The Unimportance of Belief

So I've been going through The Future of Faith slowly, as it's pretty dense, and Cox has so many excellent things to say. I don't mean "dense" in a negative way--one could easily skim over some of his words and still understand the whole context. However, I really like what he has to say. He writes it well, in a very clear fashion, and his conclusions make a big difference in understanding our faith.

For example, a central thesis for Cox's tome is that we are moving out of the Age of Belief into an emerging Age of the Spirit. To understand this, we have to know what the Age of Belief is and what preceded it (yes, something else came first).

Cox argues that beliefs were not central to Christianity until around the time of Christianity becoming an official state religion with Constantine. Cox states:

Creeds are clusters of beliefs. But the history of Christianity is not a history of creeds. It is the story of a people of faith who sometimes cobbled together creeds out of beliefs. It is also the history of equally faithful people who questioned, altered, and discarded those same creeds. p. 4

This time was what Cox called the "Age of Faith," when Christianity had more to do with living a life rather than believing certain things. The "Age of Belief," when particular beliefs became central to Christianity arose when Christianity essentially became owned by the State:

Christianity, at least in its official version, froze into a system of mandatory precepts that were codified into creed and strictly monitored by a powerful hierarchy and imperial decrees. Heresy became treason, and treason became heresy. p. 6

This makes a lot of sense to me, as I have discovered that a strict set of beliefs and proving them seems rather futile and unhelpful in my faith. It has become something that I have become rather frustrated by in hearing other people discuss.

I agree with a quote from the Science & the Sacred blog:

God does not leave an empirical bread crumb trail in order to demonstrate His existence. Rather, the only way we can really know God is through the gracious work of the Holy Spirit, who illuminates to us what God has revealed about Himself. It is only by the Spirit that we are able truly to hear the “speech” and “knowledge” poured out by the heavens God created (Ps. 19). Only by God’s gracious self-revelation can we understand that all of “nature” is in fact creation.

In this light, our apologetic task is not primarily to identify statistical anomalies and gaps in the created order that could be filled by some amorphous “designer.” Our task is boldly and joyously to point people to the God revealed in Jesus Christ as the only possible source of all of creation. Here, we can suggest that the deep structures of creation, including many of the remarkable coincidences and convergences of life’s development, cohere with our admittedly limited understanding of the God whom we proclaim is creator of everything.

While this quote deals with science explicitly, it is related to the idea of specific beliefs. If the system of unquestionable beliefs never arose, the whole debate over science versus religion, creationism versus evolution, may never have arisen in the first place. If we do not feel like we have to have absolute evidence for every belief, then we may be able to better deal with ambiguity and therefore also modify our beliefs when appropriate.

But is this understanding of the development of these so-called "Ages" important. It is. As Cox states, "It frees people who shape their faith in a wide spectrum of ways to understand themselves as authentically Christian, and it exposes fundamentalism for the distortion it is" (p. 14).

This is just a fabulous quote that so much could be said about. But ultimately, Cox asserts (and I completely agree) that understanding the history of Christianity really helps those of us who do not ascribe to fundamentalist traditions validate our experiences and our belief. And ironically, it helps provide evidence for our beliefs...

Future of Faith, Part 1

The first post as part of my stop on the The Future of Faith blogging tour!

I personally am excited to see attention given to more incarnational elements of spirituality and recognizing this is a legitimate way to engage and experience God. Cox beautifully describes this by saying "But it would be more accurate to think of it as the rediscovery of the sacred in the immanent, the spiritual within the secular. More people seem to recognize that it is our everyday world, not some other one, that, in the words of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, 'is charged with the grandeur of God'" (p. 2).

Cox also states that "people turn to religion more for support in their efforts to live in this world and make it better, and less to prepare for the next" (p. 2-3). Now this could be a controversial statement. He is making it not as a value judgment, but as an observation. Does this line up wiht what you've seen? And since this is a faith-based blog, do you think that's a good thing or not? I personally think it is valuable. We do so often ignore the present and bringing the Kingdom to Earth now...

Finally (for today), I think it's interesting how Cox differentiates the terms faith and belief. He states "faith is about deep-seated confidence... It is what theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) called 'ultimate concern,' a matter of what the Hebrews spoke of as the 'heart'" (p. 3). In contrast, he argues that "belief, on the other hand, is more like opinion" (p. 3).

I think it is important to separate those two terms, however I'm not sure I would completely agree with the definition of faith he gives. He describes it as "confidence," which indicates a lack of doubt or struggle. From the foundation of this blog, I am convinced that faith is always based on deep-seated confidence, but rather deep-seating conviction. I really like Tillich's definition, which focuses more on our concerns and priorities than being objectively and subjectives convinced of something.

Yes, these are subtle differences, but the implications are huge. Deep-seating confidence feeds into the positivist traditions of finding objective truth through scientific discovery and apologetics. On the other hand, deep-seated conviction is based on a more organic, human experience (in my opinion--you know where I land :) ). What say you to all of this? What do you think of the definitions? It's also interesting to see web definitions of faith.