Etched in Stone

I struggle with the notion that all matters of faith are absolute -- etched in stone -- that one's belief system must be adamant and unwavering. And, to the degree that we change our opinion from what we originally held, we are deviating from the "faith which was once delivered unto the saints."

Saint Paul talks about the idea of there being a "received faith." He says in his second letter to the Corinthian Church, "...if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully." And at the end of his life he writes: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith." So there's this notion of a faith that was received at conversion and that any wandering from this constitutes apostasy.

Now, I do agree that truth (ultimate truth) is indeed eternal and universal. There is nothing that is genuinely true in one time and place that is not true in another. Slavery is a good example. Slavery is always wrong and has always been wrong. It was wrong in the United States of the 1850s and it was wrong during the span of the Roman Empire, it was wrong in ancient Egypt. There are also other such universal truths (i.e., it's always wrong to murder or to abuse someone, neglecting the poor is always wrong). Truth -- ultimate truth -- is not changed by popular consensus or the law of the land. Think of the Old Testament prophets standing up to idolatry, or St. Francis standing up to the opulence of Rome, or John Brown standing up to slavery, or Gandhi or Martin Luther King standing up to racism and injustice. Think of how often the tide of public opinion and power has been wrong.

But then there are those matters of religious doctrine that aren't so clear -- those infamous gray areas. Some things I myself have changed my mind about. I used to not accept infant baptism, for instance. Now I do. I used to not believe in the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. Now I do. I used to have a more literal (and self-authorized) interpretation of scripture and I used to eschew the idea that the Church historic was the lens by which we focus our understanding of scripture. I've since reversed my thinking on these things.

My question then is this: What if the faith you "first received" later turns out to be not entirely accurate?

I think about St. Peter and his view on circumcision -- that he originally sided with the more traditionalist Jewish arm of the early church who held the idea that converts to the faith must be circumcised. St. Paul contested him on this and Peter eventually conceded that that belief -- that truth -- was not as he had originally thought.

This might be a bit of a trivial example. (Though I'm sure it wasn't trivial at the time -- especially to those adult males who were about to get their foreskins lopped off.) But there are other examples as well.

There were a couple of incidents in the Acts of the Apostles where the disciples of Saint John the Baptist were converted to Christianity. Their faith was incomplete and they required further instruction. Their understanding of the truth was shifted, or broadened if you will.

I have no conclusive statement on this matter other than that I don't think it's heretical to be open to reconsideration. Think of this: if you do change your belief on a certain issue and you turn out to be wrong. The ultimate truth is not altered in the slightest. For we haven't the capacity to change the truth.

That being said, it should be our ultimate aim to draw closer to the truth -- the true ultimate truth -- as we move through life. For to wallow in being wrong is foolish. If the truth sets us free, then it stands to reason that falsity imprisons us.