FAITH is an attitude of mind which, though not confined to religious experience, can best be examined by setting out from its manifestations within that sphere of experience. There we find in clearest form illustrations of the several shades of meaning which the word "faith" has borne. A classic definition is that presented in the Epistle to the Hebrews, xi., 1: "faith is the sub stance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The word for "evidence" is, in the Revised version, rendered as "proving," and for "substance" are offered the alternative trans lations "assurance" and "the giving substance to." Assurance, certitude or convincedness, and giving substance to what we do not perceive and as to which we, therefore, only entertain an idea or a supposition, may at first seem somewhat disparate mean ings for one word; but the connection between them is revealed by a common signification of the word "realize." We speak of real izing what some event is when we discern its import, and when what was, so to say, "nothing to us" is found to be something with which we have to reckon or which can influence our thought and action. Personal certitude or conviction as to what as yet is not matter of scientific knowledge or proven with logical certainty, is of the essence of faith; and action upon it may lead on to dis covery of the actuality of the object, i.e., to substantiation of the hoped-for or the unseen. In the case of faith in God, whom "no man bath seen at any time," such certitude cannot issue in sight or sensibly verified knowledge ; though it may develop into "proving" in the sense of establishing reasoned and reasonable belief, such as fact and experience corroborate. But in other spheres faith often issues in knowledge, such as can be character ized as seeing or perceiving what, without such exercise of faith, would have remained unseen or unknown. Thus the faith of Columbus "realized" America for the European ; and an idea of Stephenson's led to the actual locomotive engine. In neither case did faith create the reality, but in both it substantiated the unseen, and brought men into actual touch with what had been but conceived or supposed. Thus faith begins in creating or fashioning an idea; and it may issue in finding a real counterpart to the idea. There is, however, no necessity that it shall so issue; and frequently it does not ; no one, e.g., has realized the idea of a machine capable of perpetual motion, though many have experimented with the notion. The description of faith cited above from Heb. xi. , is only lacking in psychological completeness, in that it contemplates successful ventures alone, and is silent as to such as may fail. Otherwise it is of more general and exhaustive a nature than is any other conception met with in the New Testament. For instance, St. Paul considers the efficacy of faith only in so far as it is faith in Christ or in God; one of his central doctrines is that we are justified by God through faith in Christ. On the other hand the writer of Hebrews includes, among his illustrations of the faithful life, the case of Rahab who was one of "them that believed not" in the God of Israel ; and the object of faith, with him, includes the whole region of the unseen, whatever it may contain. His teaching is aptly expressed in the lines of Hartley Coleridge : faith ". . . is an affirmation and an act That binds eternal truth to present fact." The long list of instances of the faithful given in Heb. xi. is made up of prophets, kings, etc., who achieved the heroic life and victories of various kinds, in virtue of their souls being pos sessed by faith ; their faith was verified by their lives. They are all concrete embodiments of the principle "nothing venture, noth ing have." And that principle is not only the essence of religious faith ; it underlies the acquisition of all human knowledge, such as, for the conduct of life, is most worth having. Thus the "father of the faithful" who obeyed his inward summons and went for ward "not knowing whither" is an allegory of the intellectual progress of mankind. Man did not begin with scientific knowledge or knowing, but with learning through doing. He learned by failure as well as by success, and in either case he ventured before he came to have. The uniformity of nature, e.g., was not written so legibly on natural phenomena that, in the time of man's primi tiveness, he who ran could read it off. On the other hand, if it had not been tentatively assumed, here a little and there a little, it could never have got "substance" for man's knowledge or relevance to his life; had it not been trusted while as yet un verified, no evidence of its actuality could have emerged. And the most recent advance in logic consists in making clearer than ever before that this principle of uniformity, underlying all our inductive science, is, and must ever remain, a postulate incapable of logical proof. Thus faith, in its primary sense, is not a word to be confined to the vocabulary of theology. Philosophy, or theory of knowledge, requires it and so does science, if it would understand its own logical structure and the presuppositions on which it rests. Probability is not only "the guide of life"; it is also of the very texture of all "knowledge" as to the actual world as distinguished from pure mathematics or truth as to the relations between ideas ; and probability in the last resort, i.e., in the case of the fundamental postulates underlying induction—is not a matter of numerical calculability or of formal logic, but of human hope, sanguine expectation, faith in the unseen. Instead of being logically certified it is but pragmatically "verified." The old hard and fast line between knowledge and belief or faith has disappeared. The very rationality of the world, which science would read and expound, is at bottom an idea of faith. Reason, if it include the discovery of true premises as well as the logical deduction of consequences from premises that may be either true or false, contains faith as well as logical linkage of sense-data.
Besides the primary meaning that has been set forth "faith" has borne others. Sometimes the word has been used as a synonym for "belief" or intellectual assent. But whereas belief is more or less constrained by fact already known, and which convinces us independently of any striving on our part, "faith" is generally used to emphasize the active or volitional element of experience, involved in venture reaching beyond the already known. Faith, again, is to be distinguished from credulity, with which it is apt to be confounded. The open mind and docility, personified in the New Testament as "the little child" are requisite for reception of truth ; but there is no beatitude on credulousness. If faith, or the working to a lead or suggestion that experience suggests but does not warrant, is to issue in reasonable belief, credulity must be re strained by resort to the method of doubt, which is equally essen tial for acquisition of knowledge. And faith proper is doubt sif ted credulity. It proves all things before holding fast to them as true, and pursues no apparently open road of ter i1 has been shown to be closed; whereas credulity is interested belief, such as is of ten resorted to in order to escape the discomfort of uncerti tude. Faith or belief worth calling belief must often "be purchased with the sweat of the brow." Another meaning of "faith" current in theological literature as well as in common speech, is that of trust. This resembles faith, as above described, and differs from belief in involving will and feeling: but it is rather an attitude issuing out of, and presupposing, the faith which creates its idea and then establishes belief in its actuality. Before we can trust in God, we must first believe that He is ; and that belief is acquired by a venture of faith. Lastly, it is unnecessary to narrow down faith to moral postulation, or to the attitude of valuation, exclusively. Religious faith was forthcoming before advanced morality appeared ; moreover, it is not concerned with what ought to be real or realized, but with what is realizable. Theology founded on faith is dogma concerning ultimate reality, not pictorial recipes for pious conduct. When religious faith is conceived as but a particular case of the faith that is involved in all knowledge and reason, science and faith can be seen to be complementary, not mutually exclusive; they can lodge, without need of reconciliation, in brotherly relation within one mind, provided the mind is con tent with reasonableness, where logical rationality is unattainable.
See W. R. Inge, Faith (1909) ; J. Ward, Essays in Philosophy (1927) ; G. Galloway, Faith and Reason in Religion (1927).
(F. R. T.)