No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Problems of Faith
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Both philosophy and theology are given a raison d'etre by their problems. Some of their problems they share, and some they do not. They share a concern with the nature of morality and they share the problem of human freedom. But the filioque issue and the controversy between Arius and Athanasius regarding the consubstaniality of the persons of the Trinity belong to theology, if contemporary theology will have them. The problems of reference and denotation, and of classes, in the cast given them by Frege, Russell and others, are exclusively in the domain of philosophy. Sometimes the problems shared by philosophy and theology are also human problems: they intimately touch human lives and have palpable ramifications for the way men live. Camus, who said with a flourish that the only philosophical problem is whether or not to commit suicide, was saying in part that the only philosophical problems worth considering are human problems. And William James would perhaps concur; he would insist that only philosophical problems that are “living, forced and momentous” present a genuine option to men.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Authors 1976
References
1 Camus says this at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus, Albert The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays,trans. O'Brien, Justin (New York: Random House Vintage Books, 1959), p.3.Google Scholar
2 James, William “The Will to Believe, ”Essays in Pragmatism,ed. Castell, Alburey (New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1948), p.89Google Scholar; and see pp. 105–106 for James on “the religious hypothesis.”
3 Gilson, Etienne Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1938), pp. 56–59Google Scholar and 80-81.
4 Summa Theologica, ll-ll, q.1, a.4.
5 Summa Theologica, ll-ll, q.1, a.5 and q.2, a.4.
6 Pascal, B. Pensées, trans. Cohen, J.M. (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1961), pp. 164Google Scholar and 165.
7 See Kierkegaard, S. Fear and Trembling,trans. Lowrie, Walter (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 1941), pp. 60–61Google Scholar. And cf. the entry in Kierkegaard's Journal for May 17, 1843 (to which Lowrie draws our attention).
8 This is a conflict seen by Abelson, Raziel in “The Logic of Faith and Belief,” Religious Experience and Truth, ed. Hook, Sidney (New York: New York University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. And Kierkegaard also, perhaps, posits such a conflict in the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
9 S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson, Lillian Marvin Swenson and Walter Lowrie, in A Kierkegaard Anthology ed. Robert Bretall (New York: The Modern Library, n.d.), pp. 220–221.
10 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, p. 215.
11 I do not mean to imply that the affective side of faith is completely divorced from the epistemological status of what is believed. In fact, if there are signs of God's presence to be seen, it may well be that continuing to see them for what they are requires the maintenance of a certain attitude, namely that of faith. Losing his faith, a believer, could cease to be aware of God's presence. The doubts of others around him would become his own, and this would be both a failure of awareness and a failure of faith, if his faith were like that of Abraham. But it remains that the risk of losing the attitude and relationship of faith would persist even when a believer was fully aware of these signs.
12 Wisdom, John “Gods,” reprinted in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964)Google Scholar, and in many anthologies.
13 Phillips, D. Z. “Wisdom's ‘Gods,’” Philosophical Quarterly, LXXIV, 1969, p. 27.Google Scholar
14 Wisdom, John “The logic of God,” Paradox and Discovery(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1965)Google Scholar; also in The Existence of God,ed. Hick, John (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1964)Google Scholar.
15 King-Farlow, John and Christensen, William N. Faith and the Life of Reason (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1972), pp.12–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, pp.26 ff. and esp. 36-37.
17 Unamuno, Miguel de Tragic Sense of Life, trans.Flitch, J. E. Crawford (New York: Dover 1954), p.193.Google Scholar
18 Concluding Unscientific Postscript, pp. 214 and 215. This is Kierkegaard's definition of “[subjective] truth,” but it also holds for “faith,” he says.
19 This is the distinction cited by Robinson, Richard between the “certainty of persons” and the “certainty of propositions”in “The Concept of Knowledge,” Mind, LXXX, 1971, p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Cf. Abelson, “The Logic of Faith and Belief,” p.122, where he makes this point regarding faith that P.
21 Cf. Hick, John “Faith and Freedom,” chap. 6 of Faith and Knowledge(second edition; Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1966).Google Scholar
22 Macintyre, Alasdair “The Logical Status of Religious Belief,” Metaphysical Beliefs, ed. Macintyre, A (second edition; London, SCM Press, 1970), P. 199.Google Scholar
23 Donald F. Henze points out this confusion in Macintyre's discussion in Difficulties in Christian Belief, where Macintyre develops the same line of reasoning. See Donald F. Henze, “Faith, Evidence and Coercion,” Philosophy, XLII, 1967, pp. 83–84.
24 Duff-Forbes, D.R. “Faith, Evidence, Coercion,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, XLVII, 1969, p.214.Google Scholar
25 See Hick's, John “Faith and Coercion,” Philosophy, XLII, 1967Google Scholar, and his Faith and Knowledge, especially chapter 6. My point is not that Hick's view on faith and coercion is correct. It is only that he can avoid the inconsistency he skirts. In fact, Hick's general analysis of faith as interpretation is faced withmanyproblems, particularly when Hick tries to relate it to experience of “natural significance” and of “ethical significance,” as well as to experience of “religious significance,” as he does in Faith and Knowledge. Furthermore, Hick's thesis regarding faith and coercion has a little remarked tension with his defense of this thesis. The thesis is that religious experience is something we must freely choose to interpret religiously, and this cannot be coerced. The fleshing out of this thesis seems to require a contrast between our religious experience, to which we must freely choose to respond and which we must freely choose to interpret religiously, and our experience of the world, which forces itself upon us. But Hick's defense of this thesis takes the form of a general epistemological theory, according to which all experience——natural, ethical and religious——is at bottom “ambiguous,” and so requires interpretation. Thus all experience requires what for Hick is faith, not just religious experience; and religious faith stands in contrast, not to a lack of faith regarding our experience of the world, but to other faith.
26 Cf. Phillips, D. Z. “Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,” Religion and Understanding,ed. Phillips, D. Z. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p. 63Google Scholar; and McPherson, Thomas “The Falsification Challenge: a comment,“Religious Studies, V, 1969.Google Scholar
27 Cf. Evans, Donald “Faith and Belief,”Religious Studies, X, 1974, pp. 3–5.Google Scholar
28 Donald F. Henze, “Faith, Evidence, and Coercion,” p. 79; and D.R. Duff-Forbes, “Faith, Evidence, Coercion,” p. 209.
29 Matthew 22.36-37.
30 Summa Theologica, ll -ll, q.2, a. 10.
31 In his letter to the Ephesians Paul speaks of faith as “not your own doing,” but “the gift of God” — Ephesians 2.8. The idea that faith may be a gift of God accords with both models of faith. The idea that grace is sufficient for faith accords with the Biblical model.