Is Faith a Gift?: A Theo-Dramatic Perspective

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.