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WHITHER FAITH OR WORKS?
The Wikipedia article on sola fide is rather good – it has a long list of Biblical citations both for and against the position.
For –
“Luke 18:10-14: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.' But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God.”
Against –
“James 2:14-26: What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith.”
I, personally, do not believe that God intervenes in human affairs. I’m open to the idea of a Creator of the Universe, but I do not think prayer – at least in this day and age – calls down divine intervention that violates the laws of physics as we understand them.
And though we’re taking the lens of Protestantism and Catholicism to understand this phenomenon, it’s not a Christian phenomenon only, nor is it a Western thing only. The fundamental tension between faith and works occurs and re-occurs in all sorts of societies, across many times and eras.
My personal belief is that religions spread because they are successful at spreading; that might seem a tautology, but note what’s not said – I’m not saying the most correct theological position spreads, and I’m not saying that God is having any sort of direct interventionary hand in human affairs.
(Long-time readers likely know or inferred this already; I state it clearly for new readers.)
Looking to understand which of faith or works is the “correct” position to adopt – as an individual, the leader of an organization, or someone influencing and shaping society-at-large – thus becomes not a theological question for me, but rather a very practical one.
Why does “salvation by faith alone” sometimes appeal and spread, and sometimes not?
My answer: mobilization.
But we’ll get to that in a moment.
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THE SUPERIORITY OF WORKS?
If you’re enterprising and looking to build up the world, it’s very easy to be attracted to the “works” position.
It’s easy to look at a line like this from the Bible –
“By their fruit, you will know them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a diseased tree bears bad fruit.”
– and to say, “Well, that seems broadly correct.” The whole function of a fruit tree is to produce good fruit; if the fruit is rotten, the fruit tree is not good.
The argument goes, then, that though variance can strike any one of us, it tends to even out over longer stretches. Over long periods of time, healthy and sane and upgoing philosophies of life lead to better outcomes. A consistent set of diseased outcomes is sign that something is fundamentally wrong.
Thus, the excellence military commander is the one that wins battles; how could it be otherwise?
Broadly applied, the “works” position rejects the “I tried” excuse. If you tried to build a building, but it fell over, it doesn’t matter what was in your mind or heart when you were failing to build a sturdy building.
This is fundamentally appealing to very many people who build up the world.
Broadly applied, works rejects the strain of thought that says “it’s the thought that counts” if someone picks out a gift displeasing to someone.
Works rejects “I didn’t mean to do that” – works doesn’t care so much about intention. Works sees a criminal committing crimes, and hates it; that the criminal “really didn’t mean to” is rather besides the point. Works cares about results.
And again, it’s very simple and intuitively appealing. On less grand levels, you don’t want a plumber that sincerely tries to fix your sink and fails; you don’t want a baker who really wants to make nice bread who burns the bread; you don’t want a deeply committed teacher who fails to teach mathematics, reading, or writing effectively to the children.
The “faith” position, by definition, cares much less about production or results; people who adopt it tend to grow mentally weaker, make more excuses, claim justification and righteousness on behalf of mere thoughts rather than results…
… and yet, the British Empire – a deeply Protestant and faith-based society – conquered the whole world, only to be superseded by the American Empire, which is even more intensely and devoutly faith-based.
Perplexing, is it not?
What gives?
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THE THREE FAILURE POINTS OF WORKS, I: RELIANCE ON AUTHORITY
A subtle, but very important point –
The doctrine of “by faith alone” means no one can be successfully judged on their relationship with God – it is an internal thing. Even one’s own thoughts and words can’t be judged!
“Works”, on the other hand, can be judged. The doctor that cures more of his patients, the baker that doesn’t burn the bread, the military commander that wins battles instead of losing them, the builder whose houses don’t fall over – these are superior under a works-type view.
But who is judging?
This point is extremely subtle, but very important. I was never able to realize this about Protestantism and Catholicism until, interestingly enough, I saw the same phenomenon during among the warrior monks and Buddhist peasant insurgencies during the Japanese Sengoku Civil Wars, as we discussed in Vantages #3: Morality on the March.
When a society broadly accepts that its people should be judged by their outward works, there becomes a standard for judging the worthiness and goodness of people. People being what we are, we tend to like to be useful and seen as good.
Here then is the problem: who is assessing what counts as a “good work”?
If the leadership judging the worthiness of people’s works is pragmatic, wise, cautious, thoughtful, and pro-social, then “good works” should actually be… well, good works.
But if the leadership is decadent, shortsighted, and corrupt – but still in power – then they can claim that “good works” are just… giving them gold and soldiers for their private causes.
This is a major failure case of Works; indeed, perhaps the failure case of it. But there are two more.
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THE THREE FAILURE POINTS OF WORKS, II: OBEDIENCE
Bible –
“Matthew 12:36-37: "I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter; For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."”
Wikipedia: Sola Fide –
“The Catholic position is best summed up in John 3:16, if one has the proper, contextual understanding of the word "believe". "Believe", in [the Catholic] context and in ancient Judaism, meant more than an intellectual assent. "To believe" also meant to obey, which is seen, in context, in Jn 3:36, 1 Jn 2:3ff, and 1 Jn 5:1ff. Without our positive response to grace offered, salvation is not possible.”
This builds on our second failure point.
When you have a known set doctrine of rules that must be followed, Obedience typically becomes the standard of whether one is doing Works or not.
We look backwards in horror at Jan Huss being burned alive for trying to reform the Catholic Church. It is horrifying, there is no doubt about that. But it’s not surprising.
/> You merely need to look at the line, “…by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”
Yes, yes, in theory Matthew was talking about that being on the day of divine judgment. But civil and ecclesiastical leaders and courts need some measures of how to judge, police, and govern society.
When any sort of non-obedience becomes heresy, you wind up executing the majority of gentle and pro-social reformers.
Sooner or later, thus, you wind up backwards – and prone to either an external enemy with stronger systems and technology displacing you, or vulnerable to internal dissent from a less pro-social and more belligerent revolutionary.
This also has huge implications for technological growth – is it surprising at all that the vast majority of disruptive technology has been invented in faith alone type countries? Throwing “works” off the side of the boat has many downsides, but one upside that comes with it is implicitly throwing mandated obedience over the side of the boat – if judging is impossible, and if “good” is purely an internally-understood thing, the pathways to invention, innovation, and reform are much smoother.
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THE THREE FAILURE POINTS OF WORKS, III: STAGNATION
Reality itself seems to be power-law distributed. If it’s still 2016, you probably already know all about Pareto’s 80/20 Law and all of that – it’s in vogue right now – if it’s in the far future, you might look it up.
Likewise, if it’s still 2016, you probably know how compound interest and compounding gains lead to overwhelmingly large advantages and consolidations. If it’s the far future and people aren’t enamored with compound interest, do look it up. It’s fascinating stuff.
It’s very easy under Works, thus, to have the top 1-2% of society producing the vast majority of Works.
In such a case, a simple farmer – or even a feudal peasant or slave – could not produce much in the way of Works themselves.
If we’re only judging solely by output, it’s easy both for people who don’t have power, prestige, education, and capital to get demoralized, to basically “give up” and fall into listless discontentment.
Meanwhile, if you’re only judging by raw output, it’s easy to neglect investing in the development of people who can’t really “move the needle” in terms of raw output, as compared to those who are already in positions of wealth and power.
Thus, the Church of Luther’s time was trending more-and-more towards investing time, resources, and attention into the nobles, monarchs, and merchants that could produce vast sums of gold and soldiers.
The same phenomenon, of course, led to the French Revolution (in a Catholic “Works” country, mind you) and the Russian Revolution (in an Orthodox “Works” country, too).
It’s very easy for people who aren’t already thriving at the highest levels to become completely discontent and alienated in pure “works” type societies.
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THE CONQUEST OF FAITH
The doctrine of “by faith alone,” thus, has three advantages that are the opposite of the three failure cases of Works.
1. Mobilization: Since success and goodliness and salvation aren’t a result of actual tangible things, everyone who “gets the faith” thus matters intensely – this makes it very easy to recruit members of a cause, soldiers, and contributors big and small. “Faith” type societies raise more soldiers who fight harder. In “home front” terms, it’s easier to persuade people under a faith-based society to work harder and make more sacrifices for economic production. Everyone matters. Your contribution matters. If this is channeled through wise and responsible leadership, it can lead to huge gains. American faith could be seen firmly on display in the huge sacrifices needed to roll back Nazi Germany from Europe. Kennedy’s “We Will Go to the Moon” was also a faith-based appeal to make huge expenditures and sacrifices in order to show the world how serious America was about being serious; incidentally, it was also a very beneficial program – the faith channeled through Kennedy’s leadership produced large outcomes.
2. Invention: Unshackled from obedience or convention, inventors and artists and theorists can “follow their inner light” or some such – self-suppression and suppression-by-authorities are two of the leading reasons that inventions don’t happen. Unsurprisingly, almost all of the Industrial Revolution’s major achievements came from faith-based countries. Traditionally Catholic France also saw one of its greatest periods of innovation and reform under the very faith-based French Revolution, with the introduction of new technology, new weapons, new command structures, maneuver warfare, the metric system, and the codification of Civil Law across Europe under Napoleon.
3. Sanctification: Works-based societies are constantly forced to ask if their ideas “pay the rent” or not. Individuals in those societies are forced to ask the same questions. If the answer is “no”, disillusionment and listlessness can set in. Contrariwise, faith-based societies can repeatedly reaffirm their “inner light” – regardless of outcomes. The majority of us humans need to feel moral and justified in what we do, and faith provides its own and permanent justification. If you remain faithful, everything will work out. This also leads to one of faith’s largest problems, incidentally…
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FAITH’S SMALL FAILURE CASE: REINFORCING FAILURE
Repeatedly charging the machine guns in World War I is something more prone to occur in a faith-based society than a works-based society.
Failure, under faith, can always be spun as, “We weren’t faithful enough; we need to double-down on more faith.”
Counterintuitively, this can lead to breakthroughs – oftentimes, initial failures are temporary and transitory, and staying faithful can lead to breaking through.
But you always get situations like Soviet Communism, where it is clearly not producing the type of things it said it would, and the faith-machine keeps spitting the same answer back out: more Communism needed.
It’s hit-or-miss – the American Revolution was perhaps the fullest and most successful expression of faith-based principles ever done in modern times. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” – wait, why do you hold those truths to be self-evident?
“We just do.”
Faith!
By the close of the American Revolution, the Continental Army had lost more battles than it had won – but it had won the war. The endurance and fighting in the name of inalienable rights, from the Creator, had sustained the American revolutionaries long enough to win over intervention from the French and Spanish who saw an opportunity to damage the British Empire.
The American faith-based revolution succeeded despite all manner of blunders and backwardness early, and endured long enough to win.
Of course, the French Revolution likewise tried to endure, with the end result of… well, you know the end result. Faith is a double-edged sword.
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FAITH’S LARGE FAILURE CASE: GROSS HYPOCRISY
The ability to double-down repeatedly in the face of failure – “I don’t care what’s happening externally, I still feel this is right” style – can be good or bad.
It can lead to runaway bad outcomes and repeatedly reinforcing failed policies.
It can also lead to endurance during a long struggle and overcoming.
But the biggest problem of by faith alone is its unique ability to promote cognitive dissonance and gross hypocrisy.
Before the United States became a true global power, the British Empire was overwhelmingly the most successful case of a modern faith-based empire.
Now, I should stop and say something – no one at the highest levels of power in a mature system is purely faith-based.
You see genuinely sincere faith-based leaders early in movements, but almost never later in movements. Under normal times, pure sincerity does not allow for the type of coalition-building, alliance management, and resource allocation needed to reach the pinnacle of success in a mature and established field.
Faith
suffers similarly to Works, but with some minor differences. Whereas Works is terrific under wise and good leadership, and awful under degenerate and short-sighted leadership, Faith suffers similarly but in a slightly different fashion.
Eventually, sooner or later, any faith-based society gets ruled by leaders who are capable of discerning the mechanics of rising – that is, they aren’t blinded by their faith – who are then ruling a people whose ethics and animating drives they do not hold and do not share.
MACHINA Page 42