Doubting the Teachings of One's Religion

I argued earlier that besides its salutary role in philosophy, doubt also has a salutary role to play in religion. But I left something out, and Vito Caiati caught it:

I have been thinking about your recent post “A Comparison of the Roles of Doubt in Philosophy and Religion” and would like to pose a question to you: While it is certainly true that the religionist “doubts the teachings of other religions,” does he not do the same with some or many of the teachings of his own religion?  In raising this question, I have in mind the intellectual believer, imbued with an inherent religious sensibility and inclination, desirous of affirming the foundational propositions of his faith, including those that appear illogical or contradictory, but who, however much he wills it, is often suffused with doubt about their veracity. I would go so far as to argue, speaking as a Christian and Roman Catholic, that certain dogmas and doctrines by their very nature engender such doubts. None of this necessarily entails the abandonment of belief, but it renders the faith of the religionist more tenuous and unstable than many would like to admit. His struggle to uphold one or more members of a set of beliefs is, at least for those not gifted with special grace, a characteristic property of his faith.  At best, he should acknowledge the tension and understand that he will repeatedly transverse an arc between belief and doubt and that the warm convictions of one moment will often dissipate in the cold misgivings of another. The gap between what is affirmed and what is consistently believed is for the religionist of this type never entirely closed.

That is a very fine statement and I cannot disagree with it. Religious believers who are both sincere and intellectually sophisticated will in the main, and as a matter of fact, question the truth of their beliefs and the efficacy of their practices.  Dr. Caiati doesn't quite say it, but he does suggest that this is as it ought to be. Whether or not he would commit himself to the further step from the factual to the normative, I will commit myself to it: one ought to, at least sometimes, question truth and efficacy of beliefs and practices.  It has always seemed to me that a living faith, as opposed to a convenience and a soporific, must maintain itself in the teeth of doubt. A vital faith, a living faith is animated in part by doubt and a spirit of inquiry.  He who finds first had to seek; but here below the finding is never secure and final and so must be renewed by further seeking.  

Vito speaks of certain doctrines and dogmas that by their very nature engender doubts. Some of these are harder to believe than others. The hardest to believe are those that demand or seem to demand the  "crucifixion of the intellect."  Trinity and Incarnation are the two main main examples. One cannot be a Christian and deny them* (in the way one could be a Christian and deny Transubstantiation). It is, however, difficult to make logical sense of them (in the way that it is not difficult to make logical sense of the Resurrection.)  See my Trinity and Incarnation category for details, and this relatively short and precise entry in particular: The Logic of the Trinity Revisited.

Religious faith here below must remain "tenuous and unstable" to the intellectually awake. The tenets we hold to must remain tentative and thus "tenuous."  Doxastic 'grip,' like physical grip is subject to the world's loosening. No one's grip is absolutely secure.  There is no helping that unless you want to sink into the somnambulance of the worldling who has the world and its pleasures and "fire insurance" to boot.

Religious faith is a faith seeking understanding. It is not a blind faith without understanding, but neither is it a faith that goes beyond a clear understanding, superadding intellectual assent to a clearly conceived proposition.   Perhaps the Pauline image is apt: religious faith is a seeing through a glass darkly.  The glass of the discursive intellect is a distorting lens through which the Incarnation must appear logically impossible even though in truth it is actual.  

Let me put the question to myself directly: Do you or do you not accept Jesus Christ as the way, the truth, and the life, as your only hope for salvation? My acceptance takes the form, not of an acceptance of a ready-made proposition or set of propositions, but the acceptance of a task to be pursued in all seriousness, the task of investigating the matter in all its ramifications via reasoning, prayer, meditation, examination of conscience, study of all relevant literary sources, including scripture, commentaries thereon, the works of the great and not-so-great philosophers of all times and places,  with no slighting of Athens, or Jerusalem, or Benares, or Alexandria, and seeking out the few living who may have been vouchsafed a higher degree of insight than that which I find in myself.

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*I spew from my mouth those miserable 'liberals' who would remake Christianity in their own stunted image. They are free to reject the doctrine, and I defend their right to do so; but they ought not be allowed to change it to suit themselves.  Christianity is what it is; its definatory tenets are essential to it and cannot be jettisoned without jettisoning the whole thing.

Addendum (6 February 2022):

Malcolm Pollack comments on the above  here.  In an e-mail he writes,

I hope you are well. I set off in 2022 imagining I was going to write a lot more (I'd been tapering off lately), but things are now so completely insane that I hardly know what to say. How does one analyze, or comment productively on, what goes on in a madhouse? Why even bother? And why continue to elaborate the various and infinitely detailed breakdowns and malfunctions of a system that's going over a cliff? I can hardly bring myself, any longer, to raise a pen.

There is indeed something absurd about continuing to add to the analytical literature on our social and political collapse. For example, what is the point of this excellent article by Anthony Esolen? It will not be read by those who need its instruction, and even if they did read it, it would do them no good. You cannot appeal to the reason of those bereft of reason, or to the consciences of those who either lack a conscience or whose conscience was never properly formed. 

So why do I continue to think about and write about these things? The short answer is that I have a theoretical bent. I enjoy figuring things out.  "All men by nature desire to know." (Aristotle). This is so even if few live up to their (normative) nature. The bios theoretikos and all that. Intellectual types derive intense pleasure from reading, study, thinking, and all cognate activities.

Even if the subject-matter is disgusting as is that of the medical and social pathologists, the pleasure of understanding is a delight.  The feculent can be fascinating.

Theory has its escapist joys. But in the end we would prefer to act upon the world and its recalcitrant denizens and bring about improvement. But even if we know what needs to be done to bring about, not mere change, but improvement, the tasks are formidable and perhaps insurmountable especially since we who oppose the current madness are divided among ourselves, which is the topic of this article which explains the Boomer versus 'Based' generation gap on the Right. Excerpt:

Do you hate America and want it to fail? 

A lot of younger right-wingers would say yes . . . in a certain sense, they do. And they have reasons for saying that. What young man with any sense wants to die for the Joe Biden regime in the Ukraine? Who wants to pay taxes so Kamala Harris can shower money on illegal immigrants and left-wing shock troops?

That’s a hard message to hear for anyone who lived through the 1960s and the Cold War. For a long time, to be on the Right—to defend liberty and morality and decency—meant to be a patriot and to love America. And it still does. But the enemies of freedom and decency who hate America are no longer godless communists abroad, they are the godless leftists at home who are currently in power.

If America means transgender rights and suffocating biomedical security measures, then those who love freedom will come to hate America—or, to be more specific, the current regime that has taken control of what used to be America.

Young people on the Right don’t hate liberty and morality and decency; they despise woke ideology. The older idea of “America” that the Boomers love is gone, as far as the younger generation is concerned. Most Boomers will never share this antipathy, but they must learn to distinguish between America the nation and America the state. The American state—as the COVID lockdowns, Russiagate hoax, and the political prosecution of the January 6 protestors show—is at war with the American people. (Many older conservatives recognized this distinction and gave Rush Limbaugh a pass when he famously remarked on air that he hoped Barack Obama would fail.)

Comments

[Dominik Kowalski]

Bill do you think the uncertainty about religion we have speaks in favor of the religious pluralism of a John Hick or at least in favor of an Inclusivist Perennialism? It seems to me, given that especially from an outside perspective some dogmas are incredibly hard to accept or make sense of (I wouldn't even necessarily say the Trinity if constructed as an identification with the One, the Intellect and the Worldsoul, but Transubstantiation is certainly a perfect example), the exclusivist claim certain branches of Islam, Christianity , Hinduism etc. make for themselves is really hard to square with the uncertainty, at least if we suppose that the being worshipped is God and not just a god.

I know in the past that you have said that heaven isn't that special if anyone enters it. Putting aside my disagreements, at least after a period of purgatory, do you think our situation lends more credibility to a universalist or "almost universalist" position? I only include the second option in case it's possible for a completely rational mind to reject perfect goodness, which I doubt.

[BV]

There are rebellious natures who refuse to accept any authority. If C. Hitchens, say, finds himself in the divine presence and refuses to bend his knee, then he cannot possibly be admitted into heaven.