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[Faith in metaphysics]
Both Gabriel Marcel and Sǿren Kierkegaard agreed that faith is not about believing the existence of God but about believing in God, an absolute presence who is accessible to the believer through prayer and worship as well as through “invocation and response” (Negomireanu 56-57). Through faith, human beings can gain access to the mystery of God, not in the sense of understanding the mystery, but in the experience of soaking to that mysterious Presence (58). Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenological approach of this accession to the mystery was described as a sense of subordination of the person to God in a concept called “saturated phenomenon” (Solowski 604). Thus, the human grasp of divine mystery, and of God Himself, occurs as a direct experience of the divine mystery working closely and perceivably in a person’s life.
There is real difficulty in quantifying the unseen, the untouchable, and, thus, the immeasurable. There is valid concern in Pietro Prini’s critique on Gabriel Marcel’s philosophical effort to link, if not meld, metaphysics to theology as it will create an “unverified methodology”, which can reconstitute the age-old assumptions of rationalism (Negomireanu 56). However, there is no sense of keeping the rationalism assumptions if these will not help in grasping and experiencing the divine mystery through faith. Saint Thomas Aquinas insisted that knowing about the existence of God and His attributes cannot lead to a direct awareness of the God who exists (Solowski 606). Reason cannot validly claim capable of knowing God as He is. Instead, encountering the personal God occurs through faith, not reason.
However, Aquinas clarified that faith cannot change the natural intelligence of the person into something different. Faith can be a light to a person only to the extent that the person can see and understand those that faith proposes (606-607). Thus, a person’s capability to experience and encounter God in his daily life depends upon his capacity to experience and encounter God. To those without that capacity, experiencing and encountering God cannot happen, not because the encounter did not take, but because, despite the encounter, the person failed to perceive that an encounter has taken place.
Moreover, measuring the human experience of God is entirely different from measuring God Himself, or the divine mystery. The human experience of divine encounter can always be measured in a mathematical manner albeit through subjective attribution of reality into that experience. Conversely, human tools of measurement cannot fully comprehend the limitless mystery of the divine. Thus, human experience alone may be subjected to human tools of measurement. In a sense, mathematical rationalism may help the person understand the experience through the economics of that experience in the context of the daily encounters with God and His divine mystery through the subjective light of faith.
This subjectiveness, however, is not to be understood as a lack of capability to objectively observe that personal encounter with the divine. It simply meant relative subjectivism; that is, an objective observation of one person may not essentially reflect an accurate replication of the objective observations of other people. Thus, like the phenomena encountered and measured largely in qualitative research in economics, the validity of the religious experience, of the human encounter with God or the divine mystery, resides not in the replicability expected in quantitative studies, but in the inherent validity of the human experience itself as observed, recorded, and analyzed in qualitative studies.
[The faith index and indicators]
If faith or specifically faith as experienced through the encounter with God can be measured, which indicators can be used in the measurement? First, it should be noted that the spiritual relationship between God and man, and therefore the context of their encounter, is love; that is, love of God for man and man’s loving response to that divine love (Solowski 607).
Second, the expressions of God’s love are manifested to people from various sources and means, including but not limited to human expression of love (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB] 1). For instance, God’s warm loving presence may manifest under the soaking heat of the rising sun, which effectively connects a person to the divine mystery and love of God in such a mundane setting.
Third, God’s encountered with a person is not governed by the desire or the will of the person for that encounter to happen. It is always the initiative of God to set the encountered and for man to respond to that initiative. Thus, the control of the encounter is not in the person, but in God. Thomas Green, S.J. explained this phenomenon tacitly: “The best proof that it is really God is that he is often absent when we seek him, and present when we are not seeking him or perhaps doesn’t even want him present” (91). In effect, God encounters a person and manifests Himself more clearly in His own time.
Thus, through these contexts, the establishment of a faith experience index (FEI) may be derived and its mathematical expression launched. The first indicator is a strong personal conviction (SPC) that “God loves me and will manifest Himself to me anytime He wants”. It refers to a prevailing sense of inner expectancy and hope that God will reveal Himself in a personal encounter with the person in the context of daily life either through other people, through unexplainable circumstances or events, or through other components of creation. Without this inner conviction, a confounding variable will be introduced into the measurement, which will make it difficult to notice the encounter with God. SPC is always valued as “1” if present and “0” when otherwise.
The second indicator is unexpected and otherwise unexplainable initiative of providence that can only be attributed to an initiative from God to manifest to the person and which results to the generation of a deep but warm joy in the heart, or Manifestation Frequency (MF).
The third indicator is the manifestation of God as intended to happen through prayer petitions or as the person expects to exactly happen, or Expectation Frequency (EF).
[Data sets to provide measurements]
Thus, the FEI may be computed using Formula 1 as follows:
FEI = SPC x (MF/EF) Formula 1
Where, SPC, the presence of faith
MF, the number of God initiated manifestations
EF, the number of person-expected divine manifestations
[Hypothesis that can be verified using this index]
The FEI derived from Formula 1 will show whether the preponderance of the person’s faith experience came from unexpected manifestations of God’s encounter initiative in God’s time or from the person’s willful desire to encounter God in his own time. From the economic theory of supply and demand, the index will show whether God supply as demanded or supply without need of demand.
Works Cited
Green, Thomas H. When the Well Runs Dry. Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press. Print.
Negomireanu, Alin. “Metaphysics and Faith in Gabriel Marcel.” Annals of the
“Constantin Brancusi” Feb. 2013: 54-54. PDF file.
Sokolowski, Robert. “The Relation of Phenomenology and Thomistic Metaphysics to Religion:
A Study of Patrick Masterson’s Approaching God: Between Phenomenology and Theology”. The Review of Metaphysics Mar. 2014, 6(1): 603-626. PDF file.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Synopsis for Eros and Agape: Expressions of
Love in Sacramental Marriage by Joann Heaney-Hunter”. Web. 1 Feb. 2016. http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/upload/Hunter.pdf
