Editing Faith (section)

==== Strength of faith ====
Christians may recognize different degrees of faith when they encourage each other to, and themselves strive to, develop, grow, and/or deepen their faith.<ref>For example {{cite book | title = Draw Near to God: 100 Bible Verses to Deepen Your Faith | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=VSSDDwAAQBAJ | publisher = Zondervan | date = 2019 | isbn = 978-0-310-45388-8 | access-date = 25 September 2019}}{{page needed|date=July 2023}}</ref>
This may imply that one can measure faith. Willingness to undergo [[martyrdom]] indicates a proxy for depth of faith but does not provide an everyday measurement for the average contemporary Christian. Within the [[Calvinist]] tradition the degree of prosperity<ref>Compare [[prosperity theology]].</ref> may serve as an analog of the level of faith.<ref>Compare:
{{cite book | last1 = Weber | first1 = Max | author-link1 = Max Weber | translator1-last = Baehr | translator1-first = Peter | translator2-last = Wells | translator2-first = Gordon C. | year = 1905 | title = The Protestant Ethic and the 'Spirit' of Capitalism: and Other Writings | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=4MmligHndssC | series = Penguin twentieth-century classics | location = New York | publisher = Penguin | publication-date = 2002 | isbn = 978-1-101-09847-9 | access-date = 25 September 2019 | quote = In the course of its development, Calvinism made a positive addition: the idea of the necessity of ''putting one's faith to the test'' [''Bewährung des Glaubens''] in secular working life. [...] It thus provided the ''positive'' motivation [''Antrieb''] for asceticism, and with the firm establishment of its ethics in the doctrine of predestination, the spiritual aristocracy of the monks, who stood outside and above the world, was replaced by the spiritual aristocracy of the saints ''in'' the world, predestined by God from eternity [...]. | archive-date = 13 January 2023 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20230113012218/https://books.google.com/books?id=4MmligHndssC | url-status = live }}</ref>
Other Christian strands may rely on personal self-evaluation to measure the intensity of an individual's faith, with associated difficulties in calibrating to any scale. Solemn affirmations of a [[creed]] (a statement of faith) provide {{clarify|text=broad measurements of details.|date=July 2023}} Various tribunals of the [[Inquisition]], however, concerned themselves with precisely evaluating the orthodoxy of the faith of those it examined – to acquit or to punish in varying degrees.<ref>
{{cite book | last1 = Peters | first1 = Edward | author-link1 = Edward Peters (scholar) | year = 1988 | chapter = The Inquisition in Literature and Art | title = Inquisition | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=TnqLow3iKd4C | edition = reprint | location = Berkeley | publisher = University of California Press | publication-date = 1989 | page = 225 | isbn = 978-0-520-06630-4 | access-date = 25 September 2019 | quote = The costuming of those convicted [...] was the result of careful planning and indicated specific gradations of guilt. There was never a single, simple ''[[sanbenito]]'', for example, but a different kind of ''sanbenito'' for different crimes and degrees of heresy, with corresponding headgear [...]. The garb of the penitents, the procession with inquisitorial banners and crosses, the careful design of the seating and sequence of the ceremony made the [[Auto-da-fé|''auto-de-fé'']] itself 'a work of art [...]' [...]. [...] The aim of the ''auto-de-fé'', as its name suggests, is the '''act'' of faith,' that is, the liturgical demonstration of the truth of the faith and the error and evil of its enemies.}}</ref>

The classification of different degrees of faith allows that faith and its expression may wax and wane in fervor—during the lifetime of a faithful individual and/or over the various historical centuries of a society with an embedded religious system. Thus, one can speak of an "Age of Faith"<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book
 |last1                = Tanner
 |first1               = Norman
 |title                = The Ages of Faith: Popular Religion in Late Medieval England and Western Europe
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=dojYAAAAMAAJ
 |series               = Volume 56 of International Library of Historical Studies
 |year = 2009
 |publisher            = Bloomsbury Academic
 |publication-date     = 2009
 |page                 = 161
 |isbn                 = 978-1-84511-760-3
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
 |quote                = After all, was not the Middle Ages the 'age of faith' ''par execellence'', the time when the whole of Europe was united not only in its belief but also in a common view of society?
}}
|2={{cite book
 |last1                = Durant
 |first1               = Will
 |author-link1         = Will Durant
 |orig-date            = 1950
 |title                = The Age of Faith
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=cusRoE1OJvEC
 |series               = Volume 4 of ''[[The Story of Civilization]]''
 |date                 = 7 June 2011
 |publisher            = Simon and Schuster
 |publication-date     = 2011
 |isbn                 = 978-1-4516-4761-7
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
}}
}}</ref>
or of the "decay" of a society's [[religiosity]] into corruption,<ref>
{{cite book
 |title                = The Norton History of Modern Europe
 |year=1971 |url       = https://books.google.com/books?id=gPX5rnMMBGUC
 |publication-date     = 1971
 |page                 = 129
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
 |quote                = Luther attacked not the corruption of institutions but what he believed to be the corruption of faith itself.
}}</ref>
secularism,<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Haught
 |first1               = James A.
 |title                = Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age
 |year = 2010
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=GdKZSQAACAAJ
 |publisher            = Gustav Broukal Press
 |publication-date     = 2010
 |isbn                 = 978-1-57884-009-0
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
}}</ref>
or [[atheism]],<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Brown
 |first1               = Callum G
 |author-link1         = Callum G. Brown
 |title                = Becoming Atheist: Humanism and the Secular West
 |date = 12 January 2017
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=YnDBDQAAQBAJ
 |location             = London
 |publisher            = Bloomsbury Publishing
 |publication-date     = 2017
 |page                 = 2
 |isbn                 = 978-1-4742-2455-0
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
 |quote                = By the 1990s, the liberalization of Western culture allowed the individual in most countries to be comfortably alienated from church and faith without fear of censure or social stigma [...].
}}</ref>—interpretable as the ultimate loss of faith.<ref>
{{cite book
 |last1                = Kalla
 |first1               = Krishen Lal
 |title                = The Mid-Victorian Literature and Loss of Faith
 |year = 1989
 |url                  = https://books.google.com/books?id=5aQgemN-y3YC
 |edition              = 1
 |location             = New Delhi
 |publisher            = Mittal Publications
 |publication-date     = 1989
 |page                 = 205
 |isbn                 = 978-81-7099-155-7
 |access-date          = 28 October 2021
 |quote                = In the mid-Victorian era [...] new scientific discoveries broke out giving rise to agnosticism, scepticism and atheism. All important writers of this age came under the influence of rationalism and their writings are a record of the struggle in their minds between faith and loss of faith. Some, like [[Algernon Charles Swinburne|Swinburne]] and [[James Thomson (poet, born 1834)|J. Thomson (B.V.)]] became atheists [...].
}}</ref>