usly close to the schoolboy's definition mentioned by William James: ‘Faith is when you believe something that you know ain't true’ (James 1896/1956, 29).
if faith consists in beliefs that have the status of knowledge, surely faith cannot fail to be rational?
but it is not clear that this aspiration can finally be met.
Reflective believers who are aware of the many options for faith, and the possibility of misguided and even harmful faith-commitments, will wish to be satisfied that they are justified in their faith. The theistic religious traditions hold a deep fear of idolatry—of giving one's ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich 1957/2001) to an object unworthy of it. So the desire to be assured of entitlement to faith is not merely externally imposed by commitment to philosophical critical values: it is a demand internal to the integrity of theistic faith itself. Arguably, believers must even take seriously the possibility that the God they have been worshipping is not, after all, the true God (Johnston 2009). But, for this concern to be met, there will need to be conditions sufficient for justified faith that are ‘internalist’—that is, conditions whose obtaining is, at least indirectly if not directly, accessible to believers themselves. Those conditions may plausibly be presumed to include the evidentialist requirement that faith is justified only if the truth of its cognitive content is adequately supported by the available evidence.
On an externalist account, that is, one might lack independent evidence sufficient to confirm that one has knowledge that God exists while in fact possessing that very knowledge. And one might thus refute an objector who claims that without adequate evidence one cannot genuinely know. But this is still, it may be argued, insufficient to secure entitlement to theistic faith—assuming that entitlement requires that one has evidence adequate to establish one's knowledge, or even just one's justified belief, that God exists. For, one has such evidence only conditionally on God's existence—but it is precisely entitlement to believe that God exists that is at issue (Kenny 1992, 71; Bishop and Aijaz 2004).
Perhaps God provides only, as it were, ‘secret’ evidence of his existence, purposely overturning the expectations of our ‘cognitive idolatry’ in order to transform our egocentric self-reliance (Moser 2008); besides, there may be significant constraints logically inherent in the very possibility of unambiguous divine revelation to finite minds (King 2008).
The process of arriving at propositional articulations expressing the nature and will of the self-revealing God—the doctrines of ‘the Faith’—will, of course, be understood as a process under providential grace. It is often assumed, however, that that process can achieve ‘closure’ in a completed set of infallible credal beliefs. But this assumption about how divine inspiration operates may be contested, both on the theological grounds that it reflects the all-too-human desire to gain control over God's self-revelation (to ‘pin God down once and for all’), and on the wider epistemological grounds that any attempt to grasp independent reality in human language will be in principle fallible and subject to revision in the light of future experience
Aquinas's account of faith
Though firmly held theological belief is central to it, Aquinas's understanding of faith is more complicated and nuanced than the view that faith is ‘the theoretical conviction that God exists’. Aquinas holds that faith is ‘midway between knowledge and opinion’ (Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 1, 2 (O'Brien 1974, 11)). Faith resembles knowledge, Aquinas thinks, in so far as faith carries conviction. But that conviction is not well described as ‘theoretical’, if that description suggests that faith has a solely propositional object. For Aquinas, faith denotes the believer's fundamental orientation towards the divine. So ‘from the perspective of the reality believed in’, Aquinas says, ‘the object of faith is something non-composite’ (non-propositional)—namely God himself. Nevertheless, grasping the truth of propositions is essential to faith, because ‘from the perspective of the one believing … the object of faith is something composite in the form of a proposition’ (Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, 1, 2 (O'Brien 1974, 11 & 13), my emphases)
A further problem with describing as Thomist a model of faith simply as firm belief in theological propositions is that Aquinas takes as central an act of ‘inner assent’ (Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae, 2, 1 (O'Brien 1974, 59–65))
if faith consists in beliefs that have the status of knowledge, surely faith cannot fail to be rational?
but it is not clear that this aspiration can finally be met.
Reflective believers who are aware of the many options for faith, and the possibility of misguided and even harmful faith-commitments, will wish to be satisfied that they are justified in their faith. The theistic religious traditions hold a deep fear of idolatry—of giving one's ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich 1957/2001) to an object unworthy of it. So the desire to be assured of entitlement to faith is not merely externally imposed by commitment to philosophical critical values: it is a demand internal to the integrity of theistic faith itself. Arguably, believers must even take seriously the possibility that the God they have been worshipping is not, after all, the true God (Johnston 2009). But, for this concern to be met, there will need to be conditions sufficient for justified faith that are ‘internalist’—that is, conditions whose obtaining is, at least indirectly if not directly, accessible to believers themselves. Those conditions may plausibly be presumed to include the evidentialist requirement that faith is justified only if the truth of its cognitive content is adequately supported by the available evidence.
On an externalist account, that is, one might lack independent evidence sufficient to confirm that one has knowledge that God exists while in fact possessing that very knowledge. And one might thus refute an objector who claims that without adequate evidence one cannot genuinely know. But this is still, it may be argued, insufficient to secure entitlement to theistic faith—assuming that entitlement requires that one has evidence adequate to establish one's knowledge, or even just one's justified belief, that God exists. For, one has such evidence only conditionally on God's existence—but it is precisely entitlement to believe that God exists that is at issue (Kenny 1992, 71; Bishop and Aijaz 2004).
Perhaps God provides only, as it were, ‘secret’ evidence of his existence, purposely overturning the expectations of our ‘cognitive idolatry’ in order to transform our egocentric self-reliance (Moser 2008); besides, there may be significant constraints logically inherent in the very possibility of unambiguous divine revelation to finite minds (King 2008).
The process of arriving at propositional articulations expressing the nature and will of the self-revealing God—the doctrines of ‘the Faith’—will, of course, be understood as a process under providential grace. It is often assumed, however, that that process can achieve ‘closure’ in a completed set of infallible credal beliefs. But this assumption about how divine inspiration operates may be contested, both on the theological grounds that it reflects the all-too-human desire to gain control over God's self-revelation (to ‘pin God down once and for all’), and on the wider epistemological grounds that any attempt to grasp independent reality in human language will be in principle fallible and subject to revision in the light of future experience
The venture of trust
Trust involves a venture; so too—it is widely agreed—does faith. So, if faith is trust, the venture of faith might be presumed to be the type of venture implicated in trust. A venture is an action that places the agent and outcomes of concern to the agent significantly beyond the agent's own control. Trust implies venture. When we trust we commit ourselves to another's control, accepting—and, when necessary, co-operating as ‘patient’—with the decisions of the trustee. Venturing in trust is usually assumed to beessentially risky, making oneself vulnerable to adverse outcomes or betrayal. (Swinburne makes the point this way: ‘To trust someone is to act on the assumption that she will do for you what she knows that you want or need, when the evidence gives some reason for supposing that she may not and where there will be bad consequences if the assumption is false’ (2005, 143). Annette Baier puts it somewhat differently, taking trust to involve ‘accepted vulnerability to another's possible but not expected ill will (or lack of good will) toward one’ (Baier 1986, 234).) Accordingly, it seems sensible to hold that one should trust only with good reason. But if, as is plausible, good reason to trust requires sufficient evidence of the trustee's trustworthiness, reasonable trust appears both to have its venturesomeness diminished and, at the same time, to become more difficult to achieve than we normally suppose. For we often lack adequate—or even, any—evidence of a trustee's trustworthiness in advance of our venture, yet in many such cases we suppose that our trust is entirely reasonable. But, if adequate evidence of trustworthiness is not required for reasonable trust, how is reasonable trust different from ‘blind’ trust?
If faith is a kind of trust, then we may expect our understanding of faith to profit from an analysis of trust. Conceptually fundamental to trust is the notion of a person (or persons)—the truster—trusting in some agent or agency—the trustee—for some (assumedly) favourable outcome (though what the trustee is trusted for is often only implicit in the context). As noted at the outset, there is a usage of ‘faith’ for which ‘having/placing faith in’ is (near enough) synonymous with ‘trusting’ or ‘trusting in’. But this usage, of course, omits whatever is distinctive about the kind of trusting that is involved in faith of the theistic sort. Nevertheless, it is worth considering what follows about theistic faith from holding it to be a kind of trust.
There are cases where the truth that a person is trustworthy may be beneficially grasped only if one first takes it that the person is trustworth
uyskens contrasts hope with faith (understood as belief), arguing that a religion of hope is both epistemically and religiously superior to a religion of faith. But faith is not generally thought of as competing with hope (Creel 1993); indeed, other philosophers identify faith with hoping that the claims of faith are true (Pojman 1986; 2003). Hope as such is an attitude rather than an active commitment:
Faith is only one of the theological virtues, of course, the others being hope and charity (or love, agape): and St Paul famously affirms that the greatest of these is love (I Corinthians 13). The question thus arises how these three virtues are related. One suggestion is that faith is taking it to be true that there are grounds for the hope that love is supreme—not simply in the sense that love constitutes the ideal of the supreme good, but in the sense that living in accordance with this ideal constitutes an ultimate salvation, fulfilment or consummation that is, in reality, victorious over all that may undermine it (in a word, over evil). The supremacy of love is linked to the supremacy of the divine itself, since love is the essential nature of the divine. What is hoped for, and what faith assures us is properly hoped for, is a sharing in the divine itself, loving as God loves (see Brian Davies on Aquinas, 2002). On this understanding, reducing faith to a kind of hope (Section 9 above) would eradicate an important relation between the two—namely that people of faith take reality to be such that their hope (for salvation, the triumph of the good) is well founded, and not merely an attractive fantasy or inspiring ideal.
an there be faith without adherence to any theistic tradition? Those who agree with F.R.Tennant that ‘faith is an outcome of the inborn propensity to self-conservation and self-betterment which is a part of human nature, and is no more a miraculously superadded endowment than is sensation or understanding’ (1943/1989, 111) will accept that this must be a possibility. Tennant himself suggests that ‘much of the belief which underlies knowledge … is the outcome of faith which ventures beyond the apprehension and treatment of data to supposition, imagination and creation of ideal objects, and justifies its audacity and irrationality (in accounting them to be also real) by practical actualization’ (1943/1989, 100). Faith in this sense, however, may not seem quite on a par with faith of the religious kind. True, scientists must act as if their ‘ideal objects’ are real in putting their theories to the empirical test; but they will ‘account them to be also real’ only when these tests do provide confirmation.
Some hold that the truth accepted by faith must be a ‘saving’ truth—a solution to a deep problem about the human situation. Their view is thus that faith must be religious, and they accordingly enter into argument as to which religion offers the best solution to the human problem (see, for example, Yandell 1990, 1999). It is arguable, however, that an existentially vital faith that grounds hope can belong within a wholly secular context. Annette Baier suggests that ‘the secular equivalent of faith in God, which we need in morality as well as in science or knowledge acquisition, is faith in the human community and its evolving procedures—in the prospects for many-handed cognitive ambitions and moral hopes’ (Baier 1980, 133). More broadly, some maintain that a meaningful spirituality is consistent with a non-religious atheist naturalism, and include something akin to faith as essential to spirituality. For example, Robert Solomon takes spirituality to mean ‘the grand and thoughtful passions of life’, and holds that ‘a life lived in accordance with those passions’ entails choosing to see the world as ‘benign and life [as] meaningful’, with the tragic not to be denied but accepted (Solomon 2002, 6 & 51)
source http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/faith/
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