faith

   Within analytical philosophy 'faith' is an epistemological term referring to belief in a proposition in the absence of evidence due (at least in part) to trust in the source of that belief. Faith thus involves both cognitive apprehension and personal commitment. In this sense, one can have faith in many circumstances, including the testimony of another person or of one's own sense faculties. The call to have faith, so essential to Christian belief, raises some important epistemological questions. For instance, the fact that those that believe the resurrection without seeing receive commendation (John 20: 29) seems to stand in tension with epistemic intuitions that scepticism in the absence of evidence is commendable. One resolution is to see Doubting Thomas as maintaining scepticism despite adequate testimony or evidence to make faith in Jesus a rational epistemic alternative. Another possibility is to reject the demand for rationality as a primary good, and instead see faith as an irrational, but ultimately commendable, decision. As such, one can say that rationality is not the only, or even primary, epistemic virtue. The existentialist tradition has picked up on this theme, with Kierkegaard famously discussing 'a leap of faith' that one has to make in embracing religious commitment. Pascal, from whom Kierkegaard drew some inspiration, took faith as being a virtue of the practical reason, rather than of the theoretical reason.

   See credo ut intellegam; epistemology; epistemology, Reformed; epistemology, religious; existentialism; fideism; fides quaerens intellectum; Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye; Pascal, Blaise; reason; reason, practical; revelation

   Further reading: Adams, Robert Merrihew 1987; Penelhum 1995; Senor 1995; Sessions 1994; Swinburne 2005