexing passages in the Bible, divine goodness and justice, the nature and hope of an afterlife, and so on.

As a result, my own theological questions were mounting in urgency and importance. I was no longer content with answers I had earlier thought to be adequate. After three years serving the Delaware church, I began to realize that I was probably better suited to a life of teaching in a college or university where my inquiries could be more honest, direct, and sustained; where I could specialize in open-ended questions rather than poorly thought-out answers; and where I did not have to function as an authoritative source of solutions to deeply felt questions that were as troublesome to me, if not more so, as they were to the questioners. I was a Christian still and probably in some ways a more mature one than I had been before, but I felt that I had a long way to go before I could be completely settled and confident in my faith.

Despite my youth and inexperience, my Delaware congregation granted me constant affirmation and support as their pastor, a fact for which I shall always be grateful. I learned a great deal from them and made many good friends among them while serving as their minister. But I was now convinced that being a minister was not the role in life for which I was most inclined or best equipped. I applied to various schools for doctorate work in the field of religion and decided to enroll in the joint program in religion at Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University in New York City. I wanted to prepare myself for a career in teaching and research, and a career in which I could provide resources for helping young people to develop their intellectual outlooks, think through options available to them, and set out upon their own paths of faith.

Four important things happened to me as a student in New York, so far as my faith was concerned. One is that I was exposed for the first time at Columbia to teachers who were not of my own religious persuasion. All of my previous undergraduate and graduate instructors had been Christians. Some of my professors at Columbia were Jewish, for example, and some were atheists and secular humanists. A second thing was that I began to study in some depth religious traditions other than my own such as Judaism, Islam, and the religions of southeastern and far eastern Asia. A third was that I took a number of courses at Columbia in Western philosophy and became increasingly absorbed in philosophical questions and systems of thought. And the fourth was that I decided to write my doctoral dissertation on the thought of the nineteenth-century New England Congregationalist minister Horace Bushnell, whose strikingly original ideas, liberal leanings, and unconventional writings created a scandal in his place and time but who also pointed the way—for some in his own day and also for me—to radical new ways of interpreting the Bible and thinking theologically. I was having many new experiences and encountering many fresh and challenging ideas in my ongoing journey of faith.

My exposure to the thought of respected and admired professors who did not share my assumed outlook or beliefs, and the study of other religions which were long-lived and profound but provocatively different from my own, were significant challenges to my faith. These two influences were constant reminders that I could not simply take my particular faith for granted, that it was but one of many different ways of interpreting and responding to life's basic questions and living in the world. How could I be sure that my path of faith was the right one, even if only right for me? The study of Western philosophy, with its unearthing of fundamental problems and the enticing diversity of its proffered solutions to those problems, showed that there were no easy resolutions to be found. Thinkers far more original, penetrating, and insightful than I could ever hope to be had explored these problems in great depth but had not reached agreement on how to resolve them. In light of these three influences, I realized with a blend of daunting trepidation and stirring excitement that much of own thinking heretofore had been provincial, shallow, and immature. My Christian faith was challenged and made more thoughtful by these experiences, and I was even less inclined than before to be satisfied with religious assumptions that I had not previously brought to the surface and subjected to critical analysis.

My most important experience in New York was the writing of a dissertation on Horace Bushnell's theory of language in the context of other theories of language, most of them American, in the nineteenth century. Bushnell developed his theory of language as a way of interpreting and understanding his Christian faith, and especially as a way of reading the Bible. The theory emphasized the crucial role of metaphor and symbol in all language, but especially in the biblical texts and in theological discourse. The theory went against the grain of the dominant understandings of religious language and theological reasoning in Bushnell's time. That understanding emphasized, not metaphor and symbol, but a literal, doctrinaire, and highly rationalistic way of interpreting the Bible and doing theology.

In contrast, Bushnell was convinced that the real power and import of religious language lay in its richly variegated and sometimes clashing and paradoxical symbolic forms—its myths, metaphors, rites, parables, and stories that could not be translated into equally meaningful literal statements. To ignore or downplay these imaginative symbolic meanings in favor of the wooden literalism and contentious logomachy he believed to be characteristic of his time was to lose sight of what is most eloquent, convincing, and profound in religion, and what speaks most directly to the passions of the heart and the life of faith.

These ideas got Bushnell into a lot of trouble and put him in imminent danger of being defrocked. But he persisted in developing them with thoughtful, sprightly, highly readable sermons and books, and eventually some theologians and fellow ministers came over to his side. His life and thought gave considerable impetus to the emergence of Protestant libera...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedications
• Preface
• ONE Initial Sketch of a Concept of Faith
• TWO Facets of Faith
• THREE Faith and Knowledge
• FOUR Faith and Scientific Knowledge
• FIVE Faith and Morality
• SIX Secular Forms of Faith
• SEVEN Crises of Faith
• EIGHT My Personal Journey of Faith
• Notes
• Works Cited