In chapter two of his bestselling book, Marcus J. Borg offers a very illuminating explanation of the different ways of "exercising faith" (to use a JW jargon). The insightful book I'm quoting in this post is The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a life of faith. I've preserved the authors own words, almost verbatim. I hope you find it helpful.
The Centrality of Faith
Faith is at the heart of Christianity. Its centrality goes back to the New Testament. All but two of its twenty-seven books use the noun “faith” or the verb “believe.”
Moreover, the New Testament gives it crucial significance. Jesus spoke of it often, making statements such as “Your faith has made you well.” For Paul, we are “justified”—that is, made right with God—“by grace through faith.” In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the Jewish Bible becomes a story of faith. The author of Hebrews extols its heroes as having lived by faith: “By faith our ancestors received approval.” Then follows a litany beginning with Abel: “By faith, Abel . . . By faith, Enoch . . . By faith, Noah . . . By faith, Abraham . . .” through Moses and unnamed people, climaxing with Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
Four Meanings of Faith
Faith as Assensus
This is faith as belief—that is, as giving one’s mental assent to a proposition, as believing that a claim or statement is true. Sometimes called a propositional understanding of faith, it is the dominant meaning today, both within the church and outside it....Christian faith thus became believing the right things, having “right" beliefs instead of “wrong” beliefs. For many today, faith means believing in spite of difficulties, believing even when you have reasons to think otherwise. It means believing “iffy” things to be true. That Christian faith is about belief is a rather odd notion, when you think about it. It suggests that what God really cares about is the beliefs in our heads—as if “believing the right things” is what God is most looking for, as if having “correct beliefs” is what will save us. And if you have “incorrect beliefs,” you may be in trouble. It’s remarkable to think that God cares so much about “beliefs. You can believe all the right things and still be relatively unchanged. Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.
Emphasizing faith as assensus distorts the meaning of faith and the Christian life. But it does matter—it does play a role. There are affirmations that are central to Christian faith. In particular, three affirmations are foundational: the reality of God, the centrality of Jesus, and the centrality of the Bible. Being Christian means affirming the reality of God. God is real. There is a “More” to reality. The Bible, and all of the enduring religions of the world, unambiguously affirm that there is a stupendous, magnificent, wondrous “More.” Christian faith includes affirming this. Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus. It means seeing Jesus as the decisive disclosure of God and of what a life full of God looks like. Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible. Being Christian means a commitment to the Bible as our foundational document and identity document. The Bible is our story. It is to shape our vision of life—our vision of God, of ourselves, and of God’s dream for the earth.
Christian faith as assensus means to affirm all of the above deeply but loosely. Deeply: faith involves our loyalty and trust and seeing at the deepest level of the self. Loosely: we need to avoid the human tendency toward excessive precision and certitude. Christian theology has often been bedeviled by both—by the desire to know too much and to know it too precisely. The history of Christian doctrinal disputes often leaves one wondering how people could ever have thought that they could know matters about God with precision and certitude. For example, whether one can know about internal relationships within the Godhead—about whether the Spirit proceeds “from the Father” or “from the Father and the Son,” to name a conflict that was the theological reason for the division between Western and Eastern Christianity a thousand years ago.
A deep but humble (and therefore imprecise) understanding of Christian faith as assensus, as involving affirmation of the centrality of God as known in the Bible and Jesus, is very close to faith as visio. It is a way of seeing reality. Ideally, it is assent as something we freely give, as something drawn forth from us because we have been captivated by a persuasive and compelling vision, and not assent as the effortful fulfilling of a requirement, as in, “You must believe x, y, and z in order to be saved.” When assent is understood that way, faith becomes a work.
Faith as Fiducia
This is faith as “trust,” as radical trust in God. Significantly, it does not mean trusting in the truth of a set of statements about God; that would simply be assensus under a different name. Rather, it means trusting in God. This is faith as trusting in God as our rock and fortress. The point is that we trust in God as the one upon whom we rely, as our support and foundation and ground, as our safe place. We can also see this meaning of faith by turning to its opposite. The opposite of trust is not doubt or disbelief, but mistrust. More interestingly and provocatively, its opposite is “anxiety” or “worry.” We see this meaning in familiar words attributed to Jesus. He invites his hearers to see reality as marked by a cosmic generosity:
Faith as Fidelitas
This is faith as “faithfulness.” Faith is faithfulness to our relationship with God. It means what faithfulness does in a committed human relationship: we are faithful (or not) to our spouses or partners. Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart.” Faith as fidelitas does not mean faithfulness to statements about God, whether biblical, credal, or doctrinal. Rather, it means faithfulness to the God to whom the Bible and creeds and doctrines point. Fidelitas refers to a radical centering in God. Its opposite is not doubt or disbelief. Rather, as in a human relationship, its opposite is infidelity, being unfaithful to our relationship with God. To use a striking biblical metaphor, the opposite of this meaning of faith is adultery. Another vivid biblical term for infidelity to God is idolatry. Though the command to avoid idolatry includes not worshiping graven images, its central meaning is giving one’s ultimate loyalty or allegiance to something other than God. Idolatry is centering in something finite rather than the sacred, who is infinite and beyond all images. As the opposite of idolatry, faith means being loyal to God and not to the many would-be gods that present themselves to us. Christian faith means loyalty to Jesus as Lord, and not to the seductive would-be lords of our lives, whether the nation, or affluence, or achievement, or family, or desire. Fidelitas means loving God and loving your neighbor and being faithful, above all, to these two great relationships. To be faithful to God means not only to love God, but to love that which God loves—namely, the neighbor, and indeed the whole of creation. Faith as fidelitas thus includes an ethical imperative.
Faith as Visio
This is faith as a way of seeing. In particular, this is faith as a way of seeing the whole, a way of seeing “what is.” How we see the whole will affect how we respond to life. There are three ways we can see the whole, and each goes with a particular way of responding to life: First, we can see reality as hostile and threatening. The clinical form of this is paranoia, of course, but you don’t have to be paranoid to see reality this way. The bottom line is that none of us gets out of here alive. And this is the fate of not just me and us, but of everybody we love, including our children and grandchildren. Death will get us all. Moreover, astrophysicists tell us, even the earth and the solar system will one day be destroyed as the sun explodes in its dying gasp. On a more finite level, life is filled with threats to our existence: accidents, disease, violence, unemployment, poverty. Life easily looks threatening. If we do see reality this way, how will we respond to life? In a word, defensively. We will seek to build systems of security and self-protection to fend off the hostile powers as long as possible. Indeed, many forms of popular Christianity throughout the centuries have viewed reality this way. God is the one who is going to get us—unless we offer the right sacrifices, behave the right way, or believe the right things. God will judge us and punish those who didn’t “get it right.” But if we do “get it right,” then perhaps the consuming fire that will otherwise devour everybody and everything will spare us.
In the second way of seeing the whole, it is perceived as indifferent. Not as paranoid as the first, this view doesn’t assume reality is “out to get us.” Rather, “what is” is simply indifferent to human purposes and ends. This is the most common modern secular viewpoint. We respond by building up what security we can in the midst of an indifferent universe. There can be a rich aesthetic to this life. We may seek to enjoy its beauty while we are here, we may even seek to take care of the world as well as we can, but ultimately we are likely to be concerned primarily for ourselves and those who are most important to us.
The third way we can see “what is” is to view it as life-giving and nourishing. It has brought us and everything that is into existence. It sustains our lives. It is filled with wonder and beauty, even if sometimes a terrible beauty. To use a traditional theological term, this is seeing reality as gracious. It is the way of seeing spoken of by Jesus in his words about the birds and the lilies. God feeds them, clothes them, and, to echo another saying of Jesus, God sends rain upon the just and unjust. God is generous. This way of seeing the whole makes possible a different response to life. It leads to radical trust. It frees us from the anxiety, self-preoccupation, and concern to protect the self with systems of security that mark the first two viewpoints. It leads to the “self-forgetfulness of faith” and thus to the ability to love and to be present to the moment. It generates a “willingness to spend and be spent” for the sake of a vision that goes beyond ourselves. It leads to the kind of life that we see in Jesus and in the saints, known and unknown. Or, to use words from Paul, it leads to a life marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love.
Significantly, the last three understandings of faith are all relational. Faith as visio is a way of seeing the whole that shapes our relationship to “what is,” that is, to God. Faith as fidelitas is faithfulness to our relationship with God. And faith as fiducia is deepening trust in God, flowing out of a deepening relationship with God. The last three understandings are also the most important ones. Faith in these three senses enables us to live our lives and to face our deaths in a new way. In this life, a radical centering in God leads to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see and live our lives. Seeing, living, trusting, and centering are all related in complex ways. They are all matters of the heart, and not primarily of the head. And in our deaths, dying means trusting in the buoyancy of God, that the one who has carried us in this life is the one into whom we die.
The Centrality of Faith
Faith is at the heart of Christianity. Its centrality goes back to the New Testament. All but two of its twenty-seven books use the noun “faith” or the verb “believe.”
Moreover, the New Testament gives it crucial significance. Jesus spoke of it often, making statements such as “Your faith has made you well.” For Paul, we are “justified”—that is, made right with God—“by grace through faith.” In the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, the Jewish Bible becomes a story of faith. The author of Hebrews extols its heroes as having lived by faith: “By faith our ancestors received approval.” Then follows a litany beginning with Abel: “By faith, Abel . . . By faith, Enoch . . . By faith, Noah . . . By faith, Abraham . . .” through Moses and unnamed people, climaxing with Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
Four Meanings of Faith
Faith as Assensus
This is faith as belief—that is, as giving one’s mental assent to a proposition, as believing that a claim or statement is true. Sometimes called a propositional understanding of faith, it is the dominant meaning today, both within the church and outside it....Christian faith thus became believing the right things, having “right" beliefs instead of “wrong” beliefs. For many today, faith means believing in spite of difficulties, believing even when you have reasons to think otherwise. It means believing “iffy” things to be true. That Christian faith is about belief is a rather odd notion, when you think about it. It suggests that what God really cares about is the beliefs in our heads—as if “believing the right things” is what God is most looking for, as if having “correct beliefs” is what will save us. And if you have “incorrect beliefs,” you may be in trouble. It’s remarkable to think that God cares so much about “beliefs. You can believe all the right things and still be relatively unchanged. Believing a set of claims to be true has very little transforming power.
Emphasizing faith as assensus distorts the meaning of faith and the Christian life. But it does matter—it does play a role. There are affirmations that are central to Christian faith. In particular, three affirmations are foundational: the reality of God, the centrality of Jesus, and the centrality of the Bible. Being Christian means affirming the reality of God. God is real. There is a “More” to reality. The Bible, and all of the enduring religions of the world, unambiguously affirm that there is a stupendous, magnificent, wondrous “More.” Christian faith includes affirming this. Christian faith means affirming the utter centrality of Jesus. It means seeing Jesus as the decisive disclosure of God and of what a life full of God looks like. Christian faith means affirming the centrality of the Bible. Being Christian means a commitment to the Bible as our foundational document and identity document. The Bible is our story. It is to shape our vision of life—our vision of God, of ourselves, and of God’s dream for the earth.
Christian faith as assensus means to affirm all of the above deeply but loosely. Deeply: faith involves our loyalty and trust and seeing at the deepest level of the self. Loosely: we need to avoid the human tendency toward excessive precision and certitude. Christian theology has often been bedeviled by both—by the desire to know too much and to know it too precisely. The history of Christian doctrinal disputes often leaves one wondering how people could ever have thought that they could know matters about God with precision and certitude. For example, whether one can know about internal relationships within the Godhead—about whether the Spirit proceeds “from the Father” or “from the Father and the Son,” to name a conflict that was the theological reason for the division between Western and Eastern Christianity a thousand years ago.
A deep but humble (and therefore imprecise) understanding of Christian faith as assensus, as involving affirmation of the centrality of God as known in the Bible and Jesus, is very close to faith as visio. It is a way of seeing reality. Ideally, it is assent as something we freely give, as something drawn forth from us because we have been captivated by a persuasive and compelling vision, and not assent as the effortful fulfilling of a requirement, as in, “You must believe x, y, and z in order to be saved.” When assent is understood that way, faith becomes a work.
Faith as Fiducia
This is faith as “trust,” as radical trust in God. Significantly, it does not mean trusting in the truth of a set of statements about God; that would simply be assensus under a different name. Rather, it means trusting in God. This is faith as trusting in God as our rock and fortress. The point is that we trust in God as the one upon whom we rely, as our support and foundation and ground, as our safe place. We can also see this meaning of faith by turning to its opposite. The opposite of trust is not doubt or disbelief, but mistrust. More interestingly and provocatively, its opposite is “anxiety” or “worry.” We see this meaning in familiar words attributed to Jesus. He invites his hearers to see reality as marked by a cosmic generosity:
Four times in the extended passage in which these familiar lines appear, Jesus says to his hearers: “Do not worry,” in other words, “Do not be anxious”—and then adds, “You of little faith." Little faith and anxiety go together. If you are anxious, you have little faith. Faith as radical trust has great transforming power.
Faith as Fidelitas
This is faith as “faithfulness.” Faith is faithfulness to our relationship with God. It means what faithfulness does in a committed human relationship: we are faithful (or not) to our spouses or partners. Faith as fidelity means loyalty, allegiance, the commitment of the self at its deepest level, the commitment of the “heart.” Faith as fidelitas does not mean faithfulness to statements about God, whether biblical, credal, or doctrinal. Rather, it means faithfulness to the God to whom the Bible and creeds and doctrines point. Fidelitas refers to a radical centering in God. Its opposite is not doubt or disbelief. Rather, as in a human relationship, its opposite is infidelity, being unfaithful to our relationship with God. To use a striking biblical metaphor, the opposite of this meaning of faith is adultery. Another vivid biblical term for infidelity to God is idolatry. Though the command to avoid idolatry includes not worshiping graven images, its central meaning is giving one’s ultimate loyalty or allegiance to something other than God. Idolatry is centering in something finite rather than the sacred, who is infinite and beyond all images. As the opposite of idolatry, faith means being loyal to God and not to the many would-be gods that present themselves to us. Christian faith means loyalty to Jesus as Lord, and not to the seductive would-be lords of our lives, whether the nation, or affluence, or achievement, or family, or desire. Fidelitas means loving God and loving your neighbor and being faithful, above all, to these two great relationships. To be faithful to God means not only to love God, but to love that which God loves—namely, the neighbor, and indeed the whole of creation. Faith as fidelitas thus includes an ethical imperative.
Faith as Visio
This is faith as a way of seeing. In particular, this is faith as a way of seeing the whole, a way of seeing “what is.” How we see the whole will affect how we respond to life. There are three ways we can see the whole, and each goes with a particular way of responding to life: First, we can see reality as hostile and threatening. The clinical form of this is paranoia, of course, but you don’t have to be paranoid to see reality this way. The bottom line is that none of us gets out of here alive. And this is the fate of not just me and us, but of everybody we love, including our children and grandchildren. Death will get us all. Moreover, astrophysicists tell us, even the earth and the solar system will one day be destroyed as the sun explodes in its dying gasp. On a more finite level, life is filled with threats to our existence: accidents, disease, violence, unemployment, poverty. Life easily looks threatening. If we do see reality this way, how will we respond to life? In a word, defensively. We will seek to build systems of security and self-protection to fend off the hostile powers as long as possible. Indeed, many forms of popular Christianity throughout the centuries have viewed reality this way. God is the one who is going to get us—unless we offer the right sacrifices, behave the right way, or believe the right things. God will judge us and punish those who didn’t “get it right.” But if we do “get it right,” then perhaps the consuming fire that will otherwise devour everybody and everything will spare us.
In the second way of seeing the whole, it is perceived as indifferent. Not as paranoid as the first, this view doesn’t assume reality is “out to get us.” Rather, “what is” is simply indifferent to human purposes and ends. This is the most common modern secular viewpoint. We respond by building up what security we can in the midst of an indifferent universe. There can be a rich aesthetic to this life. We may seek to enjoy its beauty while we are here, we may even seek to take care of the world as well as we can, but ultimately we are likely to be concerned primarily for ourselves and those who are most important to us.
The third way we can see “what is” is to view it as life-giving and nourishing. It has brought us and everything that is into existence. It sustains our lives. It is filled with wonder and beauty, even if sometimes a terrible beauty. To use a traditional theological term, this is seeing reality as gracious. It is the way of seeing spoken of by Jesus in his words about the birds and the lilies. God feeds them, clothes them, and, to echo another saying of Jesus, God sends rain upon the just and unjust. God is generous. This way of seeing the whole makes possible a different response to life. It leads to radical trust. It frees us from the anxiety, self-preoccupation, and concern to protect the self with systems of security that mark the first two viewpoints. It leads to the “self-forgetfulness of faith” and thus to the ability to love and to be present to the moment. It generates a “willingness to spend and be spent” for the sake of a vision that goes beyond ourselves. It leads to the kind of life that we see in Jesus and in the saints, known and unknown. Or, to use words from Paul, it leads to a life marked by freedom, joy, peace, and love.
Significantly, the last three understandings of faith are all relational. Faith as visio is a way of seeing the whole that shapes our relationship to “what is,” that is, to God. Faith as fidelitas is faithfulness to our relationship with God. And faith as fiducia is deepening trust in God, flowing out of a deepening relationship with God. The last three understandings are also the most important ones. Faith in these three senses enables us to live our lives and to face our deaths in a new way. In this life, a radical centering in God leads to a deepening trust that transforms the way we see and live our lives. Seeing, living, trusting, and centering are all related in complex ways. They are all matters of the heart, and not primarily of the head. And in our deaths, dying means trusting in the buoyancy of God, that the one who has carried us in this life is the one into whom we die.
