Thomistic faith
Aquinas's view of faith is well-trod territory. In what follows, we will not get embroiled in scholarly textual disputes about it. Rather, we will articulate a view that has a significant, even if disputable, basis in Aquinas's writings and that is recognizably Thomistic, in the way that a view might be recognizably Augustinian, Cartesian, or Humean, even though it has a significant but disputable basis in their writings.
According to Aquinas, the object of faith is God but, since we have no immediate awareness of God, the object of faith is, strictly speaking, propositions about God, such as the proposition that God exists or the proposition that Jesus is God incarnate (ST II—II. q.1. a.1—2). Faith, then, is an act of intellectual assent to propositions about God. Many contemporary commentators call this act of intellectual assent “belief”; we will follow suit. NotablyAquinas says that faith shares important features with both (i) high-grade knowledge (scientia), such as a mathematician’s knowledge of first principles and their knowledge of theorems based on demonstrations from those principles, and (ii) mere opinion, suspicion, and doubt (opinione, suspicione et dubitatione), such as our mere opinion that Trump’s campaign conspired with the Russians, our suspicion that there is extra-terrestrial sentient life, and our doubt about whether the number of kayakers on Pearrygin Lake this century will be even. Like knowledge, faith requires psychological certainty, and so no doubt, a view echoed by, among others, The Catholic Encyclopedia: “doubt cannot coexist with faith... ; faith and doubt are mutually exclusive”. Like mere opinion, suspicion, and doubt, the evidence for faith is inadequate for belief, in two ways. First, the evidence for faith is causally inadequate to move someone’s intellect to belief since the evidence for faith is only enough to move their intellect to mere opinion, suspicion, or doubt (ST II—II.
q.4. a.1). Second, the evidence for faith is justificatorily inadequate for belief since the evidence for faith is only enough to justify intellectual acts such as mere opinion, suspicion or doubt and not belief. Nevertheless, someone can have faith that a proposition about God is true since they might be so attracted to its being true that their will moves their intellect to believe it is true even though their intellect alone could not be moved by the evidence to believe it (ST II—II q.1 a.4; cf. Hebrews 11:1, #558, and QDV q.14, a.2).And that is what faith is, says Aquinas: believing a proposition about God, on inadequate evidence, by an act of will due to an attraction to its being true.Aquinas also distinguishes virtuous faith from faith lacking virtue. On his view, if someone is attracted to the truth of a religious proposition out of a love (caritas) of God or a love of what is in fact the goodness of God, then, if they believe it by an act of will, their faith is virtuous; otherwise, it is not (ST II—II. q.4. a.3—5). But this isn’t quite right since, by Aquinas’s lights, faith is virtuous only if what evidence one has for it is testimonial, e.g. hearing the word of God (ST II—II. q.4. a.8). Finally, a person can be saved, says Aquinas, only if they have virtuous faith. (For extended discussion of the relationship between faith and salvation, see Stump 2003, chapters 12 and 15.) So, for example, ifValerie is attracted to the truth of the basic Christian story out of love of God or the goodness of God presented in the basic Christian story, then, if she believes it by an act of will, her faith is virtuous and so salvific, whereas ifVictor is attracted to the truth of the basic Christian story solely out of a desire to avoid hell, then, if he believes it by an act of will, his faith is not virtuous and so not salvific.
We have several objections to Aquinas’s view about what faith is and when it is virtuous. As for what faith is, we deny that faith can only take God or religious propositions as objects.
Obviously enough, spouses, friends, children, and one’s self, among other non-religious things, can be objects of faith, as can propositions that are not about God. Moreover, even if the will and an attraction to the truth of a proposition figure in faith somehow, one can have faith that it is true even if one’s faith is not caused by an act of will due to an attraction to its truth. As for when faith is a virtue, one’s faith in relations to one’s intimates can be virtuous even if what evidence one has to go on is non-testimonial, as when a mother puts her faith in her son or two friends have faith that their friendship will endure a crisis. Further, if you put your faith in someone else, you may well be attracted to them coming through for you with respect to what you’ve put your faith in them. But, in order for your faith in them to be virtuous, your attraction need not be motivated by love (caritas) of them or their goodness; any number of other positive motivations might do. For example, if we put our faith in Dr. Huber as a dentist, we may well be attracted to her coming through for us as a dentist, but our faith in her can be virtuous even if our attraction is motivated solely by a desire for a healthy doctor-patient relationship, one that need not involve love of her or anyone or anything else.It’s little wonder, then, that all the details of Aquinas's view of faith have found little traction in contemporary pistology. Even so, the core of the view has found some traction. It is this core that we will call
Thomistic faith. For someone to have faith is for them to believe something with certainty on inadequate evidence.
Others agree that this is what faith is. According to the New Atheists, “faith is belief in the absence of evidence”, or “believing something without good reasons”, or “belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence” (Rosenberg 2013; Pinker 2006; Dawkins 1992). Sam Newlands says: “A lot of people think of faith as having a kind of belief commitment that something is going to be certain, or that something is going to be probable, that maybe outstrips the evidence” (2017).According to Robert Pasnau:“To hold a belief on faith is to hold it firmly and to attach a high credence to it even though one does not suppose that the evidence warrants such confidence”; those with faith,“adhere to their firm convictions even while maintaining a self-consciously grown-up awareness of how poor the evidence is” (2017, 135).
It seems, then, that Thomistic faith has some purchase on thinkers as diverse as these.Notice that Thomistic faith is a cognitive attitude, not a character trait; when instantiated, it takes a specific proposition as its object, not all or nearly all propositions with respect to which one has faith, as we would expect of a trait. Even so, we can ask what character trait would correlate with it. On the personal worth theory we presuppose in this paper, it would be this:
Thomisticfaith as a character trait. For a person to have faith as a character trait is for them to be disposed to consistently believe things with certainty on inadequate evidence, and to do so because of their stable motivations and values.
Two questions arise. Could such a character trait be a virtue? How would it relate to humility? It is difficult to see how Thomistic faith as a character trait could be an intellectual virtue.
A character trait is an intellectual virtue only if it is grounded in a strong desire for epistemic goods such as truth, knowledge, understanding, and justified belief. But anyone with a strong desire for such goods will be ill-served by such a trait.That’s because a disposition to consistently believe things with certainty on inadequate evidence lends itself to falsehood, ignorance, misunderstanding, and unjustified belief. Thomistic faith as a character trait, therefore, conflicts with the motivations and values appropriate to intellectual virtue.
Thomistic faith as a character trait would conflict with the virtue of humility in the domain of inquiry, for at least two reasons.
First, we are often in no position to settle a matter that’s important to us because our cognitive powers are not up to the task or we have yet to exercise them to gain enough evidence to form a reasonable opinion.The virtue of humility counsels us to be appropriately attentive to, and to own, our intellectual limitations, including a lack of evidence, and so to refrain from believing in such cases.
Not so with Thomistic faith as a character trait. If we are stably disposed to consistently believe on inadequate evidence, then we will be less likely to be attentive to our intellectual limitations including our lack of evidence or, when we are attentive to them, we will be less likely to own them and respond appropriately by not believing, and so less likely to avoid falsehoods.Second,Thomistic faith as a character trait stably disposes us not just to believe on inadequate evidence but to believe with certainty. Beliefs accompanied by certainty are more difficult to dislodge.Thus, if we have this disposition, once having believed something, it will not only have made it more likely that we believe a falsehood, it will make it more likely that we retain a falsehood. Since we frequently meet inadequate evidence in our inquiries, and since we sometimes err and believe on inadequate evidence, we will be stably disposed to crowd our minds with difficult-to-dislodge falsehoods. Not so with the virtue of humility. If we are stably disposed to appropriately attend to and own our intellectual limitations, then, if we believe something on inadequate evidence, we will be more likely to be aware of it, and we will be more likely to change our minds rather than dig in with certainty.
In light of these two points, the inquirer with both the character trait ofThomistic faith and the virtue of humility would be pulled in incompatible directions.They would be pulled toward believing on inadequate evidence and not; and, when believing on inadequate evidence, they would be pulled toward believing with certainty and not.
Thomistic faith as a character trait, therefore, is not an intellectual virtue and, in the domain of inquiry, it conflicts with humility as a virtue. Later we will argue that it is not a relational virtue either and that, in the domain of personal relationships, it conflicts with humility as a virtue.
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