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Faith According to Graham Greene

The hostile takeover is complete.

“Aaron’s Friday Ramblings” is finally under my control. 

Okay, well, actually I’m traveling for the next few weeks and don’t have the time to write full Theophilus series as a result.

So, as you’ve already seen, Aaron and I have switched roles for the time being.

Although it's disappointing not being able to write a series each week, it does give me the opportunity to explore interesting standalone topics.

Like Graham Greene.

England’s Worst Catholic?

Graham Greene was among the greatest English novelists of the 20th century.

He was also a Catholic.

And, on the surface, not a great one.

He constantly cheated on his wife (quite openly), supported communists, and, later in life, famously described himself as a “Catholic agnostic.” 

And yet, his work presents some of the most authentic and moving portraits of the Christian life that I’ve ever read.

That very work reveals a man who struggled deeply with the flesh but also understood the mysterious beauty of Christ’s grace.

Faith Versus Belief

So while Greene struggled greatly with living by the church’s teachings, he still exhibited great spiritual insight.

Take what he had to say on faith for example:

There’s a difference between belief and faith. If I don’t believe in X or Y, faith intervenes, telling me that I’m wrong not to believe. Faith is above belief. One can say that it’s a gift of God, while belief is not.

To Greene, belief is grounded in the observable world, in things we can clearly see and connect.

For example, I believe the sun will rise tomorrow because I’ve known it to rise every day before. Reason, therefore, dictates that it will happen again.

But faith is deeper; it moves us beyond the realm of reason into the transcendent.

This intuitive sense leads us past the limits of the world and into the mystical.

Therefore, when belief fails, faith keeps us connected to God. It surpasses the senses, emotions, and logic, remaining a fixed state of being that ties us to God’s ultimate reality.

In this sense, Greene’s faith - sporadic as it was - wasn’t defined by feelings or failures, but by the existence of a transcendent, gracious, and merciful God.

And one must ask oneself: if they truly want a relationship with such a God, then wouldn’t a connection like the faith Greene describes be necessary?

Thanks for reading and, for now, be blessed.