23 July – The art of faith (and war)
Pentecost 8
23/7/2023
Romans 8:18-25
Psalm 86
Matthew 13:24-30
In a sentence:
Faith acts and speaks with patience because it is confident that God has and will triumph over all things.
Faith, Nature, Art and War
As I sat on down at my desk earlier this week, I was struck by the titles of two books I’d placed there next to each other.
I had just finished the first book: Gerhard Ebeling’s The nature of faith. Ebeling attempts to lay faith out in such a way as to connect to the broader university community where he taught. I wonder whether this could, in part, be the kind of work we might be doing now that we are in a university precinct among colleges.
The second book was what I am now reading – Sun Tzu’s The art of war, a classic Chinese text on martial strategy. I’m reading this for a similar reason: how does one engage with strange others, whether those in the university, those in the Synod’s Centre for Theology and Ministry(!), or just in the wider world? The terrain is unfamiliar, and we don’t know what to expect from the natives. Some anticipation and strategy would seem to be required!
Common to these two books, and central in my own motivation in reading them, is the question of engagement. But what struck me about the two sitting next to each other on the desk was the similar structure of their titles – The “This” of “That: “The nature of faith” and “The art of war”.
And a somewhat silly question came to mind: are these two books about the same thing, even if written perhaps 2400 years apart and on seemingly divergent topics? Has the nature of faith got something to do with the art of war? This strange connection persisted, and now you will have to think about it with me!
War as an Art
War is a human endeavour which is, crucially, everywhere and at all times a reality or a near possibility at one level or another. This is the case whether you’re on a battlefield, struggling to get some new business startup off the ground or just preparing to visit the in-laws. Politics – our very life together – is, broadly, war.
War is then something we make or fashion, as a matter of course. As such, it can be done well or poorly. The art of war was written so that war be done well. It doesn’t matter here whether war or any human struggle offends us. None of us can do much about these struggles when they come, or even avoid them. We can only respond well or not. And this response – this art of doing war is – like any art – not easy. (A recent book makes this point by reversing the title of Sun Tzu’s book: The war of art [S Pressfield]).
It makes sense, then, that we might think about the art of war in the way that we might think about any art: How do we do this well? How do we enter into the fray? How do we engage others, perhaps against their will? If we are going to be living with other people we need to know something about the art of war; it’s just part of life, just natural.
Faith and nature
What about The nature of faith? The proposal here is that faith has a nature appropriate to itself. It has its own way of being, self-understanding, and expression. Just as sparrows, pelicans, and ostriches are each their own particular type of bird, faith – among other human endeavours – is and does its peculiar thing.
But on this account (which is not quite Ebeling’s argument), faith is a different human thing from war. If war is “natural” – by which I mean that it is everywhere at hand – this is not so for faith. Faith might have a nature of its own, but we don’t think that faith is “natural”. War and struggle are everywhere and are, in this sense, natural. Faith is not everywhere – or at least this is how the secular world frames the matter. Faith might have its own nature, but it is not natural, not fundamental, and is actively excluded from some places.
The question for us is, is this the proper reading of faith? And the answer is, No.
But it’s one thing to say this, and another to know and embrace what it means to say it in a context where it is denied.
The war of faith
The only way we can contradict this marginalisation – in ourselves and in our relationship with the world – is surprising and horrifying: faith must go to “war”. With all political struggles, war is about the crossing of boundaries. We push back invaders or become invaders ourselves. Not surprisingly, this is precisely what it feels like to ourselves and to the broader culture whenever the church presumes to speak out on some topic or to evangelise. We – the church – strategise, and the world responds as if under attack. It is almost impossible – outside the church and inside it – to hear the word “faith” without faith already being outside natural human endeavour. In a culture like ours, to propose faith is to cross a boundary, so that the very notion of faith is heard as a rumour of war.
I suspect this seems rather extreme to some of you, but consider the response you might expect from family, neighbours or colleagues if you suggested a bit of theology might do them good. The defences will go up, for an enemy is at hand.
Of course, the problem with war language in connection with faith is that there is a kind of faith which literally goes to war. The young fanatic with a bomb in his backpack is a version of faith at war, as is the Christian reactionary blowing up an abortion clinic. This is war, and it is a kind of faith. But it is bad faith. For there is an art of faith which determines what the war of faith should properly look like, and this art can be badly or well done. We need to know about the art of faith in order to know how faith might properly wage war.
Paul and the patient warrior
And now I come(!), briefly, to our text this morning from Paul’s letter to the Romans. What does the war of faith look like, according to Paul?
The condition for war is the world’s “bondage to decay”, the “sufferings of this present time” and the the great groaning” of creation and the human heart, at the struggle for life. Faith holds that this is the struggle, and that it will be a victorious struggle because the only combatant who matters is the God and Father of Jesus Christ. It is God’s own struggle.
And us? What is faith’s part here? What is the art of faith in the one struggle which matters? Faith wages war, Paul says, by being patient.
I didn’t expect that when I started pondering those book titles. If we are in a war, patience is almost a horrifying suggestion, sounding like resignation and capitulation. But this is faith’s war – the struggle of the faith which trusts in this God, who will overcome the bondage of all things, all relationships, to decay.
The art of war is, for faith, the art of patience. This is because faith holds that the war is already won. And now the groaning of all creation is no longer “mere” suffering but is transformed into the birth pangs of God’s future: the whole world is pregnant with God’s promise. There is then now, no further blow to strike. Patience need only wait for the birth of the children of God; this cannot be induced or hurried.
But the patient art of faith is not passive. Patience expects something, and faith’s mode of waiting points towards what we expect, testifying to what is to come. Faith, then, refuses to shut up about the coming reconciliation of all things, the overcoming of all boundaries, the end of all struggle and war. If faith seems to cross boundaries, it is because this crossing itself is testimony. The war of faith is not incursion into foreign territory, even if the foray makes us nervous and we are rejected as enemies. Anywhere faith goes, it knows that place as God’s own and goes there as proof of this.
This is to say that faith is at home in the world, in the entirety of the world. Faith is at home on Curzon Street and on College Crescent. Faith is at home in the rigour and passion of politics and in a solitary, quieted heart. Faith is at home in death as well as in life.
This is because faith holds that we are already conquerors through him who loved us; there is no war to wage, only the busy, witnessing work of patience. To anticipate what we will hear from Paul again next week in his great crescendo to this chapter in Romans: faith does its work patiently and without violent struggle because not death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation,
is be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8.27-39).
Faith struggles here and now – but patiently – in words and works which express the reconciliation of all things which God will bring.
Our new start here today is just a part of that struggle, which we take up with joy – which is to say, with courage. We are here because it is, for us, faith’s next thing, whatever comes of it.
And so, let us lift up our hearts as, in fresh words and deeds, we begin again the patient life of the children of God.