Fate of a Mustard Seed?

Mustard Seeds

Faith may move mountains, but so do earthquakes . . . and they do it faster.

That Old Switcheroo!

Bait and Switcheroo

Google Images

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." I can see that, I think, but what about its opposite? "Planning to fail is failing to plan." Does that switcheroo work?

The heavens declare the glory of God, the earth is less secure . . .

Michelangelo's God

Sistine Chapel

He does look sort of like an angry old man . . .

(Image from Wikipedia)

In a post on Japan's recent earthquake, "God's Love, Delivered," my cyberfriend Malcolm Pollack noted nature's apparent indifference to human purposes:

The hideous indifference of Nature! Again it yawns and extends a finger, shearing us away en masse, and I think: "we are nothing".

Despite the title of his post, Malcolm doesn't actually make an explicit point about God, though perhaps "Nature" stands in for "God" here. In an "Addendum," Malcolm notes that one reader objected:

To me, G_d is synonymous with the Explanation for Everything; for you, He is an angry, immature old man.

Actually, the deity in Malcolm's post seemed more bored and indifferent than angry, and not necessarily a man, but possibly Mother Nature. At any rate, Malcolm demurs that he doesn't believe in the sort of angry-old-man God inferred by the reader, but then explains his reason for the post:

I've been re-reading the Bible and the Koran over the past few weeks. That's the sort of "God" I'm referring to here; and it's the one that most people believe in, and that they think of when they use the word "God". It amazes me that people are capable of the cognitive dissonance required to witness natural disasters like this, or the awful earthquake in Haiti that killed and maimed multitudes of the innocent faithful, square it somehow with the idea of an involved, active, personal God who is nevertheless infinitely loving and merciful, and then keep coming back for more. It just boggles my mind [in the same way that it boggled Voltaire's mind after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755], and I can’t help remarking on it from time to time.

Hence the post "God's Love, Delivered." Malcolm states that he finds the belief of many people in an "active, personal God who is nevertheless infinitely loving and merciful" to be mind-boggling since it appears to run counter to all the evidence. Well, I have a simple, quasi-psychological suggestion that might help unboggle the mind:

People want to believe that life has purpose, and the apparent indifference of nature only serves to reinforce that need to believe, and since purpose is identified with the intentionality characteristic of persons, then people believe in a God who is personal.

I think that this helps to explain why so many people maintain theistic beliefs. Whether such a God exists or not is, of course, another issue.

Shallow Reflections on Deep Faith

Triumph of Faith over Idolatry

Jean-Baptiste Théodon

(French, 1646–1713)

Church of the Gesù

Rome, Italy

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm re-reading David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, so I have encountered for the second time an aphorism on religious belief:

"Faith, the least exclusive club on earth, has the craftiest doorman." (David Mitchell, "Letters from Zedelghem," Cloud Atlas: A Novel, page 75)

This remarkable, offhand remark is penned by Robert Frobisher, would-be composer -- and son of a sinecured Anglican minister -- as he later records the thoughts first entertained while sitting in a Catholic church in Bruges envying the believers kneeling in prayer . . . and also envying God for being privy to their secrets.

Whatever what Frobisher might mean by "faith" -- and I'll reflect on that in a moment -- the Hebrew terms are "'emeth" (firmness), "'emuwn" (faithfulness), or "'emuwnah" (firmness), etymologically related to the more familiar term "amēn," meaning (according to the Blue Letter Bible):

1) firm

a) metaph. faithful

2) verily, amen

a) at the beginning of a discourse - surely, truly, of a truth

b) at the end - so it is, so be it, may it be fulfilled. It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded Amen, and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own.

None of these quite captures Frobisher's use of the term "faith," which seems to imply a trustful emotion that runs deep in the believer. Nor does any of these clearly express what I've sometimes been told about the Hebrew understanding of faith, that it means belief expressed in action.

When I was growing up in the church, I understood the word "faith" to designate dependence, a deep trust in God that whispered not even a single doubt . . . but I've long since come to deeply distrust that understanding because I've seen that it often means trusting in some other person's subjective insistence on God's will.

I've gone through a pretzel's tangle of different positions on this faith issue, but I've ultimately come to the conclusion that God wouldn't demand an irrational faith, for the character of God, properly and correctly understood, would have to be -- as Pope Benedict maintains in his Regensburg lecture, "Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections" -- eminently reasonable:

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, the first verse of the whole Bible, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: "In the beginning was the λόγος [logos]" . . . . God acts, συν λόγω [syn logō], with logos. Logos means both reason and word -- a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist. The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: "Come over to Macedonia and help us!" (cf. Acts 16:6-10) - this vision can be interpreted as a "distillation" of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

One need not be Catholic to appreciate an insistence that God is essentially reasonable. If God's not, we're all in big trouble, for if God's character is not reasonable, then faith itself must be unreasonable, even irrational, never truly engendered by trustworthy persuasion but always imposed with the threat of violence. We see this most explicitly in the faith of religious terrorists, but the threat is more often implicit, especially when obscured through the manipulative cunning of some who would set their own subjective faith up as the objective standard by which to judge everyone else's. Not that I'm thinking of anyone in particular . . .

The Greek term for "faith," incidentally, is pistis, which has the following meanings in the New Testament (borrowed from the Blue Letter Bible):

1) conviction of the truth of anything, belief; in the NT of a conviction or belief respecting man's relationship to God and divine things, generally with the included idea of trust and holy fervour born of faith and joined with it

a) relating to God

1) the conviction that God exists and is the creator and ruler of all things, the provider and bestower of eternal salvation through Christ

b) relating to Christ

1) a strong and welcome conviction or belief that Jesus is the Messiah, through whom we obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom of God

c) the religious beliefs of Christians

d) belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same

2) fidelity, faithfulness

a) the character of one who can be relied on

The correspondence of pistis to the Hebrew terms "'emeth," "'emuwn," and "'emuwnah," as well as to "amēn," is clear, though this Greek term seems to carry a good deal more theological content.

Just to satisfy curiosity, mine anyway, here's the etymology for the English word "faith," borrowed from the Online Etymological Dictionary:

mid-13c., "duty of fulfilling one's trust," from O.Fr. feid, from L. fides "trust, belief," from root of fidere "to trust," from PIE base *bhidh-/*bhoidh- (cf. Gk. pistis; see bid). For sense evolution, see belief. Theological sense is from late 14c.; religions called faiths since c.1300.

All of this is very interesting, I suppose, though I'd need to reflect on it a lot before I'd have anything interesting to write, but why did Frobisher say that faith has the craftiest doorman? We have to read the aphorism in its context:

"Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again." (David Mitchell, "Letters from Zedelghem," Cloud Atlas: A Novel, page 75)

That sounds a bit like disappointment, but perhaps Mr. Frobisher is simply directed to where, deep down, he really wants to find himself, and the doorman's craft thus consists in recognizing this innermost desire, but you'll need to read the larger context, the entire "Letters from Zedelghem" story, to find out for sure.

After all, why trust me?

Is the Money Good?

Simon Critchley

(Image from New School for Social Research)

I don't think that I'd ever heard of the philosopher Simon Critchley before, but the man has penned an amusing if rambling essay on money in "Coin of Praise" (August 30, 2009) for an opinion series called "Happy Days" that the New York Times has set up. About this series, the NYT informs us:

The severe economic downturn has forced many people to reassess their values and the ways they act on them in their daily lives. For some, the pursuit of happiness, sanity, or even survival, has been transformed.

Happy Days is a discussion about the search for contentment in its many forms -- economic, emotional, physical, spiritual -- and the stories of those striving to come to terms with the lives they lead.

I suppose that humor must be one of those ways of coming to terms with life, and Professor Critchley has offered us a humorous essay -- at least, I found it amusing . . . but also serious and informative.

But at the risk of taking seriously an off-the-cuff remark meant unseriously, let's look carefully at this passage:

[T]he legitimacy of money is based on a sovereign act, or a sovereign guarantee that the money is good, that it is not counterfeit. Money has a promissory structure, with a strangely circular logic: money promises that the money is good. The acceptance of the promise is the approval of a specific monetary ethos. We all agree that the money is worth -- in the best of circumstances -- more than the paper on which it is printed. To buy and sell in the U.S. dollar, or any other currency, is to trust that each bill is making a promise that it can keep.

Critchley's is an ironic way of putting things, I presume, but let's take him literally for the moment. Money has no "strangely circular logic" on this point, for money does not itself promise that it is good. Rather, it carries the promise made not by the money itself but by another entity, usually the government. Take the analogy of this blog. Gypsy Scholar is not analyzing Critchley's passage; it is bearing an analysis made by the blog's author: Jeffery Hodges (in case you'd forgotten).

Critchley himself knows this -- not about me but about money -- for he immediately goes on to state:

This ethos, this circular money-promising-that-the-money-is-good, is underwritten by sovereign power.

He still insists on his ironic point, but the "underwritten" guarantee is the actual promise that the money is good. But to his 'credit', Critchley immediately procedes to offer up some satisfyingly etymological details:

It is worth recalling that gold coins called "sovereigns" were first minted in England under Henry VII in 1489 and production continues to this day. It is essential that we believe in this power, that the sovereign power of the bank inspires belief, that the "Fed has cred," as it were. Credit can only operate on the basis of credence and credibility, of an act of fidelity and faith (fides), of con-fid-ence. As historians of language have shown, there is a strong etymological link between ideas of belief, faith and forms of economic exchange. The goddess Fides or trust was sometimes depicted on the verso of Roman coins. "In Fed We Trust," as the title of David Wessel's new book has it.

Interesting. Money as religion, as Critchley notes:

There is a theological core to money based on an act of faith, of belief. One can even speak of a sort of monetary civil religion.

Much of this is tongue-in-cheek, I guess, but it has an earnest intent and gives rise to some serious insights about our potentially idolatrous attitude toward money. Perhaps Paul was writing with authentic insight in 1 Timothy 6:10, where -- in what I've long taken as an overstatement -- he maintains:

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. (King James Version, Blue Letter Bible Website)

Perhaps Paul meant that those who "coveted" money "erred from the faith" because they had found a new 'faith' -- trust in money above trust in their God. On the other hand, rightly understood, trust in money is necessary -- as is trust in a friend, or a spouse, or anything in which we must place trust.

Even in Critchley, who -- I trust -- has a serious point in his irony and a way with words in coining the phrase "Coin of Praise" and thus deserves some serious attention from a fellow like me who appreciates a good wordsmith.

God's Justice: The Gift of Faith

Allegory of Faith

Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I questioned an aside in which Robert Koons claims that "Calvinists, [by asserting] that Christ has died only for believers, ... make faith into a human work that merits salvation." I questioned this claim because it makes no sense to me from my (admittedly minor) knowledge of Calvinism. If anybody knows where Koons presents an argument to support this claim, please let me know.

Today's question concerns a different sort of statement, or series of statements:

If all the world is justified by Christ alone, does this mean that all will be saved? No, because not all are in a position to benefit from Christ's redemption. In order to be able to benefit from our objective justification, we must undergo an internal transformation that enables us to enjoy eternal life with God. Eternal life in God's presence would be no benefit to a sinful man, whose heart and mind are at enmity with God. C.S. Lewis illustrates this fact beautifully in his masterpiece, The Great Divorce. Unregenerate people would find heaven more intolerable even than hell. (pdf, page 41)

Koons is here rejecting universalism, the view that everybody, willy-nilly, ends up in God's presence because God ultimately extends grace to all. Koons cites C.S. Lewis to the point that unregenerate people would find hell more tolerable. I'm familiar with Lewis's interesting point, but doesn't it miss Koons's point? How so? Because if grace were extended to all, willy-nilly, then all would "undergo an internal transformation ... [enabling them] to enjoy eternal life with God." All would be regenerate. This doesn't happen. Why not? An argument must be lurking here. Koons only obliquely addresses the point:

How does this internal transformation take place? It begins with faith, which is itself a free gift of God, dependent on no prior works or merits. However, merely believing God is not sufficient for being able to enjoy communion with God: faith must reach its natural end or completion, in the form of the love of God. Only when, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we begin to love God are we in a state in which we can begin to enjoy the benefits of Christ's redemption. It is true, of course, that we never love as we ought, but neither do we ever trust as we ought. The process of sanctification is a long and gradual process: the attainment of perfection is not a prerequisite of friendship with God, but the natural result of that friendship. (pdf, page 41)

I presume that on this point, Koons is expressing his own view rather than a specifically Lutheran or Catholic one, but his view may be common to both ecclesiastical traditions. Anyway, the regeneration process is set into motion by God, who gets the ball rolling through the free gift of faith -- free in the sense that God suffers no obligation to grant the gift. The recipient, however, is under an obligation to reciprocate by learning to love God, which occurs through another gift, i.e., God's Holy Spirit, given to believers.

I have two questions on this point, and they are not specific to a particular Christian tradition. I just want to know. Does Koons think that faith is given to all but not acted upon by all? What is the role of human agency in the regeneration process?

If individuals have a choice, then I can understand God's justice, but if some are excluded from receiving the gift of faith (or perhaps the subsequent gift of the Holy Spirit?), then God's justice is rather harder to comprehend.

Koons on Faith and Works in Catholicism

Abraham Sacrificing Isaac (1634)

Rembrandt

(Image from Wikipedia)

I've read a bit more in "A Lutheran’s Case for Roman Catholicism," the essay (pdf) by Robert Koons, and I'm musing my way through his thinking -- specifically, through his views on faith and works.

On the issue of faith versus works, I wonder if Koons is merely explaining Catholic doctrine or possibly nudging it along towards a Lutheran position:

Rome does not claim that God's grace renders anyone sinless in this life: everyone sins daily and is in daily need of forgiveness for Christ's sake. At the same time, the Lutherans do not deny that there is something internal to us (in nobis) that is required for our justification: namely, the faith that lays hold of Christ's righteousness. So the question comes down to this: what internal condition (in nobis) is required for us to lay hold of Christ's righteousness? The Scriptures sometimes speak of faith justifying or saving (or even of baptism as saving). These are understood as elliptical, expressing that it is Christ as believed in who justifies, or Christ in whom we are baptized who saves. By the same token, when Rome speaks of our being justified 'by good works', this can be taken as also containing an ellipsis: we are justified by Christ as the one who brings forth good works in us as His fruit.

Lutherans say that it is faith alone that does the apprehending, although saving faith is always accompanied by regeneration and good works. Rome teaches that it is 'faith working in love' that apprehends Christ's merits: that is, that [it] is the whole process, including both faith (as its root) and hope, love and works of charity (as the fruit), that is involved in apprehending Christ. In both cases, it is only Christ and only His merits that reconcile us to God. Lutherans are unfair in claiming that the Romans propose to substitute our merits for Christ's. One could, with as much justice, claim that Lutherans propose to "substitute" our faith for Christ's merits. The biblical evidence (including the Lutheran's most important text, Romans 4), simply doesn't, taken as a whole, clearly favor the Lutheran position. (pp. 26-27)

Koons suggests that when Catholics speak of the Christian being "justified by good works," then the wording "can be taken as ... containing an ellipsis," namely, that the Christian is "justified by Christ as the one who brings forth good works" as fruit.

Question: Is that what Catholics do mean?

Certainly, it could be taken that way if that's what is meant. Okay, let's take it that way, with the provision that the Catholic position might be somewhat different.

Koons refers to Romans 4, the famous passage where Paul elaborates upon the statement that "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:3, NRSV). According to Koons, it seems, Lutherans emphasize that Abraham's faith is itself a gift from God, such that one's personal faith is the expression of an inward state granted by God. The faith is not a substitute for Christ's merit. Similarly, for Catholicism, one's works are no substitute for Christ's merit, for they can also be understood -- implies Koons -- as the expression of an inward state granted by God. At least, I think that this is what Koons is saying.

But why bring works into this economy of salvation at all since Paul not only quotes scripture as stating that "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness" (Romans 4:4), but also says in Romans 4:3 that "if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about" and in Roman 4:5 that "to one who works, wages are not recognized as a gift but as something due"? Koons doesn't at this point explain why Catholics bring works in, but he would probably point to James 2:21-24:

21 Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar. 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. 23 Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness," and he was called the friend of God. 24 You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. (James 2:21-24, NRSV)

Such would be the reason that Catholics introduce works at this point in the economy of salvation. Even so, Koons argues, what this means in Catholic thinking is that the Christian is "justified by Christ as the one who brings forth good works" as fruit.

Is that what it means? Catholic readers, is Koons correct?

Supposing that he is, where does free will fit into this? If I recall, Luther rejects free will, whereas Erasmus affirms it. Does Koons Lutheranize Catholicism here and make good works purely Christ's works, or does he leave implicit a Catholic acknowledgement of free will on the part of human beings?

"The wind bloweth where it listeth..."

It took a bit of faith ...

... and a big box kite for Lawrence Hargrave and James Swain

to demonstrate how 'man-lift' was achieved.

(From Wikipedia)

Recently, I was asked to write about my "religious views" -- and this within a context where I couldn't refuse and even had to elaborate a bit -- so I thought that I'd post the piece here ... if for no other reason than that I'm short on time this morning.

"The wind bloweth where it listeth,
and thou hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh,
and whither it goeth:
so is every one that is born of the Spirit."
John 3:8 (KJV)

Trying to describe one's religious views can be like catching the wind in a box. Too successfully boxed, the wind no longer blows and becomes mere air, without power to move. But if I send the box up as a kite, it catches and is caught in the wind, like a kite flying so high that it nearly disappears into the apophatic heavens.

This is the image for my faith. An essential, tensed link between heaven and earth, tugging to draw me higher even as I keep my feet planted firmly on the ground.

But if I myself am to be boxed in, then one box is Baptist. I was raised in the Arkansas Ozarks as a Southern Baptist, I attended Baylor University, a Southern Baptist school, and I currently belong to Seoul International Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church.

I have attended the churches of various denominations, however, such as Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian ones, among others. Thus, a larger box is Protestant.

A larger box still is Western Orthodoxy, but with openness to other Christian traditions. I therefore find inspiration in great thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas as well as in the early Church Fathers and even Copts like Shenouda or Syrians like Ephrem.

A yet larger box is the Judeo-Christian tradition, which encompasses not only the Hebrew scriptures and rabbinical writings but even Jewish commentaries written today on the Bible. I therefore find that I receive a great deal by reading, for example, the commentary on Leviticus by Jacob Milgrom.

All of these boxes rise or fall like kites on the wind, which "bloweth where it listeth."