Faith: Security and Risk. Richard W. Kropf
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love alone can account for faith, then we have to conclude that not only does God’s love alone make faith possible, but also that our own commitment as an act of love is the psychological starting point of faith. Without this loving commitment and the risk it entails, no faith convictions are possible, nor can the security it promises possibly come about.
Start at the other end of the process, and everything comes out just the reverse. Confidence or security pursued for its own sake will fabricate contents to suit its own whims — which is the essence of idolatry — and this in turn will reinforce an egotistic self-love.
In basic human terms, there is no better analogy for dynamics of faith (and hope and love as well) than its parallel in marriage. The biblical prophets knew this well — for them idolatry was the same as “adultery.” Fundamentally, the commitment that marriage entails is always fraught with risk. True, if a person marries for money or for prestige, for security, or any other self-gratifying reason we may think of, there is risk as well, but when such marriages turn out to be
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a disaster or loveless at best, we all know why and condemn such persons for their foolishness. We may (or may not) feel sorry for them, but we are hardly surprised at the result. Only commitment “for better or for worse,” to the other person “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” (in other words, not for one’s money, not for one’s looks) , irrevocably “until death do them part” will do. Anything less than this commitment is not only a formula for disaster, but is “invalid” from the start.
So too with the commitment of faith, except for one big difference. God as the “other” in this partnership is the person or partner who will never fail. Thus we need never worry about our ultimate security. Our confidence, granted the sincerity of our commitment, is guaranteed. But the question remains: If faith (and hope) are produced by love, still how does love come to be?
If Frankl, from the psychological point of view, spoke of “faith, hope and love” as all being equally incapable of being produced on command, there are even deeper theological reasons for doing so. I think many will recognize this “triad” as being the three “theological virtues” as described by St. Paul (see 1 Cor. 13:8-13). They have been termed such in Christian tradition because not only their final goal, but their origin as well, is in God-as distinguished from the four “cardinal” or pivotal moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, which have our own moral perfection as their primary aim.
So this means that when it comes to love-just as with faith and hope-although our ability to love is partly a matter of our own openness to love, we in no way can produce the results, as it were, by “pulling on our own boot straps.” The same goes for our search for meaning. True, we can prepare ourselves by searching for that ultimate truth or meaning that we call “God.” But if this committed search for meaning depends, to a large extent, on ourselves, theologians have long argued that even this beginning is an effect
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of God ‘s grace working in us. So if arriving at that ultimate meaning or truth is what we mean by “believing,” neither can this be successfully produced on command.
On the other hand, if it is true, as St. Augustine said, that “no one can be forced to believe,” then I would add that not even God can force us to believe, nor for that matter can anyone force himself or herself to believe. At best we can only put ourselves at the disposal of God ‘s grace.
So what all this comes down to is to say (with Newman) that the beginning of faith is the effect of a twofold love: first, God’s love for us, and, second, our love for God. True, that love that we express for God at this beginning stage will be largely incoherent if not outright confused, since we do not yet “know” God. At best, it may be only a firm commitment to seek the truth over all else-but even that is enough to explain why Vatican II commends even those atheists who commit themselves to the betterment of this world as instruments of God’s will. On the other hand, those who claim to know God and yet refuse to share in the works of God’s redemptive love-can we really say they have “faith” in any meaningful sense? It would hardly seem so.
So what about the object or goal of faith? This is where the theological impact of Frankl’s psychological truth is even more evident. Not only is it a case of where the security provided by faith cannot be successfully pursued as the goal of faith, but neither can the convictions or contents of faith be the object as well. This is why, in my second diagram, the “conviction” or “ultimate meaning” (upper left-hand corner of the triangle) really points (using a double arrow) beyond the triangle toward God. Our convictions or beliefs that form the intellectual contents of our faith, our “creeds” as we term them, are, in the end, “symbols”— they are attempts, in human language, to describe a reality that far exceeds our limited grasp. The closer we come to God in love the more inadequate these words become. The easily recited but often puzzling formulas of faith veil an ever deeper mystery. We
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must never imagine that we have “defined” (which is “to set limits to”) God.
So too, the same warning must be said about hope; it simply can’t be produced by joining some ecclesiastical equivalent of the “Optimists’ Club.” The theological virtue of hope is, in some aspects, simply that part of faith that we call “confidence” and, as such, is that part of faith which least of all can be produced by us upon command. It can only come to us through that faith which is born from love. Any attempt to manufacture this hope through purely human means is bound to fail. Frankl (following St. Paul) may have spoken of the “triad” of “faith, hope and love” in that order-with love alone remaining when all is said and done-but the fact is that in terms of our ability or empowerment to have faith and hope, we must begin with love.
So, in a way, it all begins and ends in love. But it is here that the major problem with faith (and hope and love) begins — in our love of whom or what?
Self-love may be the psychological pre-condition (if not the theological limit) of our love for others; at the very least we must “love our neighbor as ourselves.” For how can we love unless we first feel loved? Yet no such stipulation is set for our love of God. Instead, we are told that we must love God “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and that is “the first and the greatest of the commandments” (see Mt 22:37, also Dt 6:5 and Lev 19:18). So, theologically speaking, all love (even love for neighbor) ultimately must be included in and transformed by the love of God. As St. Augustine, who certainly knew his share of human loves, once said: “Our hearts were made for you, Lord, and they will not rest until they rest in you.” This is certainly true of any self-love, however necessary that self love be.
Thus Frankl’s warning against the attempt to command faith, hope and love is warning against what is an expression of a “manipulative approach” in which the activities would
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become an end in themselves, and, in so doing, lose sight of their main objective. Faith, hope, and love are “ `intentional’ acts or activities” — that is to say that they in-tend or “tend to” their own proper objective, which is God (see Frankl, The Unconscious God, p. 14).
Yet why would a person attempt to manipulate or conjure up faith or hope or love in such a manner? Obviously because he or she hopes to get something out of it. So what we see is a subtle-or sometimes not so subtle-enthronement of our own personal needs as the real motivation for our believing, our hoping or our loving. Instead of being “theological virtues” in the full sense of being theo-centric or “God-centered,” what we would have would be really an ego-centric striving posing as the quest for God. The so-called “theological virtues” are such not merely because they are a grace or gift of God, or because their only proper object or goal is God, but also because when truly possessed by a human being, the principal motivation is “for” or “for the sake of” God.
Thus faith cannot be simply a “belief in faith” as something good for us; rather it has