[22] faith, namely faith embracing itself and the doubt about itself--faith embracing itself and the doubt about itself. There is an element of doubt, of "in spite of," in every living faith^a. Now I come to the traditional forms, what somebody believes--in terms of his God, in terms of the revelation of his God, in terms of a special doctrine, in terms of the doctrines either of his church or of the Bible^b or of the Koran or the traditions of the seers of old, in India, or who have the authority, maybe--or of modern science (this is also a possibility). All these forms are what I would call risks. Every act of faith^c must be concrete, but in being concrete, in having a finite conditional content, every act of faith is a risk. And nobody can take this risk away from you. Now there are special forms in which this risk is taken. When you speak with Roman Catholics, then you often believe they have no such risk, they have subjected themselves to the authority of the church, the church takes away the risk for them, and so they can live in quiet and in certainty. But it is not as easy as that. The Catholic theology, and even the Roman Catholic layman, would say: There is ALSO an act of risk, which of course we believe is not a WRONG risk; you don't risk anything--but you MUST risk! And this is the subjection to the church itself. And many Catholics who live in a culture such as ours, in contrast to the Middle Ages, where there was no alternative, there are now many alternatives (Protestantism, humanism, naturalism, Indian mysticism)--there are many alternatives. If the Catholic Christian of today who is aware of this situation, who does not live any more in the Middle Ages (as of course many levels of society still do), if this man realizes his situation, he also must become aware that his subjection to the Roman Catholic authorities has in itself an element of risk. But THEN, after he has done this, the risk comes to an end, he does not have to risk anything after this with respect to the content of his faith, everything is given to him by tradition and authority. The Protestant Fundamentalist^d is in the same situation with respect to the Bible^e. There, the risk is even greater, because he has to make not only the one risk--to subject himself to the authority of the Bible--but he has to repeat this risk, always, when historical research shows him the innumerable problems of the Biblical literature, and he has to deal with them, either by denying their existence (which is a dangerous risk), or by going into it and then every special step is a new risk.