Belief in a religious context is more often called faith. Epistemically, all perception and belief in them come from faith. One must have faith - belief in something that empirically cannot be proven - that one's perception is reliable, that one's perception is not a merely a product of brain in a vat. Yet our vernacular gives the word "faith" almost specifically to religious and spiritual beliefs.
St. Thomas Aquinas classifies faith as a virtue (Summa Q55A1). Virtue is a disposition or a sort of habit. Virtue, while it is a kind of perfection, a lesser degrees of it exist. It is likewise true of faith. For instance, a religious person may have moments of doubt in one's spiritual beliefs when under severe stress. One who is well-developed spiritually would be able to sustain greater stress before doubting. One who has attained greater virtue would be able to maintain one's faith regardless of one's current state. In the Abrahamic traditions, it is believed that one of insurmountable faith can command demons in the rite of exorcism without being corrupted in turn.
For most, the very first degree of spiritual development, then, begins with a flicker of faith; not many are gifted with instantaneous proofs of God as St. Paul experienced. For most of us, this flicker of faith can come in two different ways: Rational and emotional.
Rational
The rational emergence of faith is extremely rare. This sort of emergence comes from rigorous interdisciplinary understanding of philosophy and empirical sciences. I have read testimonies of former atheist philosophers, cosmologists, and biologists giving their studies as one of the contributing factors of their conversions. For these intellectuals, they first had to learn that, epistemically, existence of a sentient unmoved mover we often call God is entirely reasonable to believe.
However, I have observed that faith cannot be sustained with our rational faculties alone in its beginning stages, because most of us are incapable of acting in accord with reason at all times. We too often are governed by our emotions, are we not? For this reason, emotional emergence of faith is required for even the most stoic of persons simply due to human nature.
Emotional
Emotional emergence of faith is one we see more often. We see this often in culturally homogeneous cultures and charismatic churches. For [relatively] homogeneous cultures like Southern India, the inhabitants believe in the Hindu faith mainly due to the cultural factors. In charismatic churches, the emotional flows created by music lead to faith. In both instances, the faithful come to believe due to the herd mentality.
Although emotions are useful in invoking faith, I have found them to be incredible unreliable, because emotions can be used to invoke unbelief also. Even when one believes that it is reasonable to believe empistemically, one can freely choose not to believe simply because one feels no "spiritual experience."
I have seen too often cookie-cutter college students who have left environments that foster faith primarily through emotional impulses created by herd mentality after graduating from high school. As soon as these students are exposed to ideas that challenge their faith, they quickly convert to agnosticism and atheism.
It becomes clear, then, that neither types of emergence of faith are sustainable on their own. As human beings are of both mind and emotion, our growth of faith must be fulfilled through both mind and emotion, even when the rational part is the greater.
It is said here that through reason and emotions we come to have faith. The aim is to grow and maintain this faith. In order to do so, I observe that there has to be periodic reminders that what we believe and what we feel are real, satisfying our reason and our emotions.
The second stage of spiritual development, then is perception.
No comments:
Post a Comment