Sea Day

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.  James 1:6-8 NIV

Doubt – Doubt is a big problem for modern religious faith.  Why?  Because doubt is viewed as unbelief, as something that diminishes true faith, almost as if doubt is sinful.  To compensate for a demand for extreme, unwavering piety, and to  acknowledge that virtually all of us have moments of doubt, religious authorities often say something like this statement from Rabbi Elie Spitz:

“ . . . lived relationship with God contains an element of doubt.”[1]

Spitz makes it seem as if doubt is inevitable, that it must occur in the relationship between Man and God.  But this is quite strange.  Why?  Consider Heschel’s remark:

There is no word in Biblical Hebrew for doubt; there are many expressions for wonder.  Just as in dealing with judgments our starting point is doubt, wonder is the Biblical starting point in facing reality.  The Biblical man’s sense for the mind-surpassing grandeur of reality prevented the power of doubt from setting up its own independent dynasty.  Doubt is an act in which the mind inspects its own ideas; wonder is an act in which the mind confronts the universe.  Radical skepticism is the outgrowth of subtle conceit and self-reliance.  Yet there was no conceit in the prophets and no self-reliance in the Psalmist.[2]

If there is no word for doubt in the Torah, then what explains the experience of doubting and what are we to do about it?  Why do both James and Yeshua suggest that doubt is a reality in spiritual life?

Before we investigate the vocabulary of this verse, we need to add a recorded statement of Yeshua.

Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”  Matthew 14:31 NIV

What we discover is that James uses the Greek diakrínō while Matthew uses distazō.  Is there a difference?

Greek normally uses distázō for “to doubt” (cf. in the NT Mt. 14:31; 28:17). The NT has dialogismós in the same sense. diakrínesthai for “to doubt” is rare even in later Christian writings, which prefer distázō. The Semitic originals express the thought of “divided or divergent opinion.”^[3]

NT doubt comes to expression in prayer and action, not in thought. What is doubted is God’s word. Doubt is not philosophical skepticism nor is it the uncertainty of conflicting motives. In Mk. 11:23 it is a final lack of faith that God can really do what is requested.^[4]

This kind of doubt does not appear in the OT, where rejection of God’s word is a deliberate attitude rather than a lack of certainty or consistency.^[5]

Perhaps our modern world’s preoccupation with cognitive certainty has lost sight of the biblical reality.  In the Bible, doubt is not a mental state of confusion.  It is inaction.  It is the refusal to take steps based on the veracity of God’s word.  In other words, the reason there is no word for cognitive confusion (doubt) is because the dichotomy is between acting or not acting, not between thinking about how to act.

Greek, of course, has words that express mental confusion, that is, the inability to decide how to act.  But this is not the same as acting or not acting.  Therefore, when we read the New Testament documents in Greek, rather than understanding them from a Hebraic point of view, we import the idea that distazō or diakrínō must be about the kind of mental confusion we have.  We think that Matthew and James are speaking about a feeling of uncertainty, rather than the opposition of acting one way or the other.  We imagine that our cognitive, emotional experience of uncertainty is what these Semitic authors are discussing.  We end up believing that our version of doubt is somehow essential and authorized, when all along these authors are describing fulfilling God’s commands or not fulfilling God’s command regardless of cognitive, emotional conditions.  Doubting Thomas was not the victim of uncertainty.  He just failed to act.

Topical Index: doubt, distazō, diakrínō, action, confusion, Matthew 14:31, James 1:6-8

[1] Rabbi Spitz in Jack Riemer and Elie Spitz, Duets on Psalms: Drawing New Meaning from Ancient Words (Ben Yehuda Press, 2023), p. 100

[2] Abraham Heschel, God in Search of Man (Ferrar, Straus and Giroux, 1955), p. 98.

^[3] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 474). W.B. Eerdmans.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Ibid.