“the most profound and menacing doubts”

Timothy Beal is a Christian. Yet he is also a critical thinker. Note my caveat. It is, Beal tells us, not only possible to be a Christian and a critical thinker, all the real Christians are. I am not qualified to debate who is and who is not a real Christian. No one is. Not even Christians. 

One thing that irks me about Christians is the way they have to have their own definitions of words. I was struck by a definition of “love,” for instance, that had the word’s meaning weirdly and horrifically different from everyday human affection in order to be able to declare that God loves us. Yes, he loves us even when he’s standing idly by during our torture or obliteration. That is part of God’s love, you idiot; how can you not understand that! No, I don’t remember who insisted this was love. In the paragraph below Beal does something similar with the word “faith”:

There is a widely held, simplistic definition of faith as firm belief. To many, especially nonreligious people, faith is seen as absolute certainty despite or without regard to observed facts or evidence. Yet, as anyone trying to live faithfully in this world knows full well, there is no faith without doubt. … The Bible … presumes faith in God, yet … it also often gives voice to the most profound and menacing doubts …

Let’s take a quick look at Merriam-Webster: “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” 

Not among the shades of meaning: “doubt”

This is not to say I think Timothy Beal is being disingenuous. He can define religious faith however he wants to, so long as he is up front about it. He can define God. He can define Christianity. Everybody can have their own definitions — so long as they don’t hurt each other over disagreements. These are squishy terms. Not like oxygen, say. We better have a consensus definition for oxygen. If you buy an oxygen tank, it won’t be helpful to have something other than oxygen in it.

Still, the idea that it is “nonreligious people” who mainly think of faith as the absence of doubt, rather than the religious, seems to me wrong. The impression I’ve gotten from religious people, most especially the loudest spokespeople on the teevee, is that doubt is sacrilegious. Maybe they don’t read the same bible as Beal. 

source: The Rise and Fall of the Bible: the unexpected history of an accidental book 

by Timothy Beal

2011. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York