Is such love or such faith possible? Perhaps not all at once. Here we might turn back to our comparison with married love. Both our commitment to God as well as our commitment to another person must be a growing relationship. One reason for this is that our perception of the “other,” to some extent, will inevitably change. And along with this changing perception, the relationship itself will change.
Very often, in our youth, the other person is perceived as a reflection of ourselves or, more exactly, as the ideal
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counterpart of what we aspire to be. This is natural, and not without profound implications. But we must be careful, for that “other” is also a person in his or her own right. To try to force that person to conform to our own expectations is a violation of that person’s integrity or “otherness.” The maturity of the relationship must not only involve a growing unity, but a growing individualization as well. It has been said that “true unity differentiates.” Although a certain similarity is a foundation for unity, its perfection is to be found in complementarity, not in uniformity or sameness.
The same goes for our relationship with God. Just as with married love, which usually begins in the attraction of “eros” and blossoms into the love of friendship — unless the erotic element is unrestrained — so too love of God will often begin on a strong note of “what’s in it for me?” But just as a marriage that involves a true mutuality will regularly demand real self-sacrifice, so too the attraction to God that has ripened into a true friendship will also demand that “he must grow greater, I must grow less” (Jn 3:30).
For such love the New Testament has a special word; it is agape, the unconditional, self-sacrificing love that is celebrated in the famous thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Such love, it is true, transcends merely human capabilities. It is, above all, a gift-which is why agape is often translated as “charity” (from the Greek charis for “gift” or “grace”), But this uniqueness must not stand as an excuse or reason for evasion of our call to respond to it. Instead it is a demand that we move beyond the limits of our own self-concern and self-love. Instead of expecting God to cater to our own wants, faith demands that we set aside all idols and that we “let God be God.”
The life of faith, like the love from which it issues and in which it ends, must be gradually deepened and transformed. Confident trust will more and more be tested by a renewed demand for a loving commitment to the works of faith. As in a marriage, mere words or signs of affection , as nice and as
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reassuring as they may be, are not enough. As Margaret Farley, in her excellent book Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing, makes clear, commitments are neither mere predictions of the future nor simple resolutions made in behalf of one ‘s self. On the contrary, commitment involves a “giving of one’s word” or a promise that lays a claim on us over our future. Mere good intentions and enthusiasm are not enough. “Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven; but he who does the will of my Father in heaven shall enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 7:21).
Nor is self-determination enough either. Just as faith and hope require love for their beginning, and that even this love is something that depends on God who has first loved us (1 Jn 4:10), it should be obvious that in the end, when the life of faith has reached its zenith, the measure of our faith will be the purity and sincerity of our love (see 1 Cor 13:1-13). What I have to say in the chapters that follow will attempt to show what this means for us at each stage of life.
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
1. What has been your own understanding or “definition” of faith? Were you satisfied with it? Why or why not?
2. How does your understanding of faith fit into Frankl’s scheme (see the diagram
in this chapter) , and what does this tell you about any difficulties you’ve had with faith?
3. How is faith undercut by the search for absolute certainty or security? Give some examples of ”manipulative” religion.
4. Reflect on your own experience with “faith, hope and love” in life. How does human experience in these matters throw light on the theological insight (or the other way around)?
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Chapter 3: The Beginnings of Faith
“To live is to change, and to live perfectly means to have changed often”. (John Henry Newman)
Although it is commonly said that “the faith” remains timeless or changeless, the way or the life of faith is a process — it is a living, moving thing. Like so much else in life, faith that fails to develop and grow soon atrophies and perhaps even dies. This is not simply true of our individual commitment to the life of faith, but it is also true of the understanding of faith’s contents or our doctrinal convictions.
There is nothing new in this. The fifth century monk-scholar St. Vincent of Lerins, whose ideas greatly influenced Cardinal Newman, had written on the “growth,” “development,” and “progress” of doctrinal understanding. And Newman’s famous 1845 Essay on the Idea of the Development of Doctrine, in turn, greatly influenced the Second Vatican Council which clearly affirmed the idea of “a growth in understanding of the realities and words which have been handed down” (“Constitution on Divine Revelation,” section 8, paragraph 20).
We can trace this notion of growth back even further to the New Testament itself. Not only do admonitions for a greater faith, in the sense of loving trust, fill the gospels and the epistles, but we also have direct appeals for a growth in the knowledge and understanding of the faith. In the epistle to the Colossians the apostle speaks of his prayers “that through perfect wisdom and spiritual understanding you should reach the fullest knowledge of his will . . . until they [you] are rich in the assurance of their [your] complete understanding and have knowledge of the mystery of God in
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which all the jewels of wisdom and knowledge are hidden” (see Col 1:5 and 2:2-3). Obviously, then, the idea of growth and development in faith, both in one’s understanding and commitment, as well as in “assurance” or confidence, should be a major concern in Christian life.
Yet, oddly enough, while much has been written down through the ages on the stages of growth of Christian love and holiness, little has been done precisely on the idea of growth in or stages of faith. Recently, to our good fortune, the situation has changed.
The Stages of Faith
Among the most well-known studies on the subject of growth in faith have been those of the American theologian and religious researcher James Fowler and his colleagues. (See James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning, New York, Harper & Row, 1981.) Fowler tested his theories by means of a series of exhaustive interviews of persons from many walks of life. Since then, The Religious Education Association of the United States and Canada commissioned further testing, first (as mentioned in the previous chapter) through The Gallup Association by means of a telephone survey of over one thousand persons, and again through exhaustive interviews, similar to those used by Fowler, of forty-one persons who were selected as being representative of the range of variations found in the larger poll. (See Constance Leean, Faith Development in the Adult Life Cycle, Module 2, Religious Education Association of United States and Canada, 1985.)
Fowler divides his stages of faith development into six or seven, depending upon whether one counts the earliest, beginning level as involving “faith” in any meaningful sense. In his first book he assigns numbers from 0 through 6 to what amount to seven stages, while in his more recent book Becoming Adult: Becoming Christian