EPS Lecture | Does (Christian) Faith Imply Belief?

Dr. Craig gives a lecture at the annual ETS/EPS conference in November 2021 on an analysis of the nature of faith, specifically "saving" faith.

In recent years Christian philosophers have produced a burgeoning literature on the nature of faith. As is typical among analytic philosophers, their treatment of faith almost always proceeds along the lines of analysis of ordinary language expressions of faith and personal intuitions about faith. Many have then sought to apply the results of such analysis specifically to Christian faith.

Such a procedure is, however, all too quick. It cannot be uncritically assumed that an analysis of generic faith is directly applicable to Christian faith. By turning to the authoritative teaching of Scripture concerning faith, we avoid much of the uncertainty and subjectivity endemic to analyses based solely on ordinary language and personal intuition. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, most Christian philosophers writing on the nature of faith largely neglect the teaching of Scripture concerning faith, contenting themselves with at most quoting a verse or two of Scripture to ratify the results of their independent analysis of faith. So flawed a methodology threatens to deliver a theologically inadequate understanding of the nature of Christian faith.

Right at the outset, then, it is important to distinguish between secular faith, for example, faith in one’s dentist or faith that one’s son will return from war, and Christian faith or saving faith (fides salvifica), the sort of faith spoken of in Ephesians 2:8: “By grace you have been saved through faith.” By saving faith I mean the sort of faith which is instrumental to salvation, a faith which is necessary for salvation. Secular models of faith, such as preoccupy Christian philosophers, cannot be assumed to be theologically relevant insofar as saving faith is concerned. We must rather turn to the teaching of Scripture to determine the nature of saving faith.

Obviously, of paramount importance for our interest in Christian saving faith is the New Testament witness to faith. Pistis or its cognates are to be found in every New Testament book except the brief 2 John.  Significantly, in sharp contrast to usage in the ambient Greco-Roman culture, such words are used in the New Testament almost exclusively of divine-human relationships as opposed to intra-human relationships. Indeed, the essence of Christian salvation is to be found in such a faith relationship with God (Romans 1:16-17).

There is a scholarly consensus that the foundational meaning unifying the various meanings of pistis is trust/trustworthiness. In the New Testament such a relational faith is the heart of saving faith. Pisteuein with the prepositions en, eis, or epi is often used to convey the notion of trust in or belief in someone. “Salvation through faith in Christ Jesus [sōtērian dia pisteōs tēs ev Christō Iēsou]” (2 Timothy 3:15) nicely epitomizes Christian faith.

The fact that saving faith is a relational faith involving trust in God forces us to draw a further distinction between such relational or personal faith and propositional faith. Propositional faith has as its object, not a person, but a proposition. It is the faith that p, where p takes some proposition as its value. The question is whether saving faith implies propositional faith, that is, whether a person must believe (pisteuein) certain theological propositions in order to be saved.

An examination of New Testament materials makes it clear that saving faith does imply propositional faith.

To begin with, there are theologically significant statements employing the expression pisteuein hoti [believe/trust that], which is a straightforward expression of propositional faith. Though few in comparison with the number of statements involving pisteuein + the dative or with the prepositions en, eis, and epi, sentences employing pisteuein hoti should not be overlooked. For example, Paul writes in Romans 10:9-11,

If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that [pisteusēs en tē kardia sou hoti] God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For man believes with his heart [pisteuetai] and so is justified, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved. The scripture says, ‘No one who believes in him [pas ho pisteuōn ep’ autō ou] will be put to shame’.

Here Paul identifies the propositional belief “God raised Jesus from the dead,” as well as the confession “Jesus is Lord,” as central to salvation.

John also uses pisteuein hoti, indeed more than any other New Testament writer. The very purpose of the Gospel of John is to induce propositional faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, leading to salvation (John 20:31). Indeed, Jesus says that unless one believes that he is the chosen one sent by God, one will not be saved (John 8:24). Saving faith thus implies correct propositional faith concerning Jesus’ identity.

In sum, saving faith as described in the New Testament implies as a concomitant propositional faith in such truths as God’s existence, Christ’s being the Son of God, his resurrection from the dead, his Lordship, and so on. Without such propositional faith one cannot be saved but remains in his sins.

With these Scriptural data in hand, let us now turn to philosophical reflection on the nature of faith. In addition to other propositional attitudes, there are exactly three doxastic attitudes that a person might take toward a proposition p: belief, disbelief, and non-belief. The customary view has been that propositional faith involves belief in the relevant propositions, that is to say, faith that p implies belief that p, a view that is reflected in the standard English translations of pisteuein as “to believe.”

Remarkably, however, a number of Christian philosophers have recently argued that propositional Christian faith may not be and often is non-doxastic faith; that is to say, faith that p, where p is some Christian truth claim like “God exists” or “Jesus rose from the dead,” does not always imply belief that p. Accordingly, we need to introduce into our discussion yet another distinction between doxastic faith and non-doxastic faith. Whereas doxastic propositional faith implies belief that p, non-doxastic propositional faith does not. On non-doxastic views of faith, saving faith as described in the Bible does not require even the belief that God exists, much less that Jesus is His Son or rose from the dead. On non-doxastic views of faith, despite saving faith’s implying propositional faith, one can be agnostic about Christian propositional truth claims and yet still meet the conditions of saving faith.

To understand how this can be so, it will be helpful to consider the elements that make up propositional faith. Daniel Howard-Snyder offers the following analysis of Christian propositional faith:

For you to have faith that p, for some proposition p, is (a) for you to have a positive cognitive attitude towards p, (b) for you to have a positive conative orientation towards the truth of p, (c) for you to be disposed to live in light of that attitude and orientation, and (d) for you to be resilient in the face of challenges to living in that way.

The first element (a), a positive cognitive attitude towards p, is the most controversial element in the analysis. We shall therefore focus our attention on it.

This notion of a positive cognitive attitude towards p is difficult to parse. As an attitude, it is presumably a mental state, something like believing. The positivity of this state seems to have to do with being oriented towards affirming p rather than denying p. If we take believing p and disbelieving p to be the paradigm cases of positive and negative cognitive attitudes, then a positive attitude would seem to be leaning in the direction of belief, while a negative attitude would be leaning in the direction of disbelief.

Building on the seminal work of William Alston, Howard-Snyder maintains that the positive cognitive attitude towards p required by faith may not be belief. Appealing to the distinction between belief and acceptance, Alston had contended that accepting that p while not believing that p is sufficient for having faith that p. Alston formulates the crucial condition distinguishing belief from acceptance as

If S believes that p, then if S considers whether it is the case that p, S will tend to feel it to be the case that p, with one or another degree of confidence.

Alston’s formulation allows for various degrees of belief, from “complete certainty at the top all the way down to a mere inclination to suppose that p.” A handy measure of degrees of belief, he says, is “the different degrees of assurance that p is the case.”

Alston’s condition is not met if S merely accepts that p. Accepting that p is like believing that p without tending to feel it to be the case that p. The crucial factor differentiating belief from acceptance is whether or not, upon consideration, one tends to feel it to be the case that p.

It will be helpful to have before us an illustration of acceptance as opposed to belief at work in an academic discipline. A paradigm case of mere acceptance may be found in pure mathematics. For example, the majority of set theorists accept the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with the Axiom of Choice (ZFC) as the standard set theory. But do they believe the axioms of ZFC? If asked, for example, whether an infinite set exists, most set theorists would immediately respond in the affirmative. But when pressed by a mathematical Platonist whether they really believe that such a metaphysically extravagant object truly exists, many, if not most, would demur. Most practicing mathematicians would probably not consider themselves to have made such metaphysical commitments by means of their assertions. So it is common to distinguish between accepting a mathematical statement and believing a mathematical statement.

On the basis of this differentiation Alston argues that the positive cognitive stance involved in Christian propositional faith can be acceptance rather than belief.  In assessing the relevance of acceptance for Christian faith, Alston addresses two questions: (1) Do many sincere, devout, committed Christians accept rather than believe central Christian doctrines? And (2) Does Christianity require belief rather than acceptance?

In response to (1) Alston registers his “distinct impression” that a significant proportion of sincere, committed, devout, contemporary Christians accept but do not believe central Christian doctrines. Unfortunately, Alston’s discussion is predicated upon his exclusive focus on firm, sure belief as representative of propositional Christian belief. Alston’s proffered examples of acceptance rather than belief among contemporary Christians are similarly based on playing off highly confident belief, “free of doubt” and supported by “rationally decisive evidence,” over against belief or faith which is less certain.

All this is somewhat beside the point, however. For, as Alston recognizes, the normative question (2) still remains: Does Christianity require belief rather than acceptance? Even if many doubt-ridden Christian philosophers merely accept rather than believe central Christian doctrines, is such faith defective? In order to answer that question, Alston devotes but a single paragraph to the scriptural teaching on faith. Obviously, such an anemic treatment as Alston offers of the scriptural data on faith affords no sure conclusions.

We come now to some assessment of a non-doxastic view of faith. Is such a view a plausible construal of saving faith, Christian faith, scripturally assessed? I take it that Christian faith implies propositional faith in various Christian doctrines. The question, then, is whether propositional Christian faith involves belief. The question then is whether belief in the relevant truths is a necessary condition of saving faith.

The first thing to note is that non-doxastic views of faith import into the literature of the ancient world and into the New Testament in particular a modern philosophical distinction between belief and acceptance which is alien to the mentality of the ancient world. No attempt was made at that time to distinguish between pisteuein in the sense of “to believe” and in the sense of “to accept (or assume).” The fact that New Testament commentators never discuss the question whether propositional Christian faith implies belief is abundant testimony to the foreignness of the distinction to ancient mentality.

Nowhere is this fact more evident than in Teresa Morgan’s lengthy examination of the ancient world’s mentalité with respect to pistis/fides. The main distinction she knows is between faith as trust and faith as propositional belief. She is oblivious to the modern distinction between faith as belief and faith as acceptance because such a distinction was not part of the mentality of the ancient world.

Given how alien the modern distinction between faith as belief and faith as acceptance is to antiquity, it becomes difficult to imagine how the proponent of a non-doxastic view of Christian faith could successfully make a case that the propositional faith described in the New Testament need not involve belief but only acceptance or assumption. It is very dubious that any non-doxastic propositional attitude was on the mind of any New Testament writer.

Second, a cognitive stance less than belief is too weak to give a plausible account of scriptural teaching. Nowhere in the Bible does God call us to merely assume or accept His existence. On the contrary, it affirms that all persons know that God exists (Romans 1:18-20). Since such persons know that God exists, it follows that they believe that God exists since knowledge entails belief, even if they, lacking the favorable attitude and connation requisite for faith, do not have faith that God exists, much less faith in God.

The Gospel of John is also noteworthy for the connection of pisteuein and ginōskein (to know). Morgan observes that they are twice paired in such a way that it is hard to differentiate their meaning:

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:68-69).

“Now they know that everything that thou hast given me is from thee; for I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from thee; and they have believed that thou didst send me” (John 17:7-8).

Moreover, ginōskein and pisteuein appear in close proximity in John 3:10-12; 8:27–32; 8:43–46; 14:7–10. Morgan also observes that around a dozen of the 34 passages in John where ginōskein has to do with theologically significant knowledge concern propositional knowledge, for example, “Jesus answered them, ‘My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me; if any man’s will is to do his will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority’” (John 7:16-17). Such use of ginōskein with respect to propositional truths is decisive, since knowledge entails belief. If anyone wills to do God’s will, then he shall not merely accept or assume Jesus’ teaching without belief, but he will know and, hence, believe that Jesus’ teaching is from God.

Finally, we should be remiss if we did not discuss one of the most famous New Testament texts on faith, namely, James 2:19:

You believe that [pisteueis hoti] God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe [pisteuousin]—and shudder.

James’ statement is one of the most intriguing passages concerning the cognitive stance required by saving faith. As pisteuein hoti shows, it is propositional faith that is in view here. The proposition at stake recalls the Shema, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Deuteronomy 6:4), stating what would have been a fundamental and hallowed truth for James’ Jewish Christian readers and this served to mark them off from virtually all pagans.

Pisteuein when used with respect to the demons’ cognitive stance can only be translated “believe,” for they lack the favorable attitude and positive conative orientation toward Jewish monotheism characteristic of faith, as is evident from their response: they shudder. Thus, their cognitive stance toward the proposition that God is one is that they believe it. Moreover, the demons would hardly be terrified as a result of belieflessly adopting or assuming a proposition, not to mention the fact that if anyone knows that God exists it is the demons. So we have firm grounds for understanding pisteuein with respect to demons to mean nothing more and nothing less than “believe.”

But now consider pisteuein with respect to James’ correspondents, whom he addresses as “brethren” who “hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ.” They share the same cognitive stance toward the same proposition as the demons. So although they no doubt do have a favorable attitude and positive conative orientation toward what they believe, their positive cognitive stance is the same as the demons’: they believe that God is one, and James commends them (however sarcastically) for it. Moreover, the context of James 2:14-26 shows that it is no less than saving faith that is at issue here. James’ discussion of the faith that justifies is a counterpoint to Paul’s, James insisting that mere belief is not enough for saving faith. James 2:19 is thus not just an offhand, isolated remark but a theologically significant comparison concerning the nature of saving faith. It tells us that saving faith involves nothing less than belief.

In summary, while saving faith is fundamentally personal faith in God or Christ with all that that involves, personal faith implies propositional faith with respect to various Christian truth claims. Propositional faith involves a positive cognitive stance of belief toward the relevant proposition, along with a favorable attitude and positive conative orientation toward the state of affairs described. Thus, saving faith is doxastic faith plus some additional feature, what in contemporary discussions has come to be called belief-plus.

Non-doxastic views of faith fail to do justice to the scriptural teaching on saving faith. The attempt to drive a wedge between faith as belief and faith as acceptance is to draw a distinction alien to the New Testament and results in an analysis of saving faith that is much too weak to account plausibly for the New Testament data, which imply that we know central Christian truth claims.

Non-doxastic views of faith are not merely mistaken, however, but positively dangerous. While motivated by a laudable desire to be inclusive of those in doubt, these views, I fear, endanger such persons spiritually, for these views may lull unbelievers who are in fact merely nominally Christian into a false sense of security concerning their spiritual condition, when they are, in fact, unregenerate persons. We can make room for those struggling with doubts by emphasizing that belief comes in degrees measured by the believer’s confidence that what is believed is the case. Persons claiming to no longer believe but merely to accept Christian truth claims may in fact have very weak belief. When struggling with doubts, we can always cry out with the man who besought Jesus, “I believe! Help thou my unbelief!” Persons who have first come to accept Christian truth claims without yet believing them may well be on the pathway that will lead them eventually to saving faith, and we should do all that we can to encourage them along that path.

QUESTION: In our Reasonable Faith chapter in Nebraska, one of the best students I've ever had there really struggled with belief. He was riddled with doubt but he did think that Christianity was the best explanation of all the competing religions, and then comparing it to Pascal's Wager he thought that Christianity is the best explanation and so he put his faith and chose to live that way. Even though he didn't think it was true with over 50% certainty – that is what he said – he did believe it was the best explanation. Now, that was several years ago. Now he seems to be well over that 50% mark. But at that point would you say he was not regenerate but on the way?

DR. CRAIG: You can't . . . only God knows his heart. But I do think that by understanding and appreciating Alston's point that belief comes in degrees from almost virtual certainty down to just an inclination to believe we can say that someone like that did believe however weak and frail it might have been at the beginning. Where along the line he crossed the threshold and became a regenerate Christian is really known only to God. Has he been baptized? Good. That is kind of a seal of that commitment.

QUESTION:  I could have misheard what was going on, but you were talking about the degrees of faith earlier on, and you talked about a tendency to have a positive inclination toward – I don’t know if that is the right language as I'm trying to remember it but – I'm wondering if you could comment on the the term “tendency toward” because I think of myself if – that's if I heard that right – if I have a tendency to go to a restaurant when I'm in a certain town, sometimes I don't go to that restaurant. So I'm wondering if someone just has a tendency to have a positive attitude if that means that sometimes they just don't and that seems like a difference than just mere degrees.

DR. CRAIG: I think the way Alston is using it is that this is the way you lean. You tend to feel that p is the case. It's very subjective as you can see. He uses the word “feel” rather than “think” deliberately. It's just that you are inclined to – maybe that would be the word for “tend”. You incline toward feeling that p is the case. So it's a very weak condition to qualify as belief.

FOLLOWUP: It seems like there might be a difference. If you're 51% inclined maybe you're always going to choose that thing but just barely – you're just edging out the other alternative, versus if I'm just inclined that means sometimes I do but sometimes I don't still.

DR. CRAIG: I understand your question, but I don't think that that's the way Alston is using the word in terms of vacillating. I think he would probably say such a person vacillates between belief and unbelief or between doxastic faith and non-doxastic faith. That's what it sounds like based on what he says here. Yes, that person would be vacillating.

QUESTION: I'm pretty familiar with the literature that you're referring to, and I agree with you that you get these really convoluted accounts that don't sound like faith at the end of it. I've made a contribution to that literature, too, and I probably did the sort of approach that you talked about but I think I end up a little closer to where you are. But here's what I wanted to push on a little bit to say: why do we even need propositional faith at all if we've got this personal faith? Why not just make that propositional attitude just belief? So you just have “belief in” which is what we refer to often as faith and construe that in terms of trust. I define it as ventured trust – that we're not taking a kind of risk.

DR. CRAIG: The short answer is because the New Testament requires it. These expressions pisteuein hoti – believe that. You find these, as I say, especially in the Gospel of John: “Unless you believe that I am he, you will remain in your sins” and “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing have life in his name.” I think it's indisputable that the New Testament teaches that personal faith in Christ implies propositional faith.

FOLLOWUP: But you're talking about belief as a constituent of a proposition.

DR. CRAIG: I use the word “concomitant.” I'm not committed to the thesis that a constituent of personal faith (which is that loving trust in God) is propositional faith. What I said is it's a concomitant of personal faith. If you trust in Christ, trust in God, then you have propositional faith that God exists.

FOLLOWUP: You just have those two categories – trust and then you've got the belief in. And then you've got belief that.

DR. CRAIG: Or faith that. You've got pisteuein hoti, you've got “faith that,” and the question is: is that “belief that?” Almost all English translations render the word “believe” and my argument is that they're quite right in doing so. So I really don't think there's a whole lot of dispute that this personal, trusting, saving faith has as its correlate or constituent propositional faith. The real debate is does propositional faith imply belief?

QUESTION: I'd love to get your thoughts on this. I struggle – especially with the Gospel John – I struggle to see a distinction between propositional faith and personal faith. For example, in John 8 he says, “unless you believe that (pisteuein hoti) I am He you'll die in your sins.” A few verses down “as he was speaking, many believed in Him.” Then he said, “to those Jews who believed him,” and it's all used interchangeably.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

FOLLOWUP: In John 4 you see that same interchange. “Woman, believe me that . . .” So it seems like this is just a stylistic thing that John does.

DR. CRAIG: Or that they're all coordinated and involved with each other as concomitants, which is what I prefer to say. The passage I read from Romans 10 has exactly the same combination of datives, prepositions, and “belief that,” and I take this to mean that all of these things are either constituents or concomitants or correlates of the faith that saves.

FOLLOWUP: So you would say those are expressing different dimensions of saving faith. Is that the right way to think of it? They're not expressing the same thing in a different way?

DR. CRAIG: Right. Yes. I think that's right. I mean clearly trusting in a person is different than believing a proposition. You're quite right. They're not the same thing. But I'm saying that they are correlated or concomitants or constituents – some sort of word to show that they go together as a package.

QUESTION: You gave belief as a range from “just beginning to think that” and “I believe with almost 99% certainty.” Is it fair for a Christian, despite their ability to be able to prove such, to say they know that and then to give “that I am saved, that God is such” because we can't prove it outside. Do you see what I'm saying? You said, “I can believe this,” “I believe this to be true,” but can a Christian at any point in time have said, “I know this to be true”?

DR. CRAIG: I think we must be able to say that because that's what the Scripture tells us. It says that from the creation of the world all men know that God exists because he's revealed it to them. You heard the passages from Jesus saying, “They have come to believe and know that thou has sent me.” So, yes. Now, how do you make sense of that? I think Reformed Epistemology comes in here. This non-doxastic view of faith is incompatible with Reformed Epistemology because according to Reformed Epistemology we have certain properly basic beliefs which we know to be true on the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit. Therefore we do have a propositional belief and knowledge of these things. Thank you very much.