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Testimony, faith, and humility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2020

FINLAY MALCOLM Open the ORCID record for FINLAY MALCOLM [Opens in a new window]
FINLAY MALCOLM*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9EU, UK
*
e-mail: f.malcolm@herts.ac.uk
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Abstract

It is sometimes claimed that faith is a virtue. To what extent faith is a virtue depends on what faith is. One construal of faith, which has been popular in both recent and historical work on faith, is that faith is a matter of taking oneself to have been spoken to by God and of trusting this purported divine testimony. In this article, I argue that when faith is understood in this way, for faith to be virtuous then it must be accompanied by intellectual humility. I defend this view by showing how someone ought to respond to purported divine testimony if her faith is to be intellectually humble, and how, if it fails in this respect, it will instead be accompanied by the vices of either servility or arrogance.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 466 - 483
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2020

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