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Jim's PERSPECTIVE

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November 30, 2015

For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17

The scriptures listed above are foundational and pivotal for me. It really is all about faith. But the obvious questions are, what is faith? How is faith defined? What is its nature? How does it work? Why is it necessary?

In trying to deal with the last question first, let’s just say that from the outset that faith is absolutely and critically necessary. The writer of Hebrews (not Paul, BTW) states that “without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him” (ch.11, v.6). In 1 Peter we are told that “that the genuineness of your faith, (is) much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire,” and in that same verse there is a sense that one’s faith is to be evaluated as to whether it “may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” For some reason, God seems to have engineered faith into the equation and has declared it as perhaps the one thing that God values above all else (except for love).

The best-of-the-best definition of faith, in my view, is found in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. Incidentally, the entirety of chapter eleven is specifically about faith and the nature of it. To begin with, and as most Christians know, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (ch.11, v.1). Is it not ironic, wouldn’t you think, that something as non-rational as faith could be described as evidentiary—the “evidence” of things unseen? I don’t believe that using the term “evidence” to define faith is either a misnomer or an accident. I think that it is spot-on correct. The human mind demands to know. We ask for, and expect, proof in order to substantiate any truth claims to reality. The outlandish claim that Christians make—that God makes—is that faith will serve and stand as evidence. Given how faith is viewed by most people, the very idea of faith as evidence seems contradictory. But I don’t believe it is. I will try to make that clearer below.

Notice that, at least in the beginning of this article, I have been using scripture to explain and to justify faith. And, for me, in the end whatever we say about faith must comport with scripture in order to be regarded as authentic and authoritative. However, and at the same time, I will make an appeal to rationality—reason—to explain and justify faith in terms of why and how it works. Hoping not to be thought of as digressing here, I have in mind John Wesley’s four-way test of truth, and that is known as the “quadrilateral” (Methodist historian Albert Outler’s term delineated from Wesley’s work—not a term Wesley would have used). The quadrilateral refers to, in no particular order (despite the fact that there are some Christians/ Methodists who do wish to establish a “hierarchy” in the listing of these terms), Reason, Scripture, Tradition, and Experience. According to this way or arriving at authenticity, all truth claims must agree with all four ways (or means). One may come in by way of any one of those doors; nonetheless, the other three must be addressed and satisfied. Some will come to faith by way of Experience, some by Tradition, some by Scripture, and some even by means of Reason (or the seeming lack of it). I believe that C.S. Lewis is an example of one who came in through the door of Reason. I came to faith (even though I was raised in a traditional church and taught scripture as a child) by way of Experience. However, my traditional up-bringing dictated that I had to consult scripture in order to understand what I had experienced. “Tradition,” in the very best sense, means for me not so much the “keeping of the faith,” per se, as much as what others before me have experienced and said about it. Although times and cultures are all different, in the end people are not. People are pretty much the same in terms of how they process reality. “Tradition” means that what I experienced/experience must be, despite the cultural gaps, something that those in other times and places would be able to understand and affirm. And what I experienced must also be reasonable—to all people in all times and places.

In terms of Reason, I, as well as many others, have more questions than answers. One question is, why do many Christians seem to believe that in order for one to live, participate, or walk in faith, one must turn off or abandon one’s thinking processes? On the other hand, I totally understand why this is so. When one remembers that because the quintessential model of our faith, Abraham, at the behest of God, left everything—family, friends, familiar surroundings—to follow God (Genesis 12:1, Hebrews 11:8), we believe that we must do exactly that same thing. “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.” It is the “’not knowing’ where he was going” part that we are concerned with. We conclude that to do what Abraham did—go out not knowing where he was going—means that we have to live in uncertainty. And, in fact, there is truth in that. The reality is that, at least on this side of Glory, we all must walk and live in uncertainty. But to assume that that means we must walk blindly and in ignorance is not correct and, pardon the pun, is short-sighted. And you may already may have thought, “But what about that verse in 2 Corinthians 5:7, ‘we walk by faith and not by sight?’ Isn’t that practically a directive to walk in blindness?”

Well, yes and no. Think for a moment about the claim that Jesus makes in the eighth chapter of John’s gospel: “He who follows me shall not walk in darkness; but shall have the light of life.” And yet Jesus would be the first to say that we must have the faith of Abraham. The very nature of the statements, “Abraham went out not knowing where he was going,” and “We walk by faith and not by sight” seem to agree, and both verses suggest that “not knowing” is the very hallmark of faith. And yet, throughout the Bible God appears to want us to be assured that our “blind” faith is not misplaced.

But, it seems to me, the issue should be framed in terms of how we process what it means to “know” something. Don’t most of us believe that the key to “knowing” anything is through sense-experience? If you believe that to be true, then you are referring to empirical knowledge. Many modern (and so-called “post-modern”) people insist that for anything to be regarded as true, it has to be empirically verifiable. That is, through sense-experience— sight, touch, taste, smell, hearing—I know if something is real. And yes, I am aware that “facts” and “reality” are often not the same thing. However, if you are one who demands that in order for something to be regarded as real it must be factual—empirically demonstrable—then you may be what is known as a “logical positivist.”

And then there are those who believe that “facts” and the insistence on empirical knowledge is precisely the problem when it comes to truth and other realities not empirically knowable, such as Beauty, Justice, Love, the Good, and, indeed, Faith. Not a few Modern and post-modern artists, poets, and musicians will tell you that in order to genuinely do what they do, one must separate oneself from the rational. I understand to a degree what they mean, and it does make some sense, but I don’t believe that one can escape one’s own rationality. And I do believe that thinking one can separate oneself from one’s reasoning processes is naïve. The 18th century poet and painter William Blake once said, “What has reason to do with art?” Well, even for William Blake, the “rational” actually does have a little something to do with art, although he and, say, the Surrealists of our own time, believe (or pretend) that it doesn’t.

In the same vein as Mr. Blake and others, one could very well also say, “What has reason to do with faith?” Many Christians and non-Christians alike do not believe that one has anything to do with the other. And that to “do” faith legitimately means that one must turn off one’s rational mind. However, I believe that there is another way to view faith-as-the-non-rational. The verse, “We walk by faith and not by sight,” put another way could be translated, “We walk by faith and not by sense-experience.” Christians could put it still another way, “We do not know by means of sense-experience; but we do know by means of faith.” Faith here is an alternative way of knowing.

The obvious question at this point should be, “Know what?” Some have said that faith is both a subject and an object. The object of faith is God himself. And yet faith is also the very means to that knowledge. Why? I believe that because God is a Universal—the ultimate, absolute Universal, the problem is, the particular, the individual (meaning ourselves) cannot know the universal. In other words, the individual cannot know a universal by rational means. Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher (and others) basically believed that. And that would be true if we were defining reason as strictly conceptual, logical, discursive reasoning.

So what happens when the question becomes how does one know anything? Or, how can one know something/anything beyond doubt? That’s why many people will say, “If I can’t see it, touch it, hear it, taste it, or smell it—in short, if I can’t prove it, I won’t believe it. Furthermore, it doesn’t exist.” French philosopher Renee Descartes was famous for, among other things, having said, in response to what one can actually know without doubt, “I think; therefore I am.” So he locates “knowing without doubt” in the mind, or, in reason.

Although Descartes was a brilliant guy, a wonderful mathematician, and a seminal thinker, he is somewhat notorious for having separated (conceptually) mind from body. He believed that life was comprised of three “substances:” Mind, Body, and God. Descartes did believe in “God,” but, like many other philosophers who expressed a belief in God, and to name just a few--Plato, Aristotle, George Berkeley, Hegel, and Kant—their God is impersonal (read: “not knowable”). God, to them, remains a concept. The question of concepts and universals is complicated, and there is no one position. Some believe that universals don’t exist, or, like Kant and other idealists, believe that they only exist in the mind. In any case, universals are known only rationally, or intellectually. Individuals/particulars, on the other hand, are known empirically and experientially.

Descartes, by locating God in reason, and through his assertion, “I think; therefore I am,” locates God in his own conscious mind. He does not take the unconscious into consideration. He doesn’t think (no pun intended) about the non-rational, or the “extra-rational” as some have called it. So, by locating his “non-doubting self” in his own mind, he tries to locate the reality of himself in himself (or his own consciousness), which seems self-contradictory to me. Is there a “non-rational,” or “extra-rational” in addition to a “rational?” Well, what if you ask, “Is there an unconscious, as well as a conscious?” Most everyone would say that there is. Despite whatever you think about Freud or Jung, you can thank those guys and their disciples for that.

What then, would be the nature of the unconscious (or the non-conscious)? Apparently these are things that we cannot get to by normal rational means. Concepts, universals, the unconscious, are all known intellectually. But individuals are known, not intellectually, but rather, empirically, or experientially by means of the senses. I can see you, touch you, hear you, etc…. (The metaphysical question of knowing the “essence” of you is too long and complicated for a basic discussion of faith). Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and 20th century French philosopher/theologian Jacques Maritain (a disciple of Aristotle and Aquinas) wrote of two kinds of reason. The first, already mentioned above, refers to logical, conceptual, discursive reason. The second is an intuitive reasoning, and one that arises from the senses. Aristotle and Aquinas—and Maritain—believed in an “Illuminating Intellect” that sheds light on reason’s images.

In terms of how one knows God, one cannot “know,” God in an empirical sense, but, rather, only intellectually. One may know an individual in an empirical sense; however, God is not an individual, in spite of such scriptural references as Exodus 33:11, “God spoke with Moses face-to-face, just as a man speaks with his friend.” And yet we say that God is knowable, and knowable “one-on-one.”

I believe that the Christian Trinitarian understanding of God provides the means to conceive and comprehend personal knowledge of God, and the key to unlock the mystery of experiencing God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is familiar to most as the principal way to express the Trinity. Another way is to think of the Trinity is God-the-first-time, God-the-second-time, God-the-third-time. Because the Spirit (God-the-third-time) is the Spirit of the risen Christ Jesus (God-the-second-time), and that both the Spirit and the Son allow us access to God-the-first-time, we ourselves, by means of the indwelling, incarnate Spirit of the Risen Christ, have access to God the Father. In a very simplistic explanation, Jesus, a knowable particular/individual gives us access to an otherwise unknowable Universal. How is it put in Romans 5:1-2? “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand….” Ephesians 2:18 states it thusly: “For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

Faith, it seems to me, is a means to “bypass” the limitations of human reason. Christians speak of a faith which “passes understanding.” I believe that to “walk by faith and not by sight” is to incorporate the “other” means of seeing, as well as the “other” means of knowing. We know by faith because we see by faith. We see by faith because we walk in faith.

  
 

 

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