Jonathan Merritt’s Interview with Greg Boyd

Also from Jesus Creed

What do you see as the problems with certainty-seeking faith? Or do you think it is a problem? Is faith certainty? Or is certainty faith no longer faith?

The more psychological certain you are, the stronger your faith; the less certain, the weaker your faith. If something is not happening right — like a healing — the problem is weak faith. So he uses the image of the mallet slammed down at the county fair onto a device that tosses a ball up a pole — and if you hit it hard enough the bell will ring. Some think of faith this way: if you have enough of it, the bell of certainty and success rings. (Good analogy.) If this is the case, there is no one with enough faith to bring peace to the Middle East, an end to AIDS or healing to someone for whom you and others are praying. Boyd will present a more biblical understanding of faith, but that’s for a later post.