Here are a few interesting excerpts from one of the above articles (the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on "Fideism," the philosophical position that "claims that truths of a certain kind can be grasped only by foregoing rational inquiry and relying solely on faith." It's at plato.stanford.edu/entries/fideism/

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Fideism

First published Fri 6 May, 2005

“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (p. 246) This question of the relation between reason—here represented by Athens—and faith—represented by Jerusalem—was posed by the church father Tertullian (c.160-230 CE), and it remains a central preoccupation among contemporary philosophers of religion.

“Fideism” is the name given to that school of thought—to which Tertullian himself is frequently said to have subscribed—which answers that faith is in some sense independent of—if not outright adversarial toward—reason. In contrast to the more rationalistic tradition of natural theology, with its arguments for the existence of God, fideism holds that reason is unnecessary and inappropriate for the exercise and justification of religious belief. The term itself derives from fides, the Latin word for faith, and can be rendered literally as faith-ism. “Fideism” is thus to be understood not as a synonym for “religious belief,” but as denoting a particular philosophical account of faith's appropriate jurisdiction vis-a-vis that of reason.


1. A Formal Definition
2. A Brief History of “Fideism”
2.1 Sin, Skepticism, and Kant: Theological and Philosophical Roots
2.2 The Usual Suspects
2.2.1 Pascal
2.2.2 Kierkegaard
2.2.3 James
2.2.4 Wittgenstein
3. Tendentious Terminology
4. A Rational Fideism?
Bibliography
Other Internet Resources
Related Entries


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1. A Formal Definition

Alvin Plantinga has noted that fideism can be defined as an “exclusive or basic reliance upon faith alone, accompanied by a consequent disparagement of reason and utilized especially in the pursuit of philosophical or religious truth” (p. 87). Correspondingly, Plantinga writes, a fideist is someone who “urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious” and who “may go on to disparage and denigrate reason” (p. 87). Notice, first, that what the fideist seeks, according to this account, is truth. Fideism claims that truths of a certain kind can be grasped only by foregoing rational inquiry and relying solely on faith. Insofar as fideism insists that knowledge of these truths is possible, it must be distinguished from various forms of skepticism with which it otherwise shares certain common features. Notice too that this definition is largely formal; the plausibility of fideism as a philosophical doctrine and the proper extension of the term will therefore depend on the content given to the terms “faith” and “reason.”

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3. Tendentious Terminology

One lesson to be gleaned from the preceding cases is that “fideism” is a term that is seldom self-applied. This is no doubt largely because it has come to function primarily as a term of abuse as opposed to a genuinely descriptive term. In this respect, its de facto role is similar to that played by terms like “relativism” and—perhaps—“anti-realism.” Such labels generally say at least as much about the philosophical commitments of those who use them as they do about the positions to which they are applied.

Popkin argues that the skepticism introduced into theology in the sixteenth century eventually led to the atheism and irreligious “free-thinking” of the Enlightenment. After all, Hume says essentially the same thing as the so-called fideists when he writes that “[o]ur most holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason” (p. 140), except that by the eighteenth century this had been transformed into an implicit—if not-so-subtle—criticism of religion. Thus, Hume proceeds to add that since “[m]ere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity…whoever is moved by faith to assent to [Christianity] is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person which subverts all the principles of his understanding and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience” (p. 141). The irony here is hard to miss.

Hence, by the time the term “fideism” entered the philosophical vocabulary, the position it denoted was already highly suspect. In an Age of Reason, faith-ism is inevitably going to sound irrational. However, the conception of reason which the putative fideist is accused of transgressing is almost invariably one the latter would reject as insufficiently robust. Thus, the opposition to reason said to characterize fideism is perhaps better conceived as a rejection of a particular account of reason—one the so-called fideist regards as overly narrow and restrictive—or of the applicability to religion of a particular way of reasoning. To be sure, the thinkers described as “fideists” have sometimes expressed their objections in ways that contribute to the impression of irrationalism. Looked at from this point of view, however, it is the critic of fideism who fails to appreciate the irony with which the putative fideist uses the term “reason.” In effect, the putative fideist can generally more charitably be interpreted as claiming that it can be rational to refuse to subject certain of one's beliefs to what is popularly (though misleadingly, from the point of view of the putative fideist) called “reason.”

To generalize, what the thinkers labeled “fideists” have tended to find objectionable is not reason per se, but evidentialism—i.e., the doctrine (expressed forcefully by Clifford) that beliefs can be rational only if they are supported by evidence. Since evidentialism might otherwise seem to give rise to a regress problem, it is generally conjoined with some version of foundationalism which purports to delineate a criterion of “proper basicality”—i.e., a set of conditions under which beliefs can rationally be held without further evidential support. Whereas some putative fideists—like Pascal—argue that religious beliefs can be given non-evidential support, others can be interpreted as suggesting that such beliefs are themselves properly basic, or (as Plantinga has argued more recently) that no criterion of proper basicality that would exclude religious beliefs can itself be shown to be properly basic. Their contention in either case is that the believer can be rationally justified—or at least cannot be shown to be behaving irrationally—in holding certain beliefs, even if these beliefs themselves cannot be supported by evidence. Conceived of in this way, the putative fideist's position—though not uncontroversial—is hardly the brazenly paradoxical doctrine it might at first appear to be.



4. A Rational Fideism?

One of the most carefully argued contemporary defenses of fideism is C. Stephen Evans's book Faith Beyond Reason. Insofar as he applies the term “fideism” to his own position, Evans is rare among philosophers in his willingness to take up a gauntlet that is usually refused—even by those with views otherwise similar to his own. Evans attempts to rehabilitate—or rather habilitate—the term by distinguishing “responsible” forms of fideism from various irrationalistic alternatives. Whereas the latter pit faith directly against reason, the former contend that faith can appropriately take over where reason leaves matters of ultimate concern unresolved. Drawing on Kierkegaard's thought, Evans contends that while there are limits to reason, they are limits which it is reasonable for reason to acknowledge.

Like the Protestant Reformers, Evans suggests that the customary exercise of human reason is limited not merely by finitude but also by pride and self-centeredness. For this reason, faith and reason can find themselves in tension. For Evans, however, “faith is against reason only in the sense that it runs into conflict with a concrete form of reason that is damaged” (p. 153). Moreover, Evans insists that the defects in reason—though substantial—are nevertheless not such as to render us completely oblivious to them. Thus, he does not reject reason altogether. In his preferred terminology, faith is not so much against as beyond reason, since it is ultimately compatible, in his view, with a duly self-critical intellect.