You go outside. You take the tube, ride a bus, or catch a cab. Many decisions are made on faith, but there is always risk in every moment. We hope that the bus will be on time, we expect that gravity will hold us down as we are thrown through the universe, and we pray that our religions are valid. But the bus can be late, gravity can kill us, and we have never seen beyond death. We try to make a patchwork quilt of the world, taking pieces we can understand and expanding. If perceived facts are statistical correlations without any guarantee of the consistency of scientific law, then risk is the backdrop to all human existence. Perhaps things are as bad as Stanislaw Lem said—maybe all knowledge is statistics… nothing but the correlation of unrelated phenomena. Even if it’s not that bad, risk still plays a crucial role in human existence. In fact, one could go so far as to say that risk is the most human condition.
In a recent article, Jacob Holt spoke about why he is a Christian Existentialist. This continues this discussion, specifically with the fundamental uncertainty of faith. In every game, there is risk. You often don’t know if your opponent is better than you, and even if she is worse, she might get lucky. But you still play, you still make your move, even though every action contains an incurable existential danger.
In economics, risk is understood clearly. Without risk, our economy would collapse. Of course, with too much risk, a venture becomes a true gamble. Poker players get this and economists get this. There is no such thing as a return without an investment; and there is no investment without possible risk. Obviously, good investors seek to limit (or eliminate) risks as much as possible in order to earn as much as possible with the smallest possible risk.
Even theologians like Soren Kierkegaard get this with the so-called “leap of faith.” We are to work out our faith with “fear and trembling.” Where is fear when all certainty is resolved? If uncertainty and risk are inextricable from the human condition, it would make sense that much of our efforts politically, economically, and theologically are to cure uncertainty and risk. In religion, there are three major strains trying to cure the human condition. First, we have an evangelical gospel which offers a gnostic creed in which tyrannical orthodoxy and arrogant certainty rival only other religious extremists. Second, we have Catholicism, which often reduces religion into a mechanistic (even “magical”) rite by which one is guaranteed salvation by performing the right magic tricks. Third, we have Quakers, social gospel and liberation theologians, who often present an orthopraxy as tyrannical in its tolerance as any evangelical orthodoxy. While each of these may seem disparate, they are essentially the same. All three of these paths are attempts to create absolute certainty in the realm of religion by making adherents follow a set of magic tricks. All of them are “salvation by works,” to use a Protestant term of approbation—most sinisterly, evangelicalism. To be fair, no one knows the state of her soul before God. Anyone who professes absolute certainty is dangerous to herself.
A false sense of security (certainty) is usually more comfortable than a true sense of uncertainty. Of course, there is the possibility of infinite regression here: certainty of uncertainty? But that misses the point. If someone believes she holds absolute certainty, there is no need for faith. This isn’t a criticism. Perhaps she really has absolute certainty and is also absolutely correct. Who are we to question that? But there is no need for faith in such a situation. Faith is not absolute certainty, but an acceptance of inadequacy, mystery, and profound uncertainty. This is the cause for the cry of faith, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” This cry is faith. Faith (pistis) is not knowledge or action (faith or faithfulness) but both at the same time. The very Greek word contains both precise meanings. One does not have faith to one’s lover if one is not faithful. But this brings us yet again to the problem of profound spiritual uncertainty. We do not know whether God exists. We do not know whether our lovers will betray us. Every human transaction is wrought with uncertainty. Risk defines our every move, but we cannot quit the game.
What does this mean? If we have faith in something, we must be faithful to it even if it opposes what we see in the world. Contra mundi (“against the world”) should be our spiritual attitude, whether or not we are religious. Our faith fuels our lives and every risk. There is only so much we can do to alleviate danger hidden in faith, business, or sex. One would probably be extremely uncomfortable with perfect comfort—it would be inhuman. So do we make things intentionally risky? No. But we do openly embrace uncertainty, risk, and the danger of every human action.
Credo di credere is the essence of all human conversation. It is a radical action against the uncorrelated and unfathomable universe around us. If creation itself is so difficult to comprehend, how much more so is its creator if it is true that no effect is greater than its cause? Tim Raveling, another ex-Patrick Henry College student, confessed his disillusion with Christianity, though not with faith or necessarily with God. Maybe it’s our fundamental distrust of metanarratives, or our interest in discovering a new language, but whatever the case, we are either failures of Patrick Henry College or Patrick Henry College failed us.
Certainty is impossible, so faith is necessary. The danger is the demon we mistake for an angel, the traitor we mistake for a disciple… but we have to operate with consistency. In Dante’s Inferno, the lowest circle of hell is reserved for those of bad faith—those who betray the only certainty possible between human beings: faith. This is why a promise is the most powerful (and dangerous) gift we can give. It is what binds us together, keeps everything going. Even if we don’t need God, we need faith.
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As a person whose ‘faith journey’ began as a ‘belief journey’ when I was ordained back in 1957 in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod – and there are real parallels between PHC’s thinking and what is still current LC-MS thinking – and as I have been impacted by history over the past 50 years, my belief systems have shrunk while my faith systems only continue to expand. We ought to sit down somewhere and talk about the links between FAITH and ORTHOPRAXY… especially a PRAXIS that is based on that of Jesus of Nazareth and primitive Christian community….
Great post. I always enjoy reading your thoughts. I would, however, argue that the sacraments, or magical, rites are no guarantee to salvation. They are helpful, no doubt about it, but Catholicism differs from many Protestant denominations in its lack of belief in a saved moment, where we know beyond all uncertainty that we are saved. We hope for salvation, but that is the goal not the starting line or a stop along the journey of this life.
Justin, you’re absolutely right to say that sacraments are not (or should not be considered) magic.
Magic treats someone as a dead object and manipulates it to the magician’s Will. Reducing orthodoxy, orthopraxy, or sacraments to “magic” in order to somehow trigger God is the problem. Catholicism’s potential error lies in sacraments just as Reformed Christianity’s potential error lies in orthodoxy… when right belief becomes the means of salvation, it is magic which manipulates God into responding a certain way. Essentially, magic treats persons as “what” rather than “who.” Magic is a depersonalizing force which destroys the relationship of God to man or even man to man. For example, the Catholic who sins all week but confesses “just in time” for Eucharist.
What are your thoughts on viewing sacraments/practice/belief like this?
What do you think in regards to faith, is the faith itself more important than the object of that faith?
I would agree that attempting to manipulate God by use of the sacraments is a potential error. I believe there is even a story in the Bible about Simon the Magician who wanted to buy the ability to lay his hands on people for them to receive the Holy Spirit. By buying it, he would lay some claim of ownership upon it and like you say treat the Spirit as a What rather than a Who. But of course there is also the danger of going the other way, as some say Simon himself later did in starting the Gnostic offshoot of Christianity, and discard the practice altogether for fear of the potential dangers. With great gifts come great responsibilities and great dangers.
Justin: I tend to like the story of Simon following Paul all the way to Rome and there being a statue to him after he died in a flying accident (tradition has it that Simon the Magician could fly, apparently). What I am trying to convey is that there is a danger of reducing any good element of Christianity to a “magical” formula: praxis, sacraments, or beliefs. Correct me if you think I’m wrong, though. When any of these three things become an attempt to “buy the Holy Spirit” they are reducing grace to a commodity which is an objectification of a gift, which destroys its essence. If I were to try to pay the market price for a gift on my birthday, the giver would be rightly insulted by such a gesture, I believe. How is a balance (if such a word should be used) to be found between these three aspects?
Jeff Thornhill: I find it difficult to say. An object is a definite, limited thing, and the problem with God is that we are dealing with something that is no object nor finite. God is, rather, infinite which causes problems. I prefer to think of faith as having a locus rather than having an object. God is the home of our faith. Our fidelity to that is always a movement home. Essentially, the Infinite is the locus of our faith (and all faiths) and we are all trying to find our way often to the exact same goal. We disagree on how to get there, but if any single religion is true and there is any divine spark in us, we all have a sense of the goal of religion even if we don’t know how to get there. I think it is very easy to believe in God (or gods) but the difficulty is how to approach this infinite God. Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy provides an excellent account of what the numinous experience of the awful and incomprehensible presence may be. The preeminent difficulty, of course, is determining whether one’s approach is correct. If this approach is primarily one of humility and awe, I believe Otto taps into a religious attitude he believes is most exhibited in Christianity.
Don Prange: I’d like to have a conversation at some point, perhaps especially to hear your perspective on what PHC is. I would like to hear more on your distinction between belief- and faith-journeys. I find myself having a similar experience. There was a point at which I knew very precisely what God is, but had no knowledge of who God is. My strict orthodoxy (knowing answers to “What is God?”) kept me from seeing the essential “who” of God.
If that statue was dedicated to Simon as a god, apparently they had low standards for gods if they included those who had yet to fine-tune their flying skills. Simon was baptized and taught by the Apostles themselves, so his example shows what a prideful approach to praxis, sacraments, and beliefs can do. As you say, the opposite approach is one of humility and awe. But could you clarify your question about the balance between praxis, sacrament, and belief?
My question is one of renouncing a “gnostic line” by which we gain magical access to salvation by treating God as a dead object. This is what Louis-Marie Chauvet, a Catholic philosopher, refers to as the “‘Necrotic’ Temptation” in the excellent Heideggerian work Symbol And Sacrament: A Symbolic Reinterpretation of Christian Existence (pg. 174) in three forms: 1. religious knowledge, 2. sacramental magic, and 3. moralism. These three are necrotic forms of approaches to 1. scripture, 2. sacraments, and 3. ethics. How does one keep from straying and being what G.K. Chesterton called a “heretic” by taking one principle and totalizing it? So to speak, how does one keep from exaggerating one of the legs of the “tripod” of Christian identity?
“An uncanny effect is often and easily produced by effacing the distinction between imagination and reality, such as . . . when a symbol takes over the full functions and significance of the thing it symbolizes. . . . It is this element which contributes not a little to the uncanny effect attaching to magical practices.” -Freud
Freud here is talking about the bad kind of imagination, the reductive kind of building that takes comfort in an illusion rather than the kind of building Heidegger espouses. It is the repression of the aboriginal catastrophe. The magic of the symbol taking over the functions and significance of the thing it symbolizes can often extend to beliefs, sacraments, and practices. When we mistake our conceptions of God for God, we make God in our own image and our worship becomes a form of self-worship. While I firmly believe that the sacraments are more than mere symbols, it can also be easy to forget that they are not the fullness of what God has for us. One of the Eucharistic Acclamations after the Consecration goes, “When we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim your death Lord Jesus, until you come in glory.” Although the fullness of the Lord’s presence is there, even this points to some event yet-to-happen. Our practices, intrinsically tied to our beliefs, can prove catastrophic when based on a cult of one’s own personality and/or when we don’t realize the limitations of our condition.
The gnostic teaching of a secret knowledge can be construed as an attempt to escape from the struggles and uncertainties of the everyday life of the masses. But another way to attempt to find shelter from these uncertainties is to dispense with symbols altogether. It is one thing to live under the reign of the symbol or to become iconoclastic and preach the absolute futility of the symbol. What can prove more difficult is to learn the art of dwelling with the concealing-revealing aspect of the symbol. Perhaps the first step to such a dwelling is to realize the dangers of illusion and remain ever vigilant against them.
But I think I may just be reiterating something of what you already said in this post.
P.S. For clarification purposes, the Freud quote is illustrative of what I’m trying to get at, but he is using his terms in a slightly different way. In the above quote, the imagination could initially be construed as a good thing, as it represents the reality of the repressed impulses, but then the delusive imagination works to dismiss the symbol by reducing the reality to that of the symbol or by rejecting the symbol altogether.
Have you read Jean-Luc Marion’s book God Without Being? He makes a very big deal of precisely what you’re saying here. We often make our concept of “God” into an idol rather than allowing God to be God.
I’m coming to appreciate more the revealing-concealing of the symbol… where would you say I should look for more on this? Interested in writing something here?
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I have read God Without Being. He had some interesting insights, despite being a little unfair to Aquinas and Heidegger I thought. I need to read that book by Chauvet sometime.
I was mostly thinking of Heidegger and Lacan on the concealing-revealing aspect of the symbol. Have you read anything by Levinas? I think he might be a good source too. I know I would like to learn more about him. On writing something here, it would be fun to expand on this topic, maybe within the next week or two.
Marion seemed unfair, yes. It seems like French philosophers have been irritated ever since the Germans took the spotlight away from them and most of their projects now are aimed at getting “beyond” Heidegger but none of them really do a very good job, from what I can tell.
The Chauvet book is incredible. Admittedly, also French, but this one is good. He takes Heidegger’s approach to being and says that the approach is homologous to our approach to God, though he never conflates God and Being. I highly recommend On The Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite by Christos Yannaras, the leading (living) Eastern Orthodox theologian; it’s a short book that says everything Marion tries to say and does so much, much better.
I have not read Levinas. I am currently reading Heidegger, Vattimo, Husserl, and Wittgenstein. What would you recommend adding of Levinas?
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A late comer to this conversation, but I just happened on this blog…
As a reformed protestant and one who confesses particularly the Westminster Confession, as well as others (Heidelberg), I can attest to the danger of those doctrines becoming the object of our faith, rather than pointing us to the One whom the doctrines are intended to direct us – namely, Christ. It is a constant battle between the belief (faith) in the doctrinal word and belief in God’s Word. As Calvin so correctly observed, the heart is an idol factory. If we can replace Christ with anything from man, we will. The irony, of course, is that doctrine, orthodoxy, and confessions are meant to guide us so that we do not fall into heresy, but as soon as those become the object of our faith and assurance, we are already in heresy. There is no assurance apart from faith in the One true Son of God. Once sight is lost of that fact, it is a very slippery slope to the bottom. I would also add that if Christians cannot say that we have assurance in our salvation, we are no better off than those who practice Judaism or Islam. Assurance of salvation is one of the defining truths of Christianity – the fact that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In terms of metanarrative, you may find Richard Pratt’s book “He Gave Us Stories” particularly interesting. Especially when thinking about the narrative found in the Old Testament, which is what the book addresses.
Also, I think you might enjoy John Frame’s “The Doctrine of God”, and his other works where he discusses and augments Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics specifically with his own Triperspectivalism.
Can’t seem to get italics in this comment box…had to use quotations…sorry