Taxonomy of Faith

Just for fun, I thought I'd try to list various methods or types (species if you will) of faith. Feel free to play along in the comments. I'm just making these categories up as I go along, although I'm sure wiser men have already mapped this terrain.

"Blind" Faith: By blind faith, I will assert that species of faith which is unquestioning of the source of information. It takes all statements by a subject as revelation of truth or fact. Within this category of faith, there would seem to be at least two subspecies: unlimited and limited. Unlimited blind faith would accept all statements as individually true facts, even to the point of accepting obvious or direct contradictions. This seems the least plausible faith to sustain in the real world by a mature, competent adult. By "limited" blind faith, I would assert a species of faith that limits what it accepts as true to a particular authority or individual. This seems a more plausible form of blind faith and perhaps represents the type of faith exhibited by radicals and/or cult members. It rejects contradictions or employs reason when information is presented from sources outside of the authority, but it might still accept contradictory statements from the authority itself.

Skepticism: My understanding is that classical skepticism is defined not so much by its affinity for empiricism as it is by a philosophical realization that all knowledge is based on faculties that are subject to distortion and therefore liable to error. Modern skepticism, at least in layman's terms, seems focused instead on only accepting as fact that which can be visibly observed, demonstrated, and/or reproduced. Like blind faith, I assume that very few people are actually true skeptics in this sense. It's simply too irrational. Rather, most people probably refer to being skeptics only when it comes to matters of the supernatural or cryptozoological.

Semiotic-Rationalism: There seem to be hybrids between skeptics and blind believers that dismiss with supernatural and yet still want to cling to a certain "truth" behind statements of the supernatural. These are the types of people who reject supernatural reality of New Testament miracles by abusing Augustine's discussion of figurative language in the Bible. For these people, it is not simply the uncharitable portions of the Bible that must be read allegorically or metaphorically. They would advance that anything that sounds implausible according to our understanding of modern science must also be reduced to a metaphorical description of an event (e.g. Jesus didn't really multiply the loaves and fishes, he simply guilt-tripped his followers into sharing food; Jesus didn't physically rise from the dead...but the spreading of his message was a kind of resurrection).

Synthetic-Rationalism: Synthetic-rational faith would be that faith which does employ reason to question the consistency of matters of faith with its own internal logic as well as external ideologies. This kind of faith is necessary to the belief in miracles--it accepts as historical facts events that it accepts cannot have happened under any known natural means. It is also the kind of faith that is necessary to conduct higher order theological and moral discussions within a religion itself. This is the kind of faith that prevents an institution like the Catholic Church from reducing itself to limited blind faith to the pope, and it is what prevents popes from becoming all-out Antichrists. It is also why the Church takes great care before pronouncing on matters of faith and morals. The Church recognizes that it has an obligation not to present contradictions to the faithful--and that the faithful have the capacity to recognize those contradictions. I suppose it is also this kind of faith that enables one to believe in the Eucharist--allowing me to accept the physical accidents of the bread and wine without merely rationalizing it to mere symbolism as a figure (metaphor) for Christ's body. One would also like to imagine that it is this approach to faith that leads to conversion into one's Church...but that idea would, of course, also be subject to personal bias.

I would go so far as to say that synthetic-rational faith is the most mature of the four forms listed above since it seems to demand an awareness and even acceptance of all of the preceding forms at some level. Blind faith and skepticism seem immature modes of faith due to their absolutism. They are all-or-nothing approaches that seem the product of underdeveloped imaginations. Semiotic-rationalism seems to merely ape maturity. While it is imaginatively clever in its supposed ability to read between the lines, it seems trapped to forever ride an ultimately sterile one-trick pony. The synthetic-rationalist, trapped between two seemingly contradicting ideologies, seems to occupy that abundantly fertile space of intersection.

I'm not sure, though, that I would say that a synthetic-rational faith is necessarily the best or happiest mode of faith. One might say that "limited blind faith" is the most pure form of faith. A limited blind faith renders the believer extremely vulnerable to exploitation and can lead one to become an accomplice to evil. However, a limited blind faith attached to a true and benevolent authority probably yields the greatest form of happiness. The synthetic-rationalist is always in danger of slipping too far towards extremes--giving up the project in favor of a simpler, more temptingly comfortable worldview--of either denouncing the supernatural or too aggressively (defensively) asserting it out of his own repeating doubts.

Comments

[Peter Terp]

Another species of faith occurred to me this morning, and it perhaps is the more prevalent than any that I listed above.

Identity-faith: A belief system accepted on the sheer basis that the individual self-identifies or is identified with that system. In this case, it is not so much that the individual subscribes to the charism of an authority or to a rational assessment of facts and statements. In this case, the individuals adheres to what they perceive as identifying characteristics of the system, less out of respect to a hierarchy than out of a tribal mentality. This most likely overlaps with limited blind faith at an early age, although there are many people who most likely subscribe to the "basic tenets" of a faith while rejecting the persons of authority in that faith. This would seem to be a category of faith for the "cafeteria Catholic", the person who claims membership in a group despite rejecting the group's higher-order or more challenging doctrine. Likewise, this describes the "cradle Catholic" who does not quite understand or contemplate the complexities of his or her own faith but merely accepts the faith as part of a comfortable continuum they have experienced over their lives.