At 13:14 16.05.1996 +0200, you wrote:
>Many thanks, Therese, for the inspiring account of a dynamical
>view of faith and the instructive contrast with both skepticism
>and certitude.
>
>I don't think too many of us on this list still regard our
>calling as the search for static permanent universal truths, but
>many of us may:
>
>(1) mistake faith as something that must be of that sort (as it
>did become it seems in many Christian traditions, very likely
>under the influence of Hellenistic neo-Platonism, and not
>irrespective of the social conditions of the European Middle Ages
>where stability of _everything_ was very much in the interest of
>a tiny feudal aristocracy trying to hold its own against a not
>very docile peasantry), and
Right, this is what my research is concerned with: The history of the
concept of faith, or why it is that faith has fallen into such disrepute
despite the fact that it is something of which we are still capable and
something that has great potential to help us. The development of the
concept is really fascinating - in its original form among the ancient
Israelites (and one of my theses is that the concept truly was original with
them), it is a thoroughly coherant idea, faith is an existential phenomenon,
or an existential category. There is a slow metamorphosis as this way of
thinking meets up with classical Greek epistemology during the Hellenistic
period - not just neo-Platonism, but Aristotelianism is also an important
influence ... in Christianity, faith becomes eventually (by the time of
Clement of Alexandria and, later, Augustine) thoroughly conflated with the
epistemological phenomen of belief, and is mainly conceived of as a
cognitive category.
This shift leads to considerable difficulties for Christian thinkers, as
many aspects of religious commitment become simply absurd when faith is so
conceived ... the insight about social conditions during the European Middle
Ages is something I hadn't thought of, but surely also plays a role -
thanks, Jay! I now have another angle for looking at the problem!
Anti-semitism is of course also an important factor, that is also something
I need to investigate further. But in any case - Kierkegaard does a bang-up
job of showing exactly where the contradictions lie in a religious
commitment based on faith-as-the-epistemological-phenomenon-of-belief. As
does Nietzsche also. Then you have the Christian Existentialists such as
Jaspers, and wonderful, wonderful Martin Buber (Two Types of Faith -
terrific book, much easier than I and Thou) and we start to see a slow
realization that faith doesn't really work as anything other than an
existential commitment ... unfortunately we still have today oodles of
people in the analytic tradition, philosophers of religion, who find
existentialism too fluffy and unacademic, who continue to try to rely on the
epistemological approach and rather than going for an overhaul of the
faith-concept itself, try to defend the skewed faith-as-belief concept as
is, with arguments based on warrent (e.g. Plantinga), probability (e.g.
Swineburne) etc. pp. This is what happens when people don't learn languages
and when they go around scoffing at history ...
Oops, I'm spouting ... But I just find it very interesting to see that the
concept of faith has undergone such 'dialectical' development as well ...
>(2) regard skepticism as a progressive, scientific attitude for
>scholarship, and not only in matters of 'ultimate concern'
>
>perhaps not having considered the kinds of alternatives which a
>dialectical view of life might offer us on both counts.
>
>Skepticism says that we should not have any faith, not only that
>we should reject all certainties (until proven, but none ever
>are), but that we should expect even probable truths to have
>their warrants eroded, or their conditions of possibility changed
>out from under them.
Faith construed as an existential category actually has much in common with
this skepticism ... the older and wiser Kierkegaard, who had gained faith,
writes in _Works of Love_ (perhaps his greatest work):
'Mistrust says: 'Deception stretches unconditionally as far as the truth,
falsity unconditionally as far as honesty; there is no unconditional
criterion of truth or of honesty and integrity. So it is also with love;
hypocrisy, artifice, wiliness, and seduction stretch unconditionally as far
as love does, and they can imitate true love so srikingly that there is no
absolute criterion, because in every expression of truth or of true love
there exists the possibility of deception which corresponds to it exactly.'
And so it is; so shall it be. Precisely because existence will test _you_,
test _your_ love or whether there is love in you, for this very reason with
the help of the understanding it presents you with truth and deception as
two equal possibilities in contrast to each other, so that there must be a
revelation of what is in you since _you_ judge, that is, since in judging
you _choose_. Alas, many think that the judgment is something reserved for
the far side of the grave, and so it is. But one forgets that judgment lies
much closer, that is takes place every moment, because existence judges you
every moment you live, inasmuch as to live is to judge oneself, to become
open. For this very reason existence must be so arranged that you do not
with the aid of certainty in knowledge slink out of revealing yourself in
judging or in the way you judge. When deception and truth are presented as
two equal possibilities in contrast to each other, the decision is whether
there is love or mistrust in you. For example, one says, 'Even what appears
to be the purest feeling can nevertheless be a deception - certainly it is
possible; it must be possible -- _ergo_ I choose mistrust or belief in
nothing.' This means that one reveals his mistrust. Let us turn the
conclusion around: 'Truth and falsity reach unconditionally just as far;
therefore it is possible that even what appears as the vilest behaviour
could be pure love' -- well, now, it is possible; it must be possible --
_ergo_ the lover chooses to believe all things, that is, he reveals his
love. ... Therefore, if on the basis of the possibility of deception
someone can demonstrate that one should believe nothing at all, I can
demonstrate that one should believe all things - on the basis of the
possibility of deception. If someone thinks that a man should not believe
even the best person, for it is still possible that he is a deceiver, then
the opposite also holds true, that you can expect the good from even the
lowest fellow, for it is still possible that his baseness is an illusion.
'Love is the very opposite of mistrust, and yet it is initiated in the same
knowledge ...'
(From the essay 'Love Believes All Things -- and Yet Is Never Deceived', in
_Works of Love_, trans. Howard and Edna Hong, Harper & Row: 1962.)
This faith, which Kierkegaard describes as loving, faces the same
uncertainty, the same lack of knowledge, as skepticism, and chooses in this
lack of certainty that to which it will commit itself - just as skepticism does.
Our view of dynamics may be that hypotheses
>once established as reasonably likely can only come historically
>to be seen as less warrantable, or to become irrelevant to new
>concerns or new conditions. But we do still go on, most of us. We
>do still take the risk of wasting our lives in a vain project of
>passing on useful ideas and information to others and to an
>uncertain future. Every day we commit to this agenda ... so we
>must indeed have some sort of dynamic faith, a faith that is
>contingent, but also renewable from day to day, act to act,
>commitment to commitment.
Yes! 'Every journey to a journey is a type of faith.' This commitment to
commitment is also faith, a loving faith. The fact that in skepticism one
still goes on is something that makes evident a certain grace (free gift
i.e. unconditional love) in you skeptical scholars, and in all who teach -
that exactly without having any assurance that it will work, that it will be
remembered, that it will hold up to future scrutiny, you go on with your
efforts ...
>A dialectical _praxis_, then, is not at all one that is assured
>of making a better world tomorrow, but only of aiming to do so
>today. We cannot, I believe, know the consequences of our
>interventions, whether for good or ill in the longer term. But we
>can try today to do something that seems good now, and one of
>those things, for me, is to find ways to intervene more
>successfully. I suppose that is hybris, and rationally it is
>really folly (becoming able to make bigger mistakes!), but still
>there is a contingent faith that if these things are not done
>others will do more ill, as they do now. (If there were no evil
>in the world, would doing good seem so necessary?)
I think that if one admits that one is acting on faith, and not on the basis
of some kind of higher knowledge, then it is not hybris. But admitting that
one is acting on faith makes one appear weak - and in truth, one who acts on
faith *is* 'weak'. On the other hand, one who does *not* act on faith is
weaker still ...
>This is, of course, in my cultures, an uncomfortably masculine
>anxiety: to fear that if we do not dominate (through good), other
>(males) will dominate (us) through evil.
Oh, come on! As charming as these self-denigrating remarks made by male
feminists are - this is not just a masculine anxiety.
That, too, has been writ
>large in some of our religious systems. I can see the appeal of a
>Third Force, a God, who does not end this game but does play in
>it (and not as referee but as unpredictable partner).
Or perhaps some force that does not seek to *war* against evil, but that
transcends both good and evil as we understand them, and transforms all
things by love ...
I wonder
>though what remains in our traditions of (and I do not believe
>this is myth, perhaps on faith) the pre=patriarchal cultures,
>where Torah was, like Gaia and the Mother, a female (was there
>then a feminine? probably not as we understand it)
In the Semitic languages I've come into contact with (Hebrew and Ugaritic)
there is a feminine - sort of. The philologists speculate that what we call
the feminine in conformity with traditional Latin-based grammatical
terminology was actually originally a ... [Vereinzelnungsform] ... oh,
German is lovely, but hard to translate - singularizing form?? But yes,
Torah, as well as Emunah (faithfulness) are 'feminine' forms. And both
ideas do contain, as I explained, the nurturing 'feminine' element ...
force for
>order, not an enforced order like Yahweh's, but a natural order
>that gave without being forced to yield up, a bountiful earth and
>womb that did not need to be raped/controlled, but only adjusted
>to.
I call attention to a little slip you make here: 'need' to be
raped/controlled?? It almost sounds like: 'In contrast to today's unruly
earth/woman whom you have to rape/control to get what you need ...'
It is of course still the fact that earth/woman, the nurturing element, does
not need to be raped or controlled. On the other hand, being merely
adjusted to is not sufficient - if the land/woman is to be fruitful, she
herself must first be nurtured/loved, just as faith, if it is to nurture us
to health, must first be nurtured by us to life. This is the essence of the
covenantal relationship: the relationship is mutual. Cf. concept of
marriage-covenant. There is a double-sided grace, an active and passive
moment (but the active is passive and the passive is active): the side that
dares to offer love (= nurturing) without knowing that it will be accepted,
and the side that dares to trust and accept love, without knowing that the
lover will be true to the promise.
>That natural order was never stable either, but dynamic, with its
>own dialectic, but not one built mainly on contradictions and
>conflicts (the masculine preoccupation), but on the bringing
>forth of new possibilities out of the rich potential of a ground
>made up of all that had been brought forth before. I'm not quite
>up to trying to construct even an imaginary Gaian dialectics ...
>but this too ought to be part of our dialectics of dialectics, to
>bring forth another possibility that might help us adjust a
>little better to a world we do not and never shall control. JAY.
Good, but - beware of vilifying the 'masculine' and making the 'feminine'
the ideal. Both are necessary for fruitfulness and for faith!
Therese
P.S. I seem not to be getting any messages from xmca - my e-mail has been
acting pretty funny lately (hence also the lateness of my reply) - anyone
have a clue what is wrong there?