I will even encourage my children to follow your example of teaching tolerance, striving towards a
deeper understanding of their faith and beliefs, and obtaining a strong education.
One can see in this period of about 500 years the tragic evolution away from the
Catholic understanding of faith and reason as complementary ways of knowing.
By pressing the ancient moral criterion of equity while refusing to discuss the economic criterion of growth, the clergy in effect revived a medieval
understanding of faith as intellectual sacrifice.
So likewise Kierkegaard's
dialectical understanding of faith establishes the subjective truth of faith as a consequence of the negation of objectivity, and the passion and inwardness of faith is established only by virtue of the absurdity of its objective meaning or ground.
Since then Rodgers has begun intensely studying Scripture and has developed his
own understanding of faith: «The Bible opens with a poem.
It is this shift in how truth is perceived and appropriated that is one of the factors creating resistance to electronic culture by theologians and clergy,
whose understanding of faith has been strongly shaped by the characteristics and requirements of print culture in which they were educated and by virtue of which they hold status and power.
Any other practice breaks the unity of the church, and the lack of water baptism is actually a tradition of omission, thus not showing a
greater understanding of faith, but rather a lack of reverence for the will and intention of Jesus himself.
In my experience, and I don't think my experience is unique, laity who are in many ways highly educated have frequently not grown beyond their
childhood understanding of the faith.
Schubert Ogden has published Faith and Freedom, which he subtitles «Toward a theology of liberation».3 He describes the challenge of liberation theologies as the call «to join them in working toward a still more
adequate understanding of faith and freedom».4 To do so, he argues, we must distinguish without separating a double meaning in the idea of liberation.
When Kierkegaard finally came to believe that the Christianity of the New Testament no longer exists, that contemporary Christianity is exactly the opposite of New Testament Christianity, he reached a consistent fulfillment of his
earlier understanding of faith.
It was precisely because Kierkegaard was so profoundly open to the spiritual emptiness of his time that he was able to reach a
radical understanding of faith.
Liturgical theology is a newer term, reflecting the sense that the words and actions of worship are a vital locus theologicus, one which ought to mirror the church's
understanding of its faith at various times and places; past and present.
But it is undeniable that the same kind of spiritual rhetoric and
understanding of faith allowed Christians in America to oppress others for hundreds of years on the one hand, while feeling spiritually righteous or justified on the other.
More conducive to dialogue than initial insistence on obedience to authority is
apersonal understanding of faith that allows diverse formulations of a common content.
Without exposure to practices that help people develop a solid biblical and theological foundation and which encourage them to develop their capacities to think ethically and theologically, the unschooled mind of the child will pull Christian communities and individuals toward
simplistic understandings of the faith.
For Newman there is always the possibility that what may appear innovative doctrines are in fact implicit in the
total understanding of the faith, and yet not necessarily subject to some logical deduction.
«I am looking forward to helping Christians develop a richer and deeper
understanding of our faith so we are better able to share it with bold humility.
The shift envisaged is from the de-historical post-Tridentine model of theology as the bastion of certitudes to a model in which Christian
understanding of faith takes place in the midst of changing modem situations.
The revised canon fails to understand the true nature of the Catholic college or university because it assumes an enduring conflict between faith and truth or, at least, assumes that faith seeking understanding will always operate in obedience to the
institutional understanding of faith.
But someone who truly believes in God's existence and yet hates or scorns him is in a state of religious rebellion so perplexing as to strain our
common understanding of faith to the breaking point.
I'm not about to give theological lessons here other than to say that to expect God to intervene and prevent every tragedy that befalls man shows a complete lack of
understanding of faith based teaching, and that includes the teachings of the Buddhist and Hindu faiths also.
She is also working on a project to provide a comparative analysis of the politics of the post-liberation trajectories of the Eritrean and Rwandan states, and «
Engendering Understandings of Faith - Based Humanitarian Responses to Displacement: Intersections between gender and religion in humanitarian interventions» with Dr. Elena Fiddian - Qasmiyeh and Chloe Lewis.