The new kind of skeptics want the faith to be cut down to the size of their doubt, to conform to their suspicions. Doubt is taken to be sufficient warrant for jettisoning what occasions our disbelief and discomfort, cutting a scandalizing God down to the size of our believing. For the new doubters, if I can’t believe it, it can’t be true. If orthodoxy is unbelievable, then let’s come up with a rendition we can believe in.
But for catholic doubters, God is not subject to my doubts. …
— James K.A. Smith, via Wesley Hill
Doubt isn’t the suspension of belief, but the struggle to believe — and doubt is resolved, finally, not merely by knowledge but by love. God is not so small, nor so boring, as to be believed in easily; we have to stretch ourselves.
More on this topic from TJP:
Editor’s note: In addition to our regular All Things Linked pieces, which bring together a bunch of links and some more extensive reflection, we’re experimenting with a new kind of post, offering a quick excerpt and a link to a longer piece, “worth reading,” elsewhere on the web. We will link both to current, just-published pieces on the web and (as in this case) to older items that we’ve had “starred” in Google Reader for a while. Let us know what you think.
