By DOUG SHAVER
June 4, 2020
Christopher Hitchens was a great thinker, but nobody's perfect. It isn't true that religion poisons everything.
One counterargument I have seen is that politics, to pick just one example, can be plenty toxic without any assistance from religion. That misses the point, though. When either religion or politics gets toxic, it is for reasons unique to neither religion nor politics. The problem lies in the subordination of truth to virtue, the notion that some things must be believed, regardless of relevant evidence, because we can judge a person's character by their willingness to believe those things.
Religion didn't invent this notion, but it made it respectable by calling it faith and declaring faith to be a virtue. Whether all religions do this, I have no knowledge, but here in the West, the quintessential religion is Christianity, and Christianity does so declare. For orthodox Christians, faith is not just a virtue but the supreme virtue.
Some apologists will offer I Corinthians 13 as a proof text to the contrary. Throughout its history, though, the Christian tribe has rarely punished uncharitable behavior but has routinely punished dissenting beliefs. The tribe has defined itself by its dogmas, not by its members' behavior. It has said in effect: No matter how you behave, you must believe these things or else you are not one of us.
Protestants have historically accused Catholics of the opposite—of stressing works over faith, in their parlance. This is an object lesson in the perils of judging any sect by what its adversaries say about it. I know what Protestants believe because I used to be one. I was never a Catholic, but I have engaged in lengthy dialogues with Catholic apologists and read some books written by their intellectual champions. On this particular issue, the differences between Catholics and Protestants are more superficial than foundational. For both, the good life is ultimately all about having faith—the right kind of faith, of course, but it has to be faith of some kind.
But, meaning what? What is this faith that Christians assure us everyone must have?
I must have asked at least a dozen apologists this question, and I don't think I've gotten the same answer twice. Their own Bible provides one (Hebrews 11:1), but it's one proof text they don't like to use against skeptics, for some reason. Evangelicals will quote it among themselves, but they prefer a different tactic with outsiders.
Amid all the variation, a pattern eventually emerges. Some examples:
According to a modern dictionary, faith is "unquestioning belief that does not require proof or evidence." As it regards the faith found in the Bible, this is simply not true. . . .The evidences of faith may operate differently than those of science, but they are there. (http://www.learnthebible.org/what-is-faith.html)
This is saving faith. The faith God requires of us for salvation is belief in what the Bible says about who Jesus is and what He accomplished and fully trusting in Jesus for that salvation (Acts 16:31). (https://www.gotquestions.org/definition-of-faith.html)
Faith simply means believing that something is true, and then committing our lives to it. In the Bible, “faith” means believing in God, and in what Christ has done for us to make our salvation possible–and then committing ourselves to Him. (https://billygraham.org/answer/can-you-give-me-a-simple-definition-of-faith/)
Thus, in biblical vernacular, faith is a channel of living trust—an assurance—that stretches from man to God. In other words, it is the object of faith that renders faith faithful. (https://www.equip.org/bible_answers/what-is-the-biblical-definition-of-faith/)
When we say that a person is saved by faith, some people say, “It doesn’t matter what you believe, just as long as you are sincere.” That’s not what the Bible teaches. It matters profoundly what you believe. (https://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-faith/)
Faith means recognizing God’s faithfulness and believing Him. . . . We grow in faith by studying the Bible and seeing what God has done in the past and what He promises for the future. It also requires that we “diligently seek Him” and strive to be like Him. (https://lifehopeandtruth.com/change/faith/what-is-living-faith/)
Wikipedia's article on the subject provides some useful commentary, too, particularly with its reference to Thomas Aquinas. I have read little of Aquinas's work itself, but much exposition on his thinking by Catholic philosophers. In terms of his influence on Christian thinking, whatever he meant to say matters less than what his acolytes believe he said.
According to them, and to the pattern I perceive in countless apologetic claims like those above, faith is about trust in the proper authority. Which authority is the proper one is up for intellectual grabs, but you have to pick one, and it had better be the right one. An alleged difference between Catholics and Protestants is that the former accept the church as authority while the latter accept only the Bible. Many Protestants quickly learn, though, that their appeal to scripture counts for nothing unless they interpret the Bible the way their sect's authorities say it must be interpreted.
A principle theme of the Enlightenment was a rejection of any such appeal to authority. This idea was made the motto of the Royal Society, which can be loosely translated from the Latin as "Don't believe anything just because somebody says it." It was not only religious authorities with whom this did not sit well. Many political and other secular ideologues had their own problems with it, and they still do.
Christianity's promotion of faith and its fundamental virtuousness has had the effect of endorsing the notion that, for certain kinds of belief, no justification is needed beyond the approval of one's epistemic community, and that the disapproval of those outside the community is evidence of their epistemic or moral deficiencies. Thus we now hear, from otherwise secular political factions, that anyone who questions various dogmas of progressivism is a racist, sexist, xenophobic reactionary.
Next: On learning from history
(This page last updated on June 4, 2020.)