Doubt

In today’s Christian culture, doubt is often repressed because it is considered to be denying your faith rather than working it out for a better understanding of Christian beliefs. In their writings, Elie Wiesel, Thomas Hardy, and Dorothy Sayers, address this issue of doubt; but perhaps Alfred Lord Tennyson best sums up the proper view of doubt with his words, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds” (340).

In Elie Wiesel’s book “Night,” he relays how doubting led to his loss of faith in God. Yet, inexplicably, he holds a subconscious belief in God, as he later prays “a prayer to the God in Whom [he] no longer believed” (91). Wiesel also describes the loss of faith on the part of a couple of rabbis when their doubts finally overwhelm them. One man, Akiba Drumer, shown throughout the first part of the book to be one of the more faithful Jews, finally has “no more strength, no more faith” and is lost to the Nazi selection process (76). Wiesel speculates that “if only he could have kept his faith in God, if he could have considered this suffering a divine test” he would not have died. By losing his faith “he lost all incentive to fight and opened the door to death” (77). Ironically, Wiesel speaks about his own loss of faith, yet he never dies, causing one to wonder at his words about Drumer. Perhaps Wiesel’s doubts kept his faith alive while Drumer’s ardent grasp on a doubt-free faith in God ultimately caused his downfall when he realized he could no longer believe without exploring the why questions about God. An unnamed rabbi also lost his faith around the same time as Drumer. “He recited entire pages from the Talmud,” Wiesel records, “arguing with himself, asking and answering endless questions” (76). Sadly, one day, he gave up that faith as he told Wiesel “It’s over. God is no longer with us…Man is too insignificant, too limited, to even try to comprehend God’s mysterious ways…I suffer hell in my soul and my flesh. I also have eyes to see what is being done here. Where is God’s mercy? Where’s God? How can I believe, how can anyone believe in this God of Mercy?” (76-77). As he recited Scriptures, daily forcing himself to believe without question in the God of his ancestors, the poor rabbi finally reached the point in which he no longer had the capacity to believe, doubting too late to work through his faith by questioning it thoroughly. Unwittingly, Wiesel presents doubt as a key to survival in a world of evil and suffering. Furthermore, he proposes an idea that faith can become dormant only to later be revived. When his mind could no longer fathom the works of God, he quit trying to understand His ways, instead allowing his faith to reach a comatose state of denial until he could properly reach conclusion about the works of God in the lives of men.

Next, Hardy presents doubt through several of his characters in “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” Angel Clare, while still believing that one should live out the principles of Christianity, struggles with its doctrines, doubting many of the integral building blocks of his parents’ and brother’s faith. Unfortunately, in his case, reason undermines faith, portraying doubt in a negative light. In Clare’s day, unbelief had fast become socially acceptable among Christians, causing him to continue in his doubt rather than resolving his questions and moving into a deeper faith in God. On the other hand, Alec D’Urbervilles’ questioning led to his conversion to faith in God (301-309). Undoubtedly Tess doubted God, especially when the dashing son of a minister, Angel Clare, forsook her shortly after their marriage when he discovered that she had been raped in former years. Eventually, her doubts lead her to such a loss of faith that she returns to her former abuser Alec D’Urbervilles and later becomes so desperate that she takes his life so that she can escape him.
Dorothy Sayers, in her work “The Mind of the Maker,” addresses the need of nominal Christians to think through their beliefs. Although many feel a need to try to resolve seeming biblical “contradictions,” there is a clear difference between knowing God and exhausting all knowledge of God. Likewise, doubting can lead “man [to make] God in his own image” instead of acknowledging that he is made in His image. She uses the example that just as one cannot correlate a dog’s nature or behavior to that of a human, one cannot compare God’s actions to those of human beings on the same basis that the two are completely separate and utterly different entities. Sayers, in her writings, presents the idea that doctrine led to faith while doubt may improperly lead to unequal and inappropriate comparisons of the morality and actions of God to that of human beings.

Tennyson, on the other hand, depicts doubt as a healthy and necessary aspect of faith. In the prologue of “In Memoriam”, he portrays knowledge and faith as inseparable, introducing the concept of doubt as a means of obtaining knowledge by working out faith (285). Tennyson’s work follows the form of a typical elegy, causing doubt and inquisition to be an acceptable form of dealing with grief. He seems to juxtapose doubt and unbelief, defining the former as questioning while the latter as outright rejection of beliefs. In section XCVI of “In Memoriam” he characterizes “honest doubt” as an attempt to understand or work out faith through questioning rather than just solely for the sake of sowing seeds of unbelief (341). By doubting and wrestling with one’s beliefs, one begins to internalize the values of the creeds. Although Tennyson seems to suggest that doubt is essential to faith, he does not deny the importance of creeds. Tennyson, rather, considers questioning necessary in order for believers to thoroughly understand the reasons behind these foundational values. Wisely, Tennyson concludes that at some point doubt can lead to unanswerable questions, in which case, faith must overarch these questions rather than letting unbelief encroach, as he penned the words, “I cannot understand: I love” (341). Eventually, a decision to simply accept God must occur or else unbelief will ensue.

In conclusion, when honestly pursue, doubt can be an important aspect of the Christian faith. However, care must be taken not to doubt merely for the sake of doubting, nor to let unbelief infiltrate doubt to the point of loss of faith. Likewise, the importance of Christian doctrine and creeds should not be dismissed, but rather, sincere questioning should lead to confirm their answers.

Works Cited
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Annie Dillard Reader, An. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. 279-414. Print.
Hardy, Thomas. Tess of the D'Urbevilles. Bantam Classic ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1981. Print.
Sayers, Dorothy L. "Dorothy L. Sayers:The Mind of the Maker." World Invisible, The Real Invisible World behind the material world. Web. 25 Oct. 2009. .
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Poetical Works Tennyson (Wordsworth Poetry Library). Boston: NTC/Contemporary Company, 1998. 285-365. Print.
Wiesel, Elie. Night. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006. Print.