Thursday, April 12, 2012

Continuum of Faith to Antagonism

Because of several recent conversations and studying for a sermon on "Doubting Thomas" (who would be more accurately described as "unbelieving") this weekend, I have been working on creating a continuum of Faith to Antagonism to Faith.  My ultimate goal with this list would be to see how God responds to people at each point along the way and how we should deal with ourselves and others who are at these points.

I wonder if there is already something like this out there?  I don't want to recreate the wheel if there's already a continuum like this available.


Full Trust/Faith/Understanding à
Lack of Understanding (still trust, what does bible say or mean about _____) à
Struggling with Circumstances (Why is this happening?  Deal with pain of moment) à
Doubt (Is God going to fulfill His promise?) à
Wavering (Should I believe in God?) à
Unbelief à
Disobedience (Go against God)à
Antagonism toward faith/God/believers 

And where would something like John Wesley’s “Almost Christian” (profess belief, but no action) fit into this continuum?
Are these good labels for each point?  What would you add or remove from this continuum?

2 comments:

Shannon Blosser said...

Let's try this again:

It would seem to me that the Order of Salvation would be appropriate here, would it not? I want to say Collins worked with the progression of faith through that order of salvation in his books.

Dan Underwood said...

I think they are related, but not the same. I'm looking at it through the lens of a continuum rather than progression - I'm not even sure if that makes sense to anyone but me. I think the Ordo Salutis is also positive whereas I'm looking at it negatively. Sort of coming from different angles. But, I'll go back and restudy that material and maybe I'll find I'm wrong.

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