Last Sunday, when the Bible readings were concerned with the risen Christ and the overcoming of the reluctance of Thomas to believe in that risen Christ, is sometimes known as Thomas Sunday when the theme is doubt and belief. In my reflection this week I will set out a few thoughts on belief, using my own rather interrupted journey to faith as an example.
But to begin let me set out my current understanding of what it means to believe, in the context of a Christian faith. It means to believe that God is our loving Creator, that Jesus is the Son of God and hence able to reveal the truth about the nature of God and, in addition it means to live out a life that in practice conforms to the behaviour of a Christian which has been spelt out by Jesus. Then through the Holy Spirit, that Spirit which links Jesus, God and the whole of humanity – through that Spirit, eternal life – of peace with God, of peace with other people, and of peace with ourselves is available for us here and now.
Before returning to this statement I will go back some 70 years to my school days when like most children we read the Bible and had religious education lessons which were fine up to the age of about 11 when I started to learn about science and in particular physics. This didn’t concur with what I was reading in the Bible so one of them must be wrong and of the two it seemed to me then that science was correct and the bible was wrong and hence unbelievable. Unfortunately, the religious instruction teachers at that time did not realise that I and, no doubt, other pupils were moving forward in a stage of faith where we leave behind an understanding of faith as set out in the Bible as absolute history with God as a sort of super human being located somewhere “out there”. The teacher at that time did not explain the Bible was a collection of books established over a period of some thousand years and sets out a history of a relationship between a people and their God, with their God being described in anthropomorphic language.
If the teachers had explained all this, together with the concept of the provisionality of knowledge, then instead of rejecting the whole of the Bible, I might over the years of adolescence and early adulthood, have come to discern or recognise the truths contained within the Bible and to take responsibility for my own beliefs and attitudes that could result from careful study and interpretation. Instead, it was not until my late 20s that I began to take an interest in those whose writings were based on a liberal interpretation of the Bible – in particular being influenced by Harry A. Williams and Don Cupitt. Gradually I came to understand that God was not a super human but a spiritual presence or reality that can exist everywhere, including residing within the psyche of the human being. I say gradually because it took many years to reach the stage of, on the one hand demythologising and on the other recognising the development of the images, symbols and myths that have been used to express the universal truths of the messages that underly that transcendent reality that we call God. Obviously, I was helped along this way by many helpful writers and those that I found particularly spoke to me were Bultmann, Tillich, Rahner and Macquarrie. So, this was my route to a fairly secure faith which I suspect is often followed by those whose background is in science or engineering.
But there is another way to faith through religious experience. For those who have been fortunate enough to have had such experiences this can provide a sudden realisation of that ultimate reality that comes upon one rather like the sun bursting through clearing fog on a crisp winter’s day. Such an experience or a becoming awareness of the presence of God can take many forms but was described by Sir Alister Hardy as ’becoming aware of or influenced by a presence or power, whether you call it God or not, which is different from your everyday self.’ Sir Alister when he retired from his post of Linacre Professor of Zoology at Oxford set out to collect such experiences and we now have a vast collection of accounts of such experiences in the University at Lampeter. Perhaps the most famous of religious experiences is that of St.Paul when on the road to Damascus he received his well known commissioning to promote the religion that was to become known as Christianity and to set aside his previous role within Judaism. For those of an academic bent, the lines of thought concerning religious experience can be traced from Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Otto(1869-1937), to a number of writers in the twentieth century including Sir Alister himself.
Whether or not one has arrived at a faith via the reading of the Bible and its interpretation or a result of a dramatic religious or spiritual experience one comes to point of realisation that God is not out there but in here in each and every one of us and is to be found In our way of living. At this stage in our faith when according to philosopher Paul Ricoeur ‘symbolic power is reunited with conceptual meanings. Here there must also be a new reclaiming and reworking of one’s past. There must be an opening to the voices of one’s “deeper self.” Importantly, this involves a critical recognition of one’s social unconscious-the myths, ideal images and prejudices built deeply into the self-system by virtue of one’s nurture within a particular social class, religious tradition, ethnic group or the like.’ In other words, one has achieved a rounded wholeness and a confidence to live a life, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, through the Holy Spirit, an eternal life – of peace with God, of peace with other people, and of peace with ourselves.
Afternote: Some of you reading through this reflection will recognise that I am writing about some of the stages of faith. As one moves from early childhood when one is born with a sense of primal belief through some of the stages I have described above one may reach a stage of such enlightenment that is achieved only by the mystic – to most of us mortals to have achieved the stage I have described in the final paragraph is achievement enough.
But if you really want to read more, I can recommend James W. Fowler. Stages of Faith – The psychology of human development and the quest for meaning – Harper One
If you would like information on any of the other authors mentioned above, please e-mail me on d.greenwood@uwtsd.ac.uk
Dr David Greenwood April 2020
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