Questions to Guide Your Reading

John Coventry, The Theology of Faith

1. What is the main contention of John Coventry's book?

2. According to Coventry, "Faith and revelation are correlative terms, and can only be understood in view of each other."  What, then, is revelation?

3. Revelation, says Coventry, is not just a question of what Jesus said.  What is it a question of?

4. Was Christ God's only moment of self-disclosure in history?  Does God's revelation in Christ negate all those other revelations in history?

5. What, according to Coventry, is the "gift of faith"?

6. According to Coventry (p. 12), "faith is correctly explained as knowledge through signs, or, perhaps better, a personal relation established through signs."  How does this apply to the case of faith in Christ?

7. Coventry claims later (bottom of p. 12), that "faith is a recognition of the messenger in the message."  What does he mean?

8. According to Coventry, "The sign given to the apostles was Christ."  That was all well and good for them.  But what about us?  What does Coventry say?

9. On pp. 16 and following, Coventry makes a distinction between the origin of faith, which continues through life, and the subsequent acts of faith that we make in or to revealed truth.  On what basis does one, according to Coventry, make subsequent separate acts of faith to particular doctrines?

10. According to Coventry, what do we mean when we say that faith is "above" reason?  Does that mean that we can never attain or grow in our "understanding of the faith"?

11. Does a development in one's understanding of the faith necessarily entail a growth in faith, in the sense of a deeper and more personal hold on God in Christ?

12. As Coventry points out:  "It is a pretty common, if not universal, experience nowadays that some time roughly between the ages of 17 and 30, a young person will experience a severe challenge to faith, which feels like and will often be described as a "loss of faith."  What factors, according to Coventry, cause this challenge to the faith? 

13. In responding to this challenge, will thinking be a necessary part of  the emergence of adult faith?  What else?  What does Coventry say, for example, about having "a tidy pattern of theories" about God?

14. We might think of the "life of faith" and the "life of sin" as contraries.  If so, consider for a moment what Thomas Merton had to say about what constitutes "the life of sin" in the selection from New Seeds of Contemplation.  If the "life of sin" is, as Merton suggests, the cult of being devoted to one's false self, what would the "life of faith" be?  Continuing that thought:  We oftentimes assume that "faith" is difficult because the concept of God is so difficult to grasp.  But if Merton is right about the "life of sin" and the tremendous difficulties involved in avoiding it, what might that tell us about why faith is so difficult?  Remember, faith isn't merely assent to a difficult concept;  faith is primarily an assent to a person.  If Merton is right about us, why is faith in another person (especially a Person who knows us better than we know ourselves) so difficult?