FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

In several of my last posts, I've used the phrase "faith beyond belief."  While I think its meaning intuitive for most, especially those who have been following my posts, I've thought I might go a little deeper into discussing what I mean by it as it relates to Christian practice and theology.

As I've pointed out faith and belief are largely understood as synonymous terms in the English translations of the  Greek word πίστις (pistis) as used in the New Testament.  The difficulty in translating the Greek word for faith, πίστις, is that faith is strictly understood as a noun in English, whereas in Greek it also has a verb form which has no exact equivalent in English.  The closest verb form found in English as a form of "to faith" or be faithful is to believe.  

As linguists would probably tell us, there is no such thing as completely synonymous words. Each word is nuanced; has its own feel.  Novelists, playwrights, and poets get this sense of feeling that words possess.

PAUL AND FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

The person who best gets this sense of the feeling words conveyed in the New Testament is the apostle Paul.  Paul's struggle with his newfound source of "faith" leads himself to explore what it means.  As a result, faith figures prominently in Paul's understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus as the Christ. Paul provides a subtle distinction between our understanding of faith and belief as used today.

It was an experience that became Paul's access point to understanding faith. That experience, a vision of the risen Christ on the road to Damascus as an act of God, rendered him blind to the world he thought he knew so well; a world shaped by the ideological beliefs he possessed which were based on a concrete understanding of Judaism.

What Paul also possessed was faith. Beyond his ideological beliefs, residing deep within Paul (and residing deep within all of us) is a repository of faith that is, in part, the active image of God that we are.  The vision of Paul's, this act of God's grace, as Paul would come to understand it, was a religion-shattering moment that shook him to his core.

Paul was an intellectual who came to understand that there is more to being human than mere intellect, something that transcended mere human belief; something that resides in the heart rather than the mind of man, something that actively synchronizes one's acts with God's acts.  He called this something faith.

For example, let's examine Romans 10: 6-10:

"But the righteousness based on faith (πίστεως) says Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven? (that, is to bring Christ down) 

Or,” Who will descend into the abyss?” (That is to bring Christ up from the dead.)

But what does it say? The word is near you, on your lips  and in your heart [that is the word of faith (πίστεως) which we preach];

because, if you confess with your lips that  Jesus is Lord, and believe ( πίστευσης) in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For man believes (πίστευεται) with his heart and is so justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved.

 [Revised Standard Version (RSV), Division of Christion Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America 1946].

My purpose in quoting this section of Romans is twofold. First I'm using it to demonstrate the verb-like manner in which faith is used in Greek, but not in English. The problem is that believing and belief have more than one connotation and defining the affective property of faith as believing in English gives it a different feel than it has in Greek.

To believe in something is not the same as being motivated by faith to do something.  In modern usage believing is very subjective and more associated with perception and opinion than with trusting without seeing or without having an opinion prior to apprehension, which brings me to my second reason for quoting this section. Faith, as used by Paul, is not a stagnant something, but a dynamic force.

This section of Paul's epistle can be easily construed to mean that all that is necessary for personal salvation is to say that one has faith in the Lord Jesus.  Paul's seemingly minimalistic approach to faith belies the impact it has on our lives, but Paul's point is that saying Jesus is Lord is motivated as result of faith.  You can't say it from the heart unless it resides in one's being.  To put this into an English context, faith, understood as a belief, does not necessarily cause us to act unless faith motivates us to act.

The distinction between faith as an affective element, causing one to act, and faith as intellectual assent to an ideological belief proved to be problematic in the early Christian Church, as well. It proved problematic for the church at Corinth, for example.

I don't see Paul as personally having this problem, but I can see where it became one amongst those who took Paul's enthusiastic embrace of God's free gift of grace through faith as all that is needed for one's salvation and running with it.

JAMES AND FAITH BEYOND BELIEF

Fortunately, the writer of the Epistle of James (attributed to Jesus's biological brother and leader of the Church in Jerusalem) picks up on the problem of seeing faith treated simply as a thing to possess (like a belief) as being sufficient for one's personal salvation that requires nothing from us than just to say we have it.  

James points out in very clear language that if we are to continue the ministry of Jesus, the work of Christ in "saving" the world, restoring it, faith has to produce actions, faith must be active; something we do:

“What does it profit, my brethren, if a man says he has faith but not works?  Can his faith save him?

If a brother or sister is ill clad and in lack of daily food,

and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled, “ without giving them the things needed for the body, what does it profit?

So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.”  "Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”  James 2: 14-18

[Revised Standard Version (RSV), Division of Christion Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America 1946].

I have often found the Epistle of James most helpful in understanding the early Christian mind regarding faith.  The Epistle of James appears antithetical to what Paul is saying in his Epistle to the Romans, but if one takes a closer look at James and compares it to Paul’s example of Abraham in Romans as an illustration of how faith in Christ changes perspective and motivates us in all of life, one has a better appreciation for both Paul and James. 

As a side note to James’s comments on faith, I find it interesting that there have been some theologians throughout history, such as the reformer, Martin Luther, who considered removing James from the canon of scripture because it appears so antithetical to Pauline theology.  In Luther’s defense, I would say that, given the emphasis on indulgences (the type one could buy to fund church projects) during his day as way to earn safe passage to heaven and the fact that the majority of people of his day felt about as doomed as he did prior to rediscovering Pauline theology, one can understand how this became an issue. 

The problem that Luther and others had/have with James, however, is not a case of works vs. faith, or, as the Lutherans are apt to phrase it, the failure of "works righteousness" vs. God’s "unmerited grace" but rather salvation theology as a whole which pits work and faith against each other. James and Paul are both right regarding the affective property of faith (as a verb) to change and motivate lives in the service of God.

THE AFFECTIVE ELEMENTS

One of the clear markers of Pauline scripture is his consistent reference of what I have been referring to as the affective elements, faith, hope, and love.  In every epistle that can be attributed to Paul, these three elements are mentioned or implicated as properties of God and as properties of those "in Christ;" as in God is faithful, God is hopeful, God is love and as those who live or walk in faith, hope, and love.

I identify them as affective in that they are active in motivating one to do something, to essentially be.  There is a verb-like sense to all three of them, to act from faith (to trust in doing without knowing an outcome), to hope, and to love.

Significantly, in Romans Paul differentiates between belief and faith in his discussion of the law. Paul begins with a discussion of Abraham's faith and how Abraham had faith before the law was established during the time of Moses.  What Paul is getting at in this discussion is that faith was pre-existent before the law; that one could be considered faithful without having intellectually subscribe to ideologies that he associates as being the law.  

The ideological belief being questioned by Paul, in this case, is the belief that in order to be considered righteous; right with God and a follower of Jesus, one had to become a Jew, meaning a gentile male had to be circumcised.  Circumcision was an issue, if not the issue, for the early church, and Paul put great of effort into changIng it as a requirement.

Paul argued that faith (the act of trusting in God's unmerited Grace) not the intellectual submission to a belief as represented by the "law" accounts for what is righteousness in God's eyes.  He demonstrates that faith is pre-existent; that faith is a property of being or, at the very least, a property of human beings.

Paul goes so far as to say that those who act in faith become doers of righteousness (doing right towards others) - fulfill the requirements of the law whether they are circumcised or not.  In other words, those who live in faith beyond belief are those who live in the hope and in the love of God, regardless of any ideological belief that would say otherwise.

For Paul, the law, by itself, can occlude one's vision of God; that there is something fundamental at work that brings an awareness of God, that brings one to Christ beyond what can be believed.  Paul, however, is quick to point out that faith doesn't negate the law (the relevance of one's beliefs or the acquired wisdom of religious beliefs), it deepens it as something one must live. 

Life is the testing ground of all beliefs.  If what one believes is not applicable to one's personal life, is used only to criticize others, does not not lead to personal acceptance (faith in one's being), hope, and love  for one's self and the world, such a belief is antithetical to one's existence and is in opposition to the will and the creative activity of God.

FAITH BEYOND BELIEF IN THE FIRST CENTURY

Paul's epistles declare that the floodgates of God's grace have been opened upon the world.  The first disciples and followers of Jesus couldn't see around the religion that they and Jesus were part of.   It took an educated Pharisee, Paul, to see the implications of what Jesus's message and ministry was about. It took faith form him to apply it.  In Jesus, Paul saw and experienced the faith, hope, and love of God which extended far beyond the confines of any single culture and religion.

Paul's use of the affective elements throughout his epistles is effective in bringing us a deeper understanding of what God initiated in Jesus's ministry.  Jesus's ministry was all about living in the faith, the hope, and the love of God; that our faith, our hope, and our love is nothing more than images of what God has invested in us; of what God does in and through us.

Faith in Jesus as the Christ is not a matter of simple believing, as a mental assent to a theological premise. Faith in Jesus as the Christ is experiential, a matter of living life, as Paul did, from the center of one's heart, from the love of God experienced as Christ, as a child of God. 

FAITH BEYOND BELIEF IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY

In the twenty-first century there is a need for Christians to broaden the application of faith to those outside of Christianity.  Paul started something that was never fully completed; just as Jesus started something that was never fully completed.  This sense of incompletion is essential to human progress and creativity.  I see incompletion (at least on this side of life) as something God is intentional about.  Bear with me on this:

There is a pragmatism to Christianity that is frequently watered down as a result of salvation theology.  I can accept that God will save everyone in the long run of cosmological history, because everything already is in God.  In essence nothing ever can be lost in that Being in which we move, live, and have our being.

The problem is we live in a world, in a physical life-span,  that is very limited in what we can conceive of or perceive.  As smart as we humans are, we are linear-based creatures who, for all practical purposes, live in flatland world of limited dimensions.  We truly see things, as Paul says, through a dark glass. 

The pragmatism that is watered down in Christianity is that salvation based theology tends to make us ignore the world in which we live in.  It says outright that this world is so messed up nothing good can come of it or be made of it in the present time; in the time we live.  This understanding of our world has been in effect for the last two millennia.  Ironically, salvation theology argues against the need for humans to progress and to be creative; the hallmarks of God's breathed image within us.

Do we need help in restoring the world, in saving the world?   

Absolutely,  and I believe God is there to help us on our way in the work of restoring this minute corner of creation.  It may require a religious-shattering experience that shakes us from our religious complacency to see with the eyes of faith beyond the beliefs we have concretized over the centuries and which have numbed us to the needs of our fellow humans, our fellow creatures, and to the earth as a whole.  

Advancing Pauline theology beyond the confines of Christian religion, one can easily see that whether one believes or disbelieve in the Christian message as codified in its voluminous doctrine sand dogmas or in an out-there-other God becomes a moot point.  The pragmatism of Christianity, which I feel is applicable to all of our problems and in all of our endeavors to solve them in the present, is to become workers in the faith, in the hope, and in the love that is God even if one does not like calling such things that because, ultimately, God is a verb -  is that which was, is, and will be. 

What Paul, James, and Jesus reveal is that the God concept is an inward process connected to our abilities to act out of faith, hope, love.  These are the elements of God.  These are also the elements found at center of every human heart, even those hearts clouded by evil deeds.

These are what presents in us the image of God to the world.

Until next time, stay faithful