As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been “Yes and No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you – Silvanus and Timothy and I – was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God. (2 Corinthians 1:18-20)

God has wholeheartedly pronounced a passionate “yes” to humanity in Christ. God’s “yes” invites us to respond in kind. When we do, we experience the “Great Amen” – God’s “yes” and our “yes” together. We demonstrate that God has put his “yes” within us through the Spirit. The result: with Jesus, we bear God’s yoke of “yes” to and for the world. This is the message of Pope Benedict’s The Yes of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope, and Love.

The Practicality of Everyday Faith

Everyone exercises some measure of faith. Without faith, it is impossible to truly interact with our world. Since we cannot possibly know or experience everything, we often must trust in and rely upon the experience and knowledge of others. From our confidence in the structural engineering of a skyscraper to the composition of medicine (to name just two examples), we “believe” in the products of other people’s knowledge. Whether consciously or unconsciously, we practice this faith everyday. It is the foundation of our coexistence with one another and with our world.

None of us are self-sufficient in knowledge. We all have inherent intellectual and experiential limitations. Therefore, we must trust the knowledge and experience of others. Otherwise, “everyone would have to start from scratch all the time” (6). We must not underestimate the hopeless unfeasibility of life without this measure of faith: “human life becomes impossible if one can no longer trust other people and is no longer able to rely on their experience, on their knowledge, on what is already provided for us” (7).

Thus, even the most ardent atheist practices an “everyday faith” because of the insufficiency of his or her own personal knowledge, resulting in “a mutual trust, a common sharing in understanding and in mastering the world, and this aspect is essential for the organization of human life. A society without trust cannot live” (7-8).

The Impracticality of Agnosticism

Having proved that faith is an indispensable aspect of human coexistence, Benedict moves on to demonstrate how supernatural faith builds upon and resembles secular faith. Just as we cannot fail to express faith in everyday matters – because of the far-reaching practical significance of “everyday faith” – so we cannot fail to act by faith in regard to the question of God. Our response to God may be either “yes” or “no” but it cannot be “I don’t know.” The reason: agnosticism has absolutely no practical value!

The problem with agnosticism is that it is empty of any real significance to human life. In other words, it is incapable of realization. It cannot be embodied or practiced. It offers an intangible solution to a very substantive problem:

For human beings the question of God is not some theoretical problem … On the contrary, the question of God is an eminently practical affair that has its effects on all spheres of our life. If therefore I allow agnosticism to be valid in theory, in practice I must nevertheless decide between two possibilities: to live as if there were no God or to live as if God did exist and was the determining reality for my life. (12)

Though agnosticism has a certain theoretical plausibility, it has absolutely no practical value: “when one tries to ‘practice’ it in what is thus its true extent it slips away like a soap bubble: it collapses because the choice it would like to avoid cannot be evaded. We are not allowed neutrality when faced with the question of God. We can only say yes or no, and this with all the consequences extending right down to the smallest details of life” (13).

Agnosticism attempts to avoid the unavoidable by abstention – by refusing to give a definitive answer. But only a firm “yes” or “no” to the question of God has any real practical significance.

Pope Benedict’s criticism of agnosticism is particularly poignant. Our culture tends to ennoble and celebrate agnosticism as an enlightened option. In reality, however, agnosticism is a non-answer that has no significance whatsoever.

The Possibility of Supernatural Faith

Having established that faith is an everyday act for everyone – in that we all trust in other people and rely on their knowledge and experience to live and coexist in the world – and having established that agnosticism is not a “real” option in regard to the question of God, Benedict challenges us to consider how faith in God through trust in the witness, knowledge, and experience of others is not an irrational option, but rather, is how faith works.

Just as our “everyday faith” rests in the knowledge and experience of others, so our faith in God follows suit. God has spoken through men and women who have listened to and experienced God. Because of the inherent limitations of our own personal knowledge and experience, we rely on (or trust in) the knowledge and experience of others. Their knowledge becomes our knowledge; we share in their experience. Just as with “everyday faith” we are reminded of “the social aspect of the phenomenon of faith” (27):

Our knowledge of God … depends on this mutuality, on a trust that becomes sharing and is then verified for the individual in his or her lived experience. Our relationship with God is first of all and at the same time also a relationship with our fellow men and women: it rests on a communion of human beings, and indeed the communication of relationship with God mediates the deepest possibility of human communication that goes beyond utility to reach the ground of the person. (28)

Like our experience with “everyday faith,” supernatural faith moves from trust in other’s knowledge or experience to our own personal knowledge and experience. What we receive by faith we seek to personally know and experience in order that we may also witness as men and women who have listened to and experienced God. In other words, our “yes” to God becomes an invitation to others to know and participate in God’s “yes.”

God’s Yes

God’s yes to us in an expression of love. Not only is this embodied in the sacrificial self-giving of Christ, but it is inherent in the very word “yes.” Love “denotes an act of fundamental assent to another, a ‘yes’ to the person towards whom the love is directed: ‘it is good that you exist’” (89). We need this approval of others in order to keep from descending into the despair that comes from the fear of not being loved. “The worst anxiety of all … is the fear of not being loved, the loss of love: despair is thus the conviction that one has forfeited all love forever, the horror of complete isolation” (69).

God’s “yes” not only delivers us from despair but allows us to live a hopeful and meaningful existence. It is not just the affirmation of a Creator, but the acceptance of a Savior. Its impact upon us is deeply and profoundly spiritual:

Biological birth is not enough: man can only accept his personality, his “I,” in the power of the approval of his being that comes from another, from “you.” This “yes” of the one who loves him (or of course her) imparts his existence to him in a new and definite way. In this he receives a kind of rebirth without which his actual birth would remain incomplete and leave him in conflict with himself. … It is only rebirth in being loved that completes birth and opens up for men and women the space of meaningful existence. (90)

God’s “yes” is so full and complete that it involves no less than the complete humiliation and self-giving of God in Christ. Only two responses are possible: either “yes” or “no.” Both have a significant impact on every aspect of our daily lives.

If we choose to respond to God’s “yes” with our own “yes” then we enter into the “Great Amen” – God’s “yes” and our “yes” together. Joined to God in Christ, we with Christ “bear the yoke of his ‘yes’” and his yoke “is in reality the burden of love that turns the yoke into wings” (108).

So, what are you waiting for? Say “yes” or “no.” But, please, no more of that empty and impractical language of agnosticism. Though it sounds enlightened, it has absolutely no real significance. The question of God deserves more than a “whatever”.

Quotes excerpted from The YES of Jesus Christ: Spiritual Exercises in Faith, Hope, and Love by Pope Benedict XVI
© Richard J. Vincent, 2007