Faith before seeking understanding

Anselm of Canterbury, who I’ve been reading recently thanks to Morgan Guyton, was intensely interested in the rationality of the Christian faith, but only up to a point and only in the proper order.

He wrote we should not try to understand our faith until we have faith. Christianity is rational, he wrote, but you could not get to faith in Christ through logic. You could only use logic to help you understand what you already believed. And failure to understand was not grounds for ceasing to believe what the Church taught.

I will say something to curb the presumption of those who, with blasphemous rashness and on the ground that they cannot understand it, dare to argue against something which the Christian faith confesses — those who judge with foolish pride that which they are not able to understand is not at all possible, rather than acknowledge with humble wisdom that many things are possible which they are not able to comprehend. Indeed, no Christian ought to question the truth of what the Catholic Church believes in its heart and confesses with its mouth. Rather, by holding constantly and unhesitatingly to this faith, by loving it and living according to it he ought humbly, and as best he is able, to seek to discover the reason why it is true. If he able to to understand, then let him give thanks to God. But if he cannot understand, let him not toss his horns in strife but let him bow his head in reverence.

Anselm was no Martin Luther. And as a child of the Reformation, I’m pretty sure I am supposed to reject this sentiment on spec.

But when I read it today, I was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s assertion in The Cost of Discipleship that only those who obey believe, and I was reminded of the gospel reading this week with Jesus’ statement that only his sheep hear his voice. This both strike me as in the ballpark of Anselm’s assertion that we cannot hope to develop a logical and rational account of our faith if we do not start with and from a bedrock faith, as long as we remember that Anselm argued equally that once we had faith we should by all means try to understand it.

We can easily come up with ways to poke holes in Anselm’s argument, but his point is worthy of conversation and reflection.

What is saving faith?

In his sermon “The Way to the Kingdom,” John Wesley reflects upon the nature of saving faith.

It is not, as some have fondly conceived, a bare assent to the truth of the Bible, of the articles of our creed, or of all that is contained in the Old and New Testament. The devils believe this, as well as I or thou! And yet they are devils still. But it is, over and above this, a sure trust in the mercy of God, through Christ Jesus. It is a confidence in a pardoning God. It is a divine evidence or conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their” former “trespasses;” and, in particular, that the Son of God hath loved me, and given himself for me; and that I, even I, am now reconciled to God by the blood of the cross.

This is a much different definition of faith than the ones I am used to. This is because Wesley is writing here specifically about his understanding of saving faith, as opposed to faith as a generic thing.

A lot of the conversation in the church about faith strikes me as taking place on the generic level. We speak of faith much more than of saving faith. At least that is my experience.

Four kinds of faith

The first standard sermon of John Wesley, “Salvation by Faith,” discusses several kinds of faith. I wonder where we would would fall on this list.

Faith of a Heathen – Belief that God exists, that God rewards and punishes, and that God requires of us moral virtue, justice, mercy, and truth.

Faith of a Devil – Belief, in addition to the above, that God was made manifest in the flesh, that Jesus Christ will destroy all enemies of God, and that Scripture is given to us by the inspiration of God.

Faith of an Apostle (while Christ still lived among them) – Belief that led them to leave all and follow Jesus Christ, that he did work healings and miracles, and that they were given power to cast out demons and preach the kingdom of God.

Faith that Saves – Faith in God through Christ, faith that stirs the heart and not only the head, and faith that by his death and resurrection our sins are blotted out and death has lost its power over us. In Wesley’s words, it is “a full reliance on the blood of Christ” for our life. It is faith in Christ as given for us and living in us.

[Note of clarification after a comment: For Wesley, this was a building thing. The faith at each point includes and adds to what came before. So, the Faith of a Devil assumes and includes the Faith of a Heathen.]

An Earnest Appeal: The meaning of faith

I started this series of posts with a look at the way John Wesley describes Christianity as a religion of love in his 1744 pamphlet “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion.” I continue in this post by looking at the means by which this religion comes to us.

The trick, the secret, the good news, Wesley writes, is that the religion of love is not something we do but something we receive. It is something that God plants and grows in us. We do not will ourselves to this. We can only do it by faith. And this faith, as Wesley describes it, is not a cognitive assent to some set of propositions. It is the growing of a new set of sense organs. Drawing heavily on Hebrews 11, Wesley writes of faith as a kind of spiritual perception that allows us to perceive God and the things of God. Faith is an opening of eyes that were dark.

By this faith, we are saved from all uneasiness of mind, from anguish of a wounded spirit, from discontent, from fear and sorrow of heart, and from inexpressible listlessness and weariness, both of the world and ourselves, which we had so helplessly laboured under for many years; especially when were out of the hurry of the world, and sunk into calm reflection. In this we find that love of God, and of all mankind, which we had elsewhere sought in vain. This we know and feel, and therefore cannot but declare, saves every one that partakes of it, both from sin and misery, from every unhappy and unholy temper.

It is hard to hear Wesley as he intends to be heard here because he uses faith in such a different way than we do. But he is unwavering. Faith is not anything that we do. It is itself a gift of God. Indeed, it is something that only God can give.

No man is able to work it in himself. It is a work of omnipotence. It requires no less power thus to quicken a dead soul, than to raise a body that lies in the grave. … May not your own experience teach you this? Can you give yourself this faith? Is it now in your power to see, or hear, or taste, or feel God? … It is the free gift of God, which he bestows, not on those who are worthy of his favour, not on such as are previously holy … but on the ungodly and the unholy; on those who till that hour were fit only for everlasting destruction …

It is by this opening of our spiritual eyes, that we are said to “have faith.” This faith, Wesley writes, saves us.

By  those words, “We are saved by faith,” we mean, that the moment a man receives that faith which is above described, he is saved from doubt and fear, and sorrow of heart, by a peace that passes all understanding; from the heaviness of a wounded spirit, by joy unspeakable; and from his sins, of whatsoever kind they were, from his vicious desires, as well as words and actions, by the love of God, and of all mankind, then shed abroad in his heart.

Where, we might ask, is justification in all this? Where is Jesus Christ and his cross? We can find in other places Wesley writing of the atoning work of Christ on the cross that would make any contemporary evangelical well pleased. But in this pamphlet, Wesley writes of justification in a different way, which will be the subject of another post.

Making faith concrete

One of the great blessings of my full-time job teaching writing courses at Indiana University is that I get to re-read Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath every semester. It always reminds me of important things I have forgotten or let slide.

Here is a snippet from the chapter of the book on the power of being concrete:

What makes something “concrete”? If you can examine something with your senses, it’s concrete. A V8 engine is concrete. “High performance” is abstract. Most of the time, concreteness boils down to specific people doing specific things. … Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts. Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. If you’ve got to teach an idea to a room full of people, and you aren’t certain what they know, concreteness is the only safe language.

When I read these words, I find church-related communication problems leaping to my mind. In the church, we specialize in abstract language. We have little choice in many cases because we are talking about invisible things. Learning how to make something abstract concrete is among the greatest challenges in teaching and preaching.

This is why Jesus taught so often in stories. When asked what he meant by the word “neighbor,” he did not pull out a dictionary. He told a story. Stories are always concrete.

The reverse of this insight is also helpful to us. Since concrete things are memorable, it is those things that come to define the meaning of abstract concepts for us. For instance, what does it mean to participate in the vital congregations initiative of the United Methodist Church? For most of us, it means collecting data and entering it on a web site every week. The concrete experience of church is bureaucracy.

You might not find my musing very interesting, but I can assure you that the book that sparks them is worth your time. It is worth your time. You’ll enjoy reading it, too.

Death bed faith

I was reading an account in John Wesley’s journals of a death-bed conversion. Wesley had come to the side of man in his last days. The time being short, he got to the point. He asked the man if he had a “solid hope of salvation.”

Through the course of their talking, the man confessed that he had constructed for himself a philosophical Deism that had no use of Jesus Christ. But now as the hour drew near, he was troubled deeply.

Wesley urged him to pray for faith. He records in his journal the prayer the man prayed in that moment:

O Almighty God, I am a poor cursed sinner, worthy of damnation; but Lord Jesus, eternal Son of God, thou diest for my sins also. It is through thee alone I can be saved. O give me faith, and strengthen that faith!

As I read these words, I notice how different they are from the formulaic prayers that I hear of so often in salvation stories. The man did not “invite Jesus” into his life or accept him as Lord. He prayed for faith. He prayed as if faith was something he could only receive as a gift. He prayed as if faith was something he could not control or muster up on his own with a little exertion of his will.

This little death bed story has me thinking carefully about what it is I say it means to be justified.

God, marriage, and eternal life

A woman who has no faith in God writes in the New York Times about God and marriage.

I don’t have time today to engage in a careful reading and reaction, but I was struck by the way the writer struggled when her husband abandoned his Deism.

Christians and religious zealots might say that deep down I was searching for a sense of peace that only the Lord can provide. Maybe, but I doubt it. I know myself enough to know that I can’t fuse my intellectual knowledge with a blind faith in a supreme deity. It just won’t ever happen.

But I did realize I liked the comfort of other people believing, especially my other half. It made me feel safe. Not believing in something, or not being steadfast in what you’re told to believe, can be frightening. It makes those pesky existential questions in life more difficult to answer, particularly when you wake up at 4 a.m., short of breath from contemplating the finality of death.

Fred’s faith was my safety net, just in case this whole God thing really was the way. With him, there was always the chance that when I got to the bouncer at Heaven’s door and my name wasn’t on the list, I could say, “Hey! I know someone inside.”

I’m struck by how the “cosmic fire insurance” view of faith can be held so firmly by those inside and outside the church. Many in the pews on Sunday would argue the best reason to be in church is to get exactly the kind of ticket to heaven’s gate that she makes a bit of a nervous joke about.

By the end of the article, her doubts are settled down by the realization that she and her husband have a common bond in their disbelief.

It sounds like she would not be much up for talking to a pastor, but I do find myself wondering how I would respond to her thoughts and questions if she came to my church one day with her son, as the article ponders at one point, looking to give him some grounding in spirituality and religion.

The usefulness of devils

For at least 100 years it has been fashionable in Western Christianity to dismiss the existence of devils or demons. To speak of Satan is a sign of poor upbringing among the seven sisters of the Mainline.

Reading John Wesley’s sermon “The Marks of the New Birth” this week, I wonder if the inability to believe in devils is part of the reason why our faith has so often become a dry matter of the head rather than a vital warmth of the heart.

For Wesley, one of the best arguments against faith being reduced to ideas in our heads and agreement with (or assent to) certain beliefs was the existence of devils. Here are his words on the matter:

But it is not a barely notional or speculative faith that is here spoken of by the Apostles. It is not a bare assent to this proposition, Jesus is the Christ; nor indeed to all the propositions contained in our creed, or in the Old and New Testament. It is not merely an assent to any or all these credible things, as credible. To say this, were to say (which who could hear?) that the devils were born of God; for they have this faith. They, trembling, believe, both that Jesus is the Christ, and that all Scripture, having been given by inspiration of God, is true as God is true. It is not only an assent to divine truth, upon the testimony of God, or upon the evidence of miracles; for they also heard the words of his mouth, and knew him to be a faithful and true witness. They could not but receive the testimony he gave, both of himself, and of the Father which sent him. They saw likewise the mighty works which he did, and thence believed that he “came forth from God.” Yet, notwithstanding this faith, they are still “reserved in chains of darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”

The devils believe every right doctrine of Christianity, and yet they are devils still.

Our brothers and sisters in the Mainline no longer believe in devils, and so they fall prey to the mistake that believing what devils believe is the same as real faith. [revision] I have encountered many people who espouse a “head” religion who see the key issue as getting the right ideas about God arranged in a way that they can give them their stamp of approval. When they can work out faith in a way that “makes sense” to them and they can give it their asset, they believe they have reach the central issue. [/revision] But real, saving faith is a matter of the heart. It is trust and reliance on Christ as our salvation.

Again, in Wesley’s words:

The true, living, Christian faith, which whosoever hath, is born of God, is not only an assent, an act of the understanding; but a disposition, which God hath wrought in his heart; “a sure trust and confidence in God, that, through the merits of Christ, his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God.” This implies, that a man first renounce himself; that, in order to be “found in Christ,” to be accepted through him, he totally rejects all “confidence in the flesh;” that, “having nothing to pay,” having no trust in his own works or righteousness of any kind, he comes to God as a lost, miserable, self-destroyed, self-condemned, undone, helpless sinner; as one whose mouth is utterly stopped, and who is altogether “guilty before God.” Such a sense of sin, (commonly called despair, by those who speak evil of the things they know not,) together with a full conviction, such as no words can express, that of Christ only cometh our salvation, and an earnest desire of that salvation, must precede a living faith, a trust in Him, who “for us paid our ransom by his death, and fulfilled the law of his life.” This faith then, whereby we are born of God, is “not only a belief of all the articles of our faith, but also a true confidence of the mercy of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I do not know if disbelief in devils caused or just coincided with an abandonment of sin, conviction, and heart religion. But I do note today how devils helped Wesley avoid a misunderstanding that is both tempting and common in our day. Perhaps we could use with a few devils to help us out.