[lit-ideas] Re: Faith
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 13:02:02 -0700
I really have no idea what it means to 'reconcile' faith and reason. Why
do they need 'reconciling'? Anselm described his project as 'faith
seeking understanding' (fides quaerens intellectum), and uses such
famous catch-phrases as 'credo ut intelligans' ('I believe in order that
I may understand') which express his commitment to the compatibility of
reason and beief, (or 'faith'). Is there a tradition in which if
something is believed on 'faith' (the Old Testament word translated into
English as 'faith' is much closer to 'belief') it cannot be believed in
any other way?
In the so-called New Testament, a classic definition of faith is in
Hebrews 11:1 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.' [KJV] 'Now faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.' {RSV] There
follows an illustrative list of various heroes of the faith: Abel,
Enoch, Noah, Abraham, etc.
Luther thought that Christians were justified 'by faith alone,' but this
is by no means all he said.
I mention these things because nowhere can I find the doctrine that if
one believes something on faith (in an exalted theological sense) it is
logically impossible that there could be evidence for it. This is surely
a distortion of the ordinary notion of faith: I have faith in (trust her
in something) and my trust is either justifed or not, in light of the
way things turn out. That the believer believes 'things not seen' are
evidence is neither to say to say that he could never have any other
sort of evidence for what they're evidence of nor that they could not at
some later time be 'seen.'
I do think that a Kierkegaardian leap of faith is quite different from
what medieval theologians were talking about. Reconciling a leap of
faith with reason strikes me as incoherent.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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