I've been thinking a lot about faith lately, perhaps because in recent weeks I've been wrestling with my own. It's not as steady as I'd like it to be, but then again, I'm like everyone else in this regard--a work in progress. But I keep trying to think my way through what is becoming, for me, a rather tangled query: how are faith and knowledge linked?
Scripturally speaking, we're told that faith is hope for things which are not seen, but which are true. Knowledge, according to the Bible Dictionary, is one of God's attributes... and "knowledge of divine and spiritual things is absolutely essential for one's salvation." The difficulty is this: how does one know divine and spiritual things?
I recognize that there are different types of knowledge: some forms of knowledge are based on pure empiricism and actual experience--I know I will get sunburned in 100 degree heat if I don't wear sunscreen, because I've had that experience. (And even if I hadn't, I know that the sun is hot and that it can burn.) I believe there's such a thing as innate knowledge, i.e. I think that one of the talents we are blessed with is that we automatically know (or recognize) things when we hear them. And then there's learned knowledge, which, as near as I can figure, comes from listening to what we are taught.
The gospel includes all of these types of knowledge including, I'd argue, at least a small bit of empirical knowledge. But I still can't figure the link between faith and knowledge: when, exactly, does believing become knowing? And further (and probably more importantly), is there all that great a distinction between the two? After all, rhetorically speaking, we often hear the two used interchangeably.
And to throw in another monkey wrench, we're also taught that faith has to be based on correct knowledge for that faith to be effective. I grant that's the "which are true" part of the "things which are hoped for and not seen, but which are true" equation. But faith implies we are trusting those things are truth--at least initially--not that we know they are true.
I'm probably rambling a little, but I'm trying to sort out a relationship here. And it only gets more messy and muddled the more I analyze. Except for this: scripturally speaking, those who know often fall away because they skip over the having-faith. Laman and Lemuel, for example, who know they've seen an angel. Because they empirically know, they don't place any faith... and they eventually fall away. (Clearly for more reasons than that, but I find it an interesting link.)
The one thing I understand when it comes to faith and knowledge is this: if you conceptually know that God is an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving being, then you can easily place faith in Him because you have faith that He has a purpose for everything and that He knows exactly how to achieve that purpose--even if you don't understand.
Thoughts, anyone?
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4 comments:
After all, rhetorically speaking, we often hear the two used interchangeably.
Defining scriptural terms precisely always presents some difficulty because prophets are often imprecise themselves. I've heard several times when people take a definition one prophet sets forth and then place it in another prophet's quote and make a mistake in the process. I often here people say things like, "Nephi said that you can only understand Isaiah if you have the spirit of revelation, and John said in Revelation that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of revelation, so Nephi's saying that, if we have the testimony of Jesus, we can understand Isaiah." That statement is obviously not true (I can find lots of people who have strong testimonies of Jesus yet cannot understand Isaiah), but I've heard it a few different times.
Similarly, "hope" is a tricky word: sometimes (as in Alma) it's the thing that precedes faith, but sometimes (Moroni in Ether) hope comes from faith. The distinction isn't solid. My best working theory is that hope as a verb precedes faith while hope as a verb comes from faith.
So there's my response, which approaches your question tangentially at best. My answer is, though, that you probably won't find definitions for 'faith' and 'knowledge' that will fit in every context. For example, you alluded to Alma 32:21 ("not to have a perfect knowledge"), but in the next few verses, Alma talks about acting in faith and finding out the truth and then he says in v34, "And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith becomes dormant." If you get too caught up in the words, it all gets pretty confusing pretty fast. But, then again, what are the scriptures except a whole bunch of words, right? I myself have trouble with this a lot.
If only the scriptures had been written by corporate lawyers. I mean, yeah, they'd be a whole lot longer and a lot harder to read, but once you got through them, everything would be clearer.
Neither extreme seems very good....
Good grief, I'm glad the scriptures weren't written by a bunch of corporate lawyers. For one thing, the redundancy would be mind boggling.
I think you're right about getting caught up in the words, though. At least to an extent. (I can't grant that you're totally right because this is me, and I'm a little incapable of that...)
The difficulty is, in fact, that I feel as though faith has a pretty concrete and not-so-changeable definition. Whereas knowledge, on the other hand, could mean a variety of things.
So really it's not a matter of trying to link two things together, but a matter of linking one well-defined thing (faith) to several different types of knowledge. And that's where things get fuzzy.
I guess that's true. I find it funny that faith is the more concretely defined term because my intuition is that it's more abstract than knowledge. But I guess they're both pretty abstract.
Come to think of it, 'know' and 'knowledge' are really sticky terms. I mean, I can know about something, and that's different from knowing something, and knowing something is different from knowing someone.... Plenty of philosophers could pretty adamantly argue that I don't know anything at all!
They're both abstractions, I completely grant that...but knowledge does, seem to you, the more abstract of the abstractions. Precisely for the reasons you mentioned--there are different ways of knowing.
I don't see how there are different ways of having faith. (Not to say there might not be... it just seems to me that faith boils down quite tidily into belief, whereas knowledge can be fact-based or belief-based or internally-based...)
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