Unmotivated Stories on TV: They Suck

A big problem for TV writers right now is developing characters that have strong motivation. Police procedurals are filled with criminals who do things for ridiculous reasons. For example, I saw an episode of Bones set in a renaissance fair milieu.The plot as such was that a medieval enthusiast with in-depth knowledge of weaponry and combat gave a poorly-made sword from a fantasy movie to a girl he adored (anonymously - he was dressed as the Black Knight of Arthurian lore). She tried to sell the sword, which made him angry, so he killed her with a 16th century torture device. Police procedurals as a genre seem to be jumping the proverbial shark...

But this problem of motivation is not limited to procedurals. Eli Stone is one of the most (unintentionally) absurd TV shows on right now, and that's saying something. On the episode I saw tonight, the Christian parents of a girl killed in college object to their daughter's heart going into the body of an atheist because, get this... they don't want her daughter's heart going to hell. These parents talked about accepting Jesus and being saved, but apparently were Catholic also (I guess all Christians are alike?). At the end of the show, the mother consents to her daughter's heart saving the atheist. She says to Eli: we've heard that you have visions, and you're lucky. For the rest of us, we live in the dark. I choose to believe that our daughter is sending us a message that she would want this lady to have her heart. What a muddled confusion of motives! The mother acted like no Christian I've ever known: Protestant or Catholic. They may act better or worse, but the motive given is not based on anything except some idea in a writer's head. And the final relenting is idiotic. To say that "I choose to believe" is to say that it makes me feel better to make this decision, but I actually believe in nothing.

Not Hans Küng... try again :)

"[Supernatural] Faith is anchored in what Jesus and the saints see.

Jesus, he who knows God directly, sees him. This is why he is the true mediator between God and man. His human act of seeing the divine reality is the source of light for all men. Nevertheless, we must not regard Jesus himself as one totally isolated, pushing him back into a remote historical past. We have already spoken of Abraham; let us now add that the light of Jesus is reflected in the saints and shine out through them. But the 'saints' are not only those persons who have been explicitly canonized. There are always hidden saints, too, who receive in their communion with Jesus a ray of his splendor, a concrete and real experience of God."

I've quoted this passage and the previous one because they help shed light on this question of the relation between natural faith and supernatural faith...

[Update: the above quote is from J. Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, p 107-108]

What Does Faith in Christ Require?

An extraordinary witness: fully human and alive, the Church. If Jesus is God among us, the person who is the announcement of God with us, then in what mode does this Incarnation continue? In what way does Jesus not leave us orphans? Through the Church. Without the Church, we are like pagans who have received the revelation of some god who left a message for gurus and experts to interpret for us. The sacraments are God's work to make Himself present to the Church, and the Church is the sign (sacrament, mystery) of God present to the world.

An extraordinary witness: fully God, the Holy Spirit: the Advocate who descended on the Church at Pentecost. Jesus promised His Spirit to remain with the Church. How do we know which spirit is the Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit brings truth and peace and unity. What is the tradition of the Church? The Holy Spirit living within the Church, the body of Christ.

Extraordinary means this: that the Person announced by the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit corresponds to the needs of my heart beyond its capacity (my cup overflows). The heart (reason, affectivity, will) recognizes its merciful Master, its tender Creator, the Good Shepherd: Jesus Christ Yesterday, Today, and Forever.

Faith: An Exceptional Witness is Needed

Karl Adam had this to say in 1924:

"How is faith in Christ attained? The apostles attained it preparatorily by His personal teaching, fulfillingly by the Pentecostal gift of the Holy Spirit. So we also: preparatorily by the teaching of His living, apostolic Church, fulfillingly by the operation of His grace. Not from lifeless records, but from the *living witness* of a living organism sustained and animated by Him, from immediate contact with Christ living in His Church."

In the comments, Clare posted this from Adam's Spirit of Catholicism, and she also recommended Amy Welborn's book discussion, also sent to us by David. I have more to add on this topic, but it will have to wait for me to take care of some other stuff first.

What Is Faith in Christ?

I want to understand better the connection between faith as an indirect method of knowledge and faith as it pertains to Christ. I know the connection is there because I live it every day, but I want to examine it closer, to test it in its particulars so I don't miss anything. 

I return again to the book on faith: Is It Possible to Live Like This? Faith by Luigi Giussani. Giussani is an authority for me - which is to say, he tells me things that I don't fully understand or believe and when I follow them I grow. Here's what Giussani says:

"How do you come to know Christ? Clearly, from our outline of the methods that reason uses, the one that has to be applied here is faith. We don't know Christ directly. We know Christ neither through evidence nor through the analysis of experience" (25). If someone disagrees with this point, I would like to see an explanation.

A curious thing about Giussani is that he always insists that the method by which we come to know Christ must be the same method that the disciples came to know him. In the book on faith, he describes five passages, or moments, in the progressive coming to know Christ better: 

1. An encounter
   
2. An exceptional presence
   
3. Wonder
   
4. Who is this man?
   
5. Responsibility before the fact
   

Giussani insists: the problem that we have with faith in Jesus is the same problem that the disciples had:

"The moment the question 'Who is Jesus?' was posed for the first time is the instance in which the problem of faith entered the world. Not faith as a simple method of reason, but as a method of reason applied to something supra-reasonable, beyond reason, unthinkable, inconceivable. Faith as a method of reason applied to something inconceivable, because everything this man said was unconceivable" (27). 

If you don't feel this inconceivability, then the note on page 27 points to John 1:35ff (the ff means start at 1:35 and keep reading until you see it).  Here we can see that faith in Jesus is different because the object is different: not this or that, but Someone who is beyond what we can conceive, better than we can imagine. 

Grace builds on nature, stretches it, changes it, but it doesn't wipe it out. It doesn't replace human nature with something alien. Faith does not turn men into angels who know things directly. 

What is Faith?

Here is the definition of faith which Julián Carrón gave in New York last January:

"What method can be applied to the knowledge of a historical event? The only way to
grasp any historical event in which I didn’t participate is through an indirect method of knowledge, through a witness. This is called faith. Faith then is a natural method of knowledge, a method of indirect knowledge, a knowledge that comes through the mediation of a witness."

He then quotes this bit from Alexis de Tocqueville:

“If man were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory demonstrations without ever advancing beyond them. As, from the shortness of his life, he has not the time, nor, from the limits of his intelligence, the capacity, to act in this way, he is reduced to take on trust a host of facts and opinions which he has not had either the time or the power to verify for himself, but which men of greater ability have found out, or which the crowd adopts. On this groundwork he raises for himself the structure of his own thoughts; he is not led to proceed in this manner by choice, but is constrained by the inflexible law of his condition. There is no philosopher in the world so great but that he believes a million things on the faith of other people and accepts a great many more truths than he demonstrates.”

Faith in the sense described above — a method of indirect knowledge — is essential to the construction and functioning of society and any common endeavor in life (which is to say life itself). The current economic turmoil is a crisis of faith. The journalists would have us believe that this faith is foolish, and that we should never trust anyone... but then where would the journalists be? O, that's right: they're scrambling for jobs like everybody else. 

Whatever else faith may be as a theological virtue, it has to at least be this first: a method of indirect knowledge which depends upon the testimony of another. Otherwise, faith becomes something disconnected from reality, like believing in Casper the Friendly Ghost (as Fr. Meinrad likes to say). Or, like our commentator Scott (A Future Metaphysician) quotes from Mark Twain, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

Here is faith. It's something common, something natural (remembering of course that all of nature is a gift, a grace); and thanks to Scott again for recalling the situation of a child and his mother. My question is how do we move from this reality to faith as a theological virtue, saving faith? I ask because I would like to understand faith better — appreciate it more. I remember that this very question is discussed heavily in the first half of John's Gospel... among other places. 

Faith, according to Journalists

For theologians it's not common to speak of faith in a natural way... but here's how some journalists use the word faith. Thank you, Google News:

Colorado Foundation’s Faith in Hedge Funds Unshaken After Rout

Bloomberg, March 6, 2009.

Faith = risking money despite evidence of losses.

Christopher Bittman, head of the $1 billion University of Colorado Foundation, is committing more money to hedge funds even after the industry handed investors record losses last year.

Faith in Wells Fargo's dividend ebbs further on Wall Street

March 4, 2009. LA Times. 

Lack of faith = not risking money due to fear because evidence is not available.

This terse article reads like inside baseball, but this quote is clear: "At the current price the stock’s annualized dividend yield is 14%. That’s the market’s way of saying it’s sure the dividend is a goner."

On Education Spending Facts, not faith Obama pours money into...

March 6, 2009. SF Gate (San Francisco Chronicle)

Faith = ideology instead of facts, evidence.

Making tough decisions with facts, not faith, is so emblematic of Mr. Obama's new pragmatism. But as the Congress begins debate over his huge education initiative, we will discover whether Obama's commitment to science is real, or simply rhetoric.

Japan’s Slump Tests Faith in the Resilience of Stocks

March 5, 2009. NY Times.

Faith = belief in something that is contradicted by what's going on in Japan.

For those seeking solace in the conventional wisdom that stocks rise in the long run, consider this: 20 years after Japan’s stock market peaked, share prices are still less than 25 percent of their top values.

Putting Faith But Not Money in Stocks

March 5, 2009. US News Money & Business blog.

Faith = lip service without risking anything. 

It’s easy to pay lip service to stocks being a good long-term investment, but few investors plan to actually buy them during a month when the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged below 7,000. About half of Americans (53 percent) and 67 percent of stock owners agree that stocks remain a sound long-term investment, according to a Gallup Poll conducted March 4.

For most of these sources, faith is wishful thinking which is opposed to evidence and facts. Perhaps someone at the University of Colorado Foundation has had a private revelation about an unexpected turnaround in hedge funds. So it would seem that journalists agree with the theologians that faith is something remote from evidence and facts...

If Faith Natural or Supernatural?

I notice in recent discussions with evangelical Protestants an idea of faith that saves. And this is the faith required for baptism. So, essentially, one has to be saved first and then baptized. A difficulty with this approach is that salvation rests upon an interior state, and thus there's a tendency to seek repetition of baptism because one's state today is more authentic than previously.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says some very succint things about baptism, but with regard to faith I can't seem to resolve this point. If I were to summarize, I'd say infants at the time of baptism neither have faith nor receive faith, exactly. Instead, they are cleansed from original sin and will develop faith when they are older and when they live in a Christian companionship: faith itself being a communal virtue and the individual participating in the faith of the Church.

***

In both of the above cases, faith is a supernatural gift: rooted in either an interior revelation or in an objective act of the Church. 

The poet Charles Péguy says that faith is simple, that one would have to blind oneself not to have faith. Giussani says that faith is a basic dimension of human personality and that it's essential for society to exist. He also says that faith is acknowledging a presence. I seem to recall Thomas Aquinas saying that the value of faith is determined by its object. If so, this would mean that humans have a natural faith (best seen in the trust of an infant for its mother), but that when Jesus Christ is encountered in the face of the Church a new possibility arises for faith in the human person. It's not faith that changes, but the object. When Christ is encountered, faith in the person of Jesus Christ becomes possible. And this faith must grow through the person following Christ through the trials of life.

What do you think?

Baptism and the Necessity of a Living Christian Companionship

"you begin to understand it [the impact of one's baptism] in the encounter with a living Christian companionship" (Julián Carrón).

"Baptism is the sacrament of faith. But faith needs the community of believers. It is only within the faith of the Church that each of the faithful can believe. The faith required for Baptism is not a perfect and mature faith, but a beginning that is called to develop" (CCC 1253).

"Catechesis aims at coming to know Jesus concretely [....] catechetical instruction also includes a pilgrim fellowship, a gradual familiarization with the new life-style [or form of life] of Christianity" (Ratzinger, Gospel, Catechesis, Catechism, 56-57). 

Baptism according to a Catholic

"This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.
It is not a removal of dirt from the body
but an appeal to God for a clear conscience,
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ," 

(NAB, Second Reading March 1, 2009)

It's always interesting to hear from others what the Catholic Church teaches about baptism. All I know is that my baptism is something that increases in power and importance to me the further removed I am from it in time, that is, the older I am. To begin with, baptism was something that happened to me before I had consciousness of sin or anything else. As a child and for many years, I have renewed my baptism with the rest of the Christian people at Easter Mass, and at other Masses in the Easter season. The promises that my parents made for me I have made my own for as long as I can remember. As part of the ecclesia, I have been sprinkled with water inumerable times in a corporate rededication to the baptismal covenant that recalls the sprinkling of blood on the People of God. Baptism saves because it redeems with the power of Jesus's forgiving blood.

Baptism was not my idea or something that I understood first. Instead, it was a gift that Christ gave me through the Church and my parents. Over time, the grace of baptism has grown in me and born fruit in my life. Even now, however, I hardly know the least thing about baptism. I could (and have) talk for days and not succeed in expressing what baptism has done for me.

So, here are a couple of snippets of things I've recently said elsewhere about baptism...

It seems to me that baptism is like a seed, like a tiny fertilized speck in a chicken egg. Eventually that speck will conquer every bit of the egg so that when the chick hatches all that is left is yellow fluffiness. The new life in Christ is real and definitive, but as a human life it requires time and freedom and friendship to unfold.

[....]

Baptism confers faith - not magically or automatically - but precisely as a seed whose trajectory is totality (and this seed could explode in 2 or 20 years). Baptism is human insofar as it’s a human begging for the salvation that only Christ brings. But even more, baptism is the living and active promise of God. God has answered the cry of sinful man in the person of Jesus Christ who is human and divine. If baptism is an incorporation into Christ, then it will necessarily be both human and divine…

I was a devout child but I felt my baptism truly explode when I was 20 after a week listening to Jean Vanier (lay leader and preacher, founder of l’Arche). It is 21 years later for me now and I see that the faith I received in baptism is conquering me in ways I could not have imagined so many years ago. And I am confident that the one who began a good work in me will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.

I was going to title this post "Baptism according to the Catholic Church," but I really don't know how I would covey the deep richness of Catholic teaching on baptism. Instead, I can only testify to the impact of baptism in my life. I would add that what the Catholic Church teaches about baptism applies not only to baptism of Catholics, but to any baptism which conforms to what the New Testament specifies is required for baptism: water in the name of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism saves you now — even if you believe it is but a public ritual or exterior ordinance. The power of God is not magical, but it is effective and persistent. It is the seed of faith whose fruit is eternal life. 

Catholic Culture: Worldview for Catholics?

Today I read an article, "Restoring a Catholic Culture: Where do We Start?." And, while it doesn't explicitly define "Catholic Culture," the definition used can be seen in the following question: "But what if some of us were conspicuously unified in our beliefs and in our behavior?" For the author, then, "Catholic Culture" means a unity in beliefs and behavior. I'm reminded of the evangelical leader Francis Schaeffer, who proposed an Evangelical Culture based on Biblical principles, which could be lived out coherently. Schaeffer normally used the term "worldview" for this approach, but both he and those influenced by him also use the term "Christian Culture," reducing the richness of culture to ideas and ethics.

Here's another perspective on Christian culture:

"What then do we mean by a Christian culture? In fact the word Christian is commonly used in two different senses. There is a sense in which it is identified with certain forms of moral behavior which are regarded as typically or essentially Christian, so that a Christian society may mean an altruistic and pacific society, and an unchristian society or form of behavior is taken to mean one that is aggressive and acquisitive.

[...]

The only true criterion of a Christian culture is the degree in which the social way of life is based on the Christian faith. However barbarous a society may be, however backward in the modern humanitarian sense, if its members possess a genuine Christian faith they will possess a Christian culture — and the more genuine the faith, the more Christian the culture."

"The Outlook for Christian Culture"
from The Historic Reality of Christian Culture
by Christopher Dawson

According to this definition — which Dawson characterizes as traditional — Christian culture is a social way of life, a life style, a life form if you will. It is based not on abstract principles but on faith.

So what is faith? For Schaeffer and those directly or indirectly influenced by him, faith is a set of core principles, presuppositions, a priori ideas which are used to systematically understand the world. This is a rationalistic understanding of faith (If these principles are received or confirmed through interior illumination, it's also fideistic).

Here's another perspective on faith:

"The other methods of reason use only a part of man. In contrast, this method of faith uses the whole man. Why? Because you have to trust the witness. To correctly and reasonably trust a person, you need to engage all the loyalty of your person, apply all the acumen of observation, involve a certain dialectic, a sincerity of heart. It takes a love of the truth that is stronger than, for example, the antipathy that might arise towards the witness. You have to love the truth. The whole person becomes engaged. Installing electricity in a room doesn't require the engagement of the entire person. That is why faith is a method of knowing that engages the totality of the person in its event. Hence, it's the most dignified, precious method. In fact, if it weren't for the use of this method, society — the development of living together as the existence of a society, a small society like the family or society in its totality — couldn't exist.

What is the method of knowledge [faith as knowledge]? Society comes about entirely through the method of faith. If none of us trusted each other, what would happen? In fact, where the naturalness of these things is lacking, people go about with knives and guns. No one can trust anything anymore.

So cohabitation, culture (culture is the development of knowledge, but you develop knowledge if, trusting in the discovery that's given you by those who precede you, you add your own discovery, and those who come after you, trusting your discovery, add their own), society (the existence of society), history (the development of society, the changing society) are all based on this method, the method of faith."

Is it Possible to Live this Way? An Unusual
Approach to Christian Existence
Vol 1: Faith
by Msgr. Luigi Giussani
p 21-22

I really love the openness of the above description of faith by Don Giussani. The problems of faith and culture are those which the Christian shares with everybody else. Like my neighbor, I want to live a happy life. Like my co-worker, I want to pass on the good things in life to my children. Culture is not so much a war of opposing principles, but instead the growth of a society. Evangelization is not a matter of convincing people to accept Christian presuppositions but instead the sharing of an extraordinary humanity. As I noted previously, we are already in a period of great spiritual and cultural renewal, which is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for our circumstances and times.

And what is the object of Christian faith? For the answer, go read the Socratic dialogue: "What is Christianity?"