Is Faith Rational?
A Hermeneutical-Phenomenological Accounting for Faith
By (author) W. Stoker
Is faith rational? Some respond by providing proofs for God’s existence. Others hold that no reasons for the Christian faith can be given. This book discusses different ways of accounting for faith, i.e. classical apologetics, the transcendental view that faith is part of human nature, and the view that argues for the rationality of faith on the basis of direct perceptions of God that appear to be objective. The author subsequently proposes a rational accounting for the Christian faith in our secularized and religiously pluralistic society. His starting point is the lasting religious experience of believers in everyday life. He also discusses the question of how this accounting for faith can function in a world of both secular worldviews and other religions. Religious experience is not subjective or arbitrary but rational. In these experiences human beings are involved with God. Religious experience can be described phenomenologically as an experience that transcends our capacities. God reveals himself to people primarily in narratives. Narratives have a rational structure and the Gospel narratives provide, in narrative form, arguments for faith. The assent to faith involves the whole person and stamps his life story and conduct. Assent to faith is thus affective, but that does not exclude its being rational. The positive reason for faith lies in experience itself. There are no reasons for faith outside the faith itself, but this does not mean that there are no points of contact in human existence for the Christian faith.
- By (author) W. Stoker
Other Titles in this Series
The Mind of God and the Works of Nature
Laws and Powers in Naturalism, Platonism, and Classical Theism
Volume 65
Divinising Experience
Essays in the History of Religious Experience from Origen to Ricoeur
Volume 23
‘The Little Commonwealth of Man’: The Trinitarian Origins of the Ethical and Political Philosophy of Ralph Cudworth
Volume 42
Finitude and Theological Anthropology
An Interdisciplinary Exploration into Theological Dimensions of Finitude
Volume 47
Mobile Performances
Linguistic Undecidability as Possibility and Problem in the Theology of Religions
Volume 48
The Art of Theology
Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics and the Foundations of Faith
Volume 25
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