Faith and Belief

 Books fall down from the shelf, not really, but occasionally get plucked from where they have been hiding.  The Way of Transcendence by Alistair Kee left to me by a friend and never consciously opened was there lurking.  Kere (1937 - 2011) was a radical theologian  and in his Introduction promotes the idea that the modern man bereft of the beliefs which inform the NT might have faith in Jesus Christ as the Way but be without belief in the divinity.  His epistemological underpinning for this dichotomy seems to be belief requires evidence, justified true belief, Humean assurance and so forth.  To make Christianity more palatable it must be trimmed of such like fat as Virgin Birth, miracles, Son of God etc.  Of course this is absurd.  For instance is it intelligible to believe in the evidence of your senses?  Where does belief come into that?  George Moore was thought to have made a profound statement when he said “Its raining outside and I don’t believe it”.  That latter expression was the catch phrase of a sitcom grumpy old man when confronted by the anomalous that did not accord with expectation.  It does not cohere, it is incongruent,  

Anyway if belief is a world viewish stock that you are born into, are you stuck with it?  Can you achieve it?  Can you test it?  When Jesus said ‘Knock and it shall be opened unto you’ was He offering a verbal placebo?  People have gotten down on their knees and tried it and lo they received an answer.  A personal belief has been established that is counter to rational scrutiny.   De profundis clamavi ad te domine is not the same as the knock on the door of the deserted mansion in Walter de la Mare’s poem:

The Listeners

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grass

Of the forest's ferny floor;

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

"Is there anybody there?" he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

"Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word," he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.