Reason and Contemplation

That discursive reasoning cannot attain contemplative wisdom or enlightenment is obvious enough. As I mentioned in my last post, if it this was possible, enlightenment could be attained in much the same way one follows a reasonable argument in a book. But enlightenment is not attained in this way; the great mystics of every tradition are unanimous on this point. It follows an experience, and one cannot simply "think" one's way into the experience.

Nevertheless, mysticism cannot be irrational, though some people see it this way. This is true both of detractors of mysticism as well as some who embrace it.

Ken Wilber writes, "all true mysticism is transrational and never antirational; 'right thought' always precedes 'right meditation.'"¹ He is alluding here to two elements of Buddhism's Eightfold Path.

Traleg Kyabgon Rinpoche, a high-ranking teacher in the Tibetan tradition, make a similar point about "right view," or "correct view," as he calls it.

Traleg Rinpoche notes that a lot of Westerners who are interested in Buddhism are very into meditation, but become resistant when it comes to studying the philosophy of Buddhism. I think this is true of a lot of people interested in contemplative spirituality in general: they want to meditate, but they don't care for philosophy.²

Traleg Rinpoche notes that many Western Buddhists believe "that meditation is all about getting rid of views or that all views will hinder us from attaining our spiritual goal." On the contrary, he says, "It is only incorrect views that we need to overcome. The correct view is to be cultivated with great diligence."³

The reason this is so important is that the experience of a higher state of consciousness is simply that: an experience. It is not itself knowledge. It has to be understood, and it will be understood within a particular framework. Taking care to ensure that the framework is adequate—that is, to make sure we have the "correct" or "right" view—is of great importance if our experience is going to be translated into authentic wisdom. As Traleg Rinpoche says, "We cannot simply practice meditation and hope for the best; we need a conceptual framework that is based on correct view."⁴

For people at the "Synthetic-Conventional" stage (or earlier), the framework in which they understand their experience will be one that is largely, if not entirely, unexamined. If someone at such a stage has a vision, there is a good chance they will take it at face value. So if I am at this stage and I have a vision of Mary or Jesus (or Krishna or Kuan Yin, or whoever) I will probably understand it quite literally as being that person or deity (or bodhisattva, or whatever).

A more rational perspective will recognise that the sensible content (visions, auditions, etc.⁵) of such an experience is likely drawn from the imagination of the one having the experience. It's not an accident that it's usually Catholics who have visions of Mary and Hindus who have visions of Krishna.

Even higher mystical states that do not feature any kind of sensible content have to be understood or interpreted. The understanding then has to be judged (which is to say, reasonably affirmed) for it to count as actual knowledge. The adequacy of this understanding and this judgment will depend on a large extent on the adequacy of our prior conceptual framework, even as this framework will likely undergo some changes as a result of the experience.

So I would say that rationality plays two very important roles in mysticism: first, in cultivating a correct view, which is to say an adequate framework in which the experience will be understood; and second, in judging whether the insight that results from the experience is itself correct.

The implications of this, as I see it, are twofold: First, you should not embark on the contemplative path unless you are willing to also learn philosophy and cultivate a correct view; you will not be able to properly understand your experience otherwise. Second, you should not simply assume that whatever insight occurs to you during the experience is correct. It is quite possible to have a mistaken insight during such an experience, and the powerful quality of the experience can too easily convince the person having the experience that the insight is correct.⁶

Cultivating a correct view, of course, is not simply something that happens before the experience, but also after. So it is not as simply as, "philosophise now, experience later." Wisdom, I think, is refined through an ongoing dialectical process of thinking and experiencing, thinking more, and experiencing more.

Notes

[1] Wilber, Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, 179.

[2] One reason for this, I think, is that a lot of people become interested in this kind of spirituality when they reach James Fowler's Stage 5, the post-modernist "Conjunctive" stage, which corresponds with Wilber's "green altitude." For more on the relationship between Fowler's stages and Wilber's "altitudes" see "The Colours of Spiritual Development."

People at every level tend to be very resistant to certain tendencies that are characteristic of the previous level. The previous level in this case would be the modernist "Individuative-Reflective" stage, at Wilber's "orange altitude." The orange stage is characterised by what the green stage sees as a too-strong emphasis on rationality.

The next stage, Wilber's teal-altitude Integral stage, seeks to correct this by reclaiming rationality against green, but correcting the error of orange, which generally rejects the idea that valid knowledge can be attained in non-normal states of consciousness. I've written about this stage before in "The Problem is Orange." Note that Wilber's understanding of teal-altitude spirituality is quite different from Fowler's sixth (and final) stage, the "Universalizing" stage. A number of critics have found Fowler's Stage 6 problematic, as it is not based on the same kind of empirical evidence as the previous stages. See, for instance, Romney M. Mosely's "Forms of Logic in Faith Development Theory," in Christian Perspectives on Faith Development, Jeff Astley and Leslie J. Francis, eds., Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1992: 169.

[3] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 25.

[4] Kyabgon, Mind at Ease, 26.

[5] I use the term "sensible content" to refer to things that do not literally involve the senses, but which are described as though they were. So one does not actually use one's eyes when one has a vision, but it nevertheless has a visual character.

[6] Traleg Rinpoche says,

"Some meditative experiences may have the appearance of being genuine, but in reality are false and misleading. Such experiences can be deceptive, giving us the false conviction that we have attained a particular meditative state when in reality we have simply gone astray or fallen victim to fanciful thinking. To separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, and to endeavor to find out whether anything genuine has occured, we must make use of conceptual tools that steer us in the right direction. That way, we can purposefully continue with our spiritual practice by critically examining and refining our views." (Mind at Ease, 26)

The failure of some people to recognise this, I think, stems from the erroneous belief that knowledge is attained simply through experience, which is sometimes called "naive realism": I saw it, therefore it's real.

Others might assume that whatever "insight" they had from the experience is necessarily true, apart from (or prior to) any kind of reasonable affirmation. This likely happens because the experience of having this mystical insight is so powerful that whatever one understands from it is simply accepted without question. It seems to me that the monistic non-dualism of the Advaita Vedanta tradition probably originated in this: I experience myself as "one with everything," so everything is "one," and so multiplicity is illusory. That’s kind of a complicated topic, though, so I won't go into it right now.

More on the Problem of Orange: The Line/Level Fallacy

In a recent post I argued that the absence of an appealing modern/ rational/ conventional/ Individuative-Reflective/orange-altitude form of Christian faith is a very serious and (mostly) unrecognised problem in the Church.

The Church is being torn in two by pre-modern/ pre-rational/ Synthetic-Conventional/ amber-altitude conservatives on the one hand, and post-modern/ post-rational/ Conjunctive/ green-altitude progressives on the other. Of course the reality is more complicated than this, but I think this is basically how things are going.

Today I thought I’d look a little bit at why the modern, orange level faith has posed such a problem.

Confusing Levels and Lines

The philosopher Ken Wilber has written a fair bit about what he calls the “Level/Line Fallacy.” The line in this case is the line of development, through a succession of stages, in some particular area (such as spiritual development).

The level is a particular stage along that line of development. In James Fowler’s faith development theory, there are seven such stages, beginning with the Primal faith of infancy through to the highest stage (so far), which Fowler calls “Universalizing” faith.

The Level/Line Fallacy is the tendency to confuse one particular level with the entire line.¹

For many people, including most devoutly religious people as well as many atheists, the Synthetic-Conventional/amber-altitude level of faith is religion, properly speaking. There is no room for development. There is only one true level. To many believers, anyone who moves beyond this stage will appear to be distancing themselves from the true faith, flirting with heresy at best, and sliding headlong into apostasy at worst. To many atheists, any faith that claims to have grown beyond the amber level is not the real thing; it’s just a pale, watered-down simulacrum. And far from being a positive development, it’s actually just enabling the more dangerous kinds of religion (see Bill Maher’s patronising rant at the end of Religulous to see what I mean).

Making such a mistake effectively prevents (or at least strongly discourages) growth into a healthy orange-level faith. One cannot be expected to embrace a healthy orange spirituality if one is unable (or unwilling) to recognise even the possibility of doing so.

Wilber discusses two different outcomes of the Level/Line Fallacy. The first he calls repression:

In the case of repression, the entire line is then denied and suppressed, resulting in atrophy and dysfunctional manifestations. If this occurs in the spiritual line of development, then in many cases, the repressed spiritual impulses are projected onto others, and then, like the anti-gay-porn crusader who is attacking his own shadow, this person becomes an obsessed, hyper-rational crusader fighting any and all spiritual endeavors, seeing them as complete irrational hogwash (with a pre/post fallacy not far behind). When then have science declaring war on religion.²

The second he calls fixation:

In the case of fixation, the particular level is so glorified that, while development again freezes at the level where the confusion occurs, instead of [a particular type of] intelligence being denied, it is obsessively and ferociously defended against all comers. But the only thing defended is that particular level in the line, which is then identified with the entire line and confused as the only correct type of the particular intelligence allowed. Ironically, in these individuals, as their own higher levels of that [particular type of] intelligence attempt to emerge, they will end up repressing them, repressing their own emergent potentials in that line because they are fixated to a particular level in that line. If the line is the spiritual line, then these individuals end up fixated at a lower level of spiritual intelligence (usually mythic), and ironically can project the their own higher, emerging spiritual impulses onto others, seeing these higher spiritual impulses as anti-spiritual. They then often end up denying higher levels of both science and religion, and lash out blindly at what amounts to their own higher potentials. We then have mythic religion declaring war on science (and the liberal world in general).³

These afflictions are both pretty common, I think, though of course not everyone so afflicted will be as extreme as Wilber’s characteristically hyperbolic descriptions would suggest.

They are also mutually reinforcing. Those fixated at amber are constantly being reminded of the “dangers” of rational thought and modern science by the anti-religious ranting of some of those who are repressing their own spiritual intelligence. And these spirit-repressors are always having their distorted stereotypes about religion reinforced by those fixated at amber, precisely because these happen to be the most publicly visible of all people of faith.

This public near-invisibility of orange (and higher) forms of faith is, I think, a real problem. Amber believers often wear their religion on their sleeves; orange (and higher) believers generally do not. The very fact that their is room to grow, even if it’s not officially sanctioned, is lost on a lot of people. I’m not entirely sure what can be done about this, but I have some ideas, and I’ll explore those in a future post.

Notes

[1] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184.

[2] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184.

[3] Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 184. Emphasis in original.

The Problem is Orange

People often speak of "polarisation" in the Catholic Church; this term denotes a widening gap between two opposing groups, and these two groups are usually called "conservative"/"traditional"/"orthodox" on the one hand, and "liberal"/"progressive" (as well as a number of less flattering epithets) on the other. There is also a tendency, I think, for people to see these as two sides on a horizontal axis.

The reality is, as I've argued before, rather more complicated than this, and I'm going to explain a bit more how I understand this conflict in the light of developmental spirituality.

It is probably safe to say that the large majority of adults in the Church today fall into three of James Fowler's six stages of development (and the corresponding altitudes in Ken Wilber's thought, as mentioned in a previous post). These are "Synthetic-Conventional," or amber-altitude; "Individuative-Reflective," or orange-altitude; and "Conjunctive," or green-altitude. There are some adults at the "Mythic-Literal"/red-altitude stage, and others at the "Universalizing"/teal-altitude stage, but these are probably small minorities.¹

Fowler himself has noted that individuals at the (amber-altitude) Synthetic-Conventional stage tend to be the "orthodox" believers; this stage of faith, he says, "can be seen as having rootage in and preserving important elements of pre-Enlightenment forms of cultural consciousness" (emphasis in original; Faithful, 161). Beliefs at this stage are held tacitly; individuals at this stage are generally non-reflective -- or, at least, not very reflective -- particularly when it comes to matters of faith. Additionally, authority is located externally at this stage. Wilber would add this stage is typically ethnocentric, which is manifested in the triumphalism and exclusivism of conventional Christianity.

The orange-altitude "Individuative-Reflective" stage emerged with the Enlightenment, and reflects a "modern" consciousness. It is characterised by a more reflective awareness of one's faith, and a more critical approach to one's beliefs. Orange faith also features a "relocation of authority within the self" (Fowler, Stages, 179). Fowler identifies this as the "progressive" stage (Faithful, 161ff.). It was this type of spirituality that eventually precipitated the "modernist crisis" in the Church in the late 19th century, which provoked an aggressively amber response from the Magisterium. It also brought us rigorous biblical criticism, and made a measure of openness to non-Christian religions possible for the Church. (The documents of Vatican II are essentially a mishmash of amber and orange ideas, with, perhaps, an occasional sprinkling of green.)

I would argue that most of the really committed progressives in the Church are more likely to be at the green-altitude "Conjunctive" stage. Green faith moves beyond the dichotomous rationality of orange, and embraces a more dialectical form of reasoning. It can move beyond a merely critical approach into a post-critical position (Paul Ricoeur's "second naiveté"), and is more experiential and pluralistic. It reflects a more "post-modern" consciousness.

If, as I've asserted, most committed progressives are at green, then what is orange? Who do we find there?

One well-known type of orange spirituality is that promoted by the retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. This is not to say that Spong himself is at that stage (I don't presume to know what stage he's at), but his work is very much aimed at converting late-amber Christians into orange faith. Spong, at least in his works that I've read,² follows an aggressive demythologising approach. It's not uncommon for people to read Spong and ask why, if what he says is true, anyone should bother with Christianity?

And that is the problem with orange. It simply isn't very appealing. Orange is the stage where many people say their goodbyes to the Church (and religion in general), and many never look back. Some will regress, and re-embrace, often with great fervour, an amber-level spirituality. Still others will ride it out, continue to develop, and find a much more satisfying spirituality at green, or higher.

The lack of an appealing orange spirituality is, I think, the great unrecognised cause of the so-called polarisation within the Church. Many progressives look at their conservative co-religionists and wonder, "Why do they have to see everything in black and white?" "Why can't they just think for themselves, and trust their own experience?" "Why is it so important for them to believe their religion is the only way?"

"Why," we might as well be asking, "can't they embrace a green-altitude spirituality?"

The problem is orange. It's a massive stumbling block -- that is, until you've cleared it, at which point it all but disappears.

I'll talk about some of the implications of this, as I see it, some other time.

Notes

[1] Wilber and Fowler match up quite well in the stages up to Conjunctive/green-altitude, but the next stage in Wilber, which he identifies as having reached "Integral" consciousness, is probably a more common achievement than Fowler's Universalizing stage. I've indicated in the past that I have some problems with Fowler's Universalizing stage, which he identified in the 1970s, long before Integral philosophy began to find a following.

[2] I haven't read a book by Spong since his autobiography, Here I Stand, was first published in 1999. I read several of his books prior to that, with Why Christianity Must Change or Die, which I also read in 1999, sticking out in my mind as particularly memorable. I suppose he might have changed his approach in the decade since then.

The Colours of Spiritual Development

I’ve written a fair bit in the past about James Fowler’s theory of faith development, and I’m going to be picking it up again in the near future. I’ve decided that I need to clarify something about how I’m going to refer to the different stages in future posts.

In Fowler’s early work, his stages were numbered. In his more recent work, he has avoided numbers. I think there are good reasons for doing this, so I’m going to avoid using numbers as well. However, because the names for the stages are sometimes long enough to be unwieldy, it is helpful to have a shorthand name for each, and for this I will be borrowing Ken Wilber’s practice of using the colours of the visible light spectrum.

The line up like this:

• Infrared - Primal Faith (Infancy)
• Magenta - Intuitive-Projective
• Red - Mythic-Literal
• Amber - Synthetic-Conventional
• Orange - Individuative-Reflective
• Green - Conjunctive
• Teal - Universalizing

Wilber’s use of colours, which began (as far as I can tell) in his 2007 book Integral Spirituality, struck me at first as being somewhat gimmicky, but I’ve since realised that it is a very helpful way of comparing the levels across different lines of development. Basically, there are corresponding levels in the various lines (cognitive, moral, spiritual, values, etc.), and levels that correspond might be said to be at the same “altitude.”

For a more detailed (and more adequate) explanation of the concept of altitude, I recommend reading “What Is Altitude?” from Wilber’s Holons internet newsletter.

Developmental Theories

James Fowler's research into faith development has demonstrated how what we might call our "spiritual intelligence" develops through a predictable sequence of stages.¹ In his important book Stages of Faith, Fowler noted the relationship between the different faith stages and the stages of other developmental theories, particularly those of Jean Piaget (cognitive development) and Lawrence Kohlberg (moral development).

The stages would optimally line up something like this:²

Stage	Piaget	Kohlberg	Fowler
1	Preoperational	Heteronomous Morality	Intuitive-Projective
2	Concrete Operational	Instrumental Exchange	Mythic-Literal
3	Early Formal Operations	Mutual Interpersonal Relations	Synthetic-Conventional
4	Formal Operations (Dichotomizing)	Social Systems and Conscience	Individuative-Reflective
5	Formal Operations (Dialectical)	Social Contract, Individual Rights	Conjunctive
6	Formal Operations (Synthetic)	Universal Ethical Principles	Universalizing

I say "optimally" because moral and faith development do not always keep pace with cognitive development. Ken Wilber likes to cite the example of Nazi doctors as people who may have been very intelligent (highly developed cognitively), but whose moral development was obviously lagging far behind. Cognitive development is necessary but not sufficient for development in other areas (or along what Wilber calls "lines"). Both Fowler and Wilber make this point.³

Wilber has argued that different developmental theories describe different lines, which is similar to the increasingly popular notion of multiple intelligences (IS, 59). The lines develop in each individual relatively independently of one another:

A person can evidence very high development in some lines (e.g., cognitive), medium development in others (e.g., interpersonal), and low in yet still others (e.g., moral). (Wilber, IS, 59)

A nice chart showing some of these lines, and how they correspond to each other can be seen here (opens new window).

Some Objections to Developmental Theories

There are some people who reject developmental theories, so I thought I would address that a little bit.

One argument I’ve encountered on the web is that some people don’t neatly fall into any one stage as described by a particular theory. For instance, Fowler’s Synthetic-Conventional stage is a conformist stage, and by the way Fowler describes it, one would expect adults who inhabit that stage to have very conventional views. How does one explain the existence of conformist progressives?

This reflects a failure to grasp the distinction between “contents” and “structures.” Some contents are more likely to be found in some structures than others, but there is no necessary relationship between them. Someone raised in a progressive family might well inhabit the Synthetic-Conventional stage and still hold progressive views. “Contents” refer to what we think; “structures” concern how we think about it.

A more serious and legitimate concern is that hierarchical models can be used used by the powerful for ideological purposes, with the oppression and marginalisation of others being the inevitable result. They invariably see themselves as the most developed, and relegate everyone who disagrees with them to lower levels. (See Pope Benedict’s comments about what constitutes “adult faith” in this article by John L. Allen, Jr. for a recent example of this.)

This is a legitimate concern, there’s no doubt about that. But the fact that an idea can be abused does not mean it’s mistaken. Besides, as Wilber has never tired of pointing out, those who reject hierarchies (a common enough problem among postmodernists) inevitably assert their own: To reject hierarchical theories in favour of non-hierarchical ones is itself to create a hierarchy. Wilber argues that we have to distinguish between “natural hierarchies” (which are not good or bad, but simply happen to exist) and “dominator hierarchies” (which are bad).

Another related-but-different argument is that developmental theories are “elitist.” I must admit, this particular argument doesn’t resonate with me. Are we to suppose that all people are equally adept at all things?

Wilber addressed this in an article in What Is Enlightenment? magazine a few years ago:

But isn't this view of mine terribly elitist? Good heavens, I hope so. When you go to a basketball game, do you want to see me or Michael Jordan play basketball? When you listen to pop music, who are you willing to pay money in order to hear? Me or Bruce Springsteen? When you read great literature, who would you rather spend an evening reading, me or Tolstoy? When you pay $64 million for a painting, will that be a painting by me or by Van Gogh?

All excellence is elitist. And that includes spiritual excellence as well. But spiritual excellence is an elitism to which all are invited. We go first to the great masters —to Padmasambhava, to St. Teresa of Avila, to Gautama Buddha, to Lady Tsogyal, to Emerson, Eckhart, Maimonides, Shankara, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Bodhidharma, Garab Dorje. But their message is always the same: let this consciousness be in you that is in me. You start elitist, always; you end up egalitarian, always.

For a nice take on this issue in a editors’ blog for the same magazine (now called EnlightenNext), read this.

Notes

[1] I don't recall Fowler ever using the term "spiritual intelligence," but Ken Wilber makes the point that this is essentially what Fowler is talking about (and I happen to agree that it is an apt term); see Wilber, IS, 69.

[2] Piaget development scheme ended with formal operations (which most people reach in adolescence). The gradations of “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” have been identified by Fowler. Similar gradations beyond mere formal operations are found in Wilber’s work, though the terminology he uses tends to change from one book to the next. Fowler’s “dichotomizing,” “dialectical,” and “synthetic” are, respectively, “rational mind,” “pluralistic/meta-systemic/early-vision logic,” and “paradigmatic/middle vision-logic” in Wilber. There is no single source for this information – as I said, Wilber changes his mind about what he would like to call them – but one place would be SES, 623n.6.

[3] See Fowler, Stages of Faith, 65; Wilber, SES, 689n.46.

Stages of Faith: Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

The sixth final stage, Universalizing Faith, is the most difficult to write about. In Stages of Faith, Fowler provided excerpts from interviews of people at each of the previous stages, but there are no interviews with individuals at Stage 6. Perhaps this is not surprising -- apparently only one individual of the 359 in his research sample had actually reached this stage (see Stages, 318).

Fowler does name some individuals he considered to be representatives of Stage 6, including Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, as well as people like Dag Hammarskjöld, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham Heschel, and Thomas Merton (Stages, 201).

When I first read this, it struck me as problematic. I don't think it's legitimate, after carefully working out the structures of the other stages through careful empirical research, to simply toss that method away and start speculating. I also find it difficult to believe that one has to develop through all of the other stages in order to be a Martin Luther King or a Mother Teresa. As admirable as her life was, did Mother Teresa really ever move that far beyond conventional faith? From what I've read, it seems that she did not. I don't mean to depreciate what she did; I mean only to suggest that what she did could have been done at a lower stage, that it is not indicative of a high level of faith development as Fowler describes it. Or, to put that another way, I would argue that when someone gives him- or herself so completely for others, there is something else at work, something other than the kind of faith development we are concerned with here.

I don't have as much confidence in Fowler's description of this stage compared with the earlier stages, but I will summarise it for the sake of completeness.

Fowler writes,

The structuring of this stage derives from the radical completion of a process of de-centration from self that proceeds throughout the sequence of stages. From the non-differentiation of self and objects in the earliest phases of infancy to the naive egocentrism of the Intuitive-Projective stage, each successive stage marks a steady widening in social perspective taking. (Faithful, 66)

Or, put very simply, one's ability to see things from perspectives other than one's own deepens and widens as one develops.

People at Stage 6 overcome the need, felt in all previous stages, for the preservation for one's own life and well-being:

Heedless of the threats to self, to primary groups, and to the institutional arrangements of the present order that are involved, Stage 6 becomes a disciplined, activist incarnation -- a making real and tangible -- of the imperatives of absolute love and justice of which Stage 5 has partial apprehensions. The self at Stage 6 engages in spending and being spent for the transformation of present reality in the direction of a transcendent actuality. (Stages, 200).

Fowler says people at this stage "typically exhibit qualities that shake our usual criteria of normalcy," and "[i]n their devotion to universalizing compassion they may offend our parochial perceptions of justice" (Stages, 200).

People in Stage 5 "continue to live in the tension between their rootedness in and loyalties to their segment of the existing order, on the one hand, and the inclusiveness and transformation of their visions toward a new ultimate order, on the other" (Faithful, 66-67). In Stage 6, one overcomes this tension.

Stage 6 individuals are often charismatic leaders. The followers of some charismatic cult leaders will readily identify their leaders as belonging to this stage, so Fowler suggests how these dangerous leaders are different:

A good test for distinguishing the authentic faithful leader from the dangerously charismatic copy is whether the leader requires regressive dependence and relinquishing of personal responsibility from his or her followers. Similarly, the authentic spirituality of the Universalizing stage avoids polarizing the world between the "saved" and the "damned." Persons of this stage are as concerned with the transformation of those they oppose as with the bringing about of justice and reform. (Faithful, 67)

Universalizing Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Synthetic)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual, with the commonwealth of being
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Loyalty to being
Bounds of Social Awareness: Identification with the species. Transnarcissistic love of being
Locus of Authority: In a personal judgment informed by the experiences and truths of previous stages, purified of egoic striving, and linked by disciplined intuition to the principle of Being
Form of World Coherence: Unitive actuality felt and participated unity of "One beyond many"
Symbolic Function: Evocative power of symbols actualized through unification of reality mediated by symbols and the self (Fowler, Stages, 244)

Stages of Faith: Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith

James Fowler says that reaching Stage 5, which he calls "Conjunctive Faith," is "unusual before mid-life" (Stages, 198), although it should be noted that a significant minority of people in their thirties, even some people in their twenties, are best described as Stage 5.¹

"The name of this stage," he writes in Faithful Change, "implies a rejoining or a union of that which previously has been separated" (64). One moves into Stage 5 when one moves beyond the "either/or" dichotomizing logic of Stage 4, and begins to think more dialectically or dialogically (Stages, 185). He says that the name was inspired by Nicolas of Cusa's notion of the coincidentia oppositorum, "the 'coincidence of opposites' in our apprehensions of truth" (Faithful, 64). Someone at this stage grasps the interrelatedness or interconnectedness of things.

"In dialogical knowing," Fowler writes, "the known is invited to speak its own word in its own language... The knower seeks to accomodate her or his knowledge to the structure of that which is known before imposing her or his own categories upon it" (Stages, 185).

In Stage 4, one sees the emergence of what Fowler calls the "executive ego" (Stages, 179). This is when the individual begins to take responsibility for his or her beliefs, commitments, values, etc. Authority, which had always previously been external, is now located internally. This does not change in Stage 5, but now the executive ego "must come to terms with the fact that its confidence is based at least in part upon illusion or upon seriously incomplete self-knowledge" (Faithful, 64). Whereas the Stage 4 individual has great confidence in the conscious mind, the Stage 5 individual begins to see this as overconfidence, begins to appreciate the reality and the influence of the unconscious mind, and grasps the need to integrate the conscious and unconscious (Stages, 186).

Stage 5 also brings a different relationship with religious symbols. In Stage 4, the individual is preoccupied with "demythologizing":

Stage 4 is concerned to question symbolic representations and enactments and to force them to yield their meanings for translation into conceptual or propositional statements. As such, Individual-Reflective faith wants to bring the symbolic representation into its (Stage 4's) circle of light and to operate on it, extracting its meanings. This leaves the person or group in Stage 4 clearly in control. The meaning so grasped may be illuminating, confronting, harshly judgmental or gently reassuring. But whatever its potential impact, its authentication and weight will be assigned in accordance with the assumptions and commitments that already shape the circle of light in which it is being question. It will not be granted the initiative. (Stages, 187)

The Stage 5 individual does not abandon this critical approach, but moves beyond it. Stage 5 does not regress to the pre-critical approach of Stage 3 (and earlier), but moves forward into a post-critical phase, which Fowler identifies with Paul Ricoeur's notion of the "second naïveté" (Stages, 187). Here the individual develops "a readiness to enter into the rich dwellings of meaning that true symbols, ritual and myth offer" (Faithful, 65).

These need not be the symbols, rituals or myths of one's own tradition, either. Someone at this stage, Fowler writes, "is ready for significant encounters with other traditions than its own, expecting that truth has disclosed and will disclosed itself in those traditions in ways that may complement or correct its own" (Stages, 186).²

Conjunctive Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Dialectical)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual with groups, classes and traditions "other" than one's own
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Prior to society, Principaled higher law (universal and critical)
Bounds of Social Awareness: Extends beyond class norms and interests. Disciplined ideological vulnerability to "truths" and "claims" of outgroups and other traditions
Locus of Authority: Dialectical joining of judgment-experience processes with reflective claims of others and of various expressions of cumulative human wisdom
Form of World Coherence: Multisystemic and conceptual mediation
Symbolic Function: Postcritical rejoining of irreducible symbolic power and ideational meaning. Evocative power inherent in the reality in and beyond symbol and in the power of unconscious processes in the self (Fowler, 244)

Notes

[1] See the age distribution chart in Stages, 318. It shows that 14.6% of the Fowler's subjects aged 31-40 were solidly at Stage 5, and 3.3% of those aged 21-30 were in Stages 4-5. This reflects his research done in the 1970s. I suspect the number might be somewhat higher today, although my reason for suspecting this owes more to my reading of Ken Wilber rather than Fowler. I intend to touch on that in the future, when I get more into Wilber's ideas.

[2] For a quite brilliant example this, see Paul F. Knitter's recent book, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian.

Next: Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

Stages of Faith: Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective Faith

[A slightly altered version of this post can be read on my new blog.]

The transition to the fourth stage, "Individuative-Reflective," ideally happens in the early to mid-twenties, though it can happen later (Fowler, Stages, 181).

This transition, which involves a movement beyond the conventional faith of Stage 3, typically follows a significant change in life. For many, it is the experience of moving away from home, into an environment where one encounters values and beliefs that differ considerably from one's own. This often forces a critical examination of the tacitly held beliefs and values of one's Synthetic-Conventional faith.

Additionally, this transition requires "an interruption of [the] reliance on external sources of authority" that is characteristic of Synthetic-Conventional faith. There must be, as Fowler puts it, "a relocation of authority within the self":

While others and their judgments will remain important to the Individuative-Reflective person, their expectations, advice and counsel will be submitted to an internal panel of experts who reserve the right to choose and who are prepared to take responsibility for their choices. I call this the emergence of an executive ego. (179)

(It's not difficult to find elements within religious traditions that aim to mitigate against exactly this transition, which undoubtedly accounts for the large number of adults whose faith development fails to keep pace with their cognitive development. In light of this, it is not at all surprising that we find so many otherwise intelligent people with such immature faith.)

So Fowler has identified two things that have to happen for an individual to move beyond Stage 3 Synthetic-Conventional into Stage 4: "the critical distancing from one's previous assumptive value system and the emergence of an executive ego" (179). When both happen, a new identity is formed.

Some individuals, however, will make one of these movements but not the other. On the one hand, there are individuals who, after moving into a new kind of environment, will encounter ideas very different from their own:

They come face to face with the relativity of their perspectives and those of others to their life experience. But they fail to interrupt their reliance on external sources of authority--and may even strengthen their reliance upon them--in order to cope with this relativity. (179)

So if I am a young Synthetic-Conventional person, leaving home to go to university, I might encounter for the first time peers who believe very differently than I do. Now I might be forced to acknowledge that I've come to believe a lot of things -- things I've simply assumed to be true -- because of the family, community, and culture in which I was raised. This might be liberating, but it might also create a great deal of anxiety, particularly if great importance was placed on maintaining those beliefs.

"On the other hand," Fowler writes, "there is a significant group who shape their own variant way of living from a shared value ethos, break their reliance on consensual or conventional authorities and show the emergence of a strong exective ego. Yet they have not carried through a critical distancing from their shared assumptive values systems" (179).

Fowler doesn't provide any examples of what this might look like in Stages of Faith (or either of his other books I've read), but I wonder if some conservative and traditionalist Catholics who reject some papal teachings (or entire popes, in the case of many traditionalists) don't fall into this category. They have learned to be critical of external authorities, but they don't critically examine their other beliefs, or consider that those beliefs came from equally fallible authorities.

People who complete only one of these two movements can remain indefinitely in a transitional space that is neither Synthetic-Conventional nor Individuative-Reflective.

Those who do make the transition completely develop a greater awareness of their own ideology, as well as the external factors that have nurtured it, and they can understand the ideologies of other people in the same way. They also understand symbols and rituals in a very different way than before. In the past, these were "taken as mediating the sacred in direct ways" and were therefore seen as "sacred in themselves" (180). In other words, people at Stage 3 tend not to distinguish between the symbol and what the symbol represents. At Stage 4, the meaning of a symbol can be distinguished and expressed without reference to the symbol.

Fowler writes,

This demythologizing strategy, which seems natural to Stage 4, brings both gains and losses. Paul Tillich, writing about religious symbols and their powers, says that when a symbol is recognized to be a symbol by those who relate to the transcendent through it, it becomes a "broken symbol." A certain naive reliance upon and trust in the sacred power, efficacy and inherent truth of the symbol as representation is interrupted. (180)

For many people, this transition brings "a sense of loss, dislocation, grief and even guilt" (180). (When people speak of "losing their faith," I imagine it is often this transition they are talking about.)

"This transition," Fowler writes, "represents an upheaval in one's life at any point and can be protracted in its process for five to seven years or longer" (181). This is less of a problem for younger people, as it can be "a natural accompaniment of leaving home and of the construction of a first, provisional adult life structure" (182). For those who are more established in this structure -- those in their 30s or 40s -- it can be more disruptive and difficult.

With the transition to Stage 4, Fowler explains, the individual begins "to take seriously the burden of responsibility for his or her own commitments, lifestyle, beliefs and attitudes" (182). Previously, the individual's faith was in large measure chosen for them. They were Catholic or Protestant or Jewish or Muslim because they were raised that way. Authority is located externally to the self. Beginning with Stage 4, one's faith is self-chosen, and while external authorities may be consulted, the final authority resides in the individual's own judgment (243).

Fowler writes in his summary,

Stage 4's ascendant strength has to do with its capacity for critical reflection on identity (self) and outlook (ideology). Its dangers inhere in its strengths: an excessive confidence in the conscious mind and in critical thought and a kind of second narcissism in which the now clearly bounded, reflective self overassimilates "reality" and the perspectives of others into its world view. (italics in original; 182-183)

Individuative-Reflective Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Formal Operations (Dichotomizing)
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual, with self-selected group or class--(societal)
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Societal perspective, Reflective relativism, or class-biased universalism
Bounds of Social Awareness: Ideologically compatible communities with congruence to self-chosen norms and insights
Locus of Authority: One's own judgment as informed by self-ratified ideological perspective. Authorities and norms must be congruent with this.
Form of World Coherence: Explicit system, conceptually mediated, clarity about boundaries and inner connections of system
Symbolic Function: Symbols separated from symbolized. Translated (reduced) to ideations. Evocative power inheres in meaning conveyed by symbols (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith

Stages of Faith: Stage 3 - Synthetic Conventional Faith

[For a better (and shorter) description of this stage on my new blog, click here.]

Fowler's third stage, Synthetic-Conventional, typically begins around 12 or 13. A very large number of people equilibrate at this is the stage -- that is, they do not develop beyond it.

Although children and adults at this level will have some things in common, there are also some differences. Nearly everyone will enter this stage, and a certain age this is healthy. When people remain in this stage into adulthood, however, this is usually due to one problem or another. It is necessary to talk about Stage 3 first in general terms, and then specifically how it appears in adults.

An individual can move into the Synthetic-Conventional stage when they have begun to develop what Piaget called formal operational thinking.

Formal operational thinking may first make its appearance in an alegebra class or in an advanced biology lab. As it emerges it brings with it the ability to reflect upon one's thinking. It appraises a situation or a problem and forms a variety of hypothetical solutions or explanations. It generates methods of testing and verifying the hypotheses. In problem solving formal operational thinking can work with propositions and symbols, manipulating them to find solutions prior to any contact with the actual physical objects or contexts they represent. And just as it can generate hypothetical propositions of explanation, so it can envision a universe of possible realities and futures. Formal operational thought can conceive ideal features of persons, communities or other states of affairs. It can be idealistcally or harshly judgmental of actual people or institutions in light of these ideal conceptions. (Fowler, Stages, 152)

The attainment of formal operations brings with it the ability to think hypothetically. This allows the individual to create hypothetical images of how others see him or her. This leads to a new kind of "self-consciousness." As Fowler writes, "The youth believes everyone is looking at him or her and may feel either a narcissistic inflation or a self-questioning deflation regarding 'the me I think you see'" (153). In significant relationships, this ability to see yourself as others see you results in mutual interpersonal perspective taking. Both the self and the significant other "come to be experienced as having a rich, mysterious and finally inaccessible depth of personality" (153). If God is an important part of the individual's faith, then God too will be "re-imagined as having inexhaustible depths and as being capable of knowing personally those mysterious depths of self and others we know that we ourselves will never know" (153). Referring to the well-documented phenomenon of adolescent conversion, Fowler suggests that it "can be illumined...by the recognition that the adolescent's religious hunger is for a God who knows, accepts and confirms the self deeply" (153).

Significantly, he observes that it is not an accident that religious images that appeal to people at the Synthetic-Conventional stage "have the characteristics of a divinely personal significant other" (154).

Another characteristic of this stage is the importance to the individual of the expectations of others. This is reflected in the way people at this stage relate to authority. Authority, for the Stage 3 individual, is located outside the self. "It resides," Fowler says, "in the interpersonally available 'they' or in the certified incumbents of leadership roles in institutions" (154).

This is not to deny that adolescents make choices or that they develop strong feelings and commitments regarding their values and behavioral norms. It is to say, however, that despite their genuine feelings of having made choices and commitments, a truer reading is that their values and self-images, mediated by the significant others in their lives, have largely chosen them. And in their (the youth's) choosing they have, in the main, clarified and ratified those images and values which have chosen them. (Fowler, 154)

This is a good time to clarify something about the relationship between these formal structures Fowler is talking about, and the specific contents of people's faith. When we hear "conventional" we might naturally assume that Fowler means the individual holds the beliefs that are conventional to the religion. But the religious group is only one of several communities the person belongs to, and each community brings different expectations.

I, for example, was raised in a moderately progressive, church-going Catholic family. While I understood who the pope was and I knew something about the hierarchical structure of the Church, it was really my mother who served as the primary authority for me as far as religion goes. It was taken for granted in my house that women should be allowed to become priests, and if I had been asked at age 13 if I agreed with that, I would have unhesitatingly said yes. So people at Synthetic-Conventional can indeed hold views that are at variance with (for example) official Church teaching. But, importantly, they do not originate these views; they inherit them from those they regard as authority figures.

Fowler actually illustrates this difference by comparing two teenagers, a girl who belongs to a fairly conservative Lutheran church, and a boy who belongs to a Unitarian church. They are quite different in what they believe, and it appears that the boy has more mature views, but it is also clear, as Fowler points out, that "the positions he takes are really his own versions of what his community stands for rather than being self-composed perspectives" (158).

Fowler describes Stage 3 as "a 'conformist' stage in the sense that it is acutely tuned to the expectations and judgments of significant others and as yet does not have a sure enough grasp on its own identity and autonomous judgment to construct and maintain an independent perspective" (173).

Synthetic-Conventional Faith in Adulthood

As I mentioned earlier, many adults never develop beyond this stage. In fact, Synthetic-Conventional represents exactly what many people imagine being "religious" is all about:

Many critics of religion and religious institutions assume, mistakenly, that to be religious in an institution necessarily means to be Synthetic-Conventional. This mistake by critics is understandable. Much of church and synagogue life in this country [i.e., the USA] can be accurately described as dominantly Synthetic-Conventional. (Fowler, 164)

I also mentioned that, when this stage persists into adulthood, it is a sign that something less than ideal has happened. To understand why this is, we need to consider some other characteristics of Stage 3 faith.

For both adolescents in the forming phases and adults who find equilibrium in Stage 3 the system of informing images and values through which they are committed remains principally a tacit system. Tacit means unexamined; my tacit knowing, as Michael Polanyi calls it, is that part of my knowing that plays a role in guiding and shaping my choices, but of which I can give no account. I cannot tell you how I know with my tacit knowing. (Fowler, 161)

So people at this stage, though certainly aware that they have beliefs and values -- to which they might feel very strongly about -- do not reflect on their beliefs to any great extent. For adolescents this might be understandable. When this persists into adulthood, however, there is probably something preventing them from examining their beliefs and values. It may be that their cognitive development has not progressed far beyond early formal operations -- and indeed, Fowler does provide excerpts from interviews with two men who fall into this category: "Both come from backgrounds of limited education. Both exhibit difficulty in using language to communicate inner states or their attitudes, values and feelings for others... They are limited in their self-reflection...to either comparisons with or the approval of others perceived to be like them" (Fowler, 170).

Some adults at this stage, however, are highly educated, and if they have not critically examined their beliefs, it is likely, I think, that their religious formation has strongly discouraged them from doing so. They may be quite developed cognitively, quite capable of rational thinking, but they don't apply their rationality to their beliefs.

Synthetic-Conventional Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Early Formal Operations
Perspective Taking (Selman): Mutual interpersonal
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Interpersonal expectations and concordance
Bounds of Social Awareness: Composite of groups in which one has interpersonal relationships
Locus of Authority: Consensus of valued groups an in personally worthy representatives of belief-value traditions
Form of World Coherence: Tacit system, felt meanings symbolically mediated, globally held
Symbolic Function: Symbols multi-dimensional; evocative power inheres in symbol (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective

Stages of Faith: Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal Faith

The second stage, which Fowler calls Mythic-Literal, is most common in individuals between the ages of seven to twelve (although there is a small number of adults who equilibrate at this stage).

Mythic-Literal faith typically emerges after the individual reaches Piaget's concrete operations stage of cognitive development. With the attainment of this stage, the individual can better distinguish between what is real and what is merely imaginary, and can now take a perspective other than one's own.

Fowler writes,

The great gift to consciousness that emerges in this stage is the ability to narratize one's experience. As regards our primary interest in faith we can say that the development of the Mythic-Literal stage brings with it the ability to bind our experiences into meaning through the medium of stories. (Stages, 136)

Stories are important for preoperational children, but only at the concrete operational stage are children able to generate their own stories:

The convergence of the reversibility of thought with taking the perspective of another combined with an improved grasp of cause-effect relations means that the elements are in place for appropriating and retelling the rich stories one is told. More than this, the elements are in place for youngsters to begin to tell self-generated stories that make it possible to conserve, communicate and compare their experiences and meanings. (136)

We don't lose our interest in stories as we get older, but there is an important difference in our relationship with stories at this stage compared with later stages. At later stages, we can "step back from our stories, reflect upon them, and...communicate their meanings by way of more abstract and general statements. Stage 2 does not yet do this" (136-137). Fowler uses the image of a river to represent the flow of life. At Stage 2, stories "describe the flow from the midst of the stream" (137). Only at later stages can the individual "step out on the bank beside the river and reflect on the stories of the flow and their composite meanings" (137). In other words, the meaning of the story is inseparable from the story itself.

Fowler explains that he imagined anthropomorphic God-images would be found primarily in preschool (preoperational) children, but found that they were actually much more common in Stage 2 children. He attributes this to the newfound ability to take perspectives of others. The Mythic-Literal child can now imagine God's perspective, which, he says, will have "as much richness--and some of the same limits--as the perspectives now consistently attributed to friends and family members" (139).

Someone at this stage is also likely to be at Kohlberg's second stage of moral development. At this stage justice is equated with reciprocity and fairness.

Fowler describes, near the end of the chapter on Stage 2, an interview with a grown woman who has equilibrated at the Mythic-Literal stage (which is apparently the lowest stage that can persist into adulthood). She explains that she prays everyday so that, "when I need it, it's in the bank" (147). She uses this image a few times in the interview. She believes that by praying and praising God she can, as Fowler puts it, "store up God's good favor against times when special help or forgiveness may be needed" (148).

In Fowler's conclusion, her writes,

The new capacity or strength in this stage is the rise of narrative and the emergence of story, drama and myth as ways of finding and giving coherence to experience.

The limitations of literalness and an excessive reliance upon reciprocity as a principle for constructing an ultimate environment can result either in an overcontrolling, stilted perfectionism or "works righteousness" or in their opposite, an abasing sense of badness embraced because of mistreatment, neglect or the apparent disfavor of significant others. (italics in original; 149-150)

Most people move beyond the Mythic-Literal stage in adolescence, with the transition to formal operational thinking.

Mythic-Literal Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Concrete Operational
Perspective Taking (Selman): Simple perspective taking
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Instrumental hedonism (Reciprocal fairness)
Bounds of Social Awareness: "Those like us" (in familial, ethnic, racial, class, and religious terms)
Locus of Authority: Incumbents of authority roles, salience increased by personal relatedness
Form of World Coherence: Narrative-Dramatic
Symbolic Function: One-dimensional; literal (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 3 - Synthetic-Conventional

Stages of Faith: Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith

The first true stage of James Fowler's theory, Intuitive-Projective, typically emerges at around age two, and lasts until six or seven. It corresponds with what Jean Piaget identified as the preoperational stage of cognitive development.

One of the characteristics of the preoperational child is egocentrism. This means that the child is generally unable to take any perspective other than his or her own, nor do they even imagine that other perspectives are possible.

Fowler writes,

In early childhood thought is dominated by perception. This means that the child thinks by way of mental pictures that are imitations of reality as perceived. As yet the child lacks the mental capacity to prolong actions or to reverse them, so as to test the inferences he or she makes on the basis of perception. Causal relations and connections, therefore, are poorly understood. The child's feelings and fanciful imagination have free rein to fill in the gaps in understanding that perception leaves. (Stages, 57)

This inability to take perspectives other than one's own inhibits the child from any real kind of moral reasoning, as Lawrence Kohlberg's research has shown. Kohlberg held that "moral judgment requires the construction and coordination of the points of view of self and others" (Fowler, Stages, 58). For this reason, Kohlberg understood the preoperational stage as "a premoral position." A child at this stage makes decisions on the basis of anticipated reward and punishment.

A child's thought processes at this stage are largely unrestrained by the control of reason. They are not well-equipped to distinguish between reality and fantasy. Concrete symbols, images, and stories play an important role in shaping the child's worldview, including their understanding of God. This happens even in children raised in non-religious families. Fowler, drawing on the work of Ana-Maria Rizzuto, explains that "despite our secularization and religious fragmentation, religious symbols and language are so widely present in this society that virtually no child reaches school age without having constructed -- without or without religious education -- an image or images of God" (129).

The quality of images and stories children are exposed to is particularly important at this age. These may "prove life-opening and sustaining of love, faith and courage," but they might also "[give] rise to fear, rigidity, and the brutalization of souls -- both one's own and those of others" (132).

In his summary of this stage Fowler writes,

The gift of emergent strength of this stage is the birth of imagination, the ability to unify and grasp the experience-world in powerful images and as presented in stories that register the child's intuitive understandings and feelings toward the ultimate conditions of existences. The dangers of this stage arise from the possible "possession" of the child's imagination by unrestrained images of terror and destructiveness, or from the witting or unwitting exploitation of her or his imagination in the reinforcement of taboos and moral or doctrinal expectations. (italics in original; 134)

Intuitive-Projective Stage by Aspects:

Form of Logic (Piaget): Preoperational
Perspective Taking (Selman): Rudimentary empathy (egocentric)
Form of Moral Judgment (Kohlberg): Punishment-reward
Bounds of Social Awareness: Family, primal others
Locus of Authority: Attachment/dependence relationships; Size, power, visible symbols of authority.
Form of World Coherence: Episodic
Symbolic Function: Magical-Numinous (Fowler, 244)

Next: Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal

Stages of Faith: Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith

The infant understands no distinction between itself and everything else. At some point the infant begins to grasp that objects continue exist outside of his or her immediate awareness. (Precisely when this happens is a matter of some debate, but for our present purposes it is important only to understand that it happens, not when.)

This attainment, which Jean Piaget called "object permanence," is an important step in the individual's development of a differentiated self.

This is a traumatic development, Fowler points out, because this is when we begin "remembering our mothers when they are absent from us and...panic about whether they will return" (Stages, 120). For most of us, the mother (or other primary caregiver) does return, and we begin to develop trust.

Fowler writes,

Those observers are correct, I believe, who tell us that our first pre-images of God have their origins here. Particularly they are composed from our first experiences of mutuality, in which we form the rudimentary awareness of self as separate from and dependent upon the immensely powerful others, who were present at our first consciousness and who "knew us" -- with recognizing eyes and reconfirming smiles -- at our first self-knowing. (121)

Fowler explains that these are "pre-images because they are largely formed prior to language, prior to concepts and coincident with the emergence of consciousness" (121).

The quality of the care we receive as infants will play an important role in our faith development as we get older. As Fowler explains, "the quality of mutuality and the strength of trust, autonomy, hope and courage (or their opposites) developed in this phase underlie (or threaten to undermine) all that comes later in faith development" (italics in original; 121).

The next stage, the first true stage of faith development, "begins with the convergence of thought and language, opening up the use of symbols in speech and ritual play" (121).

Next: Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith

Stages of Faith: Introduction

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to write about the things I want to write about without making reference to the work of people like James W. Fowler, whose research into faith development has had a profound impact on my own thinking.

I've decided to write a series of concise descriptions of the various stages of faith identified by Fowler, so that I can make reference to them in my work.

Faith

It's very important to understand that when Fowler speaks of "faith," he is not talking about "belief," and he is not even necessarily talking about anything religious. The "faith" of many people is often entirely secular.

Fowler draws on the thought of Paul Tillich, H. Richard Niebuhr, and Wilfred Cantwell Smith. For Tillich, "Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned" (Dynamics 1), and "whatever concerns a man ultimately becomes a god for him" (Systematic 1.211). Tillich derived this idea from Deuteronomy 6.5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Dynamics 3). Needless to say, the biblical God is not everyone's "god," even for those who might insist otherwise.

One might point out that, for many people, there is no single centre of value that commands one's faith, and this is where Niebuhr comes in.

Much like Niebuhr, Fowler uses the term polytheist to describe someone whose faith "lacks any one center of value and power of sufficient transcendence to focus and order one's life" ( 19). This might follow one of two patterns. One might follow a protean pattern, and have a series of fairly intense commitments that are nevertheless "transient and shifting," where one's faith is marked by "sharp discontinuities and abrupt changes of direction" (Stages 19-20), or one may have a diffuse pattern of faith, where one has "a kind of laid-back, cool provisionality regarding commitment or trust" (20).

Fowler writes,

The practical impact of our consumer society's dominant myth -- that you should experience everything you desire, own everything you want and relate intimately with whomever you wish -- is to make the polytheistic pattern, in either its protean or diffuse form, seem normative. (20)

On the other hand, there are those who have one single dominant centre of value and identity, but it is something that is limited and finite. This pattern of faith is termed henotheism, a term coined by Max Müller to denote "faith in one god...without asserting that (it) is the only god" (20).¹ An example of this would be someone whose primary centre of value is their career, their country, etc.

"The henotheistic god," writes Fowler, "is finally an idol":

It represents the elevation to central, life-defining value and power of a limited and finite good. It means the attribution of ultimate concern to that which is of less than ultimate worth. (20)

Finally, Fowler appropriates Niebuhr's notion of radical monotheism. As with the other terms, he is not speaking strictly in terms of religious belief. Radical monotheism, Fowler explains, "implies loyalty to the principle of being and to the source and center of all value and power" (emphasis in original; 23). In this broad sense, it is not to be narrowly identified with traditional Western theism, and it can be conceptualised in both theistic and non-theistic ways.

This does not mean that other centres of value and power do not exist, but it does mean they become far less important.

Most people tend to be polytheists or henotheists, as Fowler defines these terms. Indeed, he acknowledges that radical monotheism "rarely finds consistent and longlasting actualization in persons or communities," and he suggests that it serves as a "regulative principle," or "a critical ideal" against which we can "keep our partial faiths from becoming idolatrous" (23).

With this understanding of faith as something that is not necessarily religious, we can better understand what Fowler means when he speaks of faith development. It applies no less to atheists than it does to Christians (or Muslims, or Jews, or whoever).

It is also important to understand that the stages of faith are formal stages -- that is, they do not describe the content of faith. A Stage 3 atheist will have very different faith content (beliefs and so on) than a Stage 3 Hindu or a Stage 3 Jew. But there will be important parallels between them. They may differ in what they believe, but they will be similar in how they think about their beliefs, how they relate to authority, and so on. I will try to demonstrate this when I actually get into describing each stage.

The Stages of Faith

Pre-Stage - Infancy and Undifferentiated Faith
Stage 1 - Intuitive-Projective Faith
Stage 2 - Mythic-Literal Faith
Stage 3 - Synthetic-Conventional Faith
Stage 4 - Individuative-Reflective Faith
Stage 5 - Conjunctive Faith
Stage 6 - Universalizing Faith

Notes

[1] Christians often believe in a plurality of supernatural beings, angels and saints and so on, who are often the object of devotion and even prayer, and so Christianity is sometimes described as henotheistic rather than strictly monotheistic. Fowler, like Niebuhr, uses the term in a much broader sense than this.