The introduction to this series took the simple experience of the sun shining and explored what would happen if it suddenly didn’t. We were reminded that we often take common experiences for granted, and that it’s only when we look at things from a different perspective that we become aware of difficulties.

So I’d like to suggest that one way to discover what faith is might be to look at what it isn’t. And in particular to look at precisely what it isn’t by considering its opposite.

But this is not necessarily straightforward, because over the years a number of candidates have been proposed. So let’s probe each one in turn, starting with…

Faith and…

Complete the following pairings: North and… Black and…  Jekyll and…  Heads and…  Sweet and…  Pleasure and…  Faith and…

Virtually no one would end the sequence with anything other than the word doubt. Since faith began doubt has been viewed as it’s loyal, inseparable though uneasy bedfellow.

Faith appears to drive us in one direction; while doubt holds us back. Faith is the accelerator, doubt the brake; apparently fighting each other for control over our journey. They seem to be opposites. And this seesaw view of faith and doubt is how many people try to hold the tension; as faith increases, doubt recedes; as doubt grows, faith diminishes.

In places the Bible itself encourages this view (Matthew 21:21, James 1:6), and extols the virtues of not doubting.

So what’s the problem?

There lives more faith in honest doubt…

Though we can often be taught in church that doubt works against faith and should not be entertained, there is problem with this approach. Because if you have no doubt then you are left, not with supreme faith, but with one of only two residual states: either certainty or blind acceptance.

In “A Prayer for Owen Meany” by John Irving, the narrator describes the local pastor, Mr Merrill, as being “most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite.”

And this verse from a longer poem on faith and doubt by Alfred, Lord Tennyson says something similar:

Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,

At last he beat his music out.

There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.

The logical inference from these writings is that faith cannot exist without doubt. Faith’s job is to face doubt and overcome it, not to bury it. But in this interpretation doubt has to be there, in order for faith to have any meaning. So you cannot have one without the other.

True north

This leads to another interpretation of the faith-doubt conundrum where faith and doubt can be seen, not as two different states, but as a single entity, like a magnet with two poles.

This doesn’t in itself mean that faith and doubt are not opposites. But perhaps it is the relationship between them that we misunderstand.

We are taught that as faith grows stronger then doubt diminishes. But perhaps it is subtler than this.  Just as the strength of magnetic poles always balances out, maybe as doubt grows stronger faith must also grow stronger in order to overcome the doubt. If you have little doubt then you need little faith.

And as we have seen, if you have no doubt at all then faith can vanish in a puff of logic and you suddenly find yourself with certainty, our next contender…

How do you hold the tension between faith and doubt?

Do you think they are opposites?

Part 3: The opposite of faith: certainty? coming soon.