Faith with Reason

Ars Disputandi ISSN: 1566-5399 (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjpt17 Faith with Reason Gijsbert van den Brink To cite this article: Gijsbert van den Brink (2001) Faith with Reason, Ars Disputandi, 1:1, 62-63, DOI: 10.1080/15665399.2001.10819712 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15665399.2001.10819712 © 2001 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. Published online: 06 May 2014. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 201 View related articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rjpt20 Ars Disputandi Volume 1 (2001) ISSN: 1566 5399 Gijsbert van den Brink LEYDEN UNIVERSITY, THE NETHERLANDS Faith with Reason By Paul Helm Oxford University Press, Oxford 2000, xvi + 185p., ¿ 25.00, ISBN: 0-19-823845-2 Issues concerning the relation between faith and reason seem to be rather well-worn during centuries of theological and philosophical inquiry. In his new book, however, Paul Helm succeeds in giving a remarkably fresh ring to some of them. Analyzing the concept of faith, Helm distinguishes between an epistemic and a ducial component. Faith is not simply belief, it is also trust. PostEnlightenment philosophy of religion has been preoccupied by questions concerning the belief component of faith: is it reasonable or not to believe that God exists? Helm, however, devotes nearly half of his book to an analysis of the ducial aspect of faith, discussing questions such as: What is it to trust God? Is religious trust different from other kinds of trust? Should the strength of our religious trust be proportioned to the strength of our corresponding beliefs, or are we rather to be praised for the more strongly trusting God when having only weak evidential beliefs? Meanwhile, in the rst chapters of the book Helm chooses position in the contemporary debate on the belief component of faith. After having found wanting ve philosophical objections against the thesis that faith can be discussed (chapter 1), he raises the issue of faith and (weak) foundationalism. On the one hand, he defends Plantinga's view that belief in God may be in the foundations of one's noetic structure against some criticisms of Anthony Kenny (chapter 2). On the other hand, Helm defends a coherentist view of faith, replacing the picture of a building with a foundation by the metaphor of the web: the propositions (but also experiences, promises, etc.) of faith form an intricate texture consisting of more central and more peripheral beliefs, mutually supporting each other (chapter 3). Some of the propositions involved may be held with certainty, others only tentatively. Moreover, when it comes to the rationality of faith an ineliminable element of person-relativity is involved (chapter 4). Religious adherence not only has to do with our evidential estimation of what is true, but also with our wants, fears and aspirations (somewhat obscurely summarized by Helm as our `beliefs about oneself'). Chapter 5 further explores the role played by non-cognitive factors in religious belief and unbelief, this time concentrating on the notion of our interests. Helm argues that one reason for failure to believe may be that one has an interest in not believing. In any case, moral considerations inevitably play a role in our assessment of the total evidence for theistic belief, and rather than neglecting them we should bring them out into the open. Chapter 6 discusses the interesting c February 13, 2002, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows: Gijsbert van den Brink, `Faith with Reason,' Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 1 (2001), section number. Gijsbert van den Brink distinction between `thin belief', which is a merely theoretical belief in the God of the philosophers, and `thick belief', which has ducial elements and does justice to the practical demands of faith. Here, Helm highlights what he calls the instability of thick belief, which always tends to collapse either into thin belief or into sheer deism. Next, Helm shifts his attention to an analysis of the ducial element of faith, arguing over against personalist modes of theology that trusting God does not involve a different kind of trust than trusting anything else (chapter 7). It might be asked here, however, whether Helm does not play down the unique dynamics of personal trust created by the fact that only this form of trust can be mutual? In chapter 8, Helm defends his `evidential proportion view of faith' against Swinburne, who in some of his work in the early eighties considered religious trust as a meritorious makeweight for evidential de ciency, rather than as to be proportioned to the evidence. Finally, Helm concentrates on a question which worries countless people more than any of those discussed so far, viz. the question whether they are believers themselves. All except one of the chapters of the book started life as Stanton Lectures (Cambridge 1996). Although there still is some overlap (e.g. in discussions of Basil Mitchell and Richard Swinburne), Helm succeeded in composing them into a uni ed whole. The only problems I have with the book concern Helm's hermeneutics of theological texts (Helm is anxious to abstract from theological discussions and concentrate on the philosophical issues involved, but in doing so cannot avoid interpreting theological texts). In the case of Bultmann (chapter 6), Helm is quite sensitive to what Bultmann wants to say. In the case of both Calvin (chapter 5) and Barth (chapter 9), however, he seems to misrepresent their intentions. To both of them, he ascribes an interest in epistemology which exceeds the limits of what is warranted by the texts. As to Calvin, he does not seem interested in the noetic effects of sin as an epistemological issue of its own, but only as a theological argument for the necessity of special revelation. And as to Barth, in stressing the possibility of having unconditional assurance of one's faith, Barth does not argue that `to raise the question whether one has faith is to make a logical and also perhaps a theological mistake' (172). Rather, he is countering here the Tridentine rejection of the possibility of having absolute certainty of one's faith. In other words, Barth (in line with the Reformed theological tradition) is arguing for the possibility of having complete assurance of faith, not (as Helm takes him) for its logical necessity. All in all, however, Faith with Reason is an excellent book, especially unique and recommendable because of the balanced way in which both the cognitive and the non-cognitive elements playing a role in religious belief and its justi cation are treated. Ars Disputandi 1 (2001)