Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Richard B. Miller on 4th mo. 26, 2011 at 3:04pm

Words get their meaning from the way people use them.  So, in some circles "faith" may very well mean "belief" and in other circles mean something else.  I think that the kind of question people should be asking is "which meaning of belief is most helpful?"  Granted that "faith" is a very important and valuable thing, what is this good and necessary thing?

I find "faith" = "orthodox belief" to be a particularly unhelpful meaning.  It has historical roots in the Calvinist side of the Protestant Reformation.  I won't go into that history here, but I think that Quakers represent the opposite side of the Protestant Reformation.  Orthodox belief is not a good and necessary thing.  It is not what Jesus taught.  Jesus was no friend of orthodoxy.  He thought orthodoxy was a barrier between people and God. 

Enough of what I don't thnk.  Jesus says he has a spiritual food that other people do not see or understand.  His "food" is to listen to and obey the immediate guidance of God.  Faith (in my language) is the courage to listen and obey.  It is the strength to ignore the world when the world's wisdom says that such faithfulness is foolishness. 

 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Adria Gulizia on 4th mo. 26, 2011 at 4:27pm

I think "faith" means "belief" in a limited sense. If I say that I have faith in my husband, I mean that I believe in him. That is, I trust his capacity  and judgment and ability and worthiness. When I say that I have faith in God (or, more frequently, that I am trying to have more faith in God) , it means I believe in Him, not merely in the sense that I believe He exists, but that I trust Him to lead me if I yield to Him, to guide people towards him, and  to work things out for the best. I think that being guided by faith is about trusting God to guide us even if we can't see where we're going.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 4th mo. 28, 2011 at 12:12am

 

Hmm, I agree very much-- and yet words also "get their meaning" from the way people are most likely to interpret them.

 

So "faith" could be a useful word among people who interpret it your way, but might mislead if I used it that way in a conversation with somebody else. (Then again, in that situation I might need to 'negotiate' a few usage changes to communicate at all! We simply might not have a word for it. Or need to direct our attention, as you've done, to 'what Jesus meant by it.')

 

"Orthodox belief" is as you say, not all that interesting. But how about "accurate belief"? Which seems to point to  " 'faith' = 'trust' that God will lead us to correct knowledge as needed-- as well as leading us to whatever else we need.

 

That is, we value knowledge as a route to understanding-- but we also tend to rely on 'knowledge' as a source of security, which is where it starts looking like a Power in rivalry with God... Just as we rely on what we derive from other modes of orientation, like physical senses. Which necessarily is, most of the time, justified, but not always.

 

Sometimes God is in the whirlwind... We want to know, when that points to the true significance of a moment, and when it doesn't. So this "Guidance" depends entirely on a simple form of trust, 'faith' that God will direct our attention where it belongs, so that even what looks and feels like "Another mistake! Oh no!" will turn out in accord with ultimately-benevolent divine intention.

 

(Okay, I'm still confused... and hope I can wrestle with this more later.)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by jp on 4th mo. 28, 2011 at 10:04am

I used to equate "faith" with "belief." Then one fine day my systematic theology crumbled under the weight of its contradictions and I suffered with the idea that I had "lost my faith." During this difficult time I began attending a Quaker meeting. At one of the adult ed classes, the question was asked, "Who here thinks he/she will never speak out of the silence?" I raised my hand, and explained I no longer was sure I believed in God, that to speak out of the silence requires that one believe one had received a message from God that was for the Group, and because I could not be sure of God's existence, I could not believe any message came from said God, so thus I could not speak. QED.

A couple weeks later, during the silence, I knew I had to speak something. The conversation went something like this:

Voice inside my head: you need to stand and repeat those thoughts you just had.
Me: no, I can't. Those thoughts could have no relevance to anyone but me, and besides I don't believe in you.
Voice: are you going to be obedient or aren't you?
Me [rising to stand]: this is crazy!

It wasnt just the internal dialog, there was the accompanying heart-pounding that quickly reached a near exploding sensation.

As I returned to sitting, I realized that I had faith. I had quite a bit of it. I just didn't have a systematic theology.

I go back to the koine Greek word, pistis, which is translated equally well as "trust" as "faith."

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Richard B. Miller on 4th mo. 28, 2011 at 10:28am

The people whose use determines meaning consists of both speakers and listeners.  The use isn't purely individualistic.  Basically you have the idea.  When different groups use words in different ways it is imperative that you explain clearly which meaning you intend.  

 

What I add to that (being a pragmatist in philosophy) is that the "right" meaning is merely the most useful one.  Meaning A will allow you to think about and state one set of possibilities.  Meaning B will allow you  to think different thoughts.  The thoughts we can think are a function of the concepts we use.

 

I find that the range of thoughts that faith= orthodox belief gives me isn't the thoughts I need to think to live humanly and authentically.   I get that from the other meaning of faith.

 

This other meaning of faith includes a minimal belief content too.  If I didn't minimally believe tht there was a God then I couldn't have courage to listen and obey.   I don't however need "knowledge" to listen and obey.  I might want knowledge and I might even get it sometimes.  But I can obey the Voice of God without it and sometimes I've got to.

 

Keep wrestling.  Only those who wrestle with God are faithful to him.

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 5th mo. 3, 2011 at 10:42am

Check out Hebrews 11.  There are different ways people use the word but if we are reading someone else's writings we should try to understand what they meant when they wrote it.  I spend a lot of time thinking about Paul's use of the word as well as Jesus' use of it and why people I pray for don't always get healed by what I thought was the "prayer of faith".  With no disrespect meant to anyone else, what Jesus and Paul meant is what I try to understand more fully.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James C Schultz on 5th mo. 3, 2011 at 11:18am

I just want to clarify what I said vs. what Forest heard.  And this might seem to some to be splitting hairs.  I was quoting Paul and said that we "walk by faith and not by sight".  And I do accept that the word sight can and should be taken as including the other 4 senses of smell, touch, hearing and taste but I am not sure that "faith" itself is not an additional "sense" rather than a belief.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Irene Lape on 5th mo. 5, 2011 at 8:09am

For me faith is a word I use to describe what I have put my trust in, knowing that some degree of uncertainty surrounds it. It is not the same as knowledge, though I would argue its "truth" might well be demonstrated to a degree. Kierkegaard put it best that it is like a leap off a platform at the end of a path we explore with our senses and our reason - and, I would say, our imaginations. Everyone has faith in a whole bunch of things, even those who would describe themselves as non-theistic. Non-theists might deny that they have faith in a creator god or a divine "person" who seeks some presence in our lives, but if they are among Friends, they most often have "put  their faith" - their sense of complete trust - in the values Friends proclaim or in the purposes Friends trust in. 

 

I think one could use the word belief to describe pretty much the same thing as faith, but for me it refers to the specifics of how I would articulate what I have faith in. This would lead to my telling you that I have placed my faith in Christ and in the teachings of the apostles and early church started by them. Like Thomas - even way more than Thomas - I will never be able to say I saw Jesus or experienced him or any of his followers in the flesh, in history. I cannot prove any of it happened, but because of the powerful love and purposefulnessI have experienced through this faith, I will live my life out trusting in it. And I will try to keep the beliefs that underpin this faith alive for others since I have found it so important in my life.

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by jp on 5th mo. 8, 2011 at 10:13am

This got me thinking, and reminded me of how the book of James wrestles with defining faith. The author, at the end if a discussion of whether Faith or Works is more important ends with, " even the demons believe, and shudder." I take this to mean that Jesus and the early Christian writers knew that understanding and knowledge and orthodoxy weren't enough (the demons knew the facts).

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 8, 2011 at 5:58pm

Some fine replies here, and some brooding time...

 

I'm reminded of a wonderful book on anger... from which the author concluded that it was not one unitary "thing", but rather "an emotion plus a judgment."

 

So faith is starting to look like ~"confidence/trust based on belief." What's problematic about this, I think, is that word "belief". As illustrated by Bertrand Russell's dinner companion, and her response to his question about death: "No doubt I shall inherit eternal bliss, but I wish you wouldn't bring up such unpleasant subjects."

 

Paraphrasing Anthony Prete at P[acific]YM, discussing the Hebrew of the Psalms: ~"They don't seem to have a word for the Greek idea of 'truth', as a logical question of the factuality of a proposition. The word we translate as 'true' here means something more like 'dependable', 'trustworthy'."

 

"Belief" is like that.

 

It isn't that factuality is irrelevant-- as jp's response makes clear. When he'd stopped believing in God's factual existence, that left no room for "faith" or any pretense of faith. But once one finds oneself denying ones' 'belief' in the factual existence of someone, saying it directly to that someone... He obviously had a conflict between beliefs on more than one level, in which one of those levels was wide open, whole-heartedly witnessing something his logical mind had dismissed.

 

Belief in someone or something necessarily involves having concluded that they exist... but that conclusion can be more or less tentative, more or less subject to new evidence pro- or- con, and above all: it doesn't necessarily coincide with whatever you believe that you believe.

 

"Belief" in this sense is actually pretty close to what we mean by "faith":  You "believe" that your new glass-bottomed balcony is properly built and strong enough to bear your weight-- But do you step out and dance on it?

 

The other night I was up after bedtime, indigesting an overlarge dinner. It occurred to me that I'd fallen into a state of futility, feeling unAssigned to any effort in the face of a world of need... tired and retired and near ready to go sit in Death's Waiting Room. As if I were already there, in stone fact. As if there were nothing the world or I needed from one another anymore. Scary.

 

Whatever you might call that state of mind-- That's the opposite of "faith". Starting from there... I could see that it flew contrary to all my knowledge of God's love, wisdom, and power. So long as I was in such a state, if I'd happened to have some Good Works project or other going... It would only have been a mask and a distraction, no matter how much I was complaining about lacking one.

 

Living frozen in headlights... That has been a sick reaction, however appropriate to fending off the overwhelming realization that I have no adequate response to the slow motion train wreck we live in... Where life should include the ability to see what one needs to do, and simply do it-- It's been a very long time since that's been possible, except on the smallest scale.

 

The more "normal" condition-- I speculate-- is what "The Knowledge of Good and Evil" was all about. What William Springfellow was saying about a certain kind of devotion to work being no escape from Death's dominion, but rather a tacit homage to it. Futility in old age gives one a whole new perspective on our condition.

 

I'd like to be able to say what faith is-- now that I think I've got a better notion of what it's about. It's like confidence and trust, as I've said elsewhere-- not in this or in that-- but that whatever I need will be provided, that I can trust whatever God sends me.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Richard B. Miller on 5th mo. 9, 2011 at 9:18pm

I don't read Greek but I've read enough Greek philosophy to say that the idea that the Greeks had no concept of truth is just plain wrong.  I suspect it comes from some postmodernist who doesn't like the idea of truth trying to read his or her own views back on the Greeks.  But the Greeks were too sensible to be postmodern in that bad sense of the word.

 

I would agree that there is a minimal belief component in faith.  As you say, it is necessary to believe that who or what you are putting your trust in exists in order to have any trust.  But the belief component is very small.  You don't have to swallow the whole Apostle's Creed or any other church's set of dogmas.  God exists and cares is enough. 

 

I've had times of feeling "frozen in the headlights" as you put it.  And what gets me out of it is a willingness to get over the fact that what God wants me to do looks small scale.   It's as if I think God needs to find something important for me to do.   Quaker tradition is one of humility.   "make me little; make me low" is something I remember one of the dear elders of our Yearly Meeting quoting to me.  The joy comes back when you accept that whatever God asks you to do is the right thing.  We need to put aside thoughts that it is somehow too small to be worth doing.

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by jp on 5th mo. 9, 2011 at 9:34pm

Richard, I think you read that paragraph about "truth" too quickly!  Forrest was quoting Anthony Prete who was speaking of HEBREW, not GREEK.

 

And your final paragraph reminded me of a quote I've heard attributed to Ghandi, a quote that keeps me hopeful when the "headlights" of an oncoming catastrophe catch me in their merciless glare:  "Whatever you do is bound to be insignificant; and it is very important that you do it."  I hadn't connected that thought to humility, and I think it is a good connection.

• ▶ Reply

▶ Reply to Discussion

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• Next ›
• Page