Generally, faith is conceived of as something outside of us. Our faith is a link to the ‘outside’ or ‘spiritual’ realm. As such, it doesn’t seem to make much sense for me to say that I have ‘pragmatic’ faith. After all, something is generally considered pragmatic only if it displays itself in the outside world–and faith is generally thought of as something immaterial. I can act through faith, but still cannot produce a lump of physical faith for you to examine. So, taken in the most literal sense, yes, the term pragmatic faith is an oxymoron. But is there anything beyond a literal translation…?

I think so. Generally, pragmatism (please read my What is Pragmatism? page if you are not at all familiar with the subject) and faith are seen as mutually exclusive–but I say that this need not be the case. To understand why, let’s examine something that the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty described as recontextualization.

Big Word, Easy Meaning: Recontextualization

Imagine a spiderweb. Got it? Ok, now imagine that spiderweb is the human mind in its entirety–there’s nothing else to it. There’s nothing we can see beyond a simple web. Pretty simple so far. Now imagine that each strand in the web is a belief, a desire, a predisposition, or an attitude–all weaved together into the tapestry of beliefs and desires that makes up a human being. 

Now you have to believe that every now and then parts of the web will get damaged. Maybe a bug flies into it and breaks some strands, or it rains and parts of the web break off as a result. These damages to the web are analogous to our ‘crises of faith,’ or anything that happens to challenge our beliefs (of any kind) and forces us to ‘reweave our web.’ When we re-weave our web of beliefs, one of two things things happens. We either: 1. Accommodate new beliefs and reject the old, or 2. Reject the new beliefs and fortify the old against them. 

This is, as you might imagine, a bit simplified, but the analogy adequately represents Rorty’s idea of recontextualization. The re-weaving of our beliefs and desires as we come across new ideas that challenge our old ones is the process of recontextualization. That’s all it is. 

Imagine a real world situation: suppose I am a firm believer in, say, the idea that all cars must have four doors to be ‘real’ cars. Then, one day, I see a coupe for the first time. The particular strand in my web of beliefs that tells me that all real cars must have four doors has suddenly been challenged! What can I do? I can either get rid of my old belief and accommodate a new one (that real cars can have less than four doors) or I can reject the new belief and re-enforce my old one (perhaps that the car with two doors is not in fact a ‘real’ car, but maybe a ‘fake’ car). Regardless of what I choose to do, recontextualization has taken place. 

So, the question is: how can a Christian maintain this world-view? It surely seems that Rorty’s idea does not allow for a soul (in fact, for him, recontextualization’s lack of transcendence was the prominent high point) or anything spiritual. 

How could this be compatible with faith? We’ll explore that in my next post.