One of the things Christians must realize is that their doctrines and dogmas, however important they are, can become distorted when they are written down. This is because many, if not most, Christians end up thinking what is to believed is found in the letter of such written declarations instead of the spirit which lay behind their creation. This has never been the intention of those who wrote them down. Christians must learn and engage the intended meaning behind them, the meaning which transcends the letter, and when they do so, they must end up finding out the way dogmatic and doctrinal declarations should affect the way they live. A life of faith is more than just a life of learning the written declarations of the dogmas and doctrines of the church and believing them, but a life which is lived in respect to what they intend, for his is how Christians are to act in the way God wants them to act:
But between God and human beings the symbol of faith is confirmed by faith alone; it is entrusted not to the letter, but to the spirit; it is entrusted and committed to heart, not to a sheet of paper, since divine credit has no need of any human warranty. [1]
St. Peter Chrysologus, speaking about how the Christian faith is confirmed by the “faith alone,” must not be misunderstood as if he were suggesting Christians are expected to only believe in the doctrines and dogmas of the faith without doing anything more; rather, he understood faith in a holistic sense, one which sees both belief and praxis as being necessary for one who lives in and with faith. To pit “ faith alone” against “works” is to misunderstand what faith is about, for how can one be said to be faithful if they do not live what they say they believe? When “faith alone” is understood as the ability to know and believe the right dogmatic declarations, instead of being faithful to God, “faith alone” leads to infidelity as Christians think whatever they do will not affect their salvation.
The Christian who is faithful will love God and what God has revealed in Jesus, including and especially, the way of life presented to us by him. As long as the faith is reduced to the rote memorization and belief of declaratory statements about the faith, and the ability to argue in support of those statements on the most simple, literal level, the Christian faith is not going to be very appealing to non-Christian. Non-believers will find the way Christians are not concerned about the common good to not only be contemptible, but they will see how the Christian faith can end up being used for an evil ideology.
Often, more often than many would like to admit, it is not the presentation of those apologetic arguments which suggest the truth of the Christian faith which leads to people being converted, but rather those who embrace the transcendent mystery of the faith and engage it, living it out in a positive way throughout their lives, that leads people to find Christianity attractive and lead people to truly consider what Christ has to say. Gerald O’Collins understood this, which is why he could say:
Experience constantly shows how the mere force of argument is never enough by itself to convert someone to the Christian faith. If the (historical) evidence were sufficient to establish or conclusively confirm resurrection belief, such belief should be utterly convincing to all those willing to weight the evidence and draw the obvious conclusions from it. [2]
Certainly, it is important to be able to present the faith to others, to give explanations for Christian doctrine, but it is also important to realize we cannot argue with people and think they will come to a long-lasting, sustainable faith due to those arguments alone. Some might come to believe for a time, but when they find reasons to doubt the arguments, if they have not gone beyond the rationalism inherent with apologetics, that is, if they have not moved beyond a purely intellectual engagement of the faith, their faith will likely falter and they will turn elsewhere for their understanding of the truth. We can see this happening all the time with those involved in apologetics, as many of them can be seen going from one faith tradition to faith tradition, sometimes from one Christian ecclesiastical communion to another, but also, sometimes from one religion to another (such as from Christian to Jew or Muslim). Each time they do that, they say they have found (often, through their reason) the truth faith, and they end up continuing to engage in apologetics, but now hoping to convince people to follow them in their transfer of their faith. Many times, indeed, perhaps most times, their arguments end up being attempts to reassure themselves that they finally have found the true faith, but the more they argue with others, the more doubts they will have, until at last, they will abandon their faith and move on to something else, either another religion, or pure skepticism.
So long as Christianity is treated merely as a rationalistic philosophy, the imperfections contained in every philosophical exploration, as every philosophical exploration comes from a limited perspective and appropriation of the truth, will end up undermining the Christian faith itself. This is not to say philosophy is unimportant, but it the domain of philosophy must be understood, as philosophy is able to provide a far more limited presentation of the truth than religion as religion deals with and engages, and indeed, receives, transcendent truths while philosophy deals with what can be conformed to the human mind. To be sure, there are crossovers between the two, as philosophy and what it discerns can be used to help explain religious doctrines, that is, philosophy can be said to serve as a “handmaiden to theology,” even as what is discovered by religion can and will be used as givens which philosophers than will use as they engage their philosophical analysis. Likewise, some philosophers and theologians are both philosophers and theologians at the same time (as, for example, we find happening with many influential figures in the Platonic tradition such as Iamblichus and Proclus). Nonetheless, in general, philosophy does not deal with revelation as it does not know how to properly appropriate it with its own categories of thought. For philosophy deals with ideas (and perhaps, the implications of those ideas) while religion is a way of life, with Christianity being a religion of the incarnation, and the way God works with and through the incarnation to transform the world and make it better. Christians are to engage God’s work with the world, to help it along. If Christians become hyper-focused on the intellectual elements of the faith without engaging the world with grace and love, they will not present the world the sign which God wants them to show the world:
But the true sign of a Christian is the following: to feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty, to endure hunger and thirst, to be poor in spirit, humble and contemptible in one’s own eyes, and for a man to beseech God both day and night that he might stand firmly in the truth. [3]
This is the sign Christians should give to the world. It should not be the sign of someone who goes out into the world to debate or judge everyone who they come across. Rather, it should be the sign of love, where the Christian uses love as the foundation for their engagement with others. Those involved with the intellectual tradition of the Christian faith, those who explore and try to express the doctrines and dogmas of the faith, must also be involved in showing how that tradition reflects the praxis of the faith, how it connects to Christ’s teaching of love. Those who limit themselves to the letter are unable to do that, while those who are able to engage the spirit of what is written will find they will be embraced by the Spirit, the Spirit of love, who will then guide and show them the fullness of the truth, a truth which transcends simple declarations of the truth. They will then understand what it means to say man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for man, as they will understand this represents the value of the Christian faith and its teachings as a whole: the faith. It is all meant for the betterment of humanity (and the world at large). Reading and exploring Christian doctrine without such a hermeneutic will have Christians think humanity is made for Christian doctrines and dogmas in such a way they are meant to learn and follow them according to the letter in which they have been declared. This undermines the value which Christ showed is inherent in humanity, and Christians will find themselves ultimately challenging Christ and his work in the incarnation similar to the way many in the time of his temporal ministry did. They will try to promote the faith in a form which ultimately destroys the faith, something which we can see is happening all around us as we find more and more people rejecting Christianity because those who preach the Christian faith have lost sight of the true faith and the mercy, grace, and love which it is meant to bring to the world.
[1] St. Peter Chrysologus, Selected Sermons. Volume 2. Trans. William B Palardy (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2004),240 [Sermon 62].
[2] Gerald O’Collins, SJ, Easter Faith(New York: Paulist Press, 2003), 49.
[3] Saint Isaac the Syrian, The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian. Trans. Monks of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery. Rev. 2nd ed (Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2011), 565 [First Epistle of Saint Macarius of Alexandria On the Christian Discipline, not St Isaac].
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