Few modern thinkers have helped pastors and thoughtful Christians navigate faith after doubt more than the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. His idea of second naïveté—a way of returning to faith after criticism—has shaped generations of theologians, preachers, and ordinary believers who can no longer read the Bible with the “just believe it” simplicity of childhood, but who also refuse to give up on Scripture, worship, or the language of faith.

For many of us, this is not an abstract philosophical question. It is the lived experience of trying to follow Jesus with integrity in a world shaped by science, psychology, biblical scholarship, and profound suffering. As Ricoeur famously put it:

“Beyond the desert of criticism, we wish to be called again.”
—Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, 349.

This article tries to explain Ricoeur’s model in an accessible way and explores why it matters so deeply for pastors, teachers, and anyone who is trying to hold together honesty and hope.

The Three Movements of Faith: First Naïveté – Criticism – Second Naïveté

Ricoeur develops his model of interpretation across several works, especially The Symbolism of Evil, Freud and Philosophy, and the essays collected in The Conflict of Interpretations. At the heart of this work is a movement through three stages:

  1. First naïveté — unreflective, literal belief
  2. Critical distance — the “hermeneutics of suspicion”
  3. Second naïveté — post-critical, re-appropriated faith

First Naïveté: Faith Before Questions

In the first stage, we take biblical language at face value. The creation stories, the miracles, the sacrificial imagery, the resurrection—all of it is received simply and literally. We enter the imaginative world of Scripture without friction.

Ricoeur describes this stage as a direct, immediate participation in the sacred symbols. In other words, people at this point do not experience symbols as symbols—they simply receive them as transparent windows into the sacred.

This stage of faith is not “bad.” In fact, it is where most people in our congregations find themselves on the disciple’s path. They take the Bible at face value, reading it simply and literally with sincere trust—and God honors this kind of devotion. Pastors, therefore, should never belittle this beginning point or recklessly push people toward critical thinking before they are ready. God can and does transform faithful followers through naïve readings of Scripture, and we are wise to remember that people are saved by grace through faith, not by successfully progressing through stages of biblical understanding.

Even so, part of our pastoral calling is to gently raise deeper questions and patiently guide congregants toward a more mature and resilient faith. As Paul reminds us, “we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ” (Ephesians 4:14–15, NRSV). Our task is to honor where people are, trust the Spirit’s pace, and lovingly lead them forward so they can encounter the deeper, richer, transforming wisdom that Scripture offers.

Critical Distance: The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Eventually, life raises questions. Sometimes it’s a crisis of suffering. Sometimes it’s science class. Sometimes it’s the complexities of adult life.

Ricoeur names this second stage the hermeneutics of suspicion, a phrase he uses to gather thinkers like Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche—figures who challenge what religious language claims on the surface. In Freud and Philosophy, he explains how these critics expose hidden motives and competing interpretations beneath religious explanations.

Modern people, Ricoeur argues, simply cannot stay in first naïveté without serious cognitive dissonance. Once you’ve learned to ask questions, you cannot suddenly forget how. And when we take these questions seriously and wrestle with their implications, our childlike faith can begin to unravel. This can be a frightening experience—one that sometimes pushes us back toward simpler explanations as we try to repress our doubts. Yet once these questions surface, they rarely disappear. We can spend enormous energy trying to keep them at bay, often propped up by versions of fundamentalist religion that encourage willful denial. On the other hand, unresolved questions can push people toward the opposite extreme, abandoning faith altogether in favor of reductionistic, materialist accounts of the world.

But there is another possibility. Sometimes this season of deconstruction opens the door to a new, deeper, more resilient kind of faith. This is especially true for those who have encountered God in meaningful ways—moments of grace or presence that create a deep desire to believe. Yet as our simple, literal faith unravels, we discover that we cannot go back to believing the way we once did. What we need is not a return to the past but a renewed faith; a way of thinking, trusting, and believing that can engage our questions honestly and sustain us amid the complexities of adult life.

Second Naïveté: A Faith That Has Passed Through Fire

The brilliance of Ricoeur’s model lies here. He refuses both fundamentalism and cynicism. For him, criticism is not the end of faith but the doorway into something deeper and wiser.

Second naïveté is not going back to literal belief. It is going forward into symbolic, poetic, post-critical belief.

We read Scripture again, but with eyes open:

  • We no longer demand literalism.
  • We no longer reduce faith to historical fact-checking.
  • We no longer dismiss religious language as illusion.
  • We consent—freely, humbly—to the power of symbols to reveal truth.

Faith on the other side of doubt is quieter, humbler, and more resilient. It trusts the power of symbols to reveal truth without pretending that symbols must be literal to be real.

Why Second Naïveté Matters for Today’s Church

Ricoeur’s model gives the church a way to move beyond the polarization of our time:

  • Fundamentalism lives in first naïveté.
  • Skepticism lives in suspicion.
  • Mature faith grows into second naïveté.

Second naïveté helps us avoid shallow literalism on the one hand and shallow cynicism on the other. Instead of asking, “Did this really happen?” as our only interpretive question, second naïveté asks a richer one: What truth does this symbol reveal, and how does it shape us into Christ’s likeness?

This is not a downgrade of Scripture’s truth. It is an acknowledgment that its truth runs deeper and is more mysterious than literalism can hold. We do not dismiss symbols as somehow inferior to facts; instead, we return to them with greater reverence and wiser understanding. Throughout the Christian tradition, theologians have recognized that symbols carry a kind of revelatory power that factual language alone cannot convey. Unlike bare propositions, symbols open new horizons of meaning—they disclose value, purpose, and divine reality in ways that illuminate the whole of our existence. They create a light in which we begin to see everything differently, reshaping our worldview and reorienting the deepest parts of our lives. And because symbols reach the heart as well as the mind, they possess a transformative power that can change our behavior from the inside out, drawing us into the likeness of Jesus.

How Second Naïveté Helps Pastors Preach with Integrity

The pastor’s calling is not only to understand Scripture but to proclaim it faithfully—often to congregations full of people at various stages of belief. Ricoeur’s work gives pastors a framework for preaching the ancient symbols without pretending they mean something they do not.

Below are seven ways second naiveté strengthens pastoral leadership.

1. It affirms that biblical language can be true without being literal.

A post-critical pastor doesn’t need to force ancient texts into modern categories. You can preach resurrection, kingdom, incarnation, and miracle in ways that honor their theological truth without flattening them into newspaper-style reportage.

Biblical symbols reveal meaning. They invite transformation. They awaken imagination. That is their truth.

2. It honors people who are still in first naïveté.

A congregation includes:

  • those with simple faith,
  • those in crisis,
  • those reconstructing belief.

Ricoeur helps pastors see that first naïveté is not bad. It’s simply a stage of learning. You don’t need to disrupt it prematurely. You can preach symbols with depth while allowing people to hear them at the level they are ready for.

3. It trusts the power of symbols to do their own work.

The pastor does not have to explain every angle of resurrection, cross, or kingdom. Proclaim the symbol faithfully trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit, and it will awaken meaning in those who hear it—each in their own way and in their own time.

4. It creates space for honesty without dismantling anyone’s faith.

Preaching from second naïveté allows a pastor to be truthful without being destructive. The message becomes: These stories are true—deeply, theologically, sacramentally true—even if their truth is not literal in the way modern people assume.

You can preach with integrity without announcing all your philosophical footnotes from the pulpit.

5. It teaches patience with those who have not yet faced deconstruction.

People ask questions when they’re ready. A pastor grounded in second naïveté doesn’t panic when someone’s faith seems too simple—or when someone else enters doubt. You can trust the Holy Spirit’s timing.

6. It shapes preaching marked by humility rather than arrogance.

A second-naïveté preacher speaks differently:

  • bold but not domineering
  • honest but not cynical
  • clear but not dogmatic
  • humble but not vague

This kind of preaching is magnetic. It gives people space to breathe.

7. It equips the pastor to guide those in the wilderness of suspicion.

Eventually, people ask tough questions:

  • What do miracles mean today?
  • Is resurrection history or symbol?
  • How is Scripture true?
  • What is myth? What is theology?

A pastor who has walked through their own hermeneutical desert can gently say:

“I’ve been there. Your questions are not dangerous. There is deeper faith on the other side.”

This makes the pastor a spiritual midwife—helping people move from suspicion into a wiser, sturdier trust.

Why This Model Offers Hope for the Church

Ricoeur’s second naïveté is not an academic game. It is a pastoral gift; a way of living faithfully with Scripture in a world where simple certainty is no longer possible for many people.

It allows the church to:

  • preach Scripture without fear
  • embrace questions without anxiety
  • reject both easy literalism and easy unbelief
  • cultivate mature, humble, resilient disciples

And most importantly: It invites us to hear God’s call again—on the other side of criticism—with hearts made wiser by the journey.

Relevant Works by Paul Ricoeur

Ricoeur, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974.

Ricoeur, Paul. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.

Ricoeur, Paul. The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.

Helpful Secondary Works

Kaplan, David M. Reading Ricoeur. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008.

Kearney, Richard. On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004.

Tracy, David. The Analogical Imagination. New York: Crossroad, 1981.