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Pillars of Faith
Here a man known as a foremost interpreter of theology turns to a simple explanation for the layman of the five central pillars of Christian faith and their meaning for today.
Interesting, authoritative and vital are these pillars of faith. Jesus is the first pillar, an authority for his disciples in his and all generations to follow.Another pillar - the Holy Spirit - was given to his followers upon his death. A third also followed soon thereafter - the Church. Men revolting against the authority of the Church set up a fourth pillar - the Bible. A fifth has been added in recent years as emphasis has been place upon Experience.
Interesting, authoritative and vital are these pillars of faith. Jesus is the first pillar, an authority for his disciples in his and all generations to follow.Another pillar - the Holy Spirit - was given to his followers upon his death. A third also followed soon thereafter - the Church. Men revolting against the authority of the Church set up a fourth pillar - the Bible. A fifth has been added in recent years as emphasis has been place upon Experience.
128 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1948
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January 8, 2018
This is the second book by Ferre that I've read and I'm grateful to have discovered his work. He is a lesser-known figure in popular theological circles, and if he is known he is regarded with suspicion for some of his admittedly-unorthodox theological convictions. Nevertheless, in Pillars of Faith Ferre offers conventional wisdom for the church by exploring what he considers five foundational components of Christian faith.
I appreciate Ferre’s thoughts on the power of faith and the despair of non-belief. He really gets down in the mud on the existential crisis of faith. His first chapter on “Christ and Our Problems” offers some great insight on insecurity in relations, eternal life, death, and the change of heart necessary to follow Christ. Christ is the light that illumines our path, exposes our darkness and brokenness in sin, and offers hope in the face of uncertainty.
The second chapter on “The Holy Spirit and the New Age” was a bit of a stretch. I’m not quite sure I fully follow Ferre’s language of “the family fellowship.” At times this seems like an explicit reference to the church; at others it seems like a placeholder for a vague community of self-professed spiritualists. Nevertheless, this chapter offered some good thoughts on the Holy Spirit.
The third chapter on “The Challenge of the Church” is replete with quotations from Thomas and Alexander Campbell, two personal heroes of mine. Ferre’s insistence that the Bible is the blueprint for God’s building and that that building is the church (85) certainly resembles the restorationist spirit of the Campbells. The necessity of the church and proper relation within the church speaks to the heart of the problem of “run-of-the-mill” Christianity: we are not engaged. Ferre’s take on Christianization and legislation (pg 75) is puzzling. However, I assume he’s wanting to celebrate the transformative power of faith communities among the secular. For Ferre, the church (body) and the Christ (head) are inseparably linked, and in some sense co-dependent.
Ferre’s fourth chapter, “Biblical Bedrock,” incorporates much of what has been said about the church. He wants to affirm three categories for understanding the Bible: as the standard for faith, as the open book, and as food for life. Each of these categories calls readers to become practitioners, the Bible coming alive in the church so that the church can come alive in the world. “The church is this not only a principle for interpreting the Bible. It is also itself an organ of revelation” (85). The church and Scripture are intimately related, and the church is “the Bible writ large in history.” Ferre insists that privatized interpretation leads to division. He adopts a Christocentric hermeneutic wherein Christ illumines the entirety of the Canon. In order to understand the Bible as God’s word, the Word must come alive in us. Along these lines, he further speaks of “layers of truth” and the aftermath of biblical criticism. On both of these fronts he aligns himself with Bultmann and C.H. Dodd. Those unwilling to partake in the fruit of Biblical criticism are hindering the truth, making use of scripture in ways that hide saving truth and power from the outsider. He calls for intelligent, humble use of scripture instead of reliance of those who misuse scripture (I’m guessing fundamentalists?) on “clinging to a mixture of untruth and truth as the truth and nothing but the truth” (94). Ferre doesn’t affirm verbal inspiration, so let the reader prepare himself for that.
The struggle of scripture calls us to search for the things we can grasp while we admire those things beyond us. Ferre calls this finding the constant blend of meaning and mystery. Scripture both satisfies our desire to know God intimately and it draws us deeper into the mystery of the unknown; we have not plummeted the riches of the Bible. While I agree with much of what he says, I have some issue with his implicit dichotomy between the Bible and history. “It (the Bible) does not begin and end in history, but in Him who alone makes history possible” (103). I would argue that the Bible must be understood as having a definite place in the beginning and ending in history in order for us to accept Jesus’ teaching as anything beyond spiritualism.
In the fifth chapter (“The Christian Life”), Ferre combined Reason and Experience and claims that these characterize our present age. This is an interesting appropriation of two distinct parts of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Here Ferre returns to the existential grapplings of a life of faith in the midst of a secular world by focusing on all of life as being for God in three dimensions: From Him, Through Him, and For Him. This is perhaps the genius of the entire book because it brings together all that has been said and opens the reader to appropriation of these pillars.
While I can’t endorse everything Ferre believes, especially what I perceive to be an unorthodox understanding of God’s being in Christ, I can say this book has proven itself worthy of keeping and rereading.
I appreciate Ferre’s thoughts on the power of faith and the despair of non-belief. He really gets down in the mud on the existential crisis of faith. His first chapter on “Christ and Our Problems” offers some great insight on insecurity in relations, eternal life, death, and the change of heart necessary to follow Christ. Christ is the light that illumines our path, exposes our darkness and brokenness in sin, and offers hope in the face of uncertainty.
The second chapter on “The Holy Spirit and the New Age” was a bit of a stretch. I’m not quite sure I fully follow Ferre’s language of “the family fellowship.” At times this seems like an explicit reference to the church; at others it seems like a placeholder for a vague community of self-professed spiritualists. Nevertheless, this chapter offered some good thoughts on the Holy Spirit.
The third chapter on “The Challenge of the Church” is replete with quotations from Thomas and Alexander Campbell, two personal heroes of mine. Ferre’s insistence that the Bible is the blueprint for God’s building and that that building is the church (85) certainly resembles the restorationist spirit of the Campbells. The necessity of the church and proper relation within the church speaks to the heart of the problem of “run-of-the-mill” Christianity: we are not engaged. Ferre’s take on Christianization and legislation (pg 75) is puzzling. However, I assume he’s wanting to celebrate the transformative power of faith communities among the secular. For Ferre, the church (body) and the Christ (head) are inseparably linked, and in some sense co-dependent.
Ferre’s fourth chapter, “Biblical Bedrock,” incorporates much of what has been said about the church. He wants to affirm three categories for understanding the Bible: as the standard for faith, as the open book, and as food for life. Each of these categories calls readers to become practitioners, the Bible coming alive in the church so that the church can come alive in the world. “The church is this not only a principle for interpreting the Bible. It is also itself an organ of revelation” (85). The church and Scripture are intimately related, and the church is “the Bible writ large in history.” Ferre insists that privatized interpretation leads to division. He adopts a Christocentric hermeneutic wherein Christ illumines the entirety of the Canon. In order to understand the Bible as God’s word, the Word must come alive in us. Along these lines, he further speaks of “layers of truth” and the aftermath of biblical criticism. On both of these fronts he aligns himself with Bultmann and C.H. Dodd. Those unwilling to partake in the fruit of Biblical criticism are hindering the truth, making use of scripture in ways that hide saving truth and power from the outsider. He calls for intelligent, humble use of scripture instead of reliance of those who misuse scripture (I’m guessing fundamentalists?) on “clinging to a mixture of untruth and truth as the truth and nothing but the truth” (94). Ferre doesn’t affirm verbal inspiration, so let the reader prepare himself for that.
The struggle of scripture calls us to search for the things we can grasp while we admire those things beyond us. Ferre calls this finding the constant blend of meaning and mystery. Scripture both satisfies our desire to know God intimately and it draws us deeper into the mystery of the unknown; we have not plummeted the riches of the Bible. While I agree with much of what he says, I have some issue with his implicit dichotomy between the Bible and history. “It (the Bible) does not begin and end in history, but in Him who alone makes history possible” (103). I would argue that the Bible must be understood as having a definite place in the beginning and ending in history in order for us to accept Jesus’ teaching as anything beyond spiritualism.
In the fifth chapter (“The Christian Life”), Ferre combined Reason and Experience and claims that these characterize our present age. This is an interesting appropriation of two distinct parts of the Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Here Ferre returns to the existential grapplings of a life of faith in the midst of a secular world by focusing on all of life as being for God in three dimensions: From Him, Through Him, and For Him. This is perhaps the genius of the entire book because it brings together all that has been said and opens the reader to appropriation of these pillars.
While I can’t endorse everything Ferre believes, especially what I perceive to be an unorthodox understanding of God’s being in Christ, I can say this book has proven itself worthy of keeping and rereading.
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