What is Faith?

An Exploration of Metaphysical and Religious Trust in God

This research develops and evaluates the Dual Faith Hypothesis (DFH) within the context of analytic religious epistemology: that faith in God manifests in two distinct but often co-present forms -- Metaphysical Faith and Religious Faith -- each grounded in different evidential bases and exhibiting different epistemic and phenomenological characteristics.

Metaphysical Faith (MF) is a habitual trust in God based primarily on impartialist (publicly accessible) evidence -- experiences, intuitions, and inferences accessible across religious boundaries. Examples include: cosmological wonder at existence; moral intuitions suggesting objective value; sense of cosmic purposiveness; philosophical arguments (cosmological, teleological, moral); experiences of transcendence in nature or art. MF can exist without religious affiliation and persists across doctrinal revisions.

Religious Faith (RF) is a habitual trust in God based primarily on partialist evidence -- beliefs, practices, and testimonies specific to particular religious traditions. Examples include: scriptural authority; prophetic testimony; liturgical experience; denominational teaching; miraculous claims; confessional communities. RF provides detailed theological content but depends on acceptance of tradition-specific authorities.

Crucially, these faith-forms are not mutually exclusive. Many religious believers appear to exhibit both simultaneously, with MF providing foundational trust reinforced and specified by RF. This dual structure explains otherwise puzzling phenomena: why persons sharing imcompatible religious beliefs can nevertheless insist they trust in God, why “cultural” believers with minimal doctrinal knowledge exhibit robust faith, why religious skeptics often retain trust in God, why serious doctrinal doubts need not undermine basic faith, and why adherents of incompatible religions can share similar dispositional trust despite irreconcilable beliefs.

Pictures Metaphysical Faith and Religious Faith

What Is New in This Research

Existing theories struggle to explain the diversity of religious beliefs and corresponding empirical evidence of sincere trust in God even among those without strong or even any religious beliefs. Richard Swinburne’s evidentialist framework (2005) treats faith as trust based on probability calculations from total evidence, but this predicts faith should correlate with doctrinal knowledge and evidential awareness -- contrary to observation. Alvin Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology (2000, 2015) distinguishes the sensus divinitatis (producing belief in God) from the Internal Instigation of the Holy Spirit (producing Christian beliefs), implicitly recognizing two mechanisms, but doesn’t develop this as a theory of two distinct faith-types. Theological traditions distinguish “general” from “special” revelation but rarely analyze corresponding faith-forms systematically.

Research Questions

Is the impartialist/partialist evidence distinction philosophically robust? Can paradigm cases of each evidence-type be identified? Are there edge cases that resist categorization, and if so, do they undermine the distinction?
Do theological and philosophical traditions implicitly recognize the MF/RF distinction? How do general/special revelation, natural/revealed theology, implicit/explicit faith, and anonymous Christianity relate to the DFH?
Does the DFH explain observed phenomena better than alternatives? Specific test cases: (a) faith persistence through doctrinal doubt; (b) “spiritual but not religious” populations; (c) interfaith commonality; (d) sophisticated theological doubt compatible with faith; (e) religious conversion patterns.

Methodology

Conceptual Clarification: The development of operationalized definitions of MF, RF, habitual trust, impartialist/partialist evidence. Create formal models showing relationships between components.

Comparative Analysis: The examintion of how existing theories (Swinburne, Plantinga, Aquinas, Smith) implicitly recognize or miss the MF/RF distinction. Show DFH clarifies confusions in existing literature.

Ordinary Language Analysis: The systematic examination of how “faith” functions in religious discourse, ordinary language, and philosophical texts. Identify usage patterns suggesting dual structure.