Against Dogmatism: Dwelling in Faith and Doubt

One. Postures of Trust

Chapter One Postures of Trust Medieval Christian theologians drew a telling distinction between fides qua, the act of faith or trust in God, and fides quae, the specific content of belief statements. The former refers to the experience of having faith, of trusting in God, of recognizing the world as God’s world. The latter refers to what one believes about that world, themselves, and God. At first glance, this distinction may look like one between a vague sort of feeling and a clearly articulated faith, but the way the medievals responded to these two forms of faith is interesting. They referred to the former as implicit faith and to the latter as explicit faith. Those with implicit faith participate in the life of church tradition in obedience without a clear and explicit understanding of the doctrines of the church. Explicit faith refers to the ability to articulate what one believes and why. Interestingly, the medievals held that implicit faith, on its own, was enough for a person’s salvation, but explicit faith alone was not. Knowing the doctrines of the church and articulating them clearly was not viewed as sufficient to guarantee salvation. Trust, obedience , and participation in the tradition were required. On the one hand, this suggests a pragmatic concern with the uniformity of external practice over the intellectual deliberation on doctrine, and allows a simpler, minimalist sort of faith for the general uneducated medieval public that was distinct from the deliberate learning and doctrinal interpretation that was part of monastic study. On the other hand, the link between trust, obedience, and participation, or fides qua, and their practical superiority to the explicitly stated faith of fides quae, suggests that the act of trusting God was considered far more integral to the value of faith than one’s clear understanding of God. Thomas Aquinas, while distinguishing faith from knowledge, still suggested that faith does yield proper knowledge of God because it is rooted in the act of assent to divinely revealed propositions of faith as directed by God’s grace. The act of assent or trust that takes places in faith enacts a proper relationship to God’s grace. It is this priority of trusting God over creedal propositions that informs this first chapter. In many ways this runs counter to the need often articulated in today’s very self-conscious society, that one should understand exactly why one believes something for it to be valuable and strong. I do not intend in this book to trace the development of the modern emphasis on what one believes, but we can certainly point to the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, and the rising values of individualism, reason, and autonomy to identify the multilayered influences of this pattern of thinking. In one sense, modern people have appropriated the Socratic intuition that “a life unexamined is not worth living” to criticize faith that is unarticulated as perhaps only immature and inferior. We even refer to it in a derogatory manner as “blind faith.” While that is very often a valid criticism of those who unreflectively cling to their views, it may also be a mistake to privilege the intellectual and logical exposition of doctrine over the emotional act described by the religious as trust. Although faith certainly includes the articulation of certain positive beliefs, its exclusive focus can overstate the role of individual autonomy in the spiritual life and fail to recognize the degree to which trust embodies an acceptance or acquiescence to being moved by something deeper, larger, or more sovereign. Part 1 of this book comprises a descriptive approach to faith. If faith is not primarily about certitude or creedal statements, what is it? This first chapter explores several articulations of faith as the consciousness of humility or dependence, on the one hand, and belonging to a world of meaning, on the other hand. These two forms of experience together identify some defining sense of trust in the sacred. Treating them in turn allows me to better identify the relationship between humility and belonging, or between consciousness of dependence and spiritual confidence. I begin with a discussion of humility, as treated by several Christian mystics and ritually enacted by Muslims in the five pillars of faith. Humility functions somewhat differently in Christian reflection and Muslim reflection, given the unique Christian espousal of the doctrine of original sin. Next, I consider nineteenth-century Christian theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher’s treatment of religious experience and Christian God-consciousness. Described in Christian terms, this...