The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason Book

Riffing on Christian Faith

At some point I'll do a review on Harris's book (with which I have some serious disagreements). But for now I'll just use it as inspiration and excuse for a rant about Christianity. Said rant is not about the patently poetic content and its derivatives of the Christian Faith (I am listening to the incomparable Vespers of Rachmaninov as I write). The birth, death, bodily resurrection, and eventual return of the Son of God can be held harmless. But the far more insidious and destructive Christian idea of faith itself cannot.

To only slightly simplify: Judaism consists of rules for behaviour; Islam of submissive obedience; Buddhism is a life-practice; Hinduism, a mythological imagination; and Confucianism a suggestive aphoristic wisdom. Only Christianity, by its own definition, is a matter of faith. But through Christianity's insistence, all these others have come to be called 'faiths,' and considered as if they were competitors for something Christianity calls belief. So Christianity, uniquely, has missionaries whose intention is to instil faith, correct belief, among those unfortunates among whom it is lacking. Nulla salus extra Ecclesiam, There is no salvation outside the Church, is a doctrine that celebrates the two Christian inventions: salvation and faith, which can be used interchangeably as the need arises.

Although Christianity has its many rituals and credal expressions, every Christian knows that these are not the thing called faith. Anyone can perform the ritual or say he creed. But authentic faith is far more basic, more existential. It is an orientation, an attitude perhaps, toward the world. An attitude of... well faith. Press a Christian hard enough and he or she will be forced to admit that this faith they have is an elemental thing. It can't be defined, divided or described in terms of behaviour, or propositions, or rules, or even psychology. Faith is a unique category of existence, they will contend, which can only be considered from inside that existence by those who live within it. Faith is a condition of the soul.

Rituals and creeds may be shared, therefore; they are a source of solidarity. But faith is entirely a personal matter. Only an individual knows about his or her faith and, according to some, not even them. Doctrinally in Christianity there is no clear sign, either external or internal, of the one who lives in faith. Consequently, for those who take the matter seriously, faith is a source of constant worry. If those without it are doomed, how could it be otherwise. So the aspiring Christian, and all must be aspiring to be considered Christian, must be constantly mindful, not of one's behaviour but of the state of one's faithfulness. One must suspect and inspect oneself continuously for the signs of faith. This drove Martin Luther, among many others, mad.

As Sam Harris says, therefore, Christianity is the "perfection of Narcissism." It is the radical liberal economics of the soul. What matters is individual salvation. And the way salvation is to be achieved is not how one behaves externally with the rest of the world, but how one is internally with God. At most the rest of the world is a mirror upon which the Christian projects his own image in order to assess the quality of his faith - ceaselessly, remorselessly, and ultimately fruitlessly. Fruitlessly because even he has no clear idea what faith itself might be. Faith is what is absent, 'hope for things unseen' as the Pauline formula has it. Christianity creates the need which it claims only it can fill, and then calls its failure 'longing for God' and declares that proof of the universality of the need. With an advertising campaign this effective is it any wonder Max Weber pointed to Christianity as the matrix of capitalism?

Faith is therefore terrifying. And it's logical consequence is terrorism. It is Christianity's insistence upon the equivalence of faith and religion which has infected Islam and Buddhism with the germ of terror (it is at this point that Harris and I part company; he may be unaware that Sri Lankan Buddhist monks invented the modern suicide killer, one of whom, Somarama Thero, appropriately became a Christian shortly before his death). The novelty of Christianity was never in the tenets of its faith but in the idea of faith itself. Stories of virginal births, suffering gods, gods in human form, for example, are common in ancient civilisations. What is distinctive about Christianity is that the elements of these stories became matters of faith not rituals of communal solidarity. Mere acceptance, tolerance, of such content and its ritual are insufficient proof of faith. Real faith is extreme faith, total faith, or it is nothing. As another Christian doctrine has it: Error has no rights. And for Christians right is might. This is the reason many Christian theologians branded Islam a 'Christian heresy.' It came dangerously close to the territory of faith, and not just geographically.

So, emulating the theological lead of the religious genius St. Paul, the first Christian apologists attacked their religious enemies not on the basis of morality, about how people should treat one another, but by insisting on the 'irrationality' of their beliefs. As if beliefs did not carry their own rationality. Not having beliefs in the Christian sense was somewhat confusing for these opponents therefore. But the Jews and the emperor-worshippers and the Mithraists and eventually the Muslims soon got into the swing of this faith thing. Christianity transformed religion from interesting, creative, inspiring, diverse poetry about things beyond reason, into a debate about beliefs, then into a commercial competition, and ultimately into repressive violence about faith.

Beliefs, as matters of faith, become truths which are immutable and must be fought for. This is obvious to all who 'live in faith.' Such truths destroy the possibility not just of learning but also of negotiation. They, therefore, undermine both politics and science. Today's single-issue Evangelicals are from the same intellectual tribe that destroyed the great Library of Alexandria, outlawed the Socratic Academy, masterminded several crusades, massacred the Jews in great numbers, condemned Galileo, fought doggedly against constitutional democracy as a heresy, and persistently protected paedophiles in its ranks, among many other well-known activities. All in the name of faith. This concept of faith, we now know, has another, more precise name: Ideology, the absolute devotion to unchallengeable presumptions about the world, the principle use of which is the suppression of human freedom by those who claim to have it against those whom, they claim, don't.

¡Felíz Navidad! y'all. As they say at that border wall of Christian love.

Postscript: For more on the Christian idea of faith, see