Faith of our Fathers! Holy Faith!
We will be true to thee till death
Frederick William Faber, 1848
Steadfastness was traditionally a sign of true faith in my early Christian education. In Sunday School we were taught not to doubt. Cautionary tales of doubting included: Peter walking on the water till his confidence failed and he sank; Zechariah struck dumb by his lack of faith that his wife would become pregnant with John the Baptist; Jesus prevented from healing in Nazareth, because of their lack of faith; Jesus scolding his disciples for their lack of faith; Thomas doubting the resurrection until he touched the nail prints in the hands of Jesus.
Faith was a commodity we could not do without. We could have a lot of faith or a minimal faith, but not “no faith.” No one I knew could see faith as a continuum, a work in progress.
On the other hand, the Hebrew Bible honors a tradition of questioning or negotiating with God. Abraham, the paragon of faith, questioned the angel, who promised that his elderly wife would bear a child. Lot famously cross-examined God about his mercy on the city of Sodom and Gomorrah (Shall not the Judge of the earth do what is just?” (Gen 18:25). Jacob wrestled with the angel of God the night before confronting his estranged brother, Esau. Moses tried to escape the role of prophetic leader by insisting he was inarticulate. Called by God to lead his people against the powerful Midianites, Gideon insisted on sign after sign to prove God’s call. Despite the awesome power and holiness of God, Jewish history and literature honors dialogue, even argument, with God.
Contrast this with the one incident in the Christian Bible when Jesus is challenged by Peter for predicting that the Messiah must suffer and die. Jesus harshly rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” (Matthew 16:21).
And what does Jesus say after Peter bravely walks on the water to meet Jesus, then has a panic attack? “You of little faith. . . .why did you doubt?” What about the other disciples who cowered in the boat? How little was their faith?
If Peter were a character in Genesis, he would be honored for his nerve like Jacob, who wrestled with God, but in the Gospel of Matthew he is an object lesson for his lack of faith. The disciples of Jesus are frequently chastised for their lack of faith, whereas when Moses balks, he is given Aaron as a spokesperson and manages to become the most honored prophet in Jewish history.
The examples from the Christian scriptures have made Protestant Christians consider faith dualistically. You either have it or you don’t. If you had it you were favored or “saved.” If you lacked it, you were judged or “unsaved.” Even my unchurched friends saw this dualism in me. They might say, “I wish I had your faith,” as if I had a secure stash of faith in my wallet.
The discrepancy between the God of Jacob and the God of the Gospels may turn on what faith means in different traditions. In the Hebrew Bible the prophets were respected for their audacity for questioning God, but, for some Christians, challenging God shows a lack of faith. And faith is a commodity that you have or you don’t have.
Father Richard Rohr notes the limitations of this dualistic way of thinking or believing:
The dualistic mind is essentially binary, either/or thinking. It knows by comparison, opposition, and differentiation. It uses descriptive words like good/evil, pretty/ugly, smart/stupid, not realizing there may be a hundred degrees between the two ends of each spectrum.
Should faith and doubt be considered a dualism, where the absence of one reveals the existence of the other? Or are faith and doubt relative to each other, where faith may lapse into doubt, while doubt may restore faith?
Brian McLaren, in his study of doubt (Faith After Doubt, St Martins Essentials, 2021), suggests that honest doubt can actually enrich faith. In profiles of numerous pastors and church leaders, he claims the struggle with doubt can restore an abandoned faith, that doubt should be faced, not stigmatized, that doubt may be a sign of a healthy faith.
This is apparently the view of doubt in the Hebrew Bible, where some of the exemplars of faith actually challenged God. And some of the pretenders of faith were called “false prophets.” When Elijah, the heroic antagonist of the wicked King Ahab, fled from the wrath of his idolatrous wife Jezebel, he cowered in a cave at Mount Horeb, where God had first spoken to Moses:
Lord God who rules over all, I’ve been very committed to you. The Israelites have turned their backs on your covenant. They have torn down your altars. They’ve put your prophets to death with their swords. I’m the only one left. And they are trying to kill me.”
15 The Lord said to him, “Go back the way you came.” (I Kings 19:14-15).
Elijah turns from faith to fear to faith again in a few chapters of I Kings. The Apostle Peter ran the same course, from confessor to denier of the Messiah to the inspiring leader of the church at Pentecost. Doubt propelled these two heroes into stronger faith.
And yet many Evangelical Protestants conceive of doubt as abandonment of faith. Doubt can be battled, but it cannot be confronted as a viable option. It can only be opposed with fierce opposition. As a lapsed Evangelical pastor, Brian McLaren, writes:
Good Christians (and I’m sure good people of other religions) were expected, quickly and privately, to mend their doubts like an embarrassing tear in the pants and, failing that, to silence and suppress their doubts, to fake confidence and certainty in desperate hope that the next sermon, hymn, praise song, conference, book, or prayer would be the silver bullet that would vanquish doubt forever. (Faith After Doubt, 208)
Yet following the example of the great heroes of faith, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, Peter, we see that faith can be lost and regained. Further, that the exploration of doubt can bring a later resurgence of faith. McLaren and so many pastors he counseled found doubt as a counterpoint to faith, potentially a route to a restored faith.
Perhaps the “Faith of our Fathers” has come full circle, where doubt can be acknowledged without condemnation. “We will be true to thee, till death,” may not be the last word in the hymn. Faith and doubt are more similar than we know.