Account Of Faith Research Articles

Nietzsche, Nishitani, and Laruelle on Faith and Immanence

Abstract This article explores the use of the concept of “faith” in three non-Christian philosophers. The study begins with Nietzsche, who, while deeply critical of Christian belief throughout his work, offers a positive reformulation of the term in a few key texts. From here, the discussion proceeds to two authors who are deeply influenced by Nietzsche, François Laruelle, and Nishitani Keiji. Laruelle’s recent turn to non-theology sees him engaging directly with Christian theological material and presenting a distinction between a positive form of “faith” in contrast from standard religious “belief,” a distinction I suggest bears close resemblance to Nietzsche’s approach, especially in relation to the Apostle Paul. Finally, Nishitani offers his own account of faith, one inspired primarily by the Buddhist notion of faith, but also referencing Christian theology and specifically the practice of Paul, while also connecting with Nietzsche. The connecting theme for all three thinkers is rooted in Zarathustra’s encouragement to be “faithful to the earth,” a non-transcendent, immanent formulation of faith. Faith, in Nishitani and Laruelle especially, is non-doctrinal, non-dogmatic, and non-intellectual; it is, instead, practical, an immanent existence, a way of life resulting in a different form of connection with the world around us.

Faith and Hinge Epistemology in Calvin’s Institutes

Abstract In mainstream analytic epistemology, Reformed theology has made its presence prominently felt in Reformed epistemology, the view of religious belief according to which religious beliefs can be properly basic and warranted when formed by the proper functioning of the sensus divinitatis, an inborn capacity or faculty for belief in God that can be prompted to generate certain religious beliefs when presented with things (e.g., certain majestic aspects of creation). A major competitor to Reformed epistemology is Wittgensteinian quasi-fideism, a position drawn from the epistemology of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty, according to which some foundational religious commitments are not properly basic beliefs but some kind of apodictic, unshakeable certainties that form part of the structure of one’s rationality and worldview. I argue that the Reformed tradition has contained elements of quasi-fideism at least as far back as Calvin’s account of faith from the Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 3, chapter 2.

Human Beings and Ethics in the Thought of Herbert McCabe

Abstract Cartesian pictures of the human self and act-centred understandings of ethics dominate modern thought. Throughout his work, Herbert McCabe challenges these, and as such remains an important resource for philosophical and theological ethics. This paper lays out McCabe’s philosophical anthropology, showing how he draws on Wittgenstein to revive a Thomist account of the human person. It then shows how this anthropology feeds into a philosophical ethics, focused on human flourishing and the possibility of life being meaningful. This, in turn, underwrites a theological ethics, according to which the human person flourishes ultimately through graced participation in the divine life. The paper concludes with a discussion of McCabe’s account of faith as participation in the divine self-knowledge.

An argument for the perspectival account of faith

Abstract Faith, I argue, is a value-oriented perspective, where the subject has a pro-attitude towards the object of the perspective. After summarizing the perspectival account of faith and its upshots that are relevant to the proceeding argument, I give an extended explanatory, cumulative case argument for the account by showing that the perspectival account of faith explains the data that alternative accounts of faith seek to explain, including why faith is present in paradigmatic cases of faith and the truth, or perceived truth, of various statements about faith. In addition, I argue that the perspectival account of faith explains the plausibility of alternative accounts of faith; each of the alternative accounts of faith focuses on a feature or consequence of faith, according to the perspectival account, which we would expect if other faith theorists seek but incorrectly identify the correct account of faith.

WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH AND THE ORIGINS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

In this paper I look at one of those thinkers who set the stage for, and influenced, Locke and Hume, William Chillingworth (1602-1644), and show how he understood faith, reason, and the relation between the two. Addressing the question of how the relation of faith and reason came to be an issue in the Anglo-American theological and philosophical traditions will provide some context for the later discussions by Locke and Hume on this relation, but will also show the distinctiveness of this earlier account of faith and reason – an account which may provide some insight and resources for discussing the general issue of the relation of faith and reason today.

Faith as skill: an essay on faith in the Abrahamic tradition

Abstract What is the nature of religious faith as understood in the Abrahamic tradition? This article suggests a novel answer to this question. To this end, I first outline five desiderata, characterized by appealing to conceptions of faith in both the Islamic and Christian traditions, which I think every adequate account of faith should satisfy. These five desiderata are: (1) explaining the principle of the relationship between faith and religious actions; (2) accounting for the maxim of the relationship between faith and moral virtues; (3) showing how the thesis of the priority of faith over knowledge can be the case; (4) providing a basis for the axiom of the gradability of faith; and (5) solving the dilemma of faith as a gift or an achievement. Then I make my case and develop a model of faith that satisfies all five desiderata. Following the accounts in the literature that describes faith as a kind of know-how, the central idea of my suggestion is that religious faith is partly constituted by intellectual, practical, and moral skills.

Kierkegaard on Hope and Faith

Faith, hope and love have often been classed together in the Christian tradition as the three “theological virtues”. Kierkegaard does not use that label for them, but he does have a good deal to say about all three. This paper starts by examining hope, arguing that there is an Aristotelian-style virtue relating to hope (a mean between wishful and depressive thinking) and that Kierkegaard could consistently recognize it as a secular virtue. However, his main discussions of hope as a positive state are in a religious context and relate it closely to faith and love; proper hope is a work of love and grounded in faith in God. I then argue that Kierkegaard’s understanding of faith, hope and love is, in many respects, close to Aquinas’ understanding of them as theological virtues (which differs in important ways from Aristotle’s account of a virtue) and that, therefore, it is appropriate to see Kierkegaard’s religious thought as lying within the tradition of virtue theory. The main difference between Aquinas and Kierkegaard here is that the former has an intellectualist and propositional account of faith which contrasts with the latter’s affective and existential view of it. This means that hope and love are both closer to faith for Kierkegaard than they are for Aquinas, meaning that he has a tight account of the unity of the theological virtues. I conclude by discussing how both faith and hope operate as antidotes to despair in The Sickness Unto Death.

My religion preaches ‘p’, but I don't believe thatp: Moore's Paradox in religious assertions

AbstractIn this article, I consider the cases of religious Moorean propositions of the form ‘d, but I don't believe thatd’ and ‘d, but I believe that~d’, wheredis a religious dogma, proposition, or part of a creed. I argue that such propositions can be genuinely and rationally asserted and that this fact poses a problem for traditional analysis of religious assertion as an expression of faith and of religious faith as entailing belief. In the article, I explore the possibility of undermining these commonly held assumptions and argue that the assertability of religious Moorean propositions can be justified by an account of faith as an intention to form religious beliefs. In the end, I also consider the consequences of such a stance, especially concerning the debate on the ethics of religious belief and doxastic voluntarism.

Religion, fiction, and facts

Religious fictionalism is a philosophical theory that aims to provide an alternative to the metaphysically realistic (theistic or God-centred) view of the nature of religious discourse. Religious fictionalism argues that being an atheist is compatible with a certain kind of personal religiousness because it is possible to understand traditional religious discourse as a useful fiction. In the first part of my presentation, I will outline the central ideas of religious fictionalism. After that, I highlight some key problems associated with it. These have to do with the “make-believe” attitude of the fictionalist account of faith and the problems linked with personal integrity. In the last part of the article, I will turn to metaphysical and epistemic presuppositions that play a central role in religious fictionalism. I will deal with these issues in the light of Bas van Fraassen’s empiricist views on science, secularism and religion.

Sartre and Frankfurt: Bad faith as evidence for three levels of volitional consciousness

AbstractThis essay argues for a new conception of bad faith based partly on Harry Frankfurt's famous account of personal autonomy in terms of higher‐order volitions and caring, and based partly on Sartre's insights concerning tacit or pre‐thetic attitudes and “transcendent” freedom. Although Sartre and Frankfurt have rarely been connected, Frankfurt's concepts of volitional “wantonness” and “bullshit” (wantonness about truth) are similar in certain revealing respects to Sartre's account of bad faith. However, Sartre leaves no room for Frankfurt's central point that people can volitionally commit themselves to develop certain motives and reduce others, thereby shaping an authentic identity through volitional “identification” and “alienation” of motives. Frankfurt in turn minimizes the role that a sense of liberty to form and alter higher‐order volitions plays in experiences of autonomy, which Sartre recognizes in the transcendence of the “for‐itself.” When these points are combined, we get a tri‐level theory of intrasubjective volitional stances that explains Sartre's cases better than his own theory can, and also clarifies how sincere or procedurally autonomous self‐relation is possible.

Faith and rational deference to authority

AbstractMany accounts of faith hold that faith is deference to an authority about what to believe or what to do. I show that this kind of faith fits into a more general account of faith, the risky‐commitment account. I further argue that it can be rational to defer to an authority even when the authority's pronouncement goes against one's own reasoning. Indeed, such deference is rational in typical cases in which individuals treat others as authorities.

On the Nature of Faith and Its Relation to Trust and Belief

Abstract One can have faith in someone, believe in someone and trust someone, and these notions seem closely related. Any account of faith should then address its relation to trust and belief. Like trust, faith can similarly have propositional and relational forms. One can have faith that God is good and faith in God; one can trust that another will do something and trust them to do it. Starting from a comparison between these forms of faith and trust, this paper proposes a philosophical analysis of faith and its relation to trust and belief.

Global Faith, Trust, and Hope

Abstract This paper develops an account of faith as a global trait of character, and explores how it relates to trust and hope. This account is developed in terms of the functional role faith occupies: what it is that global faith does in our lives. Global faith is taken to be a disposition to persevere in seeing the good in situations, events, circumstances, and people. This trait is explored through real and fictionalised situations of difficulty and strife, and when looking back at one’s past experiences and challenges. The paper locates global faith within the broader family of faith-attitudes, contrasts it with similar accounts, and shows how it contributes to valuable trustfulness and hopefulness.

Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity by Roberto Di Ceglie

Reviewed by: Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity by Roberto Di Ceglie Gregory Stacey DI CEGLIE, Roberto. Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Charity. New York: Routledge, 2022. x + 196 pp. Cloth, $160.00 Suppose one wishes to argue that Christian faith (that is, supernatural belief in propositions insofar as they are divinely revealed) is compatible with the proper exercise of reason (that is, forming beliefs through natural cognitive processes). Two strategies suggest themselves. First, one could argue that faith is itself a natural cognitive process or else meets criteria by which natural beliefs are considered rational or appropriate. Alternatively, one might contend that faith can meet its own, independent criteria for rationality or propriety. Thomas Aquinas, whose natural theology and discussion of public evidence that God has revealed himself in Christ are famously robust, may appear to be an exponent of the former strategy. Yet in this volume, Roberto Di Ceglie advances a reading of Thomas that illustrates how faith can support rational enquiry, while remaining independent of it. On this view, faith is "caused mainly by God" and is therefore "at least partly unresponsive to rational criteria." Part 1 begins Di Ceglie's case obliquely, by criticizing both efforts to argue (following Gilson and Maritain) that philosophy can be influenced by Christian faith and recent attempts to explain Aquinas's account of faith and reason. Reviewing the work of commentators including Anthony Kenny, Richard Swinburne, and Eleonore Stump, the author objects that many philosophers hold that for Thomas, faith is primarily a form of propositional belief that should be evaluated for propriety in the same way as natural beliefs. He alleges that this understanding of faith is inherited from Locke, who endorsed "methodological naturalism": the view that appropriate "religious belief can only be taken as the outcome, if any, of a rational exploration of our experience." While this material usefully outlines views which Di Ceglie means to oppose, readers unfamiliar with scholarship on Aquinas and Locke may find these initial chapters difficult to follow. The argument becomes easier to follow in part 2, which provides Di Ceglie's own interpretation of Aquinas. The key third chapter explores Aquinas's definition of faith as "an act of the intellect assenting to the Divine Truth at the command of the will moved by the grace of God" (ST II-II, q. 2, a. 9). It demonstrates that while for Aquinas faith involves firm propositional belief, its certitude derives not from believers' assessment of signs that God has revealed the articles of faith but from their free choice—itself a gift of grace—to embrace those articles. More precisely, in cases of "formed" faith, this choice is motivated by supernatural love for God (charity). Charity's role in Aquinas's religious epistemology is [End Page 547] highlighted in two subsequent chapters. Inter alia, Di Ceglie charges that faith is meritorious principally due to its grounds in charity rather than because the articles of faith are not evidently true. He further claims that Aquinas understood "unformed" faith as merely "faith commonly so called"—that is, natural belief in propositions because one judges that they are testified to by a competent authority. Accordingly, unformed faith lacks perfect confidence because it is merely based on probabilistic evidence that God has revealed the articles of faith, rather than on a strong, loving will to trust God. More generally, the certitude of one's faith is proportionate to the perfection of one's charity. Having developed a reading of Aquinas's religious epistemology that stresses the distinction between faith and reason, in part 3 Di Ceglie considers their positive relationship. First, he attempts to reconcile the apparently opposing views that Aquinas's philosophy is purely an exercise of natural reason, and that his philosophical work was influenced by his Christian faith. Broadly, the charity that grounds formed faith also inspires and enhances rational investigation, although philosophical arguments cannot presume faith's truth. Believers with formed faith, however, should reject positions that contradict faith and seek to revise their philosophical reasoning accordingly. The final chapter argues that Christian faith affords a better position from which to engage in rational reflection than atheism or agnosticism. Among other advantages, faith...

A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus ed. by Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J.

Reviewed by: A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus ed. by Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J. Mark Woodruff Walter Oxley and Ulrich Rhode, S.J., ed. A Treasure to Be Shared: Understanding Anglicanorum Coetibus Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022 182 pages. Paperback. $34.95. Three years before he died in 1988, Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, was visited by a long-time collaborator with the news that he would shortly announce his resignation and be received into the Catholic Church. Ramsey responded, "If you had told me twenty-five years ago that this man whom I ordained a priest in the Church of God would one day leave his ministry to become a Roman Catholic, I would not have been believed it possible. Nowadays, I cannot say that I am surprised." Not long before, Ramsey had given a serious of lectures to Anglican seminarians in the United States (The Anglican Spirit, 2004) in which he described Anglicanism not as a church that was an end in itself, but providential and necessary for the authentic re-composition of the universal Church as a whole. They are a fine reflection on what it is about the shared history, perspective, and tradition—social, theological, ecclesiological, spiritual, pastoral, and liturgical—that it matters to Anglicanism to offer to the whole Church in the spiritual exchange of gifts of which John Paul II wrote, just as Anglicanism has itself learned so much from other churches. So, what is this patrimony as identified by the Catholic Church? A Treasure to be Shared provides the considered reflections of key Catholic figures who witnessed the rising tide of groups longing to transfer to the Catholic Church, yet not lose who they were and what had formed them. These accounts of the historical background, the canonical conundrum, the ecumenical controversies, and the Catholic Church's shaping of the Anglican patrimony that it wished to receive, as a kind of so far missing expression of its faith, crucially come not from the immediate beneficiaries or third-party commentators, or apologists for one cause or another, but from those involved in the development of Anglicanorum Coetibus at close hand. Did it come twenty years too late? Cardinal Basil Hume of West-minster told Anglican clergy hoping to be received and ordained [End Page 125] priests in the Catholic Church in 1993: "Bring your Anglican tradition with you. Do not leave it behind. We need it." In his essay on canonical questions, Gianfranco Ghirlanda, S.J., Rector of the Pontifical Gregorian University at the time of Anglicanorum Coetibus' release and now a Cardinal, convincingly explains that earlier proposals for corporate reunion could only prove inconclusive. The late Msgr. Mark Langham, from his role at the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity as Anglicanorum Coetibus was crystallizing, reflects in his essay that official Anglican bodies had so far failed to "think things through" (158–159) on the implications of their dialogue with the Catholic Church, or to be consistent in their account of faith and order, or moral teaching. Yet Ghirlanda's engrossing account of discussions back and forth between the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, and ultimately Pope Benedict XVI, reveals the conviction in Rome that a defining moment had at last arrived, and that it was important to keep faith with those who had taken the Catholic Church at its word—if only the right formula could be found. Resolving upon the structure of the personal ordinariate recalls the proposal at the Malines Conversations from Dom Lambert Beauduin that the way to unite the identity and tradition of Anglicans with the Catholic Church was through a distinctive entity: "the Anglican Church, united not absorbed." But to some Anglican observers the establishment of the ordinary's office as vicarious, as if it signified a merely delegated power rather than a position distinct from that of the local bishop and protected for this purpose by immediacy to the Apostolic See, fell short of a fitting recognition of what Anglican tradition constitutes in a reintegrated Church. Ghirlanda is frank...

The perspectival account of faith

AbstractThis article articulates and defends an underexplored account of faith – the perspectival account of faith – according to which faith is a value-oriented perspective on the world towards which the subject has a pro-attitude. After describing this account of faith and outlining what it is to have faith on the perspectival account, I show that the perspectival account meets methodological criteria for an account of faith. I then show that this account of faith can be used to unify various faith locutions: having faith that p (propositional faith), having faith in something (attitudinal faith), being a person of faith (global faith), articles of faith (creedal faith), and acts of faith (praxical faith). Finally, since the perspectival account of faith is a cognitive account of faith, I defend the perspectival view against objections to cognitive accounts of faith.

Mystery and nothingness: the christian conception of call in the perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre

ABSTRACT This essay explores the possibility for a phenomenology of Christian vocational calling through conversation with Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential-ontology. By demonstrating how Sartre’s account of nothingness comports with a Rahnerian understanding of God as absolute mystery and how Sartre’s account of bad faith further opens up an understanding of ontological self-identity as a turn away from God, we can establish a phenomenology of Christian vocation as one’s owning each finite situation in terms of its divinely available possibilities rather than simply its given conditions. Divine call thus occurs where one’s possibilities for boundless becoming are freely recognized in any situation and are further apprehended in light of the character of God to become the possibilities for the freedom and calling of others.

Amen to daat: on the foundations of Jewish epistemology

AbstractI argue that the Hebrew Bible adopts a non-doxastic account of propositional faith. In coming to this conclusion, we shall discover that Biblical Hebrew has no word for belief. What ramifications might this have had for biblical and Jewish epistemology? I begin to trace the sort of epistemic norms that might emerge from an epistemology that approaches knowledge by thinking about faith, rather than belief.

Kant on the Relations between Church and State: An Introduction to the Special Edition

This introduction is divided into two parts. First, drawing on Paul Guyer’s suggestion that we should turn to Kant to reinvestigate the foundations of religious liberty, I outline Kant’s views on the relations between the ethical (‘church’) and the political (‘state’) community, as presented in Part Three of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, focusing in particular on his arguments for separation between religion and the state. Examining critically the idea to employ Kant in contemporary debates, I claim that Kant’s account of pure moral faith and the church as its ‘vehicle’ may pose difficulties for any argument for religious liberty that appeals to his thought. For Kant is better equipped to offer resources to overcome rather than to accommodate the fact of so-called “moral pluralism,” i.e. the condition in which the principle of religious liberty can find its application. In the second part, I summarise the arguments of the authors who contribute to this volume: D. Jakušić, W. Kozyra, S. Lo Re, G.E. Michalson Jr., and S.R. Palmquist.

Bad Faith in Film Spectatorship

This article seeks to develop an under-appreciated aspect of spectator activity: the way in which viewers make use of film to enter or sustain a project of bad faith. Based on Jean-Paul Sartre's account of bad faith in Being and Nothingness (1943), the article explains the aspects of bad faith that are pertinent to viewer activity, then explores the way viewers can make use of filmic depictions to facilitate self-denial. For example, spectators may emphasize the fact that persons are depicted in narrow terms as corroboration for their belief that human nature is just as its depicted, thereby denying that we have the freedom to be otherwise. Or spectators may deny the relevance of problematic aspects of themselves when they find it depicted in characters who are admirable in other ways. I then consider whether films themselves can be described as being in bad faith. While technically they cannot, I identify ways that a film may encourage or discourage bad faith in viewers. I also examine how the immersive aspect of film enables viewers to turn attention away from themselves while they engage in self-denial. The case for this approach to viewer activity and film analysis is supplemented by a distinction between traits that do apply to film, e.g., being racist, sexist, or homophobic, and the resources it gives persons to be in bad faith about these social attitudes. I argue that a film can have traits like these while not encouraging bad faith and vice versa, demonstrating the unique perspective offered by approaching film and spectator activity in terms of bad faith.