Is Faith Just Blind Belief?

The Question

Is Faith Just Blind Belief?

• Critics often define faith as believing without evidence, or even against it.
• On that definition, faith would be a vice — a way to dodge honest inquiry.
• But is that how the major Christian traditions have actually understood faith?
• This deck states the caricature fairly, then tests it against the sources.

The core issue: Everything turns on what the word ‘faith’ is taken to mean.

Key Terms

Faith, Belief, and Evidence

• ‘Belief’ is simply holding something to be true.
• ‘Evidence’ is whatever gives us reason to think a claim is true.
• ‘Faith,’ in Christian usage, centers on trust in a person, not mere assent to a proposition.
• These are distinct ideas, and blurring them causes most of the confusion.

Two sides of faith: The tradition splits faith into assensus (assent) and fiducia (trust) — and stresses both.

Two Pictures

Caricature vs. Mainstream

• Picture one: faith is a leap in the dark, held with zero grounds.
• Picture two: faith is trust extended on the basis of reasons, testimony, and experience.
• The first is easy to attack; the second is what the traditions defend.
• A fair debate has to engage the view believers actually hold.

The claim: Mainstream Christianity treats faith as grounded trust, not evidence-free assertion.

The Biblical Word

Pistis: Trust, Not a Leap

• The New Testament word for faith is the Greek pistis, used over 240 times.
• It carries the sense of trust, confidence, and even faithfulness or loyalty.
• Hebrews 11:1 ties faith to elenchos — ‘evidence’ or conviction of things unseen.
• The Gospels present belief as a response to signs and eyewitness testimony.

Word study: Pistis grows from a root for persuasion — being convinced, not deciding to pretend.

Source: Hebrews 11:1; Strong’s Greek 4102 (pistis)

Faith and Reason

Faith Seeking Understanding

• Anselm (11th c.) called theology fides quaerens intellectum — ‘faith seeking understanding.’
• ‘I believe in order that I may understand,’ he wrote — not to escape reason but to use it.
• Aquinas held that faith and reason cannot finally conflict, since both come from God.
• For him, some truths are shown by reason and others received by faith, but never against it.

Partners, not rivals: In the mainstream, reason and faith work together rather than against each other.

Source: Anselm, Proslogion (c. 1078); Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 1

Faith as Trust

Fiducia: Resting on Testimony

• The Reformers sharpened faith as fiducia — personal trust, not mere agreement.
• Calvin defined faith as a firm knowledge of God’s goodwill, founded on Christ.
• Trust here rests on testimony judged reliable, much as we trust a witness or a friend.
• This is relational confidence, not a checklist of proofs mastered in advance.

Everyday parallel: We reasonably trust doctors, maps, and friends on grounds short of proof every day.

Source: Calvin, Institutes III.2.7 (1559)

The Objection

The New Atheist Challenge

• Richard Dawkins defines faith as ‘belief without evidence,’ even belief ‘in spite of’ evidence.
• On this view, faith is a ‘cop-out’ that discourages weighing evidence at all.
• If that were faith’s true meaning, the critics’ verdict would be devastating and correct.
• This is a serious charge, and it deserves an honest answer, not a dodge.

Source: Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006); Edinburgh Science Festival lecture (1992)

The Reply

Whose Definition Is It?

• The reply is not that Dawkins misstates his own definition — it is that it isn’t the tradition’s.
• Alister McGrath notes that no major Christian body defines faith as belief against evidence.
• Where a caricature is attacked, the attack lands on no one who actually holds the view.
• The real question becomes whether grounded trust — not blind belief — is reasonable.

Steelman first: A good critique must target the strongest form of a view, not its weakest.

Source: Alister McGrath, The Dawkins Delusion? (2007)

Honest Limits

Faith Does Go Beyond Proof

• Being fair cuts both ways: faith is not the conclusion of a knock-down proof.
• Trust always reaches beyond what the evidence strictly compels — that is what trust is.
• To trust a person is to commit further than a syllogism can force you.
• So faith is more than proof, yet it need not be contrary to reason.

Beyond, not against: Faith exceeds what proof compels without contradicting what reason shows.

The Minority View

Fideism and a Famous Misquote

• Some thinkers do prize faith over reason — this stance is called fideism.
• Tertullian is quoted as saying ‘I believe because it is absurd,’ but he never wrote those words.
• His actual line defends the credibility of the cross against a particular opponent, not blind belief.
• Even Kierkegaard’s ‘leap’ is more careful than the slogan suggests, and remains a minority path.

‘Credo quia absurdum’: The famous line is an Enlightenment reworking, not a genuine quotation from Tertullian.

Source: Tertullian, De Carne Christi 5.4; R. D. Sider, ‘Credo Quia Absurdum?’, Classical World 73 (1980)

A Fair Map

Not Certainty, Not Mere Opinion

• Faith is not the same as mathematical certainty, which few of our beliefs enjoy.
• Nor is it mere opinion — a guess held loosely with nothing behind it.
• It sits where most of life sits: warranted trust under less-than-total proof.
• Calling that ‘blind’ would condemn most of human knowing along with it.

Why It Matters

An Honest Faith Can Be Examined

• If faith means grounded trust, then it invites questions instead of forbidding them.
• Believers can hold their convictions and still weigh evidence honestly.
• Critics keep a real target: the actual claims, reasons, and testimony behind the trust.
• The caricature helps no one; the real definition lets the conversation stay serious.

In one line: Christian faith is not belief without evidence, but trust that reaches beyond proof without going against reason.