From My Book "Breath of God"- On The Gift of Faith

The Spirit & Faith

            One of the 'gifts of the Spirit' Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 12 is faith (vs 9). Much of the New Testament is guided by the view that faith in Jesus Christ, is the result of the activity of the Spirit. Paul explicitly says that no one can proclaim Jesus Lord without the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). This kind of view is not universal throughout the New Testament. For instance, when Peter has what is probably the most famous confession of faith in the New Testament, it is the Father and not the Spirit that is named as the Source (Matthew 16:13-20). But throughout the Church's history, the idea that faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit has often been dominant, especially among protestants, and I am definitely a protestant Christian.

            Much of my reflection on faith has been rather intellectual and volitional. One has certain experiences, and reflects on those experiences. Having reflected fully, one realizes the possibilities those experiences indicate, what they might mean, and it is very big indeed. However, these experiences are not the type that can give one certainty, and so one must take a risk, and go out on an adventure, seeing how far they can push those experiences and finding out where all they leave. One makes a commitment to the reality those experiences seem  to point to, God and the Church, and walks down the life of faith. As one walks down that life, one is confronted with some difficulties or problems, like the problem of evil. So confronted, one must choose what kind of faith life best deals with them, and I argued in my last book that Christianity looked the best.

            I think that a lot of this is true so far as it goes. But it must be remembered that volition includes more than just the mind, it includes the heart and the imagination. The adventure of faith is something we take because, through certain experiences, we feel called to it, and we feel empowered to make a decision to leap into uncertainty and risk, on the hope and the considered possibility of finding something truly 'better' in life. Whitehead describes the nature of the religious experience and commitment succinctly when he says, "In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe. Religion is world-loyalty. The spirit at once surrenders itself to this universal claim and appropriates it for itself. So far as it is dominated by religious experience, life is conditioned by this formative principle, equally individual and general, equally actual and beyond completed act, equally compelling recognition and permissive of disregard." The religious experience, the call of God, always comes to us as something that might be vastly important and yet something that we have the option to throw away if we so choose. But it is the choice, and the experiences that bring about faith, it is the sense of being called to anything at all, that gives us a place for the Spirit, and an important one.

            And as it is for faith in God, and in religious experience, so it is with faith in Jesus Christ. We can only become Christians if we feel called to it, if we feel ourselves 'nudged' a certain direction. No doubt, reflective, intellectual reasoning plays a role in this, but no reasoning, no power, no inspiration is possible without the Spirit anyways, so we don't have to dichotomize our lives between that which the Spirit affects and that which it does not. So the Spirit is the Source of faith in the following ways:

            First of all, the Spirit prepares our hearts and the hearts of all humankind for faith through what I have called elsewhere (look up), "mundane religious experiences". These are encounters with the world, ways of experiencing the world, that everyone shares. When we sit and reflect on what these experiences are like, what philosophers would call their 'phenomenology', they give us some indication that there is more to life than meets the eye. Some of these experiences include artistic and aesthetic sensibilities, play, humor, our experience with the concept of perfection, the experience of innocence, hope, and as I've mentioned in this book, certain skills that strike us has having come from a higher source. When we live into the moments that are defined by these experiences we get the sense that there is more to life than meets the eye. There is an inspiring quality to them, they move us to consider certain things and perhaps to live in certain ways. That inspirational quality can only come by the Spirit, the Spirit is inspiration and motivation. In this way the Spirit prepares the heart for faith.

            Second the Spirit prepares the heart for faith in Christ specifically through repentance. By confronting us with an ideal possibility, what we could be in each moment, the Spirit also reveals the imperfection of the world. This gives us our sense of God as transcendently good, it is how the Spirit brings Yahweh's transcendent goodness and confronts the world with it. This is the source of our sense of the otherness of God. This reveals our need for something other than ourselves to save us, it makes us aware of our dependence on the goodness of God. It also enlightens the problem of evil, since this encounter with God makes us keenly aware of the evil in the world, and we are forced to try to reconcile this goodness we encounter in and through the world, and the evil that seems to define so much of it. Bringing to bear ideals of mercy and justice, it also enlightens the 'prophetic problem', the problem of how we are to reconcile God's mercy and justice. By confronting us with our own sinfulness, the Spirit makes us aware of our need for God, by confronting us with the sinfulness of the world, it makes some solution to the problem of evil necessary, by confronting us with mercy and justice it makes us aware of the prophetic problem. To the degree that these problems demand a solution which Jesus Christ seems to give (and I argued extensively and I think persuasively in my last book He did), the Spirit's gift of repentance is the gift of faith in Christ Jesus. John the Baptist must baptize with the water of repentance before we can receive the Christ.

            Finally, to the prepared and receptive heart the Spirit can give the call of faith, it can give us a role that includes belief in Jesus Christ. But we must be very careful here. It is so easy to go around judging people who do not believe or do not believe as we do, especially if what we think God has chosen to deny them the gift of the Spirit. I do not think that this is the way we should understand the Spirit or its role in our faith-life. It is not meant to be used as weapon, a dividing line, or a law book whereby we can judge others as less than ourselves. We are not to aggrandize ourselves as having received faith through the Spirit nor judge others as having been judged unworthy by God. This is antithetical to the unity which defines Her, and the humility that defines Christ.

            We need to keep our eyes on the mystery that is the Spirit, and the Spirit's work. We cannot know all that is going on in a person, nor why it is that the gift of faith has not been given. Honest people reject belief in God for honest reasons. Faith is a matter of 'seeing' and we can't ever be sure why it is some people see and some don't but we should not just assume that God has judged them unworthy. In the vision of the Holy Spirit given here, the Spirit is limited by what is going on in the world. The image it gives is of the 'best' the world can do, given the facts on the ground as they are. The free choices of the past place a limit on the Spirit's power. It can only offer roles, and empower people, in relation to what situations people find themselves in. And our situations are not just an external matter, they include our states of mind and abilities. Who we are is largely our responsibility, but it is not completely our responsibility. If a person, because of the horrors of the world, or because their mind has been hardened by past experiences into a purely empirical relationship with the world, cannot give themsel ves over to faith, it is not always in the Spirit's power to countervale this situation. They may just be too far along a given path for a singular and 'all-at-once' leap into faith. The role they are called to may not include belief in God or Christ, at least right now. I don't doubt that the Spirit, in the end, in the long term, wants to bring all people to faith in Christ and even Jesus Christ, but a person may not be in a place where that is psychologically possible for them, right now.

            Things cannot 'jump' into an absolute perfection. Perfection is a process. The Spirit's ultimate goal may be to make all people believers, but it can't do that until a process of transformation begins. A person's heart would have to be worked on, and the world they see around them would have to change. The next 'moment' the Spirit calls the person to, the completion the person is called to, is limited by what the person is now. So in the next moment the atheist may be called to do something or see something that would, given enough time, bring him or her to faith, but that doesn't mean that the next moment is one in which the atheist will have faith, necessarily.

            In fact, the best the world can be right now may include athiests. If an atheist, for instance, can defend the goodness of Christianity as an institution to other atheists without being a Christian themselves, such that their fellows won't be militantly opposed to it, it may be that this position makes them a better ally to the work for the Spirit than they would be if they came to belief. As such, the call they have received, though they would not understand it as a 'call', might not yet include a call to faith. We cannot box the Father in, His plans and ways may be broader than our own limited vision. We also need to be careful not to underestimate (nor overestimate, for that matter), the pervasiveness of sin. A parent who claims to be a Christian may also be an abuser of their child, should it surprise us that the child or those who claim solidarity with that child may, right now, be literally unable to accept the faith call? And in such a case it would do no good. There are some things that are impossible, even for God, even in relation to the human soul.

            There are certainly some people who probably recieve the call of faith and reject it. We cannot know for certain when we are dealing with one situation or the other, and we should be very wary of labelling anyone the devil, believer or non-believer. Rather, let us rejoice for the gift that we have been given in the form of a call to faith and the power we have received to respond to that call, testifying to the fact that nothing we accomplish is possible without God's help. Our response to the atheist should not be hatred or rejection, and certainly not rejection in the name of God. The Book of Job explicitly speaks against this kind of approach. Rather we should seek solidarity with the sufferer, even when their suffering leads them to rejection of God (Job 6:14), and try to make the world the kind of place that reflects the truth we believe: that God is real and that God cares about us. Lets seek not to judge the work of the Spirit, but rather to grease the wheels so the Spirit can bring all souls into Her wondrous Truth.

             We should also remember that faith is not the only gift of the Spirit. Faith is a wonderful gift, but relationship with God is more important than faith, and the Spirit ensures that God relates to all beings, all creatures, all objects, whether they know it or not. An atheist may be gifted in healing through means other than miracles, or in kindness or faithfulness, or in hospitality, to degrees greater than we are. And they may be recipients of the greatest gift of all, prophecy. There are, no doubt, many atheists who have spoken God's Word without even knowing it. There have been non-believers who have spoken on issues in ways that are truly Holy, when believers have kept darkly silent.

            In my last book I made a distinction between the "Institutional Church" and the "Hidden Church". I said that the Institutional Church's job was to make Jesus Christ's existence presence to the consciousness of the world, to help people experience Christ's life, death, and resurrection. The Hidden Church, I contended, is where God is working in the world, bringing about the Kingdom. We could never identify its workings, because it was animated by an ever-mysterious Spirit. While I have distanced myself from the idea that the Spirit is in all ways mysterious or uknowable, I still maintain that the Spirit is Holy Mystery. I want to re-affirm my Hidden Church/Institutional Church distinction. The Institutional Church's job is to embody the Spirit by pointing the way to Christ, through the man Jesus. We bring Jesus into people's lives through sacraments, by bringing the Disciples' experience of Jesus Christ, and ours, to more and more people. We ourselves also re-acquaint ourselves with Him continuously. The Hidden Church is the true Body of Christ, the places in the world that have been brought in line with the Character of Christ, with the Mind of the Universe. This may happen through Jesus, and it was for this reason in part that Christ came into the world as Jesus, but it can also come directly through the Spirit. It may be in the Church's food bank, or in the atheist's gift to a homeless man. Any moment that is in line with the behavior of Jesus, is Christ with us. It is important to remember that Jesus identified His family as those who do the Will of His Father (Matthew 12:49-50). It is about action, not belief. In the process of becoming the Body of Christ, on the road to theosis, an atheist may be farther along than I am.

            But belief does matter. It is through faith in Christ that we deepen our relationship with The Spirit. Faith helps the Spirit empower, and sustain us. Harold Kushner in WHO NEEDS GOD once suggested that the main difference between the average morally committed atheist and the average believer may be that day after day, as the 'long, hard slog' that is the war against sin drags on, the atheist may find that the well of power that he finds within him has dried up. Whereas the believer has an Infinite Well to turn to, to be refreshed from, to gain strength from. The Spirit's ability to empower the individual may be limited by our unwillingness to turn to God, to pray, to find faith. The atheist may find that the role he or she is called to is one that they can no longer fulfill, without the gift of faith. Hopefully at that point, the heart will be ready for the gift, because we need all the warriors we can.  

            The upshot of all this is that Christ's body extends beyond the Institutional Church. It no doubt includes not only atheists, but even moreso other religious movements as well. Balaam, in the Bible, is a pagan, but he is able to receive the Spirit of God for the benefit of the Israelite people (Numbers 24:2). The Spirit works in all movements for good in the world, and doubtless other cultures and other faiths have had access to the Spirit in countless ways. The Spirit loves variety, and it may have prepared the world for Christ by expressing God's reality to the world, in vastly different ways in all of the world's great religions and cultures. No Person of the Trinity can be boxed in too tightly. Nearly every religion includes conversations that have been moved along by the Holy Spirit, and may include insights from the same Spirit that are superior to the ones found in the Bible. There may be conversations that the Bible doesn't include at all, that are important in their own right. But we must, as Christians, see all of these religious movements as pointing the way towards Christ. We should proclaim the Spirit-led truths that we find in any religion, and yet also proclaim the Spirit-led truth of Jesus Christ. We need to learn, through theological dialogue, philosophical reflection, and by helping people experience Jesus, to bring Christ to bare on all that the Spirit has done throughout the world. But we must, as with the atheist, respect the decision any person comes to, knowing that we are not in control of all that happens to the world, and that not even God is. To do otherwise is to be an enemy to freedom, and thereby to remove from ourselves the image of the Spirit that we are supposed to be taking  on.

            The Church should also consider the idea that it is Christ that we need to be pointing people to, and this may not mean that we have to point them to Jesus. I am not saying that we should stop proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Man-God, quite the opposite. What I am saying is that through Jesus people may experience Christ and accept Christ without accepting Jesus. Harold Kushner does not believe in the Trinity, nor in Jesus as God, but he does accept a vision of God as Suffering Love, as limited and creating/redeeming through a process much like crucifixion and resurrection. Alfred N Whitehead did not believe in the Trinity, but he saw Jesus as a reflection of Who God is. He coined the succinctly Christian phrase: "God is the co-sufferer Who understands". To the degree that these people, and others, have allowed a Christian vision of God to shape their theology (though I'm not sure Kushner is fully aware how indebted to Christianity he is for his vision), I believe they have accepted Christ without becoming Christians. I think that God's goal in and through Jesus Christ has been fulfilled in them. Jesus the man cannot become a stumbling block to accepting the Son. Jesus IS the Son, to accept the one is to accept the other and vice versa. We need to quit worrying so much about historical and philosophical formulations. If our proclamation of Jesus Christ brings the world to a vision of God, of various cultural expressions, that is Suffering Love, I'd say that we will have fulfilled our call to baptize 'all the nations' 'in His Name'. One consequence of this, however, is that there are a lot of Christians who need converting to Christ. There are so many who claim solidarity with Jesus Christ but who believe in a God that has no relationship to the Image we receive from Him. Harold Kushner is more a Christian than they.

            I want to make one modification to the Hidden/Institutional Church idea here. I said in my last book that the Institutional Church could never move with confidence that is the selfsame Hidden Church, except in hindsight. I want to amend that, I think now that The Institutional Church can move in confidence that is the Body of Christ in one way: during worship. When it takes the position of the nothing, giving all glory to Another, proclaiming its own sinfulness and its absolute dependence on Christ and the Spirit, it can have some confidence that it is moving as the Body of Christ, and moreover as a reflection of the reality of the Spirit. There are so many ways the Church tries to express that reality, so many arguments as to when worship has truly reached the summit of the Spirit's world. So many ways in which the Church has claimed to be a community of the 'Born Again'. Those arguments will form the backbone or our next section.