Recent years have seen increasing discussion of the nature of early Christian faith, not least by Benjamin Schliesser in his first monograph, Abraham’s faith in Romans 4 (Tübingen 2007). The closely related, arguably symbiotic attitude, emotion, and activity of doubt, however, though it is extensively discussed in philosophy of religion, psychology, sociology and ethnography (and somewhat less in systematic theology), has received remarkably little attention from scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity. This ground-breaking monograph will surely change that. In a wide-ranging, incisive, and highly illuminating study, Benjamin Schliesser analyses for the first time the multiple ways in which early Christians up to around the end of the second century experienced and discussed doubt.
He has a good deal of background work to do, because there is also little study of doubt in the ancient Mediterranean and the world of the Roman empire. Focusing on the Greek-speaking world, Schliesser accordingly begins by discussing the various Greek terms we might translate as Zweifel or ‘doubt’ and how they are deployed in mainstream philosophical, rhetorical and ethical discourse. The first chapter also outlines the history of interpretation and introduces his own methodology. Two early insights to emerge are that both linking and polarising ‘doubt’ and ‘faith’ (pistis) is a Christian innovation, and that Christians rarely use most of the common Greek terms for doubt, preferring ‘double-mindedness’ (dipsychia) and ‘little faith’ (oligopistia) and their relatives. Neither of these appears in pre-Christian Greek sources or in earlier Jewish writings, though they have conceptual relatives in contemporary Jewish discourse, so they seem to describe something which early Christians thought distinctive about themselves.
In important respects, early Christian treatments of doubt are also rather different from modern Christian treatments. Schliesser argues that early Christians often approach doubt in an exploratory spirit which is interested in uncertainty, wavering and hesitation as well as double-mindedness and little faith, and does not always condemn them. Moreover, not everything in early writings that we might assume refers to doubt necessarily does. The verb diakrinesthai is understood by many modern exegetes and translators as the most common term for doubt in the New Testament, and appears in passages (for example, Mark xi.22–3; Romans xiv.23; James i.6) that have powerfully shaped subsequent theological and practical understandings of Christian doubt. In contemporary non-Christian texts, however, it typically means ‘to contend’ or ‘dispute’ rather than ‘to doubt’. Unlike double-mindedness, little faith, wavering or uncertainty, which for early Christians denote intrapersonal conflict, diakrinesthai refers to interpersonal conflict. The misinterpretation of this verb, Schliesser argues, has fostered a much more forensic and adversarial understanding of doubt, within Christianity and beyond, than early Christian writings support. Not only is this an important finding about early Christianity, but it offers a good example of what the study of early Christian doubt offers to the study of later periods of history and to modern theology and spirituality.
Schliesser notes that some understandings of doubt are widely shared, while others are particularly characteristic of one author or community. He emphasises that it is in within the discourse of each text that we can best understand how an author construes doubt and its significance, so the treatments of doubt he explores are also treatments of doubt in different contexts: theological, ethical and ecclesiological. He is also interested in the influence of influential and future canonical early writings on later ancient Christian thinking, so the book also makes a contribution to patristics and the history of interpretation.
The central chapters focus on what Schliesser identifies as six major types of Christian doubt. Chapter ii sets out early Christian terms relating to doubt, including apistia (unbelief, incredulity), plērophoria (fullness of conviction, as opposed to doubt), dialogismos (doubtful thoughts), dipsychos (‘double-hearted’), oligopistos (‘of little faith’) and distazein (‘to waver’), and their relatives. Chapter iii investigates doubt as an ‘impossible possibility’ in Paul’s apocalyptic theology, teasing out the tension between Paul’s conviction that there is no theological room for doubt after the revelation in Christ Jesus, and his recognition that community members do, in practice, sometimes doubt.
Chapter iv discusses ‘existential doubt’ in the synoptic gospels, especially in the contexts of healing miracles and natural wonders, including Jesus’ resurrection, showing how pistis in the power of God and God’s Son, as opposed to apistia/oligopistia, blurs the boundaries between the human sphere and the kingdom of God and changes what is possible for those who have faith. Chapter v examines the story of ‘doubting Thomas’ in John’s Gospel and its reception, arguing that the Gospel presents a narrative of evolving faith and doubt which culminates in Thomas’s acclamation, ‘My Lord and my God’ (xx.28).
Chapter vi turns to the first appearance of the term dipsychia, in the Letter of James, and its reception, arguing, in line with much recent scholarship, that James’s is an independent and significant theological voice, and that the author’s concern with double-mindedness reflects his concern that Christian faith should be a whole-hearted attitude of hope and trust in God that is reflected in an active, ‘whole-life’ existence of faith. Chapter vii discusses the theology and spirituality of the Shepherd of Hermas, which Schliesser sees as struggling with the diminishing faith of the Roman community. The author draws on James to urge readers to develop a wholehearted (not double-minded) faith, understood not only as a life-transforming act of trust and hope in God but as a virtue that is practised every day. One of the important areas of everyday practice for this author is the Christian’s life of prayer, in which the faithful are urged to examine their hearts and repent wholeheartedly in the certainty of being heard by God.
Chapter viii investigates the Letter to the Hebrews, arguing that it understands doubt as arising from the perceived gap between the present experience of the faithful on earth and the future transcendent reality they are promised. Doubt must be resisted by focus on the reasonableness of faith and by firm attachment to Jesus Christ and what is hoped for but not yet seen (cf. xi.1). The conclusion summarises Schliesser’s typology of doubt as ‘impossible possibility’, intellectual challenge, theoretical problem, existential problem, ethical problem and ecclesiological problem. Schliesser locates this taxonomy in the historical development of the Jesus movement, where issues of individual and collective identity are being constructed and teachers of the faithful are grappling with the cognitive, emotional, evaluative and ethical dissonances arising from the preaching of the Gospel and life in developing churches.
This summary, I hope, indicates the decisive advance this study represents in our understanding of early Christian doubt. It does not begin to do justice to the many exegetical insights and fruitful observations on the genre, structure, rhetoric, addresses, theology and ecclesiology of the sources (non-Christian as well as Christian) that emerge in the course of the argument. Inevitably readers will take differing views on some of these, and will take up Schliesser’s discussion of the precise nature of the doubt at stake in particular passages. It is to be hoped that some will also build on his approach to examine doubt in sources in other languages and later periods of history. Schliesser’s careful philology and exegesis and the explanatory power of his taxonomy have changed what it is possible to discuss and claim about early Christian doubt. The whole book is extremely lucidly structured and elegantly written, making it, though lengthy, eminently readable. At the time of writing it is already the indispensable resource for anyone interested in this crucial topic and its relationship with theology, ethics, ecclesiology and spirituality in early Churches and beyond.
