Q. In the movie Conclave, Cardinal Lawrence says (going by memory here, a risky proposition), “The greatest sin facing the Church is certainty.” A good friend of mine, an Episcopal priest, once told me, “The opposite of faith is not doubt, it is certainty.” However, I recently came across Matthew 21:21, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done.” And also Romans 14:23, “But whoever has doubts is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from faith; and everything that does not come from faith is sin.” I consider myself a believer and a follower of Jesus. Help me resolve these seeming contradictions.
In another post on this blog (linked below) I say, “The capacity for faith and the capacity for doubt are the same. If you did not have any doubts about what you believe, you would not be believing it by faith.” That seems to be what the character of Cardinal Lawrence means in the movie. He goes on to say, “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore, no need for faith.” In other words, the “certainty” that the cardinal describes as the “one sin which I have come to fear above all else” is a certainty based on something other than faith. It is a doctrinaire dogmatism based on tradition or rationalism.
I believe that the reason why Jesus could say “if you have faith and do not doubt” is not that faith and doubt are opposites, but that we can use one and the same capacity either to believe or to doubt. He means “if you use that capacity to believe rather than to doubt,” your prayers will be answered in the way described. Similarly Paul’s meaning in Romans would be “whoever uses that capacity to doubt is condemned if they eat, because their eating is not from using that capacity to believe.”
We can think of many other capacities that we could use in one way or another. We might have an admirable potential capacity for persistence in carrying good projects to completion that we use instead to be stubborn and not open to reasonable persuasion. We might have an admirable capacity to enjoy life and help others find joy in life that we instead use to fool around when we should be working. And so forth. The point in both cases, and in all similar illustrations, is that the person would not be able to persist if they were not also able to be stubborn, and the person would not be able to find and share joy in life if they were not also able to fool around irresponsibly. The goal is to become able to use the capacity in the positive way in which God intends us to use it. And we should not beat ourselves up if we find ourselves in the learning curve. Doubt is evidence of capacity.
Good Question 