is why Frankl wrote in the new preface to his book, The Unconscious God, that faith, in the sense of a “will to believe,” cannot be produced. Frankl is very clear about this. As he tells us, “There are certain activities that simply cannot be commanded,” among them “the triad, faith, hope and love.”
Why did he say this? It should be obvious if the emphasis is put on the “trust” in his definition of faith as “trust in ultimate meaning.” If “religion is the search for ultimate meaning” (parallel to his “will to meaning” in the first
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diagram) then the present happiness or fulfillment of faith which is experienced as “confidence”— which I prefer to think of as the “security” of faith — can only come as a by-product of the search for greater or “ultimate” meaning.
From this we must conclude that the search for confidence or security for its own sake in the guise of religious faith is no less selfish than any other search for pleasure, power for its (or our) own sake nor any less futile than the quest for pleasure, happiness or fulfillment. It can’t come to us this way. To attempt it is to defy the psychological laws of nature. Thought of in terms of baseball (but in this case involving a triangle rather than a “diamond”), we simply cannot get from home-base (self) and back (with the prize of happiness or fulfillment) without passing through first base first-a “meaning” greater than self. The confident security of faith (second base) can only “ensue.” It can’t be “pursued” directly, or if we do, we will commit a major error. If so, the result will turn out to be something less than faith in God. Faith, especially in this sense of “confidence,” is always a gift, or, in biblical terms, a grace or “charism.”
Faith, Hope, and Love
If faith is, in biblical and especially gospel terms, a loving trust, it is also a demanding one. If union with the God who is love is the only true “object” of our faith, it is only through the love of God, as God has first loved us, that faith in God or hope for ourselves is possible. As Cardinal Newman once put it: “It is love that makes faith, not faith love.”
Newman’s remark, I suggest, should prompt us to rethink the relationship between faith, hope, and love on the basis of the threefold understanding of faith as we have adapted it to Frankl’s scheme. Personally, I’ve always found it particularly difficult to distinguish between faith and hope. As a “definition,” the description of faith given in the epistle to the Hebrews as “confident assurance of things
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hoped for…” does not seem to clarify matters much. Nowadays it has often been said that in the face of uncertainty, hope has replaced faith as the major expression of religious consciousness. This may very well be true. But is it an adequate replacement?
I do not believe so, for if we were take hope simply as our future expectations, we must ask what our present grounds are for such hope. The only answer can be the conviction we have that because something is already the case (for example, the resurrection of Jesus Christ) , that what is not yet (in this example, our own “resurrection” to eternal life) is surely to come about. In other words, only the contents of faith, or faith understood from the viewpoint of “conviction,” can bring about that “assurance of things hoped for” that we think of as the confidence of faith.
On the other hand, if we follow Newman’s theological insight that love alone can account for faith, then we have to conclude that not only does God’s love alone make faith possible, but also that our own commitment as an act of love is the psychological starting point of faith. Without this loving commitment and the risk it entails, no faith convictions are possible, nor can the security it promises possibly come about.
Start at the other end of the process, and everything comes out just the reverse. Confidence or security pursued for its own sake will fabricate contents to suit its own whims — which is the essence of idolatry — and this in turn will reinforce an egotistic self-love.
In basic human terms, there is no better analogy for dynamics of faith (and hope and love as well) than its parallel in marriage. The biblical prophets knew this well — for them idolatry was the same as “adultery.” Fundamentally, the commitment that marriage entails is always fraught with risk. True, if a person marries for money or for prestige, for security, or any other self-gratifying reason we may think of, there is risk as well, but when such marriages turn out to be
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a disaster or loveless at best, we all know why and condemn such persons for their foolishness. We may (or may not) feel sorry for them, but we are hardly surprised at the result. Only commitment “for better or for worse,” to the other person “for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health” (in other words, not for one’s money, not for one’s looks) , irrevocably “until death do them part” will do. Anything less than this commitment is not only a formula for disaster, but is “invalid” from the start.
So too with the commitment of faith, except for one big difference. God as the “other” in this partnership is the person or partner who will never fail. Thus we need never worry about our ultimate security. Our confidence, granted the sincerity of our commitment, is guaranteed. But the question remains: If faith (and hope) are produced by love, still how does love come to be?
If Frankl, from the psychological point of view, spoke of “faith, hope and love” as all being equally incapable of being produced on command, there are even deeper theological reasons for doing so. I think many will recognize this “triad” as being the three “theological virtues” as described by St. Paul (see 1 Cor. 13:8-13). They have been termed such in Christian tradition because not only their final goal, but their origin as well, is in God-as distinguished from the four “cardinal” or pivotal moral virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude, which have our own moral perfection as their primary aim.
So this means that when it comes to love-just as with faith and hope-although our ability to love is partly a matter of our own openness to love, we in no way can produce the results, as it were, by “pulling on our own boot straps.” The same goes for our search for meaning. True, we can prepare ourselves by searching for that ultimate truth or meaning that we call “God.” But if this committed search for meaning depends, to a large extent, on ourselves, theologians have long argued that even this beginning is an effect
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of God ‘s grace working in us. So if arriving at that ultimate meaning or truth is what we mean by “believing,” neither can this be successfully produced on command.
On the other hand, if it is true, as St. Augustine said, that “no one can be forced to believe,” then I would add that not even God can force us to believe, nor for that matter can anyone force himself or herself to believe. At best we can only put ourselves at the disposal of God ‘s grace.
So what all this comes down to is to say (with Newman) that the beginning of faith is the effect of a twofold love: first, God’s love for us, and, second, our love for God. True, that love that we express for God at this beginning stage will be largely incoherent if not outright confused, since we do not yet “know” God. At best, it may be only a firm commitment to seek the truth over all else-but even that is enough to explain why Vatican II commends even those atheists who commit themselves to the betterment of this world as instruments of God’s will. On the other hand, those who claim to know God and yet refuse to share in the works of God’s redemptive love-can we really say they have “faith” in any meaningful sense? It would hardly seem so.
So
