The reification of faith

 Well, the word "reification" will certainly drive many away, but no matter. Some actually enjoy seeing a new word. They look it up. It is called "learning".......We live and learn, or perhaps not.

I was once browsing through a few journal entries of Thomas Merton, and uncovered the following. It relates to "belief" and "faith", a subject that cropped up elsewhere. Merton is responding to a passage from Irenaeus. (A passage, by the way, that my own understanding and experience associates with the Pure Land notion of "being made to become so - of itself - without/beyond the calculation of the devotee, where no working is true working")

Here are the words of Irenaeus:-

If you are the work of God wait patiently for the hand of your artist who makes all things at an opportune time........Give to Him a pure and supple heart and watch over the form which the artist shapes in you........lest, in hardness, you lose the traces of his fingers......

Myself, I think it sadly becomes easy to "lose the traces of his fingers" in today's world where the incessant cacophony of discordant voices drown out any chance of wisdom.

But, whatever, Merton comments:-

The reification of faith. Real meaning of the phrase we are saved by faith = we are saved by Christ, whom we encounter in faith. But constant disputation about faith has made Christians become obsessed with faith almost as an object, at least as an experience, a "thing" and in concentrating upon it they lose sight of Christ. Whereas faith without the encounter with Christ and without His presence is less than nothing. It is the deadest of dead works, an act elicited in a moral and existential void. To seek to believe that one believes, and arbitrarily to decree that one believes, and then to conclude that this gymnastic has been blessed by Christ - this is pathological Christianity. And a Christianity of works. One has this mental gymnastic in which to trust. One is safe, one possesses the psychic key to salvation......

It would seem to me, if one recognises the Word of God as that which lights ALL who come into the world, as that through Whom ALL things are made (as said in St John's Gospel) then the "presence of Christ" spreads far wider than mere allegiance to, and acknowledgement, of the Biblical word and any "requirement" claimed to be found therein. The Living Word that "blows where it will" is of another dimension.

The message of Grace can be found in all faiths, at all times, in all places.......for those with ears to hear and eyes to see. And such is a gift, pure and simple....

Faith does not arise within oneself
The entrusting heart is given by the Other Power

......as said by the Pure Land "saint" Rennyo.