For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and
this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no
one can boast. – Ephesians 2.8,9 (NIV)
I have had a few conversations recently with friends where
they asserted the notion that faith was a gift from God. In each instance the notion just didn’t sit
right with me. Upon doing a bit of
research and reading here and there, I unearthed a long standing and open theological
conversation that’s been running through the centuries regarding just this
topic. I’m ashamed to admit I’d never
taken note of it, perhaps because of the fixedness of my own position and
understanding in relation to faith. At
any rate I began to reconsider the question or perhaps just consider it, given
I’d never given much thought to it previously.
Also after reading texts on both sides of the debate, I wanted to bring
a particular set of eyes and ears that I thought might be helpful to my process
of thinking. I wanted to briefly read
the question through the eyes of Theo-Drama.
If you’ve read this blog previously, you know I’ve employed this
template before as a means of working through a particular thought, text or
theology. So how would this notion of
faith as a gift play out if we filter it through the separate notion that
existence is a part of a larger story or drama being told and played out on the
stage of the world? Well let’s find out.
First, I must make a quick detour and define what I mean
when I use the word faith here. For that
we could go one of two roads and reach the same destination I think. The first would be a Biblical road. I am not going to do an entire exegetical
analysis here on the nature of Biblical faith, but I will (even with the danger
of proof-texting) pull from the writer of Hebrew’s definition of faith. He or she suggests, “Faith is confidence in
what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (NIV) The key words I want to draw on for my
purposes here are “confidence”, and “assurance.” They embody the notion of trust. A person who trusts something or someone is
willing to place their physical, emotional, or spiritual safety (depending on
what one is trusting in) in the care of the thing or individual being trusted. I trust that the engineers and builders of my
car have designed and constructed it to such a quality that it will not explode
as I drive it. To that extent I place my
faith in both them and my car.
The other road is the dictionary road. Given we are dealing with an English
translation of the Bible, the folks translating decided that “faith” is the
best translation for the Greek word translated (which we’ll get to
momentarily). Our friends at
Dictionary.com assert that our English word faith is “confidence or trust in a
person or thing.” That fits in pretty
well with what the author of Hebrews asserts as a working definition. If I were to expound on the Biblical and
dictionary definitions together, I’d say that faith is a confident, assured
trust. Quick and dirty, but fair I
think. Unfortunately for lovers of pith,
this simple understanding of faith is in conflict with much of the historical
understanding of Christian faith.
To establish this conflict I’ll have to start with a little
bit of Greek, which I suppose is a dangerous course in the hands of one
ignorant of Greek; however it’s a course we will take anyway. The most widely employed Greek word which we
translate into English as “faith” is the word pistis. It’s rooted in the
Greek word peitho, which means, “to
persuade or be persuaded.” So in the
minds of the New Testament writers, faith contained in it the notion of being
Divinely persuaded to trust. If one is
of the mind that these types of word choices are beyond chance and have their
roots in Divine inspiration, then Christian faith by its nature, given the
object of the faith, is revealed as an interplay between Divine persuasion and the
human response to that persuasion. The
conflict then arises in relation to the manner in which people through history
have tried to make sense of that interplay.
Those who tend toward the notion that faith is an entirely
gratuitous gift from God tend to find themselves favoring the Divine portion of
the interplay as dominant over the human portion. To be fair there is scripture that seems to
bear this out. For example Paul in the
Book of Romans suggests, “For through the grace given to me I say to everyone
among you not to think more highly of himself than he ought to think; but to
think so as to have sound judgment, as God has allotted to each a measure of
faith (Romans 12.3 NAS). Paul also lists faith as one of the fruits of
the Spirit in Galatians 5, meaning it’s something produced by the Spirit, not
by the individual’s effort. In addition
the verse at the beginning, Ephesians 2.8,9 is also often cited. Folks who hold this perspective read the
line, “and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works,
so that no one can boast,” as referring to faith. Given I’m going to argue for a
different reading, and that this is a blog, not a book, I will not lay out this
case further. I don’t intend to be
unfair to it, but to represent it simply and quickly.
I’m also not going
to argue that faith is entirely of human origin. To do so would be to marginalize the parts of
Scripture I find difficult, and what fun would life be without Scriptures that
blow holes in your understanding of God? Instead I’m going to argue that faith
is a mysterious inter-penetration of both God’s persuasion, and humanity’s
trust. I could go directly to scripture
for this, but that’s been done, and would not add to the conversation (though
what I’m going to argue I suppose isn’t new, unique, or extra-biblical). As I wrote earlier I’m going to filter the
question through Theo-Dramatic Theory.
For this I’ll be drawing heavily on Balthasar’s understanding of the
notion.
At its heart is the
idea that the story or narrative God is telling in history, that is the fall,
redemption and restoration of humanity, is being played out in the world as if
on a stage. One could loosely see the
Father as the author of this play, the Son as one sharing the stage with
humanity, representing and revealing the Father’s vision, and the Spirit as the
play’s director, bringing the play to life, directing the actors and action on
the stage, and improvising to bring about the Father’s vision. As members of this stage, we all have “roles”
in this play. Some have more to do than
others, but as Stanislavsky said, “there are no small parts, only small
actors.” This however does not mean that
our contribution to the story is entirely pre-determined. On the contrary, just as any actor in a play
or film must bring their entire person to a role, their interiority, their
subjectivity, their creativity, so we must if we’re to play our part to the
fullest on the world stage. It’s our
freely exercised choices which bring life to the role given us by God. In other words for the drama being played out
to have life, the actors must contribute something to the work, and the Father
seems, through the Spirit, to expect and encourage our contributions to the
story. What’s in play here is our
understanding of the manner in which our finite freedom interacts with God’s
infinite freedom.
Granted I haven’t
argued exhaustively here to prove my point, but if we assume this construct
reflects something of the reality of things, it would mean that humanity has
something of themselves to contribute to the drama, including their trust of
the God who gave them their role, and though not mentioned previously, also
their identity, both of which are tied up in the imitation of the self-gifting
of Christ, but that’s another blog.
Ultimately, if one leaves no room for humanity’s trust/faith, then one
strikes an almost un-repairable blow to human freedom, which itself runs
contrary to much of scripture. I would
suggest human freedom is a Biblical concept.
I would also suggest Biblical freedom is the freedom to do what we ought
to do, to employ our God given gifts, and creativity and apply them to the role
God’s given us in order to achieve God’s ends.
In the end I will grant that God is ultimately responsible to bring
about the ends God has planned, choreographed and orchestrated, and that I see
God’s fingerprints all over my life, wooing me, influencing me, persuading me,
cajoling me, loving me. But I also
experience my active pursuit of God, which can’t be diminished. So in the end has God given me my faith, or
do I freely, by my choosing offer my trust to God? For me the answers to those questions are yes
and yes, and must be in order to preserve both God’s and humanity’s respective
freedoms.
