What Is “Faith”? And How Does It Grow?
A Critical Assessment of Social-Scientific Perspectives on Faith Development
Faith grows.
Or, at least, it should.
The apostles once implored their Lord, “Multiply our faith!” (Luke 17:5)—and no wonder. According to the teachings that the apostles had heard from the lips of Jesus, it was possible for faith to blossom from an almost-imperceptible speck—“like a mustard seed”—into an earthshaking force (Matt. 17:20; Luke 17:6). The apostles had listened as Jesus praised “great faith” and then as he rebuked his followers for their “little faith” (Matt. 6:30; 8:10, 26; 14:31; 15:28; 16:8; Luke 7:9; 12:28). And evidently, when Jesus returned from the heavens to earth, faith would be one aspect of what he would be looking for: “When the Son of Man comes,” Jesus asked, “will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8). Jesus wanted faith to be present when he returned to earth, and he expected this faith to have grown.
From the perspective of the inspired authors of the New Testament writings, growth in faith was both desired (2 Corinthians 10:15; Ephesians 4:13-14; 2 Thessalonians 1:3) and expected (Hebrews 5:11—6:2). If an individual’s faith failed to grow, the validity of that person’s faith was doubtful (Hebrews 10:39). In the decades following the Savior’s death and resurrection, the faith of Jesus multiplied not only by increasing within believers as they received apostolic instruction (1 Thessalonians 3:2, 10) but also by spreading from one person to another (Acts 6:7; 2 Timothy 1:5).
Exploring Faith Development
A dilemma emerges at this point, though: Despite the fact that growth in faith is praised throughout the New Testament, Scripture provides no explicit step-by-step sequence for this growth. How, then, is it possible to assess whether or how an individual’s faith is developing in a healthy way? Is it conceivable to describe faith-development in a series of styles or stages? And, for that matter, what is faith?
Near the end of the book of Hebrews, one Spirit-inspired author provided a brief definition of faith. Yet it is a definition that seems to complicate as much as it elucidates: “Faith is the underlying reality of doings that are hoped for; it is the revealing proof of that which is unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). Tellingly, what follows this definition is not a sequence of developmental stages but a series of stories—the narratives of past prototypes of faithfulness, recounted in rapid succession. And so the question remains, “How does faith grow?” The goal of this article will be to explore that critical query.
In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, the theory that James W. Fowler first posited in the 1970s has continued to dominate discussions of faith-development in secular contexts. As such, much of this article will focus on Fowler’s theory. At the same time, other developmental models—both from historic Christian reflection and from modern theorists—will provide additional frameworks for the discussion.
“Seeking to Understand Faith”: A Gap in Theological Reflection
In the eleventh century A.D., Anselm of Canterbury summarized the task of the Christian theologian in a dictum derived from Augustine of Hippo that remains a touchstone for theological reflection still today: “Faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum). Anselm’s adage defined his task as the process of comprehending more deeply and articulating more clearly the truths that the Christian already believes. While recognizing the importance of fides quaerens intellectum, I suggest that another task is equally vital for Christian formation and discipleship. Taking a turn from Anselm’s adage, we describe this task as quaerens intellegere fidem (“seeking to understand faith”). Anselm’s task of fides quaerens intellectum portrays the prescriptive process that clarifies, based on divine revelation, how Christians ought to understand the God in whom they believe. The task that we have termed quaerens intellegere fidem is a descriptive process that seeks to comprehend the underlying structures of faith as well as examining how these structures shape individuals’ behaviors, perspectives, and ideals.
Despite the equivalent significance of these two tasks, evangelical theologians and educators have tended to place far more emphasis on fides quaerens intellectum than on quaerens intellegere fidem. Empirical studies from evangelical publishers describe significant factors in maturing faith while popular guides to spiritual disciplines highlight effective means and methods for development as disciples of Jesus Christ. Systematic theological texts spill much ink when it comes to the logical positioning of faith within the ordo salutis (“order of salvation”) and to aspects of authentic faith. Yet little space is expended in these worthwhile texts to explicate the structures that describe how faith grows throughout the Christian’s life.
In one first-rate evangelical theology text, for example, the sole presentation of developmental structures in the Christian life is a three-stage process of (1) conversion, (2) growth in holiness, and (3) ultimate perfection in holiness. The entire Christian life from conversion to consummation is summarized in the single category of “growth in holiness”! Although such a structure may well be accurate, it is not particularly helpful for the purpose of assessing Christian maturity or of guiding individuals toward deeper faithfulness to Jesus Christ.
Theories of Faith Development
Perhaps because of the relative neglect of the developmental structures of faith among evangelicals, the principal theories of faith-development have emerged not from evangelical scholarship but from liberal Protestantism. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the predominant paradigm for faith-development studies remains the stage theory that Methodist theologian James W. Fowler first formulated in the 1960s and 1970s.
James W. Fowler laid the foundations for his developmental theory at Harvard Divinity School in the 1960s “in the context of the bitterly dividing struggle in the United States over the Vietnam War.” During those years, Fowler developed a course for Master of Divinity students entitled “Theology as the Symbolization of Experience.” The writings of Paul Tillich and H. Richard Niebuhr provided Fowler’s primary theological frameworks, which he integrated with the developmentalist perspectives of Erik Erikson and Robert Bellah. The research of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, professor of comparative religions at Harvard, formed Fowler’s definition of faith.
Another influence soon engaged Fowler’s attention and helped to shape his perspectives on faith: Lawrence Kohlberg, a professor in the Harvard Graduate School of Education, formulated a stage-development theory to describe how perceptions and practices of morality evolved throughout the lifespan. Deeply influenced by Kohlberg’s methods and stages, Fowler gathered a team of graduate students in the fields of theology and developmental psychology. Over a period of three years, Fowler and his students conducted 359 interviews, exploring what they perceived to be individuals’ “faith development.” Working from his earlier theoretical research and from these interviews, James W. Fowler constructed a stage-theory to describe how faith grows.
The stage-theory that Fowler developed served as the foundation for his 1981 book Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Search for Meaning—a text that, in 2005, had reached its fortieth printing. Since the initial publication of Stages of Faith, dozens of doctoral dissertations and no fewer than three hundred academic articles have explored Fowler’s stage-theory.
How Fowler Defined Faith
Fundamental to Fowler’s stage-theory is his definition of “faith.” James W. Fowler sought a perspective on faith that transcended any specific content or beliefs. A few years before Fowler formulated his faith-development theory, moral theorist Lawrence Kohlberg had claimed that a universalized principle of justice could provide the necessary foundations for a moral-development theory. Fowler sought a similar sort of universalized “content-empty” principle to undergird his theory of faith development. The universal foundational principle for Fowler’s theory became the individual’s or the group’s way of responding to transcendent value and power. In keeping with this principle, Fowler defined faith as a “person’s or group’s way of responding to transcendent value and power as perceived and grasped through forms of the cumulative tradition.”
The potential for the phenomenon that Fowler has defined as “faith” results neither from divine action nor primarily from any human choice. The propensity for faith is part of every human being’s genetic code. It is “a generic human phenomenon” and “an apparently genetic consequence of the universal burden of finding or making meaning.”
The Foundations of Fowler’s Definition of “Faith”
Although influenced by the theological perspectives of H. Richard Niebuhr and Paul Tillich, Fowler’s exclusion of content from the essential nature of faith also arose from his reliance on the research of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, professor of comparative religion at Harvard. In Stages of Faith, James W. Fowler explicitly acknowledged his dependence on Smith’s research, pointing out how “for nearly two decades Wilfred Cantwell Smith has devoted himself to … the task of researching and interpreting the contribution each of the central world religious traditions makes to our understanding of faith.”
In The Meaning and End of Religion (1963) and Faith and Belief: The Difference Between Them (1979), Wilfred Cantwell Smith had argued that, in the pre-modern world, to believe or to have faith did not imply the acceptance of specific content as true. Instead, these terms meant to regard another person with “a certain ultimate loyalty” and to set one’s heart on a relationship with that person. The very idea that faith might require the acceptance of specific content would have been alien to pre-modern people. Thus, the terms translated “faith,” “belief,” and “believe” in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and pre-modern creeds could not—Smith claimed—connote assent to any specific claims about God at the times when these documents were written.
In his developmental theory, Fowler followed Smith’s foundational assumptions about the nature of faith. For Fowler, the terms translated “faith,” “belief,” and “believe” in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures and in the writings of early Christians denoted personal allegiance (“I believe [have faith] in”), but never assent to specific assertions about God (“I believe [have faith] that”). Faith was personal loyalty that required no intellectual assent to any specific concepts or propositions. According to Fowler, “for the ancient Jew or Christian to have said, ‘I believe there is a God,’ or ‘I believe God exists,’ would have been a strange circumlocution. The being or existence of God was taken for granted.” Whether a person accepted specific claims as true was never “a matter of final human destiny” in the minds of early Christians.
Neither Smith nor Fowler denied the presence or the necessity of truth within the reality to which they referred as “faith.” Faith is, Smith claimed, “answerable to transcendent reality and truth.” Their “transcendent reality and truth” does not, however, entail assent to any specific beliefs. It is, instead, allegiance to truth as a transcendent principle, a perspective that Fowler echoed in his definition of faith as a way of responding “to transcendent value and power.” By defining truth as a transcendent principle devoid of content, Smith was able to assert that
there is no reason, in the modem world, why in principle an intelligent and informed Jew or Muslim and an intelligent and informed Christian, and indeed an intelligent and informed and sensitive atheistic humanist, … should have different beliefs. Yet also there is no reason why they should not continue to live in terms of their differing symbols.
Following this line of thinking, James W. Fowler argued for a “cultural-linguistic” perspective on faith. Such a perspective treats doctrines not as declarations of truth but as “grammatical rules” that govern the language of a particular set of religious convictions. Heard from this perspective, when a Christian declares “Jesus is Lord,” the Christian’s statement represents an ontologically true affirmation of the need to be committed to a reality that is greater than oneself, spoken within the grammatical rules of Christianity. When Muslims declare that there is no God but Allah, they speak the same ontological truth in the grammar of their particular faith. According to Fowler, “despite the myriad variants of religions and beliefs,” there is a universal “unity and recognizability” that points to an identical phenomenon of faith within every religion.
Treated cultural-linguistically, faith functions as a mode of knowing that requires no assent to specific knowledge. This content-empty pattern develops, according to James W. Fowler, within a covenantal triad that involves three entities: self, other persons, and shared centers of value and power (see Figure 1). The “shared centers of value and power” represent unifying sagas and shared statements that point a community or an individual toward that which is transcendent and ultimately meaningful. Although the cultural-linguistic expressions of these sagas and statements differ from one religion to another, the underlying realities remain the same.
Criticisms of Fowlerian Stage-Development
James W. Fowler’s stages provide not only a theory but also a model, portraying not only what is but also what ought to be. The theory seems to be intended to shape the processes of Christian education. Put another way, Fowler’s stages provide a map for people’s lives, and maps not only depict particular destinations; maps also tell travelers how to traverse the terrain to arrive at the desired destination. Maps both describe and prescribe.
At this point, one must ask, “Is Fowler’s map accurate?” Over the past three decades, more than a few ministers and scholars have questioned whether Fowler’s cartography accurately depicts the terrain of faith-development. Most of the critics have found fault with Fowler’s stages in one or more of the following three areas: (1) Was Fowler’s original sample sufficient to provide foundations for a universal model for faith-development? (2) Given that faith seems to unfold within a complex and continuing life-narrative, is it even possible for a traditional stage-development theory to describe faith-development accurately? (3) From a Christian perspective, should the reality to which Fowler referred as “faith” actually be identified as faith at all?
A Universal Model for Faith-Development? Criticisms of Fowler’s Methodology. James W. Fowler and his researchers drew their initial sampling of 359 interviewees from areas in and around academic communities in North America. Interviewees were selected purposively rather than randomly, and researchers collected no information about the subjects’ educational backgrounds. Given these gaps in the data, it is unclear whether Fowler’s sample accurately represented any larger population.
Despite the claim that faith-development tends to advance with age, especially in the less mature stages, later studies have not consistently replicated this proposed relationship. Fowler’s findings have been replicated among non-theistic Jews; however, studies conducted with native Hawaiian and Korean populations revealed significant gaps and cultural biases even as they replicated other aspects of Fowler’s research. Paula Drewek’s research among Bahá'í populations in Canada and India revealed particular culturally-rooted problems with the third and fourth Fowlerian stages. Although Fowlerian stage assessments based on the interviews remained similar from one rater to another, it is unclear whether these assessments related significantly or meaningfully with any external measures.
Perhaps the most pressing problem with Fowler’s claim to have developed a universal stage-theory is the apparent correlation between social class and Fowlerian stage-development. In studies conducted in the decades following the release of Stages of Faith, Fowlerian stage-development has related positively to educational level, occupational level, job complexity, and income level. Citizens in urban areas rate higher than rural folk, and women tend to cluster in Stages 3 and 5 while men have been found more frequently in Stages 2 and 4. If such biases do exist, they would call into question the suggestion that Fowler’s stages constitute a universal paradigm that transcends gender, class, culture, and religious tradition.
In Fowler’s favor, factor analyses have suggested that his stages do constitute a structural whole that describes some actual dimension of human development. Nevertheless, much of the data that undergirds Fowler’s developmental sequences remains more heuristic than definitive, sufficient to allow for the proposal of a theory but perhaps inadequate to sustain such an all-encompassing developmental model.
Stages or Styles? Criticisms of Fowler’s Appropriation of Cognitive-Structural Developmental Theories. “It cannot be overlooked,” European developmental theorist Heinz Streib has pointed out, “that the cognitive-structural theories of development, in their traditional shape of structural, hierarchical, sequential, and irreversible logic of development are due to an all-too-optimistic interpretation of the project of modernity.” Streib specifically critiques James W. Fowler’s theory in this regard.
According to Streib, Fowler’s stages center almost exclusively on cognitive decentration—on constructive expansion of the individual’s responsiveness to perspectives beyond his or her own. By centering on decentration, Fowlerian stage-development stumbles over itself by placing the “cart” of cognitive competencies in front the “horse” of personal biography and life history. Wanting to work toward a view that is not so centered in individual cognitive competencies, Heinz Streib has urged theorists of religious development to shift their focus from decentration to phenomenology, from the development of cognitive competencies to the relationship of the individual’s life-narrative to that which is perceived as transcendent or “Other.” In the process, Streib broadens the central phenomenon of his model from Fowler’s content-empty “faith” to the ongoing appropriation of religion within the individual’s life-narrative.
In his resulting corrective to Fowler’s cognitive-structural system, Streib suggests that spiritual formation transpires along the lines of five “religious styles.” With this corrective, Heinz Streib seems to have moved religious development from a “soft developmental theory” of the sort attempted by Fowler to a “functional model,” more akin to Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development.
Streib’s five religious styles are very similar to five of Fowler’s stages—beginning with Fowler’s intuitive-projective stage (Stage 1) and continuing consecutively through the conjunctive stage (Stage 5)—with a couple of crucial distinctions: (1) In the first place, Streib’s styles focus on the individual’s expanding life-story and relationships instead of the individual’s changing perceptions of meaning. (2) More importantly, although certain religious styles are likely to be more dominant during particular stages of life, all of Streib’s styles are theoretically present throughout an individual’s life. “The stages of faith,” Streib contends, “are not confined to a certain age; there is more permeability and flexibility.” The Bielefeld-Based Cross-Cultural Study of Religious Deconversion has corroborated several facets of Streib’s proposal, not only in Europe but also in North America.
Biblical and Theological Insights on Faith Development
Perhaps the most strident criticisms of Fowlerian stage-development have come from Christian scholars who find deficiencies in Fowler’s “content-empty” understanding of faith. The concept of content-empty faith is unavoidably problematic for Christians who emphasize the regulative authority of Holy Scripture and who, because of this high view of Scripture, understand faith to require assent to specific content.
Working from the historical reconstruction proposed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Fowler defined “faith” as personal allegiance to transcendent reality while excluding the necessity of assent to specific propositions regarding the nature of this reality. According to Fowler, ancient Christians would also have placed “faith” and “belief” in this content-empty category; it has only been in the modern era, Fowler claims, that Christians have defined faith in ways that could require propositional assent.
Has Fowler, however, offered an accurate historical reconstruction of faith among the earliest believers in Jesus Christ? Was the primal form of Christian faith truly content-empty? Does Fowler’s definition of “faith” correlate in any significant way with Christian faith-development? If not, what phenomenon does Fowler’s developmental theory actually describe?
Fowler’s “Faith” in Historical and Theological Perspective
It is my contention that Fowler’s claims about “faith” among the earliest Christians require highly selective readings of the Scriptures and of the theologians of the early church. A survey of the functions of pisteuein (Greek, “to-believe” or “to-have-faith”) and related terms in the New Testament reveals that the faith of the earliest Christians was not only a matter of having faith in a person but also a matter of believing that certain assertions were true.
It is true that, among the earliest Christians, “faith” did imply personal allegiance that resulted in a transformed life. Christian faith is in fact inseparable from such transformation. John the Baptist launched his ministry of proclamation with a charge to “repent and believe the good news” (Mark 1:15). Jesus placed obedience and belief in synonymous parallelism (John 3:36). To have “faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” was, for Paul, to exercise “repentance toward God” (Acts 20:21; see also Romans 1:5; 10:16; 16:26). For the author of Revelation, “to keep God’s commandments” is inseparable from having “faith in Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).
At the same time, texts such as Hebrews 11:3 make it clear that the life of faith also requires propositional assent to specific content: “By faith we know that the ages were created by God’s Word, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are apparent.” In other biblical texts, faith requires believers to recognize that God exists, that God raised Jesus from the dead, and that Jesus is the Savior (Romans 10:9; 1 Thessalonians 4:14; Hebrews 11:1-6; James 2:19; 1 John 5:1-5). In Paul’s letter to the Romans, faith requires not only heartfelt submission to Christ’s Lordship but also assent to the historical fact of his Resurrection (Romans 10:6-11). Throughout the earliest decades of Christianity, “faith” implied both propositional assent and personal allegiance. If an individual abandoned either aspect, the result was considered to be something other than authentic faith (see, e.g., 1 John 4:3,15; 5:1-5; 2 John 1:7).
Even in the Septuagint—the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that served as the first Bible for many early Christians—terms translated “belief,” “believe,” and “faith” repeatedly implied assent to specific historical and ontological assertions (see, e.g., Gen. 45:26; Exod. 4:5, 8-9; 1 Kings 10:7; Job 9:16; 15:22; Ps. 26:13 [Eng., 27:13]; Tobit 2:14; 10:7-8 [long version]). This understanding of faith may also be found in the writings of the church fathers. In a crucial passage from his catechetical writings, Cyril of Jerusalem—the very theologian from whom Wilfred Cantwell Smith claimed to have derived primary proof for his historical reconstruction—clarified what he meant when he used the term “faith.”
The term “faith” is … one word, yet it has two meanings: One kind of faith concerns doctrine. It involves the soul’s rising to and accepting some particular point and it is profitable for the soul. … For if you will have faith that Jesus Christ is the Lord and that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved and will be transported into paradise by the same one who brought the thief into paradise. … The other kind of faith, … given by the Holy Spirit as a special favor, is not only doctrinal but it also produces effects beyond any human capacity. … Whenever anyone speaks in faith, having faith that it will come to pass, without doubting in his heart, he receives that grace. … Since all cannot read the Scriptures, ... so that the soul may not perish because of ignorance, we pass on all of the doctrine of faith in a few lines. … Be careful, brothers! Hold tightly to the things-handed-down that you now receive!
The function of the terms translated “faith” in this particular passage suggests that this church father’s definition of faith specifically required assent to objective claims. This understanding of “faith” is also present in other theologians’ use of the word credere (Latin, “to-believe” or “to-have-faith”). For Cyprian of Carthage, for example, to believe in [credere in] God was to believe that [credere quod] it was God who had appointed the church’s leaders. Writing in North Africa in the fifth century, Augustine of Hippo identified faith as “thinking with assent” regarding truths that God had revealed in Jesus Christ and in Scripture.
This perspective persisted among the medieval theologians. Peter the Lombard’s Sententiae, written in the twelfth century, includes one of the first developmental models to describe how Christian faith grows. Peter the Lombard’s fourfold model strongly influenced Scholastic perspectives on the nature and function of faith. For Peter and other Scholastic theologians,
(1) faith begins as “implicit faith” (fides implicita)—an innate sense of trust in a higher source of knowledge.
(2) Faith then grows to include assent to the historical reality of God’s consummate self-revelation in Jesus Christ (“historical faith” or fides historica). Although not fully constitutive of Christian faith, this act of assent provided a necessary foundation for Christian faith. Fides historica gives way to
(3) personal allegiance or “explicit faith” (fides explicita). Ideally, fides explicita grows into
(4) fides formata caritate (“faith formed by love”). In fides formata caritate, the believer believes not because of blessings that he or she may receive but out of sheer love.
Although the sixteenth-century Reformers such as John Calvin and Martin Luther did not wholeheartedly embrace the Scholastic perspective on faith, the Scholastics and the Reformers alike understood Christian faith to require assent to specific objective assertions about God. Early Protestant theologians contended that, until the point of fides explicita, no authentic faith could be found in anyone’s heart. Unless an individual explicitly trusted in Jesus Christ, his or her assent was merely “notional” and could not lead to eternal life. Calvin defined Christian faith in terms of “firm and certain knowledge of divine benevolence toward us”; prior to such certainty, authentic faith does not exist. Again, Christian faith clearly required assent to specific content.
In sum, from the first century forward, Christian faith entailed personal allegiance to an unfathomable transcendent reality. Yet this faith also referred to transcendent reality by a certain name, required that this reality be linked to specific redemptive acts in human history, and called believers to embrace particular assertions about the essential nature of this reality. The difficulty with Smith’s and Fowler’s understanding of faith is their apparent assumption that the primacy of personal allegiance somehow excludes the necessity of propositional assent to specific or objective content. Given the clear function of the terms translated “faith” in the New Testament and throughout the church’s history, Fowler’s claim that the phenomenon of faith among pre-modern Christians was “a mode of knowing” that required no specific assent appears to be debatable at best.
Fowler’s “Faith” and Christian Maturity. According to Fowler, every religious tradition describes faith in ways that ultimately exemplify “the same phenomenon.” Fowler simultaneously insists that maturation within his model “implies no lack of commitment to one’s own truth tradition,” If these claims are true, development according to Fowler’s stages ought to correlate strongly and positively with increasing maturity in any religious tradition. Even within the conservative-evangelical Christian tradition, increasing growth in Christian faithfulness should relate positively to increasing maturity according to Fowler’s stages.
Research has not, however, substantiated this supposition. In a 2003 study, a sampling of evangelical Christians was grouped according to Fowlerian stage-development and then evaluated using a standardized instrument—the “Shepherd Scale”—to assess Christian faith-maturity. A significant relationship was observed between Christian faith-maturity and Fowlerian stage-development—but not in the direction that one might expect! Participants who showed evidence of a mature Christian faith were slightly less likely to exhibit advanced development according to Fowler’s stages.
What these data suggest is that, though Fowler and his researchers may have measured some actual developmental pattern, Fowler’s model seems to have failed to describe faith in any sense that evangelical Christians could identify as faith. Despite Fowler’s insistence on the unity and recognizability of an identical phenomenon of faith in every truth tradition, the phenomenon of Christian faith—at least within the evangelical tradition—differs radically from the phenomenon that Fowler has identified as faith.