The Future of Faith,   ISBN:9780061755521

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This is an important work in understanding Christianity in the 21st century. Cox handles the question of the relationship of Jesus and the kingdom of God in such a way that
one cannot be taken without the other. In this regard Jesus as the paradigm of seeking the kingdom of God and beginning to build it, is the position of where Christianity should be.
He does an excellent presentation of the history of Christianity throughout the centuries: early, medieval, Reformation,fundamentalism and pentecostalism. He poses the
issue of a future of putting not a belief, but a faith and a building of the kingdom of God in the 21st century.

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Harvey Cox [...] is the recently retired Professor of Divinity emeritus at Harvard whose last book is entitled, "The Future of Faith." My good friend, Jack LaMar, who still labors in God's pastoral vineyards in Elcho, Wisconsin, was kind enough to send me Cox's latest work as a birthday present. Since you ask-you did, didn't you?-what I thought of the book, here are my thoughts.

It's a moderate investment of one's time, covering 224 pages and written in quite understandable layman's language. It would be helpful if the reader has a little background in Christian theology and the history of the church, but even without that background it does not appreciably limit Cox's ability to communicate his message.

That core message, as I understand it, is that Christianity began in a "faith" mode, but, then, beginning most notably in the 4th century, deteriorated into a "belief" mode and its future lies with trying to get into a "spirit" mode.

Perhaps a subtitle to the book, obviously greatly overdrawn, would be the thesis, "deeds, not creeds." That's what Christianity should be about, says Cox.

When the Church began it overcame and burst out of the Jewish trappings in which it originated. Through the Apostle Paul, the good news of Jesus went out into the gentile world, the Greek speaking world. Cox sees the early church as a vibrant, enthusiastic group of communities dedicated to "following" Jesus. Not following "about" Jesus, but trying to devote themselves to what Jesus meant to his own community and "doing" that in the context of others. So, he talks about the early church's mission to help others, serve the poor, etc., although I think that kind of mission was mostly intended for members of the fellowship, instead of some wider community enterprise. In other words, members of the early church made sure their own people were taken care of and tended to, and probably less concerned about the needs of the rest of the city.

It seems that Dr. Cox would see in the Letters of Paul, and other writings, both that made our Protestant accepted 27 books in the New Testament, and those that did not, e.g., the Gospel of Thomas, the letters of Clement, as less theological proposals and more pastoral. In other words "faith" was being promoted, and, where wranglings and disputes took place in the church, as they will in any community of people, the accent was on common sense resolution instead of proposed theological dogma.

Unfortunately, says Cox, the church began to lose its way when it moved from a "faith" accented community to a "belief" driven community. In other words, the church decided to codify faith by issuing statements of faith, another word for "creeds." He does not seem to think that the development of the "apostle's creed," or the Nicene Creed, or any other exclusionary statement of faith helped the church to be the church, as he sees it.

Essentially, says Cox, the church moved from a faith based organization, where it was for at best several hundred years, to a structured belief based organism. That movement got pretty well solidified in the 4th century when Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity as the official religion of the empire. Then you see the structure really develop, people jockeying for importance and power in the church, the development of the apostolic succession of bishops, read, papacy, etc.

The church has been in this latter mode for a long, long time. It has become stale, stultified, and stuffy. It has got to change. Not that Cox sees returning to some golden age of the church, but kind of. The church has to get to the mode of the "spirit." Faith was a thing of the past. Good, but in the past. Belief, with all of the creeds and individual theologies that insisted that its members had to believe a certain thing or a certain way, whether that source of authority was the pope or the bible, it was still creedal. It was still bogged down in a belief system. We have to look for our models for a spirit community for Christians both within and without.

Dr, Cox sees examples and models in the Christian liberation theology that has come out of Latin and South America, where the church "does," where it is involved with the poor and the downtrodden, where it enacts the message of Jesus, as Dr. Cox sees it.

He looks to other religions, including the Hindus and Buddhists who do more doing and less believing, as further examples. And, he lifts up the Muslims who, as part of their faith, have a very involved commitment to be very charitable and supportive, especially monetarily, to those of their own ilk.

As somewhat of a sidebar, Dr. Cox tells about his early religious experience as a Baptist and how he moved from faith to the belief mode. He speaks of his time and work with some Christian fundamentalist groups early on in life and of how he left them behind, but not unkindly. He understands "fundamentalism" and that it is not limited to Christianity, as Karen Armstrong has so ably pointed out in her writings. Notably, there are Christian fundamentalists, Muslim fundamentalists and Jewish fundamentalists. These groups have some common characteristics. Circle the wagons. Encourage people to come in, but protect those from within. Keep them in. Don't let them be corrupted by those outside the circle.

I found it interesting that Cox does not fear the take over of Christian fundamentalism in America. Despite the fact that main line churches seem to be receding in membership and attendance, and we are seeing an increase in the bible churches, etc., Cox is so bold as to propose that fundamentalism is dying! No matter how much we try to fence ourselves off, the barriers and demarcations are less and less. Can't keep anything in and can't keep anything out. Things just seem to be melding.

While Cox sees fundamentalism dying, he seems to extol the virtues of Pentecostalism, especially as it is represented in the Latin and South American countries where he sees it as a faith movement, a movement of the spirit where everything ostensibly is geared to the Kingdom of God, an overarching theme to Cox's understanding of the spirit community. We are working in and for the Kingdom of God, as proposed by Jesus and called by Jesus to belong to and commit to.

Anyhow, I think the book is interesting and challenging. Cox does not want to say that church, the Christian community, should be founded on "feeling," but when he talks about the Pentecostals, and how they worship and how they see mission, which he thinks is worthy of emulation, I don't know how you just give up all reason, all attempts at formulating theology. Is theology not longer an enterprise of the church, even though it has not always served the church well over the centuries, read the Inquisition and the dealing with heretics?

I guess what I am saying is that Dr. Cox seems to want to eschew creedal theology for what he calls the spiritual nature of people and the church. It just seems to me that as I read the letters of Paul, especially his letter to the Romans, that Paul sees it necessary for the church to understand where it came from, where it is and where it is going, and, consequently, the plan that God has not just for the church, but also the synagogue and that much larger community of the world outside those two institutions.

But, if you have a chance, read Cox's book. He truly is a readable, presentable and understandable theologian.

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For those who believe in evolution--universe, earth, life, especially human life--this is a resource to read and ponder. Here Harvey Cox offers his evolved view of faith, which he defines, unlike too many who rail against personal views--religion, evolution, truth, belief, science, climate change--without a definition of terms; e.g., equating religion with theism.

A careful reading of his uncertainty of the mystery of human spiritual evolution could prompt one to ask, "What's it really about?" and free themselves from following self-appointed gurus, be they theist, atheist or other.

That this book has evoked protests from those who want Christianity to remain unchanged may be its highest praise.

I also recommend Coming back to earth by Lloyd Geering for a similar perspective from a more secular vantage point.

http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Back-Earth-gods-Gaia/dp/1598150162/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265897222&sr=8-1

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Harvey Cox' book is a page turner! It is destined to rival Augustine's Confessions as classic religious autobiography. In this readable account, Harvey Cox speaks vulnerably about the beginnings of his faith as a fundamentalist Baptist with a complete description of his baptism by immersion. He repeatedly speaks openly about his liberation from belief to a person of faith. "The Spirit cannot be restricted by doctrinal or ecclesial boundaries." He talks of his liberation from fundamentalism as a university student at Penn where during a religious retreat in southern New Jersey he discovered his belief in liberal mainline Protestant theology disagreed with the bibliolatry of more fundamentalist-evangelical students aligned with the Inter-Varisty Christian Fellowship student movement. Dr. Cox' often nostalgic personal spiritual catharsis continues by speaking of his freedom from belief to become a person of faith. Possibly many, with him, can relate to the bane of creedal formulations of historic Christianity, from which one may find freedom. I was especially struck with his account of his liberation from Gnosticism where through the use of neo-Platonic dualism he continually pitted faith against belief, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Clearly, his personal spirituality counters the both-and resolution of un-necessarily rivaling motifs. Can a person of belief simul be a person of faith? According to this autobiography, apparently not. I wondered often out loud about the church leaders who took 500 years to write the poetry of the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed and how the earliest Christians might have learned "to read symbolic language symbolically" while reciting the Creed in Mass or later in other liturgical Christian forms of worship. As I continued to read this book, I was challenged by Cox' ongoing war with fundamentalism, as if this were any different from his own "fundamentalistic" critique of historic Christianity which might be stated in the following Five Fundamentals. 1. There is no such thing as Early Christianity.
2. All Christian Creeds are flawed. 3. Belief and Faith are mutually exclusive 4. Anything Western about Christian Faith is in error. 5. Ecclesiology should be banned from Christian theology. I was furthered enamored by Dr. Cox' diatribe and spiritual concern with literalism, as I read his own book written by him using words, all of which I took literally, without a "tone-deafness to literalism." Cox' autobiography informs the reader of his inter-faith conversations with world religious leaders. I was saddened that the Pope failed to offer him lunch. I was surprised that fundamentalist pastor Rick Warren even made it into his autobiography, but then, Warren's quote "deeds, not creeds" supported his thesis. Possibly the new word Harvey Cox coins----"hascent, on page 77" is the symbolism which most appropriately assesses this book. I failed to locate this descriptor in any dictionary he identifies with the "first two and a half centuries of the Christian movement"--you see, I was reading his book literally. I took great interest in Cox' appraisal of base communities as the answer to all that's wrong with the organized church; but then, where are the base communities today while all those Pentecostal churches from the West abound and flourish, as he states? I was intrigued that whenbase communities did exist, they were not spoiled by the fundamentalism of a "Jesus as personal savior whose mission was to rescue them from a sinful world..."
In sum, Harvey's intellectually-challenged and poorly-researched book is more the author's nostalgic spiritual journey than it is a scholarly history of Christianity. It is, however, prophetic; for it forecasts the conclusion to historic Christian faith. If this book represents academic research [one footnote for every 3 pages], Christian faith may have no future in America, or anywhere, even in the global South. An author with integrity would have marketed it as his own personal spiritual journey. This book is an insult and an affront to any thinking theologian who still cares about scholarship and who calls herself Christian.

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I have always wondered what the dialogue would sound like if the religious right (fundamentalists) took the time to study the history and origin of their beliefs. This is a great book and offers sanity and REALITY to the Christian faith. (Quite a refreshing change from the tired, mythological beliefs that define the fundamental Christian religion.) The Future of Faith is an excellent read on many levels. It is well written, interesting and not a boring theological thesis.