Faith as the proclamation, “It is Good”

Today the word “faith” is by and large used in order to express an individual’s belief in something for which they lack the body of evidence that would be required to make that belief intellectually justified. For example, one might say of a friend who has just been in a life-threatening accident, “I have faith that she will pull through.”

Yet there is something more than this at work here, for the belief is not simply one for which we lack enough evidence to make it a justified one; it is used in relation to a belief that we desire. For instance, if our friend who had the accident is so badly hurt that, should she survive, she would be in a coma for the rest of her life, we might say, “I fear that she will pull through.”

In this way the word “faith” isn’t simply connected to beliefs that lack a sufficient level of justification, but to a subsection of that group: those beliefs that we also desire.

Although this everyday usage has little to do with the original meaning of the word we can hear within it the distant echo of its origin.

For faith, in its full-blooded sense, describes a way of living in full confidence of something hopeful without actually perceiving that thing. The problem comes when this full confidence is seen as connected to some kind of intellectual affirmation.

To understand this we need to briefly consider why some of the earliest church writings were against the wisdom tradition (Worldly philosophy etc.). Why would this be the case? It is because the “wisdom tradition” describes a disparate body of thought that lays bare reality in its brute materiality; that is, beyond the imposition of subjective meaning. In the wisdom traditions things are just what they are and have no lasting value. It is against this that the Apostle Paul wrote.

However it is at this point that we need to be careful, for faith does not describe an intellectual disagreement with the wisdom tradition (which would put it on the same level, i.e. as a philosophical position). Faith describes a lived protest against it. In other words faith is a mode of life in which we encounter the world as infused with depth and meaning. It is an attitude towards the world that births within us a profound concern and care (as Heidegger wrote).

Think about this in relation to the work of love. If one believes that the world is meaningful, yet does not love, they cannot help but experience the world as meaningless. Yet if one believes that the world is meaningless yet loves, that person cannot help but experience their world as meaningful.

The confidence that comes from love has no necessary connection with ones rational reflection (if it did then only people with a particular philosophical outlook could love), it is a way of comporting oneself towards existence. To paraphrase Pascal, it is a reason of the heart that reason cannot know.

The lived certainty of faith then has nothing to do with belief or non-belief in gods, natural law or karmic returns. It is a mode of care that, when looking at the world, causes us to proclaim, “It is good, it is good.”