Summa origines scientiarum: Proœmium
Fides
In a fictional quote attributed to a fictional character, Jack McDevitt has Gregory MacAllister write:
Faith is conviction without evidence, and sometimes even in the face of contrary evidence. In some quarters, this quality is perceived as a virtue.
-- Jack McDevitt, Odyssey (2006) Ch. 12
The McAllister character is being deliberately provocative here, but this version of "faith" is one widely bruited, mostly by people who don't think they have one. A contrary view comes from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, who stated in one of his lectures:
A blind faith, one that would simply demand a leap into the utter void of uncertainty, would be no human faith. If belief in the Creator were totally without insight, without any understanding of what such entails, then it would likewise be inhuman. Quite rightly, the Church has always rejected "fideism" -- that very sort of blind faith.
-- Christoph Cardinal Schönborn,
"Creation and Evolution: To the Debate as It Stands"
(First Catechetical Lecture for 2005/2006: Oct. 2, 2005, St. Stephan's Cathedral, Vienna)
But faith, of course, is simply the latinate version of "trust" or "truth." To keep faith simply means to trust someone or something. To trust the "evidence," for example.
Read More