The many types of faith
A short list of definitions follows
There is a story that an audience member asked Rudolf Steiner if praying made a difference. His response was this perfect approach to respecting the free-will of others. “Try it out. Say the Lord’s Prayer every day for ten years. And then don’t say it for the next ten years. Then you will know.”
(I don’t know the source—if you know it or remember differently, let me know.)
I love that anecdote, because it encapsulates these elements of faith and modernity and personal free-will choice so perfectly. There is no finger-wagging from above, no religious leader exclaiming what might happen if you don’t. Rather: if you want to know for yourself, here is how to find out.
And it emphasizes that faith—and even experimental faith—takes time.
On Sunday, I participated in the very enjoyable conversation about the leap of faith and Christian Existentialism 2.0 (for our modern times) with David of the Freedom Conversation, André Meloche, and WD James.
You can watch the replay here on Rumble.
We will follow up the conversation next week with Part 2: “Problem of the Self. Problem of Evil. Lucifer, Humans and Technology. Kierkegaard’s Knight of Faith.” (Sunday Dec 14, 10am ET)
Definitions of Faith
Please note how different each of these meanings is. They could easily be different words.
Faith, meaning subscribing to a religion.
Faith, meaning obedience, such as described in the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac.
Faith, meaning belief in God or an afterlife. (Note: this is different from subscribing to a religion)
Faith, meaning the active force described in the New Testament (Jesus Christ says many times “Your faith has healed you” or some variation of that phrase—Mark 5:34, Mark 10:52, Matthew 9:22, Luke 17:19, Luke 18:42, Matthew 8:13, etc)
Then we have the quasi-secular ideas, such as faith in oneself, faith in another person, faith as a synonym for hope, etc.
Can you think of other definitions and meanings for Faith? 💛
What you describe as an "active force" in No. 4 points to the ancient, longstanding meaning of the Virtue of Faith: a freely chosen assent to truth and the perceived source of truth. It involves both “with knowledge” (consent, freely chosen) and “toward knowledge” (assent), and therefore counters the mistaken claim that virtuous Faith is opposed to or a lack of knowledge.
The thing is that you can never know what might happen along the road not taken. You can essentially travel only one path at a time. You will never know for sure what might have happened by choosing a different path.