In Chapter one Hessert laid out the basic idea of his book: much of Christianity agrees with the culture's primary task, the search for and maintenance of meaning and power. He also describes the basic structure within which this search for meaning and power functions.
Chapter two assumes this cultural structure and asks how faith exists in relation to it. It is helpful to remember Hessert's definition of faith is not the same as what most of us might think of when we hear or read the word faith. At this point, Hessert hasn't introduced us to this definition directly.
Hessert argues that the unique meaning of "faith" has been conflated with the ambiguous meaning of "to believe" in its translation from New Testament Greek to English.
Hessert begins chapter two with a passage from the Apostle Paul that, Hessert argues, "distinguishes the Christian Gospel from two characteristic religious outlooks of [Paul's] age." The quote comes from Corinthians 1:22-35. Hessert explains that coming to terms with this passage is the most important purpose of his book. He argues that the passage, "brings into focus the break with the cultural structure," that is a part of what it is to be a follower of Christ (18).
In the passage Paul distinguishes the proclamation of the crucified Christ from two religious outlooks, one "of the Jews" and the other "of the Greeks." Note: Paul is not interested in setting cultural groups against each other, nor with replacing one group with another. Instead, he aims to challenge the cultural structure through which these two outlooks understand reality.
I must stress, it is not Hessert's intention, nor mine, to support supersessionist and/or racist connotations that may be read into the Apostle Paul's use of "Jews/Greeks." I reject such views outright and I believe Hessert would as well.
Those who demand signs of divine favor, labeled by the Appostle Paul as "the Jews," are not confined to the people of the Tanakh, or the Christian Old Testament, and certainly not modern Rabbinic Jews. Indeed, Hessert points out that this outlook is perhaps most dominantly held "among certain contemporary Christians" (19). The particular people is not important. The outlook is the thing.
A sign, in this sense, is an event that is interpreted as a manifestation of divine power in favor of the search for meaning of a certain group that otherwise does not have the power to manifest such meaning in time. The outlook is not limited to one group or ethnicity, but stems from anyone seeking divine confirmation of their particular reading of meaning in the world.
The Apostle Paul argues that for anyone seeking divine confirmation of their group ideology through the reading of signs, the preaching of "Christ crucified" is a stumbling block. Hessert explains that the crucifixion of Christ cannot be a sign in the positive sense. It is not a "self-manifesting act of God confirming our values" but "can only be an unfortunate event." To be a positive sign for those seeking God's approval, Jesus would have had to have been delivered from condemnation and death at the hands of Roman authorities.
"Christ crucified" may be a negative sign—a confirmation of God's curse. To this outlook, because he was crucified, Jesus was obviously not the Christ. To preach that Jesus was crucified but remains Christ is counter to the circle of reality that searches for meaning in signs. As Hessert writes, "Preaching 'Christ crucified' is not saying merely that bad things happen to good people but that God's approach to us belies our expectations, in fact, is manifest in the very contradiction of our experiences" (20-21).
Hessert also points out that there is a difference between explaining the historical event of Jesus' crucifixion and the preaching of "Christ crucified." That Jesus was crucified at the hands of Roman authorities, that he was a good man, a friend to the poor, an enemy of injustice, and that he was misunderstood and killed may move you to sadness or the determination to be with the poor and oppressed as Jesus was. But to hear the preaching of "Christ crucified" and to react to it with faith is to take part in contradiction, even a paradox.
"Christ crucified" does not invite you to respond with preconceived understandings provided for us by our society and its search for meaning. To these preconceptions "Christ crucified" is offensive, an obstacle, a stumbling block, because it condemns the search for meaning through signs. "For faith, however, Jesus' crucifixion manifests Christ crucified, and Christ crucified becomes a judgement on our circle of reality" (21).
What the Apostle Paul calls the Greek outlook is the search for "the overall rational pattern in which everything can 'make sense' for us" (21). This is the quest for meaning not contained within any discrete event, but for ultimate meaning: meaning that provides a key to everything else (22).
This meaning is understood by the intellect and is held to be unapproachable by anything except the perfection of the rational mind. Within this outlook, God is seen as the most perfect Mind and the source of all rational order. Any particular event itself is less important than the act of bringing our intellect to events, which gives us a perspective on them. Every event—everything that exists—is an extension of the Mind of God and is reconcilable as part of the ordained order of things. That is, if one has the wisdom to see it as such.
The preaching of "Christ crucified," more than a simple description of an event, carries a contradiction. The search for wisdom would reconcile this contradiction as a part of God's plan. To preach "Christ crucified," however, focuses on this contradiction as the object of faith and as a denial of the idea that "the manifestation of God fulfills the quest for rationality and order" (22).
To sum up the two outlooks suggested by the Appostle Paul and drawn out for us by Hessert:
But Christ crucified denies both of these outlooks. As Hessert says, "'Christ crucified' is the absence of that divine confirmation of human values which seeing seeks and the absence of that rational coherence which knowing seeks." Christ crucified is not seen or known, but faithed (26).
Hessert argues that the Greek word “pi'stis,” often translated into English as "believe" is crucial to understanding Christianity as a whole. He writes,
"In New Testament Greek, 'faith' is both a noun and a verb. English lacks a special verb to translate 'faith' and so uses 'believe' instead. But the English 'believe' carries a very different nuance of meaning. Of the many things that conceivably could be known, some we definitely know, some we definitely do not know, and of others we are not certain. Uncertainty is not the same as not knowing, however, for although we may not know, we may have very good reason to 'believe' that something is or is not the case, and here 'knowing' and 'believing' function the same: I turn down the road I know goes to Franklin Forks or that I believe goes to Franklin Forks. We often speak of this latter situation as 'taking it on faith.'" (27)
The conflation of "faith" and this popular usage of "believe" leads to a misunderstanding of the "faith" referred to by Paul specifically and the New Testament generally. The "faith" Paul speaks of is not to be understood as a way of knowing, but as a specific relationship (or posture toward) "Christ crucified." In this case, "faith" ought to be approached through the verb form, what Hessert coins in English as "to faith" (27).
"To faith." The verb transforms our entire idea of what it means to be a Christian. Hessert goes so far as to argue that to qualify faith with the adjective "Christian" is redundancy, because the verb form of "faith" implies a unique relationship communicated by Christianity and the Gospel. Indeed, whether one is Christian, Buddhist, or Muslim in the cultural sense is beside the point. Rather, the existential stance of faith, in relationship to the divine, the world, and the other is the content of "faith." Faith does not claim signs, or propound a certain secret knowledge, but instead faiths a relationship with "Christ crucified" (28).
Hessert explains the content of faith like this: "'Faithing' is a willingness to live without the control and understanding (the 'power' and 'meaning') that the relationships of seeing and knowing provide." God is manifest in "Christ crucified" but is unable to be seen or known, only faithed. To live this way is to live without the reassurances that power and wisdom provide. "Christ crucified" contradicts the expectation that we will be granted a sign or come to understand a hidden, unifying wisdom (28).
Hessert admits that conceivably the repudiation of power and meaning could be expressed in other ways than "Christ crucified"1 but argues that the New Testament does not provide other expressions. However it is expressed, it is important that it tells us "that God must be found in the absence of power and in the absence of meaning" (29).
Hessert concludes his second chapter discussing the criteria of faith. What checks are available to us to measure faith, not as belief, but as a new posture toward Christ crucified? Hessert provides two positive checks, one objective and one subjective, and two negative reactions to Christ crucified, unbelief/unfaith and make-believe.
Objective Faith
To be confirmed objectively, Hessert argues, faith must have made a break with striving after signs or seeking knowledge. Genuine faith lives without power over the future granted by the structure of meaning offered up by culture. And this objective reality is confirmed experientially by the individual in what one's faith responds to and what it affirms (30-31).
Subjective Faith
The subjective criteria of faith also lies in a break with the status quo. Human individuals are normally oriented toward self-interest both as individuals and as individuals with a self-interest in maintenance of culture. Faith, says Hessert, changes this orientation away from self-interest and orients an individual toward a relationship with God. This form of relationship, according to Hessert, is contained by son-ship and daughter-ship,2 while a relationship toward meaning is contained by an allusion to slavery. In other words, as a son or daughter and not as a simple child, one stands with a posture toward God characterized by maturity, confidence that God loves you as God loved Christ, and by trust. Importantly, this relationship does not strive or seek for power but remains open to receiving the gifts of the Spirit (32-33).
Unbelief/Unfaith and Make-believe
Unfaith, interestingly, also rejects signs and wisdom, but rather than faithing, instead chooses the despair of death as giving ultimate meaning to life. Socially, the outcome here is a philosophical and practical nihilism that justifies every action by the lack of any sign from above, and the meaninglessness of any human action in a universe without order.
Make-believe, on the other hand, abandons reality entirely and collapses into positivism, superstition, and feel-good platitudes based on nothing (34-35).
Faith, meanwhile, does not seek signs, strive after wisdom, nihilistically embrace death, nor does it rush past pain into make-believe. Faith remains suspended, existing with a strange confidence in the new identity given to the faither (35).