Belief and Faith

With regard to faith, Pieper strongly backs up his points but here are the highlights: “To believe always

means: to believe someone and to believe something. The believer—in the strict sense of the word—accepts a

given matter as real and true on the testimony of someone else. That is, in essence, the concept of belief.

Then, for to believe means: to regard something as true and real on the testimony of someone else.

Therefore, the reason for believing ‘something’ is that one believes ‘someone.’ Where this is not the case,

something other than proper belief is involved.

Belief can never be halfhearted. There may be plenty of compelling arguments for a man’s credibility;

but no argument can force us to believe him.

Newman is forever stressing the one idea that belief is something other than the result of a logical

process; it is precisely not a conclusion from premises. For directly you have a conviction that you ought to

believe, reason has done its part, and what is wanted for faith is, not proof, but will.

It is not the truth, then that compels him to accept the subject matter. Rather, he is motivated by the

insight that it is good to regard the subject matter as true and real on the strength of someone else’s testimony.

But it is the will, not cognition that acknowledges the good. Thus, wherever belief in the strict sense is involved,

the will is operative in a special fashion, the will of the believer himself. We believe, not because we see,

perceive, deduce something true, but because we desire something good. Pieper then clears up many

misunderstandings from this last statement.

To believe means: to participate in the knowledge of a knower. Belief cannot establish its own

legitimacy; it can only derive legitimacy from someone who knows the subject matter of his own accord. By

virtue of contact with this someone, belief is transmitted to the believer.

 There are several statements implicit in this proposition. To begin with: Belief is by its nature something

secondary. Wherever belief is meaningfully held, there is someone else who supports the believer; and this

someone else cannot be a believer. Before belief, therefore, come seeing and knowing.

Belief has the extraordinary property of endowing the believer with knowledge that would not be

available to him by the exercise of his own powers.

This act does not take place in a vacuum and without reason—without, for example, some conviction of

the credibility of the witness on whom we rely. But this conviction in turn cannot possible be belief; the

credibility of the witness whom we believe cannot also be the subject of belief; this is where real knowledge is

required. The matter is, to be sure, somewhat complicated.

No one who believes must believe; belief is by its nature a free act.

The certainty of the believer must possess a special quality.

There are quite a few definitions of “certainty”. The first conceives of certainty as a ‘firm assent, that

is, assent excluding all doubt and regarded as ultimate’. It is immediately apparent that part of the nature of

belief, not only of religious faith, is to be entirely certain in that sense. The concept itself excludes the

possibility that belief and uncertainty can coexist side by side.” (49)

“The second, equally common definition holds that certainty is a ‘firm assent founded on the

evidentness of the matter’. [With evidentness meaning nothing more nor less than obviousness. ...] According to

this definition, no believer, of course, can possess certainty—for belief means: to accept as true and real a

matter that is not in itself obvious.” (49-50)

“To be sure, the certainty of the believer cannot possibly stretch farther than the insight and reliability of

the witness on whom he depends. If, therefore, we read again and again in the old theory of belief that the

certainty of belief transcends the certainty of knowledge and insight by an infinite amount, we must consider

what grounds there are for this statement. The reason for that transcendent certainty does not lie in the fact that

certainty of belief is involved but rather that the believer has to do with a witness whose insight and truthfulness

infinitely exceed all human measures. Belief is more certain than any imaginable human insight—not insofar as

it is belief, but insofar as it properly rests upon divine speech.” (54)

 “Belief still means: to accept something unconditionally as real and true on the testimony of someone

else who understands the matter out of his own knowledge.” (55)

“[T]he crucial factor of belief never consists in the matters that are believed. The believer, of whatever

sort, is not primarily concerned with a given matter but with a given someone. This someone, the witness, the

authority, is ‘the principal thing’, since without his testimony the matter would not be believed at all. Herein lies

the decisive difference between religious belief and every other kind of belief: the Someone on whose testimony

the religious believer accepts a matter as true and real—that Someone is God himself.” (56)

“’I love you.’ That statement, too, is not primarily supposed to inform another person of an objective

fact separable from the speaker. Rather, it is a kind of self-witnessing; and the witnessed subject matter is given

reality solely by having been spoken in such a manner. In keeping with this condition, the only way the partner

can become aware of the love that is offered is by taking what is said into himself, by listening. Of course, the

state of being loved can simply happen to him, as to an immature child; but he can truly ‘know’ it only by

hearing the verbal avowal and ‘believing’ it; only then will the other’s love become truly present to him; only

then will he truly partake of it.” (84)

“On a higher plane, the very same rule applies to divine revelation. In speaking to men, God does not

cause them to know objective facts, but he does throw open to them his own Being. The subject matter that

forms the essential content of revelation—that man has been elected to participate in the divine life; that that

divine life has been offered to him, in fact, already given—this subject matter owes its reality to nothing but the

fact that it is pronounced by God. It is real in that God reveals it.” (85)

“Only now can we answer the question of whether it is ‘good’ for man to believe. And the answer will

have to run somewhat as follows: If God has really spoken, then it is not only good to believe him; rather, the

act of believing generates those things that in fact are goodness and perfection for man. Receptively and

trustfully hearing the truth, man gains a share not only in the ‘knowledge’ of the divine Witness, but in his life

itself.” (85)

Belief and Faith

A philosophical tract

Josef Pieper

Translated from german by ichard and clara Winston

1. the true meaning of root words is not easy to determine, despite the fact that they have “always” been present

in language.

It is well to dstrust the perfection of excessively precise definitions.

The fundamental types of attitude: doubt, opinuiion, knowledge belief.

Tywo elements of the concept