Beyond proof: seeking faith? Follow the hints.

Seeking faith? Follow the hints

George Steiner, one of our greatest modern critics and one of the few who takes theology seriously, compares the writings surrounding Socrates and Jesus in his chapter, "Two Cocks" (No Passion Spent, Yale University Press, 1996). At the end of this powerful and challenging essay, in which he firmly rejects any fundamentalist or literalist approach to Scripture, Steiner writes: "Reason as I can, there are passages in the Old and New Testaments which I am unable to accord with any sensible image, however exalted, of normal authorship, of conception and composition as we seek to grasp them in even the greatest of thinkers and poets. Mundane imaginings are almost wholly rebuked by, for example, the thought of Shakespeare coming home for lunch and reporting on whether or not the writing of acts 3 and 4 of King Lear 'had gone well.' Almost. Considered reflection does allow such a vignette its place at the far edges of the ordinary. As I have remarked earlier, I am at a loss when, by analogy or similitude, I try to graft this picture onto the author of the speeches out of the whirlwind in Job. When I would apply it to certain sequences in the Psalms or Ecclesiastes. When I would explain to myself the genesis of such pericopes in the Gospels as Jesus"Before Abraham was, I am' or of very nearly the entirety of chapters 13-17 in John. In such biblical instances, the concept of a wholly rational hermeneutic escapes me. I find myself backed up against the harsh radiance of 'the scandalous.' It is not 'theology as grammar' which seems pertinent. It is grammar as theology."

This final paragraph of Steiner's essay points to a sense beyond either fundamentalism or its denial, to a claim that is put upon us at a level so close to the bone that it approaches the demand Jesus made of his followers: "Who do you say that I am?" And Steiner's choices are good ones. Anyone who can read God's answer to Job without the short hairs rising on the back of the neck is brain dead.

This passage brought me back to a recurrent thought: Belief is always based on a response to something less than clear and compelling evidence, and the old notion that one could be led logically, by argument, to faith is not only wrong but possibly a form of blasphemy. If faith could be proven you would have the proof, and lose God. What you get, and all you get, is a hint, a clue. It orients you. You have a choice: Go with this, or lose track. It is the direction, not some form of claim or ownership, that is the sign of faith. in Pascal's Mystery of Jesus (part of Pensees) the Lord says, "If you are seeking me, you have found me." It can be as faint as the way you look at some stars in deep darkness, by not seeing them directly, but looking at the dark next to them. You have the hope that it is God's leading, and not illusion or self-deception, that gets you to this place. Trust in God is nothing like a claim on him, or ownership, or a conviction of certainty that this is so.

And yet, there is something compelling here: The faint star really is there, and there is an authority about some passages in Scripture, some people you have met, some stories you have heard, that doesn't exist anywhere else. This is something you sense viscerally, and you hope it is true, and try to stake your life on not being deceived in this. It isn't proof. But there are moments when something cuts through our reading to our hearts. The story of Zacchaeus, his enthusiasm, and the sweet detail of a short man climbing a sycamore tree to see Jesus; Jesus' change of mind (he was passing through town, but is compelled to stay with Zacchaeus); the four short verses in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector that manage to cut to the heart; the parable of the prodigal son and his merciful father - if this sort of storytelling is not in some profound way divine inspiration, something in us needs it to be; if this is not true, why worry about truth at all? The power and beauty of these passages make us understand what Dostoevski meant when he said that if he had to choose between truth and Christ, he would choose Christ. (Simone Weil, citing this, pointed out that Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, would rather Dostoevski chose the truth.)

Dostoevski was a romantic who could also say, "Beauty will save the world." At nineteen you breathe, "Yes!" But then you think of the Nazis who wept listening to Bach and Mozart after days full of murder. Sorry - beauty isn't good enough. Dostoevski also wrote, in commenting on his composition of the chapters "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" in The Brothers Karamazov, that his "hosannah of belief" was "forged in the crucible of great doubt." That may be closer to the experience of many of us.

The passages that Steiner cites do something beautiful and powerful; so does much good art. The parables of Jesus are succinct, charged examples of perfect storytelling. But more: They bring you to a stop. Without offering anything like a proof, they speak with such authority that - beyond proof or disproof, certainty or doubt - they make me think that if this isn't the truth about God and God's relationship to us, nothing is; and that can be enough to bring someone to the edge of faith, "the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11: 1). I know how passages from John's Gospel worked on one person I know.

During the time when communism in Albania had crushed religion, or tried to, a young man of Muslim background was given a copy of a book in French by someone who knew his love of French literature. The person who gave him the book was not aware that it was a French translation of the Gospel according to Saint John. The young man read it, decided that he had to become a Christian, and, as other people guarded the place and watched for the secret police, he was baptized in the basement of a house of an Orthodox priest who, at great risk to his life, had continued to serve the church. The young man left Albania, became a monk, returned to Albania to serve the church, and is now Metropolitan John, the bishop of Korce.

The fact that he is now a bishop where once he might have been murdered for his faith is wonderful (the man who baptized him is now also a bishop in the synod of the Orthodox church in Albania), but what moves me most is the thought of his encounter with the word of God in John, and the knowledge that he must become a Christian. That moment is full of the radiance not only of "the scandalous," but a reminder that the power at work among us is the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.