1.23.2023
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Newsletter. The previous Newsletter can be found below, as well as some of the things I’ve been reading lately:
Notes on my Faith
This past year I took it upon myself to reflect on my faith. I have previously written about this topic in previous issues of the Newsletter, but I had a friend reach out to me when he heard I had been exploring Catholicism. Now, I won’t go into full detail here about the circumstances that prompted my friend’s response, in part to keep the circumstances private as they are not something that I have gotten permission to disclose (at least when it comes to the particular details). All that I can say at this time is that he himself is also at a crossroads with his childhood faith.
The circumstances that bring anyone to question their faith are ultimately, particularly circumstantial, but the relative pattern remains the same. I go into some vague detail in the newsletter below:
As one’s faith is deconstructed, it is usually filled and replaced by other systems and values only for it to reemerge later in one’s life due to familiarity with the codified language, values, etc. For my friend who had grown up his whole life “Culturally Catholic,” the specter of it has slowly emerged again mostly in the form of cultural identity. For me, someone who did not grow up in the Catholic Faith, the rediscovery of Catholicism was three-fold; as a Cultural Identity, Intellectual project, and Object of Faith.
Now, I will be going into each of these, but I wanted to say that I am writing from the point of view of someone who never grew up Catholic and as someone who almost made the leap to begin a journey into the Faith, what I mean here is not that I became Catholic by learning the catechism. I was pushed or “pulled” towards Catholicism by what I can only describe as Grace.
This type of experience is what I can only describe by analogy as Simone Weils view of “attention”.
“The capacity to pay attention to an afflicted person is something very rare, very difficult; it is nearly a miracle. It is a miracle. Nearly all those who believe they have this capacity do not. Warmth, movements of the heart, and pity are not sufficient.” -Simone Weil
This attention to reflect on myself, and those around me, to stand in communion with the other, is one of the brief intimate moments in which one is able to experience, “God”. There’s a lot that I can into regarding this particular experience, but I don’t want to mistify the rest of this post with language obfuscating what I mean. I don’t mean that I had an experience with the personal Abrahamic God, the minimal claim is that I had a brief moment in what I can only describe as a moment of Faith, nothing more.
This led me to deepen my understanding of what I even thought Christianity itself was. I knew what the “image” of Christianity was supposed to be, what it appeared to me as a label, as a belief, etc in the eyes and minds of others but I did not have a self-rooted understanding of what it meant to me, culturally intellectually, etc.
Like many others, the “religious” itself had left a bitter taste in my mouth, I can go into detail perhaps in another post, but those close to me will immediately recognize why this would be the case. I can’t help but think that this is true of anyone growing up religious only to have their beliefs challenged by academic institutions amongst others, due to the seemingly outdated and harmful beliefs proposed by The Church (Christianity at large).
Upon learning more about the Catholic Church and its early origins, I found that there was a deep and rich history and engagement throughout time. There certainly are dark moments in which the Faith caused great harm, but it was clear to me that Christianity had a deep tradition that integrated that which I have spent a large amount of time researching: Philosophy.
The sense of Cultural Identity that I’m pointing to is that of having been born and raised within a Christina Paradigm. I could not pretend or even attempt to conceive of being removed from this context, to naively hold up this notion of Tabula Rasa, in which we are, but a blank slate on to the world is a Liberal pipedream.
Even if I now identified as an atheist, someone who no longer believed in the “big sky daddy” I could not escape the reality that I was an Atheist to a particular cultural conception of God, one which was deeply seeded in my socio-cultural upbringing.
With this in mind, recognizing that this was something that was still important to me and knowing that within this historical conversation, my philosophical tradition lay in, I took it upon myself to become familiar with the Epistemic, Metaphysical, and Ethical presuppositions of the Church in order to understand the very positions that I “claimed” to uphold. I found that it was arrogant to believe that I had even a minuscule understanding of the thinkers I had been studying without having even an acquaintance with the arguments of those that came before.
What I found is that when I dove into the Theological underpinnings of the church, It enriched and provided a new way to understand all of the Western Philosophical Canon. It solidified my understanding of even the language that I had been using with only a vague familiarity.
With all of this I still did not jump into the journey of conversion, why?
The primary reason is that although I found a trove of utility in fortifying my foundations in multiple areas, I ultimately still lacked Faith. There are a number of things holding me back, the primary of which is to accept the personability of God. There are a number of positions that I could hold which don’t necessitate a personal god, this isn’t even to say that I would be against one, but ultimately I find that Reason and the Intellect alone are not sufficient to instill faith. Ultimately Faith is a necessary component, it is not the only component (sola fide), but it is to act in congruence with many of the other attributes I listed above. I find that for many their worldview does not have to be demonstrated and articulate or sensical for them to believe in something, but for me personally I could not make the jump to grasp something that I still can not comprehend. That might be my own folly, it might be that God doesn’t present itself when the proof is required, in a way, I prefer that, I prefer the absence of God, not just the Personal God, but all the conceptions of the God Head.
In short, I found that bolstering my cultural and intellectual understanding of Christianity was something that I desired, and although I don’t think that I’m done with this incursion, I think for the time being I am satisfied.
-C.N
P.S I mostly wrote this because I promised my friend that I would write something like this, and although I’m uncertain if it’ll answer or provide any guidance, perhaps walking through this experience in broad brushstrokes might be what they might need to think through their own personal journey. I hope that it does the same for any of you reading this.
~Links~
“A single and same voice for the whole thousand-voiced multiple, a single and same Ocean for all the drops, a single clamour of Being for all beings: on the condition that each being, each drop, and each voice has reached the state of excess – in other words, the difference which displaces and disguises them and, in turning upon the mobile cusp, causes them to return.”
― Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
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-C.N.