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Essay on Faith | Faith Essay for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Essay on Faith:  The term faith can be defined as the confidence and trust in a person, concept or a thing. Faith is different for everyone – having faith in something, or someone means believing in them and being able to trust them completely.

Religious faith and non-religious faith are two different things. Faith is a belief, which holds to every person –religious or non-religious. Faith is the hope that a person has, which also determines how the person decides to lead their life.

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Long and Short Essays on Faith for Students and Kids in English

We are providing students with essay samples on a long essay of 500 words and a short essay of 150 words on the topic Faith for reference.

Long Essay on Faith 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Faith is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Having faith is the essence of having hope. No matter how high one’s aspirations maybe if they keep trusting in themselves and embrace faith, their dreams turn into reality. Faith teaches us persistence and determination – nothing is possible when faith is absent. Faith serves as the driving force behind all the greatest endeavours that have ever been and are still being pursued in this world. Faith gives a person the push that they need to achieve their goals and fulfil their dreams – which they have set for themselves. Hence every new invention, discovery and success is possible because of the faith that was held on to during the tough times.

Faith not only means worshipping or believing in an idol. One can have faith without any prayers or any idols. Faith goes a long way in making an individual’s life happier and full of achievements. Having faith is necessary as even if one fails, faith gives them the strength to embrace the failures and try again. Faith cannot be taught, forced or imbibed into a person. It comes from within and serves as the determiner of one’s attitude towards life. Faith gives one motivation and also strength and enthusiasm for achieving their goals. Faith also serves as an important factor in determining the success or failure of one’s dreams – when faith is lost, failure is forthcoming.

A person who has any skills, intelligence or capabilities cannot accomplish their set goals if he or she lacks faith. Faith serves as the foundation of any mission that a person undertakes and has hope and will to complete. Even if having faith doesn’t make the struggles go away, it gives one the strength to face your challenges head-on and not let them drag them down.

Faith helps in keeping a person’s aim clear to them and helps them focus on their destination by not being deterred by the hardships that come their way. An individual feels enlightened and doesn’t lose their heart in a moment of hopelessness – is they have faith.

Great men and saints have lived their lives challenging the mainstream and stereotypes. They have accomplished tasks and missions that ordinary men were far from achieving. It was their faith, hope and belief that helped them achieve all this. Freedom fighters have faith in their country and themselves and have won great battles. This faith has also helped them in not getting disheartened when they have encountered failure. A doctor has full faith in his abilities that gives him the strength to cure his patients.

Even in the epics, there are examples of great characters like Lord Krishna, who won the battle against evil forces with his faith in goodness and fairness. Swami Vivekananda is another example of great men who practised and preached the power of faith to people and used it to get rid of most miseries faced by people. Mother Teresa had faith in humanity and brotherhood – and she kept serving the poor and sick selflessly. People still have in goodness for the selfless and kind contributions of people like her. History and one’s own experience has innumerable examples to showcase that faith is the mother of success and force of life.

Short Essay on Faith 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Faith is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Faith can be defined as having complete confidence or trust in a person or a thing. Faith is that distant light that stills keeps us moving even when the circumstances and surroundings seem to fall apart. When one has faith and keeps practising hard work courage and determination, there is nothing that can stop them from winning.

People who have succeeded in life and have made a change in the world is because they had faith in themselves and their beliefs. Every great achiever has always said that the reason why they are where they are in life is that they had faith in themselves. Faith is what made the impossible possible.

Having faith doesn’t always have to religious. One can even have faith without any deities or religion. Faith is something that comes with time – it cannot be put into something but is something that some builds with experience and time.

10 Lines on Faith in English

• Everyone has a different perspective on faith.
• Faith is not about what we claim to believe, but faith is what we truly believe in.
• Faith means believing in something true for both a religious and non-religious person.
• Faith doesn’t necessarily have to be religious.
• A struggle becomes much easier when the person has faith in themselves.
• Having faith doesn’t always need prayers and an idol; it can be practised from within.
• Having faith gives a person the hope to hold on in situations where everything seems dull and dark.
• One’s faith is completely one’s personal choice.
• Faith gives a person the strength to achieve their goals and aspirations.
• If one loses faith, failure is inevitable.

FAQ’s on Faith Essay

Question 1.  Does faith always have to be religious?

Answer: Faith doesn’t always necessarily have to be religious. Every living being – whether religious or non-religious – must have faith.

Question 2. Why is faith necessary?

Answer: Faith sometimes is the only brink of light during tough times that keep one moving forward. Faith gives one the strength in times of weaknesses. Without faith, one cannot survive.

Question 3.  Can faith have negative consequences?

Answer: Sometimes, faith can have negative consequences when an individual starts believing in the wrong things. This happens due to wrong company which can have deadly consequences.

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Essay on Faith

Introduction

A tightrope walker suspended high above a bustling city skyline takes each step with unwavering confidence. What keeps them balanced, you might wonder? It’s not just the taught wire beneath their feet but something far more intangible yet equally powerful: faith.

Faith, an intangible yet potent force, permeates every facet of human existence, shaping beliefs, actions, and perceptions. Whether rooted in religion, personal conviction, or trust in the unknown, faith is a cornerstone of our lives. It transcends boundaries of culture, creed, and time, offering solace in moments of uncertainty and anchoring us amidst life’s tumultuous seas. Yet, its essence eludes definitive explanation, encompassing a spectrum of meanings and interpretations. In this essay, we embark on a journey to unravel the complexities of faith, exploring its myriad manifestations and profound implications. From the sanctuary of sacred rituals to the corridors of everyday existence, faith weaves a tapestry of hope , resilience, and interconnectedness, inviting us to ponder the mysteries of existence and embrace the boundless potential of the human spirit.

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Understanding Faith

Faith is a multifaceted concept that encompasses various dimensions of human experience. It extends beyond religious belief systems to encompass trust, confidence, and conviction in something greater than oneself. To comprehend faithfully, one must explore its diverse interpretations and implications:

• Religious Faith : At its core, faith is often synonymous with religious belief. Across different faith traditions, believers trust a higher power, whether God, gods, or spiritual principles. Religious faith is a guiding force, providing moral frameworks, rituals, and narratives that shape individuals’ identities and worldviews. It offers solace in adversity and fosters community and belonging among adherents.
• Personal Faith : Faith extends beyond organized religion to encompass individual convictions and values. It reflects one’s trust in oneself, others, or the universe at large. It can manifest as confidence in one’s abilities, trust in humanity’s goodness, or belief in the cosmos’ inherent order. Personal faith empowers individuals to navigate life’s uncertainties with resilience and courage, guiding their choices and actions.
• Faith in Relationships : Faith is crucial in interpersonal relationships as the foundation of trust and commitment. Whether in friendships, romantic partnerships, or familial bonds, faith entails believing in the reliability and goodwill of others. It also involves vulnerability and risk, as individuals invest their trust and emotions in others, believing their bonds will endure challenges and hardships.
• Faith in the Unknown : Beyond tangible realities, faith encompasses belief in the unseen and the unknowable. It invites individuals to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, acknowledging that empirical evidence alone cannot grasp all truths. Faith in the unknown encourages exploration, curiosity, and openness to new possibilities, fostering personal growth and intellectual humility.
• Cultural and Philosophical Perspectives : Different cultures and philosophical traditions offer unique insights into the nature of faith. From the existentialist notion of faith in oneself to the Taoist concept of trusting the natural flow of life , diverse perspectives enrich our understanding of faith’s complexities. Cultural expressions of faith, such as art, literature, and rituals, provide windows into the human soul’s yearning for transcendence and meaning.

Historical Perspectives on Faith

To comprehend the depth and complexity of faith, it is essential to trace its roots through the annals of history, where it emerges as a fundamental force shaping human civilization.

• Ancient Civilizations: From Mesopotamia to Egypt, people deeply intertwined faith with the natural world and the cycles of life and death in the cradle of civilization. Ancient cultures venerated gods and goddesses, believing in their power to influence the forces of nature and human affairs. Rituals, sacrifices, and sacred texts emerged as expressions of devotion and attempts to understand the divine.
• Classical Antiquity: The quest for understanding and moral virtue replaced polytheistic worship as the central theme of the intellectual traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, providing multiple viewpoints on faith. Philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle contemplated the nature of the divine and explored concepts of transcendence, immortality, and the meaning of life. Skepticism and rational inquiry challenged traditional religious beliefs, paving the way for new ways of understanding faith.
• Abrahamic Religions: The emergence of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam marked a pivotal moment in the history of faith. Rooted in the monotheistic tradition of ancient Israel, Judaism laid the foundation for the Abrahamic faiths, emphasizing covenantal relationships between God and humanity . Christianity, born out of the teachings of Jesus Christ, introduced the concept of divine love, redemption, and salvation. Islam, founded by the Prophet Muhammad, offered a comprehensive worldview, uniting spiritual beliefs with legal and social principles.
• Medieval and Renaissance Periods: Faith was central in shaping European society during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The dominance of the Catholic Church provided a framework for religious life, with rituals, sacraments, and hierarchical structures governing spiritual practice. The rise of scholasticism and mysticism reflected diverse approaches to faith, from the rigorous logic of theologians like Thomas Aquinas to the ecstatic visions of mystics like Hildegard of Bingen.
• Enlightenment and Modernity: The Enlightenment ushered in an era of intellectual upheaval, challenging traditional religious beliefs and institutions. Philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant championed reason, individualism, and human autonomy. They also questioned religion’s authority and advocated for secularism and religious tolerance. Despite these challenges, faith persisted, adapting to new cultural, scientific, and political realities and shaping movements of social reform, spiritual revival, and global missionary outreach.

The Role of Faith in Religion

Faith occupies a central position in religion, serving as the cornerstone of belief systems and shaping the spiritual lives of adherents. Its role is multifaceted, encompassing various dimensions that are fundamental to religious practice and experience:

• Foundation of Belief : Faith establishes the foundation for religious beliefs. Followers of religious traditions trust and confide in the existence of divine beings, sacred texts, and spiritual truths. Through faith, believers accept and affirm their religion’s teachings and doctrines, even without empirical evidence.
• Source of Meaning and Purpose : Faith imbues religious life with meaning and purpose, answering existential questions about the nature of existence, human suffering, and the afterlife. It provides a framework for individuals to interpret their experiences and find significance in the broader context of divine providence and cosmic order.
• Guiding Moral Principles : Religious faith informs ethical and moral principles, guiding adherents’ behavior and shaping their moral decision-making. Believers draw upon their faith traditions’ teachings to discern right from wrong, cultivate virtues, and uphold ethical standards that reflect their devotion to divine commandments and principles of justice.
• Expression of Devotion and Worship : Faith inspires devotion and worship as believers express their reverence and commitment to their religious beliefs through rituals, prayers, and practices. These faith expressions deepen individuals’ spiritual connections with the divine and foster a sense of awe, gratitude, and humility.
• Community and Communal Identity : Faith fosters community cohesion and solidarity among believers as they come together to worship, celebrate religious festivals, and participate in communal rituals. Religious communities provide support networks, social structures, and avenues for collective worship and service, reinforcing individuals’ sense of belonging and shared identity.
• Means of Salvation and Redemption : Many religious traditions believe faith plays an instrumental role in attaining salvation, liberation, or enlightenment. Through faith in divine grace, mercy, or enlightenment, believers seek spiritual liberation from suffering, sin, and ignorance, striving to cultivate virtues and live by divine will.
• Source of Comfort and Hope : Faith provides solace and consolation in times of adversity, grief, and uncertainty. Believers draw strength from their faith, finding comfort in believing that divine providence offers guidance, protection, and eventual redemption. Faith instills hope for a better future in this life and the hereafter.

Faith in Everyday Life

Faith permeates every aspect of human existence, extending beyond religious contexts to influence personal relationships, decision-making, and resilience in facing challenges. Through real-life examples, we can explore how faith manifests in various facets of everyday life:

1. Faith in Self

• Pursuing Dreams : Consider an aspiring entrepreneur who embarks on a risky business venture fueled by faith in their abilities and vision. Despite uncertainties and setbacks, they persist with unwavering confidence, trusting their capacity to overcome obstacles and succeed.
• Overcoming Adversity : Imagine an individual facing a debilitating illness who maintains faith in their ability to heal and regain health. Through perseverance and a positive mindset, they navigate treatment challenges with resilience and hope, believing in their inner strength to overcome adversity.

2. Faith in Others

• Building Relationships : Imagine a newlywed couple embarking on a lifelong journey together, guided by faith in their love and commitment. Despite inevitable disagreements and challenges, they cultivate trust and mutual support, strengthening their bond through shared experiences and unwavering faith in their partnership.
• Parental Trust : Consider a parent entrusting their child with responsibilities, demonstrating faith in their abilities to make sound decisions and learn from mistakes. Through guidance and encouragement, the parent fosters the child’s self-confidence and independence, nurturing a relationship grounded in mutual trust and respect.

3. Faith in Community

• Volunteerism and Service : Reflect on individuals who dedicate their time and resources to serving their communities, driven by faith in the collective power of compassion and solidarity. Whether volunteering at a homeless shelter or participating in community outreach programs, they embody faith in humanity’s capacity for kindness and social change.
• Support Networks : Think of support groups or faith-based communities that provide solace and strength to individuals facing life’s challenges. Through shared experiences and mutual encouragement, members draw on their collective faith to navigate hardships, find healing, and foster a sense of belonging and connection.

4. Faith in the Future

• Educational Pursuits : Consider students who persevere through academic challenges, driven by faith in their potential to achieve their educational goals. With determination and resilience, they overcome setbacks, believing in the promise of a brighter future through learning and personal growth.
• Environmental Activism : Reflect on individuals and organizations advocating for environmental sustainability and conservation. Their optimism about humanity’s capacity to save the world for coming generations inspires them. Through activism and collective action, they strive to create a more sustainable and equitable world grounded in faith in the power of collective efforts to effect positive change.

Challenges to Faith

Despite its significance and resilience, faith is not immune to challenges. Human experiences, doubts, and external factors often test the strength and endurance of one’s faith. Here, we explore several common challenges to faith from the perspective of human struggles and uncertainties:

1. Doubt and Skepticism

• Internal Conflict : Individuals may grapple with doubts about their beliefs, questioning the validity of religious teachings or the existence of a higher power. These internal conflicts can arise from intellectual inquiry, personal experiences, or exposure to contradictory perspectives.
• External Influences : Skepticism fueled by societal norms, scientific advancements, or philosophical debates can also challenge faith. Cultural shifts towards secularism or materialism may undermine religious convictions, leading individuals to question the relevance or validity of their faith.

2. Suffering and Adversity

• Existential Angst : Confronted with personal suffering or witnessing the pain and injustice in the world, individuals may struggle to reconcile their faith with the existence of evil and suffering. The age-old question of why a benevolent deity allows suffering can shake the foundations of religious belief and lead to profound existential crises.
• Loss and Grief : Experiences of loss, such as the death of a loved one or personal tragedy, can challenge faith by eliciting feelings of anger, abandonment, or disillusionment. Despite prayers or religious rituals, the absence of divine intervention in moments of profound grief may strain one’s faith in the benevolence or existence of a higher power.

3. Morality and Ethics

• Moral Dilemmas : Conflicts between religious teachings and personal ethics may arise, challenging individuals to reconcile their faith with contemporary ethical issues. Debates over topics such as LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, or social justice can create tensions between religious doctrine and evolving societal norms, testing the integrity of one’s faith.
• Religious Hypocrisy : Instances of hypocrisy or misconduct within religious institutions or leadership may undermine trust in organized religion, causing disillusionment and skepticism among believers. Scandals involving abuse, corruption, or intolerance can erode faith in religious authority and the integrity of institutionalized faith.

4. Intellectual and Philosophical Inquiries

• Cognitive Dissonance : Encounters with philosophical conundrums or inconsistencies within religious texts may provoke cognitive dissonance, causing individuals to question the coherence or rationality of their faith. Paradoxes such as the problem of evil, predestination versus free will, or the compatibility of faith and reason can challenge deeply held beliefs.
• Interfaith Dialogue : Engaging with diverse religious perspectives or encountering atheistic philosophies may expose individuals to alternative worldviews, prompting critical reflection on their faith traditions. Dialogue with skeptics, agnostics, or adherents of other religions can foster intellectual humility and a deeper understanding of one’s own beliefs, but it may also raise challenging questions that unsettle faith convictions.

5. Spiritual Dryness and Disconnection

• Spiritual Crisis : Periods of spiritual dryness or disillusionment, commonly called a “night of the soul,” can test one’s faith by eliciting feelings of spiritual emptiness, alienation, or divine absence. Even with fervent prayers or religious practices, individuals may experience a sense of disconnection from their faith or difficulty finding meaning and purpose on their spiritual journey.
• Lack of Religious Community : Isolation or alienation from religious communities due to geographical mobility, cultural assimilation, or disagreements with fellow believers can weaken one’s sense of belonging and support network and challenge one’s faith resilience.

Benefits of Faith

Faith, whether in a religious context or as a broader belief system, offers individuals a multitude of strengths and benefits that contribute to their well-being, resilience, and sense of purpose. Here are several key strengths and benefits of faith:

1. Psychological Resilience

• Coping Mechanism : Faith is a powerful coping mechanism during adversity, providing individuals with comfort, hope, and inner strength to navigate challenges.
• Emotional Support : Belief in a higher power or divine providence offers emotional support, reducing anxiety, depression, and loneliness and promoting overall psychological well-being.
• Sense of Meaning and Purpose : Faith provides individuals meaning and purpose, helping them find significance in their experiences and fostering greater fulfillment and contentment.

2. Social Support and Community

• Sense of Belonging : Reducing isolation, fostering social cohesion, and engaging in religious or spiritual communities cultivate a sense of belonging and connection to those who share similar views and ideals.
• Mutual Support : Faith communities offer mutual support and solidarity during times of need, providing practical assistance, emotional encouragement, and spiritual guidance to members facing challenges.
• Opportunities for Service : Engagement in acts of service and volunteerism within faith communities strengthens social bonds and promotes altruism, compassion, and empathy toward others.

3. Health and Well-being

• Stress Reduction : Belief in a higher power or divine plan can reduce stress levels by promoting acceptance, surrender, and trust in the unfolding of life events beyond one’s control.
• Positive Health Outcomes : Studies have shown that people with strong religious or spiritual beliefs frequently have superior physical health outcomes, such as a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, an enhanced immune system, and a quicker recovery after illness or surgery.
• Lifestyle Practices : Many faith traditions encourage healthy practices, such as regular exercise, dietary guidelines, and stress-reduction techniques, contributing to overall health and longevity.

4. Ethical and Moral Guidance

• Guiding Principles : Faith provides individuals with ethical and moral guidelines for behavior, promoting virtues such as compassion, forgiveness, integrity, and humility.
• Sense of Accountability : Belief in divine judgment or karma fosters a sense of accountability for one’s actions, encouraging individuals to act with integrity and consider the ethical implications of their decisions.
• Contributions to Society : Faith-inspired values and principles often motivate individuals and communities to engage in social justice initiatives, humanitarian efforts, and advocacy for marginalized populations, promoting greater equity and compassion in society.

5. Hope and Optimism

• Positive Outlook : Faith instills hope and optimism for the future, encouraging individuals to envision possibilities for growth, transformation, and redemption, even in the face of adversity.
• Resilience in Uncertainty : Belief in divine providence or a higher purpose cultivates resilience in uncertainty, enabling individuals to maintain optimism and perseverance amidst life’s challenges.
• Source of Inspiration : The stories, teachings, and symbols of faith traditions inspire individuals to overcome obstacles, pursue noble aspirations, and strive for a better world, fueling a collective sense of hope and determination.

The Power of Faith

Here are two real case studies that illustrate the transformative power of faith:

Viktor Frankl’s Search for Meaning

• During World War II, Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl went through unspeakable torture in Nazi detention camps. Despite his horrors, Frankl discovered a profound sense of purpose and resilience through his faith.
• While imprisoned, Frankl observed that those who maintained a sense of meaning and purpose were more likely to survive. Drawing from his experiences, he developed logotherapy, a psychotherapeutic approach centered on finding meaning in life.
• After the war, Frankl’s faith in the human capacity for transcendence and his belief in a higher purpose led him to write “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a seminal work that continues to inspire millions worldwide.
• Through his enduring faith, Frankl not only survived the atrocities of the Holocaust but also found a way to transform his suffering into a source of wisdom and hope for generations to come.

Mother Teresa’s Compassionate Mission

• Mother Teresa, whose birth name was Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Albania, devoted her life to helping the impoverished in Calcutta, India. Motivated by her deep faith and a calling from God, she founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
• Despite facing numerous challenges and obstacles, including criticism and skepticism from some quarters, Mother Teresa remained steadfast in her commitment to love and serve the marginalized and destitute.
• Through her unwavering faith in God’s love and her belief in every human being’s inherent dignity, Mother Teresa touched countless lives, providing care, comfort, and hope to society’s most vulnerable members.
• Her selfless devotion to serving others earned her worldwide acclaim, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979. Mother Teresa’s legacy inspires people of all faiths to embrace compassion and altruism as guiding principles.

Critiques and Controversies

Despite its profound influence on individuals and societies, faith is not immune to criticism and controversy. Various critiques and controversies surround the concept of faith, reflecting diverse perspectives and conflicting interpretations. Here are some key critiques and controversies related to faith:

• Close-mindedness and Dogmatism : Critics argue that faith can foster close-mindedness and dogmatism, inhibiting critical thinking and openness to alternative perspectives. In some cases, rigid adherence to religious beliefs may lead to intolerance, discrimination, or rejection of scientific evidence that contradicts religious doctrine.
• Religious Extremism and Conflict : Faith-based extremism, characterized by radical interpretations of religious teachings and ideologies, has fueled violent conflicts, terrorism, and religious persecution throughout history. Critics contend that religious extremism poses a threat to global peace and stability, perpetuating cycles of violence and division.
• Ethical Ambiguity and Moral Relativism : Critics question the ethical foundations of faith-based morality, arguing that religious doctrines may promote moral absolutism or endorse practices that conflict with contemporary moral values. Moral relativism and ethical uncertainty exist inside and within religious communities due to the vast range of religious texts and teachings.
• Suppression of Dissent and Free Inquiry : Some critics argue that faith-based institutions and authorities have historically suppressed dissenting voices, persecuted heretics, and stifled free inquiry and scientific progress. Religious orthodoxy may discourage questioning or skepticism, hindering intellectual freedom and the pursuit of truth.
• Conflict between Faith and Secular Values : Tensions often arise between faith-based beliefs and secular principles, particularly in education, public policy, and human rights . Controversies surrounding issues such as evolution, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and religious freedom highlight the complex interplay between religious convictions and secular values.
• Scandals and Abuse within Religious Institutions : Instances of misconduct, abuse, and corruption within religious institutions have prompted public outcry and eroded trust in religious leadership. Scandals involving clergy abuse, financial impropriety, and institutional cover-ups have raised questions about the moral integrity and accountability of religious organizations.
• Cognitive Biases and Psychological Vulnerabilities : Critics argue that faith can exploit cognitive biases and psychological vulnerabilities, such as the human tendency to seek patterns, meaning, and comfort in uncertain or distressing situations. Charlatans and religious leaders may manipulate followers’ emotions and beliefs for personal gain or control.

If you remain unconvinced about the power of faith, let me share my personal story, which may illuminate the matter.

My Journey towards Faith

Growing up in a small mountain town, faith was central to my upbringing. But it wasn’t until facing my trials that its true power became evident. As a teenager, a chronic illness changed everything. Questions swirled: Why me? Where was the divine intervention?

In my darkest moments, prayer became my solace. Despite no miraculous healing, faith gave me peace beyond my pain. It became my anchor, providing strength to face each day with courage and hope. Through my struggles, I found purpose in sharing my story and offering hope to others. Faith taught me resilience—not to escape suffering but to endure and overcome it.

Today, I’m grateful for faith’s lessons. It’s not always easy, but belief can transform lives, heal wounds, and inspire hope in the darkest times. In the end, faith has been my guiding light, leading me through darkness to healing and redemption.

The faith journey is as diverse as the individuals who embark upon it. From the depths of personal struggles to the heights of spiritual awakening, faith is a guiding light that illuminates our path through life’s trials and triumphs. Through stories like mine and countless others, we witness the transformative power of faith to provide strength, resilience, and hope in the face of adversity. It is a force that transcends cultural, creed, and circumstance barriers, uniting humanity in a shared quest for meaning and connection. As we navigate the complexities of existence, may we hold fast to the belief that faith is not merely an escape from suffering but a source of inner fortitude and renewal. In embracing faith, we discover the courage to confront life’s challenges with unwavering resolve, knowing that even in the darkest times, the light of faith shines brightest.

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Three Essays on Religion

Author:  King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Date:  September 1, 1948 to May 31, 1951 ?

Location:  Chester, Pa. ?

Genre:  Essay

Topic:  Martin Luther King, Jr. - Education

In the following three essays, King wrestles with the role of religion in modern society. In the first assignment, he calls science and religion “different though converging truths” that both “spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.” King emphasizes an awareness of God’s presence in the second document, noting that religion’s purpose “is not to perpetuate a dogma or a theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.” In the final handwritten essay King acknowledges the life-affirming nature of Christianity, observing that its adherents have consistently “looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.”

"Science and Religion"

There is widespread belief in the minds of many that there is a conflict between science and religion. But there is no fundamental issue between the two. While the conflict has been waged long and furiously, it has been on issues utterly unrelated either to religion or to science. The conflict has been largely one of trespassing, and as soon as religion and science discover their legitimate spheres the conflict ceases.

Religion, of course, has been very slow and loath to surrender its claim to sovereignty in all departments of human life; and science overjoyed with recent victories, has been quick to lay claim to a similar sovereignty. Hence the conflict.

But there was never a conflict between religion and science as such. There cannot be. Their respective worlds are different. Their methods are dissimilar and their immediate objectives are not the same. The method of science is observation, that of religion contemplation. Science investigates. Religion interprets. One seeks causes, the other ends. Science thinks in terms of history, religion in terms of teleology. One is a survey, the other an outlook.

The conflict was always between superstition disguised as religion and materialism disguised as science, between pseudo-science and pseudo-religion.

Religion and science are two hemispheres of human thought. They are different though converging truths. Both science and religion spring from the same seeds of vital human needs.

Science is the response to the human need of knowledge and power. Religion is the response to the human need for hope and certitude. One is an outreaching for mastery, the other for perfection. Both are man-made, and like man himself, are hedged about with limitations. Neither science nor religion, by itself, is sufficient for man. Science is not civilization. Science is organized knowledge; but civilization which is the art of noble and progressive communal living requires much more than knowledge. It needs beauty which is art, and faith and moral aspiration which are religion. It needs artistic and spiritual values along with the intellectual.

Man cannot live by facts alone. What we know is little enough. What we are likely to know will always be little in comparison with what there is to know. But man has a wish-life which must build inverted pyramids upon the apexes of known facts. This is not logical. It is, however, psychological.

Science and religion are not rivals. It is only when one attempts to be the oracle at the others shrine that confusion arises. Whan the scientist from his laboratory, on the basis of alleged scientific knowledge presumes to issue pronouncements on God, on the origin and destiny of life, and on man’s place in the scheme of things he is [ passing? ] out worthless checks. When the religionist delivers ultimatums to the scientist on the basis of certain cosomologies embedded in the sacred text then he is a sorry spectacle indeed.

When religion, however, on the strength of its own postulates, speaks to men of God and the moral order of the universe, when it utters its prophetic burden of justice and love and holiness and peace, then its voice is the voice of the eternal spiritual truth, irrefutable and invincible.,

"The Purpose of Religion"

What is the purpose of religion? 1  Is it to perpetuate an idea about God? Is it totally dependent upon revelation? What part does psychological experience play? Is religion synonymous with theology?

Harry Emerson Fosdick says that the most hopeful thing about any system of theology is that it will not last. 2  This statement will shock some. But is the purpose of religion the perpetuation of theological ideas? Religion is not validated by ideas, but by experience.

This automatically raises the question of salvation. Is the basis for salvation in creeds and dogmas or in experience. Catholics would have us believe the former. For them, the church, its creeds, its popes and bishops have recited the essence of religion and that is all there is to it. On the other hand we say that each soul must make its own reconciliation to God; that no creed can take the place of that personal experience. This was expressed by Paul Tillich when he said, “There is natural religion which belongs to man by nature. But there is also a revealed religion which man receives from a supernatural reality.” 3 Relevant religion therefore, comes through revelation from God, on the one hand; and through repentance and acceptance of salvation on the other hand. 4  Dogma as an agent in salvation has no essential place.

This is the secret of our religion. This is what makes the saints move on in spite of problems and perplexities of life that they must face. This religion of experience by which man is aware of God seeking him and saving him helps him to see the hands of God moving through history.

Religion has to be interpreted for each age; stated in terms that that age can understand. But the essential purpose of religion remains the same. It is not to perpetuate a dogma or theology; but to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience.

[ signed ] M. L. King Jr. 5

"The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry"

Basically Christianity is a value philosophy. It insists that there are eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good. This value content is embodied in the life of Christ. So that Christian philosophy is first and foremost Christocentric. It begins and ends with the assumption that Christ is the revelation of God. 6

We might ask what are some of the specific values that Christianity seeks to conserve? First Christianity speaks of the value of the world. In its conception of the world, it is not negative; it stands over against the asceticisms, world denials, and world flights, for example, of the religions of India, and is world-affirming, life affirming, life creating. Gautama bids us flee from the world, but Jesus would have us use it, because God has made it for our sustenance, our discipline, and our happiness. 7  So that the Christian view of the world can be summed up by saying that it is a place in which God is fitting men and women for the Kingdom of God.

Christianity also insists on the value of persons. All human personality is supremely worthful. This is something of what Schweitzer has called “reverence for life.” 8  Hunan being must always be used as ends; never as means. I realize that there have been times that Christianity has short at this point. There have been periods in Christians history that persons have been dealt with as if they were means rather than ends. But Christianity at its highest and best has always insisted that persons are intrinsically valuable. And so it is the job of the Christian to love every man because God love love. We must not love men merely because of their social or economic position or because of their cultural contribution, but we are to love them because  God  they are of value to God.

Christianity is also concerned about the value of life itself. Christianity is concerned about the good life for every  child,  man,  and  woman and child. This concern for the good life and the value of life is no where better expressed than in the words of Jesus in the gospel of John: “I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly.” 9  This emphasis has run throughout the Christian tradition. Christianity has always had a concern for the elimination of disease and pestilence. This is seen in the great interest that it has taken in the hospital movement.

Christianity is concerned about increasing value. The whole concept of the kingdom of God on earth expressing a concern for increasing value. We need not go into a dicussion of the nature and meaning of the Kingdom of God, only to say that Christians throughout the ages have held tenaciouly to this concept. They have looked forward for a time to come when the law of love becomes the law of life.

In the light of all that we have said about Christianity as a value philosophy, where does the ministry come into the picture? 10

1.  King may have also considered the purpose of religion in a Morehouse paper that is no longer extant, as he began a third Morehouse paper, “Last week we attempted to discuss the purpose of religion” (King, “The Purpose of Education,” September 1946–February 1947, in  Papers  1:122).

2.  “Harry Emerson Fosdick” in  American Spiritual Autobiographies: Fifteen Self-Portraits,  ed. Louis Finkelstein (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 114: “The theology of any generation cannot be understood, apart from the conditioning social matrix in which it is formulated. All systems of theology are as transient as the cultures they are patterned from.”

3.  King further developed this theme in his dissertation: “[Tillich] finds a basis for God’s transcendence in the conception of God as abyss. There is a basic inconsistency in Tillich’s thought at this point. On the one hand he speaks as a religious naturalist making God wholly immanent in nature. On the other hand he speaks as an extreme supernaturalist making God almost comparable to the Barthian ‘wholly other’” (King, “A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman,” 15 April 1955, in  Papers  2:535).

4.  Commas were added after the words “religion” and “salvation.”

5.  King folded this assignment lengthwise and signed his name on the verso of the last page.

6.  King also penned a brief outline with this title (King, “The Philosophy of Life Undergirding Christianity and the Christian Ministry,” Outline, September 1948–May 1951). In the outline, King included the reference “see Enc. Of Religion p. 162.” This entry in  An Encyclopedia of Religion , ed. Vergilius Ferm (New York: Philosophical Library, 1946) contains a definition of Christianity as “Christo-centric” and as consisting “of eternal values of intrinsic, self-evidencing validity and worth, embracing the true and the beautiful and consummated in the Good.” King kept this book in his personal library.

7.  Siddhartha Gautama (ca. 563–ca. 483 BCE) was the historical Buddha.

8.  For an example of Schweitzer’s use of the phrase “reverence for life,” see Albert Schweitzer, “The Ethics of Reverence for Life,”  Christendom  1 (1936): 225–239.

9.  John 10:10.

10.  In his outline for this paper, King elaborated: “The Ministry provides leadership in helping men to recognize and accept the eternal values in the Xty religion. a. The necessity of a call b. The necessity for disinterested love c. The [ necessity ] for moral uprightness” (King, “Philosophy of Life,” Outline, September 1948–May 1951).

Source:  CSKC-INP, Coretta Scott King Collection, In Private Hands, Sermon file.

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What Is Faith and Why Is it Important?

• Carrie Lowrance Crosswalk Contributor
• Updated Jan 05, 2022

Faith. It’s a word we hear thrown around all the time. Keep the faith. Walking in faith. Having faith. So what is faith? Faith has several different definitions.

1. Complete trust or confidence in someone or something. 2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than truth. 3. A system of religious belief. 4. A firmly held belief or theory

What Does the Bible Say About Faith?

The Bible says that faith is confidence in what we hope for and the assurance that the Lord is working, even though we cannot see it. Faith knows that no matter what the situation, in our lives or someone else’s, that the Lord is working in it.

The Hebrew word for faith is Emunah which means “support.” This is perfect because faith is like “the Lord’s support” to us because he is working in every situation for his glory. Regardless of what we think, He always knows best, and there are many times we have to see by faith and not our own eyes.

5 Bible Verses About Faith:

• “And Abraham believed in the Lord, and the Lord counted him righteous because of his faith.”  - Genesis 15:6 , NLT
• “Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation. By faith, we understand that the whole universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.” - Hebrews 11:1-3 , NLT
• “When the people of Israel saw the mighty power that the Lord had unleashed against the Egyptians, they were filled with awe before him. They put their faith in the Lord and his servant Moses.”- Exodus 14:31 , NLT
• “Be sure to fear the Lord and faithfully serve him. Think of all the wonderful things he has done for you.” - 1 Samuel 12:24
• “He will protect his faithful ones, but the wicked will disappear into darkness. No one will succeed by strength alone.” - 1 Samuel 2:9  

Where Does Faith Come From?

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast." - Ephesians 2:8-9

Justification by faith means that God has removed the penalty of our sins and has declared us to be righteous. By God's work, we have peace with our Lord Jesus Christ.

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.” Romans 5:1 (NLT)

What’s the Difference Between Faith and Belief?

Faith and belief are often used in the same context, sometimes interchangeably, but they are not quite the same thing. Belief is a strongly held opinion about an idea or worldview. Beliefs are also opinions that you form about what you read, hear, or see. Beliefs can change over time, as you grow and learn new things. Faith is not something you start and build from; faith can only be received, it must be given by God. True faith can take on doubts and questions, but it remains intact. We can grow in our faith, but the foundation is always the same. James 2:19 says, 

"You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder."

You can believe there is a God, even that there is one God, but do you believe He is your God? God produces faith in us by giving us new hearts and opening our eyes to see that He is our God and we need Him. Does your faith in God change the way you live your life? There are some who say they believe in God, but the way they live their life does not change; they are motivated by other factors. Faith changes how we live our lives, faith motivates us to keep moving in life. 

Having faith in the Bible means trusting that God’s Word is the truth. The faith that God began in us will grow when exposed to God's Word. It’s knowing that every time you read the Bible, the word of God is being imparted in you. The Bible says that faith is not silly or irrational. It is not a feeling of closeness to God either. Instead, faith is being able to trust God for what He has promised in His Word. 

5 Examples of People in the Bible Who Had Faith

1. Mary was faithful to God when she was chosen to be the mother of his son. Mary trusted her God and the role He had chosen for her.

"The angel answered, 'The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.' 'I am the Lord’s servant,' Mary answered. 'May your word to me be fulfilled.' Then the angel left her." - Luke 1:35-38

2. Abraham had faith in God when he was called to sacrifice his only son as a burnt offering. He set out the next morning after God told him where to go, he had faith that God would provide. 

"Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, 'Abraham!' 'Here I am,' he replied. Then God said, 'Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.' Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, 'Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.' Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, 'Father?' 'Yes, my son?' Abraham replied. 'The fire and wood are here,' Isaac said, 'but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?' Abraham answered, 'God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.' And the two of them went on together." - Genesis 22:1-8 

3. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had faith when they were thrown into the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar. They had no doubts that God would save them.

"If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” - Daniel 3:17-18 "They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair of their heads singed; their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them. Then Nebuchadnezzar said, 'Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who has sent his angel and rescued his servants! They trusted in him and defied the king’s command and were willing to give up their lives rather than serve or worship any god except their own God." - Daniel 3:27-28

4. Esther had faith in going to the king unannounced and exposing Haman’s plan to kill the Jews.

"When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, he sent back this answer: 'Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?' Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 'Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.'" - Esther 4:12-16

5. Moses had faith when God asked him to lead the Israelite’s out of Egypt and across the red sea, away from everything they knew.

"As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up, and there were the Egyptians, marching after them. They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, 'Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!' Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.” - Exodus 14:10-14

How to Grow in Faith

There are several different ways we can grow in our faith.

1. Ask God to increase your faith. If you are struggling in your faith, ask Him for more of it. He will be glad to bestow it through the Holy Spirit.

2. Focus on obeying God. No one is perfect and we all make mistakes, but if you focus on following God’s word and commands, your faith will grow naturally.

4. Spend time with other believers. We are meant to worship together, pray together, and share our faith with each other. Hearing about others' journeys in faith can be encouraging. Also study the Bible together, encouraging each other in godly disciplines.

5. Spend time in fervent prayer . Scheduling a specific time each day to spend with God in prayer makes a huge difference. This is your time alone with Him to discuss anything that is on your heart and mind. Be still and listen carefully and your faith will grow in abundance.

How Do We Live by Faith and Not By Sight?

Living in faith and not by sight means that you are willing to go into the unknown. It’s trusting God even though you don’t know where He’s leading you or what the outcome will be. I have been living in faith over a specific situation for almost three years. I have been praying over this situation fervently. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out or where it’s going to lead. All I do know is that God is working, and I’m waiting patiently to see the outcome. It’s not easy and it’s not fun, but I know that He’s in control and that is where I find my peace.

How to Keep the Faith in Times of Trouble

1. Keep a positive attitude, reflecting on God's promises. We are to praise Jesus in all things and in all circumstances.

2. Surrender your circumstances to God. It can be so easy to get upset and shake our fists at Him when things aren’t going right. Instead, ask Him for help and to change your circumstances. Let Him take the wheel and trust what He is going to do.

3. Be generous. The Bible says even in times of trouble, we are to give. It seems counterintuitive when you are struggling to keep your head above water. However, in giving and blessing someone else, you are blessing yourself too. God loves a cheerful giver.

4. Spend more time in the Word. This will help keep you grounded and not going in another direction due to confusion or desperation.

The truest act of faith, which is made possible by God's gift of grace to us, is complete trust in the Lord through every circumstance, even when we do not understand why something is happening or not happening.

Let’s pray:

Dear Lord, Please help me grow in my faith. Help me to lean on You in good times and bad. Help me not to be quick to anger and instead, have a godly mindset. Speak to my heart as I read Your Word and highlight verses of encouragement. Help me to trust You in every situation and in every circumstance. In Your name Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Carrie  Lowrance is a writer and author. She has been published on Huffington Post, The Penny Hoarder, and ParentMap. She is also the author of two children’s books, Don’t Eat Your Boogers (You’ll Turn Green) and Brock’s Bad Temper (And The Time Machine). You can find out more about her on her website, www.carrielowrance.com

Photo credit: ©Thinkstock/B-C-Designs

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What Role Does Religion Play in Your Life?

Did you attend religious services or observe religious traditions as a child? How has religion shaped who you are today?

By Nicole Daniels and Michael Gonchar

When you were younger, did you attend religious services or participate in religious observations with your family? Did you belong to any kind of religious community? What about now, as a teenager?

Has religion played an important role in your life? If so, in what ways?

In her recent Opinion essay, “ I Followed the Lives of 3,290 Teenagers. This Is What I Learned About Religion and Education ,” Ilana M. Horwitz discusses the effects of a religious upbringing on academic success:

American men are dropping out of college in alarming numbers. A slew of articles over the past year depict a generation of men who feel lost , detached and lacking in male role models . This sense of despair is especially acute among working-class men, fewer than one in five of whom completes college. Yet one group is defying the odds: boys from working-class families who grow up religious. As a sociologist of education and religion, I followed the lives of 3,290 teenagers from 2003 to 2012 using survey and interview data from the National Study of Youth and Religion , and then linking those data to the National Student Clearinghouse in 2016. I studied the relationship between teenagers’ religious upbringing and its influence on their education: their school grades, which colleges they attend and how much higher education they complete. My research focused on Christian denominations because they are the most prevalent in the United States. I found that what religion offers teenagers varies by social class. Those raised by professional-class parents, for example, do not experience much in the way of an educational advantage from being religious. In some ways, religion even constrains teenagers’ educational opportunities (especially girls’) by shaping their academic ambitions after graduation; they are less likely to consider a selective college as they prioritize life goals such as parenthood, altruism and service to God rather than a prestigious career. However, teenage boys from working-class families, regardless of race, who were regularly involved in their church and strongly believed in God were twice as likely to earn bachelor’s degrees as moderately religious or nonreligious boys. Religious boys are not any smarter , so why are they doing better in school? The answer lies in how religious belief and religious involvement can buffer working-class Americans — males in particular — from despair.

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The role of faith in spiritual growth.

• God is Faithful , Faith , Identity in Christ , God is Good , Starting with God

Everyone knows that faith plays a significant role in our spiritual growth , but practically speaking it either occupies too much or too little of our understanding. If our conception of spiritual growth is nothing more than self-effort, we will not experience life transformation.

But if every spiritual pothole is paved with “just trust God,” we will also miss out on true spiritual growth. This is not to detract from the centrality of faith in becoming more like Christ, only to understand its role, so we can better coach those whom we disciple.

In the Christian life there are certain truths that are either so formative, or so fragile, that your disciple may require special assistance in learning to hold them in the shopping cart of faith. As mature Christian we are used to toting these truths around like a handbag (such as the security of our salvation), but young Christians need to develop the spiritual muscles that we take for granted.

What follows is a partial list of these foundational truths that require the exertion of faith, and may require your assistance. It is in these areas that the need for faith is most acute and where the lack of it will have the greatest ramifications.

Faith and Forgiveness

Few of the great battles in life are ever won overnight, so it is safe to assume that your disciples will see many spiritual failures before they finally see the flag raised, hear the national anthem, take their place on the winner’s platform and the world is joined together under the Nike swoosh. It might be a small failure or a stunningly gross one, but in either case they will desperately need to experience God’s forgiveness.

The problem with many sins is that even after we’ve confessed them, it is difficult to feel cleansed, to not berate ourselves, and not suspect that God’s still fuming over the incident. When we sin we instinctively feel someone must pay a price. No one gets off easy. What we need to decide is who is going to pay. Your disciple will therefore move in one of the following directions:

• ALTERNATIVE #1 “I am pig swill.” This is one of the terms I use when beating myself up for having fallen into the same trap of sin, yet again. I’ve not copyrighted the phrase so feel free to use it. In essence, I’m crucifying myself for the sin. Yes, what Jesus did was nice, but I’m going to cover the tab—check, please. Someone must pay and rightfully it should be me, so I pound myself for my stupidity.
• ALTERATIVE #2 “You, you made me sin.” That “you” could be a person, Satan, or even God, but either way someone needs to take the fall for the sin I’ve just committed, and I’ll be darned if it’s going to be me.
• ALTERNATIVE #3 “Now that you mention it, I’m not sure that really was a sin.” Recognize that phrase? It’s called justification. As the word implies, we decide to make a judgment over and against our conscience, declaring that what we did was actually right, or at least not that wrong. Why go to the effort? Because someone must pay for sin, unless of course there is no sin and that’s what we’re shooting for in this approach: to eliminate the offense.
• ALTERNATIVE #4 “I couldn’t help myself, it’s just my personality.” Let’s call this rationalizing, which is equivalent to the courtroom plea of insanity. What I’m saying is, “Yes, it was sin, but I didn’t have the moral capacity to say ‘no.’” My personality was such, and circumstances were such, that I could do no other than what I did. The effectiveness of this strategy lies in how good you are at convincing yourself that it’s really not your fault. I’m pretty gullible, so I usually believe me.

Of course what makes this all unnecessary is that someone has already paid the price, Christ. What is needed is confession. The problem is that we can confess our sins while failing to employ faith. Faith involves a choice of the will to believe that God has forgiven us through Christ’s death, while turning a deaf ear to doubts. We reckon that God is more merciful than we can imagine and believe that through Christ’s death we are completely forgiven, and “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12).

We often ask our disciples to scribble out their sins on a piece of paper, and have them write the verse 1 John 1:9 across the list, and tear up the list. I see no expiration date on this exercise. It is effective because it develops the faith component of confession: a visual aid to under gird a young and underdeveloped faith muscle. It might be useful to walk your disciples through the different responses listed above to help them see where in the process of confession, they are failing to exercise faith. You must teach them confession but you must also teach them that confession involves faith.

Faith That God Can Make You Holy

Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6)

Most of the great heroes of the Bible share two things in common: they all wore sandals, and they were all required to persevere in their faith, though final victory was often years in the future. We, too—no matter how many setbacks we encounter—must never waiver in our belief that God can make us holy, and, if we persevere, will ultimately lead us in triumph.

Every disciple is willing to trust God for victory over sin at least once. The problem is when the war turns into Vietnam, with infrequent victories, heavy losses, and no foreseeable exit strategy. It is at this juncture that they need to know that faith is a long-term struggle and holiness a lifelong battle. Point to the many battles of faith in scripture fought and won over years, and not days. Show them how the Promised Land was taken one battle at a time.

When victory is elusive they will need someone to help make sense of it and prepare them for the long war. Without a proper perspective, they may resolve the conflict with a ceasefire, and an acceptance of behavior far from godliness. Help them persevere in the battle believing God will, in time, bring victory.

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Here is another truth into which faith must sink its teeth: we must choose to believe that our temptations and struggles are not unique and therefore never insurmountable, unfixable, or unforgivable. It is a lie to believe that any temptation is irresistible, or that we are unique in any of our struggles.

God always provides what we need to remain holy, even if it’s simply an escape hatch. Every disciple is tempted to believe that in some area of their lives, they deviate from the norm. Satan desires for us to feel alone. You might ask your disciples if they have ever felt this way or in what area they tend to think of themselves as having unique trials or temptations. Forfeit faith in this area and you’ve dangerously increased the power of sin.

Faith That All Things Work For the Good

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

The next battle of faith is for all those who have experienced damage in their lives, or within themselves, due to sin. God can take any manure and from it grow a garden, as you participate in this promise by faith. While it may be impossible to imagine how God can bring good out of our train wreck of past and present failures, this is hardly a limiting factor. For God can do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

There is no limit to God’s capacity to redeem evil. Everything in our past can be taken and used for good. Every failure (like Peter’s failures) can be transformed by God’s mercy. Every weakness (like Paul’s weaknesses) can be a vehicle for God to demonstrate His strength. Though we must persevere in faith, and sometimes for years, the equation will always add up: crap + God = life. And faith is the means by which God enters the equation.

Through the examples of biblical characters such as Peter and Paul, and through examples from your own life, you must help your disciples strap on the shield of faith against the lie that anything in their lives is unredeemable, gratuitous, or random.

Faith in Our Reward

Now, there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing (2 Timothy 4:8).

Some years ago I was in China and like any tourist I visited the Great Wall. Along the bottom of the wall, a worker of this communist country was picking up trash. I clocked him at one piece of trash a minute, which at that rate would have taken him longer to clear the grounds than it took to build the Great Wall.

Where we visited included a maze of concession stands, tons of them—Great Concession stands. Someone told me that those who operated the stands employed principles of the free market, meaning that the more they sold and the more they charged for what they sold, the more they profited. One of the women at the booths actually grabbed my coat and dragged me to her counter. It would be an understatement to say that it was a motivated workforce.

The difference between these two workers was a chasm. Let’s call it the Great Chasm. One worked like a sluggard because he knew that he would always make the same amount no matter what he did (communism). The other worker knew that her effort would be rewarded (the free market).

The doctrine of eternal security (that we can never lose our salvation) was never meant to negate the teaching of rewards. In many places in the Bible, God makes it clear that our obedience and faithfulness will be rewarded. We are called to exercise faith in future rewards, choosing to believe that our actions or inaction will be compensated. When our minds move down the trail of “what difference will this really make?” the response of faith is—a lot. We are not told what these rewards will be, but simply given the assurance that it will be worth our while.

Teaching our disciples to maintain an eternal perspective, or to live for eternity, can cultivate their faith toward this truth, provided that our definition of what is eternal encompasses far more than evangelism, for Jesus states that even a cup of water given in his name will not fail to be rewarded.

Faith in God's Goodness

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11).

If you go back to the Garden of Eden (which is probably now a parking lot in downtown Baghdad), you will notice that the first sin was a distrust of God’s goodness. Adam and Eve became convinced that God was holding out on them. Eating from the tree was in their best interests. The foundation of most sin is a lack of faith in God’s goodness, and disbelief that His plans for us are really best.

When things are going wrong, we justify our sin with self-pity. We find ourselves thinking, “Well, I’m going to do this because God isn’t taking care of me anyway, and rather than helping, He’s allowing my life to disintegrate.” Such reasoning is designed by our scheming mind to bring us to a sense of entitlement to sin.

More innocuously, many of us fall prey to pessimism and distrust that what lies in wait over the time horizon is anything but good, often brought on by a nagging suspicion that God never did forget our sin, and payday is right around the bend.

We must fight the battle to deny or disbelieve God’s goodness, with faith, never giving an inch. Everything God does in our lives is motivated by love, and any minor deconstruction of that truth is a lie that can have serious ramifications.

In helping your disciples with this struggle, you might ask some questions to discover if their mind has a proclivity to move down this path. You might also share in what ways you tend to doubt the goodness of God. Intimacy with Christ is the best answer to any and all doubts of His goodness. When we feel close to Christ, we sense that He is on our side, and when we feel distant, we come to suspect that He is not.

Memorizing scripture is great, but passages of scripture are animated by our intimacy with Christ.

Identity: Identity Theft

“I got me some of them mud flaps with the naked ladies on them. Ohhh mamacita.”

In a series of ads for Citibank’s identity theft program, the viewer sits and listens to the thief who, having stolen the person’s credit card number, recounts their various bizarre purchases and exploits. What makes the ads humorous as well as memorable is the thief’s story is told (lip-synced) through the identity theft victim, sitting forlornly mouthing the words.

In some way we are all victims of identity theft. Having trusted Christ, we are heirs with Christ of all that is in Him. Most of us never fully grasp what God’s Word says is true of us in Christ, or worse, we simply don’t think about it. We are children of God, chosen before time to be in the family of God, yet these concepts don’t make it to the starting line-up of thoughts that propel us into the day.

In the movie "Cheaper by the Dozen," the youngest child is treated as the family outcast. The other kids call him “FedEx” because they suspect he was adopted and simply delivered to the family, not born into it. Over the course of time he begins to believe it, rumors become a lie, and the lie grows in power until he runs away from the family believing he has no place within it. There’s a message from an otherwise boring movie: our identity matters.

Our faith in our identity in Christ is absolutely foundational to our lives. Faith is fed by reading the Bible. “The Daily Affirmation of Faith” was written to provide a concise, clear statement of the truth of God’s Word as it applies to our victory in Christ (what is true of us in Him). Commend it to your disciples for daily reading particularly during times of deep trials and temptation when they are most prone to forget who they truly are, and believe things about themselves and God which are not true.

The Daily Affirmation of Faith

Today I deliberately choose to submit myself fully to God as He has made Himself known to me through the Holy Scripture, which I honestly accept as the only inspired, infallible, authoritative standard for all life and practice. In this day I will not judge God, His work, myself, or others on the basis of feelings or circumstances.

I recognize by faith that the triune God is worthy of all honor, praise, and worship as the Creator, Sustainer, and End of all things. I confess that God, as my Creator, made me for Himself. In this day, I therefore choose to live for Him. (Revelation 5:9-10; Isaiah 43:1,7,21; Revelation 4:11)

I recognize by faith that God loved me and chose me in Jesus Christ before time began (Ephesians 1:1-7).

I recognize by faith that God has proven His love to me in sending His Son to die in my place, in whom every provision has already been made for my past, present, and future needs through His representative work, and that I have been quickened, raised, seated with Jesus Christ in the heavenlies, and anointed with the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:6-11; 8:28; Philippians 1:6; 4:6,7,13,19; Ephesians 1:3; 2:5,6; Acts 2:1-4,33).

I recognize by faith that God has accepted me, since I have received Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord (John 1:12; Ephesians 1:6); that He has forgiven me (Ephesians 1:7); adopted me into His family, assuming every responsibility for me (John 17:11,17; Ephesians 1:5; Philippians 1:6); given me eternal life (John 3:36; 1 John 5:9-13); applied the perfect righteousness of Christ to me so that I am now justified (Romans 5:1; 8:3-4; 10:4); made me complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10); and offers Himself to me as my daily sufficiency through prayer and the decisions of faith (1 Corinthians 1:30; Colossians 1:27; Galatians 2:20; John 14:13-14; Matthew 21:22; Romans 6:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-3,11).

I recognize by faith that the Holy Spirit has baptized me into the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:13); sealed me (Ephesians 1:13-14); anointed me for life and service (Acts 1:8; John 7:37-39); seeks to lead me into a deeper walk with Jesus Christ (John 14:16-18; 15:26-27; 16:13-15; Romans 8:11-16); and to fill my life with Himself (Ephesians 5:18).

I recognize by faith that only God can deal with sin and only God can produce holiness of life. I confess that in my salvation my part was only to receive Him and that He dealt with my sin and saved me. Now I confess that in order to live a holy life, I can only surrender to His will and receive Him as my sanctification; trusting Him to do whatever may be necessary in my life, without and within, so I may be enabled to live today in purity, freedom, rest and power for His glory. (John 1:12; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 9:8; Galatians 2:20; Hebrew 4:9; 1 John 5:4; Jude 24).

Our Salvation

We’ll conclude with the most fundamental of truths, and ground zero for faith. All things build upon this.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12).

I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life (1 John 5:13).

In describing our spiritual armor, Paul uses a helmet to illustrate the truth of our salvation: that which protects the mind, and protects us from a fatal blow. We make it a critical part of basic follow-up, because scripture affirms that it is. Let your disciples doubt that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Let them doubt that the Cubs will ever win a World Series. But, rehearse this with them until that helmet cannot be pried off their head.

How Faith Grows

Faith is like a muscle; it grows by lifting weights. Weights are the resistance—the doubts, mental whispers, and circumstances that tell us the opposite of what faith must believe.

When God seems absent and horrible circumstances swirl around us, everything seems to shout, “God isn’t here! And if He is, He certainly doesn’t care.” In those circumstances, faith curls the barbell toward the heart and says, “No, God is good. He is for me. He has a plan.” Thus, it is the circumstances adverse to our faith that become the vehicle for our growth—they are the weight on the barbell.

And so all disciples are periodically tossed into a boat and sent out into a raging storm, where God is conspicuous by his absence. We are not trying to rescue our disciples from the situations and circumstances that will cause faith to grow. Our role is to come alongside them, strengthen their feeble arms and help them to curl the heavy weights that will cause their faith to bulk-up. (I think I just described a steroid.)

God provides the weight (adverse circumstances and trials), but they must continue to lift the weight. We must spot them helping them push out more repetitions than they thought possible while making sure the barbell doesn’t pin them to the bench-press.

Alternatively, faith grows through new challenges and we serve our disciples well by calling them into circumstances where they will need to trust and rely on God. They take courageous steps, God shows Himself faithful, and their faith grows.

Through the stress and strain of faith development, the truths discussed in this article are the most common fracture points, and the places your disciples may most need your encouragement to wind their way up the hill of faith.

Related Topics:

Previous story, let the nations be glad, good old grace, latest stories in beginning with god - blog, a desire to journey, a desire for god.

We were all created with a desire to find meaning and happiness in life. But are we looking in the right places? Which journey for meaning and happiness will ultimately fulfill us?

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Sometimes, finding hope means looking in a new direction.

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Questions about faith have inspired centuries of philosophical and theological reflection, particularly, though by no means exclusively, as faith is understood within the Christian branch of the Abrahamic religions. What is faith? What makes faith reasonable or unreasonable, valuable or disvaluable, morally permissible or impermissible, virtuous or vicious? How does faith relate to psychological states such as belief, desire, trust, and hope? How does faith relate to action? To what extent is faith under our voluntary control? Because answers to these further questions depend on what faith is, as well as on assumptions about relevant evaluative norms and the philosophical psychology and theory of action applicable to faith, this entry focusses on the nature of faith, while also touching upon implications of various models of faith for assessments of its reasonableness and value.

‘Faith’ is a broad term, appearing in locutions that point to a range of different phenomena. We speak of ‘having faith that you will succeed, despite setbacks,’ ‘having faith in democracy,’ ‘putting faith in God,’ ‘believing that God exists by faith,’ ‘being a person of faith,’ ‘professing and keeping the faith (or losing it),’ ‘keeping (or failing to keep) faith with someone’, and so on. At its most general ‘faith’ means much the same as ‘trust’. Uses of ‘faith’ and ‘faithfulness’ closely parallel ‘trust’ and ‘trustworthiness’ and these are often used interchangeably. Yet one of the striking and intriguing facts about theorizing in this area (the study of faith, faithfulness, and related phenomena), is that people have offered radically different accounts of what faith is—to such an extent that there remains disagreement even about the basic ontological category to which faith belongs. Is it a psychological state and, if so, is it cognitive, affective/evaluative, or perhaps some combination of both? Is it an act or disposition to act—or is there at least some sort of connection to action essential to faith and, if so, to what sorts of acts?

This entry will focus on religious faith as paradigmatic—or, rather, it will focus on the kind of faith exemplified in theistic faith (i.e., faith in God, faith that God exists, and commitment to a theistic interpretation of reality), while leaving open whether faith of that same general kind also belongs to other, non-theistic, religious contexts, or to contexts not usually thought of as religious at all. The question of faith outside of a theistic context, such as whether it is apt to speak of the faith of a humanist, or even an atheist, using the same general sense of ‘faith’ as applies to the theist case, is taken up in the final Section (11).

Philosophical reflection on theistic religious faith has produced markedly different accounts or models of its nature. This entry organizes discussion of accounts or models of faith around key components that feature in such accounts—with varying emphases, and with varying views about how these components relate to one another. These components are the cognitive , the affective , the evaluative , and the practical (volitional, actional and behavioural). Models of faith may also be usefully categorized according to further principles, including

• how the model relates faith as a state to the actional components associated with faith;
• whether the model takes the object of faith to be exclusively propositional (e.g., faith that such and such) or not (e.g., faith in persons or ideals);
• the type of epistemology with which the model is associated—whether it is broadly ‘internalist’ or ‘externalist’, ‘evidentialist’ or ‘fideist’;
• whether the model is necessarily restricted to theistic religious faith, or may extend beyond it.

The entry proceeds dialectically, with later sections presupposing the earlier discussion. The section headings are as follows:

1. Models of faith and their key components

2. the affective component of faith, 3. faith as knowledge, 4. faith and reason: the epistemology of faith, 5. faith as belief, 6. faith as an act of trust, 7. faith as doxastic venture, 8. venturing faith, without belief, 9. faith and hope, 10. faith as a virtue, 11. faith beyond (orthodox) theism, other internet resources, related entries.

While philosophical reflection on faith of the kind exemplified in religious contexts might ideally hope to yield an agreed definition in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions that articulate the nature of faith, the present discussion proceeds by identifying key components that recur in different accounts of religious faith. It also aims to identify a focal range of issues on which different stances are taken by different accounts. There is a plurality of existing philosophical understandings or models of faith of the religious kind. This discussion therefore aims to set out dialectically an organisation of this plurality, while also giving indications of the reasons there may be for preferring particular models over others. Since ‘religion’ itself may well be a ‘family resemblance’ universal, essentialism about faith of the religious kind might be misplaced. Nevertheless, the concept of faith as found in the Abrahamic, theist, religious traditions is widely regarded as unified enough for an inquiry into its nature to make sense, even if a successful real definition is too much to expect (this kind of faith might conceivably be a conceptual primitive, for example).

Note that some philosophers approach the target of religious faith by first classifying and analysing ordinary language uses of the term ‘faith’ and locutions in which that term occurs. See, for recent examples, Audi 2011 (Chapter 3, Section I), who identifies seven different kinds of faith, and Howard-Snyder (2013b), who attempts a general analysis of ‘propositional’ faith—i.e., faith that p is true, where p is a relevant proposition. The present discussion, however, deals directly with the target notion of the kind of faith exemplified in religious faith , assuming the background of a working grasp of the notion as deployed in religious forms of life, and specifically in those belonging to the theist traditions. Insights from the analysis of faith understood more broadly may, nevertheless, be important in constructing models of faith of the religious kind, as will emerge below in the discussion of religious faith as a kind of trust (Section 6).

The notion of religious faith as the possession of a whole people is familiar, and arguably theologically primary in the theist traditions. Philosophical accounts of theistic faith typically focus, however, on what it is for an individual person to ‘have faith’ or be ‘a person of faith’. An initial broad distinction is between thinking of faith just as a person’s state when that person ‘has faith’, and thinking of it as also involving a person’s act, action or activity . Faith may be a state one is in, or comes to be in; it may also essentially involve something one does. An adequate account of faith, perhaps, needs to encompass both. In the Christian context, faith is understood both as a gift of God and also as requiring a human response of assent and trust, so that their faith is something with respect to which people are both receptive and active.

There is, however, some tension in understanding faith both as a gift to be received and as essentially involving a venture to be willed and enacted. A philosophical account of faith may be expected to illuminate this apparent paradox. One principle for classifying models of faith is according to the extent to which they recognise an active component in faith itself, and the way they identify that active component and its relation to faith’s other components. It is helpful to consider the components of faith (variously recognised and emphasised in different models of faith) as falling into three broad categories: the affective , the cognitive and the practical . There are also evaluative components in faith—these may appear as implicated in the affective and/or the cognitive components, according to one’s preferred meta-theory of value.

One component of faith is a certain kind of affective psychological state—namely, having a feeling of assurance or trust. Some philosophers hold that faith is to be identified simply with such a state: see, for example, Clegg (1979, 229) who suggests that this may have been Wittgenstein’s understanding. Faith in this sense—as one’s overall ‘default’ affective attitude on life—provides a valuable foundation for flourishing: its loss is recognised as the psychic calamity of ‘losing one’s faith’. But if foundational existential assurance is to feature in a model of faith of the kind exemplified by theists, more needs to be added about the kind of assurance involved. The assurance of theistic faith is essentially a kind of confidence: it is essentially faith in God. In general, faith of the kind exemplified by theistic faith must have some intentional object . It may thus be argued that an adequate model of this kind of faith cannot reduce to something purely affective: some broadly cognitive component is also required. (For an account that takes faith to be fundamentally affective, while allowing that it might also involve cognitive aspects, see Kvanvig 2013.)

What kind of cognitive component belongs to faith, then? One possibility is that it is a kind of knowledge , but there is then a question about the kind of knowledge that it is: e.g., is it knowledge ‘by acquaintance’, or ‘propositional’ knowledge ‘by description’, or both? One type of model of faith as knowledge identifies faith as propositional knowledge of specific truths, revealed by God. A model of this type has received prominent recent defence in the work of Alvin Plantinga, who proposes an account which he regards as following in the tradition of the reformers, principally John Calvin (see Plantinga 2000, 168–86). Calvin defines faith thus: ‘a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence towards us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit’ (John Calvin, Institutes III, ii, 7, 551, quoted by Plantinga (2000, 244)).

Appeal to a special cognitive faculty

‘Reformed’ epistemologists have appealed to an externalist epistemology in order to maintain that theistic belief may be justified even though its truth is no more than basically evident to the believer—that is, its truth is not rationally inferable from other, more basic, beliefs, but is found to be immediately evident in the believer’s experience (see Plantinga and Wolterstorff 1983, Alston 1991, Plantinga 2000). On Plantinga’s version, (basic) theistic beliefs count as knowledge because they are produced by the operation of a special cognitive faculty whose functional design fits it for the purpose of generating true beliefs about God. Plantinga calls this the sensus divinitatis , using a term of Calvin’s. (For discussion of the extent to which Plantinga’s use of this term conforms to Calvin’s own usage see Jeffreys 1997 and Helm 1998.) This quasi-perceptual faculty meets functional criteria as a mechanism that, when functioning in the right conditions, confers ‘warrant’ (where warrant is whatever must be added to true belief to yield knowledge) and, granted theism’s truth, it probably yields ‘basic’ knowledge because God designs it just for that purpose. In defence of specifically Christian belief, Plantinga argues that the same warrant-conferring status belongs to the operation of the Holy Spirit in making the great truths of the Gospel directly known to the believer.

The welcome certainty of faith

This appeal to a God-given ‘higher’ cognitive faculty is found (in the early 12th Century) in al-Ghazâlî’s Deliverance from Error , where it provides the key to the ‘Sufi’ resolution of his religious crisis and his sceptical doubts about the deliverances of sense perception and unassisted human reason. Faith is thus understood as a kind of basic knowledge attended by a certainty that excludes doubt. But faith will not be exclusively cognitive, if, as in Calvin’s definition, faith-knowledge is not only ‘revealed to our minds’ but also ‘sealed upon our hearts’. For, on this model, faith will also have an affective/evaluative component that includes a welcoming of the knowledge received.

Practical aspects of faith on this model

This model of faith as a kind of knowledge, certain and welcome, exhibits faith as essentially something to be received, something delivered by the proper functioning of a special cognitive faculty. Nevertheless, the model may admit a practical component, since an active response is required for reception of the divine gift. Such a practical component is implied by the real possibility that faith may be resisted: indeed, Christians may hold that in our sinful state we will inevitably offer a resistance to faith that may be overcome only by God’s grace. It is, however, a further step for persons of faith to put their revealed knowledge into practice by trusting their lives to God and seeking to obey his will. On this ‘special knowledge’ model of faith, however, this activity counts as ‘acting out’ one’s faith rather than as a part of faith itself. Persons of faith thus act ‘in’, ‘through’ or ‘by’ faith: but, on this model, their faith itself is the welcomed revealed knowledge on which they act.

Models of faith as knowledge may be thought lacking because they admit no actional component in faith itself. Faith seems essentially to involve some kind of active venture in commitment and trust, even if talk of a ‘leap of faith’ may not be wholly apt. Many have held that faith ventures beyond what is ordinarily known or justifiably held true, in the sense that faith involves accepting what cannot be established as true through the proper exercise of our naturally endowed human cognitive faculties. As Kant famously reports, in the Preface to the Second Edition of his Critique of Pure Reason : ‘I have … found it necessary to deny knowledge , in order to make room for faith ’ (Kant 1787 [1933, 29]). Theist philosophers do, however, typically defend the claim that faith is not ‘contrary to reason’. On models of faith that take a cognitive component as central, and construe faith’s object as propositional, reasonable faith therefore seems subject to a general evidentialist principle—‘a wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence’, as Hume puts it (Hume 1748 [2007], “Of Miracles”, 80). And W. K. Clifford elevates evidentialism to the status of an absolute moral requirement, affirming that ‘it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence’ (Clifford 1877 [1999, 77]. Faith’s venturesomeness may thus seem in tension with its reasonableness, and models of faith differ in the way they negotiate this tension in response to evidentialist challenges. Another way to classify models of faith, then, is in terms of their associated epistemology—and, in particular, whether and according to what norms of ‘evidential support’, they accept that faith’s cognitive component needs to meet a requirement to be grounded on available evidence.

The Reformed epistemologist model of faith as ‘basic’ knowledge (outlined in Section 3) generates an epistemology under which, although ordinary cognitive faculties and sources of evidence do not yield firm and certain inferred knowledge of theistic truths, there is (if Christian theism is true) a ‘higher’ cognitive faculty that neatly makes up the deficit. This model seems thus to secure the rationality of faith: if faith consists in beliefs that have the status of knowledge, faith can hardly fail to be rational. And, once the deliverances of the special cognitive faculty are included amongst the believer’s basic experiential evidence, an evidential requirement on reasonable belief seems to be met. (Note that Plantinga originally expressed his defence of ‘properly basic’ theistic belief in terms of the rationality of believing in God ‘without any evidence or argument at all’ (Plantinga 1983, 17). He does respect an evidential requirement, however, holding that it may be fully met through what is basically, non-inferentially, evident in the believer’s experience. Hence Plantinga’s insistence that his Reformed epistemology is not fideistic (Plantinga 2000, 263).)

Reflective faith and the question of entitlement

It is not clear, however, whether Reformed epistemology’s model of faith can achieve all that is needed to show that theist faith is reasonable. From the perspective of reflective persons of faith (or would-be faith), the question of entitlement arises: are they rationally, epistemically—even, morally—entitled to adopt or continue in their faith? This question will be existentially important, since faith will not be of the kind exemplified by religious faith unless its commitments make a significant difference to how one lives one’s life. 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 theist traditions hold a deep fear of idolatry—of giving one’s ‘ultimate concern’ (Tillich 1957 [2001]) to an object unworthy of it. The desire to be assured of entitlement to faith is thus 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. And, as already noted, those conditions are widely assumed to include an evidentialist requirement that faith is justified only if the truth of its cognitive content is adequately supported by the available evidence.

The Reformed epistemologist model as leaving the question of entitlement unanswered

It may be argued, however, that, if the Reformed epistemologist’s model is correct, those who seek to meet an evidentialist requirement will be unable to satisfy themselves of their entitlement to their faith. Theistic truths may be directly revealed, and experienced as immediately evident, yet, on reflection, one may doubt whether such experiences are genuinely revelatory since competing ‘naturalist’ interpretations of those experiences seem available. Furthermore, there are rival sources yielding contrary claims that equally claim to be authentically revelatory. It may be true, as Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology maintains, that if God exists then certain basic theist beliefs meet externalist criteria for knowledge, even though the truth of the propositions concerned remains open to reflective ‘internalist’ doubt. 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 . One may thus refute an objector who claims that without adequate evidence one cannot possess knowledge. But this consideration is still insufficient to secure entitlement to theistic faith—if, as may be argued, that entitlement requires that one has evidence adequate to justify commitment to the truth 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). For a wider discussion of the possibility of religious knowledge that, inter alia , endorses the present point, see Zagzebski 2010.

If faith is not ‘firm and certain’ basic knowledge of theistic truths, then a model of faith as having a propositional object may still be retained by identifying faith with belief of relevant content—and the question whether a faith-belief may have sufficient justification to count (if true) as (non-basic) knowledge may remain open. To have theist faith might thus be identified with holding a belief with theological content—that God exists, is benevolent towards us, has a plan of salvation, etc.—where this belief is also held with sufficient firmness and conviction. Richard Swinburne labels this the ‘Thomist view’ of faith, and expresses it thus: ‘The person of religious faith is the person who has the theoretical conviction that there is a God’ (Swinburne 2005, 138). (Aquinas’s own understanding of faith is more complex than this formulation suggests, however, as will be noted shortly.)

The rationality of faith on this model will rest on the rationality of the firmly held theological beliefs in which it consists. As Swinburne notes, if such beliefs are founded on evidence that renders their truth sufficiently more probable than not, then the beliefs concerned may amount to knowledge on a contemporary ‘justified true belief’ fallibilist epistemology, even though they fall short of knowledge on Aquinas’s own criteria, which require that what is known be ‘seen’ (i.e., fully and directly comprehended) ( Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 1, 4 & 5 (Aquinas 1265–1273 [2006], 27)). In any case, the reasonableness of faith on this model of faith as (non-basic) theological belief depends on the beliefs concerned being adequately evidentially justified. The claim that this condition is satisfied is defended by John Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695 [1999]), and, in contemporary philosophy, by Richard Swinburne’s Bayesian approach to the epistemology of Christian belief (see, for example, Swinburne 2003).

Some argue, however, that the truth of theism is ‘evidentially ambiguous’—that is, that our total available evidence is equally viably interpreted from both a theist and a naturalist/atheist perspective (Hick 1966 and 1989; Davis 1978; Penelhum 1995; McKim 2001). This thesis of evidential ambiguity may be supported as the best explanation of the diversity of belief on religious matters, and/or of the persistence of the debate about theism, with philosophers of equal acumen and integrity engaged on either side. Or the ambiguity may be considered systematic—for example, on the grounds that both natural theological and natural atheological arguments fail because they are deeply circular, resting on implicit assumptions acceptable only to those already thinking within the relevant perspective. (In relation to Swinburne’s Bayesian natural theology, in particular, this objection surfaces in criticism of assumptions about how to set the prior probabilities implicated in calculations of, for example, theism’s probability on the evidence of the ‘fine-tuning’ of the Universe’s basic physical constants, or of the probability, on all our evidence, of the truth of the Resurrection.) If the ambiguity thesis is correct, then—assuming evidentialism—firmly held theistic belief will fail to be reasonable.

On this model of faith as non-basic belief, all that characterizes faith apart from its theological content is the firmness or conviction with which faith-propositions are held true. Firm belief in the truth of a scientific theoretical proposition, for example, fails to count as faith only through lacking the right kind of content. This model therefore shares with the Reformed epistemologist model in taking its theological content as essential to what makes theistic faith faith , and so rejects the suggestion that faith of the same sort as found in the theist religious traditions might also be found elsewhere.

Furthermore, in taking faith to consist in non-basic belief that theological propositions are true, this model invites the assumption that theological convictions belong in the same category of factual claims as scientific theoretical hypotheses with which they accordingly compete. That assumption will lead those who think that theological claims are not reasonably accepted on the evidence to regard faith as worthless and intellectually dishonourable—at best, ‘a degenerating research programme’ (Lakatos 1970). (On this negative assessment of faith’s evidential support, persons of faith come perilously 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]). Or, if persons who have theistic faith readily abandon theological explanations whenever competing scientific ones succeed, their God gets reduced to ‘the God of the gaps’.) These misgivings about the model of faith as firmly held factual theological belief dissolve, of course, if success attends the project of showing that particular theological claims count as factual hypotheses well supported by the total available evidence. Those who doubt that this condition is or can be met may, however, look towards a model of faith that understands faith’s cognitive content as playing some other role than that of an explanatory hypothesis of the same kind as a scientific explanatory hypothesis.

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 (Aquinas [2006], 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 ’ (hence, definitely not 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 (Aquinas [2006], 11 & 13), our emphases).

A further problem with describing as Thomist a model of faith simply as firm belief that certain theological propositions are true is that Aquinas takes as central an act of ‘inner assent’ ( Summa Theologiae , 2a2ae, 2, 1 (Aquinas [2006], 59–65)). This is problematic because, (i) in its dominant contemporary technical usage belief is taken to be a mental (intentional) state —a propositional attitude, namely, the attitude towards the relevant proposition that it is true; (ii) belief in this contemporary sense is widely agreed not to be under volitional control—not directly, anyway; yet (iii) Aquinas holds that the assent given in faith is under the control of the will. Aquinas need not, however, be construed as accepting ‘believing at will’, since assent may be construed as an act that has to be elicited yet terminates a process that is subject to the will—a process of inquiry, deliberation or pondering that involves mental actions, or, in the case of theist faith, a process of divine grace that can proceed only if it is not blocked by the will.

Most importantly, however, Aquinas says that assent is given to the propositional articles of faith because their truth is revealed by God , and on the authority of the putative source of this revelation. Terence Penelhum puts it like this: ‘Thomas tells us that although what one assents to in faith includes many items not ostensibly about God himself, one assents to them, in faith, because they are revealed by God … It is because they come from him and because they lead to him that the will disposes the intellect to accept them’ (Penelhum 1989, 122: see Summa Theologiae , 2a2ae, 1, 1 & 2 (Aquinas [2006], 5–15)). So, Aquinas’s model of faith is of believing (assenting to) propositional truth-claims on the basis of testimony carrying divine authority . John Locke follows the same model: ‘Faith … is the assent to any proposition … upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication’ (Locke 1698 [1924, 355]; compare also Alston 1996, 15).

The unanswered question of entitlement—again

Theist faith as assent to truths on the basis of an authoritative source of divine revelation is possible, though, only for those who already believe that God exists and is revealed through the relevant sources. Might such faith, then, have to rest on a prior faith—faith that God exists and that this is God’s messenger or vehicle of communication? Those foundational claims, it might be maintained, are held true on the grounds of adequately supporting evidence, such as putatively provided by arguments of natural theology and the claimed evidence for miraculous endorsement of a prophet’s authority. Theist faith might then have a purely rational foundation. But this could hardly be so for every person of faith, since not everyone who believes will have access to the relevant evidence or be able to assess it properly. Besides, and more importantly, although Aquinas allows that rational assessment of the available evidence may lead a person to faith, he does not think that such an assessment could ever elicit assent itself—only demonstration could achieve that and so high a level of proof is not here available (see Aquinas [2006], footnote 2b, 58–9). Aquinas’s view is thus that all believers stand in need of God’s grace: ‘the assent of faith, which is its principal act … has as its cause God, moving us inwardly through grace’ ( Summa Theologiae , 2a2ae 6, 1 (Aquinas [2006], 167)). It follows, then, that, on Aquinas’s view, believing that God exists and is revealed in specific ways is itself a matter of faith, and not a purely rationally evidentially secured prolegomenon to it.

Aquinas’s model of faith thus shares with the Reformed epistemologist model the problem that it leaves unanswered the reflective believer’s concern about entitlement. Attempting to settle that concern by meeting the evidential requirement leads to circularity: theological truths are to be accepted on divine authority, yet the truth that there is such an authority (historically mediated as the relevant tradition maintains) is amongst those very truths that are to be accepted on divine authority—indeed, it is the crucial one. As Descartes puts it in the Dedication to his Meditations , ‘It is of course quite true that we must believe in the existence of God because it is a doctrine of Holy Scripture, and conversely, that we must believe Holy Scripture because it comes from God. … But this argument cannot be put to unbelievers because they would judge it to be circular’ (Descartes 1641 [Cottingham et al. 1984, 3]). Thus, although they differ on the question whether the firm beliefs of faith count as knowledge, both Aquinas and Calvin understand faith as essentially involving accepting the truth of propositions as revealed through willingly receiving God’s gracious gift of that very revelation. The question remains how accepting this gift could be epistemically rational. The externalist account of how Christian beliefs may have epistemic worth proposed in Plantinga’s model of faith (named ‘the A/C’ model because its sources are supposedly found in Aquinas as well as Calvin) offers some help with the required explanation, but (as noted in the final paragraph of Section 4 above) may arguably not by itself be sufficient.

Revelation—and its philosophical critique

The reasonableness of belief that God exists is a focal issue in the Philosophy of Religion. Theist traditions typically, or some would say essentially, make a foundational claim about an authoritative source, or sources, of revealed truth. What is salient includes belief or some related sort of affirmation, not just that God exists but associated content such as that this God exists, the God who is revealed thus and so (in great historical acts, in prophets, in scriptures, in wisdom handed down, etc.). The reasonableness of theism is therefore as much a matter of the reasonableness of an epistemology of revelation as it is of a metaphysics of perfect being. The question of how God may be expected to make himself known has gained prominence through recent discussion of the argument for atheism from ‘divine hiddenness’ (Schellenberg 1993; Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002). That argument holds that a loving God would make his existence clear to the non-resistant—but this claim is open to question. Perhaps God provides only ‘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).

Similarly, accounts of theistic faith will be open to critique when they make assumptions about the mechanisms of revelation. In particular, the model of faith as assent to propositions as revealed holds that, since God’s grace is required for that assent, when grace is effective the whole ‘package deal’ of propositional revealed truth is accepted. This yields the notion of ‘ the Faith’, as the body of theological truths to be accepted by ‘the faithful’, and it becomes a sign of resistance to divine grace to ‘pick and choose’ only some truths, as heretics do (Greek: hairesis , choice; see Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 5, 3 (Aquinas [2006], 157–61)). For heresy to be judged, however, some human authority must assume it possesses the full doctrinal revelation, with God’s grace operating without resistance in its own case. Whether that assumption can ever be sufficiently well founded to justify condemning and purging others is an important question, whose neglect may be seriously harmful, as we are reminded by the fact that the phrase for ‘act of faith’ in Portuguese— auto-da-fé —came to mean the public burning of a heretic.

But the deeper assumption made by this model of faith as non-basic (justified) belief (as, too, by the model of it as basic knowledge yielded by the proper functioning of a special cognitive faculty) is that God’s self-revelation is primarily the revelation of the truth of propositions articulated in human language (compare Swinburne 1992). Alternative understandings of revelation are available, however. In particular, it may be held that it is primarily the divine itself that is revealed—the reality, not merely a representation of it. (See Lebens 2023 for discussion of faith as knowledge by acquaintance with God from a Jewish perspective). Propositional articulations of what is revealed may still be essential, but they need to be accepted as at a remove from the object of revelation itself, and therefore as limited. The development of 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 that that process can achieve ‘closure’ in a completed set of infallibly known creedal propositions. 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 limited and fallible, subject to revision in the light of future experience.

Not all models of faith, however, identify it as primarily a matter of knowing or believing a proposition or a set of them, even with the addition of some affective or evaluative component. What is most central to theistic faith may seem better expressed as believing in God, rather than as believing that God exists. The Christian Nicene creed begins ‘Credo in unum Deum …’ and it is arguable that in this context ‘belief in’ is neither merely an idiomatic variant on, nor reducible to, ‘belief that’ (Price 1965). It may thus be held that theists’ acceptance of propositional truths as divinely revealed rests on believing in God—and it is this ‘believing in’, or ‘having faith in’, which is, fundamentally, the nature of faith. Noting that, while faith is held to be a virtue, believing as such is not, Wilfred Cantwell Smith argues that ‘faith is not belief’, ‘but something of a quite different order’ (Smith 1979, 128), requiring ‘assent’ ‘in the dynamic and personal sense of rallying to [what one takes to be the truth] with delight and engagement’ (142). Arguably, to put or to maintain faith in God involves a readiness to act, perhaps by relying on God in relevant ways and/or grounded in a practical commitment. Our considerations now shift, then, from propositional-attitude-focussed models of faith to those focussed on action, or what J. L. Schellenberg calls ‘operational’ models (2005, 126).

Judeo-Christian scripture envisions humans as actively engaged in a covenantal relationship with God. Their ongoing participation in, and commitment to, such a relationship paradigmatically involves both faith in God and faithfulness to God (McKaughan and Howard-Snyder 2022a and 2023a; Pace and McKaughan 2020). The kind of faith of which Christian faith is a paradigm case, then, may be understood as ‘action-centred commitment’ (McKaughan 2016, 78), e.g., to the Christian ‘way’. Arguably, faith understood as a combination of affective and cognitive elements would miss its essential active component. We now turn, then, to consider a fiducial model—a model of faith as trust, understood not simply as an affective state but as an action .

On a fiducial model, having faith in God is making a practical commitment —the kind involved in trusting God , or, trusting in God. (The root meaning of the Greek pistis , ‘faith’, is ‘trust’ (see Morgan 2015).) On such a model, faith’s active, practical component takes central place, though a cognitive component may be presupposed by it. Swinburne calls it the ‘Lutheran’ model, and defines it thus: ‘the person of faith does not merely believe that there is a God (and believe certain propositions about him)—he trusts Him and commits himself to Him’ (2005, 142). Yet, as noted earlier, Aquinas too takes the ultimate object of faith to be God, ‘the first reality’, and, furthermore, understands ‘formed’ faith as trusting commitment to God, motivated by, and directed towards, love of God as one’s true end (see Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 4, 3; Aquinas [2006], 123–7). It is true that Aquinas allows that the devils have faith in a certain sense, but this ‘faith’ amounts only to their belief that what the Church teaches is the truth, arrived at not by grace but ‘forced from them’ reluctantly by ‘the acumen of their natural intelligence’ ( Summa Theologiae 2a2ae, 5, 2; Aquinas [2006], 155 & 157). Aquinas’s account of ‘saving’ faith is thus also a fiducial model.

The venture of trust

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’. (For discussion of how faith relates to a range of contemporary theories of trust, see McKaughan and Howard-Snyder 2022b.) If, moreover, faith of the religious kind is itself a type of trust, then we may expect our understanding of religious faith to profit from an analysis of trust in general. It is therefore worth considering what follows about the nature of faith of the sort exemplified in theistic faith from holding it to be a kind of active 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). 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 be essentially 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 makes no requirement for evidence that the trustee may prove untrustworthy, but nevertheless takes trust to involve ‘accepted vulnerability to another’s possible but not expected ill will (or lack of good will) toward one’ (Baier 1986, 235, our emphasis). 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 reasonable (see, for example, Adams 1987). But, if adequate evidence of trustworthiness is not required for reasonable trust, how is reasonable trust different from ‘blind’ trust?

The answer seems clear: reasonable trust is practically rational trust. The question of when one may rationally trust another may thus be resolved by a decision-theoretic calculation, factoring in the extent to which one’s evidence supports the potential trustee’s trustworthiness and the utilities of the possible outcomes, given one’s intended aims. The exercise of practical reasoning does include mental acts which are epistemically evaluable, however. When one takes it to be true in practical reasoning that someone will prove trustworthy, that mental act may be more or less epistemically rational: it would break the evidentialist norm to employ in a decision-theoretic calculation a credence that does not match one’s available evidence. In many situations, it will be practically rational, given one’s intentions, to trust another person only if one believes, or, at least, believes with high probability, that the person will prove trustworthy. In such situations it is also often the case, as already noted, that we don’t have adequate evidence in advance that this person will be trustworthy in this particular respect. Yet, affording high credence to a person’s trustworthiness may still be epistemically rational given wider available evidence of, for example, the person’s past friendliness and trustworthiness in other matters, or, if the person is a stranger, of our shared social experience that trusting others generally elicits a trustworthy response. Nevertheless, it can still be rational— practically rational, that is—to trust another when we don’t have adequate evidence that they will prove trustworthy. In a life-threatening situation, for example, it may be rational to trust unlikely rescuers if they are the only ones available. Or, when we have wider aims, it may be practically rational to trust those without a record of trustworthiness, as with ‘educative’ and ‘therapeutic’ trust where people are trusted for the sake of their development or rehabilitation as trustworthy persons. Being in established relationships of friendship with others, too, can also require commitment to continue to trust them even in the face of evidence that, otherwise, would make it reasonable to believe them unworthy of trust.

On models that take faith of the theist kind to consist fundamentally in an act of trust, the analogy with interpersonal trust is suggestive. When one person trusts another there seems typically (though not uniformly) to be a doxastic aspect (the truster’s belief that the trustee is trustworthy). But what’s essential is the fiducial aspect, which consists in an active commitment or ‘entrusting’ to the other. Paul Helm proposes that theist faith similarly has importantly distinct doxastic and fiducial aspects: in addition to belief about God’s existence and trustworthiness for salvation held with a degree of strength proportional to the believer’s evidence, persons of faith must also entrust themselves to the one on whom they rely (Helm 2000). While it is widely agreed that theist faith must have a cognitive aspect, some philosophers hold that this need not be doxastic (as we shall see in Section 8).

There are significant differences, however, between the trusting involved in theistic faith and that involved in interpersonal trust. For one thing, trusting would seem not to risk any possibility of disappointment if God really is the trustee. Given the existence of the God of unchanging love, one trusts in ultimately perfect safety. But the venture of actually entrusting oneself to God seems to begin with the challenge of being able to believe or accept that, indeed, there is such a God. While some affirm that this claim is a matter of basic knowledge, and some that there is sufficient evidence to justify it, others, as already noted, hold that everyone has to confront the evidential ambiguity of foundational theistic claims. For those who reject the model of theist faith as basic knowledge and also think that the question of God’s existence cannot be settled intellectually on the basis of the available evidence, the venture involved in trusting in God (if such there be) may seem to include a doxastic venture: those who trust already venture beyond the available evidence, in their very believing or accepting that God exists and may be relied on for salvation. Trusting in God seems to presuppose, in other words, trusting that God exists. But, if so, the question becomes pressing whether, and under what conditions, one may be entitled to such an evidence-transcending venture in practical commitment to a particular view of ultimate reality and its implications for how we should live.

Theological non-realism

One way to relieve this pressure is to offer a non-realist analysis of theological claims. Trusting God will then not entail any commitment to reality’s being a certain way. Rather, on arguably the most sophisticated kind of non-realist view, theological beliefs arise because living ‘trustingly’ comes to be expressed and reinforced through a culturally constructed fiction about God and his great saving acts. This existential confidence may then be described, using the language of the fiction, as ‘trusting God’ (Cupitt 1980, Geering 1994). On such a non-realist account, the model of faith as trust brackets the cognitive component of faith, and risks becoming, in effect, a model of faith as purely a certain kind of affective state. But, in any case, non-realist models will be rejected by those who take faith to have a cognitive component that functions as a grasping—or would-be grasping—of how things really are.

Defending doxastic venture by analogy with interpersonal trust?

Assuming, then, that theist faith does include (under realist assumptions) a venture in practical commitment to truth-claims about ultimate reality, the justifiability of such a venture might yet be thought defensible by analogy with interpersonal situations where practical commitment seems justifiably to be made beyond one’s evidence to the claim that a person will prove trustworthy in some relevant respect. Reflecting on that proposal discloses further points of disanalogy, however. In cases of interpersonal trust, a venture is often needed in initially taking the trustee to be trustworthy, but evidence will inevitably later emerge which will either confirm or disconfirm the truth of that claim, and trust may, and rationally should, be withdrawn if the news is bad. But if—as we are here assuming—one ventures beyond evidential support in taking it to be true in practical reasoning that God exists and may be trusted for salvation, this may be a venture that is not confined to initial commitment but rather persists in needing to be made. This will be the case on accounts of the evidential ambiguity of theism that take the ambiguity to hold in principle, ruling out any possibility of evidential disambiguation. Those accounts may grant, of course, that continuing to journey in theistic faith may psychologically reinforce one’s commitment, providing subjective confirmation that the theist view of reality is correct. Yet these reinforcing experiences, which often involve faith renewed in the face of apparent failures of divine love, do not possess the uncontroversial status of evidence that independently and inter-subjectively confirms the initial venture.

Doxastic venture without doxastic voluntarism

Many dismiss the idea that one may venture in one’s very believing that God exists as committing a category error: ventures are voluntary, but propositional belief is not directly under voluntary control. Trusting God, however, entails practical commitment to the truth of theological faith-propositions , and commitment to the truth of a proposition in one’s practical reasoning may be under direct voluntary control.

It is one thing to be in the mental state of holding that the proposition that p is true; it is another to take it to be true that p in one’s practical reasoning (although these typically go together, since to hold that p is true is to be disposed to take it to be true that p in practical reasoning whenever the question whether p becomes salient). Practical commitment to a faith-proposition’s truth therefore could be a venture: there is no category error in allowing this possibility. Doxastic venturing—venturing in believing—is thus not a matter of willing oneself to believe without adequate evidential support; rather it is a matter of taking an already held belief to be true in one’s practical reasoning even though (as one may oneself recognise) its truth lacks such support.

The psychological possibility of doxastic venture

Some philosophers have argued, however, that one cannot (in full reflective awareness, anyway) believe that p while accepting that one has insufficient evidence for p ’s truth (Adler 2002). The counterclaim that this is possible is defended by William James, in his controversial 1896 lecture, ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896 [1956]). James agrees that belief cannot be directly willed and must be otherwise causally evoked (he later came to wish that he had used ‘The Right to Believe’ as his lecture’s title). James observes, however, that many beliefs have causes that do not constitute or imply an evidential grounding of their truth. James labels such causes ‘passional’—again, a potentially misleading term, since its intended referents include much more than emotional causes of belief. In particular, beliefs may be caused by ‘the circumpressure of one’s caste or set,’ of which one’s inherited religious tradition is a paradigm case (James 1896 [1956, 9]). James is thus able to explain the psychological possibility of doxastic venture: one already has a ‘passionally’ caused belief, which one then takes to be true in practical reasoning despite its lack of adequate evidential grounding (compare Creel 1994, who similarly describes ‘faith’ as a ‘non-evidential doxastic passion’).

Note that a doxastic venture model of theistic faith reconciles faith as gift with faith’s active components: taking a faith-proposition to be true in practical reasoning is a basic (mental) action (which leads on to further actions involved in trusting God and seeking to do God’s will); the gift provides the motivational resources for this basic action, namely a firm belief in the truth of the faith-proposition, despite its lack of adequate evidential support. (In the next section, the possibility is considered that the gift of these motivational resources might be effective yet not amount to actual belief.) It is also worth noting that those who find the focus on the individual something of a deficiency in analytical accounts of faith (Eklund 2015) may perceive in James’ account some acknowledgment of the social aspect of faith. Arguably, the standard ‘passional’ or ‘non-evidential’ cause of religious belief is cultural immersion within an historical faith-tradition. The motivational resources for faith-commitment may thus be an essentially social possession.

Examples of doxastic venture models

On the doxastic venture model, faith involves full practical commitment to a faith-proposition’s truth, despite the recognition that this is not ‘objectively’ justified on the evidence. Kierkegaard’s definition of faith as ‘an objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation process of the most passionate inwardness’ in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard 1846 [1968, 180]) is an example of a doxastic venture model. So too is Paul Tillich’s account of faith as ‘the state of being ultimately concerned’, since the claim of the object of one’s ultimate concern to ‘promise total fulfilment even if all other claims have to be subjected to it or rejected in its name’ cannot in principle be established on the basis of the evidence (Tillich 1957 [2001, 1 and 21]).

Aquinas’s model of faith, though widely thought of as conforming to an evidential requirement on belief, may arguably be open to interpretation as a doxastic venture model. As noted in Section 5, Aquinas holds that the available evidence, though it supports the truth of foundational faith-propositions, does not provide what Aquinas counts as sufficient (i.e., demonstrative) support to justify inner assent (in addition to references to the Summa Theologiae given previously, see 2a2ae. 2, 1 (Aquinas [2006], 63); and compare also Penelhum 1989, 120). Now, whether practical commitment to the truth of a given faith-proposition does or does not venture beyond adequate evidential support will be relative to assumptions about (a) where the level of evidential support required for ‘adequacy’ should be set, and (b) just how firm and decisive propositional faith-commitment needs to be. On some such assumptions, for example those made by Bayesians, the support provided by the evidence Aquinas adduces—or, by a suitable contemporary upgrading of that evidence such as that provided in the works of Richard Swinburne—may be considered enough to make reasonable a sufficiently high degree of belief (or credence) in the truth of theistic faith-propositions so that believers need not venture beyond the support of their evidence. Interpreting Aquinas’s model of faith as conforming to evidentialism may thus be viable. Nevertheless, Aquinas’s own assumptions on these matters may leave him closer to Kierkegaard and Tillich than is commonly thought (consider Summa Theologiae 2a2ae 4, 1 and, once again, 2a2ae 6, 1 (Aquinas [2006], 117–9 & 167)).

The special role of faith-propositions

Bayesians might argue that there is no occasion for faith as doxastic venture since, once practical commitment to the truth of propositions is recognised as a matter of degree, whatever the state of the available evidence relating to a given proposition, there will always (given initial credences) be a rational credence properly associated with that evidence, and hence there are no possible circumstances where ‘the evidence does not decide’, so that an evidentialist requirement can indeed apply universally. Note, however, Lara Buchak’s (2012, 2018) discussion of ways in which Bayesians might understand faith as going beyond the evidence, and her own proposal that faith-ventures essentially include an additional practical commitment, which may be rational under certain conditions, not to inquire further into evidence relevant to the truth of the propositions concerned for the sole purpose of deciding what to do. (For critical discussion of this kind of restriction on inquiry in connection with faith commitments, see Dormandy 2018 and Howard-Snyder and McKaughan 2022a. Katherine Dormandy has recently proposed a positive defence of evidentialism in considering the question of what makes it good to form positive beliefs about those you have faith in, including God (Dormandy 2022).)

If the domain of faith is, as Stephen Evans puts it, ‘the assumptions, convictions and attitudes which the believer brings to the evidence for and against religious truth’ (Evans 1985, 178), and faith’s cognitive component offers a ‘total interpretation’ of the world of our experience (Hick 1966, 154), then (foundational) faith-propositions function as ‘highest-order framing principles’ which necessarily cannot have their truth settled by appeal to the force of a body of independent evidence (Bishop 2007a, 139–44). Taking such a faith-proposition to be true, then, is not something that comes in degrees: either one ‘buys into’ the overall worldview (foundational) faith-propositions propose, or one does not. Such a choice is existentially important, and settling it raises anxiety about exercising a responsibility that cannot—without ‘bad faith’—be transferred onto the relatively impersonal function of one’s reason, since a venture beyond any inter-subjectively rational evidential confirmation is required. The doxastic venture model may thus be regarded as capturing the spiritual challenge of faith more satisfactorily than do models that conform to evidentialism. This is because, on the doxastic venture model, faith involves a deeper surrender of self-reliant control, not only in trusting God, but in accepting at the level of practical commitment that there is a God—indeed, this God—who is to be trusted.

Doxastic venture models of faith and epistemic concern

Doxastic venture in relation to faith-propositions can be justifiable, of course, only if there are legitimate exceptions to the evidentialist requirement to take a proposition to be true just to the extent of its evidential support—and only if the legitimate exceptions include the kind of case involved in religious, theistic, faith-commitment.

A possible view of theistic faith-commitment is that it is wholly independent of the epistemic concern that cares about evidential support. On this view, faith reveals its authenticity most clearly when it takes faith-propositions to be true contrary to the weight of the evidence. This view is widely described as ‘fideist’, but ought more fairly to be called arational fideism, or, where commitment contrary to the evidence is positively favoured, irrational or counter-rational fideism. Despite its popular attribution both to the church father Tertullian and to ‘the father of existentialism’, Kierkegaard, counter-rational fideism does not seem to have been espoused by any significant theist philosophers (passages in Tertullian and Kierkegaard that appear to endorse this position may be interpreted as emphasizing that Christian faith requires accepting, not logical contradiction, but ‘contradiction’ of our ‘natural’ expectations, wholly overturned in the revelation that the power of divine love is triumphant in the Crucified One).

Serious philosophical defence of a doxastic venture model of faith thus implies a moderate version of fideism, for which epistemic concern is not overridden and for which, therefore, it is a constraint on faith-commitment that it not accept what is known, or justifiably believed on the evidence, to be false. Rather, faith commits itself only beyond , and not against, the evidence—and it does so out of epistemic concern to grasp truth on matters of vital existential importance. The thought that one may be entitled to commit to an existentially momentous truth-claim in principle undecidable on the evidence when forced to decide either to do so or not is what motivates William James’s ‘justification of faith’ in ‘The Will to Believe’ (James 1896 [1956]). If such faith is to be justified, its cognitive content will (on realist assumptions) have to cohere with our best evidence-based theories about the real world. Faith may extend our scientific grasp of the real, but may not counter it. Whether the desire to grasp more truth about the real than science can supply is a noble aspiration or a dangerous delusion is at the heart of the debate about entitlement to faith on this moderate fideist doxastic venture model.

A discussion of the debate between the moderate, Jamesian, fideist and the evidentialist is beyond this entry’s scope. Still, it is worth remarking that those who think that faith understood as doxastic venture may be justified as reasonable face the challenge of providing the tools for weeding out intuitively unreasonable forms of faith. On the other side, those evidentialists who reject doxastic venture as always impermissible have to consider whether taking a stance on the nature of reality beyond anything science can even in principle confirm may not, in the end, be unavoidable, and potentially implicated in the commitments required for science itself (see Bishop 2007a, Chapters 8 and 9; Bishop 2023). For a useful recent collection of articles on the wider theme of the relation of religious faith to intellectual virtue, see Callahan and O’Connor 2014.

Some accounts allow that faith centrally involves practical commitment venturing beyond evidential support, yet do not require (or, even, permit) that the venturer actually believes the faith-proposition assumed to be true. Such accounts may be described as proposing a ‘non-doxastic’ venture model of faith. F. R. Tennant holds a view of this kind: he takes faith to be the adoption of a line of conduct not warranted by present facts, that involves experimenting with the possible or ideal, venturing into the unknown and taking the risk of disappointment and defeat. Faith is not an attempt to will something into existence but rather treating hoped for and unseen things as if they were real and then acting accordingly (Tennant 1943 [1989, 104]). Swinburne refers to this as the ‘pragmatist’ model of faith (Swinburne 2005, 147–8; Swinburne 2001, 211; compare also Golding 1990, 2003 and McKaughan 2016). The origins of Swinburne’s pragmatist model are to be found in a much earlier paper, Swinburne 1969.

William Alston (1996) suggests that faith may involve an active ‘acceptance’ rather than purely receptive belief. A clearly non-doxastic venture model results if acceptance is understood on Jonathan Cohen’s account under which to accept that p is ‘to have or adopt a policy of deeming, positing, or postulating that p —i.e. of including that proposition … among one’s premisses for deciding what to do or think in a particular context, whether or not one feels it to be true that p ’ (Cohen 1992, 4, our emphasis). The firmness of faith-commitment is then just the firmness of one’s ‘ resolve to use [faith-claims] as a basis for one’s thought, attitude and behaviour’ (Alston 1996, 17): there is no firm assurance of their truth . Decisive commitment in the absence of such assurance may nevertheless be possible, motivated (as Swinburne suggested in the first edition of his Faith and Reason ) by the evaluative belief that ‘unless [faith-propositions are true], that which is most worthwhile is not to be had’ (Swinburne, 1981, 117). A faith venture that lacks belief in the faith-proposition to which commitment is made need not, and probably could not, lack cognitive components altogether, as this suggestion of Swinburne’s indicates.

Andrei Buckareff (2005) and J. L. Schellenberg (2005, 138–9) propose non-doxastic (or, ‘sub-doxastic’) venture models of propositional faith, with Schellenberg emphasising the positive evaluation that persons of faith make of the truth-claim to which they commit themselves. In response to Daniel Howard-Snyder (2013a) Schellenberg allows that faith may in some instances involve belief while still maintaining that ‘non-doxastic religious faith … will turn out to be a particularly important way of having religious faith as we head into the future’ (2013, 262). Bishop (2005), in response to Buckareff, also agrees that authentic faith need not always be a specifically doxastic venture. There may, then, be an emerging consensus amongst proponents of venture models that faith, at its core, consists in suitably motivated persistent practical commitment ‘beyond the evidence’ to the positively evaluated truth of foundational faith-claims which may, but need not, actually be believed to be true.

Robert Audi (2011) has also defended a non-doxastic account of faith, contrasting ‘fiducial faith’ and ‘doxastic faith’, and arguing that authentic religious faith need only amount to the former. Audi’s account is not strictly a ‘venture’ model, however, since he does not take commitment beyond the support of adequate evidence to be essential. Audi’s account suggests that religious faith is sui generis , but capable of being understood through its relations with other psychological states and actions, such as beliefs, evaluations and practical commitments. Rational assessment of religious faith, Audi thinks, must avoid treating it as implying belief, while recognising that greater confidence attaches to it than to religious hope. For another version of a non-doxastic account of faith, as a person’s ‘affective orientation or stance’, see Jonathan Kvanvig (2013, 2018). The question whether faith entails belief (even if it may not consist purely in beliefs) remains a lively focus of debate. For defence of the view that faith entails belief, see Malcolm and Scott 2016 and Mugg 2021; for criticism see Howard-Snyder 2019.

Some philosophers have suggested that the epistemological challenges faced by accounts of faith as involving belief beyond the evidence may be avoided by construing theist commitment as hope. Theist hope seems not to be mere tenacity (‘clinging to one’s hopes’) (Taylor 1961), but a more complex attitude. James Muyskens suggests, for example, that one who hopes ‘keep[s] his life open or fluid with respect to [a faith-proposition] p —where (a) neither p nor not- p is certain for him, (b) he wants p and (c) he sees p as constructively connected with his own well-being and/or concept of himself as a person’ (1979, 35). Muyskens 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 understood as competing with hope (Creel 1993), and some 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, and, as Audi observes, it contrasts with the attitude of faith at least in this respect, namely, that surprise makes little sense as a response to discovering that the object of one’s faith is indeed the case, whereas there need be nothing inappropriate in surprise at the fulfilment of one’s hopes (see Audi 2011, 74).

A more adequate model of faith as hope, then, may rather take faith to be acting in, or from, hope. Such a model then comes close to a non-doxastic venture model of faith, differing only in so far as acting from hope that God exists differs from taking this claim to be true (albeit without belief) in one’s practical reasoning, but this difference may be undetectable at the level of behavioral outcomes (see McKaughan 2013). A model of faith as acting in hope shares with the doxastic and non-doxastic venture models in rejecting the view that faith requires cognitive certainty. But one can act in hope with firmness and resilience, given a strong affective/evaluative stance, even if one lacks belief that one’s hopes will be fulfilled. Hoping that p , however, does not involve taking a stand on its being true that p , which is widely thought to be essential to faith.

The ‘venture’ models of faith (with or without belief) and the model of faith as a venture in hope all fit the view that faith is consistent with doubt, and, indeed, impossible without doubt of some kind, though they allow that persons who have faith may give firm and sustained commitment to the truth of faith-propositions in practice (for discussion of different kinds of doubt and their compatibility or incompatibility with faith and belief see Howard-Snyder 2013b, 359). The ‘certainty’ of faith on these models is more a matter of the certainty that persons of faith find themselves conferring on the foundational claims of their faith, rather than a matter of discovering in themselves a certain knowledge or intellectual conviction of the truth of these claims. It is possible, then, on these accounts of faith, to be a committed person of faith and also an ‘agnostic’ in Thomas Huxley’s original sense of someone who does not claim as knowledge the commitments he or she nevertheless makes as a foundational practical orientation to reality. (For discussion of the compatibility of Muslim faith and doubt, see Aijaz 2023.)

Faith is traditionally regarded as one of the ‘theological’ virtues. If a virtue is a ‘disposition of character which instantiates or promotes responsiveness to one or more basic goods’, then theistic faith qualifies since it is ‘a responsiveness to practical hope and truth’, provided theistic faith-claims are indeed true (Chappell 1996, 27). Faith will not, however, be a virtue as such , if it is accepted that faith can be misplaced or, even, ‘demonic’, directed upon a ‘false ultimate’ (Tillich 1957 [2001, 21]). To be virtuous, faith must be faith in a worthy object: it is faith in God that is the theological virtue. More generally, faith is virtuous only when it is faith to which one is entitled. An account of the conditions under which faith is permissible is thus the key to an ethics of faith.

On models of faith as a (special) kind of knowledge, or as firmly held belief, it may seem puzzling how faith could be a virtue—unless some implicit practical component emerges when such models are further explicated, or, alternatively, a case may be made for the claim that what is involuntary may nevertheless be praiseworthy, with theist faith as a case in point (Adams 1987). (For discussion of how faith might be voluntary, even if faith entails belief, or indeed is a type of belief, and belief is not under our direct voluntary control, see Rettler 2018.) Furthermore, as already suggested (Sections 4 & 5 above), models of faith as knowledge or belief fail to provide non-circular conditions sufficient for entitlement, unless the truth of faith-propositions is established by independent argument and evidence. If faith is understood as, or as essentially including, beliefs held on insufficient evidence, it is also hard to understand why Abrahamic religious traditions have valued it so highly, let alone why God might be thought to make salvation contingent on such belief (Kvanvig 2018, 106; McKaughan and Howard-Snyder 2021).

Fiducial models of faith seem more attuned to exhibiting faith as a virtue, though a defence of the trustworthiness of the one who is trusted for salvation may be required. Doxastic and non-doxastic venture models of faith can vindicate faith as a virtue, provided they provide robust entitlement conditions, to ensure that not just any ‘leap of faith’ is permissible. The Jamesian account already mentioned (Section 7) aims to meet this need. James’s own view of what suffices to justify a faith-venture arguably needs an ethical supplement: both the non-evidential motivation for the venture and its content must be morally acceptable (Bishop 2007a, 163–6).

If faith of the religious kind is to count as valuable and/or virtuous, it seems there must be a suitable degree of resilience in the commitment made (see Howard-Snyder and McKaughan 2022b for arguments that faith requires resilience; for discussion of the value and potential virtuousness or viciousness of resilient faith see McKaughan and Howard-Snyder 2023a; on the rationality of resilient faith see Buchak 2017, Jackson 2021, and McKaughan 2016). Persons of religious faith and faithfulness both put their faith in and are faith ful to the object of their commitment, though the salient kind of faithfulness may be a matter of the continual renewal of faith rather than of maintaining it unchanged (Pace and McKaughan 2020). (See Audi 2014 for a discussion of faith and faithfulness in relation to virtue. Audi defends faithfulness as, like courage, an ‘adjunctive’ virtue, and argues that being ‘a person of faith’ counts as a ‘virtue of personality’.)

Faith is only one of the Christian theological virtues, of course, the others being hope and charity (or love, agapē ): St. Paul famously affirms that the greatest of these is love (I Cor. 13:13). 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. (See Jeffrey 2017 for discussion of the moral permissibility of faith, particularly in connection with hope.)

What is the potential scope of faith? On some models, the kind of faith exemplified by theistic faith is found only there. On models which take faith to consist in knowledge or belief, faith is intrinsically linked to theological content—indeed, in the case of Christian faith, to orthodox Christian theological content, specifiable as one unified set of doctrines conveyed to receptive human minds by the operation of divine grace. The venture models, however, allow for the possibility that authentic faith may be variously realised, and be directed upon different, and mutually incompatible, intentional objects. This pluralism is an important feature of accounts of faith in the American pragmatist tradition. John Dewey strongly rejected the notion of faith as a special kind of knowledge (Dewey 1934, 20), as did William James, whose ‘justification of faith’ rests on a permissibility thesis, under which varied and conflicting faith-commitments may equally have a place in the ‘intellectual republic’ (James 1896 [1956, 30]). Charles S. Peirce, another influential American pragmatist, arguably held a non-doxastic view of faith (Pope 2018).

Both Dewey and James defend models of faith with a view to advancing the idea that authentic religious faith may be found outside what is generally supposed to be theological orthodoxy. Furthermore, they suggest that ‘un-orthodox’ faith may be more authentic than ‘orthodox’ faith. ‘The faith that is religious’, says Dewey, ‘[I should describe as] the unification of the self through allegiance to inclusive ideal ends, which imagination presents to us and to which the human will responds as worthy of controlling our desires and choices’ (1934, 33). And James: ‘Religion says essentially two things: First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. ... [and] the second affirmation of religion is that we are better off now if we believe her first affirmation to be true’ (James 1896 [1956, 25–6]). While some of what Dewey and James say about justifiable faith may appear non-realist, in fact they both preserve the idea that religious faith aspires to grasp, beyond the evidence, vital truth about reality. For example, Dewey holds that religious belief grounds hope because it takes something to be true about the real world ‘which carr[ies] one through periods of darkness and despair to such an extent that they lose their usual depressive character’ (1934, 14–5).

A general—i.e., non-theologically specific—account of the religious kind of faith may have potential as a tool for criticising specific philosophical formulations of the content of religious faith. The conditions for permissible faith-venture may exclude faith in God under certain inadequate conceptions of who or what God is. Arguably, the ‘personal omniGod’ of much contemporary philosophy of religion is just such an inadequate conception (Bishop 2007b). An understanding of what faith is, then, may motivate radical explorations into the concept of God as held in the theistic traditions (Bishop 1998; Johnston 2009; Bishop and Perszyk 2014, 2023).

Can there be faith of the same general kind as found in theistic religious faith yet 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 consider that this must be a possibility. Tennant himself suggests that ‘much of the belief which underlies knowledge’—and he has scientific knowledge in mind—‘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 in accordance with the applicable inter-subjective norms.

If faith is understood as commitment beyond independent inter-subjective evidential support to the truth of some overall interpretation of experience and reality, then all who commit themselves (with sufficient steadfastness) to such a Weltanschauung or worldview will be people of faith. Faith of this kind may be religious, and it may be religious without being theistic, of course, as in classical Buddhism or Taoism. Some have argued that faith is a human universal: Cantwell Smith, for example, describes it as ‘a planetary human characteristic [involving the] capacity to perceive, to symbolize, and live loyally and richly in terms of, a transcendent dimension to [human] life’ (1979, 140–141). There may also, arguably, be non-religious faith: for example, ‘scientific atheists’ or ‘naturalists’ may be making a faith-venture when they take there to be no more to reality than is in principle discoverable by the natural sciences. The suggestion that atheism rests on a faith-venture will, however, be resisted by those who maintain ‘the presumption of atheism’ (Flew, 1976): if atheism is rationally the default position, then adopting it requires no venture.

An atheist’s faith-venture may, in any case, seem oddly so described on the grounds that it provides no basis for practical hope or trust. Providing such a basis may plausibly be thought necessary for faith—the truth to which the venturer commits must be existentially important in this way. (Note James’s requirement that faith-commitment is permissible only for resolving a ‘genuine option’, where a genuine option has inter alia to be ‘momentous’, that is, existentially significant and pressing (James 1896 [1956, 3–4]).) Truth-claims accepted by faith of the religious kind seem essentially to be ‘saving’ truths—solutions to deep problems about the human situation. And there may thus be arguments as to which religious tradition offers the best solutions to human problems (see, for example, Yandell 1990, 1999). J. L. Schellenberg (2009) argues that the only kind of religious faith that could be justified (if any is) is a sceptical ‘ultimism’, in which one ‘assents’ to and treats as real an imaginatively grasped conception of a metaphysically, axiologically and soteriologically ultimate reality.

Some may nevertheless argue that an existentially vital faith that grounds hope can belong within a wholly secular context—that is, without counting in any recognisable sense as ‘religious’. Cantwell Smith claims, for example, that ‘the Graeco-Roman heritage … and its fecundating role in Western life [can] be seen as one of the major spiritual traditions of our world’ (1979, 139). 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). (For further discussion of faith in secular contexts, see Preston-Roedder 2018, Tsai 2017, and Ichikawa 2020; for special journal issues addressing a variety of issues in the philosophy of faith in both religious and secular contexts, see Rice et al. 2017; Malcolm 2023; McKaughan and Howard-Snyder 2023b.)

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How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• Jackson, E., “ Faith: Contemporary Perspectives ” and Swindal, J., “ Faith: Historical Perspectives ”, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Pope, H., 1909, “ Faith ”, in The Catholic Encyclopedia , New York: Robert Appleton Company.

Aquinas, Thomas | belief | Christian theology, philosophy and | fideism | James, William | Kierkegaard, Søren | pragmatic arguments and belief in God | religion: and science | religion: epistemology of | religion: philosophy of | trust

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Sophie Milne and Selwyn Fraser for research assistance on this entry, and Imran Aijaz, Robert Audi, Thomas Harvey, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Katherine Munn Dormandy, Glen Pettigrove and John Schellenberg for helpful comments on drafts.

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Faith still shapes morals and values even after people are ‘done’ with religion

Professor of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Professor of Psychology, Brigham Young University

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Religion forms a moral foundation for billions of people throughout the world.

In a 2019 survey, 44% of Americans – along with 45% of people across 34 nations – said that belief in God is necessary “to be moral and have good values.” So what happens to a person’s morality and values when they lose faith?

Religion influences morals and values through multiple pathways. It shapes the way people think about and respond to the world, fosters habits such as church attendance and prayer, and provides a web of social connections.

As researchers who study the psychology and sociology of religion , we expected that these psychological effects can linger even after observant people leave religion, a group we refer to as “religious dones.” So together with our co-authors Daryl R. Van Tongeren and C. Nathan DeWall , we sought to test this “religion residue effect” among Americans. Our research addressed the question: Do religious dones maintain some of the morals and values of religious Americans?

In other words, just because some people leave religion, does religion fully leave them?

Measuring the religious residue effect

Recent research demonstrates that religious dones around the world fall between the never religious and the currently religious in terms of thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Many maintain some of the attributes of religious people, such as volunteering and charitable giving, even after they leave regular faith practices behind. So in our first project , we examined the association between leaving religion and the five moral foundations commonly examined by psychologists: care/harm, fairness/cheating, ingroup loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion and purity/degradation.

We found that religious respondents were the most likely to support each of the five moral foundations. These involve intuitive judgments focusing on feeling the pain of others, and tapping into virtues such as kindness and compassion. For instance, religious Americans are relatively likely to oppose acts they deem “disgusting,” which is a component of the purity/degradation scale. This aligns with previous research on religion and moral foundations .

Most importantly, and in line with the religion residue hypothesis, we have found what we call a “stairstep pattern” of beliefs. The consistently religious are more likely than the dones to endorse each moral foundation, and the religious dones are more likely to endorse them than the consistently nonreligious. The one exception was the moral foundation of fairness/cheating, which the dones and the consistently religious supported at similar rates.

Put another way, after leaving religion, religious dones maintain some emphasis on each of the five moral foundations, though less so than the consistently religious, which is why we refer to this as a stairstep pattern.

Our second project built on research showing that religion is inextricably linked with values, particularly Schwartz’s Circle of Values , the predominant model of universal values used by Western psychologists. Values are the core organizing principles in people’s lives, and religion is positively associated with the values of security, conformity, tradition and benevolence . These are “social focus values”: beliefs that address a generally understood need for coordinated social action.

For this project, we asked a single group of study participants the same questions as they grew older over a period of 10 to 11 years. The participants were adolescents in the first wave of the survey, and in their mid-to-late 20s in the final wave.

Our findings revealed another stairstep pattern: The consistently religious among these young adults were significantly more likely than religious dones to support the social focus values of security, conformity and tradition; and religious dones were significantly more likely to support them than the consistently nonreligious. While a similar pattern emerged with the benevolence value, the difference between the religious dones and the consistently nonreligious was not statistically significant.

Together, these projects show that the religion residue effect is real. The morals and values of religious dones are more similar to those of religious Americans than they are to the morals and values of other nonreligious Americans.

Our follow-up analyses add some nuance to that key finding. For instance, the enduring impact of religious observance on values appears to be strongest among former evangelical Protestants. Among dones who left mainline Protestantism, Catholicism and other religious traditions, the religion residue effect is smaller and less consistent.

Our research also suggests that the religious residue effect can decay. The more time that passes after people leave religion, the more their morals and values come to resemble those of people who have never been religious. This is an important finding, because a large and growing number of Americans are leaving organized religion , and there is still much to be learned about the psychological and social consequences of this decline in religion.

The growing numbers of nonreligious

As recently as 1990, only 7% of Americans reported having no religion . Thirty years later, in 2020, the percentage claiming to be nonreligious had quadrupled, with almost 3 in 10 Americans having no religion . There are now more nonreligious Americans than affiliates of any one single religious tradition, including the two largest: Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism.

This shift in religious practice may fundamentally change Americans’ perceptions of themselves, as well as their views of others. One thing that seems clear, though, is that those who leave religion are not the same as those who have never been religious. Given the rapid and continued growth in the number of nonreligious Americans, we expect that this distinction will become increasingly important to understanding the morals and values of the American people.

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100-Word Faith Stories: (Very) short essays about unexpectedly experiencing God in the world today

God is in all things. But we don’t always expect to feel God’s presence in a particular moment or place. We asked readers to share these stories of surprising moments of faith and grace in no more than 100 words. These (very) short essays about unexpectedly experiencing God in the world today include feelings of joy, sadness, laughter, anger and anything in between. They demonstrate the many ways in which God is with us, if only we would take the time to notice.

Two parents and four boys make a small house feel like a sardine tin packed with firecrackers. I had my eye on a larger fixer-upper nearby. But despite its apparent practicality and my eagerness, my husband wasn’t enthused. I suggested a quick attempt at discernment: Pray one Hail Mary while imagining we had settled on each choice, buy or stay.

We both felt God’s presence. The “Stay” prayer brought unwelcome but undeniable inner peace. “Buy” brought anxiety rather than excitement.

I could only respond, “Thy will be done.” Our house is cramped and noisy, but we’ll stay for now.  Jessica Carney Ardmore, Pa.

My sons and I were enjoying the wave pool at our local amusement park on a beautiful sunny day. There was the usual crowd of people—of different ages, from different neighborhoods and cultures—all enjoying the pool. I closed my eyes and was suddenly aware of the joyous cacophony. All the voices, screams and laughter of my siblings, my fellow children of God. I was awestruck, and with my eyes still shut, I smiled broadly, and I thanked God for that sudden grace of connection and awareness. Matthew Whelehan Rochester, N.Y.

My husband is a stroke survivor; I’m his caregiver. Ron has balance issues, garbled speech and swallowing difficulties. Once the primary breadwinner, Ron’s now on SSDI. I struggle to bring in money while handling the numerous responsibilities of caring for my husband and household.

Earlier today I read the abandonment prayer of the newly canonized St. Charles de Foucauld: “Father, I abandon myself into your hands; do with me what you will. I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only your will be done in me, and in all your creatures.”

I am now at peace. Jerilyn Burgess North Olmsted, Ohio

At my first holy Communion, when I was 7 in 1958, I came up to the altar and was so small I had to stand rather than kneel at the rail. The priest approached and put the host on my tongue. I felt drawn out of myself, forgetting where I was, feeling a sense of presence. It was like being a mini Samuel, and I said to the Lord, “Speak, for your servant is listening . ” My love for the Eucharist continues to this day. William Eagan, S.J. Weston, Mass.

I invited my all-white classmates to Mass at my Black Catholic parish. During Mass, my friend nudged me, “Lee, we’re the only white people here.” I responded, “Frank, how do you think…” but before I could finish my statement, Frank added, “Lee, I never thought about you that way.” The experience helped him to see my struggles as the only Black kid in our classes. We had just had a class that taught we were made in the image and likeness of God. We saw that in one another more clearly now. Lee Baker New Orleans, La.

As I walked a labyrinth, I couldn’t shake the image of playing hide and seek with God. Shrubs around the path made me alternately feel hidden and then exposed. I know God is always there waiting for me, but I often “hide.” I fear I haven’t done enough, or I’m not good enough to earn God’s love. But those doubts come from me, not God. Although I may think I’m hiding, God sees and loves me. When I embrace God’s unconditional love, I will grow into the person he created me to be. Cathy Cunningham Framingham, Mass.

Deep in grief as I grappled with my husband’s determination to divorce, God felt absent, my faith rocked. My friend, Sister Noreen, told me to read the Bible. I mocked her. Unfazed, she insisted: “Open it at random. What have you got to lose?” On March 19, as I opened a newly purchased Bible, I cried: “God where are you?!” My eyes fell upon Jer 29:11. “For I know the plans....” I can still feel the jolt that coursed through my body at that moment—in shock and joy—the first of many such moments since then. Mary Margaret Cannon Washington, D.C.

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Faith Island

7 Reasons Faith is Important

When you hear the word “faith,” what do you think of? Whether you realize it or not, faith is an essential part of life, not just Christianity. For example, every time you sit down on a chair, you have faith that the chair will hold you. You are trusting that the chair won’t collapse under you.

That’s faith – being sure of what you’re hoping for – being certain of what you don’t see or experience yet. The Bible defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).

1. Without Faith, it’s Impossible to Please God

Why is faith necessary? Because without it, we cannot please God.

Hebrews 11:6 states, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Let’s face it – believing in a God we cannot see and believing that He is who He says He is takes faith! And it pleases God.

2. Jesus Notices Our Level of Faith

In the book of Matthew, we see two different people with two different faith levels.

Matthew 15:28: “Then Jesus answered and said to her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed from that very hour.”

Matthew 14:31: “And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him, and said to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’”

The woman was a Gentile who had faith that Jesus was the only hope for her sick daughter. She wouldn’t take “no” for an answer from this Jewish Rabbi, so Jesus – moved by her faith – granted her request.

The man with little faith was Peter , Jesus’s own disciple! Jesus was walking on the water and invited Peter to come to Him; Peter had the faith to walk to Jesus on the water, but when his eyes focused on the wind and the waves, he became afraid and began to sink. We too need to keep our eyes on Jesus instead of our circumstances – this will keep our faith strong during difficulties.

3. Faith Moves God to Act

Why is faith important to God? Because faith – not need, doubt or fear – moves God . Mark 2:5 says, “When Jesus saw [his friends’] faith, He said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven you.’” The lame man got up, grabbed his mat, and went home! When Jesus saw the faith of the lame man’s friends, He moved on their behalf and healed their friend.

As Christians, we often petition God, asking Him to meet our needs, to heal our bodies or relationships, or to give us wisdom. But as James 1:5-7 says, unless we ask in faith without doubting , we won’t receive what we’re asking for.

4. Faith Strengthens Us During Trials

Because we live in a sinful, fallen world, we will face difficulties. But our faith is what helps us remain strong during hard times. We have an enemy, and it’s our faith that acts as a shield to protect us from his schemes and plots: “above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one” (Ephesians 6:16).

We should not be surprised when our faith is tested ; James 2:3 says that “the testing of your faith produces patience.” As we stand firm in faith through trials, God gets glory: “that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).

5. Faith Fuels What We Do

We demonstrate our faith in God by what we do and how we live . James 2:26 states, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”

Picture this: Faith and Works are each an oar in your row boat of life. They work together to move you forward. Genuine faith is validated by actions that follow; likewise, actions done without faith are useless. We must always act in faith!

James explains it like this: “Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works.’ Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:17-18).

6. Our Faith Can Encourage Others

Unshakeable faith is noticeable, and it can encourage others to be firm in their faith too. Colossians 1:3-4 says, “We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of your love for all the saints.” It’s easier to stay committed to faith in God when you see others doing the same. Choose to stand strong in your faith and inspire others to do the same!

Timothy was a young pastor who was being mentored by the Apostle Paul. Paul states in 2 Timothy 1:5 “when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.” When our faith is strong and true, it can be passed on to others including our family and friends making a difference in their lives as well.

7. Faith is the Foundation of Salvation

When Jesus walked the earth, the Jewish people were sure they had to keep all the rules of the law in order to be acceptable to God. But when Jesus came, He redefined righteousness: “… a man is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law …” (Galatians 2:16).

We are made right with God through faith in Jesus, God’s Son; we are not made right before God by what we do or don’t do. This was a radical shift for the Israelites. They were so used to earning their salvation. But as Ephesians 2:8-9 declares, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

Finally, we must guard our faith. 1 Timothy 6:11-13 reminds us “But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness. Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called ….”

We must be prepared to fight to maintain our faith during the storms of life which will try to derail us. In fact, as we preserve our faith in God, it will sustain us through the toughest trials, for the glory of God.

~ Jennell Houts

Related posts

• Bible Verses on Faith
• Mustard Seed Faith: Matthew 17:20 Explained
• How to Build Faith That Moves Mountains

Comments(28)

KAGUMIRE JACOB says

AM READY TI DEAL WITH YOU.

DR ANNAN says

I Will like to received your teachings and share the message of grace with our foundation. Thank you

Emmanuel Fehintola says

This is very thorough and inspiring,deeply rooted in the scripture, God bless you more.

Cassandra cassandre grande says

Opera show many important things. Like faith importance

J Jublee says

Vasanthakumar says

Thanks for your teaching on faith, please send more on faith building.

Mangaliso Myeni says

can I have a book on faith is essential

Joshua libushi says

You want to learn more about God and know how to pray

Daniel Herbert Mensah says

God bless you for that explaination

Ademola says

Thanks for the easy to read English and explanation. God increase your well of wisdom and understanding.

Emeka Mary Ann says

Your teachingsare very easy to understand and encouraging thanks.

EMMANUEL SIFUNA says

Your comment Teachings are wonderful and encouraging

Francis says

We must in faith as the Bible have said

Alele Rogers says

May God keep on you the words of encouragement Thanks you

Shadix luwafax says

People should have faith in GOD

Nsoh Grace says

God bless you. I really learn a lot about faith .

Laina Nashipili says

This really is very encouriging and I actually wrote down some scriptures to read and I got a better understanding on why faih is important and it is alive when we work with faith. This is very helpful and it is helping me with my journey to God. Amen.

Salmon Ogwell says

Am blessed, your points are well searched ,let me absorbe it will bear much fruits.

May keep providing you with encouraging words of God 🙏 Thanks

Robin Bradley says

Wonderful blog! Wanted to just say that the correct scripture for “knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience” is James 1:3.

Very powerful authority ot salvation

Okwe David says

I like to know more about faith

John Afolabi says

Thank God for your understanding in the word of God. More grace for you in Jesus name 🙏🙏

Billton hajaya says

Please send me your teachings

JONAH Nadwama Pwaltha says

My faith increases as I go through this lesson

Thank you so much says

Thank you so much may God bless you

Joseph mwai says

Will appriciate more of your teachings

Jeffrey says

I have been edified by this editorial on faith! God bless you

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The Role Of Faith In My Life

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