Faith

Quite often today the word ‘faith’ follows the word ‘blind’. Faith, some think, is blind because it claims knowledge where there is no knowledge and certainty where there is no certainty, in disregard of evidence, reason, or common sense.

Part of the problem is that we use the word ‘faith’ in different ways, as in ‘the Christian faith’ and ‘my faith got me through’. The first really means ‘the content of Christianity’, something more like ‘belief’, what might be set down in a creed. The second has less to do with belief—in difficult times we don’t worry too much about the Procession of the Holy Spirit—than with trust. I trusted God to see me through.

Faith is different from knowledge and from belief. It isn’t new information, nor is it dogmatic statement. And not all those who believe necessarily have faith. St James pointed out that the devils in hell didn’t do too badly on the belief side (James 2, 19). Nor do all those with faith necessarily have belief. Graham Greene, for one, thought that faith lingered even when belief had gone.

But faith must have some object. It can’t be a free-floating, undirected, self-justifying mental state. We have faith in something. As Christians, we have faith in Christ as the realisation of God for us. The object of our faith is not abstract—a truth or principle—but embarrassingly specific: this man at this time.

Nor does faith, by itself, make its object true. Willed faith directed at Christ does not make him any truer than he was before. The truth of faith does not arise from us. Faith is a response to what is worthy of faith.

But how do we know what is worthy of faith? Why this person rather than that? Why Jesus rather than Jim Jones of Jonestown? Isn’t faith so risky that we had better avoid it and stick to reason?

But faith doesn’t require the abandonment of reason. Reason, judgment, still work on, informing faith even though they do not produce it. That is why there can be such a thing as ‘reasonable faith’. “By their fruits ye shall know them”, said Jesus (Matt 7, 20), inviting us to exercise our judgment; and that excludes Jim Jones. Not blind faith but reasonable faith shows us what is trustworthy; and as we live in faith, the evidence of that trustworthiness grows.