There are people who I know and have long known who are annoyed by the fact that I can read and entertain, say, Orthodox Christian or Taoist or Buddhist texts but don’t have a lot of patience for religious traditions that are “closer to home.”
They put it down to ego and a kind of aesthetic obscuritanism, i.e. fashion.
“Oh, he went off and got educated and big Ph.D. guy can’t be seen standing next to the faith traditions of the average people he grew up with because it doesn’t look impressive and fancy enough for him. That’s why he reads those other books and chats with those other people, but won’t read our books or talk to us about our spiritual lives.”
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I grew up in Utah. Utah, and the United States in which it sits, are heavily Protestant. I don’t make this point to try to characterize Protestantism definitively, but more to enable a border of a kind to be drawn between spiritual and philosophical universes.
That is to say that I’m doing the same thing here they’re doing when they say “Oh, you’ll engage with and consider all of that other stuff, but not our stuff.” We’re both talking about the same border, I’m just pointing to it from the other direction.
I’m aware that there are other kinds of Protestantism in other places, but I know less about them. I didn’t grow up around them, wasn’t steeped in them.
But American Protestantism I know well. It’s a dominant social, cultural, and political force here, to this day, and even among those who no longer practice it.
And despite denominational differences and what adherents believe to be irreconcilable sectarian differences, to my eye, they’re all the same in one important way.
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Epistemology probably isn’t something I should be blogging about because I’m not a philosopher and whatever formal philosophical training I have comes to me through the “squishy” side of the American social science disciplines, with whom I’m less impressed every day.
But my particular tendencies at a personal level have everything to do with epistemology, so I’m going to have to go there to finally get to the point I’m so long-windedly trying to make.
Here’s the thing.
There is a particular epistemology that I associate closely with American Protestantism that I can’t concede. It goes something like this:
- To believe is to have faith
- To have faith is to know
- To know is to be certain
- To believe is therefore to be certain
- It is Good (capital G) to have faith
- Therefore it is Good to believe
- And it is Good to be certain
- It is a sin not to have faith
- Therefore it is a sin not to believe
- And it is a sin not to be certain
And ultimately:
- I believe that my preferences are Right
- Therefore I am certain that my preferences are Right
- And I have faith that my preferences are Right
- And because faith is good
- My certainty is good
This is all over our culture, from Disney films to national politics to activism in civil society.
To believe is to have faith is to know. To know is to have faith is to believe. And the Bible tells us that faith is everything, and Disney tells us that belief is everything, and therefore it follows that certainty is everything.
Everyone strives to believe. Everyone is proud to achieve and hold faith. And for precisely these reasons everyone operates with certainty—they know.
And all of this is a force for good in the world and is presumed to be be right and moral.
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I can’t be the only one who has spent my life being showered with testimonials from believers, both secular and non-secular, in American life. Whatever the cause, whatever the denomination, whatever the secular or spiritual claim:
- “I absolutely know—I am certain that…”
- “I believe with all my heart that…”
Usually if done in the course of proselytizing, these are prefaced with “I want you to know that…”
- “I want you to know that I absolutely know that…”
- “I want you to know that I believe with all my heart that…”
These are all seen as both fundamentally good claims—unassailable, claims that “you can’t hold against people”—and also as persuasive claims on the part of those who make them.
They tell you these things—how much they know, deep, deep down, how deeply certain is their certainty—that this thing or that one is True.
All these years later, I just can’t join them there. I find these claims of knowledge to be off-putting. More to the point, though I’m not a religious person, I find these claims of certainty to be, in some way, blasphemous.
The more they are made, the less seriously I take them.
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But here’s the thing. I do believe (along with virtually every faith tradition, American Protestant or not) that faith is a fundamental good, for a variety of reasons that I won’t bother to go into here.
So how can this possibly be?
If I see faith as good, how can I be put off by people who believe, or who know?
This question is what I’m getting at with this whole discussion. It points to how the cultures on the two sides of the border differ.
I am able to think and talk about and read certain Orthodox, or Catholic, or Taoist, or Buddhist thinkers with generosity and seriousness because faith is not an epistemic quantity for them.
That is to say that—at least for those that I find interesting and agreeable—faith is not at all the same thing as belief, and neither has much at all to do with knowledge or certainty. Belief is not a way of having faith and faith is not a way of knowing.
- Faith is faith
- Belief is belief
- Knowledge is knowledge
- Certainty is certainty
- These are each different things
- To have faith is good
- To have belief is understandable
- To have knowledge may be useful but is risky
- To have certainty is bad
This road—this is a road that I can travel as a tourist all day long.
Because the older I get, the more it becomes clear to me that I don’t know. I am not certain. They don’t know, despite their certainty. And certainty is not a good thing—and it is not the same as faith.
And when you consider the equivalences that these other traditions draw, they do not overlap with the American Protestant ones.
Not:
- Belief is faith
- Faith is knowledge
- Knowledge is certainty
But rather:
- Belief is human nature
- Faith is hope and trust
- Knowledge is practical
- Certainty is error
Despite the superficial similarities (both being Christianity) between, for example, American Protestantism and, say, Coptic Orthodoxy, at the core of things—at the transcendental level—their universes are very different places.
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Every time someone purports to know, I am put off, particularly if this is expressed with certainty.
I know that there is irony here, that the claims to know are a way of attempting to demonstrate both faith and moral value, the only move they know how to make when it comes to persuasion about things beyond the practical and empirical.
But in the same way that I have little patience (and getting less every day) for the activists who “know” in our social and political life, I have little patience (and getting less every day) for religious folk who “know” in their religious lives.
If you tell me you have deep faith, and leave it at that, I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say—and talking about it seriously all day long.
The moment you tell me that you know, you’ve lost me. Becuase you don’t know. And more to the point, that’s the claim of the tyrant, and the criminal, and the Pharisee.
In all things, religious or secular, I am unconvinced that it is for us to know.
And every bit of practical wisdom I’ve managed to accumulate over the course of my life (which admittedly isn’t all that much) tells me that people who know are both going to cause conflict and are probably going to make things worse in the end.
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I’m mildly amused imagining how some of my American Protestant compatriots might react to this explication.
“How is it possible to have faith without knowing? Surely if my faith is real, then I know?”
If only we could excise this particular epistemic ethos from our culture, we might be able to have a society again—without all the internecine, zero-sum conflict that we have today.
But we are who we are as a people.
And at a personal level—I’m just not there with you. I haven’t been there with you since I was about ten years old.
Yes, I understand that you are certain that you know, and thus that you also believe and have faith, and that all of these are good because they are the same, because Disney and the Bible and your schoolteachers assure you that faith and/or belief are moral goods, and therefore you must go out and change the world and its people based on what you are certain that you know.
I understand what you feel. I can understand it because I grew up here. I breathed the same air.
But this understanding doesn’t mean you’ll ever fundamentally persuade me—or anyone else—about any one thing. Because persuasion doesn’t have much to do with knowledge, but rather a lot to do with faith. Which is why—and how—faith and knowledge are completely different things.
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So if you want to reach me with an open mind for heart-to-hearts, bring me your faith—but don’t expect me to be impressed by your knowledge, and for God’s sake, spare me your certainty.