Messenger Magazine

The ‘Simple’ Faith
(by B.H. Roberts)

Posted on 1/1/2002 at 8:49:16 PM

It requires striving - intellectual and spiritual - to comprehend the things of God - even the revealed things of God. In no department of human endeavour is the aphorism "no excellence without labour" - more in force than in acquiring knowledge of the things of God. The Lord has placed no premium upon idleness or indifference here - "seek and ye shall find;" … THE PLEA OF "THUS FAR, BUT NO FARTHER" Mental laziness is the vice of men, especially with reference to divine things. Men seem to think that because inspiration and revelation are factors in connection with the things of God, therefore the pain and stress of mental effort are not required; that by some means these elements act somewhat as Elijah’s ravens and feed us without effort on our part. To escape this effort, this mental stress to know the things that are, men raise all too readily the ancient bar - "Thus far shalt thou come, but no further." Man cannot hope to understand the things of God, they plead, or penetrate those things which he has left shrouded in mystery. "Be thou content with the simple faith that accepts without question. To believe, and accept the ordinances, and then live the moral law will doubtless bring men unto salvation; why then should man strive and trouble himself to understand? Much study is still a weariness of the flesh." So men reason; and just now it is in fashion to laud "the simple faith;" which is content to believe without understanding, or even without much effort to understand. And doubtless many good people regard this course as indicative of reverence - this plea in bar of effort - "thus far and no farther." … This sort of "reverence" is easily simulated, and is of such flattering unction, and is so pleasant to follow - "soul take thine ease" - that without question it is very often simulated; and falls into the same category as the simulated humility couched in "I don’t know," which so often really means "I don’t care, and do not intend to trouble myself to find out." THE PRAISE OF SIMPLE FAITHI maintain that the "simple faith" - which is so often ignorant and simpering acquiescence, and not faith at all - but simple faith taken at its highest value, which is faith without understanding of the thing believed, is not equal to intelligent faith, the faith that is the gift of God, supplemented by earnest endeavour to find through prayerful thought and research a rational ground for faith - for acceptance of truth; and hence the duty of striving for a rational faith in which the intellect as well as the heart - the feeling - has a place and is a factor. But, to resume: This plea in bar of effort to find out the things that are, is as convenient for the priest as it is for the people. The people of "simple faith," who never question, are so much easier led, and so much more pleasant every way - they give their teachers so little trouble. People who question because they want to know, and who ask adult questions that call for adult answers, disturb the ease of the priests. The people who question are usually the people who think - barring chronic questioners and cranks, of course - and thinkers are troublesome, unless the instructors who lead them are thinkers also; and thought, eternal, restless thought, that keeps out upon the frontiers of discovery, is as much a weariness to the slothful, as it is a joy to the alert and active and noble minded. Therefore one must not be surprised if now and again he finds those among religious teachers who give encouragement to mental laziness under the pretence of "reverence"; praise "simple faith"; because they themselves, forsooth, would avoid the stress of thought and investigation that would be necessary in order to hold their place as leaders of a thinking people. NECESSARY ATTITUDE OF THE CHURCH IN THE MATTER OF MENTAL ACTIVITY AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENTSurely, in the presence of this array of incentives, instructions and commandments to seek for knowledge, taken from the revelations and other forms of instructions by the Prophet of the New Dispensation - taking into account also the scope of the field of knowledge we are both persuaded and commanded to enter - whatever position other churches and their religious teachers may take, the Church of Jesus Christ in the New Dispensation can do no other than stand for mental activity, and earnest effort to come to a knowledge of truth up to the very limit of man’s capacity to find it, and the goodness and wisdom of God to reveal it. The New Dispensation having opened with such a wonderful revelation respecting God, making known as the very first step in that revealed knowledge not only the being of God but the kind of beings both the Father and the Son are - its representatives may not now attempt to arrest the march of inquiry and plead "mystery" or "humility" or "reverence" as a bar to entrance into those very fields of knowledge God has commanded us to enter, and reap in, and of which he gives us assurance that our harvest shall be abundant. THE LIMITS OF OUR INQUIRIESLet me not be misunderstood. Again I say, I am aware that there are limits to man’s capacity to understand things that are. That God also in his wisdom has not yet revealed all things, especially respecting the Godhead: and that where his revelations have not yet cast their rays of light on such subjects, it is becoming in man to wait upon the Lord, for that "line upon line, and precept upon precept" method by which he, in great wisdom, unfolds in the procession of the ages the otherwise hidden treasures of his truths. All this I agree to; but all this does not prevent us from close perusal and careful study of what God has revealed upon any subject, especially when that subject is perused reverently, with constant remembrance of human limitations, and with an open mind, which ever stands ready to correct the tentative conclusions of today by the increased light that may be shed upon the subject on the morrow. Which holds as greater than all theories and computations the facts - the truth. … But some would protest against investigation lest it threaten the integrity of accepted formulas of truth - which too often they confound with the truth itself, regarding the scaffolding and the building as one in the same thing. … This holds good in theology as in science. Not that the universal and fundamental truths in theology which God has revealed change, but that man’s method of viewing them, and expounding them changes, and let us hope, changes for the better, for the more clear and perfect understanding and development of them - else there would be no progress in theology - while in all things else there is progress. … The Seventies Course in Theology (Third Year) The Doctrine of Deity Compiled and Edited by B.H. Roberts of the First Council of Seventy Pages iv - ix, Sections III - VIII