Description

Faith is a generic feature of human beings and is distinct from belief, religion and spirituality:

BELIEF: Is an intellectual assent or agreement to statements that form the doctrines, theology or ideological claims of a particular spiritual or religious tradition, group or individual. Belief therefore is just an aspect, or part of an individual’s or group's faith. Beliefs are inferences, propositions, or hypotheses that we create where there is insufficient evidence to prove them as either correct or false. This is why we are in quadrants 1 and 4 more than quadrants 2 and 3. These beliefs exist along a continuum of certainty that includes such positions as conviction, assurance, opinion, persuasion, inclination and sentiment.

RELIGION: Is a cumulative tradition in a culture or society that is composed from the many and varied beliefs and practices that have expressed or formed the faith of individuals past and present. The components of religion include religious institutions, such as churches, temples, shrines and so on; authoritarian or hierarchical structures, such as Popes, archbishops and priests; as well as art, architecture, symbols, rituals, ceremonies, narrative, myth, Sacred writings, doctrines, ethical or moral teachings, music and practices of justice and mercy. Religion tends to be an outward demonstration of internally held beliefs and faith.

SPIRITUALITY: Is the realm of the individual’s beliefs and experiences in relation to the Absolute, Divine or Ultimate: the non material, incorporeal Essence that is without material form or substance, but which may (a) emerge from the material, such as pure thought emerging from the brain, or (b) contract to form the Essence of all the material that is. Spirituality is inward and subjective, hence again our emphasis on quadrants 1 and 4, and often takes the form of a journey. Spirituality is always defined in this study in relationship to an individual’s perception and experience of the Absolute and not, as is common today, in relation to uplifting or liberating emotional experience.

FAITH: Faith includes unconscious dynamics as well as conscious awareness and also includes deep-seated emotional dimensions as well as the cognitive operations and content of rationality and logic. Therefore faith is more personal and more existentially defining than belief. A central process that integrates or unites faith is intuition, underlying the formation of beliefs, values and meanings that form our faith.