The Nature of Faith

Abstract

In this book I have argued that the fundamental claim of Skeptical Fideism is mistaken. This is the claim that in undermining our confidence in the powers of human reason, the Skeptic is performing a service for faith. This has been presented in two main ways. The Conformist Fideist argues that faith is best understood as one form of the undogmatic participation recommended by the classical Pyrrhonists. This argument misrepresents what faith is, and gains its otherwise strange appeal from its perception of structural likenesses between the Skeptic way and the life with faith as its centre. The Evangelical Fideist does not attempt to absorb faith into the Skeptical tradition, but holds that the destruction of the pretensions of reason is a necessary condition for faith to take root, since these pretensions merely serve the corruption in human nature which is the real obstacle to it. I have rejected this, on the general ground that if the Skeptic is right, it becomes less, not more, likely that unbelief is due to corruption, and that if the claims of faith are sound, the efforts of natural theologians to support them with reasons cannot be dismissed as hindrances. I have, however, accepted a negative, or permissive, version of the Parity Argument.