Sukerkin and others
Religion, historically, has not been about 'belief'. It is about one's practice.
Karen Armstrong (a former woman religious) is my great teacher here:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/b...ut_belief__karen_armstrong_s_the_case_for_god
Belief, as in an intellectual and cognitive acceptance of a set of propositions, is one consequence of the 'modern' age, beginning in the late 1500s and continuing today. it is the great gift of the supremacy of curiosity, inquiry, analysis and concern with evidence.
Sadly, and almost invisibly, fundamentalist believers (in Christianity as we discuss here) have also accepted the primacy of the scientific method and desperately struggle to submit beliefs (as intellectual propositions), to the scrutiny of that process.
It is both tragic and unnecessary. But because even they (fundamentalists) can only accept the literal validity of intellectual propositions, they are deeply threatened. And people who feel threatened at the deepest core of their identity... well, they act in defense of that deepest core.
The Ascent of Intellectual Orthodoxy
For most of Western history, religion has been primarily a matter of orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. In fact, no doctrine made any sense without participation in the community of faith and in its rituals. No doubt, there were certain thoughts or “beliefs” that mattered and were of extreme importance; however, unlike today, these convictions were never understood as either the core or the purpose of the religious life.
In fact, for most of Western history “belief” has meant nothing like what it means today. Today, when someone asks me if I believe in God, for example, they are asking if I assent to the proposed verity or the factual existence of God—and usually it is in reference to a very specific understanding of that God. Similarly, if I'm asked if I have “faith in Christ”, the question is whether I agree with the proposition that Jesus of Nazareth was divine, died on a cross, and was raised from the dead, or some form of that story. In both cases, questions of “belief” and questions of “faith” require answers of thought.
Yet, as surprising as it may seem, these understandings are relatively recent. “Faith” has its etymological roots in the Greek pistis, “trust; commitment; loyalty; engagement.” Jerome translated pistis into the Latin fides (“loyalty”
and credo (which was from cor do, “I give my heart”. The translators of the first King James Bible translated credo into the English “belief,” which came from the Middle English bileven (“to prize; to value; to hold dear”.
Faith in God, therefore, was a trust in and loyal commitment to God. Belief in Christ was an engaged commitment to the call and ministry of Jesus; it was a commitment to do the gospel, to be a follower of Christ.
In neither case were “belief” or “faith” a matter of intellectual assent.
Nevertheless, by the dawn of the 18th century, as knowledge became a rational, theoretically driven venture “the word ‘belief’ started to be used to describe an intellectual assent to a hypothetical—and often dubious—proposition.”
Religion would not be the same. “Until well into the modern period,” Armstrong contends, “Jews and Christians both insisted that it was neither possible nor desirable to read the Bible literally, that it gives us no single, orthodox message and demands constant reinterpretation.” Myths were symbolic, often therapeutic, teaching stories and were never understood literally or historically. But that all changed with the advent of modernity.
more... what are your practices? To what do you give your heart? Each day?
with respect,
