Inability-enabled faith

What is faith, in Christianity? In some precious discussions with a
friend, we found out that there are at least two positions. See if you
can agree:

certain faith

The certain faith of fundamentalists is the human work of
accepting some content as the truth.

hoping faith

The hoping faith of non-fundamentalists is an unproven but
justifiable hope that some content is true. Justifiable means that it
remained after considering in all incertainties, difficulties and
objections.

Both definitions apply to all kinds of believers: Christians,
Marxists, evolutionists, etc..

Practical differences

In Christianity, certain and hoping faith show at least these key
differences in practical living:

• Dealing with facts and arguments.
  For certain faith, being convinced is the work which a fundamentalist
  believer does. He is stronger convinced of the believed content than he
  can justify by facts and arguments; he even needs no facts and
  arguments at all to perform the work of being convinced. So, either he
  is not interested in facts and arguments at all, or he builds tools
  from them to express his convictions. But he does not allow the facts
  and arguments to affect his faith. On the other hand, with a hoping
  faith you are interested in facts and arguments, you believe “for sure”
  what is provable from them, and believe “as a hope” what you can
  justifiably extrapolate.
• Salvation by grace, or by grace
  and the work of faith? Fundamentalists think that faith is the
  “only necessary work” man has to add in order to be justified without
  works. They would not verbalize it that explicitly, but it may be seen
  from their insecurity when discussing what faith is, if not a work.
  Non-fundamentalists think that their faith is no work but the
  acceptance of the work of Jesus Christ, which is justification by grace
  alone. As faith is not esteemed a work, it needs no quality: even the
  philosophically justifiable conviction that Jesus is the Christ if
  there is any God at all is saving faith. To fundamentalists
  however, such a conviction is no faith at all: for them, only a certain
  conviction of all the Bible says is faith. Fundamentalists have a
  work-based faith, as faith is a work for them; so they have the same
  burden as every other believer with a work-based faith: salvation has
  to be achieved by good human performance, here by believing in a most
  straight and certain way.
• Cultivating strenghth or
  weakness. In
  fundamentalist faith, being convinced is a human activity, and
  salvation depends on it. So for the sake of your eternal life, you are
  not allowed to be weak here. This cultivated strength results in
  hypocrisy, because people will hide doubts from themselves and
  others. And this cultivated strength extends to other areas, generating
  the idea that holiness must be and can be achieved by human strenght.
  The result is people and churches which pretend strength and hide
  weakness, to be spiritual. On the other hand, hoping faith communicates
  doubts and difficulties and does not fear them: as a justifiable hope,
  it will stand as long as there is a reason to hope. The content of both
  certain and hoping faith is that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah of
  this wrecked human race. But only in a faith that needs no own strength
  (i.e. hoping faith), the conception of one’s own wreckedness finds room
  and can grow, resulting in cultivating the admission of weakness. Which
  generates authentic, compassionate people and churches.
• Strong and weak interpretation
  of the Bible. People with a certain faith are certain what they
  believe and that it is true. From this flows a strength-demonstrating,
  knowing interpretation of the Bible, not leaving any questions. On the
  other side, people with a hoping faith might admit that they don’t know
  what many passages of the Bible mean.
• Trusting oneself or something
  external. Certain faith does not need the believed reality to
  exist: it relies only on the ability of the believing person to
  believe. On the contrary, hoping faith trusts not in any own ability
  but in the existence of a real God. Therefore it is interested in God’s
  power and help and can acknowledges one’s own weakness and wreckedness.
  Hoping faith leans on God and trusts God, while certain faith leans on
  oneself and trusts oneself. This is the practical difference of
  “faith’s perspective”, apart from the question how faith is justified.

Which faith is the Christian one

I want to invite you to think about the question whether the
Christian faith is intended to be certain or hoping … you are invited
to discuss it with me here, also. You’ll have noticed that I couldn’t
conceal my opinion in what you’ve read so far. Now I will reveal the
way I came to this opinion. Grown up with the “certain faith paradigm”
(though far ess extreme as pictured above), I couldn’t bear the
unjustiied certainty of my faith. But I though that my faith had to be
that certain and that my salvation depends on such a faith.

Now, the honest consequence of a certain but unjustified faith is to
search for justification. Which means, I needed the scientific-style
proof that Jesus is the Christ, i.e., God’s promised saviour of
mankind. I thought to prove that by contemporary miracles which happen
“in the name of Jesus Christ” and called the project which collects
such miracles “Second Acts”. I intended to execute this project during
a world tour of several years … .

I need not to mention that this kind of faith was
at times a very stressing issue: seeing this certain faith as the key
to
salvation, I expected myself to believe “for certain” but was unwilling
or unable to do as long as the justification was missing. From these
negative consequences, and because salvation is absolutely “not by
works”, I conclude that the gospel of a “certain faith” is no good
message at all, i.e. cannot be the gospel. So Christian faith is hoping
faith.

Another confirming argument is how I arrived at a practical way of
coping with the lack of proofs for my faith, yet without knowing that
this was the transition from certain to hoping faith: in the dilemma of
believing for certain without prove, the two bad options are (1) to
think that you do not need proofs or (2) to generate fake proofs. The
real way out however was to hope that you will once have the proof for
your faith. Concretely, I hoped to find this prove by collecting
“Second Acts”.

This basically turned my faith from a certain one to a hoping one
(but yet with a temporary target and the illusionary idea that I will
arrive at an ultimately proven certain faith within life on this earth
by writing “Second Acts”). At the point of writing this, the current
situation is even better: I can cope with the lack of ultimate proof
until death, where I expect to come from “hoping to seeing”. This is
however no insecure hoping as if in doubt: hoping means that I think
and expect to be true what I believe. But not in a fundamentalist
manner which proclaims certainty beyond measure, rather with a unproven
but justifiable hope.

Now, the essence of hope is the wish to see the hoped-for reality
more and more, to get more and more proof. Which means that this
“Second Acts” project is still alive, but with other reasons behind: I
intend to do a world tour of several years to document proven
contemporary acts of God. There’s nothing more cool and precious than
to see what we hoped for, though this will be limited in this
world to the first few steps only. But anyway, it’s so cool and
precious! If anybody shares this same fascination, just tell me.
Perhaps some of you even like to join me on this world tour?

Start date: 2007-10-08
Post date: 2007-10-08
Version date: 2007-10-08 (for last meaningful change)