FAITH’S CROSSROADS

    Despite our misplaced aspirations, faith is not a certainty shielding us from uncertainties; it offers us the courage to live with uncertainty. Rather than inviting us to commit intellectual suicide, faith demands truth and thus, the willingness to question. Understanding the significance of this affirmation, the courage to question presumed expectations strengthens. Otherwise, faith becomes myopic, undermining our ability to think clearly. 

A tension accompanies the intellectual quest: from Kierkegaard to Camus, a contrasting trend continues to influence us. Kierkegaard’s leap of faith is presented as an answer to existential despair: in other words, what gives life ultimate meaning (Fear and Trembling). Albert Camus criticises those who advocate a philosophical suicide by using faith to escape absurdity. Instead, we live the absurd by creating our personal meaning, not escaping it through hope or religion (The Myth of Sisyphus). Surpassing this dialectic, both Aquinas and Bonaventure enrich our insights.  

Thomas Aquinas argues that faith is not opposed to questioning, but is deepened by it. Questioning does not threaten faith: it is its natural extension, leading to theological clarity  (Summa Theologiae, II-II, 1-4). Bonaventure’s approach differs: rather than a logical dissection, questioning entails a yearning underlined by a desire for union with God (Itinerarium Mentis in Deum). 

Both Aquinas and Bonaventure challenge our imposed dichotomy between faith as belief without evidence, and reason as the only path to truth. Faith involves trust, but also a restless pursuit of truth: a braved tension between seeking and assent, our subjectivity and the Wholly Other. 

    However, thinking is arduous, so many prefer an intellectual suicide as they attempt to live obliviously, happily ever after. Emotional satisfaction replaces it, but this emotive basis undermines discipleship because the pathos of truthless love dominates. 

    A question arises, ‘Am I a cage, in search of a bird?’ (Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung). The cage equals confinement, while the bird speaks of fulfilment and a deep desire to find a sense of completeness. 

    Exceeding our introspection, we search for what truly makes us happy: to discover the joyfulness of being alive, which is underlined by freedom, and a thirst for truth: ‘And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8,32). 

Perceiving faith as a scrutinising quest entails living with uncertainty: to encounter personal fragility as an insight to comprehend how committed love (Agape) guides our self-emptying (Kenosis).  This comprehension entails stillness, itself expressive of detachment, which comprises poorness of spirit as the beginning of wisdom: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5,3).

Detachment is not an excuse to ignore others: to be uncaring, absorbed by one’s self-centredness. Articulating faithfulness, it challenges us to scrutinise a maturing auto-understanding, enabling us to distinguish those noises that distance us from the Magister and those that proximate his presence: failing to do so, a fake intimacy infiltrates our understanding of faith. 

A fraudulent intimacy, sharing the same roof but not the same heart, is not uncommon.  Caught up in the clatter of sweet-smelling incense, we confuse the Magister with ourselves and presume to speak in his name: ‘Many will say to me on that day, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ (Matthew 7,22)  And yet, we become strangers: ‘I never knew you’ (Matthew 7,23). 

John Donne’s poem enlightens us because no man is an island, entire of itself. Beyond the ‘I’, we form part of a greater whole: ‘I am the vine; you are the branches’ (John 15,5). What underlines this intimacy is committed love (Agape), because only love is credible lived out in a faith community: ‘Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love another’ (John 13,34). 

Love cannot be forced: freedom underlines it. Caution, as Shakespeare observes, accompanies because of its importance: ‘Speak low if you speak of love’ (Much Ado about Nothing, II.1). Faith, therefore, entails the freedom to dismantle a bubble-like existence if we intend to grasp its significance. Building on sand, identifying faith with emotional self-satisfaction, we give sway to certitude as a means to escape uncertainty (Matthew 7,24-27). The question posed to Peter enlightens us: ‘Do you love me more than these? ’ (John 21,15)

Martin


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