Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments

Abstract

Donald A. Crosby's Faith and Freedom: Contexts, Choices, and Crises in Religious Commitments is published in the Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies series.Crosby's book, however, does not belong in this series. The fact that it is published in this series may mislead readers’ expectations. The series is an academic series; this book is mostly intellectual autobiography or memoir. Crosby says as much in the first footnote of the book: “This is not a book in which scholarly claims and counterclaims are constantly exchanged with highly regarded contemporary academic writers. I develop a position that relates to a variety of interreligious claims, positions, and arguments, and I do so as articulation and defense of a point of view at which I have arrived at over long years of thought” (xiii). Having this book published in this series misleads readers, but this footnote clarifies and cleans up any faulty expectations.Donald Crosby's book relates to three significant texts within the history of Western philosophy, and he only admits to one of these. The three texts are: Plato's Apology, Augustine's Confessions, and Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. Crosby admits the first one, saying that the Socratic questioning found in Plato's Apology ought to be or become a norm among both religious believers and those who identify with no religious tradition. More on this later.For this review, I forward two arguments. First, I make the case that the genre or style of Crosby's book resembles Augustine's Confessions; yet, Augustine and Crosby end up in two different places concerning the priority of God and human beings. Second, I demonstrate that the unacknowledged philosophical theory behind Crosby's thinking is the theory of autonomy and freedom articulated by Immanuel Kant in his second critique: The Critique of Practical Reason. I conclude the review by returning to Crosby's use of Plato's Apology.When Crosby claims that he defends “a point of view at which I have arrived at over long years of thought” and when he takes his readers on a journey explaining and exploring the evolution of his thinking on matters relating to religion, he puts his book in relation to Augustine's Confessions. Like Augustine, Crosby interweaves different philosophical schools of thought with religious concerns and questions; Crosby defends certain philosophical schools of thought and denounces others as deceitful (in the spirit of the Apostle Paul: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy” [Colossians 2:8]). Of course, Crosby does not defend the same philosophical schools of thought that Augustine does; that is not my claim. My claim, rather, is that both Augustine and Crosby make clear where their allegiances lie when identifying different philosophical theories. Augustine identifies as a Platonist and a Stoic; Crosby identifies as a naturalist and theological existentialist (in the vein of Paul Tillich; see page 98). Despite their differences in terms of philosophical schools of thought, both Augustine and Crosby think that their philosophical sources provide guidance and wisdom for what should be allowed or expected concerning the content of religious beliefs. In this sense, both Augustine and Crosby perform a kind of philosophical theology.Their respective conclusions differ drastically. For Augustine, his religious and theological journey goes from being ego-centered to wanting to be God-centered. This God is a very specific God: the God of ancient Judeo-Christianity. For Crosby, his religious and theological journey goes from being God-centered—he cites Walter Brueggemann and Reinhold Niebuhr as his inspirational sources for what he once thought about God—to being ego-centered in the sense of giving the individual final authority for what constitutes their relationship with God and their religious life. For instance, Crosby concludes chapter 6 with these words: “I mainly offer this account of my journey of faith as a personal example of what it can mean to subject a religious outlook to continuing examination and as an illustration of the need incumbent on us all to put our freedom to active and effective use in the process of making our faith stance truly our own” (114; emphasis added). The place where Crosby's theological journey ends up becomes my primary critique of Faith and Freedom. To be clear, I am no Augustinian on these matters. Rather, I fear Crosby defends a subject-centered view of rationality when it comes to one's relationship with God and the religious life. By subject-centered rationality, I mean that one's convictions and viewpoint are best established within one's self or one's own thinking independent of either an actual or ideal community. For thinking about one's relationship with God and one's own religious life, I prefer—not Augustinianism—but a post-metaphysical communicative rationality where examination and questioning are accomplished within a community. This community can be a scholarly community, religious community, or some type of grassroots community (see Jeffrey Stout's Blessed Are the Organized: Grassroots Democracy in America [2012]). In this sense, Crosby does not so much repair Cartesian rationalism but repeats it—at least performatively—by putting so much faith in the individual to make their faith “truly [their] own.” In my judgment, this type of unaccountability and authorization of the individual leads to religious fanaticism and violence—two worries about religious believers Crosby brings up throughout his book. Communicative rationality, on the contrary, provides accountability for what one claims in terms of their relationship with God and their religious life.Earlier I mentioned Crosby's philosophical commitments to naturalism and theological existentialism. The philosophical commitment that goes unacknowledged by Crosby, but certainly is present in Faith and Freedom, involves Kant's second critique. Basically, Crosby's book seems to be the application of Kant's theory of autonomy and freedom to all facets of the religious life. I sensed this connection while reading Crosby's book, but a claim found on page 92 sealed the deal for me. Crosby claims, “No appeal to external authority can substitute for the continual exercise of freedom in religious life, because we must give careful consideration to many different claims to authority and truth, and choose those that seem most compelling and convincing” (92). Compare this claim with Kant's distinction between autonomy and heteronomy in The Critique of Practical Reason: Autonomy of the will is the sole principle of all moral laws and of duties in keeping with them; heteronomy of choice, on the other hand, not only does not ground any obligation at all but is instead opposed to the principle of obligation and to the morality of the will. That is to say, the sole principle of morality consists in independence from all matter of the law . . . and at the same time in the determination of choice. . . . That independence . . . is freedom in the negative sense whereas . . . practical reason is freedom in the positive sense. (Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, 5:33)Crosby's emphasis on choosing religious truths “that seem most compelling and convincing” follows and piggybacks on Kant's distinction between autonomy and heteronomy. For Crosby, what it means to have freedom in relation to the religious life pertains to Kant's definition of autonomy and his observation that practical reason supplies us with “freedom in the positive sense” (Kant, 5:33). The “freedom” in Crosby's title—Faith and Freedom—turns out to be a repeat of Kant's theory of autonomy and freedom in his second critique.What does this freedom look like in practice? According to Crosby, it looks like the character of Socrates in Plato's Apology: In other words, there can be different degrees of change from the old to the new, but a religious faith that is not allowed to undergo any criticism, reassessment, or change through the years or through the course of an individual's life is bound to become increasingly sterile and obsolete. Socrates memorably declares in Plato's Apology that the unexamined life is not worth living . . . , and the same idea applies to unexamined religion. Unexamined religion is unappropriated religion, religion that is kept at arm's length rather than allowed to function in the heart of one's being, religion that can have little or no bearing on the central issues of life. (141)For Crosby, an unexamined religion is one not worth believing.In addition to this explicit citation of Socrates, Crosby's whole book can be read as his version of Socrates's own defense in Plato's Apology about the importance—indeed, the mandate—to question the religious beliefs that one inherits. Crosby performs this Socratic task by identifying different American Christian views about God and challenging those views. In this sense, Faith and Freedom succeeds as a book-length defense and explanation for how and why Crosby has challenged beliefs about God that he and others have inherited while simultaneously revealing Crosby's own positive beliefs about God and the religious life.If the members of Socrates's jury read Crosby's Faith and Freedom, they certainly would find Crosby guilty of corrupting his readers. Fortunately, for Crosby and for us, no such jury exists anymore. The closest analogue we offer to Socrates's jury are academic book reviews such as this one. I heartily recommend Crosby's book to potential readers, especially at the risk of inviting people to think for themselves in terms of their relationship with God and their religious life.