THEO11 MOD1-SECTION 2: FAITH

• "Faith is a universal human phenomenon. All people live by some faith. An approach to faith as a common dimension of human existence itself enables one to characterize its most fundamental structure and most salient qualities."

  -- Roger Haight
• "Our working definition is that faith is the relationship between one and the irreducible energizing source of meaning and center of value in one's life."

  -- Terrence Tilley

  Subject (one who believes) <----- dynamic relationship -----> Object (ultimate reality)
• The one who has faith can be referred to as the subject of faith. One can designate either an individual person or a group (or sometimes both) as the subject of faith.
• Faith communities - both individual persons and communities of persons can be the subject of faith.
• The irreducible energizing center of value in one's life can be referred to as the object of faith- a person's or community's god or gods.
• If your priority in life is to be a transcendent person, you will have a God with a capital letter. If your highest value as a cause or an ideology, you will have a god with a small letter. Either way, you will have something that is divine for you. Everyone has a god.
• Using paradox to explain faith

  • A paradox is a statement of reality that may seem absurd or contradictory at first, but is able to make sense, and even shed light on truth
  • a paradox is a convergence of opposites
  • Matthew 20:16 - "Thus the last will be the first, and the first will be the last"
• Liar's Paradox - "This statement is false"
• Animal Farm

  • written by George Orwell in 1946
  • paradoxical belief of Animalism: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others." This is a harsh critique of the failings of communism and populist revolutions.
• Faith is a mystery. Mystery in the Christian sense is something we cannot fully understand but accept as true. Although mystery is something we cannot fully know, it does not mean it cannot be known
• "self" is one of the greatest mysteries to ourselves-meaning we can never define ourselves perfectly, with nothing to add. Rather we are always open to deeper self-understanding."
• Paradoxes are paradoxical: they make sport of the usual and reasonable rule of not being allowed to be against as well as for.
• "Nothing in other words is known outside of relation-whether of terror, tedium, or love. Nothing knowable comes constructed ex nihilo, void of context. If something is known at all, it cannot be absolved of relation; therefore, nothing is known absolutely. Each is what it is only in relation to others."

  --- Catherine Keller
• Tilley

  • relationship of faith is analogous to the relationship of love. Love is a relationship between one and another.
  • Each of these loves develop over time.
  • As with love, faith evolves. What is common to the various ways of speaking of love is that love is a relationship that endures.
  • We might say that we thought we were in love for a while. That's different, we admit to being deceived or confused or overenthusiastic. A love that does not endure long is a passing fancy, not love.
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  It is on the foundation of endurance that we come to be certain of the faith that we have. Often, our experiences with our ultimate reality feed the relationship that we have with that reality. And with more experiences, we become more and more sure.
• Christian faith exemplifies six sets of paradoxical characteristics, these are:

  • faith is certain yet obscure
  • faith is free yet morally obliging
  • faith is supernatural yet reasonable
  • act yet a process
  • faith is a gift yet a task
  • faith is personal, yet ecclesial and social
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  • meaning; if one is asked to give a comprehensive list of every reason for loving, one will be in a pickle. The difficulty to definitively and exhaustively give reason to love is not proof of its inadequacy or falsity. There are just some thing that cannot be articulated within the confines of the language we have.

  sometimes the only way to resolve this difficulty is to say: tout simplement (just because)
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  • Faith is a risk! Faith is placing one's entirety of being on the authenticity of the ultimate reality one is in relationship with. As explained by Paul Tillich: The risk to faith in one's ultimate concern is indeed the greatest risk man can run.
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  Blaise Pascal's wager (he said it's not true faith): Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation that he is... there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite"

  • oversimplifies faith as if it were a riskless endeavor
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  Therefore this mystery of faith is impossible to contain fully within human categories. It is just too much for our minds to handle. This is the profoundly mysterious identity of the God who revealed Godself, yet revealed as supremely hidden: Deus revelatus tamquam absconditus.
• CERTAIN YET OBSCURE

  "Like the ocean, the revealed mysteries of God have a visible surface, beneath which lie hidden and unfathomable depths."

  --- John Saward
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  "In some sense, to say that we freely choose our god or gods must be correct... Even those of us who belong to highly structured religious faith traditions have had to choose to recommit ourselves to the tradition when we are confirmed."

  --- Terrence Tilley
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  Two levels of freedom (Karl Rahner)

  • Categorical freedom: freedom of choice, "I have my freedom", the act of choice itself
  • Transcendental freedom: freedom as the self formed by the choices, "I am my freedom", freedom is not indefinite choice but definitive commitment, capacity to create something final, irrevocable, and eternal"
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  There is a dialectical relation between choosing (categorical) and being (transcendental). The kind of person that I am determines what I do with my freedom. At the same time, the choices that I make will ultimately impact the person i become.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  We cannot reduce a person to the choices that they make.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  Faith in the categorical level includes all the individual choices that we have made in relation to faith. Faith in the transcendental level is your comprehensive choice, encompassing your whole life's vision and horizon of meaning.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  "faith cannot be ranged side by side with other choices, however momentous these may be... Of its nature, it is architectonic and claims to engage, to shape, to evaluate the whole life. Furthermore... faith is facing of eternal destiny; not the selection of one among many possibilities, but the option for my ultimate destiny."

  --- John Coventry
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  To what do obligations pertain? Most commonly, it is actions (or act-types) that are regarded as morally obligatory, though it is not necessary to limit our obligations to actions.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  • for many people, their moral convictions are very much tied to their faith convictions, that is to say convictions to their relationship with their ultimate reality-their god or gods.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  • If God does not exist, then everything is permitted (Ivan Karamazov in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, declared in his famous atheistic aphorism)
  • argues that claiming morality without God should not be controversial because there is just plain morality - American Philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
  • It is not quite right to say that there would be nothing left of morality if God did not exist. - C. Stephen Evan
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  • To be morally obligated to perform an action is to have a powerful reason to perform that action, a reason many would describe as a decisive or overriding one. It is thus understandable that many attempts to explain moral obligations take the form of trying to show that we have a powerful reason to perform whatever action the obligation covers.
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  • authentic freedom is not the right to say and do anything but to do good. It is not my own individual private possession, but a shared freedom with others in the community. It is not found in prejudice, deceit, or ignorance, but in truth
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  Dignitatis Humanae

  • lovers of true freedom are those who come to decisions on their own judgement and in the light of truth, and govern their activities with a sense of responsibility, striving after what is true and right.
  • Pope Paul VI
• FREE YET MORALLY OBLIGING

  • moral obligation has as its telos the transformation of humans. The point of morality is to help human acquire the virtues or excellences that will make it possible for them to become friends of God.
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  • supernatural means something is beyond nature, to be beyond the bounds of nature. For instance, in Christian faith, truths of faith include the mystery of the Trinity as well as the mystery if the Incarnation. These things cannot be known without God revealing and disclosing these to us.
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  • infinite comes from the Latin infinitas (in = not, finis = limit, boundary, end)
  • infinite: that which exceeds all.
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  "We might try defining theological infinity as maximality-so that saying that God is infinitely good, for instance, means that God is more good than anything else possible. This 'upper bound' conception of God's infinity is close to the definition of God as 'that than which there can be no greater'."

  --- Jill Le Blanc
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  • To love another, one must understand the other to some degree. One person may never understand another fully. And so with faith. --- Terrence Tilley
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  • Faith and reason are compatible
  • There is structure to belief. It is not random and incoherent.
  • Mystery can be encountered
  • Reason can be seen as the power to understand the convergence of opposites in the concrete historical world, and to see that history is the autobiography of God in time.
• SUPERNATURAL YET REASONABLE

  • Critical reflection upon the fact that we find ourselves believing in something (or someone) is a normal part of the life of faith, once we enter into it. Our deepest, ultimate faith may go beyond reason-it may be deeply existential-but even our deepest existential commitments can be brought to light and subjected to rational exploration.
  • --- Alan G. Padgett, Methodist Theologian