Faith At The Edge

Call it existential doubt. Call it “the dark night of the soul.” However you term it, God-doubting is a spiritual phenomenon endemic to the Christian experience, suffered by saints from Mother Theresa, St. John of the Cross, and Therese of Lisieux to lesser-known Christians throughout history. In fact, there may be something of this God-doubting in nearly all of us.

Faith at the Edge is for those doubters, believers struggling with their faith within the Christian tradition, not for the skeptics and seekers who lie outside it. It is for those who experience uncertainty about faiths to which they have been committed, but who now wonder whether it’s true. This doubt is very personal and deeply disturbing, exemplified when God seems remote, when he is experientially absent, when his very existence seems uncertain, when everything one believes as a Christian is called into serious question.

Robert Wennberg here explores the important questions of existential doubt. What causes our sense of divine absence? Are we at fault, or is there some other explanation for our uncertainty? Why does God allow this to happen? How should we respond? Wennberg answers these and other provocative questions both through personal illustrations and through the wisdom and insight of such figures as Blaise Pascal, G. K. Chesterton, Simone Weil, C. S. Lewis, and Martin Marty. He lays out a credible theological account of what happens during doubt. He further helps us understand how we can cope with these dark episodes and how we can not only stand against them, but even profit from them spiritually.