Edward Watson, finalist in Theology and Philosophy here at Oriel, delivered another thought-provoking homily at last night's Choral Eucharist.
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In my homily last term I briefly argued that authority within Christianity could not come from scriptural sources, but that faith itself should be considered the ultimate source for and affirmation of Christian beliefs. I would today like to properly flesh out what I believe faith to be and how it relates to the Christian story. Almost none of the thoughts expressed here are original, being instead plagiarised from the work of various existentialist philosophers and theologians over the past century, going back I think to Kierkegaard. I hope they bear repeating anyway! Some of them are also somewhat on the depressing side, so I apologise in advance if this all gets a bit too heavy.
First things first, I would like to say what I think religious faith is not. I do not think faith to be a cognitive or emotional state, an attitude held towards something: that is, I don't believe one can technically have faith in something. One can of course have faith in God in some sense, but this sense is not the one I consider to be theologically relevant. For one thing, I do not think God is the type of thing one could have faith in, for the same reason that I don't think it technically possible to believe in God like I can believe in my own existence, or that I am in Oriel chapel preaching. In order to believe in something, to have faith in something, one must be able to grasp it, to stand in a cognitive relationship to it: one must be able to shape words around it. But to expect to be able to genuinely grasp God seems to me as misguided as expecting to be able to physically grasp ahold of light. It belies a misunderstanding of the thing with which we are dealing.
As opposed to this view of faith, I prefer to think of faith as a state of being: perhaps the best way to draw out what I mean by this is to suggest that the most suitable contrast to faith is not doubt, or disbelief, but despair. True, one can despair in things, but there is a readily available sense of despair where to despair is to be in a particular existential state. It is with this existential state of despair that faith, as I understand it, is to be contrasted.
Despair often follows, in my mind, from the acceptance that the existentialists were right about the way the world is: that in and of itself the world is shallow and meaningless; that it is filled with inexplicable and unjustifiable suffering, that what beauty there is is transient and destined for destruction, that we, individually and as a race are hollow, that one day we will die, undignified and impotent and one day all our greatest works will be annihalated. On this view, we, even at our most exalted, are of less significance to the universe than a handful of dust is to us.
This is not a cheery picture of the world, and certainly not one to tell your children. It is, however, a picture that has impressed itself upon many (though most of them have, it must be said, been French). Somewhat bizarrely, however, it is only after this picture of the world is accepted that faith can manifest itself.
Of course, the natural (and utterly rational) response to this picture is to deny worth to existence. This is despair: not to say that self destruction is worth-while, but to accept the far more harrowing proposition that it doesn't matter either way. This is despair, apathy, and in the very deepest sense, spiritual death.
But despair is not the only response to this world view: there is a second reaction: faith.
Faith accepts that those things which naturally lead to despair are true, but rejects their logical conclusion. Faith admits a world of little more than shadows and dust, but dances still. It admits human insignificance but glorifies human love and nobility anyway. It does not find meaning or justification in the finitude of wordly existence: instead, it rejects the need for the world to provide either. This is the absurdity of faith: it is founded not upon reason, but upon reason's defeat. Faith is the affirmation of life against despair.
You can find the kernel of much of what I've just claimed in any atheist existentialist tract you care to call to hand: the question now stands, what is Christian about it?
The answer to this question has two parts: the first is the Cross. In the Christian story, we are faced with the death of the Christ in the world. This is not the death of a good man: it it not even the death of the best man: it is the death of the very best that man could ever be. Nor is it a noble, gallant death. Rather, it is small, pitiful, painful and slow, unnoticed by all but a few foolish disciples. The Cross is that upon which the very highest brought low, and in this degradation of God despair finds its ultimate expression.
But just as the Cross is the ultimate expression of despair, so the resurrection is the ultimate expression of faith. The world has done its worst, yet still life remains. Despite being brought low, the highest stands, not just untouched but higher still, elevated. Life is not just affirmed against despair: it is rejoiced in, lighter and more beautiful than before. In his wholly absurd victory, Christ emerges transcendent, the new being, and in him faith becomes indestructible: despair is vanquished; death is dead.
There is no other story that tells the victory of faith over despair like the Christian story. Furthermore, the core of the story remains, whether or not you accept the historical reality of the resurrection. That which is expressed remains: the victory of faith in Christ is its own reality. This truth is transcendent, its absurdity its own affirmation.
What then of God? God is, in Tillich's account, humanity's ultimate concern, nothing more, nothing less. For Tillich this is the ground of our being, that in virtue of which we are something rather than nothing. I would like to draw the notion of the ultimate human concern slightly narrower (though I believe Tillich includes this concept within his) and say that the ultimate human concern is not why we are, but why we should be. And if faith is the affirmation that yes, we should exist, then God is, by definition, nothing more nor less than the root of that faith. Ineffable, irrational and, in strict wordly terms, nothing at all, God is, to all intents and purposes, invisible: and yet as being after being embraces joy against despair, as love is formed in the face of all the world's desolation, God is affirmed.
It is in this affirmation that we truly find beauty, hope and love. In faith the beauty of the world is set free from any responsibility to gift worth to reality, and in its lightness it is more beautiful still. Through God hope defeats the fear of reason. Through faith, through our own lightness, we can love, unencumbered by doubt or reserve. And it is through this love, drawn from the divine, that we arrive at the core of Christian teaching, truths which far from needing to be rooted down in dogma, need instead to be given flight in faith.
Amen.
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