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Why is Faith a Virtue?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Tim Chappell
Tim Chappell
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ
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Abstract

A virtue is a disposition of character which instantiates or promotes responsiveness to one or more basic goods – where a basic good is one which in itself can provide an agent with a sufficient motivation, and an observer with a full explanation. The basic goods to which faith is a responsiveness are truth and practical hope – the latter being the belief that action according to deliberate choice is not ultimately pointless for me. Now these goods are often in tension for an agent; indeed if there is no God, they will eventually come into irresoluble tension. If God does not exist, there is no single coherent disposition which is a responsiveness to both goods; that is, there is no virtue of faith. So faith is only a virtue if God exists.

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Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 1 , March 1996 , pp. 27 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 In any non-metaphorical sense of ‘virtue’, no, they may not.

2 Such as Rosalind, Hursthouse, ‘Virtue Theory and Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 20 (1991), p. 224.Google Scholar

3 Finnis, J. M., Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 62ff.Google Scholar

4 Cp. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1153b27.

5 In the opening lines of Nicomachean Ethics; but the evidence is ambiguous.

6 Bentham and James Mill are obvious examples; J. S. Mill's distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ pleasures, in Chapter 2 of his Utilitarianism (ed. Warnock, ; London: Fontana, 1962)Google Scholar begins to complicate the picture.

7 Kant, , Critique of Practical Reason (trans. Beck, Lewis White: Oxford, Maxwell Macmillan, 3rd. edn. 1993), p. 132:Google Scholar Part 1, Bk. 2, Ch. 2, S. V, ‘The existence of God as a postulate of pure practical reason’.

8 Iris, Murdoch, ‘On “God” and “Good”’, pp. 59ff., in her The Sovereignty of Good (reprinted by Routledge Kegan Paul, 1991).Google Scholar