Maggie's Farm

Kindly define faith and the value to God thereof.

I've experienced protestant theology, including the various permutations on free will, predestination, and the whole sin and redemption thing. None of it works for me, logically.

Faith as it's typically asserted can essentially be nothing more than a revision of salvation by works; the switch thrown by a mind in order to be deemed acceptable to a G-d that works in terms of penalty and blood. That's not substantially rational, especially in the assertions that work solely on the what of a thing not a person alive grasps the how and especially the why thereof. That matrix projects onto G-d human foibles on morality and justice, hardly an iron-clad interpretation of the Mind of G-d.

So I ask: Can we define faith as the term of engagement with the divine it purportedly is, and can anyone define the structure of merit therein to a G-d that no mortal soul can possibly interpret? Not "faith is X, Y, and Z" because it's written thus - that text has already been subject to human editorial interpretation, plus it's just an assertion of the theological what and neither the philosophical how or the divine why.

Do I have an answer? Not hardly, but I do think the notion of "leap of faith" possibly essential, but not in the usual vernacular of the blood-of-Christ thing. A leap of faith puts choice back where it belongs, front and center of mind where it remodels human trajectory completely, and that, I think, alludes to what Christ was on about. Choose first; grasp later, as any believer knows from experience. But grasp what?

Yet, like the rest, not a soul has ever grasped what Christ grasped, so essentially that He invoked higher greatness in those who follow Him then even Himself. I highly suspect there's vastly more to all this - probably with Eastern resonance - and in a distinctly different tributary, than we think, at least when we issue rote notions on faith per se.

Not a syllable of disrespect or controversy is intended, Farmers. Just genuinely curious. These questions I've posed among PhD's in theology, philosophy, and psychology I respect more than I can say. Likewise laymen steeped in centuries of theological heritage (although so far, none Catholic.) So here as well.