Scripture compares the ongoing Christian life to building a house, planting a crop, leavening a loaf, attending a wedding, fighting a war, running a race, and many other things (Matt. 7:24–27, 13:31, 32, 33, 25:1–13; Eph. 6:10–17; Heb. 12:1, 2).1 As our Sabbath School lesson for this week emphasizes, Scripture also compares it to the growth of a person from infancy to adulthood (Eph. 4:14–16; Heb. 5:11–14; 1 Pet. 2:1–3; 2 Pet. 3:18). Each analogy highlights some aspects of the Christian life and partially obscures others. This is why we need them all.

Taking seriously the idea of the Christian life as "growth," and building upon the earlier work of people such as Erik Erickson, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg, some years ago James W. Fowler, a psychologist of religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, established an important school of thought by identifying six typical stages of faith.

These are excerpts from a profile provided by Rowland Croucher, a contemporary "Barnabas" at John Mark Ministries who reaches out to former Christian clergy and others all around the world from his headquarters in Australia:

The first stage Fowler calls Intuitive-Projective faith. It usually occurs between the ages of three and seven, and is characterized by the psyche’s unprotected exposure to the Unconscious. Imagination runs wild in this stage, uninhibited by logic.

The second stage is called Mythic-Literal faith, in which symbol and ritual begin to be integrated by the child. These symbols, however, are one-dimensional. Only literal interpretations of myth and symbol are possible. The runaway imagination of stage one is here harnessed, and linear thinking becomes normative.

The third stage is labeled Synthetic-Conventional faith. The majority of the population finds its permanent home in this stage. Usually arising in adolescence, this stage demands a complex pattern of socialization and integration, and faith is an inseparable factor in the ordering of one’s world. It is a stage characterized by conformity, where one finds one’s identity by aligning oneself with a certain perspective.

The fourth stage is known as Individuative-Reflective. This is primarily a stage of angst and struggle, in which one must face difficult questions regarding identity and belief. Those that pass into stage four usually do so in their mid-thirties to early forties.

Stage five, Conjunctive faith moves one from stage four’s rationalism to the acknowledgement of paradox and transcendence.…In this stage a person grasps the reality behind the symbols of his or her inherited systems, and is also drawn to and acknowledging of the symbols of other’s systems. In stage five, the world, demythologized in stage four, is re-sacrilized, literally brimming with vision.

Stage six, the final stage, Fowler calls Universalizing faith. While in the previous stage, one glimpses a unitive view of reality, but feels torn between possibility and loyalty, and may even neglect to act on its new understanding out of a regard for self-preservation, in stage six, any such apprehensions dissolve and one becomes an activist for the unitive vision.

Many Christians have found in Fowler’s six stages a scheme that helps them make more sense of their own lives. It is frequently cited and often used to pinpoint the relative maturity of individuals and sometimes even groups.

Yet I understand from my colleague Carla Gober that "stages of faith" thinking is not as influential as it used to be. I also notice that in Christian Ethics and the Moral Psychologies (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006), a book Carla and I will read for the first time this summer along with some of our graduate students, author Don S. Browning pays less attention to this approach than I thought he would. This may tell us something. (Why not read this book this summer, too, and tell us what you think?)

"Stage of faith" thinking has long given me some worries because it can leave the mistaken impression that spiritual development is invariable, smooth, and cumulative. (I use word spiritual in order to be understood even though I don’t like it because it connotes a false split between the spiritual and material.) Also, it can be obnoxiously elitist, as in "I’m at Stage 4; isn’t it so sad that you’re at Stage 3?" Another problem is that it is hard to know whether it tells us how our lives as Christians actually do "grow" (description?) or how they should (prescription?).

Probably the biggest problem of "stages of faith" thinking for me is that, when wrongly used, it implies that, if we Christians live as we should, each day will be better, that our faith will gradually develop, unfold, and grow such that the shadows of spiritual disappointment and discouragement will never darken our experience. When we come to the end of our lives, we and others will concur that we lived very well, as though we are graduating from school with honors! This is not always so.

I once watched with astonishment as Billy Graham with obvious sincerity told an interviewer on television that he was disappointed by how little he had been able to accomplish for the cause of Christ. Rachel Davies documents in the last issue of Spectrum (spring 2007) that Mother Teresa sometimes felt spiritually empty. "I want God with all the power of my soul," she wrote, "and yet between us there is a terrible separation." She also wrote, "I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing."

John the Baptist appears to have been waging war against doubt and discouragement precisely when Jesus commended him to others as a prophet and "more than a prophet," above whom "no one has arisen" (Matt. 11:1–15). And then there is Jesus. Before he cried aloud, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit," he shouted "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" How’s that for a grand finale?

Maybe, then, in view of all this, thinking of "stages of faith" is itself a "stage." If so, it is one through which I think we should all pass. I say this because it establishes that coming "home" as a wasted prodigal is not the only way to become a Christian. Another benefit is that it tells us that within limits we can grow in our understanding and practice of the Christian life. It also reminds us that we can get stuck and, worse yet, regress or even lose our way entirely.

Another insight from "stages of faith" thinking is that as we travel through life the questions we ask change, not only the answers. One of its most important contributions is that we are often much more impatient with the stage we just "left" and the people in it than we are with earlier stages because the previous ones can no longer hold us back.

When all is said and done, it is probably best not to pay too much attention to our own "stages of faith." Why not concentrate upon God’s faithfulness instead? Why not focus upon "the pioneer and perfecter of our faith" (Heb. 12:1, 2), always reminding ourselves and each other that "the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ?" (Phil. 1:6).

Notes and References

1. All biblical citations are from the New Revised Standard Version.

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