When I first started seminary back in 2005, I remember thinking that my faith would be more secure and more robust because of everything I was learning.
What I’ve found is that the more I learn, the more I need to work on my faith.
Faith doesn’t become easier with more learning, it becomes more difficult.
11 December 2009 at 2.59 pm
I know exactly what you mean, now more then ever.
11 December 2009 at 3.06 pm
I was just discussing this with an undergraduate student yesterday. As he learns more about the Bible, he is finding he has more and more questions. He wanted to know if I had found a way to satisfactorily deal with the problems of the Bible (OT in particular)–as if a grad student would have all these things worked out.
I was impressed by the depth of his faith and desire to serve God. I encouraged him to remember that his faith is not the result of his knowledge, but of the Spirit at work in him. It was a good reminder for me as well.
You’re right, Art–faith gets harder. But at the same time, faith gets easier the more I experience God’s faithfulness personally, because I have more “history” with Him to cling to.
11 December 2009 at 3.24 pm
Lots of people talk about this issue but you said really true words!
11 December 2009 at 4.32 pm
One positive of learning is that it prunes your faith’s useless twigs and burns its needless chaff. Faith in ignorance appears expansive on the surface, being quick and ready to offer bold assertions, but it’s quite shallow and arrogant underneath. Faith with greater understanding is hesitant to make great claims for itself, but it’s well-prepared to navigate the deep and stormy oceans of knowledge. A chastened and humbled mustard seed of faith is much better than forests of the same.
(Wow, I really went metaphor crazy, didn’t I?
)
11 December 2009 at 5.34 pm
Ecclesiastes 1:17-18 – Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief.
Nick
12 December 2009 at 9.20 am
I know what you mean. Faith does become harder the more you learn. However, it also becomes much deeper. Kinda like what Manlius said.
12 December 2009 at 10.35 am
Agreed!
12 December 2009 at 11.44 am
Keep up the hard work, just don’t become like 2 Timothy 3:7 =)
13 December 2009 at 5.47 am
I do think that faith becomes more difficult as one learns more, especially as one learns more about the Bible (Its textual problems, its contradictions, etc.) and the diversity of early Christianity. I now see the process, not as one of blind belief, but as one of gathering the best possible evidence and then drawing the best possible evidence-based conclusions. I think churches do a lot of damage here in that they teach things about the Bible as being true which we later discover are not true. I wish churches would not do this. So, faith persists, but, what one has faith in, changes. Paul Tillich’s “The Dynamics of Faith” challenges the idea that faith is “blind belief.” For me, a good starting point is the teachings of Jesus as put together by Thomas Jefferson in “The Jefferson Bible.” Almost everyone can agree with this foundation as a starting point.
13 December 2009 at 10.44 am
What it feels like to me is, “If you’re going to move a house from a relatively sandy foundation to a relatively rocky foundation, you’re likely to do some damage to the house along the way.”
13 December 2009 at 7.31 pm
Brooke,
Thank you. That’s the best metaphor yet, and builds upon what Manilus, Mandy, et. al. said above.
13 December 2009 at 8.29 pm
I hate to be the naysayer, but … You can’t talk about faith without talking about the object of said faith. Our faith is not in Christianity per se ; its heritage, literature, or doctrine, but strictly in Jesus Christ and His finished work. I know everyone reading this already knows, but don’t shift the focus from Christ to Biblical coursework.
13 December 2009 at 8.44 pm
I know what you mean. After spending two years changing my belief in how to read Genesis, my faith has become shaky. I set a goal for last year: to figure out how to understand the relationship between science and Christianity. At the end of the year, I have a lot more questions and other issues to search through. Still, though, I believe that Jesus is who he said he was, and that is where my faith, weak as it is, lies.
“I believe! Help my unbelief.”
13 December 2009 at 8.48 pm
@chad: I totally agree. I was talking to some friends recently about this and kept saying that the more struggles I have in my faith, the more tightly I cling onto and put my focus upon the resurrected Christ.
@Thomas: Have you read Inspiration and Incarnation by Peter Enns? It has helped me a lot when dealing with those issues.
Sent from my iPhone.
13 December 2009 at 9.02 pm
At first difficult, but then just different.
13 December 2009 at 10.57 pm
More difficult, but hopefully more robust. Study like other forms of stressing can lead to failure of the stressed component, but it can lead to greater dependence on God. I am not capable of faith, but God can enable faith…
13 December 2009 at 11.40 pm
@Thomas: Agreed. Many of us have gone down the science/faith road. Some of us went down it recently, and others of us treaded the path long ago. In the end, I’ve come to embrace science as openly as anyone, and Christianity even more firmly. Have you looked much at the resources to be found at the Faraday Institute website? They are very helpful.
Always remember that your faith is the gift of God, hold onto what you are given, but always hold onto it as a gift…not of yourself, but from God.
@Carlos: Yep.
14 December 2009 at 5.51 am
Hey Art,
We’ve all been there, usually in the middle of seminary. I remember Clair Davis once saying that the most profound thought he had ever had was ‘Jesus loves me.’ It’s what you learn as a new Christian, and no matter how strange the journey gets, it’s what you come back to on the other side of all that ‘education’. Anchor for the soul, the love of Jesus.
14 December 2009 at 7.12 am
There’s a (possibly apocryphal) story that when Karl Barth was asked to summarise what he knew in a few words, he said: “Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so.”
14 December 2009 at 12.45 pm
throw a little vocational ministry in there and it gets even more fun:)
14 December 2009 at 12.46 pm
@thomas I also highly recommend Walton’s latest work.
14 December 2009 at 1.49 pm
“Faith doesn’t become easier with mor learning, it becomes more difficult”.
Maybe faith is becoming more mature. Less cocksure and self reliant. Especially when learning is put to the test of life experiences.
15 December 2009 at 1.39 pm
Thanks, Art, for the recommendation. Enns is on my reading list.
V02468, what’s Walton’s first name?
15 December 2009 at 1.43 pm
@Thomas: I believe that v02468 is referring to The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton.
I would second his recommendation. It doesn’t put together some of the larger pieces, like Enns’ work does, but it does walk one through how to understand Genesis 1 without having to overlook scientific evidence or sacrifice a high view of Scripture.
16 December 2009 at 4.00 pm
What if you came from a more sane environment rather than at WTS during the controversy over Enns? Do you think that might have helped/hurt matters?
17 December 2009 at 12.55 pm
@carlos: I know that it would have helped matters tremendously. The whole controversy at WTS is when I felt my faith and my “spiritual walk” really start to suffer. I couldn’t then, and can’t now, understand the “other side.” If that is what ‘Reformed Orthodoxy’ looks like, I don’t want any part of it. Up until that point, I had never questioned whether or not I wanted to be part of conservative Reformed orthodoxy. Now I don’t want to touch it with a 1,646 foot pole.
17 December 2009 at 9.52 pm
but in the grander scheme of what people call the Christian faith, isn’t reformed “orthodoxy” a real small and insignificant piece of the pie?
18 December 2009 at 10.24 am
Learning holds out the hope of getting questions answered. In my 20′s I devoured Prenceton Theology. An air tight system of Reformed Theology. Then Van Til. Reformed Theology plus a devastating apologetic. How could faith falter with systems that had powerful answers?
Some hard experinces made me realize faith is more than faith in “The Faith”. And learning is more than getting all the questions answered. I cant explain how such a thing can happen but I believe …”who for us and for our salvation He came down from heaven…” May peace and joy surround and bless you and yours this Advent season.
18 December 2009 at 11.05 am
Art,
One might suggest that the persecution you faced at WTS, and that you saw your mentors face is a good sign of your true faith. So while on one hand you may doubt more now, on the other hand your faith likely will develop in a deeper and richer sense. In hindsight maybe it will become clear.
Nick
18 December 2009 at 12.50 pm
Art,
Spending 30 hours a week studying the Bible for almost 30 years now this is what I have found. The more I read THE BIBLE (in a hermeneutically correct way of course) , the more my faith is bolstered. Reading ABOUT THE BIBLE (even from good sources) doesn’t have the same affect. (Sounds like St. Paul in Romans 10:13) Seminary is about READING ABOUT the Bible in many cases. This year I made it a goal to read through the Bible 1 time a month and it has been a great time of faith building for me. Love you son!
Bill Boulet
18 December 2009 at 6.28 pm
Reading about the Bible is how one goes about finding “a hermeneutically correct way,” isn’t it? Realizing that is initially quite shocking–at least for me it was anyway.
This may sound impious but I took a break from reading the Bible and that helped my faith tons.
19 December 2009 at 5.23 am
One person reads the Bible and finds the mighty loving acts of God. Another person reads the same Bible and finds unclear writing, contradictions, myths, illogical events, and an angry God who spends a lot of time killing or ordering the killing of humans.
The trouble with centering on Christ rather than focusing on the Bible is that the Bible is our main evidence for Jesus. If the Bible has problems, then our evidence for Jesus has problems.
19 December 2009 at 9.58 am
Ronald,
I ceased trying to bolster my faith with evidence of an historical Jesus a long time ago… My faith is neither blind, nor is it empirical.
Nick
20 December 2009 at 5.05 am
Nick: So, if your faith is not blind nor empirical, what is it? How do we know what we know? Ron
20 December 2009 at 8.51 am
Ronald,
What I mean is its a fools errand to try and have unassailable understanding of God, or unassailable faith. So often we attempt to bring God beneath our microscopes and examine him; put him in the dock as one man once said.
Faith is, by its nature, assailable (which is why Paul so often reminds us to keep it.) Hence I don’t build my faith on empirical evidences (Shrouds of Turin, pieces of the real Cross or poorly constructed arguments lifted from the pages of Lee Strobel best sellers.) Nor is my faith simply blind and existential; as this sort of faith tends to wash away and lack real substance.
Rather my faith is based on my experiences with the resurrected Christ, his word and the pondering of his message, and the way the gospel transforms lives. It is experiential and living and can be wounded and harmed and perhaps even killed; by the same token it can also be nurtured and it will blossom and grow. My time at WTS tended to be a time for both tearing down and building up [Now THAT would be a good blog name
]
Nick…
20 December 2009 at 4.26 pm
Nick: Good answer although I don’t get it entirely. Ron
21 December 2009 at 10.03 am
Nick: Being a psyciatrist, I see people every day who are strongly influenced, in very powerful ways, by all sorts of delusions and religious ideas. So, how do you determine that the “experience” that you describe is imaginary or not????? Imaginary experiences can and do dramatically change lives. In other words, how do you distinguish an imaginary Jesus from an actual, living Jesus?
21 December 2009 at 12.17 pm
Ron,
Are you asking me if I’m insane? All I can do is say that so far as I am aware, I am sane. I tested negative on psychological batteries for any other known psychological diagnosis which might cause delusions such as the ones you speak of when I was a teenager. I suppose I could retake such tests, but outside of an adult onset schizophrenia, I think I am in the clear sanity wise; my wife may beg to differ.
I would also be willing to bet PET/CAT?MRI scans and such would not reveal any lesions on my brain, or other signs of mental illness. In short I’m asymptomatic for delusional disorders which are pathological (generally speaking). Therefore I can be reasonable assured I’m not delusional nor diagnosable via the DSM criteria.
I don’t know doc, you tell me am I sane? In the mean time I’m going to peruse my ink blot collection. You know, this one looks like my mother….
Nick
21 December 2009 at 2.40 pm
Nick: Actually, I was asking a serious question about how do we know what we know? A religious idea, even if it is false, is not considered a sign of insanity if it is part of the belief system of a given culture or subculture. So, the question is not about anyone being insane, but about how do we know what we know. We certainly know that entire cultures can have religious beliefs which are not true. The question is how do we determine which group has the truth? (By the way, I agree with your analysis of Strobel’s books. Strobel asks good questions, but it would be interesting to hear answers provided by more moderate/liberal scholars in addition to the conservative scholars quoted by Strobel.) A recent National Geographic article describes a group of Indonesians who have moneys in their sanctuaries and these monkeys have spread a fatal disease among the people who worship there. These people are not insane because their entire culture shares this belief system about the importance of having monkeys in the sanctuary. On the other hand, most of us would consider their worship to be false and, indeed, harmful. This religious system certainly has a powerful effect on these Indonesians even if it is false. So, Christianity seems to based on Biblical evidence and the evidence of personal experience. There are numerous problems with the Biblical evidence (unclear writing, contradictions, illogical events, and so on and so forth.) Personal experience, on the other hand, is hard for those who have not had such experiences to validate. Those are the problems.
21 December 2009 at 6.23 pm
Ron,
This seems to be the great divide between most atheists and most theists.
I of course cannot ultimately communicate my personal experiences to you, nor can you communicate yours to me. So your personal experiences of (a lack) of God are as hard for me to validate as mine are for you. I’ll give you the best I have, and it likely wont be satisfactory. I apologize at the outset.
Suppose that in some other universe, a world existed in which most people were born blind. You, however, were born with the gift of sight. You could experience something which they could not; you could see stars. So you began to try to convince them of existence of stars. You discover what the stars are, and begin to preach a message about the stars, and gain followers. Suppose now that there were a few other people who could see stars, but attached all sorts of contrary meanings to what they saw, so that the message to the larger blind world was conflicting. One sighted person might say that the stars were the departed souls of people, but another might say that they were spaceships. Now blind people would be within their rights to reject the contradictory voices of the sighted and to likewise reject your preaching, and instead just disbelieve in stars altogether. You, however, being sighted, would know that the stars did exist and perhaps you might even have insight into what they were really.
It would be possible in this imaginary world for a blind person to perhaps believe in stars; but I would argue that there would be no easy roads to travel for anyone.
Now you might assume that in the parable I just told I’m the sighted person, but you would be wrong. I’m another blind person, just like you and most everyone else, groping after something that I believe has sought me out and seeking after something I cannot be sure is there. You don’t believe, God help your unbelief Ron. I believe, God help my unbelief too.
Nick
21 December 2009 at 7.58 pm
As that great theologian and thinker T-Bone Burnett (aka a pretty darn good song writer) said, “that christianity has survived christians this long; there must be something there.
Maybe those eyewitnesses really did see something. Then again…? Maybe there are more than two very extreme ways to read the Bible.
21 December 2009 at 9.54 pm
Nick: I like your star analogy.
David: I like the Burnett observation although I think false ideas such as Islam or the earth being flat or the earth being the center of the solar system or illnesses being caused by demons have also survived long periods of time so the survival of an idea does not prove that it is true.
Actually, I never said anything about what I do or do not believe. I am just raising questions and I think one can do that without being an atheist. In fact, I think one can get to the deism of Thomas Jefferson using the cosmological and teleological arguments. (I don’t think the moral law argument of C.S, Lewis is that helpful.) Then, it becomes more difficult, especially what to do with the Bible and the historical Jesus question which depends upon the Bible. There are, of course, all sorts of “in-between the two extremes” ways to read the Bible, but too often people read in it whatever they want to see. In other words, they make result-oriented judgments getting whatever result they wanted to get before they read it. In “Lost in the Cosmos,” Walker Percy explores trying to present one’s religion to a Martian who has not already made up his/her mind about the subject and has no biases about it. What would such a Martian think reading the Bible?
21 December 2009 at 10.32 pm
Ron: curious as to know how you conclude that Islam is false and actually curious as to know how you conclude that anything is false. I think that T-Bone burnett has as much play in the field as Thomas Jefferson. “result- oriented judgments” is a judgment on your part. How do you know that?
You know Ron that there is no such thing as “no biases”.
23 December 2009 at 9.49 pm
This is amazing to read. Art doesn’t come out and tell us WHY “faith” becomes more difficult, but people chime in right away and say they understand.