Franciscan Penance Library

DOUBT AND BELIEF

Joseph Ratzinger’s book, Introduction to Christianity, written in the late 1960’s, opens with a chapter on “Belief in the World of Today” and begins with a section on “doubt and belief”. In this section he asserts that the situation of believers and unbelievers in the world is really quite similar. 

He begins first by describing the situation of the believer. Professor Ratzinger uses a play by Paul Claudel, Soulier de Satin, to summarize the situation that we as believers face in the world. A Jesuit missionary had been on a ship which was sunk by pirates. He is tied to the mast of the ship and is floating on the raging waters of the ocean. The play opens with the Jesuit’s monologue: “Lord, I thank thee for bending me down like this. It sometimes happened that I found thy commands laborious and my will at a loss and jibbing at thy dispensation. But now I could not be bound to thee more closely than I am, and however violently my limbs move they cannot get one inch away from thee. So I really am fastened to the cross, but the cross on which I hang is not fastened to anything else. It drifts on the sea.”

Professor Ratzinger then gives the following comments on this: “Fastened to the cross-with the cross fastened to nothing, drifting over the abyss. The situation of the contemporary believer could hardly be more accurately and impressively described. Only a loose plank bobbing over the void seems to hold him up, and it looks as if he must eventually sink. Only a loose plank connects him to God, though certainly it connects him inescapably, and in the last analysis he knows that this wood is stronger than the void that seethes beneath him and that remains nevertheless the really threatening force in his day-to-day life.”

As American society gets more and more secular, we can see that this image also applies to us here just as it did in Joseph Ratzinger’s German secular culture. Those of us who take the teachings of the Church seriously are surrounded by those who openly reject these teachings or simply ignore them and still call themselves Catholics. In past centuries, the beliefs of Christians were supported by the wider culture in which they lived. This is no longer true. Those of us who are older can notice a definite shift in society even in our own lifetime.

How can one escape the sea and get to the firm ground of certain and verifiable knowledge? Some try to do this by fleeing to the idea that they will only accept as true knowledge which can be scientifically and experimentally verified. Of course, this assumes that there are no higher powers or levels of being which by definition cannot be experimentally tested. In the Gospels we read how the devil tempted Jesus to jump from a high tower since Psalm 91 promises that the just man will be born up by the angels. Jesus refuses to put God to the test. You cannot “experimentally” test God in that way. Those who only accept as real knowledge that which can be experimentally tested cannot escape the possibility that they are wrong.

Professor Ratzinger gives us an illustration of this point from the writings of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber:

“An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, ‘but perhaps it is true after all.’ The scholar tried in vain to collect himself-his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold, and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: ‘My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.’ The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible ‘perhaps’ that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.”

Joseph Ratzinger explains this story as follows: 

“Here we have, I believe-in however strange a guise-a very precise description of the situation of man confronted with the question of God. No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby, it cannot forget the eerie feeling induced by the words ‘Yet perhaps it is true.’ That ‘perhaps’ is the unavoidable temptation it cannot elude, the temptation in which it, too, in the very act of rejection, has to experience the unrejectability of belief. In other words, both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man's destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him.”

The above analysis by Professor Ratzinger explains why our secular American society chooses to marginalize and privatize religious faith rather than directly attacking it. There is always the possibility that “perhaps it is true”. In the 1960’s, Professor Ratzinger could hope that believers and nonbelievers could find a common ground in their mutual lack of absolute certainty. However, it seems as though our society has even rejected that “common ground” be refusing to even discuss the issue.

--Jim Nugent (CFP Life Pledged Member)