More Thoughts on Faith and Doubt

[[Dear Sister, I never heard your take on the Apostle Thomas' doubt before. You don't think faith is the opposite of doubt? I always heard it was the same as unbelief and that the reading was about refusing to believe unless one had evidence. I always thought faith was about believing without evidence.]]

Thanks for writing.  I think your questions are mainly implied so let me give them a shot. First, no I don't think faith is about believing without evidence. Belief is not a synonym for faith really; it is more an intellectual assent to something. Faith involves the whole person and is an act of trust and courage; we entrust ourselves to the truth and compassion of God, and we grow in faith. Paul Tillich defined faith as the "state of being grasped by an ultimate concern," where ultimate concern is that which demands everything from us and promises us everything as well. To be taken hold of by an ultimate concern means to be taken hold of by the question of meaning and to be open to the source and answer to that question. Another way of saying this is the Benedictine aim to "Seek God" where we seek the very thing we are made to find and be found by. When we awake to this need to seek specifically after that One who is the source and end of all things, we have been grasped or taken hold of by an ultimate concern.

As for evidence, last Sunday's Gospel reading recognizes that faith requires evidence, but not in the sense that one wants scientific evidence. The evidence leading to faith is the actual and fruitful faith and witness of others, so it is significant that Thomas is absent from the community when the Risen Christ is first recognized. Thomas is concerned that the disciples' lives have been changed not by delusions or something similar due to grief, but by the crucified Christ, the One in whom most take offense. When we read the gospels or epistles of the NT, we read the witness of others who have indeed met the risen Christ and had their lives changed by the encounter. We welcome the newly baptized into a faith community and help the entire community realize their role in bringing the newly baptized to fullness of faith. We really cannot do this alone. 

We yearn for God, for the One who is source and completion of our very selves. At the same time, just as hunger points to the reality of food, our very yearning for God is evidence of the existence of the God we yearn for, though again, not in the sense of scientific evidence and not a God who will not surprise us at every turn. We entrust ourselves to any number of things as we seek God. Only some are worthy of that trust and lead us to the real God. Eventually, we may experience the witness of those who have met Christ already, and then our journey becomes one of our own personal faith as we grow in our capacity to fully entrust ourselves to God in Christ. The evidence of faith is evidence of that which only God can do -- the change of hearts, the healing and remaking of one's mind and vision, the growth of love and compassion in a soul wounded by hatred, indifference, or loss, for instance. All of these and more support our faith and they ground our continued growth in faith.

Faith is not precisely the opposite of doubt. The relationship of the two is more complex than that. Doubt allows us to question and seek adequate objects of faith; it opens us to truth, though not in an uncomplicated way. Faith, besides involving trust, is a form of courage that takes doubt into itself and allows us to move forward in any case. Doubt, as I wrote recently, does not necessarily threaten our faith; it can help purify it. Because faith is also a form of knowing and doubt an expression of not (yet) knowing, doubt is part of the critical faculty which helps a person come to deeper and deeper faith. In some ways it makes faith resilient in ways other forms of knowing and certainty are not because they cannot tolerate doubt. But faith can and does grow in the midst of doubt. Unbelief (or unfaith), on the other hand, is not the same as doubt; there is a willful refusal of faith in unbelief. One does not only doubt but says "NO!" to accepting x or y. When doubt closes itself to seeing differently, to being touched by the courage and trust of faith, we get unbelief.