7
szóveg forditása
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onehecsa #7 tudom hogy unalmas ezért nem tudok nekiállni én sem...meg sajna nincs időm se most rá.... -
#6
Van online szótár, amit a 3-as és 4-es hozzászólásban ajánlottak. Ezt a szöveget sajonos nem fogja neked lefordítani, aminek számos oka van. Aki nem tud angolul, az ebbe nem vág bele, aki meg tud, az meg pusziért nem dolgozik...
Kb. 21 ezer karakter, ezt testvérek között is legalább 10 óra.
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onehecsa #5 javitva picit...
THE LUTHERAN VIEW OF FAITH
The second view of faith which I shall consider is the view that faith
involves both theoretical beliefs-that (Thomist faith) and a trust in the
Living God. The person of faith, on this view, does not merely believe
that there is a God (and believe certain propositions about him), he
trusts Him and commits himself to Him. The ‘believe in’ of the Creed is
to be read as aYrming a belief that there is a God who has the properties
stated, and has provided the good things stated (e.g. ‘the resurrection of
the dead’) and also a trust in God who has these properties and has
provided these good things.
I shall call this second view of faith the Lutheran view of faith; for
Luther stressed this aspect of faith as trust15 to such an extent that the
Council of Trent was moved to declare: ‘If anyone shall say that
justifying faith is nothing else but trust in the divine mercy, which
pardons our sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is by such trust alone that
we are justiWed, let him be anathema.’16 Later Lutheran theologians
distinguished three parts of faith ( Wdes ): knowledge (notitia ), assent
(assensus ), and trust ( Wducia), and declared that the Wrst two were
subordinate to the trust. Trust is, on this view, the central element in
faith.17 The notitia is, presumably, roughly the Thomist belief-that; and
the assensus is public confession of faith which Aquinas thought as a
normal, and sometimes necessary, expression of a faith formed by
love.18 A similar threefold division of the parts of faith occurs in the
opening chapters of Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline where, after an introductory chapter, there are three chapters on faith entitled ‘Faith as
Trust’, ‘Faith as Knowledge’, and ‘Faith as Confession’.19
However, this notion of trust in God needs careful examination. To
start with, what is it to put one’s trust in an ordinary person? To trust
someone is to act on the assumption that she will do for you what she
knows that you want or need, when the evidence gives some reason for
supposing that she may not and where there will be bad consequences if
the assumption is false. Thus, I may trust a friend by lending a valuable
to her when she has previously proved careless with valuables. I act on
the assumption that she will do what she knows that I want (namely,
treat the valuable with care), where the evidence gives some reason for
supposing that she will not, and where there are bad consequences
(namely, the valuable gets damaged) if she does not. An escaping British
prisoner of war may have trusted some German by telling him of his
identity and asking for help to get out of Germany. Here again, he acts
on the assumption that the German will do for him what he knows that
he wants (namely, provide help), when many Germans are ill-disposed
towards escaping British prisoners and likely to surrender them to the
police. Or, again, a patient who trusts a doctor to cure him acts on the
assumption that the doctor will do for the patient what he knows that he
needs him to do, where there is some possibility that he may not
(because attempts to cure are not always successful), and where things
will get worse unless the doctor is successful. We saw in Chapter 1 that
to act on the assumption that p is to do those actions which you would
do if you believed that p. To act on the assumption that p is to use p as a
premiss in your practical inferences, whether or not you believe p.
But why should you act on the assumption that p if, in fact, you do
not believe p? Because you have the purpose to achieve X (e.g. get out of
Germany, or be cured of disease); and you are more likely to achieve X
by doing action A than by doing any alternative action, and action A will
achieve X only if p is true. If your purpose to achieve X is strong enough
(is far stronger than your other purposes) then you will still do A even if
you believe that p is not very probable. As we saw in Chapter 1, the
belief that in fact guides you is the belief that there is at least a small, but
not negligible, probability that p. But we can describe you as acting on
the assumption that p, because you would do the same action if you
believed strongly that p. Within limits, the degree of p’s probability does
not make any diference to your action. So a simpliWed description of
what you are doing is ‘acting on the assumption’ that p. We saw that to
trust someone is to act on the assumption that he will do for you what
he knows that you want or need, where the evidence gives some reason
for supposing that he may not, and there are bad consequences if the
assumption proves false. This, it now follows, is to do those actions
which you would do if you believed the stated assumption strongly,
where, in fact, the evidence gives some reason for doubting the assumption
(and there are bad consequences if it is false).The prisoner of war
may not, on balance, believe that the German will help him; but he
believes that there is some probability that the German will help, and he
does the action which he would do if he believed that the German
would help.
So much for trusting an ordinary person. What about trusting God?
We have seen that, on the Lutheran view, trusting God is something
additional to believing that He exists and to believing propositions
about Him. It is presumably to act on the assumption that He will do
for us what He knows that we want or need, when the evidence gives
some reason for supposing that He may not and where there will be bad
consequences if the assumption is false. Yet one who believes that God
exists and believes the propositions of the Christian creeds about Him
already believes that God will do for us what He knows that we want or
need; that follows immediately from the goodness of God, and so the
person of Thomist faith will also believe this. Luther wrote: ‘Let no one
be content with believing that God is able, or has power to do great
things: we must also believe that he will do them and that he delights to
do them. Nor indeed is it enough to think that God will do great things
with other people, but not with you.’20 Belief in such things as ‘One
Holy Catholic and apostolic Church’ and ‘The life of the world to
come’, which the Nicene Creed aYrms, is, then, presumably to be
construed as believing that God has provided one Holy Catholic and
apostolic Church and a life for humans in a future world; and acting on
the assumption that God will do for the believer by means of these
things what he wants or needs when there is some reason for supposing
that He will not, in which case bad consequences would follow.
The trouble with the Lutheran account of faith, as I have expounded
it so far, is that it has in common with the Thomist account the feature
that the perfect scoundrel may yet be a person of faith. For what you do
when you act on an assumption depends on what your purposes are.
One who acts on the assumption that there is money in a till and who
has the purpose of stealing will break open the till; one who acts on the
same assumption and who has the purpose of protecting the money will
lock the room carefully. A person may act on the assumption that God
will do for him what he wants or needs, with purposes good or evil.
Acting on that assumption, he may try to conquer the world, believing
that God will help him in his task. Shall we call such a person a person
of faith? Does he not trust God? Or the antinomian whom St Paul
attacks for suggesting that people should ‘continue in sin in order that
grace may abound’?21 Does he not trust God, to care for him abundantly
well?
The Lutheran, like Aquinas, may be prepared to allow that the
scoundrel can be a person of faith. But historically Lutherans have
wanted to claim, against Aquinas and with Luther, that faith alone
suYces for salvation (although, for them, there is no merit involved in
having this faith). If the Lutheran also claims this, he might seem
committed to the view that the would-be world conqueror and the
antinomian are exhibiting the sort of trust which alone a person has to
exhibit in order to obtain from God (unmerited) salvation. If he wishes,
as he surely does, to deny that they exhibit such trust, he will have to put
some further restriction on the concept of faith. He will have to say that
those who act on the assumption that God will do for them what they
need or want, have faith only if their purposes are good ones.22 The
good purposes will derive for the Lutheran as for the Thomist from the
basic purpose of doing those actions which the believer would do if he
was moved by the love of God. Many of these purposes will be good
ones, I would hold (though Luther might not have held), whether or not
there is a God. For example, it is good to feed the starving or educate
one’s children whether or not there is a God. But these purposes are also
purposes which the love of God ought properly to bring about. But
some of the other purposes on which, the Lutheran will hold, the person
of faith should act (purposes which the love of God would lead him to
have) will be ones which will only have a point if there is a God (who
will provide for us what we want or need). There is no point in
worshipping God if there is no God, or asking His forgiveness if He
is too hard-hearted to give it. There is no point in seeking an after-life in
Heaven for ourselves or for others whom we seek to convert if God will
not provide it. So, unless it is absolutely certain that there is a God who
will provide for us what we want or need, pursuing these good purposes
inevitably involves trusting God, acting on the assumption that He will
provide for us what we want or need. Hence—so long as the Thomist is
prepared to allow some doubt about whether there is a God who will
provide for us, and the Lutheran is prepared to say that that is not ruled
out by his further view of faith as knowledge (notitia)—Thomist faith
with the right purposes (that is faith formed by love) will entail and be
entailed by Lutheran faith.
It is beginning to look as if the Reformation controversy about
whether faith alone would secure salvation would seem no real controversy
about matters of substance, only a dispute resulting from a
confusion about the meaning of words. The Lutheran and Catholic
could agree that love is needed on top of Thomist faith, while admitting
that Lutheran faith (since it included love) was suYcient for salvation.
The parties only quarrelled, on this view, because they misunderstood
each other’s use of the word ‘faith’. In so far as one thinks that the
Reformation controversy was not merely a result of verbal confusion,
one must think of the Reformers as insisting on points implicit in the
Catholic position, but not always made explicit—as denying that one’s
works need to be successful (i.e. that one’s attempts to bring about good
should succeed), or that one needs to have been trying to do many or
even any good works (one might die before one had the opportunity).
What is needed for salvation (in addition to beliefs) is a basically good
character, that is, a mind full of good purposes arising from the love of
God set to bring about good results as opportunity arises, to guide the
beliefs on which one acts. Failure to attempt to do good works in
appropriate circumstances shows, however, the lack of such good purposes.
Luther himself was conscious of the close tie between faith and
good works. In one passage, he writes as though the tie were a logical
one. In the preface to his commentary on the Letter to the Romans, he
writes that faith ‘cannot do other than good at all times. It never waits to
ask whether there is some good to do. Rather, before the question is
raised, it has done the deed and keeps on doing it. A man not active in
this way is a man without faith.’23 Elsewhere, however, he seems to write
as though the tie were less strict, perhaps merely contingent. ‘Faith
without good works does not last’, he wrote in his ‘Sermon on Three
Sides of the Good Life’,24 implying that, for a time, one could exist
without the other.
THE PRAGMATIST VIEW OF FAITH
While Lutheran faith involves both belief-that and trust, Luther stresses
that the trust is the important thing. Is a third form of faith possible,
where one can have the trust without the belief-that? I think that it is
and that many recent writers who stress the irrelevance to faith of ‘beliefthat’
have been feeling their way towards such a form of faith. I shall call
this view of faith the Pragmatist view.
As we have seen, one can act on assumptions which one does not
believe. To do this is to do those actions which you would do if you did
believe. In particular, you can act on the assumption not merely that
God, whom you believe to exist, will do for you what you need or want,
but also on the assumption that there is such a God (and that He has the
properties which Christians or others have ascribed to Him). One can
do this by doing those actions which one would do if one believed these
things. In Chapter 1 I quoted Pascal, who responded to someone who
said ‘But I can’t believe’ by giving him a recipe for how to acquire belief.
The recipe was that the person should act as if he believed, do the
actions which believers do, ‘taking holy water, having masses said’, etc.
and that would produce belief. Although Pascal did not hold that
acting-as-if was the essence of faith, he saw it as a step on the road to
acquiring it. But it is natural to develop this third view of faith according
to which the belief-that is irrelevant, the acting-as-if is what matters.
After all, belief is an involuntary state. Plausibly, if someone does those
actions which a believer would do and for which he is to be esteemed,
then that person should be esteemed whether or not he has the belief.
I suggested above that trusting God should be regarded not just as
acting on assumptions; but doing so where one has good purposes.
Those who have wanted to deWne faith in terms of trust alone would,
I think, also wish such a restriction to be included in the understanding
of trust. So, on the Pragmatist view, a person has Christian faith if he
acts on the assumption that there is a God who has the properties which
Christians ascribe to him and seeks to do those good actions which the
love of God (if there is a God) would lead him to do. He will, therefore,
worship God; do those actions which are such that he believes that if
there is a God, God has commanded them; and seek to live in a way and
to get others to live in a way which would lead God, if there is a God, to
give them eternal life with the BeatiWc fision of Himself. He does these
actions because he believes it so worthwhile to attain the goals which
they will attain if there is a God, much more worthwhile than to attain
more mundane goals, that it is worth doing them in the hope that they
will attain those goals. The person of Pragmatist faith will thus do the
same things as the person with Lutheran faith will do. He will, for
example, worship and pray and live a good life partly in the hope to Wnd
a better life in the world to come. He prays for his brethren, not
necessarily because he believes that there is a God who hears his prayers,
but because there is a chance that there is a God who will hear those
prayers and help his brethren. He worships not necessarily because he
believes that there is a God who deserves worship, but because it is very
important to express gratitude for existence if there is a God to whom to
be grateful, and there is some chance that there is.
I have called this view of faith the ‘Pragmatist view’, because in ‘The
Will to Believe’ William James25 commends a faith which is a matter of
acting-as-if some hypothesis were true. This, he claims, is a rational
thing to do when faced with some ‘momentous’ option, if only by so
doing can we gain some good which would otherwise be unattainable.
Religion ofers a ‘vital good’ now, and an eternal well-being hereafter.
But to gain these goods we must decide to act as if the religious
hypothesis were true. To delay ‘is as if a man should hesitate indeWnitely
to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure
that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not
cut himself of from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he
went and married some one else?’ Unfortunately, James confuses things
by calling this ‘acting-as-if ’ ‘believing’ and so sees himself as endorsing
Pascal. That he was not doing, because Pascal had the more normal
understanding of belief, which I have analysed in Chapter 1. Though
Kierkegaard is in most ways a very diferent sort of philosopher from
James, the Pragmatist view is also that of Kierkegaard; and Kierkegaard
bears much of the responsibility for the many traces of this view in
modern theology. ‘The leap of faith’ which Kierkegaard commends is a
matter of acting-as-if with ‘the passion of the inWnite’.26 He commends
Socrates for having the right sort of faith in immortality because ‘he
stakes his whole life’ on this. ‘When Socrates believed that God is, he
held fast the objective uncertainty with the entire passion of inwardness,
and faith is precisely in this contradiction, in this risk.’ ‘Without risk, no
faith. Faith is the contradiction between the inWnite passion of inwardness
and the objective uncertainty.’
The person of Pragmatist Christian faith need not believe that there is
a God (in the sense of believing that it is more probable than not that
there is a God), but he does need another belief of a kind which I called
in Chapter 1 a weak belief, in the eYcacy of his actions to obtain his
goal—a belief that it is at least as probable that he will attain the goals he
seeks by doing certain actions (e.g. those which the love of God, if there
is a God, would lead him to do) as by doing any other actions, and more
probable that he will attain these goals by doing these actions than by
doing some other actions (e.g. nothing at all). He will need, therefore, to
have such beliefs as that he is more likely to honour God by participating
in Christian worship than by doing nothing; and more likely to get
to Heaven by feeding the starving than by taking heroin. He may believe
that there is more than one way which he can pursue equally likely to
attain his goals, but he will need to believe that some ways are less likely
to attain those goals. But no-one is going to hold such means–ends
beliefs except in virtue of holding theoretical beliefs from which they
follow—e.g. that it is at least as probable that any God is as the
Christian Creed depicts him as that he is as any other creed depicts
him. For if the believer believes that the Islamic Creed is more likely to
be true than the Christian Creed, he will have the means–end belief that
he is more likely to honour God by participating in Islamic worship.
And the believer needs the theoretical belief that there is some probability
that there is a God and so that he will obtain his goal; otherwise
he cannot be doing certain actions in order to obtain his goal of
honouring God. Hence, Pragmatist faith does not difer from Lutheran
faith by Pragmatist faith not involving any belief-that, but (it might
seem) simply in that it involves less in the way of belief-that than does
Lutheran faith. To express the apparent diference in terms of the
common ultimate goal of doing those actions which the love of God
would lead you to do—on the Pragmatist view, you do not need believe
that there is a God and that, in consequence, you will show love for Him
if you do certain actions, only that there may be a God and that you are
more likely to show love for Him if you do certain actions rather than
others. That Pragmatist faith involves a belief about the relative probability
of credal beliefs was recognized, in efect, by James when he
wrote that we have to choose between living options (that is, between
the diferent ways to achieve our goals commended by what we believe
to be the more probable world-views): and he commented that for his
audience belief ‘in the Mahdi . . . refuses to scintillate with any credibility
at all’.27 But I am not aware that Kierkegaard recognized the need for
such beliefs.
So it looks at this stage as if the Thomist and Lutheran views of the
faith which conduces to salvation (that is Thomist ‘formed faith’ and
Lutheran ‘faith’) are essentially the same, while the Pragmatist view
difers from these in that it does not require belief that there is a God
and that He has certain properties and has done certain things, only a
weaker belief. On all these views, the person who has the virtue of faith
(that is, ‘formed faith’ in the Thomist sense) seeks to do those actions
which the love of God would lead him to do. Whether, however, there is
150 The Nature of Faith
this ultimate diference between the three views depends on how the
Thomist and Lutheran understandings of belief are spelled out, as we
shall see shortly.
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stoner27 #4 nádzsonjótápig....
www.webforditas.hu -
#3
http://www.webforditas.hu/ -
#2
le tudnám fordítani, de végig olvasni nem fogom mert hosszú és unalmas -
onehecsa #1 KEdves emberke kapta eme csodás szöveget feladatként szombatra hogy lényegét irja le magyarul s számoljon be róla..
vki tudna pls help me????
THE LUTHERAN VIEW OF FAITH
The second view of faith which I shall consider is the view that faith
involves both theoretical beliefs-that (Thomist faith) and a trust in the
Living God. The person of faith, on this view, does not merely believe
that there is a God (and believe certain propositions about him), he
trusts Him and commits himself to Him. The ‘believe in’ of the Creed is
to be read as aYrming a belief that there is a God who has the properties
stated, and has provided the good things stated (e.g. ‘the resurrection of
the dead’) and also a trust in God who has these properties and has
provided these good things.
I shall call this second view of faith the Lutheran view of faith; for
Luther stressed this aspect of faith as trust15 to such an extent that the
Council of Trent was moved to declare: ‘If anyone shall say that
justifying faith is nothing else but trust in the divine mercy, which
pardons our sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is by such trust alone that
we are justiWed, let him be anathema.’16 Later Lutheran theologians
distinguished three parts of faith ( Wdes ): knowledge (notitia ), assent
(assensus ), and trust ( Wducia), and declared that the Wrst two were
subordinate to the trust. Trust is, on this view, the central element in
faith.17 The notitia is, presumably, roughly the Thomist belief-that; and
the assensus is public confession of faith which Aquinas thought as a
normal, and sometimes necessary, expression of a faith formed by
love.18 A similar threefold division of the parts of faith occurs in the
opening chapters of Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline where, after an introductory chapter, there are three chapters on faith entitled ‘Faith as
Trust’, ‘Faith as Knowledge’, and ‘Faith as Confession’.19
However, this notion of trust in God needs careful examination. To
start with, what is it to put one’s trust in an ordinary person? To trust
someone is to act on the assumption that she will do for you what she
knows that you want or need, when the evidence gives some reason for
supposing that she may not and where there will be bad consequences if
the assumption is false. Thus, I may trust a friend by lending a valuable
to her when she has previously proved careless with valuables. I act on
the assumption that she will do what she knows that I want (namely,
treat the valuable with care), where the evidence gives some reason for
supposing that she will not, and where there are bad consequences
(namely, the valuable gets damaged) if she does not. An escaping British
prisoner of war may have trusted some German by telling him of his
identity and asking for help to get out of Germany. Here again, he acts
on the assumption that the German will do for him what he knows that
he wants (namely, provide help), when many Germans are ill-disposed
towards escaping British prisoners and likely to surrender them to the
police. Or, again, a patient who trusts a doctor to cure him acts on the
assumption that the doctor will do for the patient what he knows that he
needs him to do, where there is some possibility that he may not
(because attempts to cure are not always successful), and where things
will get worse unless the doctor is successful. We saw in Chapter 1 that
to act on the assumption that p is to do those actions which you would
do if you believed that p. To act on the assumption that p is to use p as a
premiss in your practical inferences, whether or not you believe p.
But why should you act on the assumption that p if, in fact, you do
not believe p? Because you have the purpose to achieve X (e.g. get out of
Germany, or be cured of disease); and you are more likely to achieve X
by doing action A than by doing any alternative action, and action A will
achieve X only if p is true. If your purpose to achieve X is strong enough
(is far stronger than your other purposes) then you will still do A even if
you believe that p is not very probable. As we saw in Chapter 1, the
belief that in fact guides you is the belief that there is at least a small, but
not negligible, probability that p. But we can describe you as acting on
the assumption that p, because you would do the same action if you
believed strongly that p. Within limits, the degree of p’s probability does
not make any diVerence to your action. So a simpliWed description of
what you are doing is ‘acting on the assumption’ that p. We saw that to
trust someone is to act on the assumption that he will do for you what
he knows that you want or need, where the evidence gives some reason
for supposing that he may not, and there are bad consequences if the
assumption proves false. This, it now follows, is to do those actions
which you would do if you believed the stated assumption strongly,
where, in fact, the evidence gives some reason for doubting the assumption
(and there are bad consequences if it is false).The prisoner of war
may not, on balance, believe that the German will help him; but he
believes that there is some probability that the German will help, and he
does the action which he would do if he believed that the German
would help.
So much for trusting an ordinary person. What about trusting God?
We have seen that, on the Lutheran view, trusting God is something
additional to believing that He exists and to believing propositions
about Him. It is presumably to act on the assumption that He will do
for us what He knows that we want or need, when the evidence gives
some reason for supposing that He may not and where there will be bad
consequences if the assumption is false. Yet one who believes that God
exists and believes the propositions of the Christian creeds about Him
already believes that God will do for us what He knows that we want or
need; that follows immediately from the goodness of God, and so the
person of Thomist faith will also believe this. Luther wrote: ‘Let no one
be content with believing that God is able, or has power to do great
things: we must also believe that he will do them and that he delights to
do them. Nor indeed is it enough to think that God will do great things
with other people, but not with you.’20 Belief in such things as ‘One
Holy Catholic and apostolic Church’ and ‘The life of the world to
come’, which the Nicene Creed aYrms, is, then, presumably to be
construed as believing that God has provided one Holy Catholic and
apostolic Church and a life for humans in a future world; and acting on
the assumption that God will do for the believer by means of these
things what he wants or needs when there is some reason for supposing
that He will not, in which case bad consequences would follow.
The trouble with the Lutheran account of faith, as I have expounded
it so far, is that it has in common with the Thomist account the feature
that the perfect scoundrel may yet be a person of faith. For what you do
when you act on an assumption depends on what your purposes are.
One who acts on the assumption that there is money in a till and who
has the purpose of stealing will break open the till; one who acts on the
same assumption and who has the purpose of protecting the money will
lock the room carefully. A person may act on the assumption that God
will do for him what he wants or needs, with purposes good or evil.
Acting on that assumption, he may try to conquer the world, believing
that God will help him in his task. Shall we call such a person a person
of faith? Does he not trust God? Or the antinomian whom St Paul
attacks for suggesting that people should ‘continue in sin in order that
grace may abound’?21 Does he not trust God, to care for him abundantly
well?
The Lutheran, like Aquinas, may be prepared to allow that the
scoundrel can be a person of faith. But historically Lutherans have
wanted to claim, against Aquinas and with Luther, that faith alone
suYces for salvation (although, for them, there is no merit involved in
having this faith). If the Lutheran also claims this, he might seem
committed to the view that the would-be world conqueror and the
antinomian are exhibiting the sort of trust which alone a person has to
exhibit in order to obtain from God (unmerited) salvation. If he wishes,
as he surely does, to deny that they exhibit such trust, he will have to put
some further restriction on the concept of faith. He will have to say that
those who act on the assumption that God will do for them what they
need or want, have faith only if their purposes are good ones.22 The
good purposes will derive for the Lutheran as for the Thomist from the
basic purpose of doing those actions which the believer would do if he
was moved by the love of God. Many of these purposes will be good
ones, I would hold (though Luther might not have held), whether or not
there is a God. For example, it is good to feed the starving or educate
one’s children whether or not there is a God. But these purposes are also
purposes which the love of God ought properly to bring about. But
some of the other purposes on which, the Lutheran will hold, the person
of faith should act (purposes which the love of God would lead him to
have) will be ones which will only have a point if there is a God (who
will provide for us what we want or need). There is no point in
worshipping God if there is no God, or asking His forgiveness if He
is too hard-hearted to give it. There is no point in seeking an after-life in
Heaven for ourselves or for others whom we seek to convert if God will
not provide it. So, unless it is absolutely certain that there is a God who
will provide for us what we want or need, pursuing these good purposes
inevitably involves trusting God, acting on the assumption that He will
provide for us what we want or need. Hence—so long as the Thomist is
prepared to allow some doubt about whether there is a God who will
provide for us, and the Lutheran is prepared to say that that is not ruled
out by his further view of faith as knowledge (notitia)—Thomist faith
with the right purposes (that is faith formed by love) will entail and be
entailed by Lutheran faith.
It is beginning to look as if the Reformation controversy about
whether faith alone would secure salvation would seem no real controversy
about matters of substance, only a dispute resulting from a
confusion about the meaning of words. The Lutheran and Catholic
could agree that love is needed on top of Thomist faith, while admitting
that Lutheran faith (since it included love) was suYcient for salvation.
The parties only quarrelled, on this view, because they misunderstood
each other’s use of the word ‘faith’. In so far as one thinks that the
Reformation controversy was not merely a result of verbal confusion,
one must think of the Reformers as insisting on points implicit in the
Catholic position, but not always made explicit—as denying that one’s
works need to be successful (i.e. that one’s attempts to bring about good
should succeed), or that one needs to have been trying to do many or
even any good works (one might die before one had the opportunity).
What is needed for salvation (in addition to beliefs) is a basically good
character, that is, a mind full of good purposes arising from the love of
God set to bring about good results as opportunity arises, to guide the
beliefs on which one acts. Failure to attempt to do good works in
appropriate circumstances shows, however, the lack of such good purposes.
Luther himself was conscious of the close tie between faith and
good works. In one passage, he writes as though the tie were a logical
one. In the preface to his commentary on the Letter to the Romans, he
writes that faith ‘cannot do other than good at all times. It never waits to
ask whether there is some good to do. Rather, before the question is
raised, it has done the deed and keeps on doing it. A man not active in
this way is a man without faith.’23 Elsewhere, however, he seems to write
as though the tie were less strict, perhaps merely contingent. ‘Faith
without good works does not last’, he wrote in his ‘Sermon on Three
Sides of the Good Life’,24 implying that, for a time, one could exist
without the other.
THE PRAGMATIST VIEW OF FAITH
While Lutheran faith involves both belief-that and trust, Luther stresses
that the trust is the important thing. Is a third form of faith possible,
where one can have the trust without the belief-that? I think that it is
and that many recent writers who stress the irrelevance to faith of ‘beliefthat’
have been feeling their way towards such a form of faith. I shall call
this view of faith the Pragmatist view.
As we have seen, one can act on assumptions which one does not
believe. To do this is to do those actions which you would do if you did
believe. In particular, you can act on the assumption not merely that
God, whom you believe to exist, will do for you what you need or want,
but also on the assumption that there is such a God (and that He has the
properties which Christians or others have ascribed to Him). One can
do this by doing those actions which one would do if one believed these
things. In Chapter 1 I quoted Pascal, who responded to someone who
said ‘But I can’t believe’ by giving him a recipe for how to acquire belief.
The recipe was that the person should act as if he believed, do the
actions which believers do, ‘taking holy water, having masses said’, etc.
and that would produce belief. Although Pascal did not hold that
acting-as-if was the essence of faith, he saw it as a step on the road to
acquiring it. But it is natural to develop this third view of faith according
to which the belief-that is irrelevant, the acting-as-if is what matters.
After all, belief is an involuntary state. Plausibly, if someone does those
actions which a believer would do and for which he is to be esteemed,
then that person should be esteemed whether or not he has the belief.
I suggested above that trusting God should be regarded not just as
acting on assumptions; but doing so where one has good purposes.
Those who have wanted to deWne faith in terms of trust alone would,
I think, also wish such a restriction to be included in the understanding
of trust. So, on the Pragmatist view, a person has Christian faith if he
acts on the assumption that there is a God who has the properties which
Christians ascribe to him and seeks to do those good actions which the
love of God (if there is a God) would lead him to do. He will, therefore,
worship God; do those actions which are such that he believes that if
there is a God, God has commanded them; and seek to live in a way and
to get others to live in a way which would lead God, if there is a God, to
give them eternal life with the BeatiWc Vision of Himself. He does these
actions because he believes it so worthwhile to attain the goals which
they will attain if there is a God, much more worthwhile than to attain
more mundane goals, that it is worth doing them in the hope that they
will attain those goals. The person of Pragmatist faith will thus do the
same things as the person with Lutheran faith will do. He will, for
example, worship and pray and live a good life partly in the hope to Wnd
a better life in the world to come. He prays for his brethren, not
necessarily because he believes that there is a God who hears his prayers,
but because there is a chance that there is a God who will hear those
prayers and help his brethren. He worships not necessarily because he
believes that there is a God who deserves worship, but because it is very
important to express gratitude for existence if there is a God to whom to
be grateful, and there is some chance that there is.
I have called this view of faith the ‘Pragmatist view’, because in ‘The
Will to Believe’ William James25 commends a faith which is a matter of
acting-as-if some hypothesis were true. This, he claims, is a rational
thing to do when faced with some ‘momentous’ option, if only by so
doing can we gain some good which would otherwise be unattainable.
Religion oVers a ‘vital good’ now, and an eternal well-being hereafter.
But to gain these goods we must decide to act as if the religious
hypothesis were true. To delay ‘is as if a man should hesitate indeWnitely
to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure
that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not
cut himself oV from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he
went and married some one else?’ Unfortunately, James confuses things
by calling this ‘acting-as-if ’ ‘believing’ and so sees himself as endorsing
Pascal. That he was not doing, because Pascal had the more normal
understanding of belief, which I have analysed in Chapter 1. Though
Kierkegaard is in most ways a very diVerent sort of philosopher from
James, the Pragmatist view is also that of Kierkegaard; and Kierkegaard
bears much of the responsibility for the many traces of this view in
modern theology. ‘The leap of faith’ which Kierkegaard commends is a
matter of acting-as-if with ‘the passion of the inWnite’.26 He commends
Socrates for having the right sort of faith in immortality because ‘he
stakes his whole life’ on this. ‘When Socrates believed that God is, he
held fast the objective uncertainty with the entire passion of inwardness,
and faith is precisely in this contradiction, in this risk.’ ‘Without risk, no
faith. Faith is the contradiction between the inWnite passion of inwardness
and the objective uncertainty.’
The person of Pragmatist Christian faith need not believe that there is
a God (in the sense of believing that it is more probable than not that
there is a God), but he does need another belief of a kind which I called
in Chapter 1 a weak belief, in the eYcacy of his actions to obtain his
goal—a belief that it is at least as probable that he will attain the goals he
seeks by doing certain actions (e.g. those which the love of God, if there
is a God, would lead him to do) as by doing any other actions, and more
probable that he will attain these goals by doing these actions than by
doing some other actions (e.g. nothing at all). He will need, therefore, to
have such beliefs as that he is more likely to honour God by participating
in Christian worship than by doing nothing; and more likely to get
to Heaven by feeding the starving than by taking heroin. He may believe
that there is more than one way which he can pursue equally likely to
attain his goals, but he will need to believe that some ways are less likely
to attain those goals. But no-one is going to hold such means–ends
beliefs except in virtue of holding theoretical beliefs from which they
follow—e.g. that it is at least as probable that any God is as the
Christian Creed depicts him as that he is as any other creed depicts
him. For if the believer believes that the Islamic Creed is more likely to
be true than the Christian Creed, he will have the means–end belief that
he is more likely to honour God by participating in Islamic worship.
And the believer needs the theoretical belief that there is some probability
that there is a God and so that he will obtain his goal; otherwise
he cannot be doing certain actions in order to obtain his goal of
honouring God. Hence, Pragmatist faith does not diVer from Lutheran
faith by Pragmatist faith not involving any belief-that, but (it might
seem) simply in that it involves less in the way of belief-that than does
Lutheran faith. To express the apparent diVerence in terms of the
common ultimate goal of doing those actions which the love of God
would lead you to do—on the Pragmatist view, you do not need believe
that there is a God and that, in consequence, you will show love for Him
if you do certain actions, only that there may be a God and that you are
more likely to show love for Him if you do certain actions rather than
others. That Pragmatist faith involves a belief about the relative probability
of credal beliefs was recognized, in eVect, by James when he
wrote that we have to choose between living options (that is, between
the diVerent ways to achieve our goals commended by what we believe
to be the more probable world-views): and he commented that for his
audience belief ‘in the Mahdi . . . refuses to scintillate with any credibility
at all’.27 But I am not aware that Kierkegaard recognized the need for
such beliefs.
So it looks at this stage as if the Thomist and Lutheran views of the
faith which conduces to salvation (that is Thomist ‘formed faith’ and
Lutheran ‘faith’) are essentially the same, while the Pragmatist view
diVers from these in that it does not require belief that there is a God
and that He has certain properties and has done certain things, only a
weaker belief. On all these views, the person who has the virtue of faith
(that is, ‘formed faith’ in the Thomist sense) seeks to do those actions
which the love of God would lead him to do. Whether, however, there is
150 The Nature of Faith
this ultimate diVerence between the three views depends on how the
Thomist and Lutheran understandings of belief are spelled out, as we
shall see shortly.