Factive or “intellectual” doubt is, in a
sense, the more straight-forward kind of doubt of the two we’re looking at in
this series. Its nature is more self-evident to the person experiencing it than
anxious doubt. We experience factive doubt when we have a concrete objection,
or defeater, or counter-claim, running against something we believe. If you’re
experiencing factive doubt you might say something like the following;
When we have factive doubt, we suspect,
somewhat believe, or are pulled in the direction of believing, that something problematic
for Christian belief is actually true. We continue to overall believe that God exists, or that the Bible is trustworthy,
or that we are saved (our doubt is distinct from flat-out unbelief), but our
believing is a lot less straight-forward than it would be without the doubt. And
we desire assurance that what we’re doubting over isn’t really a problem at
all. We desire to dispel our anomalous doubt and regain an overall, unified
conviction among our beliefs that Christianity is true. This desire, as I
indicated in my initial summary of factive doubt in the first post, is legitimate and appropriate, or so I shall argue.
If we’re struggling with factive doubt, it’s
possible that some of the advice we’ve received from fellow Christian friends
or from the pulpit hasn’t felt entirely on target. In some Christian circles,
having factive doubt can be a very lonely experience. We can feel like those
around us don’t quite understand what it’s like to be faced with the kind of
doubts we’re having. We might be told, in effect, to ignore our doubts. Don’t worry about whether there are
contradictions in the gospels, just have faith, someone might say. But
what’s happened here is that the person advising us has suggested an approach
that’s (roughly) on track for anxious
doubt, not factive doubt. Probably, they are personally unfamiliar with much
of the latter. But sadly, if our factive doubt is serious, plain dismissal is
the worst thing for it.
Faith in God is something we exercise when we have confidence in God’s existence, character, and plan for us. We would find a person strange or confused if they trusted God but also thought that he was indifferent, cruel, or simply absent. By comparison, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to trust in my car to get me to some destination if I knew it was broken, or very liable to malfunctioning mid-journey, or stolen and thus not available for me. But if, instead, I know my car is in the garage and up to the job, my faith in it is well placed. My knowledge of the car serves as the basis for my faith in it. And likewise, knowing that God exists, is good and cares for me is the knowledge that acts as the basis or foundation for my well-placed faith in Him.[1]
This is why it’s unhelpful, indeed foolish to claim that in the name of faith we ought to treat factive doubt as unworthy of attention. When we doubt the reliability of the gospels, or the compatibility of God and evil, or the compatibility of depression with salvation, we are experiencing a challenge to the knowledge foundation of faith. These doubts call into question God’s existence, goodness, and plan for us. In the name of faith, then, we would want to support this foundation by addressing the challenge, not ignoring it! And we address the challenge by tackling our questions and looking seriously at the objections we are wrestling with. If you’re struggling with factive doubt, the desire to settle the doubt and enjoy assurance is legitimate.[2]
Faith in God is something we exercise when we have confidence in God’s existence, character, and plan for us. We would find a person strange or confused if they trusted God but also thought that he was indifferent, cruel, or simply absent. By comparison, it wouldn’t make any sense for me to trust in my car to get me to some destination if I knew it was broken, or very liable to malfunctioning mid-journey, or stolen and thus not available for me. But if, instead, I know my car is in the garage and up to the job, my faith in it is well placed. My knowledge of the car serves as the basis for my faith in it. And likewise, knowing that God exists, is good and cares for me is the knowledge that acts as the basis or foundation for my well-placed faith in Him.[1]
This is why it’s unhelpful, indeed foolish to claim that in the name of faith we ought to treat factive doubt as unworthy of attention. When we doubt the reliability of the gospels, or the compatibility of God and evil, or the compatibility of depression with salvation, we are experiencing a challenge to the knowledge foundation of faith. These doubts call into question God’s existence, goodness, and plan for us. In the name of faith, then, we would want to support this foundation by addressing the challenge, not ignoring it! And we address the challenge by tackling our questions and looking seriously at the objections we are wrestling with. If you’re struggling with factive doubt, the desire to settle the doubt and enjoy assurance is legitimate.[2]
Factive doubt can actually be an
occasion for growth and maturation. As limited, finite creatures, our
“knowledge” foundation for our faith will inevitably contain errors and
misjudgements of many kinds. Factive doubt can identify aspects of our
foundation that we ought, in fact, to replace. The resolution of a challenge to
the foundation, then, may preserve a foundation
but it need not be entirely identical to the one we started with. Let’s
concretise this a bit.
Let’s say you are struggling with doubt
over the reliability of the gospels (like in case A above). You don’t know what
to make of the appearance of discrepancies in the gospel accounts. You want to
trust the Bible but you believe that the Bible is trustworthy only if all the
details of its historical narratives can be harmonised with one another. Here’s
how a couple faith-preserving outcomes to this dilemma might look.
On the simpler end, you might, through a
closer reader of the gospels, end up concluding that the appearance of discrepancy
is just that: appearance. Through proper attention to the full context of each
problem passage, you think, you can harmonise the different narratives and see
that every detail of one narrative perfectly accords with the details in the
others. Your foundation remains intact exactly as it was.
But things might go differently while no
less positively. Perhaps your suspicion that there are discrepancies in the
Bible actually strengthens but through
further study you conclude that, in fact, the gospel authors were not in the
business of tying down exact details. Their accounts, you now think, are
intended to get across the core of the historical events while also serving
other stylistic and theological ends. Things like precise chronological
accuracy were not always on the authors’ minds. To judge them on standards of
precision that they didn’t intend to meet seems unfair so you judge that the
gospels are basically reliable. Here you still end up with a foundation worthy
of faith – you still trust the Bible – but the exact structure of that
foundation looks a little different. You’ve swapped a belief in the importance
of accordance on detail to a belief that such accordance is not critical.
You’ve swapped one brick in the foundation for another. In this way, factive doubt
can help modify and refine our beliefs.
You should, then, be encouraged to
explore what answers to your doubts might be available. Talk to knowledgeable
friends or read books on the issues you’re dealing with. However you do it, the
solution to factive doubt is to face it, trusting God, even in a paltry and
provisory way, that there are answers to be found. And if you don’t have a clue
where to turn, please drop me an email through the form at the very bottom of
the page. I’d love to help, or just lend you a sympathetic ear. As warned
before, the nature of this series is to analyse doubt as a first step toward
change rather than to take someone through the whole process but I welcome a
more thorough discussion of doubt through personal correspondence.[3]
We shouldn’t gloss over the distress
that doubt can cause. Indeed, the distress is a reason in favour of dropping
the intellectual/emotional divide in describing doubt-kinds. Truth is, you can
have a whole variety of emotions attending your factive doubt. Anger,
confusion, emptiness. Your very identity may be shaken. Doubt that is
“intellectual” implies a cool, disengaged process but that’s not how most Christians
experience these sorts of doubt.
“Intellectual” also implies doubt with
highly academic or philosophical content but that need not be the case. Take
our example (C) of factive doubt. The person is voicing a concern that
concretely targets the knowledge foundation of their faith – whether they are
properly Christian – but it’s a doubt that would come under the remit of
“pastoral care” rather than “apologetics.” The “facts” targeted in factive
doubt can just as easily be facts about our emotional states as they can be
facts of history or theology. Factive doubt, I’m sure, is not a perfect label
but it does seem to me slightly improved.
Next time we’ll turn to the doubt-kind
that’s typically lumbered with the “emotional” label we’re shedding.
[1]
Things have been simplified here. In some cases, it is the act of placing trust
in God and then experiencing his subsequent faithfulness that increases
confidence in God. There is something holistic and cyclical here. But still,
even in a richer holistic account, factive doubt upsets a part of that holistic
pattern and undermines its overall coherence.
[2] I realise, of course, that what I’m suggesting here is counter to the sensibilities of many an atheist/skeptic and indeed perhaps some Christians too. That is, I’m suggesting here that it’s okay to have a “vested interest” in the outcome of an enquiry. I’m suggesting that it is okay to desire to discover that the Christian gospel is true as one embarks on a quest for knowledge. But it is typically thought that this desire is rationally inappropriate, that it “biases” the enquiry in a host of ways (it motivates the enquirer to, say, only read books from the side he is sympathetic too). I understand the force this sensibility carries though I find myself nowadays distanced from it. Here is a quick sketch of an alternative take on things. Desire for a outcome to an enquiry to preserve a particular belief P is typically the result of desiring to preserve the beneficial effects of holding P. To hold P, however, is in some sense to judge P a trust-worthy account of how things are. But to engage in poor practise during enquiry is to implicitly believe that P cannot bear the weight of enquiry – that P cannot be trusted after all to give an account of how things are. Too much poor practise would undermine the idea that you trust P. The occasional slip-up of practise in this respect may not undermine your overall trust in P but too much poor practise creates in you such a pattern of distrust in P that it may become the case that, in fact, you have overall ceased to trust P and so ceased to believe P. But this was exactly the outcome you wanted to avoid. So continual poor practise more or less guarantees the loss of belief in P, whereas proper practise and enquiry may in fact strengthen P. Proper commitment to P, then, ought to motivate proper enquiry. Poor practise may be tempting but it is the opposite of what commitment to P rationally demands. Contra the skeptic’s sensibility, then, poor practise is not what ought to follow from a “vested interest” in P but is in fact the opposite of what ought to follow. These reflections inspired by Helm, B. W. (2001). Emotional reason: Deliberation, motivation, and the nature of value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Trust in God that there are answers, as opposed to witholding judgment on whether satisfying answers exist, is appropriate because I'm assuming the Christian still overall believes and trusts in God. And it makes sense to follow what is appropriate to your overall perspective.
[2] I realise, of course, that what I’m suggesting here is counter to the sensibilities of many an atheist/skeptic and indeed perhaps some Christians too. That is, I’m suggesting here that it’s okay to have a “vested interest” in the outcome of an enquiry. I’m suggesting that it is okay to desire to discover that the Christian gospel is true as one embarks on a quest for knowledge. But it is typically thought that this desire is rationally inappropriate, that it “biases” the enquiry in a host of ways (it motivates the enquirer to, say, only read books from the side he is sympathetic too). I understand the force this sensibility carries though I find myself nowadays distanced from it. Here is a quick sketch of an alternative take on things. Desire for a outcome to an enquiry to preserve a particular belief P is typically the result of desiring to preserve the beneficial effects of holding P. To hold P, however, is in some sense to judge P a trust-worthy account of how things are. But to engage in poor practise during enquiry is to implicitly believe that P cannot bear the weight of enquiry – that P cannot be trusted after all to give an account of how things are. Too much poor practise would undermine the idea that you trust P. The occasional slip-up of practise in this respect may not undermine your overall trust in P but too much poor practise creates in you such a pattern of distrust in P that it may become the case that, in fact, you have overall ceased to trust P and so ceased to believe P. But this was exactly the outcome you wanted to avoid. So continual poor practise more or less guarantees the loss of belief in P, whereas proper practise and enquiry may in fact strengthen P. Proper commitment to P, then, ought to motivate proper enquiry. Poor practise may be tempting but it is the opposite of what commitment to P rationally demands. Contra the skeptic’s sensibility, then, poor practise is not what ought to follow from a “vested interest” in P but is in fact the opposite of what ought to follow. These reflections inspired by Helm, B. W. (2001). Emotional reason: Deliberation, motivation, and the nature of value. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
[3] Trust in God that there are answers, as opposed to witholding judgment on whether satisfying answers exist, is appropriate because I'm assuming the Christian still overall believes and trusts in God. And it makes sense to follow what is appropriate to your overall perspective.
