Faith

Description

Faith is generally considered belief and acceptance of something as true when such a thing is not or cannot be known as a fact. In religious terms, it is a belief and confidence in God as revealed through scripture and teaching, often with reference to the future. Religion may be said to presuppose faith. In Zen, where the duality implied in dependence on God as some other being is contrary to basic tenets, faith is nevertheless considered fundamental with reference to the existence of the Buddha mind and in meditation as the means of achieving it; it is the beginning of the Buddha mind where the self-image made by the ordinary mind is not yet dislodged. As such it may be compared with [divine discontent]

, where there is no satisfaction in even the best that can be produced by the ordinary mind.

Although not based on rational deduction, faith is nevertheless considered an act of the intellect. For example, that which was experienced as knowledge on a particular occasion can be accepted by faith when the experience of knowledge is no longer present. Christianity teaches that faith is a gift of God, through grace, to which an individual may or may not give personal assent. Religious writers are unanimous in considering faith as a clearing ground for right action, a means of setting aside all hindrances to the task in hand.

Nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us. Nothing that can be heard is God. Similarly, God cannot be imagined. To find God we must enter darkness, silence, obscurity without images or the likeness of anything created. He can be understood only by Himself. To know Him means being transformed so as to know Him as he knows Himself, and faith is the first step in that transformation. The simple act of submission to the authority of the Church through believing some article of faith brings the gift of a pure and simple inner light which perfects the intellect. Feeling the weakness and instability of the spirit in the presence of God's mystery brings a subjective sense of helplessness, so that there are still doubts in a sense. In fact, such doubt may grow as faith grows. The obscurity of faith appears as darkness to the mind because it transcends the mind's weakness. Just as the darkness is at its deepest, when the mind is truly liberated from weak and created lights, then one is filled with the infinite light of faith which is pure darkness to reason. In perfection of faith, when God becomes the light of the darkened soul, faith becomes understanding.

Faith is thus acceptance of God and the beginning of communion. It is intensive and yet it affects everything one does. It gives simplicity and depth to apprehensions and experiences, so that life is a mystery of which only a small part is what one can rationalize and the unknown is incorporated into everyday life. Not only does it bring us into contact with the authority of God and teach us truths about God, it reveals the unknown in the self in as much as it lives in God. Faith is the only way of opening up the depths of reality, even one's own reality. It integrates the whole unconscious - that above as well as that below the conscious - with the rest of life. It enables one to accept one's animal nature and to govern it according to divine will; and it subjects reason to hidden spiritual forces that are above it. Thus the whole man is subject to the "unknown" above him.