Getting "faith" wrong...

... and getting it right

There is a lamentable misconception that one either “arrives” at faith through a process of reasoning, or else one comes by it through one’s feelings, prejudices, and psychological “needs” (with a boost from one’s upbringing). Just this past week, I saw this very “either/or” proposition flatly stated online by someone trained in philosophy and who educates others in it. I commented to him as follows: “Faith, understood rightly, isn't based on either rationalistic inquiry or emotion-driven prejudices. It is neither the result of philosophical study nor is it a non-reflective adherence to propositions, nor is it reducible to the desire for emotional or psychological consolation. The ‘either/or’ posed in your question is a red herring. If we start with your narrow dichotomy rather than, say, with asking what is meant by ‘faith seeks understanding’ (Anselm), or ‘the heart has reasons that reason cannot know’ (Pascal), then we're off to a false start.” To this, my interlocutor said he didn’t take my meaning, and would I explain my “justification” for how I had “arrived” at faith? To his mind, it seemed evident, if I hadn’t come to faith by way of rational inquiry or through emotionality, there could be no third “explanation.” Well, far be it from me to try to “explain” the inexplicable. I could never, for example, “explain” the Brandenburg Concertos or the impact on one’s soul of witnessing a sunset over a Norwegian fjord, and certainly not in the dried and shrivelled terms of rationalism, emotionalism, or even psychology. To try could only appear ludicrous to anyone possessing even a mote of elevated awareness and sensibility. Still, to satisfy his inquiry, I wrote: