Springer.   We find in contemporary culture starkly contrasting estimates of the value of faith. On the one hand, for many people, faith is a virtue or positive human value, something associated with understanding, hope, and love, something to be inculcated, maintained, and cherished. On the other hand, for many people, faith is a vice, something associated with dogmatism, arrogance, and close-mindedness, something to be avoided at all costs. The papers included in this special (double) issue on approaches to faith explore questions about faith in a variety of settings through a diverse range of examples, both secular and religious. The attempt to deepen our understanding of faith in the context of ordinary human relationships (e.g., between parents and children, friends, generals and their armies, business partners, citizens and the state), a commitment to ideals, or the pursuit of significant goals is clearly of general philosophical interest, as is the examination of potential connections between faith and topics such as trust or reliance

Howard Snyder, Daniel

McKaughan, Daniel J.

Rice, Rebekah L. H.

English

PhilPapers

EDITORIALSpecial (double) issue: approaches to faithGuest editorial prefaceRebekah L. H. Rice1 • Daniel McKaughan2 •Daniel Howard-Snyder3Published online: 29 December 2016 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016We find in contemporary culture starkly contrasting estimates of the value of faith.On the one hand, for many people, faith is a virtue or positive human value,something associated with understanding, hope, and love, something to beinculcated, maintained, and cherished. On the other hand, for many people, faithis a vice, something associated with dogmatism, arrogance, and close-mindedness,something to be avoided at all costs. The papers included in this special (double)issue on approaches to faith explore questions about faith in a variety of settingsthrough a diverse range of examples, both secular and religious. The attempt todeepen our understanding of faith in the context of ordinary human relationships(e.g., between parents and children, friends, generals and their armies, businesspartners, citizens and the state), a commitment to ideals, or the pursuit of significantgoals is clearly of general philosophical interest, as is the examination of potentialconnections between faith and topics such as trust or reliance. Discussion of thespecific role that faith plays in religious contexts is also a matter of general socialconcern. Interest in religious faith, at least in the English-speaking world, has beenamplified in recent years, not least in response to ongoing acts of religiouslymotivated 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& Rebekah L. H. Ricericer@spu.eduDaniel McKaughandaniel.mckaughan@bc.eduDaniel Howard-Snyderdan.howard-snyder@wwu.edu1 Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, USA2 Boston College, Chestnut Hill, USA3 Western Washington University, Bellingham, USA123Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6DOI 10.1007/s11153-016-9610-1religious faith?’’ is looming larger in public consciousness than ever before. Oneline of thought now prevalent in the New Atheist literature maintains that religiousfaith provides a social backdrop for extremism. Christopher Hitchens (2007) arguesthat it ‘‘poisons everything’’ while Richard Dawkins suggests that it is the ‘‘root ofall evil’’ (2006) and implicates it in ‘‘most, if not all, of the violent enmities in theworld today’’ (Dawkins 2003, 161).Of course, whether or not faith is of value depends on what it is. According toDawkins and other self-identifying ‘‘brights,’’ faith is believing fantastic, butallegedly divinely revealed, propositions on insufficient evidence. But can it reallybe that this is what early religious communities took God or other deities to desire ofhumans? Might there be a more satisfying understanding of why Jews, Christians,and others in the ancient world thought that God would care about faith? What rolesdid faith play in their lives and discourse? Are at least some of these roles worthhanging on to, both in religious and secular life? Perhaps the stark culturaldisagreement over the value of faith and its place in human life is due to faith’schampions and critics focusing on different phenomena. What if both parties tend tomischaracterize the nature of faith and, as a result, mischaracterize its value? Mightthe clamor around faith in religious contexts lead us to overlook its role in ordinarysecular human relationships? Might attention to faith’s role in ordinary secularhuman relationships shed light on how faith should be understood in religiouscontexts?These questions—and many, many others—are at the heart of pistology, theinterdisciplinary study of the nature, value, and rationality of faith, where faith isthought of as a psychological attitude, state, or trait. Pistology is of considerablesocial importance today, not least because how issues about faith get framed andresolved today will likely affect how generations to come think about those issues.In response to this perceived social need, the present special volume—Approachesto Faith—aims to facilitate discussion about what faith is and when it is ofrecognizable value and rationality. Whether or not the arguments of contributors tothis volume are successful, together they advance this larger overall aim by betterpositioning pistologists to contribute to the conversation from a more philosoph-ically, historically, and culturally informed perspective.In what follows, we briefly highlight each contribution. It’s tempting to groupthem, although any grouping will be somewhat arbitrary. Even so, perhaps we canthink of the first four contributions as focusing on faith as it is thought of in certainhistorical traditions (Greco-Roman culture, the early churches, Rabbinic Judaism,and Eastern Orthodoxy), the second four contributions as addressing faith as itappears in secular personal human relationships, and the third four contributions asaddressing specific concerns related to faith in philosophical theology.Daniel McKaughan kicks things off with a reminder that Greco-Roman culture inthe early Roman principate thought of faith as a good without which no societycould flourish (See Morgan 2015). So understood, faith was the glue that cemented awide variety of personal human relationships, as well as relationships betweenhumans and the gods. So understood, faith was a combination of trust andcommitment, and its value consisted in the stability, security, and resilience that itprovided such relationships. And the same goes for contemporaneous Jewish and2 Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6123early Christian understandings of faith, with this difference: the trust andcommitment that bound humans binds humans to God. McKaughan observes thatfaith, so understood, was designed, so to speak, to keep people together in marriage,friendship, business, and so on even when crises of various sorts arose to threatenthe relationship, including fear and doubt. He contends that faith could not play thatrole in a relationship, while retaining its value, if belief of the relevant propositionsis required; he uses Saint Teresa of Calcutta as a model to underscore the point.The view that faith is a kind of belief or that faith requires belief has been andremains widely held. One motivation for this view is the claim that certain religioustexts demand such an understanding of faith. Daniel Howard-Snyder considerswhether The Gospel of Mark demands such an understanding. Based on a closereading informed by current scholarship on the Greek notion of pistis (faith) amongboth Greco-Roman classicists and among biblical scholars, Howard-Snyder rejectsthe claim that Mark’s understanding of faith has it that faith is a kind of belief orrequires belief of the relevant propositions. Instead, he offers an account of Markanfaith according to which what is most central to faith is resilience in the face ofchallenges to living in light of the positive overall stance one takes to the object offaith, and belief of the relevant propositions is optional.We often hear that humans are to have faith in God. But what about God? Is Godto have faith in humans? That’s a question you don’t hear too often! Rabbi SamuelLebens argues that the Hebrew Bible allows for it and that Rabbinic reflectionendorses it. However, some prickly philosophical thorns surround the idea. RabbiLebens attempts to prune them, but what he is chiefly concerned to cultivate is theidea that just as humans can be people of faith, thereby unifying all manner of thingsthey regard as important under a grand narrative, a worldview, an ideal, and the like,so God can be a person of faith unifying all manner of things God regards asimportant under the ideal of creation. As such, God is like an artist who expresseswhat he values—God puts the brush to the canvas, God breaks through variousinternal and external barriers, and God commits to stick with the result. That,suggests Rabbi Lebens in ‘‘The Life of Faith as a Work of Art,’’ is putting—andexpressing—great faith in creation.While the Abrahamic faiths underscore the importance of personal faith in God,there are other ways, argues Terence Cuneo, in which someone might be related tofaith in God without having personal faith in God. In ‘‘Aligning with Lives ofFaith,’’ Cuneo takes his cue from reflection on the role that Eastern Orthodoxliturgies give to the saints, e.g. St. Jacob of Alaska, the patron saint of Cuneo’s ownparish. The liturgical activities that constitute honoring St. Jacob are intended forparishioners to engage St. Jacob’s life, but such engagement need not be emulatingor identifying with him, or even admiring or appreciating him and his work. Rather,the engagement that the liturgy calls for is aligning oneself with—or, being alignedwith—the life of St. Jacob. To be so aligned consists in investing oneself in thehistory of St. Jacob’s life of faith and allowing his life to shape one’s sensibilities,thinking and loyalties, through liturgical acts, and allowing or authorizing St. Jacobto fully represent one. Interestingly, one can align oneself with a saint’s faith in Godeven if one does not have personal faith in God. The upshot is that it matters who orwhat one aligns oneself with, and not just having personal faith in God.Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6 3123It is a deaf ear that cannot hear the role of faith in personal human relationships.One of the things that we care about in our most cherished relationships is thesupport we receive—and give—to our friends, spouses, lovers, etc. In ‘‘SupportingIntimates on Faith,’’ George Tsai identifies a demanding virtue of being supportiveof one’s intimates, explains what it is, and argues that one cannot have it unless onehas faith in the self-expressive pursuits of one’s intimates. Among other things, Tsaidescribes how such intimate-supportive faith enables one’s intimates to moremeaningfully explore and express themselves, and how it also deepens theemotional bonds of the relationship.Lara Buchak, in ‘‘Faith and Steadfastness in the Face of Counterevidence,’’extends her prior work in pistology to demonstrate how faith provides for a certainsort of personal integrity over time that would otherwise be elusive. On Buchak’sview, faith requires that one commits to risky acts before examining furtherevidence. But faith also requires recalcitrance in the face of new evidence that goesagainst what one has put one’s faith in. As such, faith seems neither rational noradmirable. By distinguishing synchronic and diachronic aspects of faith, and byappealing to a variety of theses in formal epistemology—having to do withcredences, utilities, and risk-attitudes—Buchak explains how it is that, although at aparticular time, one’s total evidence might make it seem irrational for one to havefaith that something is the case and to act on it, one’s total evidence might yet makeit rational for one to retain faith and continue to act over the long term. Faith thusmakes it possible for us to keep our commitments, especially to enduring projects,despite counterevidence, and provides integrity in our lives.One can have a lot of faith or trust in a person or just a little. Faith in a person isthe sort of thing that can grow, deepen, and develop over time or waver, diminish,regress, fail, or be broken or abandoned. But how should we characterize the ideathat faith admits of degree, given that some minimal conditions are satisfied in orderto qualify as having faith at all? In ‘‘The Strength of Faith and Trust,’’ Michael Paceargues that faith can be psychologically strong or weak in two distinct senses. Otherthings being equal, if my degree of confidence as measured by my willingness totake risks on a person’s doing such and such increases, my faith in that person to dosuch and such increases. Similarly, other things being equal, the more resistant I amto revising my confidence in the face of counterevidence, the stronger my faith.It is becoming increasingly common for philosophers to use fiction as a mediumfor exploring philosophical questions. In her contribution to the volume, FrancesHoward-Snyder uses fiction to explore the nature and value of faith. ‘‘The Pearl ofGreat Price’’ problematizes the idea that faith is unqualifiedly good or valuable. Themain character, Janet, is a well-intentioned single mom and breakfast diner waitresswhose noble desire to provide a better life for her daughter leads her to get caughtup in a pyramid sales scheme. Discerning readers will discover layers of insight andcomplexity in this short and carefully crafted piece. But one point not to be lost isthat Janet displays many of the features of faith under discussion in the currentliterature—including belief of or trust in salient propositions, committing to live inlight of something one sees as valuable, and tenaciously sticking with thatcommitment through difficulties—and yet vividly illustrates, in a variety of ways,how it is bad to have such faith.4 Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6123While some Christians think Jesus lacked any sort of faith at all, others, like BethRath, think that Jesus had faith that, among other things, God loved him. Now, onthe cross, Jesus reportedly cried, ‘‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,’’thereby making manifest the fact that Jesus no longer enjoyed closeness with God,so much so that Jesus was in doubt about whether God loved him. Thus, Jesus losthis faith that God loved him. But Jesus’ behavior and attitudes immediately prior toand after the cry indicate that he retained faith that God loved him; moreover, it’sdifficult to see how Jesus could model faith in the darkest times if he lost his faiththat God loved him while he was on the cross. Thus, Jesus did not lose his faith thatGod loved him. We have a contradiction. In ‘‘Christ’s Faith, Doubt, and the Cry ofDereliction,’’ Rath draws on Facundo Alonso’s work on propositional reliance tointerrogate the hidden premise in the puzzle of the cry of dereliction: that Jesus’faith that God loved him was incompatible with his being in doubt about the matter.In ‘‘Jesus as an Exemplar of Faith in the New Testament,’’ Dale Tuggy carefullypresents five independent lines of evidence for thinking that, in the New Testament,Jesus was not only a man of faith in God, but a paragon of faith in God, someoneworthy of our imitation. But here a surprising result arguably emerges. After all, asAquinas argued, no fully divine being could have faith in God. For a fully divinebeing would be omniscient, and omniscience is incompatible with faith. It followsthat Jesus was not fully divine, which hardly sits well with the dominantChalcedonian Christian tradition. Tuggy considers several responses to thisargument and finds each of them wanting, recommending in the end that a returnto the NT text might well be a long overdue corrective to the excesses of Chalcedon,not to mention Nicea, Constantinople, and beyond.Anne Jeffery observes that the question of the epistemic rationality of theisticfaith has swamped the literature in the last fifty years. However, as Jeffery points outin ‘‘Does hope morally vindicate faith?’’ even if such faith is epistemically rational,it might nevertheless be morally and pragmatically irrational, and so fully deservingof our rejection. Jeffery finds four arguments for the moral and pragmaticirrationality of faith and argues that unless faith is coupled with hope these fourarguments constitute powerful reason to reject faith. The upshot is that faith doesn’thave a prayer without hope.It is customary to distinguish epistemic and pragmatic rationality, and theconsiderations that are relevant to each. Evidence is relevant to the former;existential fulfillment is relevant to the latter. Thus, in comparing two worldviews,or two religions, the evidence is relevant to the epistemic rationality of putting yourfaith in one over the other, and existential fulfillment is relevant to the pragmaticrationality of putting your faith in one over the other. Or so we might have thought.Brian Ballard, in ‘‘The Rationality of Faith and the Benefits of Religion,’’ arguesthat the existential resources of a worldview or religion—its resources for dealingwith basic human problems, such as the need for meaning, love, identity, andpersonal growth—is not only relevant to the pragmatic rationality of faith in it, butalso the epistemic rationality of one’s faith in it. If this is right, then philosophershave much too easily dismissed the existential resources of a worldview or religionin their assessment of the epistemic rationality of faith in it. New territory ofassessment is ripe for the exploring.Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6 5123While no collection of fresh essays in pistology can do justice to this exciting,new field of inquiry, we hope that the essays contained in this volume will at leastcontribute to a deeper understanding of the nature, value, and rationality of faith,and pistology’s relevance to traditional areas such as philosophy of religion andphilosophical theology.ReferencesDawkins, R. (2003). A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. Boston: HoughtonMifflin.Dawkins, R. (2006). ‘The Root of All Evil?’ BBC Documentary, directed by R. Barnes.Hitchens, C. (2007). God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Hatchette.Morgan, T. (2015). Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire. NewYork: Oxford.6 Int J Philos Relig (2017) 81:1–6123

Approaches to Faith, Guest Editorial Preface

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