Fideism, Faith, and Reason

I think the word "faith" occupies the same role in religious discussions that the word "socialism" occupies in political discussions. Once you hear the word in conversation, you simply have to check with your discussion partner to see if you and he or she are using the word in the same way. For some, faith is believing absent any evidence, or in the face of a mountain of counterevidence. For others faith is just proceeding confidently on what one take to be sound evidence in support of one's beliefs. 

Now there is a position out there called fideism. According to britannica.com, this is what fideism is. 

Fideism, a philosophical view extolling theological faith by making it the ultimate criterion of truth and minimizing the power of reason to know religious truths. They defend such faith on various grounds—e.g., mystical experience, revelation, subjective human need, and common sense. .

Fideism | philosophy Fideism, a philosophical view extolling theological faith by making it the ultimate criterion of truth and minimizing the power of reason to know religious truths. Strict fideists assign no place to reason in discovering or understanding fundamental tenets of religion. For them blind faith is Encyclopedia Britannica

But many people in religious traditions reject fideism. Typical would be C. S. Lewis:

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man’s reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.

 

Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods “where they get off” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, ch. 12

For Lewis, faith does not contradict reason. 

Consider the phrase "I have faith that Biden will do a good job for the rest of his term as President." People who do that are not saying they have no good reason to think he will do a good job, though they do not know what Biden will do during the remainder of his term. But if you find Biden's track record so far to be one of good leadership, then you might say you have faith that his remaining actions will also be good. (Of course, if you think his track record so far has been bad, you understandably don't have so much faith). But your using the word "faith" in this context is not an admission that  you have no good reason to believe that Biden will do well, only that you are not in a position to perceive his actually doing well, since you are talking about future events you can't now perceive. 

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C. S. Lewis on Faith from Mere Christianity

A redated post.

Roughly speaking, the word faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply belief--accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people--at least it used to puzzle me--is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on Earth it can be a virtue--what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence, that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.
Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then--and a good many people do not see still--was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith; on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.....
Now just the same thing happens about Christianity. I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in. But supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of the evidence is for it. I can tell that man what is going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there is bad news, or he is in trouble, or is living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions will rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or else there will come a moment when he wants a woman, or wants to tell a lie, or feels very pleased with himself, or sees a chance of making a little money in some way that is not perfectly fair; some moment, in fact, at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. I am not talking of moments at which any real new reasons against Christianity turn up. Those have to be faced and that is a different matter. I am talking about moments where a mere mood rises up against it.
Now faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes. I know that by experience. Now that I am a Christian, I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable; but when I was an atheist, I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why faith is such a necessary virtue; unless you teach your moods "where they get off" you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of faith.

C.S Lewis

Now, does it take faith to be an atheist? Of course!

Reply to Loftus on the argumentum ad Kierkegaard

This kind of reminds me of what I used to call the argument ad Kierkegaard. You can't defend the rationality of Christianity, I've been told,  because Kierkegaard says that Christianity is a leap of faith. So what?
In the Catholic Church, it's actually heresy to be a fideist.

Vatican I, recognizing elements of truth and falsehood in both
rationalism and fideism, adopted a mediating position. Against the
fideists it affirmed that reason, by its natural powers, could establish
the foundations of faith and the credibility of the Christian revelation
(DS 3019, 3033). And against the rationalists Vatican I attributed
the full assurance of the act of faith to the power of divine grace
enlightening the intellect and inspiring the will (DS 3010). The act
was therefore reasonable without being a deliverance of pure reason.--Avery Dulles.
http://www.shu.edu/catholic-mi...

I can play that game too. Here's a Thomas Nagel quote:
It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm
right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there
to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.
-Thomas Nagel

See, atheists admit that they are motivated by a fear of religion. Thomas Nagel says so, and he's an atheist. You don't want to let me get away with this? Then you can't use the kind of argument  you're using here.

Faith, Evidence, and Intellectual Honesty: A Reply to Loftus

This concerns the famous, or infamous Bill Craig claim that the witness of the Holy Spirit provides such a powerful warrant for his belief in Christianity that he would keep believing even if his assessment of all the objective arguments were to turn negatve. I wrote on a thread on debunking Christianity:


VR: OK, here's one from me. Bill has done a lot of good work, but he's shooting himself in the foot with this response.

John W. Loftus said...

Agreed Vic, but what do you make of an earlier question of mine that Bill answered right here with regard to Lessing's Ugly Broad Ditch that historical proofs cannot lead the believer to faith?



Am I wrong to think that Bill is impaled on the horns of a huge dilemma? On the one hand historical evidence cannot lead him to faith, yet on the other hand the inner witness of the Spirit leads him to say what he did here?

VR: Well, I think you are setting up a false dilemma here. I would personally have a lot of trouble continuing to believe based on some inner voice if I really thought the objective evidence for theism or Christianity were bad. But, I believe that part of what the Holy Spirit does in my life is acquaint me with objective reasons as well as subjective feelings. We come to intellectual discussion of the reasons to believe with a set of intellectual predispositions, or what Bayesians call "priors." I don't think you can legislate priors, or require that we retreat from our existing belief system to some neutral position and go from there. It didn't really work for Descartes, so why should it work for me? And none of us is intellectually pure, in that, emotional reasons are always going to be present no matter what we believe, so long as we care about what we believe. What we have to do is our due diligence with respect to the reasons on both sides of the question, and combine that with a trust that God will give us our "daily bread," the means by which to remain faithful to Christ and intellectually honest at the same time. (The intellectual self-canonization of at least some unbelievers, but also of some Christians as well, is an annoying characteristic). For nearly 38 years, God has not disappointed me.

We Walk by Faith and not by.....

The Apostle Paul contrasts faith with sight, not faith with proof or reason. Sight is a particular type of proof, one that we lack for a lot of things like electrons and dinosaurs.

Some confusions about truth and religion

A redated post.

I think I am seeing people fall into some common confusions about objectivity, subjectivity, absolute truth, provability, and faith.

First, something can be absolutely true without it being provably true. Let's take the Jack the Ripper murders in England during the last century. There is an absolute truth about who committed those murders. There was an individual or group of individuals who killed those girls. However, we can't figure out who the perpetrator was. There are still books being written about it today to try to solve the murders. It's unprovable by us, and we probably never will know, yet there is someone who committed those murders.

With respect to the question of God, there have been attempts to prove that God exists and attempts to prove that God does not exist. I have studies these arguments, and I happen to think that neither side has such a stong case that every reasonable person ought to be convinced. However, there are reasons to believe and reasons to disbelieve, and I think that the claim that God does exist has stronger support than the claim that God does not exist. However, if we define God as an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then either God exists or God does not exist, and if God does exist, then the people that believe that God exists are correct, and the people that do not believe that God exists are mistaken. On the other hand, if God does not exist, then the people who believe that God does not exist are correct, and the people who believe that God does not exist are mistaken. The idea that if you truly believe in God, then God exists for you, but if you don't believe in God, God does not exist for you, is nonsense. God is not Tinkerbell, the fairy in Peter Pan who continues to exist so long as people believe in fairies.

With respect to religion, there are plenty of claims made by these religions which have to be either true or false, and about which it is possible to be correct or mistaken. (I like saying correct or mistaken better than saying right or wrong, simply because I don't want to make any moral judgments concerning the people, but I only want to talk about whether they believe, or fail to believe, the truth).
Judaism claims that there "The Lord your God, the Lord is one." So if atheism or polytheism is true, then Judaism is in error.

Christianity claims that Jesus was resurrected by God from the dead. He was either resurrected or he was not resurrected. Paul says if he wasn't resurrected, the Christians, of all people are most to be pitied.

Islam claims that Muhammad is the final prophet of Allah and that the revelation he presented is the final, perfect revelation of Allah. They've either got that right or they don't.

Hinduism says that we are all on a cycle of birth and rebirth, and that I am the reincarnation of a person who lived and died before I was born. I either was, or I wasn't.

Buddhism says my sufferings are caused by cravings, and if I stop craving, I will stop suffering. That is either true or false.

Atheists say that God does not exist. They either have that right, or they have it wrong.

Etc., Etc. Etc.

To believe that one's beliefs in the area of religion are true and those that contradict it are false is not to be dogmatic are intolerant. It is simply to understand what it is to have a belief. A belief is something you think to be true. And to believe that something is true is to believe that the contradictory is false. If I say "I believe in Christianity, but I don't believe that its claims are absolutely true" is not to be tolerant, it is to contradict oneself.

Faith is not belief in the absence of evidence, although perhaps it requires the absence of overwhelming evidence.

C. S. Lewis: I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of evidence is against it. That is not the point at which faith comes in.

Response to a student on the use of the term "faith"

 Whenever someone brings up the word faith in this class, I am going to ask them what they mean by it. Some people mean by faith simply confidence, some mean confidence without immediate perceptual evidence (faith as opposed to "sight"), some people mean faith without proof, by which I take it they mean, I take it, evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, and some see faith as belief absent any rational support, and perhaps even holding on to a belief in the teeth of a mountain of counter-evidence.

If you say that atheists like Freud and Dawkins are really religious because they have faith of some kind, the whole issue of how you define faith hits you in the nose.

An outline on faith and reason

Faith and Reason

Should Religion be Rational?

Hume’s “fideism”

In his famous essay on miracles, after presented a famous argument against rational belief in the miraculous, wrote:



"... the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.“

In other words, you real Christians have nothing to worry about with my argument. You believe on faith, not on reason anyway, so no big deal. It’s just phony Christians who pretend that their religious beliefs are rational.

Hume was certainly not a Christian, but he maybe said this to keep Christians from getting too mad at him.

Paul, Tertullian, Pascal

Paul: “See that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit.” Col. 2:8

Tertullian: What has Athens (the home of philosophy) to do with Jerusalem (the place where Christianity was founded)? Implied answer: nothing.

Pascal: “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know.”

Jimmy Swaggart: Man can’t use his mind to know the truth. If he uses his mind, he just comes up with something stupid like the theory of evolution.

C. S. Lewis on Rational Religion

He wants a child’s heart but a grown-up’s head. . . . The fact that you are giving money to a charity does not mean that you need not try to find out whether that charity is a fraud or not. . . . It is, of course, quite true that God will not love you any less, or have less use for you, if you happen to have been born with a second-rate brain. He has room for people with little sense, but He wants every one to use what sense they have. . . . God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than of any other slackers. If you are thinking of becoming a Christian, I warn you, you are embarking on something which is going to take the whole of you, brains and all. (Mere Christianity pp. 77-78).

Lewis of Faith

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in...Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. . . . That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods “where they get off,” you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith. (Mere Christianity, p. 140).

Three Views on Faith and Reason

View I: Strong Rationalism:

View II: Fideism

View III: Critical Rationalism



Strong Rationalism

Definition: In order for a religious view to be properly and rationally accepted it must be possible to prove that the position is true.

Definition of “prove” in this context means “show that a belief is true in a way that should be convincing to every reasonable person.”

W. K. Clifford: It is wrong, always and everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything for insufficient evidence.

http://www.anthonyflood.com/ethicsofbelief.htm



Why such a high standard?

Our beliefs have moral consequences. If a shipowner succumbs to wishful thinking and allows a ship to sail that isn’t seaworthy, the ship goes down and many people die.

If you don’t have time to submit your beliefs to scrutiny, you don’t have time to believe.

God and the Burden of Proof

One way of posing this question is trying to determine of one side or the other in the debate about religion has the burden of proof.

Suppose we can’t figure out, one way or another, whether or not God exists. What belief should we adopt? Should we have faith and become believers, should we just stay agnostics, or should we believe that God does not exist. Many people have said that the burden of proof lies with the person who holds the affirmative position, in this case, the belief that God exists. In the absence of proof one way or the other, the only rational position is atheism, the claim that God does not exist.

McInerney and Parsons on the Burden of Proof

This is McInerney’s essay


And this is Parsons’ reply




Does Theism Pass the Strong Rationalist’s test?

Clifford, pretty clearly, thought it did not. Neither did Bertrand Russell, who, when asked what he would say to God if God were to ask him why he did not believe, said “ I would tell God “Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence.”

John Locke (1632-1704) and Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274) thought that theism passes the test. As does contemporary philosopher Richard Swinburne.

Difficulties for strong rationalism

The Nature of Faith. Doesn’t faith involve some element of risk, a “stepping out beyond” what one is initially comfortable with?

Are there any arguments in support of any religious world-view that satisfy this requirement?



Not Everyone Is Convinced

That isn’t automatically a problem. Perhaps the evidence is out there, but some people are blinded by wishful thinking, or by the love of sin, and culpably fail to recognize the truth.

We would expect a gradual move toward consensus with respect to arguments. What we find is that as discussion proceeds on these arguments, there is a greater tendency to admit that these arguments need not persuade everyone.



Concerning Worldviews

It might be argued that religious world-views are based on pure faith, but a world-view based on science, sometimes known as scientific naturalism (the world-view preferred by most atheists) stands on firm rational foundation.

“But science as a total worldview—the idea that science can tell us everything there is to know about what reality consists of, enjoys no such overwhelming support. This worldview, (often termed scientific naturalism) is just one theory amongst others and is no more capable of being “proved to all reasonable people” than are religious belief systems. To claim that the strong support enjoyed by, say, the periodic table of the elements transfers to scientific naturalism as a worldview is highly confused if not deliberately misleading.





So can we select a world-view based on Strong Rationalist Criteria

The textbook authors think this will not be possible.

Religious Rationality Part II

A redated post.

In response to Mr. Aspray, I would hope that he gets the chance to read the second chapter of my book, "Assessing Apologetic Arguments." There I distinguish three positions with respect to the relation between faith and reason, fideism, which denies that religious beliefs are open to rational assessment, strong rationalism, which says that in order for it to be rational to believe something in religion we should have a proof that at least ought to be acceptable to every reasonable person, and critical rationalism, which says that although we should have good reasons for our beliefs, we should not expect that the proof we expect will, or even should, be acceptable to every rational person. I endorse the third option, but not the second, in spite of spending the remainder of the book providing reasons for preferring theism to naturalism. (In passing, it looks as if Richard Carrier is a strong rationalist who keeps taking me to task for failing to successfully shoulder the strong rationalist's burden, something I explicitly indicate probably cannot be done. And then I have seen commentators who think maybe I claim to little for my arguments).

I believe strongly in reason; I just don't believe that there is a neutral, emotion-free perspective from which to reason. I expect people will reason from where they are intellectually, not from some Cartesian/Archimedean point of absolute zero.

A lot of people like to read Lewis's apologetics more rationalistically than it really is, and then say that since he met a real philosopher in Anscombe, he gave up the business of making religion rational. That's a bunch on nonsense, a crock of manure eight feet high. Lewis emphasized both reason and the emotions throughout his career, and did an excellent job of avoiding the Star Trek fallacy, the fallacy of assuming that when emotion is present, reason is not, and when reason is present emotion is not. Notice, for example, the Professor's rational argument for believing Lucy in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Who would care at all about reason if we didn't have a passion for the truth?

Religious rationality

A redated post.

t's important not to over-emphasize, or to under-emphasize, the role of reason in C. S. Lewis. It is often assumed that where reason is present, the emotions are not, and where emotions are present, reason is not, but this is what I call the Star Trek fallacy. Lewis was persuaded of various things by reason, with which he would not have become a Christian. He descibed himself as the most reluctant convert in all England; if he is telling the truth about himself, then it must be that rational argument played an important role in persuading him to believe. Even the appeal to the Desire for the Infinite has to be defended by rational argument, otherwise it can be dismissed as wishful thinking, which is precisely what Beversluis does with it.

We should expect to be as rational about our religious beliefs as we are when buying a used car. In both cases, irrationality can lead to being taken, by shark salesmen on the one case, and by cult leaders and television evangelists on the other. The religious skeptic and fideistic believer (a fideist is someone who believes that religious belief should not be open to rational evaluation) maintain that a person can be a Christian insofar is he or she abandons rationality. Lewis said "I am not asking anyone to believe in Christianity if his best reasoning tells him the weight of the evidence is against it." If Beversluis or anyone else has succeeded in showing that you can believe only if you go against reason, I con understand that this would be a problem for Mr. Ku, as it would be for me.

Are skeptics eternally secure?

Nonbelievers sometimes are so firmly convinced of their nonbelief that they suppose that theists somehow can't really be serious if they think the evidence favors them. Theism is based on belief, Mark Frank says, while nonbelief is based on skepticism. No, believers and unbelievers are skeptical about different things. Atheists believe that gaps in the evolutionary story will be closed in a scientifically acceptable way. That is a belief. Some theists look at the same thing and say that God must be the explanation, and then others say that it may go one way or the other depending on what else can be known.

Theists like to mention the Nagel quote (they may differ on how they use it, I never use it to prove that all atheists are irrational), but atheists love to bring this stuff up from Craig about believing based on personal experience even if the external evidence didn't exist. They like to ignore the fact that Craig said this about a situation they take to be counterfactual. None of this detracts from the fact that Craig believes that there is good and sufficient evidence to be a Christian.

Atheists will sometimes say that there can't be any real ex-atheists, hence C. S. Lewis or Antony Flew can't have converted from atheism. (I guess they have a doctrine of the Perseverance of the Skeptics or the Eternal Security of the Nonbeliever). You may think that believers are persuaded by bad evidence. But why think that they are somehow less than sincere?

Aquinas on faith and reason

I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
I. Aquinas and the challenge of Aristotle
• Aquinas thought that adopting Aristotelianism did not lead to heretical conclusions.
• He became the chief architect of a new philosophical system employing Aristotle’s philosophy in much the way that Augustine and others had used Plato. Aquinas’ view of Aristotle is much the same as Augustine’s view of Plato’s. It’s as good as far as it goes, but of course, with respect to the truths of Christianity, Aristotle was in the dark.
II. Augustine on the Relationship between Faith and Reason
• Augustinian tradition emphasized the damage sin had done to our rational powers.
• Mind must be renewed by grace before reason can function correctly.
• Religious faith is a necessary prerequisite to philosophical understanding.
III. Aquinas’ view
• Sin affects our moral life but not our rational powers.
• Reason can stand on its own as an independent and autonomous source of knowledge apart from faith.
• The only faith necessary for the pursuit of philosophical truth is faith in the power of the human intellect and the intelligibility of the universe.
IV. Theology and Philosophy
• Aquinas makes a sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
• Two realms of human knowledge
1. Truths given to us in revelation and known by faith.
2. Truths revealed in nature and known through reasoning and experience.
C. The two approaches are complementary because both of the sources of knowledge ultimately come from God.
V. The Spheres of Faith and Reason
Articles of reason would include:
1) Some trees lose their leaves in winter, while others do not.
Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
2) Pi= 3.1416…
Articles of faith would include
1) God is a trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
2) God created the universe at a particular time in the past.
Articles of faith and reason would include
1) Jesus Christ walked on earth in the first century A. D.
God exists
VI. The concept of faith
Many people think of faith as belief in the teeth of evidence to the contrary. Aquinas did not think of it this way at all. He would have approved of C. S. Lewis’s statement, “I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him the weight of the evidence is against it. That is not the point at which Faith comes in.” Rather, Aquinas held that faith is the acceptance of propositions on the authority of the Bible and the Church. However, he maintained that it was perfectly reasonable to accept these authorities.