Assignment | Lesson One | Faith
January 27, 2026 9:28 PM
- A reflection on the discussion forum for the week. About 200–250 words. Your reflection must respond in some way to the following prompts: How have you understood faith growing up? And how has it changed over the years? Which of the various definitions of faith provided by Borg, or the one offered by Gomes, did you find most compelling, and why? Due Friday, Feb 6
- Two (2) responses to your peers of no more than 100 words per response. Your response can be appreciation of their insight, further questioning, or respectful critique. Due Sunday, Feb 8
Discussion (17)
Faith for me growing up was simple. I was raised in a Catholic household and was taken to church every Sunday for the first ten years of my life. It was ingrained in me to have a belief in God. God just was. There was no thought of any other way. As I got older, my family stopped going to church, and I was no longer being told that I had to believe. I began to realize that I didn’t really know God. Because I was told what to believe and I didn’t seek it out, my relationship with God didn’t extend much further than a relationship similar to a teacher in school, and without a place of worship, I didn’t have a place to go where I would find people who could help me with this. I started to examine my faith. What was it? Why was it? Did it fit?
I found myself sitting outside and having conversations with God. I could feel the wind, hear the birds, every bit of nature was magnified for me during these conversations. God was in conversation with me during these times. It was then that I started a real relationship with God. It was beyond the rituals and practices of what I had been taught in church. It was a bond.
All of Borg’s writings on faith that I read were interesting. I feel that I was most drawn to Faith as Fiducia. My faith is rooted in trust. It all begins there for me. I particularly loved the words “faith as radical trust in God.” It’s powerful and simple and allows me to just lean into God’s love.
Hi Erin - I love that you found your own way to experience God and develop that relationship beyond the 'rituals and practice' of church. Your trust in God was resilient and persistent. What you described as having conversations with God in ways that magnified your wonder in nature sounds familiar to my experience too. What led you back to church?
Hey Erin! You say, "I found myself sitting outside and having conversations with God. I could feel the wind, hear the birds, every bit of nature was magnified for me during these conversations." I love this. You say you were raised Catholic, and even if you do not claim that, this strand of Catholic spirituality remains. (I no longer claim Pentecostalism, but a little of that fire still burns in me.) I am still of the likes of St. Francis of Assisi, Tielhard de Chardin, and Gerard Manley Hopkins, a Jesuit poet who penned this famous line."The world is charged with the grandeur of God."
As you moved through the course, consider how to tie this "ecological" attunement to Spirit with your attraction to faith as fiducia. How does faith as trust and finding God in creation inform each other?
Hey Erin,
The idea of faith as “radical trust in God” resonated with me too. I thought; “Not just trust, but radical trust.” Could I even imagine radical trust? Is what I imagine, anywhere near what it is to show, “radical trust in God?” Well, what I imagine is that radical trust is like jumping out of an airplane at 35,000 feet with a parachute known to be defective. You jump anyway, radically trusting God to work it all for your good.
Pray with me. That's the level of faith and trust that I want to have.
Erin- I also find a lot of connection with God when I'm in nature. Crisp air, animal sounds, wind in the trees all put my body and mind in a posture of "listening". Our daily lives can be so full of noise and distraction, so those are peaceful moments that I cherish. No special creeds or rituals needed.
My family had practiced various forms of protestant Christianity going back generations. I was raised in a church where my father was the Pastor and my mother was very involved. For me, faith felt like believing in something important and serious, something that was beyond my understanding, but also something that I carried deep within me. I suppose my experience was closest to Borg’s description of belief (Borg, 170) - there was not a set of doctrines I felt I ought to believe, but God was there and I was drawn to be near God.
As I grew older there was a season when I experienced faith as believing in the right doctrine, the right practice, the right set of beliefs about the Bible. Part of that was in opposition to what I could see was contrary to my faith. Yet the relationship with God and love for God was still present. I was distracted by the arguments of my peers and had a somewhat ‘defensive’ faith for a while. It was confusing!
I appreciate that all of these definitions represent a relationship that grows over time and experience. I am most inspired by Gomes’ suggestion that a lived faith is “an expression of a desire to come as close to God as is possible and to invite God to come as close to us as God chooses and to demonstrate that closeness through the experience of lived love.” Faith that is expressed in love for the world resonates deeply with me.
Hey Sara! Great to reconnect! Thank you for probing into your life and exploring the ways that "faith" functioned and evolved in your life. Like you, faith as desire has become the "base" (or foundation) for my articulation of what faith means. In many ways, this definition of "faith"--i.e., as desire--is quite early in the Christian tradition. Even before the medieval women mystics gave us some of the most brilliant theologies of desire (e.g. Julian of Norwich14th-10th century), the Cappadocian Fathers (Gregory of Naziansus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Caesarea, all in the 4th century) spoke of divine live as eros (where we get the word "erotic"). Currently, scholars are reclaiming the "erotic" and the "desirous" in theology (e.g. Sarah Coakley; Karmen MacKendrick).
As you move through the course, how do you, as a religious leader, teach desire? We know how to teach belief by way of beliefs. But how would you teach faith as desire?
Sara, I too believe that our faith, like other relationships, grows over time and experience. Over the years, I know my faith has matured, but I also know that I’m still trying to grow to the point that I have faith the size of a mustard seed. Pray for me.
Sara, thank you for mentioning being distracted by peers and their arguments. It took me some time to come to really live into my own faith without any influence from people. Once I was more comfortable with that, I became less confused!
Growing up, I understood faith as a less-used, synonym of belief. As a child, I don’t remember being asked if I had faith in God. I remember, “Do you believe in God?”
Even at a young age, I believed that God is the God in the Bible, and that Jesus is his son. When I gave my “confession of faith” as a 9-year-old, it was all about beliefs. My Pastor asked if I believed two things: that Jesus is the son of God, and that God raised Jesus from the dead. I said yes to both. I repented of my sins and was told that by my confession, I was saved. A confession of faith all based on beliefs. From ages 8-12, the confession of faith was the only place I heard that word outside of being read or sung.
Over time, (as I’m far from 8-12 years old now), that confession has been a planted seed that’s been growing for a good while. The growth tells me that, yes, faith is a belief, but it’s more than just a belief. After reading the scriptures, and the section on Faith from Borg’s book, “The God We Never Knew,” I know now that “Faith as Belief,” is legitimate. I really did gain salvation by my beliefs, which when said out loud were my Confession of Faith. But now I can recognize faith in other ways too, assent, faithfulness, trust, vision. God gives them all to us by his grace.
Thank you, Annie, for your reflection! When I teach Borg on faith, I rarely get anyone that affirms (or in your case, reaffirms) faith as assent, which is what you have done here. I am glad that you have. It is easy to move to another definitions--especially when reading Borg since he seems to think faith as assent as less valuable.
I am not one to quickly move away from faith as belief in certain affirmations of who God is and of what God as done. I think that the power of beliefs or doctrines is that they "orient" us in our walk with God. The point is the walk; yet without a "map," we walk aimlessly. I see doctrines, at their best, as signposts along the journey of faith.
As you move through this course, think about the core beliefs that you hold to be true and indispensable. Then think about how these doctrines or beliefs orient and guide you in your day-to-day spirituality. Or to ask it differently, what are the consequences or outcomes of the beliefs you hold? What do they inspire or compel (in a good sense) you to do? (For example, how does Jesus dying for your sins orient your relationship with God and with neighbor?)
Hi Annie! I smiled as I read your description of joining the church - my experience was similar and the pastor's questions were the same. I was 11! And, yes, that was a long time ago now.
It's beautiful to see your own mode of relationship with God lifted up and recognized as valid and to see how it entwines with other modes in different stages of life. I'm glad you feel validated by Borg's descriptions. You've shown me a great example of what this type of faith looks like in real life.
Annie, I can so relate to being asked about my belief but not my faith. I think it was a beginning to an acknowledgment that there was faith, but as you said, that faith grows. It all has to start from a belief. Isn't it interesting to see how we all have evolved and grown personally and how we continue to do so?
Annie- Thank you for your words " that confession has been a planted seed that’s been growing for a good while". I can relate to that a lot. When I was a young adult, I wanted to push against and rebel away from the churches that I was brought up in, but God kept growing my heart anyway, like a little seed. After a few years I realized that my love for people, justice, and fellowship was actually God's love in me, and I came back into a formal worship space.
Thank you, Professor Torres. My hope is that by the end of this course I will be able to answer these questions with confidence and will have learned a lot more in the process. I'm looking forward to Lesson 2.
Hi All- My aplogies for the late responses, I had some technical issues with Kwaray last week.
I was raised in a non-denominational evangelical church that taught us to “know” as much as we could about God and our faith. As a small child, I was in an AWANA program where you were rewarded for memorizing bible verses (many of which were promptly forgotten, and nor could I have explained to you the meaning). As a teenager, we were taught all kinds of “apologetics”, which were fancy sounding arguments to combat people’s criticism of our faith. A lot of that really sounded like circular logic (the Bible says it is true therefore it is true).
I see the role that history and biblical knowledge plays in our understanding of our faith, but I am compelled by Borg’s writings because I think they speak to an experience that I have reading some of the catholic mystics, like St Gemma, who wrote “Jesus possesses my heart, and being in possession of Jesus I find that I can smile, even in the midst of so many tears.” Having knowledge of something is one thing, but feeling and living inside it is another.
In my life, the times I have “leaned into” my faith, I have always found God to “catch me” and lead me into something slightly more profound. It is difficult to describe, but it is both a comfort and a an invitation to dig a little deeper into my own pre-conceptions, biases, and judgements. Because of this, I don’t really feel like my “faith” or “belief” is static, or ever really even complete. There is always something more mysterious that I don’t fully comprehend.
Thank you for a great reflection, Maxwell! Love the quote from St Gemma you included. I too spent time with evangelicals at an evangelical liberal arts college. I even took an apologetics class. Yes, I think it only defends the faith from within, as confirmation. I do not think it has much value to conversing across religious difference.
Additionally, I think apologetics is so convinced of the "logic" of the faith and it loses those deeply live, experiential and mystical dimensions. As you say, "Having knowledge of something is one thing, but feeling and living inside it is another." Beautifully put!