Download On the Value of Faith and Faithfulness

On the Value of Faith and Faithfulness
Daniel J. McKaughan
Boston College
Abstract: There was a time when Greco-Roman culture recognized faith as an indispensable
social good. More recently, however, the value of faith has been called into question, particularly
in connection with religious commitment. What, if anything, is valuable about faith – in the
context of ordinary human relations or as a distinctive stance people might take in relation to God?
I approach this question by examining the role that faith talk played both in ancient Jewish and
Christian communities and in the larger Greco-Roman culture in which Christian faith talk
evolved. I locate the value of faith and faithfulness in the context of relationships involving trust
and loyalty and argue that what is most distinctively valuable about faith is the function it plays in
sustaining relationships through various kinds of challenges, including through intellectually
unfavorable circumstances and significant periods of doubt. Contrasting what I call the Belief
Plus view of faith with the view of Relational Faith that I defend, I argue for two main
conclusions. First, faith can play the valuable role that it plays in sustaining relationships even
without belief of the salient propositions. Second, in at least some circumstances, in order for
faith to play this valuable role in a way that does not require epistemic opinions that fail to fit
one’s evidence, it is important that faith does not require such belief.
1. Introduction: The problem of the value of faith
What, if anything, is valuable about faith? Many of us today are confident that faith isn’t of value,
particularly if we assume that faith is belief on insufficient evidence. This alone, as W. K. Clifford
argued, might be sufficient to justify ranking it among the intellectual or moral vices, one arguably made
all the more dangerous owing to its associations with religious passions that frequently evoke deep fervor,
emotional attachment, and out-group enmity, and the fact that religious convictions are often among the
short list of things for which people are willing to die. While concern about faith or the enthusiasms
sometimes accompanying it are not new, interest has been amplified in recent years, not least in response
to ongoing acts of religiously motivated violence such as the terrorist attacks in New York City and
Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. The question “Would the world be better off without religious
faith?” is looming larger in public consciousness than ever before (McKaughan 2015). One line of
thought now prevalent in the New Atheist literature maintains that religious faith, whether in
fundamentalist or more moderate guises, provides a social backdrop for extremism. Bestselling author
Christopher Hitchens (2007) argues that religion “poisons everything” while Richard Dawkins (2006a;
2006b) maintains that it is the “root of all evil” and that humanity would be better off without religion
since “Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of
the violent enmities in the world today” (Dawkins 2003, 161).
But if we start with the idea that faith is inadequately evidenced belief, we are left with a puzzle—or,
better, with a whole flurry of puzzling questions. Why have billions of people, across such a spectrum of
social and cultural settings and at so many different times and places, thought that that faith should be
central to a well-lived life? Why is faith so often cherished in the lives of individuals and communities?
Why, in particular, do many religious communities invite or even command faith of adherents, perhaps
even making it definitive of membership in some religious traditions? Why would Romans come to so
revere Fides that they would worship her as a goddess? Why did the Greeks before them, personify Pistis
– goddess of good faith, trust, and reliability – as part of their mythology? How is it that “faith” has come
to be virtually synonymous with believing a set of fantastic but allegedly divinely revealed propositions
and can it really be that this is what early Christian communities took God to most desire of humans?
Can we come to a deeper and more satisfying understanding of why Jews and Christians in the ancient
world thought that God would care about faith? What function did faith play in their lives and discourse
and are at least some of these roles worth hanging on to?
There is important philosophical work to be done in coming to grips with the tension between these
radically different estimates of the value of faith. Is there a stark cultural disagreement brewing over the
value of faith and its place in human life? Or are critics and champions of faith using language about
faith to pick out different phenomena? Do we find in the more aggressively negative assessments of faith,
bombastic and uncharitable though they sometimes are in characterizing religious life, any substantive
criticisms that ought to be clarified, acknowledged, and perhaps distinguished from healthier
manifestations of faith? My view is that faith can play a vital role in the context of religious commitment.
But I worry that both critics of faith and its champions too often mischaracterize its nature. As a result,
much trumpeting on behalf of faith ends up fighting for things that are not worth holding onto. But many
legitimate criticisms of extremism, credulity, and some of the least admirable aspects of contemporary
religious life lead others to overlook the recognizably valuable role that faith can play, at least in ordinary
human relationships.
The project of clarifying the nature, value, and rationality of faith is of considerable social importance
today. The stakes involved in how such discussions get framed and resolved in future generations may be
quite high, particularly for religious communities both at the individual and social level. Indeed, the
outcome of these debates in our society could have significant cultural influence with a reach far beyond
the ivory tower for generations to come. In response to this perceived social need, the present paper is an
attempt to contribute to the project of facilitating public discussion of the conditions under which faith
and faithfulness are and are not of recognizable value. Although I will advocate for a particular set of
views in the conversation, irrespective of the success of my arguments, another way that the paper aims to
advance the larger overall aim is by helping others who want to participate in vigorous conversation from
any point of view to be better positioned to do so from a more historically and culturally informed
perspective.
This paper defends the value of faith understood as a Relational Commitment (Relational Faith for short)
in contrast to faith understood as Belief Plus. Before introducing and contrasting those views in Section
3, Section 2 examines the role that faith talk came to have in Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian culture
with the aim of better understanding what people valued about faith. Sections 4 and 5 offer a comparative
evaluation of the Belief Plus and Relational Commitment views of faith in service of the thesis that
Relational Faith turns out to be more valuable, more voluntary, more resilient, more compatible with
doubt, and arguably more faithful to a biblical understanding of faith than the widely held Belief Plus
view.
2. What did people care about?
There was a time when Greco-Roman culture recognized pistis/fides (“faith, faithfulness”) as an
indispensable social good. Faith played a role not just in religious contexts, but was thought to contribute
to stability in ordinary human relationships in a way that makes them more durable under duress or
through various sorts of difficulties.
The significance and function of faith in people’s lives and discourse was important enough that it was
common to commemorate faith on coins and tombstones. In an extensively documented study, Roman
Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (2015),
Teresa Morgan calls attention to the pervasive value placed on faith in in the context of interpersonal
relationships in both domestic and public spheres.
On one level, the omnipresence of pistis/fides language in discourse about every aspect of
society and social life in this period needs no reiteration. . . . Pistis/fides . . . is
everywhere understood as a basic building block of societies, emerging from the need of
individual and groups to make and maintain relationships (Morgan 2015, 75).
Cicero takes it that “fides is the basis of the stability and constancy for which we look in friendship” in
On Friendship (Morgan 2015, 57). But why?
2a. Greco-Roman Faith
Of primary importance within the Greek pistis lexicon, for our purposes, are the noun πίστις (pistis,
“faith, faithfulness”), the verb πιστεύω (pisteúō, “to have faith, to trust, to rely on, to believe; to commit,
to come to faith, to be faithful/loyal/obedient”), and the adjective πίστóς (pistos, “faithful, trustworthy,
reliable, dependable”). Although their meanings can vary considerably in differing contexts of use,
whether secular or religious, the basic semantic range of pistis in the first century Greco-Roman
Mediterranean world is picked out by “faith, faithfulness” (Dunn 2007).
Overlap with its Latin counterpart fides is extensive enough that we can treat pistis/fides more or less
interchangeably (Dunn 2007; Morgan 2015). People thought of faith as a social bond that strengthens
relationships and enables forms of mutually beneficial social cooperation. Both pistis and fides come
from the Proto Indo-European root *bʰeydʰ, which means “to trust” and which in turn comes from the
zero grade root *bʰidʰ- “to bind, plait, to braid, or weave together,” perhaps evoking the image of braiding
people’s lives together in a kind of cord and strengthens relationships.1
As Dunn (2007) correctly points out and as I also shall argue, “the range of meaning should not be treated
as though the two senses, “faith, faithfulness,” were quite distinct and discrete”. Faith and faithfulness are
indeed conceptually distinguishable: a philandering husband might have faith that his wife will be
faithful to her promises, whereas a faithful wife might lack faith that her philandering husband will be
faithful to his promises. Moreover, faith and faithfulness are related in the same way as, and indeed are
often interchangeable with, trust and trustworthiness. For a wife to have faith in her husband is for her to
trust that he will be faithful, being for her good and honoring the commitments they have made together
in large ways and small. However, where our goal is to understand the use of pistis/fides in ancient
Greco-Roman culture quite broadly and especially in Judeo-Christian Hellenistic religious cultural
settings shaped by Semitic languages, we should resist the urge to read too clear a separation between
faith and faithfulness back into ancient faith discourse. Even in contexts where one or the other aspect of
pistis/fides is emphasized, we should often hear both “faith/faithfulness” or perhaps “faith(fulness)”.
We can draw the relevant distinctions or point out differences in emphases where use and clarity call for
it. But I would urge readers not to assume that the tendency among ancients to hold faith and faithfulness
together in this way is simply the product of muddled thinking. A paradigmatic or flourishing mutually
reciprocal relationship would be such that each party remains faithful to one’s own promises or
obligations and also aptly trusts in or relies on the other to be faithful to theirs. Moreover, in the kinds of
interpersonal relationships in which talk of faith and faithfulness finds primary application, faith in
someone is often best expressed by one’s own continued faithfulness and loyalty to them in the face of
difficulties. Similarly, faithfulness to a companion might take the form of continued reliance on them
despite apparent evidence that one’s faith is misplaced (subject to normative appraisal in light of
appropriate constraints on epistemic and practical rationality and moral considerations). The mixture of
trust and loyalty at work in committed relationships of the sort we have in view leave faith and
faithfulness often associated and intimately intertwined. As I shall argue, understanding this dynamic
interplay between them is crucial to appreciating the distinctive kinds of goods that faith/faithfulness can
make available to us in relationships, including the perseverance, grit, and stability that what we might,
following Dan Howard-Snyder (2013), call resilience.
Notice the wide range of social relations to which ancient Greco-Roman talk of faith and faithfulness was
applied.
Pistis/fides, as we have seen, is one of the key qualities that characterize the relationships
of wives and husbands, parents and children, master and slaves, patrons and clients,
subjects and rulers, armies and commanders, friends, allies, fellow-human beings, gods
and worshippers, and even fellow-animals (Morgan 2015, 117-118).
The terms pistis/fides serve to pick out “one of the few qualities which are equally at home in the
domestic and public spheres: in the family, the marketplace, the council chamber, the temple, the palace,
and the battlefield” (Morgan 2015, 117). Salient in each of these examples is that pistis/fides talk is used
to mark attitudes and acts of faith and faithfulness in the context of reciprocal relationships, with
expectations about what is involved in being faithful, loyal, or what it is appropriate to trust, being set by
various social roles, common presumptions, or the character of particular promises on which the
relationship might rest. The mutual expectations and responsibilities associated with relationships
involving pistis/fides could be symmetrical. But, as one might expect of terms that pick out relations
“found operating at every socio-economic level, between individuals and groups,” often they are not
(Morgan 2015, 6).
Consider, for example, the attempts of Roman emperors to cultivate a relationship of public trust (fides
publica) with the people over whom they ruled. By the early second century, the Roman empire was
expansive and multicultural. It had pushed far beyond Italy and Greece up into the British Isles and
spanned from Spain, North Africa, Egypt, into Judea, Syria, and Babylonia. As the Romans expanded
their empire, rather than slaughtering newly conquered people after a military conquest, in many cases
they started to enter into agreements with the people they subdued. Conquered people were encouraged
to trust the Emperor, with the promise that if they would submit to the Emperor’s rule and be loyal to
Rome he would, in good faith, be merciful.
The Romans promoted fides publica in their propaganda, spreading the message that those loyal to the
Emperor will enjoy peace, grain, baskets of fruit, poppies, some basic political protection (dependent on
social standing), and greater prosperity. To take just a few arbitrary examples, consider several coins that
circulated in the Empire spanning from circa 275 BCE to 270 CE. An alliance between Rome and the
Greek Lokroi is symbolized on the silver coin, a Greek ΡΩΜΑ ΠΙΣΤΙΣ from circa 275 BCE. Roma is
seated with sword and shield on a low throne being crowned with wreath by the goddess Pistis, the
personification of faithfulness, good faith, trust, and reliability. The phrase “FIDES PVBL” (other
variants use PVBLICA) on a silver Roman denarius from circa 73-74 CE during the reign of Emperor
Vespasian is with the symbol of clasped right hands, which requires the setting down of swords, to invite
common trust in the Emperor to provide goods of peace and prosperity symbolized with grain ears,
poppies, and the winged caduceus (the staff of Mercury, patron of trade & commerce). Variations on this
theme decorated coins in the Empire for centuries. A silver denarius from circa 134-138 CE, during the
reign of Emperor Hadrian, pairs the words “FIDES PVBLICA” with a depiction of Fides, goddess of
trustworthiness and good faith, holding grain ears and a plate of fruit. A coin from circa 268-270, during
the reign of Claudius II, couples Fides with the lettering “FIDES EXCERCI” (other variants use FIDES
EXERC or FIDES EXERCITUM), referring to the fidelity (loyalty) of the soldiers to the Emperor and
reminding people of the good faith he displays toward them.
These practices, though of course often falling short of the ideals and propaganda in all sorts of ways,
were very effective in establishing social relations that in a clear sense depended on mutual fides (trust
and loyalty) to the benefit of conquered peoples and in directing loyalties toward Rome. By 70 BCE, in
the prosecution of Verres as part of a larger corruption trial brought against a former governor of Sicily,
Cicero could write:
He said that he was a Roman citizen. If you, O Verres, being taken among the Persians
or in the remotest parts of India, were being led to execution, what else would you cry out
but that you were a Roman citizen? . . . . Men of no importance, born in an obscure rank,
go to sea; they go to places which they have never seen before; where they can neither be
known to the men among whom they have arrived, nor always find people to vouch for
them. But still, owing to this confidence in the mere fact of their citizenship, they think
that they shall be safe . . . wherever they come they think that this will be a protection to
them (Cicero, Against Verres, 2.5.166-167).
As Morgan observes, “Such, claims Cicero, is the power of Roman law to create fides (Morgan 2015,
116). We can see that social arrangements like this are worth having. The potential goods associated
with relationships characterized by faith and faithfulness are in fact so remarkable, so desirable, that
people would often go to great lengths to secure those goods with public oaths and pledges.
2b. Judeo-Christian Faith in a Greco-Roman World
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, faith/faithfulness (pistis/ʾĕmûnâ) becomes a central category for
understanding the personal and corporate relational response that God is said to desire of humans. What
sort of response was desired and why was it thought to be pleasing to God?
Ancient Hebrew closely associates faith and faithfulness. Discourse about faith and faithfulness in the
Hebrew Bible centers on words derived the root ‫’( אמן‬mn, a conjunction of the three Hebrew letters aleph,
mem, and nun), meaning “to support, to be firm, secure, reliable, trustworthy, safe”). The most important
words in the Hebrew faith lexicon – the niphal (incomplete passive or reflexive voice) and hiphil
(causative active voice) conjugations of the verb ˜m'a; (’aman, “is faithful, to be true, to trust,”), the nouns
hn:WmaÜ (ʾĕmûnâ, “faithfulness, faith”) and tm,a‘ (’emeth, “truth”), and the adverb ‫( אָמֵן‬ʾāmēn, “surely, truly,
so be it”) – all come from this stem (see: Bultmann and Weiser 1968; Donfried & Powell 2011). The fact
that ’mn holds trust and loyalty/fidelity together is brought out nicely in the Anchor Bible Dictionary
entry on “Faith”:
[F]aith and fidelity are intertwined inextricably in the Hebrew Bible, that is, faith is
primarily not an intellectual act but an attitude which encompasses the two-sided sense of
the root ʾmn: steadfastness, which addresses the concept of acts of obedience; and trust or
confidence, which rests on the notion of God’s constancy and fidelity (Healey 1992,
747).
The Hebrew verb for faith, ˜m'a; (’aman) takes on the connotation of standing firm in trust or in
loyalty/fidelity depending on how the verb is conjugated. The niphal verb form ‫( נֶא ָ ֱ֣מן‬ne’ĕmān) usually
means “is faithful, trustworthy.” Deuteronomy 7:9, for example, presents God as trustworthy in
covenantal relations—as “the faithful (‫נֶא ָ ֱ֣מן‬, ne’ĕmān) God who maintains covenant loyalty with those
who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations”. The niphal can also be used to
refer to ongoing human faithfulness: “I will raise up for myself a faithful (‫נֶ ֱא ָ֔מן‬, ne’ĕmān) priest, who shall
do according to what is in my heart and in my mind” (1 Samuel 2:25). Samuel is said to be “a
trustworthy (‫נֶא ָ ֱ֣מן‬, ne’ĕmān) prophet of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:20).
In contrast, the hiphil conjugation ‫( ֶה ֱאמִין‬he’emin) expresses the causative action of “to be firmly set in/on
something, to hold firm” (Healey 1992, 745). Here the emphasis is on “the acceptance of someone as
trustworthy or dependable” (Donfried & Powell 2011, 280). Whether we take the firmness involved to
refer to finding support in the steadfastness of the object or to the subject’s standing firm in an internal
feeling of confidence or security (as Barr 1961, 175-176 maintains), he’emin is usually best translated
with English expressions like “to trust, to rely on, to have faith, or to believe in” and the LXX renders it
by πιστεύω (pisteúō) with a high degree of consistency (see Bultmann and Weiser 1968; Perry 1953, 252;
Lebens forthcoming). For example, the hiphil expresses Moses and Aaron’s failure to trust in God: “But
the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in (‫ֹלא־ ֶה ֱא ַמנ ֶ ְ֣תּם‬, lō-he’ĕmantem) me, to show
my holiness before the eyes of the Israelites, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that
I have given them”” (Numbers 20:12). The hiphil he’emin is also used to characterize Abraham’s faith or
trust in God in Genesis 15:6: “And he believed [trusted] (‫ ְו ֶה ֱא ִ ֖מן‬, wəhe’ĕmin) the Lord; and the Lord
reckoned it to him as righteousness.” In contrast, the author of Nehemiah uses the niphal to describe what
God found valuable in Abraham’s response—a faithful (‫נֶא ָ ֱ֣מן‬, ne’eman) heart (Nehemiah 9:8). The sense
of standing firm in trust and its close connection to being faithful comes out nicely in the Isaiah 7:9: “If
you do not stand firm in faith (‫ֹל֥ א־תֵ אָמֵ ֽנוּ‬, lō-ṯa’ămînū [hiphal]), you shall not stand (‫תֵ אָמֵ ֽנוּ‬, ṯa’ămînū,
[niphal]) at all.”
The Septuagint (LXX), a cluster of Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible dating from as early as the 3rd
century BCE, consistently renders words deriving from “the Hebrew words from root ʾmn with Greek
words with the root pist-” (Lührmann 1992, 751). “Truth” is the more typical meaning of the Hebrew
noun tm,a‘ (’emeth), reflected in its more frequent translation as ἀλήθεια (alḗtheia, “truth”). However, as
the LXX translators recognized, its associations with firmness, stability, reliability, dependability, and
steadfastness also allows the meaning of ’emeth to shade into “faithfulness,” permitting its rendering by
πίστις (pistis) in some contexts or even “righteousness” with the Greek noun δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē).
The Hebrew noun hn:WmaÜ (ʾĕmûnâ) means “faithfulness, fidelity, trustworthiness, steadfastness.” Twentyfour out of the forty-nine occurrences of ʾĕmûnâ in the Old Testament attribute ʾĕmûnâ to God with the
sense of fidelity/trustworthiness most clearly in view (Perry 1953, 254; Barr 1961, 173; but see Lebens
forthcoming for a recent defense of the idea that the Hebrew Bible also attributes faith to God). For the
most part the LXX translates ʾĕmûnâ with pistis, though whoever translated the Psalms preferred alḗtheia.
The emphasis on faithfulness (rather than faith or trust) better conveys the meaning of ʾĕmûnâ in each of
the 49 times it occurs in the Old Testament, with the possible exception of Habakkuk 2:4: “Look at the
proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith [or faithfulness] (‫ ֱאמוּנָה‬,
’ĕmūnāṯ).” In Habakkuk 2:4, ʾĕmûnâ admits of either the “faith/trust” or “faithfulness/fidelity”
interpretation and Paul reads it as pistis (faith/trust) in this passage (Galatians 3:11 and Romans 1:17).
Yet even if one were to take the noun ʾĕmûnâ to unambiguously convey faithfulness in contrast to faith or
trust of the sort better designated by he’emin, as Perry (1953) points out “trust and obedience” are both
part of what is involved in an appropriate response of faithfulness to God: “the Old Testament does not
set trust and obedience in contrast to each other as separate ways of satisfying the demands of God.
'emuna comprehends the totality of what we commonly mean in the familiar expression “faith and
works”” and the one who pursues ʾĕmûnâ in a way that would be pleasing to God, as in Jeremiah 5:1,
must seek to both trust and obey God (Perry 1953, 255). The noun ʾĕmûnâ can also be used to refer to a
more encompassing way of life in relation to God “He charged them: “This is how you shall act: in the
fear of the Lord, in faithfulness (‫ֱמוּנ֖ה‬
ָ ‫ ֶבּא‬, be’ĕmūnāh), and with your whole heart” (2 Chronicles 19:9; see
also Jeremiah 7:28).
In classical Greek, πιστεύω (pisteúō) can pick out the “action-modifying trust” that made it attractive for
conveying the faith/faithfulness of the Hebrew verb ˜m'a; (’aman) (Lindsay 1993, 111). The match between
ʾĕmûnâ and the classical Greek usage of pistis was imperfect. In classical Greek, although pistis can be
used to refer to obedience to God (Lindsay 1993, 105), the primary semantic range for pistis focused
either on the subject’s attitude toward the object (e.g., one’s trust in another person) or on the faithfulness
or trustworthiness of the object (e.g., the other person’s faithfulness which serves as the basis for one’s
trust) (Dunn 2007), whereas ʾĕmûnâ often picks out the faithfulness of the subject to whom it is attributed
(e.g., Abraham’s faithfulness to God). Nor did pistis carry the connotations of truth or righteousness
conveyed by the Hebrew nouns. Yet, at least in predominately Jewish communities in the diaspora, as the
πιστ- word group was increasingly recruited for use in religious contexts in the Hellenistic period the use
of Greek terms in reference to the God of Israel was shaped by familiar Semitic concepts and sacred
stories that gave faith talk its content. As Lindsay argues,
Septuagint translators interpreted the πιστ- word group in light of the Hebrew ˜m'a and not
vice-versa. Therefore the Septuagint translation represents a significant development in
the use of the πιστ- group as faith terminology, πίστις and πιστεύειν gained the meaning
of “having firmness, steadfastness” by association with ‫ ֶה ֱאמִין‬. The πιστ- group also begins
to assimilate some other very important nuances, such as a close relationship with “truth”
and “righteousness”. The end result is that πίστις and πιστεύειν can now have the
tendency, just as hn:WmaÜ and ‫ ֶה ֱאמִין‬, to “extend into the most comprehensive sphere of
application . . . [and to embrace] the whole attitude of a life lived in faith” (Lindsay 1993,
117).
The writings of the Greek New Testament are striking for the frequency with which words in the pistgroup are used and for the central importance which is attached to them. In the collection of writings that
make up the Old Testament canon, ’aman is used 96 times, ʾĕmûnâ 49 times, and ’emeth 127 times, with
many occurrences concentrated in Pslams and Isaiah. Some of those uses, such as those in the Abraham
story, are very significant and come at key places in Israel’s self-understanding as the people of God. But
the much shorter collection of Greek New Testament writings make use of words in the pist- lexicon
some 600 times (pistis 242 times, pisteúō 241 times, pistos 66 times, plus 51 or so uses of other cognates
of the pist- stem). Even a cursory look at the distribution suggests interesting differences in use among
various authors. The Gospel of John uses the verb almost exclusively accounting for 98 occurrences,
while making just one use of the adjective and no use of the noun. The author of Hebrews favors the
noun (pistis 32, pisteúō 2, pistos 5). In Paul’s letters the noun and verb are distributed more evenly, with
some preference for the noun and high frequency of occurrences in Romans (pistis 40, pisteúō 21, pistos
0) and Galatians (pistis 22, pisteúō 4, pistos 1).
Teresa Morgan (2015) has done pistologists a tremendous service in mapping important nuances and
differences and in use of the pist- lexicon in the various writings of the Greek New Testament. We learn,
for example, that Paul’s earliest letters (1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, and 2 Corinthians) assure readers
that God is pistos and call them to respond directly to God with pistis, conceived primarily as “an exercise
of trust which involves heart, mind, and action” (Morgan 2015, 259; 247-8; 261). In Galatians, Romans,
Philippians, and Philemon, we find a more complex integration of Jesus into faith talk describing the
relation between God and humans. In keeping with earlier Jewish uses of ʾĕmûnâ, one rather striking
contrast with the surrounding Greco-Roman culture from which the pistis lexicon is appropriated, is that
the New Testament reserves faith language almost exclusively to refer to relationships between humans
and God and/or Jesus (Morgan 2015, 235). Christians are called to love their neighbors, but not to place
their faith in each other. It is ἀγάπη (agapē), rather than mutual pistis, that is to form the basis of the
community (Morgan 2015, 215). Paul, for example, happily thinks of his own relation to God as one of
slave to master, describing himself as a δοῦλος (“slave, servant”) of Christ in Romans 1:1. The kind of
radical life-orienting allegiance, reliance, trust, obedience, and submission that Christian faith involves is
such that “Only towards God would such extreme handing over of one’s life be appropriate” (Morgan
2015, 223).
The notion of covenant, ‫( ְבּ ִרית‬berîṯ), which the LXX translates by the Greek word διαθήκη (diathēkē),
forms a key part of the background setting in which to understand the functional role that both the
Hebrew Bible and Greek New Testament envision for faith/faithfulness in relationships and the value that
they attach to it. The basic idea of a covenant is that of a relationship bound by oaths, in which one or
both parties pledge to perform or refrain from actions around which the relationship is structured. The
Judeo-Christian tradition makes extensive use of marriage as an analogy for the kind of covenantal
relationship that God is said to desire to have with God’s people.2 As part of their wedding vows, for
example, a couple might each solemnly pledge themselves to each other setting up a host of obligations
and expectations which they might take their vows to explicitly or implicitly involve (e.g., perhaps a
lifelong commitment to love and care for each other, to be for the other’s good, to live in sexual
monogamy, to raise children together, and to care for one another until parted by death). Such vows are
often made, sometimes regarded as sacred and some of which are usually legally binding, before a
community of witnesses who ratify and celebrate the act over a shared meal. The concept of faithfulness
enters in reference to the fulfillment of one’s promises and in a host of large, small, and unforeseen ways
in which loyalty to one’s spouse might find its expression. Faith directs our attention to trust in and
reliance on the other person to be faithful to his or her promises.
Consider the way that the book of Hosea brings ʾĕmûnâ into close association with the idea of a marriage
covenant. God tells Israel: “And I will take you for my wife forever; I will take you for my wife in
righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love [or covenant loyalty], and in mercy. I will take you for my
wife in faithfulness (‫ֱמוּנ֑ה‬
ָ ‫ ֶבּא‬, be’ĕmūnāh); and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19-20). Faith and
faithfulness play the same kinds of roles in covenantal relations that they do in marriage. God is said to
be faithful, in some cases unconditionally so. The presentation of God as ʾĕmûnâ/πίστóς (trustworthy)
and God’s fidelity to God’s promises is a crucial theme in both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New
Testament (e.g., as seen above with reference to Deuteronomy 7:9 and in early Christian preaching such
as 1 Thessalonians 5:24; 1 Corinthians 1:9, 10:18; 2 Corinthians 1:18). Faith enters as trust that God is
and will continue to be faithful and it is regarded as an appropriate, perhaps even obligatory, response to
God’s faithfulness. As Luther puts it, to have faith is to trust in the promises of God. But once again, in
the context of covenantal relations, the positive attitudes and acts that constitute the response of
faith/faithfulness are closely associated:
[I]n the Old Testament faith is regarded as ‘trust in’ [and] is more elemental than ‘assent
to’ . . . but ‘trust’ is not to be understood primarily in emotive terms. Trust is a practice
that entails obedience to Torah [the law] and its specific requirements. Israel’s fidelity to
Yahweh, not unlike fidelity in marriage, thus consists of concrete acts that take the other
party with defining seriousness.” (Brueggemann 2002, 78)
The basic picture of Judeo-Christian faith/faithfulness that emerges, then, is a response characterized by a
persevering commitment to remaining engaged in a sustained trusting relationship with God.
Faith/faithfulness is the response that God desires to God’s own faithfulness and freely given trust and
fidelity are central ways of participating in an ongoing covenantal relationship with God.
Faith/faithfulness is the response embodied in the figure of Abraham, that exemplar of faith who persists
in reliance on and fidelity to God, despite appearances of God’s unfaithfulness. As Dunn observes:
Genesis 15:6; 17:1–14; and 22:1–19 were all of a piece. Abraham’s trust in God was
embodied in and expressed by his obedience. His faith and faithfulness were two sides of
the same coin; it was the same word, and the same attitude and action expressed by that
word (Dunn 2007).
2c. Understanding faith/faithfulness through contrasts
People who are relying on each other in the ways described above are apt to have concerns. Placing our
trust in others brings with it risk and vulnerability, acute dangers of betrayal and of broken promises. We
can find further clues about the perceived value of faith/faithfulness (1) by contrasting it with how things
might stand if they were missing (e.g., Cicero’s seafaring citizens entrust their safety to a social milieu
Rome has established and which would not be available to them in a Hobbesian state of nature) and (2) by
reflecting on the kinds vulnerabilities or risks, whether real or perceived, to which depending on others
exposes us (e.g., it takes little imagination to envision ways in which things end badly for Cicero’s “men
of no importance” who are “being led to execution,” whether owing to Rome’s failure to come through
for them or to outright betrayal). But here let us call attention to the sorts of items that are contrasted with
faith/faithfulness.
Concerns about the misplacement, betrayal, fragility, or loss of faith run a wide gamut. In order to see the
kind of loose vocabulary used to draw these contrasts, permit me to paint some of the contours of
faith/faithfulness with a broad and somewhat sloppy brush. I see biblical talk about faith clustering
around five main areas. The first two pertain to the trust aspect of faith/faithfulness:
(1) faith in a person (trust in and reliance on), and
(2) propositional faith (faith-that, πιστεύω ότι)
The three items I find associated with respect to the fidelity aspect of faith/faithfulness – resilience,
allegiance, and faithfulness (used with a flexibility and considerable overlap appropriate to the Hebrew
and Greek concepts we are examining) – can usefully serve as pegs on which to hang the virtual thesaurus
and complex interrelated web of terms that one encounters even in serious attempts to define faith related
concepts in almost any Semitic or Indo-European language. In English, the mess of related ideas seem to
me loosely to cluster around:
(3) resilience (steadfastness; standing firm, especially in crisis and decision; to be
unwavering, constant, unreserved; to remain resolute, wait, continue; to persist in, to
withstand, persevere, endure),
(4) allegiance (fidelity; fealty; continuing loyalty; affirming; supporting; orienting
around; aligning with; remaining true; acting in service of; walking with, following;
commitment to relationship (covenant); pledge of allegiance, solemnly swear; oath,
vow, decision for, “yes,” “I do”; devotion, dedication, unite with; engagement,
involvement; setting one’s heart on, receptiveness; undivided loyalty (no other gods,
concerns about idolatry), and
(5) faithfulness (reliability; dependability; honoring obligations; obedient action;
trustworthiness; truthfulness; honesty; piety, submission).
These five aspects of faith/faithfulness can be contrasted with the mirror images of (1)-(5), which
primarily express concern with various kinds of threats to and failures of trust, loyalty, and fidelity. One
important idea here centers on distrust:
(~1) lack of faith/trust in a person (mistrust; faltering trust; untrusting; suspicious; ‘doubt’).
But faith in a person often presupposes propositional faith, which raises concerns about the attitudes that
one takes toward relevant content (claims about reality):
(~2) lack of faith that (not trusting, believing, accepting, assuming, or hoping that,
etc.); not setting one’s heart on salient content)
Factors that detract from faithfulness (i.e., varieties of faithlessness or unfaithfulness) are also of strong
concern. We find warnings against ideas that cluster around:
(~3) unsteadiness or a lack of resilience (wavering, hesitating; fragile; indecisive; failure
to stand firm or persevere; to be tossed about, unresolved, irresolute, inconstant,
unreliable),
(~4) divided loyalties (idolatry; infidelity; betrayal; rejecting, quitting, disavowing;
renouncing, disclaiming; unwilling, refusing; not devoted; uncommitted; not
aligning with; not remaining true; not acting in service of), and
(~5) unfaithfulness (disobedient; unreliable; not dependable; untrustworthy;
untruthfulness; dishonesty; disengaged; separation).
Let us briefly illustrate how we can use this framework to illuminate three kinds of perceived threats to
faith.
First, in the Greek New Testament, having faith or great faith is often contrasted with lacking faith or with
having little faith. Of particular importance here are the Greek words: ἀπιστέω (apisteō, v. “to distrust, to
lack faith, to disobey, to refuse to commit/put faith in to be unfaithful, disloyal, uncommitted”); ἀπιστία
(apistia, n. “distrust, faithlessness, unfaithfulness”); ἄπιστος (apistos, a. “unfaithful, untrustworthy,
faithless, unreliable, undependable”); ὀλιγόπιστος (oligopistos, a. “of little faith, trusting too little, of
weak/insufficient faith, fainthearted”); and ὀλιγοπιστία (ologopistia, n. “of little faith, trusting too little”).
English lacks a verb for faith/faithfulness and use of the English word “believe” to translate πιστεύω
(pisteúō) misleadingly invites the thought that what is at issue is an insufficient level of confidence in
someone’s propositional faith along dimension (2), as if in places like Matthew 8:26 Jesus were rebuking
the disciples thus: “Ye of little propositional faith, shame on you for not assigning higher probabilities to
the items on the list of things that I want you to believe.”
Second, faith is also often contrasted with “doubt,” but here again English translations such as
“unbelieving,” “unbelief,” “to disbelieve, refuse to believe” carry an overly cognitive or doxastic
connotation that may lead us to overlook the fact that the concerns that are often more clearly in view are
better understood in terms of indecisive action or wavering in decisions or commitments in ways that
directly undermine the loyalty, commitment, and resilience which give faith value. The two most
important contrasts in the New Testament are: διστάζω (distázō, v. “to waver, to hesitate, shift (vacillate)
between stances”; from dís “two, double” and stásis “stance, standing”; “to have a disagreement over
something”) (Matthew 14:31, 28:17) and διακρίνω (diakrinó, v. “to waver, to hesitate, to waver between
decisions/judgments, to separate,” from diá “thoroughly back-and-forth,” which intensifies krino “to
decide/judge”; “to pause or hold back in uncertainty or unwillingness; to shrink back, to dispute”). In
“What is Fundamental to Faith?” Jonathan Kvanvig suggests that “we understand διακρίνω as a contrast
to loyalty and commitment to a cause or person” and that, similarly, we might misunderstand διστάζω if
we too quickly assume that epistemic uncertainty rather than something more overtly behavioral is in
view (Kvanvig unpublished a, 26; see also: Moberly 2000, 192 and De Graaf 2005, 739). This
interpretation deserves serious consideration. In both cases, what is arguably at issue is not concern along
dimension (2), but rather something more along the lines of (3) or (4) or perhaps (1).
As a third illustration, consider the sense in which a lack of faith/faithfulness in the sense of divided
loyalties (4) are seen as a direct threat, for example, to the covenantal relationship that God sets out with
Israel in Deuteronomy 5 (i.e., as part of the “Ten Commandments): “[Y]ou shall have no other gods
before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol . . . you shall not bow down to them or worship them”
(Deuteronomy 5:7-9). In the context of that covenantal relationship, a central part of the human response
that God is said to demand is a steadfast and undivided loyalty or allegiance.
2d. The value of faith and faithfulness
What, then, did people value about faith/faithfulness? It is perhaps easiest, initially, to see the value of
faithfulness or loyalty as aspects of ʾĕmûnâ/pistis/fides. Even knowing nothing else about Paramonos of
Edessa, about whom an early third century gravestone which reads simply “A good man, faithful to all his
friends,” we can understand why that is a lovely thing to be remembered for (Morgan 2015, 55). We
want friends and allies who will stick with us, even when things get difficult, doesn’t look good, and it
might not be to their own advantage. We want people in our lives who will say, “I will stand by you. I
am available and ready to act if you need me. You can call on me in a moment of crisis. You can count
on me to be there for you.” A friend’s loyalty, where recognized, can serve as a kind of guarantee that
they will take appropriate action on behalf of your interests in relevant circumstances. There is no
question that being able to rely on others in this way has a value far beyond the confines of friendship.
Commanders need soldiers who will stand ready to follow them into the bloody cut and thrust of battle,
placing service to a cause, ideal, leader, the good of the empire or of their comrades above their own
interests and well-being. Kings want that kind of allegiance and people who are united around a common
cause are often drawn together thereby.
Faithfulness bestows particular goods – assurance of action on one’s behalf, reliability, security, and
stability – that can be gratefully enjoyed and appreciated by the other party as part of a shared
relationship. We want cooks who we can trust not to poison us, homes in which we can take refuge, loyal
friends or neighbors who we count on in times of trouble, and partners who will act out of consideration
for our good as well as their own. Some of these goods are available whether or not they are recognized
(e.g., infants benefit from parents whose caregiving and loving kindness is steadfast, reliable, and firm;
and sheep benefit from a shepherd who consistently protects them). Other goods become available when
faithfulness is properly recognized as such (e.g., as when coming to see that a stranger is trustworthy
makes a relationship thereby less anxious and insecure, more durable, and lasting, and so on).
Faith in the sense of trust in or reliance on someone is not, it seems, unqualifiedly valuable. Assessments
of the value or appropriateness of faith for the one who has it cannot be entirely detached from questions
about aptness of faith. We should ask, in any particular case, whether faith is an appropriate or wellplaced response to the other person’s (real or perceived faithfulness) in light of one’s values and the
available evidence and also about the (real or perceived) value or goodness of the object of faith. Faith
can be misplaced, sometimes with ruinous consequences. Frances Howard-Snyder (2017) vividly
illustrates this point, presenting us with a languishing character whose quasi-religious trust, devotion, and
all too resilient faith in an Amway-style pyramid scheme wrecks her relationship with her daughter and
detracts from a flourishing life. The character displays a profile that includes a range of positive
cognitive, affective, and behavioral dispositions often associated with faith – trust, reliance, belief,
resilience, being for a cause, orientation of one’s life around an ideal – and yet her life doesn’t go well
owing in significant part precisely to the character’s faith. The dangers here are real and should be kept in
mind as part of any philosophical reflection on the value of faith. However, the fact that such faith can be
abused or become unhealthy or irrational in the wrong sort of relationship need not prevent us from
recognizing ways in which it might open us to goods like stability, security, and resilience potentially to
be found in flourishing relationships—goods to which it might be otherwise difficult to access.
Faith in someone, where it is recognized as deserved, can be enjoyed as a good gift that stems from the
other party’s faithfulness rather than one’s own. In some relationships, faith might even be something
that we owe to those who are in fact faithful to us—something which it would be improper to withhold.
Putting one’s faith in someone can also clearly open up other kinds of potential goods for relationships.
Doctors who are in fact competent and reliable (and some who are not!) benefit when people in their
practice trust them. But faith can also add another sort of value to relationships: resilience in the face of
challenges (D. Howard-Snyder 2013).
We have already seen several ways in which faith/faithfulness can clearly be of value. But it can also be
difficult to maintain over time and in the face of adversity. Faith, at its best, perseveres. As Jesus’
Parable of the Sower illustrates, πιστεύω (pisteúō) is an obedient hearing that, when flourishing, develops
deep roots to endure the weeds that would choke it out—a steadfast response to the proclamation of
God’s kingdom that is sown which resists falling away (Luke 8:11-15). The resilience of faith need not,
of course, be unbreakable. The gospels take it for granted that real faith often falls short of the ideal: even
Jesus’ closest followers abandon him as he dies on the cross. But the value of resilience is most evident
in cases where relationships are under duress or facing certain sorts of difficulties, when faith is tested,
and when its active dimensions are most apparent—in what Morgan calls “moments of crisis or decision”
(Morgan 2015, 75). Suppose that someone makes a decision to trust you, on some matter that leaves her
recognizably open to vulnerabilities that may be quite significant if her faith in you is betrayed and where
there is some reason for her to think that you may not come through for her or carry through on your
promises. By remaining faithful to her own commitments and by tenaciously trusting or patiently waiting
for you, her faith also contributes to the stability and endurance of the relationship through trying times.
In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope waits twenty long years for Odysseus’ return despite evidence which
raised considerable doubts about whether he was still alive. The strength and resilience that she brings to
their relationship is evident not only in her continued faithfulness to him during this time (evident, for
example, in her rejection of other suitors) but also in the trust that she continues to place in Odysseus,
such that, if he is alive, he will make every effort to return to her. Other things being equal, relationships
in which trust in or reliance on the other party is readily retracted are, for that reason, fragile. If troops
follow and give their tenuous trust to a centurion whom they believe can win the battle stand ready to
abandon him at the slightest sign of weakness or suggestion to the contrary, the centurion and perhaps the
entire cohort is vulnerable thereby. A relationship in which my own faith and/or faithfulness is
contingent on the appearance of the other party’s faithfulness and this faith is easily dislodged, is weaker,
less stable, and more easily broken than a resilient relationship in which my loyalty and commitment to
the other give my continued faithfulness and reliance on the other person a kind of firmness,
stubbornness, and grit in the face of challenges.
3. Characterizing the phenomena: Two contrasting views faith
My approach to characterizing the phenomena of faith starts by offering what I shall call the CAB
analysis, attending to the Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral aspects that the complex stance of faith
involves. We can understand what it is to have faith in a person and associated phenomena (such as
propositional faith) by asking about what is distinctive or characteristic about what one thinks, what one
cares about, and what one does when one has faith or is in a relationship in which faith plays a central
role. In this section, I will set out two views of faith and then go on to offer a comparative evaluation of
them in Sections 4 and 5.
3a. The Belief Plus view of faith
According to one very common view of faith, whatever else Christian (or Jewish or Islamic) faith
involves, it requires a particular psychological attitude, belief, toward the content of the message (e.g., in
the central claims of the gospel and associated presuppositions such as that God exists) without which one
cannot have faith. Something like this view, which I call the Belief Plus view of faith, is probably the
idea most often taken for granted in popular discourse about religious faith today whether critical or
sympathetic (for characterization and critical discussion of the Belief Plus view see McKaughan 2013 and
McKaughan 2016; for a recent defense see Malcolm and Scott 2016).
John Locke, for example, takes faith to be a special case of propositional belief on the basis of testimony
(Locke 1689, Book IV, chapter 18, paragraph 2).3 On this way of thinking about faith, belief is front and
center. Indeed, propositional belief of an alleged revelation is necessary and sufficient for propositional
faith: you have faith that p just in case someone tells you that p has been revealed by God and you take
their word for it. But Locke and other proponents of the Belief Plus view typically at least take faith in a
person to require something more. After all, as the Epistle of James points out, “Even the demons
believe—and, shudder” (James 2:19). If we take Judeo-Christian faith to involve both faith-in and faiththat, we can understand the Belief Plus view as requiring only that one cannot have faith in X unless one
believes whatever propositions faith in X presupposes (e.g., that X exists). Whatever faith-in a person (or
propositional faith) might involve by way of positive affective attitudes or behavior, what is characteristic
of the Belief Plus view is that belief of the salient propositions is necessary for having faith at all.
There are important and highly contested questions about the nature of belief. Philosophers have offered
very different accounts of what exactly it is to believe, say, that 7+5=12, or that Neil Armstrong was the
first person to step onto the moon. There are questions about how belief relates to probability judgments
and to neuroscience that are still poorly understood and remain sources of disagreement. But some
preliminary remarks should suffice for the purposes of the present discussion. Suppose we start with the
rough idea that you believe that p just when you think p is true.4 We might think of belief as a disposition
to feel confident that p is true when you consider it, or to assert p when asked, or to assume it as a premise
or basis for action. I don’t very often call to mind the proposition that the elevation of Bellingham,
Washington is not as high as the top of Mt. Baker. But when I do, it seems to me to be true. Keep in
mind for the purposes of the present discussion that the psychological attitude or state type (believing) is
distinct both from the content (p) toward which the attitude is directed and with the truth of the content (p
actually being the case). Even more importantly, don’t confuse one’s lack of belief that p (e.g., an
agnostic who withholds judgment about whether or not God exists) with the belief that not-p (e.g., an
atheist who believes that God does not exist).
3b. Relational Faith: Faith in the context of a Committed Covenantal Relationship
Now consider faith in the context of a Committed Covenantal Relationship (a stance I will call Relational
Faith for short).5 On this view, faith in a person most centrally involves (a) trust in or reliance on another
person and (b) commitment to a personal sacred covenantal relationship with that person. As we have
seen such faith might well be of value and interest in human relationships such as marriage and
friendship. However, because the kinds expectations, obligations, and practices that might be appropriate
to such relationships can vary a great deal, I shall here focus the discussion on Judeo-Christian faith.
I have argued elsewhere (McKaughan 2016) that paradigmatic cases of Judeo-Christian faith/faithfulness
typically involve two core forms of personal response: (a) trust in or reliance on Jesus or God, a turning
toward God and entrusting oneself to God’s care, and (b) a commitment to walking in God’s ways or to
following Jesus, a fidelity to God expressed in an engaged life-orienting commitment to a relationship
centered upon loving God and loving one’s neighbors, around which one’s activities, behavior, and
allegiance is structured. Much of this response is located in the realm of action or behavior. I do also
take paradigm cases of both faith-in a person and propositional faith to involve some sort of positive
cognitive stance that is incompatible with disbelief of the salient content and a positive valuation or
“being for,” while allowing that the cognitive, affective, and behavioral roles or components of faith can
be filled in a plurality of ways (McKaughan 2016).
I take Relational Faith to fit quite nicely with the discussion set out in Sections 1 and 2. As in marriage,
one can commit oneself to living in a long-term covenantal relationship to God or to Jesus in which one
intends to remain engaged. The concept most directly in view here is a practice or action – a standing
commitment to behaviors that are expressed in reliance and loyalty – in contrast both to something
fundamentally cognitive and to something fundamentally affective. On this sort of covenant-based
understanding of marriage, both parties understand themselves to have freely entered into a mutual
relationship that is based on sacred promises or commitments. As we shall see, because faith of this
active sort is grounded in one’s commitment to remaining in relationship with the other, Relational Faith
has very different consequences for how we think about the relationship between faith and doubt than the
Belief Plus view does. One might decide to carry on, faithfully engaging in the relationship on the
assumption that the other is also faithful, even in circumstances where the other party’s faithfulness is far
from apparent.
As an example of faith grounded in a promise to walk with God and to follow Jesus for better or for
worse, consider Mother Teresa (now known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta). In 1942
Mother Teresa made a personal vow to God, a decision which gave her life a direction or orientation
toward God to which all of her other aims were subordinated, an active commitment to be faithful to this
relationship. Through an act of decision, or series of commitments, she took herself to have entered into a
sacred relationship with Jesus, akin to marriage. Nuns in the Missionaries of Charity regard themselves
as a “spouse of Jesus crucified.” This promise gave her relationship moorings as she was tossed about on
the dark sea of doubt and various other kinds of adversity she faced along life’s way. As we shall see in
Section 3, her resolve in honoring this promise sustained her faith in the midst of experiences of
significant doubt of a depth and variety that are incompatible with belief. More than 17 years after taking
her vow, she wrote:
Since then I have kept this promise—and when sometimes the darkness is very dark—
& I am on the verge of saying “No to God” the thought of that promise pulls me up”
(Kolodiejchuk 2007, 187).
Notice how this kind of Covenantal or Relational Faith, at its best, enables a relationship that is not
simply dependent on the waxing and waning of one’s momentary desires and beliefs (or fluctuations in
one’s levels of confidence). Paradigm cases of Relational Faith will indeed involve positive cognitive
and affective aspects, but a wide range of responses can play the needed role (McKaughan 2016).
4. Some Objections to the Belief Plus View of Faith
In this section I will raise several problems concerning the nature, rationality, and value of the Belief Plus
view of faith and point out why, in each case, I take Relational Faith fare more favorably by that measure.
Let it be clear that I am not opposed to belief as such. We should embrace truth wherever it can be found
and well-grounded belief is to be valued where it can be had. What I am opposed to is the claim that the
only way to have Judeo-Christian faith is to meet the conditions laid out by the Belief Plus view, namely,
the belief requirement. It’s one thing to regard belief as a desirable accompaniment of faith or even as an
ideal to which fully formed faith might aspire (though claims about what ‘mature’ faith requires should be
duly chastened by examples like Mother Teresa) and quite another to require it as a minimum condition
on having faith at all.
My reservations about the Belief Plus view fall under three broad, though related, categories. First, there
is the worry that it mischaracterizes the nature of faith (e.g., Objections 1a, 1b, 1c, and 1d). Second, the
Belief Plus understanding makes it hard to understand why anyone would value faith like that (e.g.,
Objection 2). Third, if we do think of faith that way, faith often comes out looking epistemically
defective (e.g., Objection 3). Objections 4, 5, and 6 can be seen as raising questions about whether The
Belief Plus view mischaracterizes the nature of Judeo-Christian faith in more specific ways that also
diminish its value. In what follows I won’t have space either to explore various avenues by which one
might defend the Belief Plus model against these difficulties or to develop these objections quite as
rigorously as I would like. But I present these lines of criticism as a basis for continued discussion and
ongoing scrutiny of the view.
4a. Objections Concerning the Nature of Faith
Objection 1: Misguided Appeals to Authority – An Exercise in Exegesis
Proponents of the Belief Plus view sometimes claim that theirs is the default or “orthodox” view: “This
view has an impeccable historical pedigree and at least until recently has been the leading theory of faith”
(Malcolm and Scott 2016, 2) and it is true that the view has come to have a kind of widespread cultural
inertia in its favor. But I make bold to envision a day when this is not so. In light of our discussion in
Sections 1 and 2, it is not clear why we should place believing a list of propositions at the foreground of a
characterization of faith or think that in order to join the community of “believers” or perhaps even to
meet God’s approval, one must bring oneself into a particular psychological state – believing the content
of those doctrines.
For those who regard the Bible as a sacred text, the question “Does the Bible recognize any sort of faith
besides the Belief Plus view as a response pleasing to God, or is that view demanded by scripture?” may
be a pressing one. Advocates of Belief Plus might defend their view by pointing to bible verses, which in
English seem to suggest that belief is required for faith (e.g., Hebrews 11:6, 11:1; Mark 11:23-24).
Consider Hebrews 11:6: “And without faith (πίστις) it is impossible to please God, for whoever would
approach him must believe that (trust that, have faith that, πιστεύω ότι) he exists and that he rewards
those who seek him.” Is the point that we cannot draw near to God unless we confidently believe that
God exists? English lacks a verb for faith and so English translations often use “believe” to translate the
Greek verb πιστεύω. As an exercise, wherever “believe” is used in the New Testament, put the Greek
πιστεύω back in and consider whether alternatives such as “to put/have faith” or “trust” makes sense. Is
the point of the passage to demand “belief”?6 The question is whether these scriptural texts require the
claim that there is just one particular psychological-type, believing whatever content follows the thatclause, as a condition for having faith at all. That’s a much more ambitious thesis to read into the text.
Moreover, it is precisely what is at issue in the present discussion and it won’t do simply to point out that
“believe” is sometimes an apt translation. Proponents of the Belief Plus view owe us an argument for
why belief is required in any particular case.
By insisting on belief, the Belief Plus characterization of faith invites questions both about the
psychological state types it takes as a condition for having faith and about the content that the proponent
of the Belief Plus view insists is required for faith.
Objection 2: Multiple Realizability and the Diversity of Cognitive Attitudes Objection: What role
does belief play in faith and why think that it is unique – why can’t other attitudes play this role?
Our discussion of the function and value of faith/faithfulness in Section 2 left us with several candidates
for why faith might be worth having (maybe the sort of response thought to be pleasing to God is freely
give trust and loyalty, of deciding to follow Jesus, to walk with God, or at least intending to do so),
including the resilience that it can give relationships (i.e., maybe faith helps relationships to persevere
through difficult times, including moments of doubt, or where the risks, real or perceived, are high).
Suppose we take V to stand for whatever is valuable about faith—whatever the goal or purpose is that
makes faith worth having. We then need to ask: what role does the cognitive component of faith play in
producing this output? In particular, why think that the psychological attitude belief of p, for salient
content p, is required for faith to play whatever role it needs to play in order to have V? For example,
suppose you agree with Joseph Fitzmeyer that for the author of Luke, “faith begins as listening, just as in
the Pauline theology, but it does not end there. If faith for Paul begins with a “listening” (akoe) to the
preaching of Christ (Rom10:17), it ends as a “submission” (hypakoe pisteos, Rom 1:5, 16:26), or better as
a personal commitment to God in Christ” (Fitzmeyer 1981, 236). Why think that you couldn’t get from
the input of hearing a testimony (which doesn’t require belief) to the output of submission (which is an
action) without believing that the advocate of Belief Plus thinks you have to believe?
The first point to see is that it is at least an open question whether one can have V where faith is
accompanied by some positive cognitive attitude toward salient content p in the absence of belief that p.
With respect to psychological state types, it is important not to forget there are a lot of other mental
attitudes in addition to believing that p, that might play the needed role here, including: believing that p is
more likely to be true than not, hoping, assuming, accepting, desiring, fearing that p, etc. Proponents of
the Belief Plus view owe us an account of why those attitudes are inadequate to play whatever role they
take belief to play in faith and also of why belief, rather than certainty, is enough.
Second, what makes faith valuable – giving relationships the firmness and ability to persevere picked out
by the term “resilience” – arguably consists of actions or forms of behavioral response (e.g., walking with
God, following Jesus). The idea is that the cognitive attitude that one takes toward the salient content p,
has to hook up with the other stuff (e.g., affections, actions, standing commitments, and so on) in such a
way that can still result in the same types of behavior. Now the claim that only belief, in combination
with whatever other attitudes it might be accompanied, can yield those behaviors doesn’t look very
plausible. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, you can perform the relevant action (e.g., turn to God,
follow Jesus, respond to God with thanks and praise, etc.) in the absence of belief (e.g., with a low
subjective probability for salient p and a high valuation of p) (McKaughan 2016).
Consider the resilience that we have seen faith can give to a marriage. What exactly is going on in your
brain when you take your wedding vows or over time as you remain dedicated to your beloved? No
doubt there are answers to these questions, but they strike an odd chord. There is, quite obviously, no one
unique psychological state involved in being married. Indeed, typically our emotions and attitudes will
fluctuate widely over the years. Similarly, it is a mistake to attempt to characterize faith in terms of
unique attitudes or dispositions that must necessarily accompany the sorts of commitment involved in
faith that perseveres—either in the lives of various persons or over the course of the life of an individual.
Billions of people, through various millennia and across a vast diversity of cultural settings and widely
different life experiences, have had faith. We should expect faith to be multiply realizable in many
psychological, affective, and behavioral dispositions.
But things get even worse for the Belief Plus view. Third, there is reason to think that in some cases faith
couldn’t play its valuable role if belief of the salient propositions were required (at least not without
diminishing the value of faith from an epistemic point of view). In circumstances that are evidentially
unfavorable for salient p, belief of p would be epistemically defective. If belief is required for faith, faith
couldn’t play the role it needs to play to yield V in those circumstances without epistemic defect. How
are you going to stick with the relationship through thick and thin, good times and bad, for better or for
worse, and in moments of crisis or duress if faith goes away (is lost!) once it encounters evidentially
unfavorable circumstances? The resilience of a faith that requires belief is fairly limited. As we shall see,
a significant advantage of Relational Faith that faith can coexist with much more significant doubts than
the Belief Plus view can. So, there is reason to think that belief that p for salient p isn’t required for faith
in someone – at least if faith can rationally play the role it needs to play to yield V in evidentially
unfavorable circumstances.
Objection 3: Content and the Exemplar Exclusion Objection: On the Belief Plus view, many figures
that the Jewish and Christian traditions put forward as exemplars of faith would not count as having faith
unless the content one takes to be essential for belonging to those traditions is severely restricted.
With respect to content, the proponent of the Belief Plus view is in a difficult position with respect to just
how much doctrine she takes to be essential enough to demand that it be believed. The Belief Plus view
of faith thinks of having faith as requiring belief in particular doctrines or dogmas, without which one
cannot count as having faith. Take p to stand for whatever doctrines one takes to be essential to a
particular religious tradition. What must p include, say, with respect to the Jewish or Christian traditions?
Notice that the content p includes cannot require more than can plausibly be attributed to people whom
those traditions take to be exemplars of faith. It probably is the case that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses,
and David all believed or took it for granted that God exists. To this Paul and the authors of the New
Testament added content such as that Jesus is the Messiah and that Jesus was raised from the dead.
However, faith is attributed to Jesus’ earliest followers such as the disciples and other characters Jesus
encounters in the gospel narratives prior to their having those beliefs about Jesus. As Jonathan Kvanvig
points out, many of the propositions formulated in statements like the Athanasian Creed would have been
unrecognizable to exemplars of faith within those traditions (Kvanvig, unpublished b [or perhaps op. cit.
forthcoming book Faith and Humility]).
Objection 4: Does Belief Plus faith have a voluntary control profile that fits the norms internal to
your religious community?
Many philosophers today think of belief as a largely passive and involuntary state that you just find
yourself in. Given the evidential situation I take myself to be in, I couldn’t just decide in any direct or
straightforward way to believe that the elevation of Bellingham, Washington is higher than the top of Mt.
Baker. Nor could, according to this widespread view, one simply decide to adopt or abandon the belief
that God exists. However, the Belief Plus view can allow that, if someone finds themselves believing that
God exists, there might be other sorts of actions under their control that would determine whether or not
they had faith. Someone lacking the allegedly requisite beliefs, X, might also indirectly seek to acquire
them through inquiry. To this extent it is compatible with the idea that faith is voluntary. But the Belief
Plus view is incompatible with the idea that faith is voluntary for the person who lacks the requisite
beliefs, including for those who find themselves in doubt about whether God exists.
If faith is a term for the response that God is said to desire of humans, is that sort of control enough? This
is a question about the compatibility of a particular characterization of faith with other norms internal to a
given community.7 There is, of course, disagreement about whether faith is under our voluntary control
and to what extent, for example, within various factions and denominations of the Christian tradition.
However, major strands of the Christian tradition in all three branches – Eastern Orthodox, Roman
Catholic, and Protestant – allow for a view of faith as a voluntary response to God’s initiative: perhaps a
decision to trust in and surrender to God, to live in faithful obedience to God’s commands, to receive (or
reject) the gift of God’s grace, or to follow Jesus (see Swinburne 2005, 267-268).8 God is said to desire a
relationship that is not simply coerced—a relationship into which we freely choose to enter, cherish, and
intend to cultivate and sustain over time. A decision of faith is seen as a proper and willful response to
God’s faithfulness and to the gift of God’s grace is gratitude, praise, and repentance for one’s own
sinfulness and unfaithfulness to the covenant. In the gospel narratives, for example, Jesus assumes that
the presence or absence of faith is an appropriate target of praise and reward (Mark 5:34; 10:52) or of
rebuke and lament (Mark 4:40; 9:19) – normative assessments that are difficult to make sense of apart
from the assumption that it was within their power to respond in faith.9
Relational Faith, in contrast, is compatible with the idea that faith can be adopted at will (by decision),
even in the absence of belief in the salient content. Unlike the Belief Plus view, Relational Faith is a
voluntary response available even to those who find themselves with in serious doubt. One can freely
commit to a relationship in which one submits to God or Jesus as Lord and actively maintain the
relationship in continuing decisions to surrender to God. As Mother Teresa describes it, “Every day you
have to say ‘yes’ to God” (Petrie 1986).
4b. Objections Concerning the Value of Faith
Objection 5: Lack of value – Is Belief Plus faith worth having?
The Belief Plus view presents for us a picture of faith according to which what is most in the foreground,
or at any rate essential, believing a list of propositions. Let p stand for whatever content allegedly must
be believed in order to qualify as having faith. Imagine yourself being presented with this creed and
being asked to report your confidence level for each item on the list. The task, with respect to each
proposition, is to ask yourself in a sober and dispassionate way how likely it is to be true in light of your
evidence. Suppose that Paul or James did hope that the communities to whom they preached would, upon
hearing their message, assign a sufficiently high probability, given their evidence, to the proposition that
Jesus was raised so as to count as believing it. Is there reason to think that they were committed to, or
would on reflection (in light of a more nuanced discussion of the various other attitudes and actions
available) insist upon, the view that no forms of response that are unaccompanied by belief that p could
count as faith? Can it really be that what God, if God there be, is chiefly concerned about is that you
bring yourself into a psychological state of believing all of the items on this list?
Why would God care about that? I think it is clear, in light of the ground that we have just covered in
Sections 1 and 2, that this is not where the locus of value lies for faith. Those who maintain that believing
the list is essential, whether or not it is central to faith, owe us an argument for that claim. Moreover,
given that even within the Greek New Testament faith became a marker for “membership” in the
Christian community (not to mention that some Christians have thought that salvation may be riding on
the presence or absence of faith), the argument in favor of insisting that in the absence of such beliefs one
cannot have faith should be sufficiently strong to justify discourse that makes that sort of talk contingent
on the presence of an attitude of belief toward all the propositions taken to be included in p.
4c. Objections Concerning the Rationality of Faith
Objection 6: Lack of evidence sufficient for belief that p is the case (e.g., for many traditional
Christian doctrines, even core content)
If God is centrally concerned with what people believe as a requirement for having faith, why not provide
more evidence? Love of truth, intellectual honesty and authenticity, and responsible assessment of
evidence are clearly valuable. Although well-grounded beliefs on significant matters is of value (and all
the more valuable if the content in question is true), for the most part belief without sufficient evidence is
not. True but ungrounded beliefs on important matters might still have some value, as in the case of a
lucky guess or biological instincts that are beneficial for survival but to the extent that they are
insufficiently grounded they are worse off from an epistemic point of view.
Even if the proponent of Belief Plus faith severely trims back X in response to the Exemplar Exclusion
Objection, the core content is likely to include some fantastic propositions. For example, Paul takes Jesus’
resurrection to be part of the core gospel proclamation: “and if Christ has not been raised, then our
proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Resurrection isn’t
something that happens every day. So proponents of the Belief Plus view who do not opt for fideism face
the task of defending the positive epistemic status of the content of such beliefs on grounds such as direct
perceptual experience, God’s self-revelation or internal prompting, testimony, or natural theology.
On Locke’s view, for example, in order to reasonably have faith in (believe) the testimonial source of an
allegedly divine revelation, you must also have good independent grounds for believing that the
testimonial source in reliable. In the absence of evidence that you take to support or ground your belief
that the testimonial source is reliable, you cannot rationally believe or have faith in the testimonial source.
Even if those beliefs are initially properly basic for a person, reasonably continuing to hold such beliefs in
today’s world would require accompanying rebutters against arguments of the sort Hume offers in his
critique of belief in miracles. Applied to Jesus’ resurrection, the idea would be that the claim that Jesus
was raised cannot rationally be believed, since we have reason to think that a wide variety of other
explanations which make no appeal to the supernatural are more probable of all the phenomena that need
to be explained:
When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider
with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be
deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one
miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce
my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony
would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he
pretend to command my belief or opinion (Hume 1748, 87–88).
Unless one takes the evidential situation to be favorable to the propositions submitted for one’s belief or
takes humans to have a sensus divinitatis, one problem for those who commend Belief Plus faith is that
such faith often fails to meet various epistemic norms (and so be irrational, unreasonable, or unjustified,
etc.).
If faith turns out to involve belief on insufficient evidence, it is pretty clear that faith will turn out to be
epistemically defective, ranking among the intellectual vices—perhaps even among the moral vices as W.
K. Clifford passionately argued. Faith so understood can tempt people into all kinds of intellectual
contortions, forms of self-deception, and other intellectual and moral vices of precisely the sort that Mark
Twain and other critics of faith such as W. K. Clifford, Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Stephen
Pinker, and Alexander Rosenberg are calling out (Kvanvig 2013; D. Howard-Snyder 2016). If one is
worried that God cares so much about belief that salvation may be riding on it, those who lack properly
basic or otherwise well-grounded beliefs with the content in question (or who simply fear losing them)
may be tempted to contort their intellectual lives in all sorts of unfortunate ways. They might even seek
to “stupefy themselves”, as Pascal recommends, attempting to bring themselves into a psychological state
of believing the propositions that they take to be essential by whatever means necessary. Such a view
also sets up (in my view unnecessary) barriers for those who might be otherwise attracted to the tradition
but wish to maintain their intellectual integrity.
Even if one takes the evidence for p, on careful consideration, to be sufficient for reasonable belief, the
question still remains: Why didn’t God make evidence of God’s presence more clear, plain to all?
5. A Comparative Evaluation: Faith and Doubt in the Context of Belief Plus or Relational Faith
The Belief Plus and Relational views of faith have very different consequences for how we think about
the relationship between faith and doubt. While Belief Plus faith is compatible with a limited range of
doubt, it also understands faith in such a way that faith is lost if one falls out of the particular
psychological state of belief. Covenantal Faith grounds faith in a commitment to remaining actively
engaged in a relationship with another person. On this view, one’s relationship with God or Jesus is
anchored in a vow or decision to walk with God or to follow Jesus. Faith of this sort is compatible with a
much wider range and variety of up and downs in one’s cognitive and emotional life than the Belief Plus
view allows.
Consider the Belief Plus view first. Like belief, doubt is a psychological state. Following HowardSnyder (2017), we might think of it this way (see also Lee 2014; Malcolm and Scott 2016; Moon
unpublished; and Peels unpublished). First, for you to doubt that p might mean that you are uncertain
about p. Since most views of belief allow that belief does not require certainty, clearly some degree of
doubt of this sort is compatible with belief that p. Second, sometimes when we say that you doubt that p
we mean that you believe that not-p. Although people sometimes hold contradictory beliefs, there is a
clear sense in which doubt of this sort is incompatible with belief that p. A third, and more interesting
sort of doubt for the purposes of the present discussion are cases of being in doubt about whether p, in the
sense that you neither believe that p nor believe that not-p. One might recognize that there are good
grounds or reasons for being in doubt about p, given one’s total evidence, while nevertheless remaining in
a psychological state of belief. But such cases often involve a failure to proportion one’s belief to the
evidence (even if one has practical or moral reasons for continuing to believe).
Given the way that things stand for belief and doubt, what consequences does the Belief Plus view have
for the relationship between faith and doubt? On the Belief Plus view, faith is compatible only with a
fairly limited range of doubts or uncertainty. What the Belief Plus view denies is that someone can be in
doubt (someone who has significant doubts or finds herself with serious doubts) can have faith. If belief
is a largely involuntary state that we simply find ourselves in and belief is compatible only with a fairly
limited range of doubt or uncertainty, many people who find themselves with significant doubts will be
unable to respond to God in faith for reasons of intellectual honesty, regardless of how much they desire
to give their lives to God, love Jesus, or choose to live.
Objection 7: Cognitive Attitudes and the Exemplar Exclusion Objection: The Belief Plus
view is unable to accommodate the lived experience of faith in the midst of significant doubt
in the lives of many Jews and Christians, including the faith of exemplars.
Notice that the Exemplar Exclusion Objection can also arise with respect to attitude. For example, if
Mother Teresa lacks belief during her dark night of the soul despite the fact that she takes some other
positive cognitive attitude toward whatever content counts as “orthodox” she and other exemplars of faith
in the midst of doubt (who are sometimes honored for authentic wrestling with doubts from within the
Judeo-Christian tradition) don’t count as having faith on the Belief Plus view.
On the contrary, both the Jewish and Christian traditions recognize a place for faith in God, even in the
midst of severe doubt, dark nights of the soul, and forms of protest against the apparent absence of God
that accommodate not just very low levels of trust but even mistrust (see McKaughan and Pace [or Pace
and McKaughan], forthcoming). Let us consider the example of Mother Teresa more closely.
Mother Teresa is widely (though not universally10) admired for the seriousness with which she attempted
to live out the good and noble teachings of Micah 6:8 to “do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with
thy God” and Jesus’ central call to love God and neighbor. She set aside her earthly possessions and
worldly pursuits to dedicate her life to serving the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, tending to the needs of
the sick, downtrodden, vulnerable, and marginalized in concrete and meaningful ways.
Many are shocked, however, to learn that she lived as she did despite the fact that over a period spanning
five decades she experienced a “dark night of the soul” that included a feeling that she had been
abandoned by God and even profound doubts about whether God exists. Excerpts from her private
writings, made public in Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light (2007), reveal her
complicated interior life which combine haunting expressions of doubts so serious that she regards them
as blasphemous with a firm resolve to be faithful to her commitments.
Quite understandably, in the midst of the kinds of suffering she encountered, she faced profoundly human
questions about whether the God to whom she had dedicated her life even exists.
Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? . . . . I call, I cling, I want—and
there is no One to answer—no One on Whom I can cling—no, No One.—Alone. The
darkness is so dark—and I am alone.—Unwanted, forsaken.—The loneliness of the heart
that wants love is unbearable. . . . So many unanswered questions live within me—I am
afraid to uncover them—because of the blasphemy.—If there be God, please forgive me.
If this brings You glory, if You get a drop of joy from this—if souls are brought to You-if
my suffering satiates Your Thirst—here I am Lord, with joy I accept all to the end of
life—& I will smile at Your Hidden Face—always.” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 186-188)
We have here a painfully honest expression of significant doubt and it is clear that at times she worried
that “there is no One to answer” her prayers (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 187). She writes:
They say people in hell suffer eternal pain because of the loss of God—they would go
through all that suffering if they had just a little hope of possessing God.—In my soul I
feel just that terrible pain of loss—of God not wanting me—of God not being God—of
God not really existing (Jesus, please forgive my blasphemies—I have been told to write
everything). That darkness that surrounds me on all sides—I can’t lift my soul to God—
no light or inspiration enters my soul.—I speak of love for souls—of tender love for
God—words pass through my words [sic, lips]—and I long with a deep longing to
believe them.—What do I labour for? If there be no God—there can be no soul.—If
there is no soul then Jesus—You also are not true. . . .” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 192-193).
Some of the doubts she articulates here are arguably incompatible with belief in God: she longs to
believe that God really exists and that Jesus truly saves souls – claims around which she has literally
centered her entire life – but does not. Yet, though she fails to believe the claims that she cherishes, even
in the midst of these profound doubts she remains faithful. She continues to honor her commitments to
serve Jesus and to live in relation to God, for better or for worse, and to orient her life around the central
claims of the gospel, for better or for worse:
In the call You said that I would have to suffer much.—Ten years—my Jesus, You have
done to me according to Your will—and Jesus hear my prayer—if this pleases You-if my
pain and suffering—my darkness and separation gives You a drop of consolation—my
own Jesus do with me as You wish . . . . I am willing with all my heart to suffer all that I
suffer—not only now—but for all eternity . . . . I am ready to wait for You for all
eternity.—Your little one. (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 192-194)
How should we think about the kind of religious commitment here expressed?
5a. Mother Teresa from the Belief Plus point of view
If belief is a largely involuntary state that we simply find ourselves in, many people who, like Mother
Teresa, find themselves with significant doubts will be unable to respond to God in faith for reasons of
intellectual honesty, regardless of how much they love Jesus, desire to give their lives to God, or choose
to live. Some will say, “Ah well, she lost her faith. She is no longer a “believer.” In fact, that’s how
Mother Teresa herself describes it in places:
Where is my Faith?—Even deep down, right in, there is nothing but emptiness and
darkness.—My God—how painful is this unknown pain—I have no Faith—I dare not
utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart—& make me suffer untold agony
(Kolodiejchuk 2007, 187).
Elsewhere she writes: “I have no faith—I don’t believe” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 193). If the only
conceptual resources available for understanding what faith is or can be take belief as a requirement for
faith, this seems like the right thing to say.
But to say that Mother Teresa lost her faith is a spectacularly implausible description!11 It is not just that
this way of reading the situation confuses ideal faith with real and all too human faith, though it is of
course true that faith can be stronger or weaker at various points in the course of a journey – along various
cognitive, affective, and behavioral dimensions. More importantly, it is not at all clear that, even during
the periods in which Mother Teresa struggled with doubts that she is aptly described as having merely
weak faith. To the contrary! It is precisely in such moments in which the essence of faith comes most
clearly into view. To classify Mother Teresa as an atheist who merely wishes that there were a God
overlooks the fact that these are confessions cast in the form of a prayer and to fail to see the direction of
the life in which these painful expressions of profound doubt about whether the God who she continues to
love and to serve even exists are a part.
We see, in the above passages, a woman whose resolve in honoring her promise sustained her faith in the
midst of experiences of significant doubt of a depth and variety that are pretty clearly incompatible with
belief. However, some proponents of the Belief Plus view might wish to argue that Mother Teresa didn’t
really lack belief, rather than conclude that she lost her faith. I have three things to say in reply. First, I
don’t find this reply plausible. There is a danger of trivializing her private and painful thoughts about
God, who she sometimes came to refer to as “the Absent One” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 165), the difficulty
she had in articulating them to others, and the fact that she was “afraid to write all those terrible things
that pass in my soul” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 193):
I understand a little the tortures of hell—without God. I have no words to express what I
want to say . . . . I want to speak---yet nothing comes—I find no words to express the
depths of the darkness (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 172).
As Mother Teresa describes her public face: “The smile is a big cloak which covers a multitude of pains”
(Kolodiejchuk 2007, 176):
The whole time smiling—Sisters & people pass such remarks.—They think my faith,
trust & love are filling my very being & that the intimacy with God and union to His will
must be absorbing my heart.—Could they but know—and how my cheerfulness is the
cloak by which I cover the emptiness & misery. In spite of all—this darkness &
emptiness is not as painful as the longing for God.—The contradiction I fear will
unbalance me. (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 187)
Her inner life, she tells us, was characterized by longing and separation from God:
In my heart there is no faith—no love—no trust—there is much pain—the pain of
longing, the pain of not being wanted.—I want God with all the powers of my soul—and
yet there is between us—there is terrible separation.—I don’t pray any longer—I utter
words of community prayers . . . . But my prayer of union is not there any longer.—I no
longer pray. My soul is not one with You—and yet when alone in the streets—I talk to
you for hours—of my longing for You (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 193).
Second, even if there were reason to think that Mother Teresa remained a “believer” throughout the
course of her life, we should still consider the significance of the response of Mother Teresa* – a figure
like Mother Teresa in other respects who definitely did lack belief that God exists. Third, it is unlikely
that the beliefs of a person who did maintain his or her beliefs in the face of profound doubts such as
these would qualify as epistemically rational. In contrast, the sort of covenantal commitment that a
person with Relational Faith might be called for in some circumstances, if it is to be at all rational, is
emphatically not that one adopt an epistemic opinion that is wildly out of step with the evidence but a
risky decision to act with eyes wide open to one’s vulnerabilities.
Those who insist on belief as a requirement for faith from a position of self-assured belief would do well
to reflect on the words of Mother Teresa:
Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me – the silence and the emptiness is so
great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 288).
5b. Mother Teresa from the point of view of Relational Faith
Sometimes it is more informative to look at what people do rather than what they say. Mother Teresa’s
continued life over the decades that were marked by this condition manifest an important kind of faith
which, although incompatible with epistemically rational confident belief (in contrast to other available
positive cognitive attitudes one might take toward the same content), constitute a response that many
recognize as valuable and pleasing to God.
A focus on faith understood as a form of Covenantal Relationship, I submit, takes us closer to
understanding why. For it is precisely in times of trial, doubt, intermingled with obedient submission to
God’s will that the steadfast commitment characteristic of faith comes into the foreground. She is still
crying to God from deep within, committed to following Jesus to the ends of the earth come what may,
and remains fully devoted to a life of servanthood that is grounded in her orientation toward God. The
commitments she made to God and to Christ and to which she remained true kept her faith afloat during
various storms and dark periods in her life.
It would be far more plausible to attribute a lack of faith to Mother Teresa if, instead of merely
experiencing significant doubts, she had renounced that relationship. This fits the case of, Mary Johnson
a former nun in the Missionaries of Charity for twenty years and who knew Mother Teresa, who now
accepts the label of “atheist” for herself (Johnson 2011). Once again the Relational view seems to deliver
precisely the right result here.
Mother Teresa’s commitment to Jesus was not easily identifiable with any one cognitive or affective state.
Her faith endured through widely different levels of confidence in central tenets of her faith:
He is not there. Heaven, souls—why these are just words—words that mean nothing to me.—My
very life seems so contradictory. I help souls—to go where? (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 210).
Her faith also endured through broad shifts in affect:
From my childhood I have had a most tender love for Jesus in the Blessed
Sacrament—but now this too has gone. I feel nothing before Jesus— . . . . All
these things were so natural to me before— . . . . I loved God with all of the
powers of my heart. He was the centre of everything I did & said. Now
Father—it [is] so dark, so different and yet my everything is His” (Kolodiejchuk
2007, 210).
Undertaking and maintaining the kinds of commitments that are at the core of covenantal faith is
compatible with a wide range of cognitive and affective states indeed. In the life of Mother Teresa, we
see an example of someone honoring her vow even in the absence of characteristic cognitive or affective
states that we typically associate with faith, such as belief and affection. By reflecting on her faith in
these moments of crisis or duress, we see that her decision – a commitment to living in a way that is
faithful to promises she has made to God and to Jesus – are what is fundamental to her faith.
It isn’t hard to see why a response like this, which Mother Teresa once described in the words “to live by
faith and yet not to believe” (Kolodiejchuk 2007, 248), might be pleasing to God. Indeed, we can see
why such commitments might be of considerable value on the level of ordinary human relations. Fully
aware of these dark nights, on September 4, 2016 the Roman Catholic Church canonized Mother Teresa
as a saint, Blessed Teresa of Kolkata holding her up as an exemplar of steadfast faith to Christians around
the world.
5c. Relational Faith and wrestling with doubt from within a covenantal relationship
How then does doubt look from the perspective of Relational Faith? Faith, understood as a Covenantal
Relationship, is clearly compatible with doubt in a way and to an extent that confident belief is not. On
this view, forms of personal response at the core of faith and faithfulness are open to people even at times
when they struggle to believe the Christian proclamation. One is thus free to honestly wrestle with God
and with one’s doubts within the context of the covenantal relationship without fear and anxiety that one’s
commitment hangs on keeping one’s doubts at bay. One can remain firmly and steadfastly committed –
and undivided in one’s loyalties and allegiance – in spite of one’s intellectual doubts. Sometimes it is
precisely in those moments when one is struggling with doubts that the essence and value of faith comes
most clearly into view and when faith is not weak but strong.
Look at the space that Relational Faith opens for wrestling with doubt from within the Judeo-Christian
tradition. Consider again the marriage analogy and the role that decisions or promises play in the context
of covenantal relations. Just as in a marriage relationship, at its best, one can remain committed to one’s
spouse through good times and bad times and through the waxing and waning of one’s momentary
passions and desires, one can be committed to cultivating and maintaining a relationship with God and/or
Jesus in a way that is not simply dependent on the ups and downs of either belief (or credence) or desire.
What is called for, on this view, is not belief but a decision to follow. Even if what one believes is not
under our direct voluntary control, one can resolve to remain actively and faithfully engaged in a long
term relationship even if one comes to doubt God’s existence or faithfulness. One can continue to
willingly engage in acts that depend on the truth of the gospel proclamation with an acute awareness of
the perceived risks and vulnerabilities that this might involve.
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Greek New Testament give wide latitude for wrestling with doubt from
within the tradition. Permission to struggle within the context of a relationship with God is granted very
early on: Abraham wrangles with God about the fate of Sodom in Genesis 18. Jacob wrestles with God
and is renamed Israel (“he who struggles/wrestles/contends with God”) (Genesis 32:22-31). Ecclesiastes
elaborates with disarming frankness on the difficultly of perceiving God’s redemptive activity in our lives
and in the world (e.g., Ecclesiastes 6:12; Ecclesiastes 8:16-17; Ecclesiastes 9:11). The fact that it gives
voice to such difficulties and yet was still included in the canon has long been a source of hope for those
who, in spite of all their doubts, wish to find a place within the community of faith and to continue to rely
on God even as they authentically face their deepest questions. The example of Job’s persistent faith
despite all his hardships and unanswered questions (e.g., Job 19:7-8, 25) is just one aspect of a rich
tradition of protest and lament that give voice to cries for help in the midst of distress, expressions of
anguish, and despair. Job’s protest that “Even when I cry out, ‘Violence!’ I am not answered; I call
aloud, but there is no justice” (Job 19:7) is echoed in Habakkuk’s exclamations “O Lord, how long shall I
cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save?” in the opening of
the book (Habakkuk 1:2-3) and in the words of Psalm 13: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me
forever? How long will you hide your face from me?” (13:1). Many Psalms give indirect expression of
doubts in the form of taunts by adversaries and directly in crying out for rescue, explicitly acknowledging
experiences such as times when God seems silent, hidden, and absent and also a sense of abandonment,
when God seems to have failed to act (Psalm 10:1, 4, 11; Psalm 22:1-2; Psalm 35:17; Psalm 39:8; Psalm
42:3, 9-10; Psalm 77:1, 7-8; Psalm 88:1-3, 9-14; Psalm 89:46, 49; Psalm 94:6-7). In the New Testament,
Jesus serves both as a model of faith and faithfulness and as the Son of God through whom a God who is
faithful to God’s covenantal promises, old and new, reconciles creation to God on our behalf. Jesus’ cry
of dereliction from the cross – “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew
27:41-43, 45) registers low on the trust scale but high on the continued commitment side (see McKaughan
and Pace [or Pace and McKaughan] unpublished). Are we to read this as a case of fragile, faltering
faith—an understandable weakness or lapse in Jesus’ walk with God? The gospel writers do not present
Jesus here as a tragic hero who faith fails at the end. Instead, they see in this moment, despite
appearances to the contrary, the Son of God in his moment of greatest triumph.
6. Conclusion
We have seen that the Belief Plus is beset with a number of difficulties. In particular, I have pressed
seven distinct objections to the claim that belief is required for faith. These objections call into question
the way that the Belief Plus view characterizes the nature of faith and point out that, understood in those
terms, the conditions under which such faith is rational are limited and its value is diminished. In
contrast, if we understand faith in the context of covenantal relationship that involves both trust and
loyalty, Relational Faith turns out to be more valuable, more voluntary, more resilient, more compatible
with doubt, and arguably more faithful to a biblical understanding of faith than the widely held Belief Plus
view. Yet, even aside from these particular conclusions, we have covered a good deal of ground that
should be kept in mind in further discussions about the nature, value, and rationality of faith and
faithfulness.
Acknowledgements12
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1
From *bʰeydʰ, we also get the Proto-Italic word *feiðō (v., “to trust”) and *feiðos (a., “faithful, reliable”), from
which the Latin fides lexicon derives. The fides word group includes the noun fidēs (n. “faith”) and fidēlitās
(“faithfulness, fidelity”), the verb fīdere (fidō) “to trust, to rely upon, confide in,” and the adjective fīdus, fido, fidēlis
(“faithful, loyal, trustworthy”) (De Vaan 2008). Notice that trust or reliance is central to the meaning of words in
this group, as is faithfulness, trustworthiness, fidelity, or loyalty. The English words confide, confidence, and
confident trace back to cōnfīdere (“trust, confide, have confidence in, believe, rely on, depend”), a verb which joins
con- (“with, together”) with fīdō (“trust, rely upon”) and confide (“entrust, have faith in”). The Old French fay, fey,
fei, feit, feid and Middle English faith, fayth, feith, feyth derive from the Latin fidēs, as does English fidelity and
fealty, a feudal vassal’s sworn loyalty to a lord. The English words bide “stay, remain, await” and abide “remain,
wait, continue, persist in, withstand” also come from *bʰeydʰ, via Germanic words like the Proto-Germanic *bīdaną,
and the Old Dutch bīdan (REF).
2
Comparisons of Israel’s fidelity or infidelity to a faithful or unfaithful spouse is particularly prominent in the
prophetic literature: Hosea 1:2-3:5; 4:10-15; Micah 1:7; Zephaniah 3:1-7; Malachi 2:11-16; Ezekiel 16:1-63; 23:149; Isaiah 1:21; 50:1-2; 54:5-8; 57:2-10; 61:10-62:5; Jeremiah 2:23-25; 3:1-23; 22:20-23; see also: Deuteronomy
23:17-18; Proverbs 1:20, 2:16-19; 23:27-28. All four of the gospels and Paul take Christ as a symbolic
“bridegroom” of his followers or of the church (e.g., Matt 9:15; 25:1; Mark 2:19-20; Luke 5:34-35; John 3:29; Eph
5:32-33; see also: 1 Cor 7:1, 7, 32-34).
This nuptial imagery carries into later theological traditions. In The Liberty of a Christian (1520), Luther
speaks of the “wedding ring of faith” and writes: “Faith unites to soul with Christ as a bride is united with her
bridegroom.” Mother Teresa explicitly understood her own vows and the vows of sisters in the Missionaries of
Charity order she founded, as a marriage to the crucified Christ. Marriage is not, of course, the only sort of
relational context to which divine-humans relations are compared. For example, parent-child relations in which
obedience, dependence, and childlike faith and intimacy are called for also serve as a backdrop for remarks about
faith and faithfulness (e.g., as reflected in the appropriateness of the Aramaic abba “father, daddy, papa” Mark
14:36, Romans 8:15; Galatians 4:6).
3
For an excellent exposition and defense of Lockean faith of this variety, see Trent Dougherty’s contribution to
Bishop and Dougherty, forthcoming.
4
Even this much is too rough to distinguish belief from acceptance, which is a voluntary mental act of taking p as
true in some contexts for theoretical and practical reasoning. In my view, we have asked the word “belief” to cover
far too much of the cognitive landscape (McKaughan 2007).
5
Strictly speaking, I am focusing on Judeo-Christian faith as the human contribution to what one takes (perhaps
mistakenly) to be a relationship. One could have faith in God even if God does not exist. That faith would consist
in that complex of attitudes and actions (a psychological and behavioral stance) that constitute the response and are
involved in inaugurating and maintaining it.
6
As interpretive tools here we can look to immediate context, use of the faith talk by the same author in similar and
different contexts, comparison of use by other New Testament authors or in broader cultural settings (e.g., Ancient
& Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman culture), and to etymology. Here is one way etymology might be relevant.
Suppose that one thought that “believe” was the only translation that made sense. There is still the further question
of whether we should under “believe” in the ancient sense of “I set my heart on; hold dear; pledge my allegiance,”
as evident in the etymology of credo, or belief in modern and largely involuntary sense of “I just find myself
confident that p” (see the Meaning-Drift Argument in McKaughan 2013).
7
For a helpful discussion of the difference between internal religious norms, which place restrictions on legitimate
forms of engagement in religious ways of life within a given tradition, and external norms, such as epistemic norms,
see Cuneo, “Inaccessibility,” unpublished.
8
Within the Christian tradition there is a great deal of diversity, but the idea that there is a God who desires for
humans freely to choose to enter into an active and ongoing relationship which acknowledges God as Lord is an
ancient and prominent theme. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sets certain terms for the relationship “Obey
my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Jeremiah 7:23; see also Exodus 6:7). Do justice,
love kindness, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). Even where the emphasis is placed on God’s initiative,
God is most often said to desire a relationship that is not simply coerced: one can freely resist the gift of God’s
grace or receive it in faith. Much in these traditions has said that individuals and communities bear responsibility
for our response. Some insist upon, and others at least allow for, an understanding faith as a voluntary decision.
Kierkegaard and Bultmann take it that God calls each individual to a decision of faith. Erasmus, in A Discourse
Concerning Free Choice (1524), insists that God has given humans the capacity to turn toward or away from God.
The idea that humans can choose to freely accept or reject the gift of God’s grace is also emphasized by John
Wesley and the Methodists. Anabaptists from Mennonites to Baptists often took the rejection of infant baptism as a
defining issue, placing the emphasis on adult baptism of those mature enough to make a conscious choice of faith.
Calls for decision or response to God’s grace are also prevalent in evangelical language that presupposes the
capacity and responsibility to make a decision. Consider the emphasis on the importance of decision and action in
hymns like “I have Decided to Follow Jesus” or in calls to “commit to a personal relationship,” “accept Jesus as
your personal Lord and Savior,” “make a decision for Christ,” “invite Jesus into your heart,” “let Jesus be the Lord
of your life,” “surrender your life to God,” “dedicate your life to Christ,” “come forward right now and choose to
receive the gift of God’s grace and be born again,” or “ask God for forgiveness and pray the Sinner’s Prayer.”
9
In the gospel of Mark, faith is introduced into the narrative on the lips of Jesus with a call to action: “repent and
have faith in (πιστεύετε ἐν, “have faith in,” “trust in,” or “believe in”) the good news” that the kingdom of God has
drawn near (Mark 1:15). What is called for is submission to God’s reign, which begins with an act of repentance
and a radical reorientation of one’s life. This turning from the ways of the world (from sin, self-reliance, and other
idols) to God, is closely associated with John’s ministry, where it was expressed in the public act of baptism in
which one symbolically dies, surrendering one’s old self to be born into a new life centered around obedience to
God. Through this free and self-conscious act of commitment in response to the proclamation one’s life takes on a
direction or aim to which all other pursuits and allegiances are subordinated. Jesus’ call is to “Come, follow me”
(Mark 1:17; 2:14; 8:34; 10:21). This is not a request that one feel a certain way. Nor is it a presentation of
evidence. It is an invitation to do something, to perform an action—to begin to a walk with Jesus. This terse call to
action – striking for its lack of propositional content – is noteworthy not as a demand for assent to a set of
propositions that would later be articulated in creeds, but as an invitation to begin a walk along a path the destination
of which remains enticingly unknown. In Mark’s narrative, the disciples are asked to radically alter the course of
their lives and to trust, at great risk to their personal well-being and with very little information about who Jesus is.
Jesus is quite comfortable leaving people with questions or at best partial understanding. His teachings take the
form of parables that offer tantalizing pictures of what God is like but which raise as many questions as they answer
and puzzle even his closest followers. Jesus does, at times, chastise his disciples for having too little faith and the
narrative takes it for granted that the presence or absence of faith is an appropriate target of praise and reward (Mark
5:34; 10:52) or of rebuke and lament (Mark 4:40; 9:19). But his goal is not, it seems, to get propositional assent
from the crowds. It is not until halfway through the narrative (Mark 8), well after the disciples have left everything
to follow him, that Jesus asks “Who do you say that I am?” Peter’s reply prompts a warning not to tell anyone and
Jesus immediately begins to teach that he will not be the sort of Messiah that anyone is expecting, but one who must
suffer and die.
10
Not everyone admires her, of course. Some, perhaps from a more Nietzschean point of view, might instead
despise her condition as tragic, weak, and servile. At any rate, her response is an undeniably real and all too human
phenomenon. Others, claim the moral high ground, arguing for example that she could have done more to improve
the health of those under her care or even that she did more harm than good. For a sustained and unflinching
criticism of Mother Teresa, see Christopher Hitchens 1995.
11
When I put this suggestion to Mary Johnson, a former nun in the Missionaries of Charity for twenty years and
who knew Mother Teresa personally, she laughed out loud. Though she now accepts the label of atheist for herself,
Mary assured me that the idea that Mother Teresa lost her faith would be a deeply misguided view of Mother Teresa.
(Personal communication with Mary Johnson, October 23, 2014).
12
Acknowledgements: This project was made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion
Trust. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of
Templeton Religion Trust. I would like especially to thank Trent Dougherty, Sam Lebens, Matthew Lee, Michael
Pace, Dan Howard-Snyder, Dale Tuggy, and the participants in the 2016 Faith Project Summer Seminar (June-July
2016) and also Sara Koenig and participants at “The Virtue of Faith” conference in Bellingham, WA (September 2224, 2016) for discussion and feedback on an earlier version of this project.