Levels and types of faith
Ultimately, faith is about
believing, trusting, and building a relationship with God. Faith is often
talked about as a yes or no proposition—that you have it or you don’t—but faith
comes in degrees and people can have faith in one part of the Christian message
but not others. This could be because they haven’t heard them, don’t understand
them, or are still working on them. This was true even for those who met Jesus,
with one person who met him exclaiming “Lord I believe. Forgive my unbelief,”
and his disciples often lacking understanding and vacillating in and out of
faith. A notable example is when Peter began to sink after stepping out onto
the water in faith.
Thomas Jefferson cut and
pasted sections of the Bible into a new document that excluded miracles,
focusing on Jesus as a moral teacher, writing “I am a real Christian, that is
to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.” On the other extreme, I’ve heard
accounts of believers who came to faith because they believed they had
experienced miracles, but understood little else about the life, teachings,
death, or resurrection of Jesus. Jesus himself expressed dismay that people
needed “signs and wonders” to believe and said that those who believed without
seeing them were blessed—does that mean the miracles weren’t important except
as a path to faith for those who would have trouble without them? Whether these
partial faiths are pathways to fuller faith or sufficient in themselves is not
ours to judge, but they do make it clear that faith has degrees and components.
There are many valuable resources to understand levels and
types of faith. A good place to start is the Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft and Ronald
Tacelli, who differentiate between things we believe (like those listed in the
creeds) and acts or components or levels of faith (such as emotional and
intellectual). It seems like the former is both a way to describe and perhaps a
pathway to growing in the latter.
As one way to think of faith, it’s helpful to me to consider specific beliefs regarding Jesus, which begin with beliefs that non-Christians might hold, and then progress with stepping stones in building a full Christian faith. These include believing the following about Jesus:
· Historical
figure—that he actually existed and lived
· Wise
teacher
· Role
model
· Moral
guide
· Healer,
miracle worker, giver of signs and wonders
· Died
on cross
· Raised
from dead
· Son
of God/presence of God on earth/part of Trinity
· Sacrifice/Redeemer/substitute
in atonement—forgiveness of sins for the guilty
· Victor
over sin, Satan, and death
· New
path towards righteousness and salvation and God (the law was the old path)
· All elements of the Creeds
Regarding reasons Jesus
came and his roles, his dual nature (being both fully God and fully human) can
be hard to understand, and for many, to accept. Of the great many writings on
this, I suggest a brief sermon “On The
Feast Of The Nativity” written in the fifth century by St. Leo the Great.
It may not resolve the issue for you, but it gives some useful perspective and
reflection.
Initial reasons people come to faith can become pathways to
fuller and broader faith including other reasons and attributes. In some sense,
this is like the blind men and the elephant—different people perceive and are
drawn to different natures at different times. All are true, but none are
complete. But is complete perception of all of Christ a requirement? Or even
possible for humans? After all, we are called to have faith like that of
children—curious and wanting to know more, but not supposing we understand
everything. And, again, Paul told us “now we see in a mirror, dimly….” Only God
fully understands.
And still, in Mere
Christianity, C. S. Lewis speaks of us not really being left the choice of
accepting Jesus as a great moral teacher but not accepting his claim to be the
son of God. Either we accept that Jesus is who he claims to be or we believe
that his claims were those of a madman or worse. As Lewis points out, “A man
who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a
great moral teacher.”
And yet, it’s comforting to know that God will not reject floundering faith; Isaiah 42:3 tells us:
A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. In faithfulness he will bring forth justice.
Regarding levels of faith, Paul wrote of feeding the
Corinthians with milk instead of solid food because they were not ready for
it—clearly, he customized his message for the level of faith of his audience.
He also wrote that those at more advanced stages of belief should take care not
do anything to hinder those “still on milk” —he’s acknowledging different
levels or stages of faith.
Another way to consider faith in
Jesus is in terms of reasons he came. The Bible contains many passages in which
Jesus or others said why he came. The Catechism
of the Catholic Church (paragraphs 457-60) collects them under four main
reasons:
1. Reconciling
us with God (from Nicene Creed)
2. So
that we might know God’s love (from John)
3. To
be our model of holiness
4. To make us partakers of the Divine Nature [by receiving the Spirit (through baptism) and being adopted as children of God],
while, the book, Why Christ Came, by Beeke and Boekestein
lists 31 reasons, all drawn from the Bible.
On the topic, Augustine wrote,
Man’s maker was made man that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast; that the Bread might hunger, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired on its journey; that Truth might be accused of false witnesses, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might grow weak; that the Healer might be wounded; that Life might die.
However categorized, there are many biblical passages on why
Jesus came, and contemplating them individually and as a whole can be valuable.
And the most often quoted Bible verse offers powerful focus: John 3:16: “For
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes
in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And the next verse is often
overlooked, but seems similarly comforting: 17 “For God did not send his Son
into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
We have varied roles
While some are called to spend their
whole lives in work that is directly faith related, there’s a place for people
who don’t completely drop their existing lives to become followers. As Paul
articulated, there are many ways to live the Christian life and serve. As
mentioned above, Joanna and Susanna, Joseph of Arimathea and many others
supported Jesus’s ministry from resources generated elsewhere, and most
believers in the early church kept their jobs and contributed to the church.
Even Paul continued to work as a tent maker so that “we would not be a burden.”
William Wilberforce (who played a lead role in ending the slave trade and then
ending slavery in England) considered giving up his seat in Parliament to
become a preacher, but was advised by John Newton (an ex-slave trader who
became a preacher and wrote “Amazing Grace”) that he should stay in Parliament
and use his position to do the work he eventually did. But it wasn’t any of
their professions that defined these people—it was their faith.
Accepting who is in
charge
You
should never presume to know that you can predict how things will end up even
when it seems obvious and this includes how you will end up feeling about
things. God has a way of changing things—including you— to maximize your growth
in ways that will continually surprise you if you let them play out and have an
open mind. Again, the song, In the Light
by DC Talk is about that struggle and relying on God, as are many other songs.
It seems to me that a critical difference between Judas and
Peter was that, upon seeing how the Passion played out, Judas gave up and
killed himself, while Peter went out and wept: Judas trusted his own sense of
things and took matters into his own hands, while Peter, for all of his faults
and failings, ultimately trusted Jesus.
In many places Jesus talks about the importance of
persistence with respect to prayer and faith—he understood our tendency to
forget and fall away. And he modeled continual prayer.
Sections in this chapter:
- The heart of faith
- The core message and goal for your life
- Seeking to trust God and become more like Jesus
- Knowing your role—and God’s
- Fruit of the Spirit
- Managing our priorities and our praise
- Identity, the creeds, and unity
- The struggle of finding and holding faith
- Faith must be our own
- Levels and types of faith
- Faith vs. knowledge
- Faith and the Law and Works
- Free Will and The Fall
- Seeking to understand the Bible and life through discernment
- The challenge of discernment
- Handling different discernments
- "Our own words"
- Exploring challenging passages and ideas
- The importance of prayer
- Personal reflections
- The importance of living the life
- It’s not too late
Comments
Post a Comment