Faith

Faith is a difficult word to define—when you think about it. My old (1967) Webster’s seems to agree. The most interesting definition of it is 2 b (1): “firm belief in something for which there is no proof”; that is a commonly held view of it in a culture where the only things that serve for proof are physical observations. The Latin root it fidere, to trust, which Webster’s never uses by itself; but one must ask: When I trust, what are my proofs? Interior sources of proof have no standing in our culture because all internal experiences are derived, in turn, from brain functions; brain functions from physical actions of neurons, etc.

But ignoring all that, we can distinguish, nonetheless, between different roots of faith: external or internal. If the faith is in a learned transmission, the faith then resides in the transmission, thus it is a trust in the words or reports of other people that have reached us by an immensely long route of passing from mind to mind—and part of that proof is the very fact that so many people had passed it on. If the faith arises from a conviction that comes from my own intuition, it is a fact I cannot for the life of me describe. But it is very strong. And only that of which my own intuition thus approves do I accept as real proof. The physical? It sometimes gives me that feeling—but by no means always; and least so if the physical is a stand-in from something internal in minds other than mine. Transmission has drawbacks, not least that large numbers of people very often believe in things that are quite dubious—and hold such beliefs for many centuries.

The action of the will is not, in my opinion, engaged in faith. Faith must come first—and from the intuition. But will is involved in this structure in other ways. It may take effort to examine reality—to deepen understanding. For intuition to operate, it must be enabled to see. Another is to follow that intuition. I may not act in accordance with my own legitimately held faith. To do so, when my inclination is to ignore it, the will becomes involved. But to assert, by will, something I don’t inwardly believe is merely a gesture of some sort. It is not, to echo the existentialists, authentic.