Faith and False Consciousness
Agellius says I’m splitting hairs when I raise the possibility that a person’s faith, while showing signs of authenticity, may in fact not be faith at all. If we make decisions in accordance with our faith and know we’ve made these decisions, then there’s no need, according to Agellius, to question whether we have faith. At this point, it doesn’t matter if, say, fear rather than faith is at a person’s psychological core. Faith is as faith does.
I differ to beg. False consciousness about one’s faith still matters even if the observable outcomes are much the same as those of authentic faith. Here’s why. As persons, we’re capable of free, conscious decisions. We act most as persons, as who we are, when we act freely and consciously, when we’re not enslaved to our appetites, passions, prejudices, and desires. Knowingly making free, conscious decisions requires rigorous, critical, honest self-reflection. Faith, I submit, is an act proper to us as persons. It’s an act that ought to be done with as much freedom and consciousness as possible. Therefore, it’s worth exploring one’s psychological core for signs of false consciousness.
I also submit that people deluded into believing they have faith are more likely to embrace and espouse perversions of faith such as fundamentalism or superstition. Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche—whom Paul Ricoeur called “the Masters of Suspicion”—were wrong to reduce all faith to some form of false consciousness, but they were not wrong to understand that what people think of as their faith can be and perhaps often is the fruit of false consciousness. I unhesitatingly subject my faith to their analysis because each of their critiques, in its own way, puts me in a better position to separate the wheat from the chaff. By doing this, do I put my faith at risk? Absolutely. But you know what they say: be not afraid.
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Kyle, I agree with you. I do not think that you put your faith at risk through critical analysis, but what you may risk is your belief about faith. Another risk we take when we challenge our beliefs is the risk of developing an identity crisis when core beliefs of self, others and God are not experienced as the truth we had initially believed. In this crisis there is a regression to a state of uncertainty and anxiety about self, others and God. Usually this is the point where we have been most vulnerable and where primitive defenses were used to prevent the intrusion of unwanted feelings into consciousness. This is also the point at which our ability to love becomes inhibited. When that happens the expression of our faith is inhibited because belief systems are formed to keep us safe from potential harm.
Marx, Nietzsche, Freud….what a triumvirate. Honestly, Kyle, if you want to question your faith I would say just spend time reading Gibbons, and you will have a lot more to show for it. And end up with some great quotes too.
I have to disagree, Peter Paul.
Nietzsche, Marx and Freud together wove the philosophical matrix in which all 20th century thought inescapably was conducted. Gibbon is relevant today only to the extent that his thought is taken into account by them. this is just like our other conversation about what constitutes an “institution.” It is impossible to escape the effects of these men’s ideas on our own thinking, whether we are conscious of it or not. It is not even necessary to have read any of them ourselves for this to be the case. This is also true of Ayn Rand, unfortunately. She threatens to subsume them all, as we are now seeing in the daily headlines.
Rodak,
Did you have to bring in a stringent thing like the verifiable history of ideas here? I’m trying to have some fun. (Of course I agree with you, with some regret.)
“Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom.”
Too bad Gibbon isn’t more influential.
I am such an old buzz-kill! Mea maxima culpa!
The devil is far more subtle than you think. Let me borrow a paragraph from your other post:
“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.”
It is precisely that same fear you speak of which drives the need to dig progressively deeper.
Agellius is right. Faith is as faith does.
It is precisely that same fear you speak of which drives the need to dig progressively deeper.
How so, Dan?
The nature of perpetual questioning is not a desire for truth, but a desire for structure. The desire for structure is a response of the primal brain – we seek structure because it provides refuge from the uncertainties and dangers of the world. It is as much a coping mechanism as Bob’s fear-based faith.
Turning the magnifying glass on ourselves is a productive exercise to see ourselves more clearly, but if you move it too closely, things start losing focus again. There is an intrinsic limit to our knowledge after which further questioning actually leads us further away from the truth.
Remember that the end result of perpetual inquiry is nihilism, because the origin of the universe is not “truth” or “God”. It is nothing.
Kyle writes, “If we make decisions in accordance with our faith and know we’ve made these decisions, then there’s no need, according to Agellius, to question whether we have faith. At this point, it doesn’t matter if, say, fear rather than faith is at a person’s psychological core. Faith is as faith does.”
I don’t think this is quite what I said. I’ll try to clarify. I said that we have to decide whom to trust for information about life, the world, etc. The vast majority of the knowledge any of us possesses is not discovered by ourselves, but received from someone else. So in making decisions about what to believe, we make decisions about whom to trust. We have no choice but to do so.
I contend that faith is a decision to believe something based on the trust we place in someone — and “someone” may be plural as it may include the saints, Doctors of the Church, authors of scripture, etc. Then again it’s not only placed in persons, since we also test it by their fruits, by our experiences, etc.
The point is, that we either make that decision — the decision to place our trust in the teachings of Christ and in the Church — or we don’t. Either we enter into a state of faith, or we remain in a state of doubt (i.e. indecision). We may waffle back and forth between them, but at any given time we are in one or the other state.
Further, we can’t not know which state we’re in, since faith is an act of the will, and you can’t make an act of the will unconsciously (if you could, then we would be culpable, for example, for sins committed in dreams).
To me it doesn’t make sense to talk about “fear rather than faith” being “at a person’s psychological core”. They’re apples and oranges. Faith is a conscious act of the will, fear isn’t. Faith (theoretically) may be subconsciously motivated by fear, but in that case it’s not a choice between one and the other, but rather, a case of one following upon the other. But even if faith follows upon fear, why is it not still faith?
Faith could follow upon a lot of things. It could follow upon loneliness, or kindness, or fellowship, or knowledge, or miracles, or understanding. A lot of people don’t come to faith until they’ve hit rock bottom (thinking of AA in particular). But how does faith following upon any of those things, make it not faith? As noted previously, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov. 1:7). If faith follows upon fear, in what way does that invalidate it, specifically?
You may decide to get on a train for any number of reasons: You’re being chased (fear); your friends are getting on it (fellowship); you’re going to meet a loved one (love), etc. But whatever your impetus to get on the train, you’re on it regardless.
Now if you’re saying the knowledge or experiences upon which we ultimately base our decision to believe, might turn out to be false or delusional, well that’s true, but that’s a different matter. That speaks not to whether we have made the act of the will known as faith, but as to whether we should make that act in the first place. We make the act of faith once we are convinced that the ground of our belief is true and therefore not false or delusional. If we’re still wondering whether it’s false or delusional, then we haven’t made the act (or else we’ve made it and then backtracked).
Another question may be, how do we know that our act of faith is the supernatural *grace* of faith, as opposed to a mere human act of will? We know that because the people (saints, Doctors, authors – in short, “the Church”) in whom we have decided to place our faith tell us that it is. “No one can come to me unless the Father calls him” (Jn. 6:44) (as Kevin Rice pointed out elsewhere).
If the question is asked, how do we know these people are right about this? Well this, again, is the same as the question whether or not to place our faith in the teachings of Christ and the Church in the first place. If we haven’t answered that question, then we don’t have faith since we remain in a state of indecision, or in other words doubt.
If you are questioning why you made your act of faith in the first place, and are not sure whether there were valid grounds for it, then fine, go ahead and see if you can find valid grounds. In the meantime, you either continue in faith, or you decide to abandon faith. It’s your choice. You may continue in it based mainly on the fear of hell should you abandon it. But that doesn’t mean you’ve abandoned it. It means, mainly, that you still have the fear of God in you, which I should think is a good sign.
You may ask, is it really the fear of God, or is it just some phobia or neurosis? But “phobia” is just another word for fear. Ah, but phobia is an *irrational* fear, not based on reason. Is that the real issue for you?
I suspect this is the root of it: That if your faith is not based on reason, then it has some irrational psychological basis and should therefore be abandoned. If so, then you are a rationalist: You will never rest in your faith until you have mathematical certainty of it. But in that case it’s not faith at all.
I’ve expressly denied the possibility of having certainty of faith (mathematical or otherwise), so rationalism isn’t what I’m aiming for here.
I agree that faith is an act of the will, but the will is among those things I’ve called into question. I cannot be certain about the workings of my will (or even if I have one). I can think I’ve made an authentic act of the will, and even have good reasons for thinking so, but certainty eludes me. It’s possible that I’m mistaken. It’s possible that I’ve been deluded. It’s possible that I’m otherwise than what I think myself to be.
Faith in my experience is a gift of grace. That grace then seems to create a desire to know more about the love which I experienced in that gift. The statement “faith is as faith does” would seem to indicate the level of maturity of the person living their faith. It would seem natural to question one’s way of living out her/his faith due to the fact that inherent in faith is the knowledge that we all fall short of God’s ability to love. The soul that is aware of this only through God’s Grace will never be satisfied or complacent with what is known about God’s Love and will always seek that union with God when the soul has the awareness that it is not in union with God. When Paul states to pray without ceasing it seems that he is telling us that we are prone to lose our awareness of the gift of faith which is natural because we are so mechanistic in our daily lives and thus become detached from our conscious connection to God. When this happens it demonstrates to us how we continue to be controlled by unconscious fears, doubts, desires, etc. Will must be directed to become more mindful of the fact that we are living our lives under the influence of social trances that influence us every minute to forget that faith is more than something to be believed. It is something that is to be explored every moment of our lives through the lens of God’s Love and Mystery.
“When Paul states to pray without ceasing it seems that he is telling us that we are prone to lose our awareness of the gift of faith which is natural because we are so mechanistic in our daily lives and thus become detached from our conscious connection to God.”
Yes. I think Ronald King has pinpointed it nicely here. Simone Weil (whose thought I never cease promoting) referred to this spiritual necessity as “attention.” Even mundane, everyday tasks can constitute ceaseless prayer, if done with attention. And this, I think, is the striving for perfection that constitutes what might be called “faith.” It is not participation in ceremony or ritual; it is participation in the constant awareness of one’s personal relationship to divinity.
Kyle writes, “I’ve expressly denied the possibility of having certainty of faith (mathematical or otherwise), so rationalism isn’t what I’m aiming for here.”
But that’s pretty much what I said: You can’t rest in your faith unless you have mathematical certainty. You deny the possibility of that certainty, therefore you can’t rest in your faith. I still think that makes you a rationalist: Not because you expect to find mathematical certainty, but because you *require* it as a condition for resting in your faith. Since you require it yet can’t attain it, you remain forever restless.
You claim that certainty is one of the peaks that you skirt, the other being absolute skepticism, while remaining on the road between them so as not to stand still (God forbid). But I still say that what you are traveling towards in your constant questioning, is certainty. There’s no other possible point in persistently delving into the bases for a belief, than to achieve greater certainty, one way or the other. In doing so you expect to make progress, not for its own sake but for the sake of achieving greater certainty, so you can rest in the truth, whatever that turns out to be. In which case, your destination actually is one of the peaks you claim to be shunning.
But truth is something other than certainty. I can (and do) strive to transcend my current understanding of reality and come closer to the truth, but this striving doesn’t bring me greater certainty. I’ve found the opposite to be the case. The more I’ve learned, the less certain I’ve become of all I know. The further along the road I go, the darker everything seems to be, and the more I have need of the hope that I’m making progress.
If things are getting cloudier, isn’t that the result of the magnifying glass getting too close? If you see less and less clearly, isn’t that a sign that you’re not moving toward the light?
I can’t deny that’s a possibility. Hence hope, not certainty.
Well said, Agellius.
Thanks brother.