Faith, Certainty and Control

 

I've always thought the opposite of faith is control, rather than certainty. This is because certainty can characterize either faith or control. For the premodern mind, faith is a matter of certainty/assurance/confidence. (see Hebrews 11:1, below) Faith is trust, and trust requires humility and vulnerability. It is the opposite of pride. If God is Good and True, then there is no greater object of trust than Him. As the hymn says, "Friends may fail me, foes assail me" but I can be certain "he is with me to the end."

For moderns, however, truth became a matter of propositional certainty; the relational certainty of premodernity was eclipsed. Faith is no longer a trust in a divine person, it is becomes trust in the truth of various propositions. (Hence the "Battle for the Bible," and the whole inerrancy debate.) It also turns out the more certain you are that something is true, the more you can be tempted to control it.

For premoderns, we can know God exists either through reason (Romans 1:20) or revelation (scripture, testimony, mystical experience). In that way, I agree with Sunny Lockland: the issue was more whether we would trust God to follow through on his promises.

But then Descartes made epistemology rather than metaphysics our "first philosophy," and truth became identical with propositional certainty. With Kant, God could not be known by reason nor could his existence be established by revelation. "Sapere aude!" So the issue was reduced, from "Can God be trusted to follow through on his promises?" to "Does God even exist"? As the way to establish truth narrowed to strictly empirical verification, faith in the sense of trust in something beyond oneself came increasingly to be taken as irrational.

More and more technology offered us the control we desired, and now the mantra, "believe in yourself!" echoes around us daily. Faith now is trimmed to mean being certain that you can do whatever you put your mind to, so you can control your world, and bend it to your will, not the will of any God.

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NOTE #1: I do not think faith is blind, Catholics speak about "the preambles to faith." The Catholic Dictionary defines those as follows:

<PREAMBLES OF FAITH

The main premises of reason on which the act of divine faith depends as on its rational foundation. They are mainly three: 1. the existence of God; 2. his authority, or right to be believed because he knows all things and is perfectly truthful; and 3. the fact that he actually made a revelation, which is proved especially by miracles or fulfilled prophecies performed in testimony of a prophet's (or Christ's) claim to speaking in the name of God. (Etym. Latin praeambulus, walking in front: prae, in front + ambulare, to walk.) > 

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NOTE #2: Hebrews 11:1, Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων.

[from ὑπό (under) and στασις (a standing, a placing, a setting, a state or condition)]

NASB: Now faith is the certainty of things hoped for, a proof of things not seen.

NRSV: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

NIV: Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

AMP: Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality—faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses].

See also https://www.hopefaithprayer.com/faith/faith-hebrews-hupostasis/