Faith

“Knowledge is justified true belief” -Aristotle

Faith—as virtue, as hope, as trust, as belief—carries within it numerous denotations and is often paired with a distinctly religious connotation. In this essay, I give faith two definitions: (1.) “Faith is the is the bridge that links suppositional belief to knowledge when absolute certainty is not attainable”, and (2.) “Faith is the virtue of trust in a person, an idea, or a cause”. The first is concrete while the second is abstract.

Everyone makes claims to knowledge. From general claims like, the Earth revolves around the Sun to personal claims such as, I am 18 years old and born in the month of May. All knowledge claims are “founded upon” a degree of uncertainty. There is no absoulte knowledge, only relative certainty, or as I will argue, “reasonable faith”.

Knowledge influences all of human thought and is the foundation for all volitional understanding of truth. As this class is called “Theory of Knowledge”, we affirm, at least according to Aristotle, knowledge is “justified true belief”. In other words, knowledge is not factual, but theoretical. By “factual”, I mean certain, and by “theoretical” I mean uncertain. In essence, according to Aristotle’s definition, since knowledge is “justified true belief”, knowledge is “reasonable faith”—faith with reasons behind it, because no knowledge claim is absolutely certain.

Think for a moment upon the various Postmodern thinkers in recent, have chided the pursuit of truth, especially by means of faith, calling knowledge of absolute truth futile, since it doesn’t exist. Although we may claim to know the earth is round, in reality, we cannot be certain, even when ample reasons support. We could be wrong. The “blind men and the elephant” analogy is often cited as evidence for this claim. After touching the elephant, one blind man claims, “It’s a wall”, while the other blind man claims “It’s a tree branch!” illustrating humanities limited perspective on truth. Although it is prudent to confess that absolute knowledge of anything is unobtainable, that doesn’t mean truth is non-existent. While we may never be sure that the earth is round, the earth is either round or it isn’t. It must be either true or false, one or the other, meaning that it either conforms to what is reality or it doesn’t, regardless of our “supposed” knowledge.

A major problem with postmodernism is it’s self-defeating claim. Postmodernism can be summed up with one statement, “there is no such thing as absolute truth”, however that claim crumbles under it’s own self-contradictory weight. “There is no such thing as absolute truth” is a statement of absolute truth. It’s like claiming “there is no such thing as words”, and yet it is words that I am using to make that statement. Likewise, the claim that absolute truth doesn’t exist is either absolutely true or absolutely false. If true, then that nullifies the claim, and if false…the statement is also false.

Said differently, postmodernism also claims that, “truth is relative”, however that claim also crumbles under its own self-contradictory weight. The claim that, “truth is relative” is an absolute truth claim. “Truth is relative” is either true or false, and thus, if it is true, that nullifies the relativity of truth, and if it is false, relativity is also false. Therefore, we know truth exists.

While we all realize no person is able to confidently claim absolute certainty of anything, as in postmodernism, since we know absolute truth does exist, we still make claims to knowledge, but we do it by means of faith. For example, in court, while the judge may not have absolute certainty of the right verdict, the jurors deliberate the innocence or guilt of the tried criminal with a faith-based system called knowledge “beyond reasonable doubt”. Again, they affirm that absolute truth exists: either the tried person is guilty or not guilty, but in order to obtain knowledge of that person’s guilt they use a system of faith, “beyond reasonable doubt”. The leap between the ground of uncertainty and of absolute certainty, in that case, is faith. If they decide, “yes” the man did commit the crime, than that is a faith-based claim, that no one is able to fully justify, but any doubt of that supposition would be unreasonable.

Faith is strong because it is a modest claim, and does not insist upon knowing, understanding, comprehending, or rationalizing anything fully, but on believing with adequate number of reasons. While I may not know for sure that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 with three ships called the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria, I do have faith that it did indeed happen.

Since we know truth exists, and the means to know truth is faith, “reasonable faith” is the “justified belief” side of that faith. “Reasonableness” is the criteria for right knowledge. By “reasonable” I mean rational. For example, as I sit here at my desk, a computer appears to be in front of me. It would be irrational for me to say that a hippopotamus sits in front of me because that is not so. Although, claiming something is reasonable doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be true. While Newton was “rational” in his foundational laws of physics, little did he know, he was mistaken for objects traveling faster than the speed of light. Although no one would say he was being irrational, people will say he was mistaken.

So faith is the means of obtaining knowledge, and reasonableness is the quality of being rational, therefore all people that claim to “know” something, do so with the means of faith, and the power of believing that that “something” has enough evidence and reasons to support it.

One way reasonable faith is expressed is in religion. Religion has, more or less, to do with the existence of a god, one God, or no gods. Whether Polytheism, Atheism, or Theism, they all rely on faith based theological claims. Since truth is not relative, and truth does exist, either one is right or they are all wrong. I will not address the arguments for any of those theological claims, but it is essential to mention that all of them are based on the claim to “reasonable faith”. As Pascal wrote, make your own wager, and weigh the reasons individually themselves.

Another way reasonable faith is expressed is in history. All of history is faith in testimonies, documents, archeological artifacts, and primary and secondary sources. Alexander the Great is one of the most famous historical accounts of all time, but its foundations are shaky. The earliest document in our possession was written 200 years after his life. Everything we know about Alexander the Great is based on documents written after a time gap almost as old as the United States of America. Clearly, we are expressing a lot of faith in subscribing to the account of Alexander the Great. Historians make the wager and believe that they are expressing reasonable faith.

Faith—with its religious connotations—has, for the most part, been dismissed as an unreliable means of obtaining knowledge. In reality, although faith is highly mystified in culture, it works in direct conjunction with Aristotle’s definition of knowledge: “justified true belief”. Therefore true knowledge finds itself in the great light of “reasonable faith”.

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