The Uncertainty of a Certain Faith
Having conceded to the critique of false consciousness that what I call my faith may be something entirely or partially other than faith—e.g., an illusory happiness, an opiate, an infantile desire, a neurosis, or a stand-in for absolute truth—I now face what for me is a pressing question: what do I make of the traditional idea that faith is certain because it is founded on the word of God who cannot lie? If, in addition to denying epistemological certainty, I were to go the distance and deny the certainty given by “the divine light” or “the word of God,” would I not, if consistent, have to admit that God, if he exists, could be a liar or at least an unreliable source?
The defenders of doctrine may sit down: I make no such denial. Whether my faith is true faith has no bearing necessarily on the honesty or reliability of God. One certainly can speak while another mishears, hears not at all, or is under the delusion that he has heard what is said. My faith can be suspect without implicating the word of God. Faith, conceived as a divine gift, would be certain by definition, but its certainty doesn’t clear away the clouds of unknowing. I can acknowledge this certainty of faith without knowing with certainty that I have this faith.
While I can never say for certain that I have faith, I likewise cannot with certainty deny that I have faith. Both certain affirmation and certain denial are far too presumptuous for me. Instead, I choose to hope that what I call my faith is in fact the real deal. Hope is the road I opt to take between the grand mountains of absolute skepticism and absolute certainty. It’s a winding road, fraught with peril and taken in the dark, but I prefer it to standing atop a peak above the clouds, going nowhere.
Kyle,
You are into really heavy realms lately. To lighten the scene, but still comment on it obliquely, I offer this. A wonderful malapropism from my erstwhile seminarian brother Michael Sean Winters. He is commenting recently on religious liberty and suggesting an article. But he seems to offer, intentionally or unintentionally (who knows?), a solution that may involve getting rid of Beelzebuib:
“Rick Garnett, law prof at Notre Dame, has a great op-ed at USAToday on the subject of religious liberty. His conclusion highlights one of the reasons Catholics seem most exorcised [!!] by the issue today: “Given our deep-rooted commitment to religious freedom, our goal should be to resolve this conflict in a way that does not make the radical privatization of faith the price of acting consistently with that faith.” For Catholics, faith can never be “privatized.” Garnett’s analysis is balanced and nuanced, something too infrequently found when the issue of the role of religion in the public square is engaged and his essay should be widely read.”
Exorcism, anyone?!
Three responses:
1. Faith, by definition, implies rational uncertainty. Otherwise, it would be knowledge.
2. Things can be certain without being rational.
3. There are degrees of certainty. Therefore, the certainty we speak of when we say faith is certain is not the certainty you are looking for. Perfect certainty requires omniscience.
@ Dan–
Could you elaborate a bit on your second point? I can be stark raving mad and absolutely certain that I’m Napoleon. But where does that gets us in terms of Kyle’s questionings?
Rodak,
The perfect rejoinder.
Madness is certitude taken to the extreme. The idea that we can be completely rationally certain of anything is next of kin to believing I am Napoleon. Both are form of self-deception and both are incoherent. Kyle is stressed about certainty, but that is actually a good thing – it should stress him out, because the species of certainty Kyle is seeking is only present in madness;
As to Point #2 – there is certainty of the mind and certainty of the heart. I can be certain that the woman I am about to marry is the woman I am called to love. There is no rational basis for that certainty, but it makes it no less true. Another example is female intuition – a form of certainty that is not rooted in reason, but is almost infallible in terms of its correctness.
Since human beings, as limited creatures, cannot know anything completely, we must cross the chasm with our innate ability to “feel” that something is right. To be truly certain about anything, both reason and intuiton must play in harmony. Reason is the map; intuition the compass.
Dan,
Eve’s proverbial intuitions in the Garden would seem a refutation of your connection between “female intuition” and certitude. Further, when you see a lot of the guys women choose to marry, I think the case is closed in the other direction I am afraid.
Better to say simply: a lot of women are very shrewd. There’s the compliment. And they are certainly generally tougher than men, who often tend to be big babies. Mea kinda sorta culpa.
I wouldn’t consider original sin an intuition. Quite the contrary, actually.
Dan,
Then where would you put the Pauline notion of scrutinizing spirits? In the history of Christian spiritual direction the fallen nature of human beings is seen in the inability to gauge necessarily whether a spirit is “of God” or not. One can only assume, in the tradition, that a pre-lapsarian sense would have been different, and thus Eve’s “intuition” was the “original sin”.
You’re equating intuition with discernment of spirits, and using that as your argument that Eve’s female intuition led her to sin?
Any women on this board have something to say about that?
Dan,
As I said, I am quite sure that on the whole women are tougher than men. But still what Shakespeare said stands: “Frailty thy name is woman.” Women are often better people than men as well, for a variety of reasons, but still it is telling and significant that “vir” is related to virtue. This is not so much about the sexes, but about the masculine and feminine in each of us.
I think you are splitting hairs. Faith is as faith does, is it not? In fact, isn’t it like love in this respect?
If you believe God exists, and live accordingly (do good, avoid sin), then you have faith; just as, if you wish someone well, and act accordingly, you are loving them.
Of course it’s possible to doubt the reality of faith, or love. As it’s possible to doubt the reality of any and everything else. But what’s the point of that? You still have to either live or die, and if the former, then decide how to live.
Isn’t faith, on your part, just a decision how to live? A decision what attitude to take towards yourself, and others, and God, and act accordingly?
If you believe God exists, and live accordingly (do good, avoid sin), then you have faith; just as, if you wish someone well, and act accordingly, you are loving them.
To outward or even inward appearance, yes, but not necessarily. Let us say that Bob believes that God exists, and strives to live in accordance with what he believes about God. On the surface, Bob seems to have faith, and yet, unbeknownst to Bob, his belief in God is not at its core motivated by an encounter with the divine, but rather by his unacknowledged, deeply repressed fear of death and non-existence. In this case, Bob’s fear is disguised as faith. He acts as though he has faith, and believes he has faith, but what he really has is fear, fear of which he is not conscious.
What’s the point? The point is the pursuit of truth and, as you say, living according to the truth. It’s one thing to ask whether or not what I have faith in is true, but quite another to ask whether my faith itself is truly faith. Both questions matter, I think. I can’t have absolute certainty about whether or not I have faith, but I can reflect upon my faith, not only on its outward signs, but on what it could otherwise be, and, through that reflection, come perhaps to a better, if still uncertain, consciousness of who and what I am.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. This is the end of Corinthians 13. It states that love is the greatest of these three things. At first when I read Aggellius I wasnt sold. I am more inclined to feel how you feel Kyle. I have often though about the fear factor with regard to the question, why do I have faith? Yet even the passages of the bible are telling you that love is greater than faith and greater than hope. So maybe it is more on how you live your life rather than what you think you understand.
@Dan — An essential difference between certainty based upon reason as opposed to certainty based upon “intuition” is that reason does not allow for circular thought processes, whereas intuition relies upon it.
Take, for example, your statement “I can be certain that the woman I am about to marry is the woman I am called to love.” It is not patently true that you, or anybody else, is ever “called” to do anything. You make that assumption and then you use it to validate your “certainty” that the woman you’ve chosen is the right one. She’s right one because you’ve been called, and you’ve been called because she’s the right one. I’m getting dizzy.
Now, reason might lead you to the same conclusion–that she’s the right one–but it would do so based a whole range of probability factors; and you could never be certain that you’ve correctly identified and categorized them, or that your set is exhaustive, or that they will hold for the long run. You don’t have certainty–just your best educated guess.
I won’t bother with a refutation of women’s intuition. I think that Peter Paul handled that one nicely.
Bottom line: certainty based on trust in a “gut feeling” always needs to posit something that is not, in fact, a given, in order to maintain itself. Read any of Plato’s Socratic dialogues and you will see that kind of thinking dismanted with surgical precision.
You’ve completely missed the point. You’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Of course it isn’t going to fit.
Change this:
Bottom line: certainty based on trust in a “gut feeling” always needs to posit something that is not, in fact, a given, in order to maintain itself.
to this:
Bottom line: certainty
based on trust in a “gut feeling”always needs to posit something that is not, in fact, a given, in order to maintain itself.and you’ll get closer to what I’m trying to say.
@ Dan–
I should state, for the record, that I am playing the devil’s advocate in this discussion. I am completely down with the belief that ultimate truth is available only through revelation–in whatever form revelation comes to the individual. I am not a rationalist. I write poetry, for instance; and my method is to silence my mind and wait until I am given the words that I am to write down. It is no different with any kind of creativity, including spiritual growth, which is, in essence, the creation of the self, enabled by grace and the Spirit.
But, it has been my experience that many people claim to possess certainty without ever stopping to examine that claim. They have been told that if you do x, y, and z faithfully, on command, certainty will be awarded to you as a kind of trophy. It is very much worthwhile inquiring of oneself, at the deepest level, if this kind of cheap grace is what one is basing one’s “certainty” on.
I meant to add that reason can be used to make the kind of inquiry that I’ve advocated; but it cannot take one past that point. In other words, reason can disqualify your belief as valid, but it cannot lead to all the way to valid belief.
I was about to say that “faith” is overrated, by Christians, but Agellius put it better than I, and I’ll go with what he said.
Additionally, however, I’d like to add that, in the epistemology course that we international secondary educators teach in the IB curriculum (called “Theory of Knowledge”), we go along with Plato and call “knowledge” “justified true belief.” Religious “faith” cannot be “justified” in the same way that scientific theories can be. However “religious faith” CAN be justified by another “way of knowing,” which is called “emotion” (and which would probably be called, in comparative religious study, “mysticism”).
One does not personally have to have had a “mystical experience” in order to accept the word of those who are privy to such “knowledge.” All one has to do is to examine the displays of total integrity, truthfulness and selfless love by such “enlightened beings” and conclude, reasonably, that they wouldn’t be lying, when they tell us what they have experienced.
This would be called “empathy” and it’s part of the “way of knowing” called “emotion.”
Unfortunately for fundamentalists of all religious persuasions, it means that we have to “empathize” (i.e. take the word of) a lot of folks who aren’t Christian. This stopped bothering me a long time ago. Naturally, however, such “empathic knowledge” demands the scrutiny of rational doubt, and that’s why, for modern man, “religious knowledge” MUST involve doubt–religious “faith” without such “doubt” simply isn’t genuinely human any more, as T.S. Eliot says in his great essay about Pascal.
One has “faith” so long as one remains in search of the source of that love Agellius speaks of during all of his or her life.
Digby:
I like what you wrote, up to the point where you said that faith must involve doubt. I can’t see that being true, since faith and doubt are incompatible — unless perhaps we are defining “doubt” differently.
For me, “doubt” is basically indecision: We have not yet determined whether or not to believe or assent to something. We don’t believe it’s true, and we don’t believe it’s false. If we believed it were true, we would no longer be doubting; and if we believe it’s false, we are no longer doubting; for in either case our mind is made up.
To have faith is to decide to believe that something is true. Once we have so decided, we are no longer in a state of doubt. If doubt re-enters the picture, then we are no longer in a state of faith. It’s certainly possible to waver between belief and unbelief, but it’s not possible to do both at once.
Agellius, you really DO need a “theory of knowledge” course. One may believe that something is “true” WITHOUT being able to logically “prove” it, and one may then assent to it provisionally, because one trusts that, one day, it will be seen to be “logically true,” as well. One simply doesn ot have to have all the “facts” in line before making a “decision”; in fact, we do it every day, and are correct to do so. In many cases, not to do so is immoral
To have faith is to decide to believe that something is true. Once we have so decided, we are no longer in a state of doubt.
The first sentence is correct, but the second sentence is unrealistic and cowardly; it represents, in my humble opinion, an “immature faith.”
@ Dan — I would go along with substituting “based on intuition” for “based on a gut feeling,” but I would not go along with eliminating the clause entirely. This “calling” you speak of is intuitional–assuming that you’re not hearing voices. And I am not, I think, misrepresenting what you’ve said in my rejoinder. Any time you posit an unsupported (and usually unsupportable) proposition as the basis of the your hypothesis, you’re going to end up with a circular argument in support of your “certainty.” Reason will not allow this, because it will employ logic to the contemplation of the problem.
I’m not sure I understand. Are you agreeing with me or disagreeing with me?
You’re not misrepresenting what I’ve said, but assuming you’re disagreeing with me, you haven’t really argued my point. What I think you’re saying (correct me if I’m wrong), is that certitude based on a “gut feeling”/intuition is reducible to circular logic, and is therefore invalid. What I’m saying is that reason is not the sole arbiter of certitude, and that to be certain of something that is inherently outside the grasp of reason is perfectly fine (and even required at some level). Therefore, you can’t use incompatibility with reason as an argument against certitude when my argument is that certitude transcends reason.
Here’s my point: the rational mind thinks circular reasoning is patently false. But there are things which are patently true that are circular in nature. Consider the father-son relationship – which is predicated on which, or are they mutually predicated on each other? According to reason, being a father should be impossible. Similarly, consider Zeno’s paradox, or any other clever problem that we know is true in practice but is a logical contradiction. Reason is a helpful tool to discern reality, but there is much about reality that we know exists even though reason says it should not be so.
I can be certain that motion is possible because I experience it. Reason tells me it is impossible. But yet here I am typing away. The hypothesis that all must be discernable by reason is madness, hence the reason Kyle is struggling with it. He’s asking the wrong questions because he isn’t comfortable that the world doesn’t make rational sense.
Kyle writes, “… Bob seems to have faith, and yet, unbeknownst to Bob, his belief in God is not at its core motivated by an encounter with the divine, but rather by his unacknowledged, deeply repressed fear of death and non-existence…”
So what if it’s motivated by fear? “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.” (Prov. 1:7) I still think you are splitting hairs based on theoretical ideas about what is at our psychological “core”.
Basically you’re a skeptic concerning whether we can know anything. Fine, we can’t be mathematically certain whether we actually know or believe anything. But by the same token, we can’t be certain that we don’t. We just don’t know how much we can actually know with complete accuracy — because we’re not God! News flash!
But since we have to live our lives, we must make decisions to trust what we’re told. We can trust the faithful, or we can trust the skeptics, but we’ve got to trust someone (echoes of Bob Dylan — “You’re gonna have to serve somebody…”). If you’ve made the decision to trust the faithful, then you have faith. That’s what faith is. It doesn’t matter whether deep down it’s based on this or that, because not being omniscient and therefore perfectly self-aware, you can’t know precisely what it’s based on.
But you can make a decision and once you’ve made the decision, you know that you’ve made it. From that point on there is no need to question whether you possess faith — unless you hold that you can’t even know what decisions you’ve made after having made them.
Now if you’re waffling over whether to make the decision, fine, that can happen. But unless you’re insane, you can’t claim not to know whether or not you’ve made the decision.
Fear of God may be the beginning of wisdom, but that’s not the fear motivating Bob. His fear of death may lead him to make similar decisions as would authentic faith, if he had it, but decisions made out of a mistaken notion that he has faith, even if on the surface they are in seeming accordance with the tenets of his faith, don’t change the fact that he is mistaken about what motivates him and who he is. Does this false consciousness matter? It does if it matters that people make free, conscious decisions.
Kyle,
What is it that drives you to need an answer to this question?
Truth. I hope.
Do you believe you’re going to find a universally objective answer to a qualitative question? Isn’t that a sign the question itself is the problem?
Depends on what you mean by a universally objective answer. There are always more and other things to say.
@ Dan–
I think that my comments are now out of chronological order. Hopefully, I addressed your 5:06 p.m. comments way up above, with the comments I made at 7:14 and 7:16 p.m. To briefly recapitulate:
Reason can examine belief and thereby disqualify groundless belief as valid; but it cannot lead one all the way to certainty that what is believed is ultimate Truth. At that point, faith must take over. But one now at least has the hope that the patently false, shallow, knee-jerk, rote, bogus beliefs have been recognized and banished.
Thanks for the clarification. I think we are in agreement.
Yes. Thank you!
Digby writes, “One may believe that something is “true” WITHOUT being able to logically “prove” it, and one may then assent to it provisionally, because one trusts that, one day, it will be seen to be “logically true,” as well. One simply doesn ot have to have all the “facts” in line before making a “decision”; in fact, we do it every day, and are correct to do so.”
I’m not sure why you think I would disagree with this. I don’t.
Digby writes, “The first sentence is correct, but the second sentence is unrealistic and cowardly; it represents, in my humble opinion, an “immature faith.””
You say so, but I remain unconvinced.
Digby writes, “[quoting me] ‘To have faith is to decide to believe that something is true. Once we have so decided, we are no longer in a state of doubt.’ The first sentence is correct, but the second sentence is unrealistic and cowardly; it represents, in my humble opinion, an ‘immature faith.’”
My contention is that it’s *impossible* to be in a state of faith and a state of doubt simultaneously, as I define “doubt”. Immaturity and cowardliness are irrelevant. Do maturity and courage enable you to perform the impossible?
“Do maturity and courage enable you to perform the impossible?”
Perhaps not. But they do enable us to ATTEMPT to perform the impossible. And we are commanded by Jesus Christ to do that. You cannot attempt to be perfect (“as your Father in heaven is perfect”) if you are unwilling to vigorously root out and discard your own imperfections. This is every bit as true of one’s belief systems as it is of one’s overt actions. If you make a sincere effort, you will receive help.
Rodak:
So you’re saying that if I make a sincere effort to be in a state of doubt at the same time I’m in a state of faith, I will receive God’s help? : )
Anyway, I have to disagree that we are commanded by Jesus Christ to perform that which is logically impossible.
(I suspect we’re not quite on the same page here, but that’s OK, sometimes misunderstandings are amusing. ; )
There are undeniable and absolute truths that no matter how people twist them or see them through flawed perceptions does not change those truths. A flawed perception can bring forth a false knowledge of a truth. I think faith can be viewed in a similar fashion. Faith is a journey and persons are fallible so they may hold misconceptions about faith. Individuals may hold skewed views of faith which in turn may distort the true epistemological meaning of faith.
What is “the true epistemological meaning of faith”?
Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
The epistemological meaning of faith is a source of true knowledge based not on direct experience of the thing known but the true testimony of a reliable witness.
Questioning the state of one’s faith and the true motivations for the decisions one makes because of faith: is it useless hair-splitting? If that were so, it seems unlikely that we could point to saints who were renowned for such intense self-reflection. OTOH, as long as one is subjecting one’s faith to such a hermeneutic of suspicion looking for Freudian elements of false consciousness that might discredit it entirely by unmasking it and revealing it to be something that is “not faith at all”, why stop there? What is the questioning itself motivated by? Is it an anomalous example of true consciousness, an island of pure motivation magically kept sanitized, disinfected, incorrupt and uncontaminated by elements of fear or a sublimated id? Could not such acts of scrupulosity be a temptation to struggle against and even justify a rejection of one’s faith – a manifestation of concupiscence Looking For An Out and masquerading as a faithful examination of conscience?
At some point you have to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Kierkegaard said that purity of heart means seeking after only one thing. But you don’t have to start there to have faith. Pascal said that if a man can not bring himself to truly believe but at least desires to believe he can start by going through the motions, acting on the beliefs that he wants to have – going to Masses, lighting candles, confessing sins, saying rosaries, offering to the God who he has doubts is even there prayers such as, “Lord help my unbelief!” Fake It Til You Make It. When the Son of God says call His Father YOUR Father as well, you obey. You do it, even though you know that you are not the son of God, and you are not lying or acting inauthentically because God is turning you into a new creature. But “a bruised reed He will not break”: He does not violently uproot all the impure elements in one’s soul and replace them instaneously with a pure consciousness. Instead He is re-shaping the natural psychic substance, turning your elements of false consciousness into a true faith that is already integrated into your psyche because it is made out of elements that already had a place there. Faith is a gift of grace. If it is there at all, even as “small as a mustard seed,” it is from God. It is a supernatural virtue. No one comes to Christ at all unless the Father draws him to Him. A totally false faith has no power to sustain itself. A partial faith is a true faith, transforming by grace, growing in love.
“Acting as if” is an effective tool for use in breaking bad habits. It is strongly advocated in A.A., for instance. It is not immediately clear to me, however, that it would be as effective in “re-shaping the natural psychic substance” as it is in modifying behavior. Belief and behavior are not the same thing. Behavior is a matter of will. If belief were also a matter of will, we would not be having this discussion.
Not it, but HE, is the agent that is actively re-shaping the natural psychic substance. It is a miracle of grace, the work of God. The tool simply puts you in the place where you can receive this gift. Belief and behavior are certainly distinct, but they are not isolated from each other, and the direction of influence is not one way only. Behavior can affect belief. Belief is not simply a matter of will, but will can have a role. Volition is not completely helpless with regard to belief. You can choose to believe something and set your will to accepting it as your truth. Over the course of time, with continued renewal of your will, your intellect will select aspects of your experience that conform to and confirm your new belief. Over time the belief finds a solid home, stable home in your soul.
There are many relatively new psychological tools and techniques available for belief change that have been developed in recent decades. Google: NLP, EFT, TFT, Energy Psychology. These are mostly used to change more or less unconscious self-limiting beliefs (e.g., “I’m not smart enough”, “I can’t lose weight,” “I deserve to be abused by my life partner/Significant Other and will only choose to be in a relationship with abusers”, “Making money is evil and I’ll never make more of it than I make now”). But they can be used for any beliefs, even religious ones. The desire to believe something is already a big step toward being open to change.
Kevin:
Well said.
Thanks, Agellius.
The image I had in mind, but never got around to using in the comment, was the miracle at Cana. The water in the six stone jugs that our Lord turned into wine was not Aquafina. It was the water that was used for the Jewish Rite of Purification. It was foot washing water. It was dirty foot water that our Lord turned into the finest wine at the wedding feast. Purity of mind and heart is not necessary at the start of our faith journey, and, when it comes to grace transforming our minds by faith, God takes His time over the course of our lives. At any given moment, we could look at the process as it is progressing and still see some elements of ourselves left over from the old, fallen nature. But in the end, God turns the base elements into something wonderful. The base elements in the miracle of Cana are the same as the base elements that were used then and now to produce wine without supernatural aid. Add grape seed and time: soil, water, and then, (in the case of traditionally made wine) when the grapes are harvested, FEET! The base psychic elements that produce many natural beliefs now are transformed by grace into a supernatural virtue of faith.
I wouldn’t restrict the hermeneutics of suspicion to what I hope is my faith. I’ll gladly put all that I am or may be under the lens. Doing do, however, doesn’t prevent me from temporarily giving myself the benefit of the doubt in my day to day living. While I’m not certain that my faith is really faith, I continue, in a spirit of hope, to live in accordance with it. Seems to me, though, that if I faith really is entirely a false faith, it could sustain itself. Not as faith, of course, but as a product of false consciousness.
A totally false faith could only fool you for so long. I believe that you would eventually know if yours was a false faith. You could fool everyone else for as long as you liked into accepting that you believe what you claim to believe, but you could not fool yourself consistently and forever. You would not be permanently and sincerely in the dark about your own faith. God would not allow it. Besides, a consistently held belief would eventually become as truly yours as any other belief regardless of its origin. Finally, no one comes to Christ unless one is divinely called, and to respond affirmatively to that call at all is perform an act of faith.
A totally false faith could only fool you for so long. I believe that you would eventually know if yours was a false faith.
I would say rather that it may, in some cases, be unlikely for a person of rigorous self-reflection and introspection to remain fooled; however, I fail to see why false consciousness has to have an expiration date.
Kyle writes, “Hope is the road I opt to take between the grand mountains of absolute skepticism and absolute certainty. It’s a winding road, fraught with peril and taken in the dark, but I prefer it to standing atop a peak above the clouds, going nowhere.”
So you’d rather keep progressing then stop on one of the peaks, “going nowhere”. But what if the peak is your destination? What’s the point of traveling if you’re not going anywhere? How do you know you’re progressing unless you have a static destination from which to measure your progress?
The destination can never be reached because reaching the destination would mean that faith or knowledge or whatever else could go no further.
How do you know you’re progressing? You can’t, not with certainty. You go with what seems to make the most sense. And you hope you are right.
Kyle writes, “The destination can never be reached because reaching the destination would mean that faith or knowledge or whatever else could go no further.”
Go no further towards what?
Kyle writes, “How do you know you’re progressing? You can’t, not with certainty. You go with what seems to make the most sense. And you hope you are right.”
Fine, but the point is, you stated that it’s better to keep moving on the road between the two peaks, than to be on either peak. That you’re sure of. But you could only know that that’s better, if you knew that to keep moving was to move closer to the goal. There’s no point in traveling unless you intend to arrive somewhere. Since one of the peaks is certainty, then certainty is not the destination. What, then, is it?
Transcendence.
“Seems to me, though, that if I faith really is entirely a false faith, it could sustain itself.”
It seems to me the more I read in this discussion that it is wrong to speak of “false faith.” Faith is neither true nor false; it is the object of faith that either partakes of objective reality, or does not. Faith is a subjective disposition and could directed toward the One True God, or toward space aliens with equivalent passion and devotion.
Rodak writes, “It seems to me the more I read in this discussion that it is wrong to speak of “false faith.” Faith is neither true nor false; it is the object of faith that either partakes of objective reality, or does not.”
I believe we are headed in more or less the same direction here.
Kyle writes, “[quoting me] ‘Since one of the peaks is certainty, then certainty is not the destination. What, then, is it?’ Transcendence.”
Transcendence of what?
What I am, what I feel, what I believe, and what I know.
Kyle writes, “What I am, what I feel, what I believe, and what I know.”
Even if what you feel, believe and know are already true? Why go beyond truth (“transcend” meaning “to go beyond”)? Does that even mean anything?
OK, the point is that you don’t know that what you feel, believe and know are true. But in that case, what you really desire is to know whether those things are true: You want to either confirm or deny them. But another way of saying that is, that you desire certainty of the truth.
The one thing you are certain of right now, is that you’re uncertain. It is for this reason that you have been continually delving and searching and questing. You may say the goal of your quest is truth and not certainty. But while certainty is not a good in its own right, since you can be certain of things that are false; nevertheless truth without certainty would only leave you uncertain and therefore perpetually questing. If you possessed truth but were uncertain of it, then continuing to quest after truth might lead you away from truth as well as towards it. Therefore if truth is the goal, perpetual questing can’t be a good thing in its own right either. The quest for truth must have as its goal not merely the possession of truth, but the certainty of it — even if only a moral certainty.
Why go beyond truth? Because, like Transformers, there’s more to truth than meets the eye. We come to truth, i.e., reality itself, by way of mediating signs. Truth is always more than what I know it to be, so, to get closer to truth, I have to transcend my current knowledge of it. And because I’m suspicious of these mediating signs, uncertain that they truly reveal, but nonetheless hopeful that they disclose reality to me, I keep them theoretically in perpetual question. I remain open to reconsidering them, perhaps adding to then, or perhaps abandoning them in favor of alternative signs.
“I would say rather that it may, in some cases, be unlikely for a person of rigorous self-reflection and introspection to remain fooled; however, I fail to see why false consciousness has to have an expiration date.”
Particular delusions lack the stability of true knowledge, which has the advantage of the ontological support of objective reality. Delusions must continue to support themselves without help, and this induces a fatigue that at least compromises their qualitative consistency.
@ Kevin Rice–
There are myriad examples of what a Christian would call “particular delusion,” denying each of them the dignity of “ontological” support, but which were thriving long before Christian doctrine became a relatively settled thing, and which continue to thrive to today. By what energy source do these continue to receive support?
I suspect that you are talking about the strength of intersubjective social support for some widely accepted delusions, which can last for many generations after even the strongest and most decisive refutations, and in some cases may never cease altogether, while I was talking about delusion as a subjective psychological phenomenon operating in the consiousness of an individual. Reality is a persistent corrective influence and at some point it intrudes by force. At that point the individual knows his “faith” is bogus, and then only the encouragement of others who continue to hold that belief can enable him to ignore what he knows and maintain his commitment to “believing” his delusion. The point is he can fool everyone but himself. Eventually he knows, and either faces this honestly or suppresses that knowledge within himself.
@ Kevin Rice–
It would seem to be your contention, then, that a Catholic is somehow able to see a reality that persons of other religions cannot see. Their delusional concepts of reality are not corrected, while the Catholic’s (at least potentially) are. But, how is a Catholic to know that the collective voices of “Tradition” and his current co-religionists, both clergy and laity, are not supporting delusions that his subjective intellect has begun to doubt? Why is the Catholic’s doubt any different than the dilemma of the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Jew, or the Muslim? How have you answered Kyle’s questions?
Ultimately, we know nothing in isolation, unless it is by direct revelation. And, even then, “the others” will likely tell us that we’ve gone mad if we report our experience of the transcendent reality. And, if this had come to us without prior cultural preparation, we might very well think that ourselves.
As a Catholic I cannot back away from contending that faithful and informed Catholics know truths less accessible to non-Catholics. If such a contention is offensive to you than I cannot avoid offending you. But I do not contend that those of other faiths have totally false faiths. I have studied all the major religions and a great many minor ones in detail and they are all rich mines of metaphysical and theological truths. Moreover, the correction I was speaking of was not a correction of confused religious content. I don’t assert that we get any guarantees there. Faithful and informed Catholics are at best only slightly less vulnerable to theological confusion than anyone else. But God loves everyone, and the Holy Spirit works in the mind and heart of every person who seeks Him, regardless of what they call Him or how mistakenly or ambiguously they understand Him, emphasizing the aspects of their faith that are true, de-emphasizing the false content, calling them all to a true faith insofar as the truth is accessible to them (and the more those who most fully participate in the mystery of faith pray for everyone else, the more we give God the authority to work in this area while respecting human freedom).
But I digress. What I was talking about was the difference between a true faith and some irrational psychological flaw that could sometimes appear to the person afflicted with it to be faith. I was talking about whether such a person actually believes such and such or only wishes he does or only pretends that he does (and deceives himself about that fact). THAT kind of false consciousness, I contend, does not have the ontological support in the reality of that person’s psyche to hold together with the kind of stability that could fool him constantly and forever, so that he could always mistakenly believe he had faith when he did not and innocently make that mistake. No, at some point, the truth about himself will emerge, and then he can either accept it or consciously and intentionally add a layer of self-deception, at which point his false consciousness no longer enjoys the degree of innocence it once did. I do think that the more intimately you are participating in the mystery of faith, the more the grace of God can work in this process, and that is why I said that God would not allow such self-deception to go on forever. But I don’t believe that Catholics have exclusive access to that as an advantage over those of other faiths. On the contrary, I believe that a very pious Protestant, Jew, Zoroastrian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or pagan can (generally in that order of participation in the truth) have greater access to such divine correction than even a well catechized but less devout Catholic who is more or less indifferent to his faith and has built little or no personal prayerful relationship with God.
@ Kevin Rice–
Thank you for that lengthy and detailed explanation. I cannot disagree with any of it. Psychological “glitches” are certainly not sustainable indefinitely, and most particularly not “comfortably” as elements of a redemptive faith. For that reason, the delusion would be doomed to succumb to truth.
I want to step back a moment and try to figure out exactly where we’re disagreeing.
In your initial post titled “The Uncertainty of a Certain Faith”, your main point was that in denying epistemological certainty, you were not implying that God could deceive or be deceived. I agree with you here.
A secondary point of yours was that you can’t know with certainty that you have faith at all. You say you can only hope that your faith is “the real deal”.
This is where I have quarreled with you, though it’s hard for me to pin down exactly where the disagreement is. You seem to be saying two different things: (1) that you’re not certain you have faith; and (2) you’re not certain whether the faith you have is authentic. If the answer to (1) is no, then (2) is moot.
Can you clarify this? Are you questioning the very existence of your faith, or do you acknowledge that you possess something which you name “faith”, but are not sure whether it’s “genuine”. If the latter, do you mean (a) it may follow from suspicious or unauthentic motives, or (b) your motives are fine, you’re just not sure whether it’s genuine in the sense of being a gift of God’s grace. Are you questioning whether the whole thing is a hallucination, or do you acknowledge that it’s something real, you’re just not sure that it’s supernatural?
When I objected that you can’t not-know whether you have faith, I was going on the assumption that you had made a decision to believe in the teachings of Christ and the Church; you can’t not-know when you’ve made a decision. But, you seemed to acknowledge that you’ve made such a decision, you’re just questioning the psychological motives behind it. For me, having made the decision due to certain psychological motives does not invalidate the decision.
However if you’re questioning whether you’ve even made such a decision — maybe you *think* you have, but you can’t trust your own thoughts and memories, etc., well that’s a different matter. In that case you seem to be getting into philosophical skepticism as to whether you can even know your own mind.
So, can you help me to know which tree I should be barking up?
I am using “real” and “authentic” interchangeably. Clearly I have something that I call faith and that I hope is faith, but I concede to the critics of false consciousness that it could be otherwise.
I would say that I’ve made a decision to keep the faith and live my life in accordance with it, even if I’m deluded about the precise nature of this thing I call faith.
I still don’t feel like I’m understanding you sufficiently. But I guess we’ve gone around enough times on it.
In any event, it doesn’t sound like your faith (if that’s what it is) is the sort of thing that makes martyrs, does it?
I can’t say for certain that I’d rise to the challenge, but I hope my faith would be strong enough to pass that test. In either case, I don’t associate the strength of faith with the epistemological certainty of faith. The willingness to be a martyr has more to do with the former than the latter.
Kyle writes, “In either case, I don’t associate the strength of faith with the epistemological certainty of faith”.
Wow, now I’m really confused. : )
In any event, none of us knows how he would act in that scenario. My comment wasn’t meant to be any kind of an insult, which I think you knew. It just stands to reason that anyone would be less willing to die for something the more he doubts its reality.
Kyle:
I know I said we had gone around enough times on this. But I’ve got my second wind. : )
I argued elsewhere (not sure if it was in this thread or not) that doubt and faith are incompatible.
Below is something I posted before in response to a post of yours, but which you never responded to:
“Cardinal Newman writes that there are three types of propositions:
Interrogative, conditional, and categorical. You may ask a question
(interrogative); you may draw a conclusion (conditional, since it
depends on premisses); or you may make an assertion (categorical). He
writes further that these types of propositions correspond to three
modes of holding propositions in the mind: Doubt (interrogative),
inference (conditional), and assent (categorical). (
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter1.html )
“Applying these three modes to revealed religion, Newman writes that a
man is either a skeptic towards religion; a philosopher, having arrived
at the conclusion that it is more or less probable based on logical
inferences; or a believer, having an unhesitating faith in it.
“You may alternate between these states at different times. Also you may
infer and assent simultaneously; but you can’t infer and doubt, or
assent and doubt, at the same time.”
What is your reaction to this? Do you concur with Newman? If not, where exactly do you disagree?
Sorry for not responding earlier. I’m actually reading Newman’s Grammar, for the first time, and would like to digest it before commenting on it in light of my distinction between faith and certainty.
OK, I’ll look forward to it.