Faith And Critical Thinking Essay Examples

When explaining her understanding of Faith, Tilley Terrence (p. 3) states that a half-truth cannot be taken can as truth. She describes four statements that partly elucidate what faith is that miss out on fully explaining and defining the word faith. She reveals that Faith is not about believing things, it is not behaving morally, it is not a deep feeling in the soul, and neither is it being religious. Each statement has an important aspect of faith but gives a partial truth, thus not accurate. Another common misunderstanding of faith is perceiving faith as a religion, for example, the Christian faith. It is for this reason of great significance to define the word Faith in order to establish its relation to and deviation from theology and reason or action.
Tilley Terrence (p. 26) explains faith as a relationship. From this statement, we can conclude that faith is a relationship of trust, believe, and knowledge between the individual having faith and the one whom faith is conferred. Faith cannot be equated to believe or trust since it has the aspect of knowledge while believe and trust involves taking someone’s word at face value. People with a similar Faith can also be grouped up and named according to their identity. For example, the people from the Christian religion can be grouped up to be having a common faith thus, the Christian Faith. For this reason, the Christian Faith should be distinguished from the Christian religion. It is, for this reason, important to differentiate between Faith and Religion by defining what Religion is.
Religion can be explained as a belief in a higher power. According to Feuerbach, Ludwig (p. 68), religion is a childlike condition of humanity. In that situation, the child sees his nature out of himself. He further explains that in childhood, a man is an object to himself, under the form of another man. Connecting this to religion, he implies that the earlier religion was objective, which is now viewed as subjective. By this, Ludwig suggests that what was thought to be worshipping God in the past is now perceived to be something human. This theory is questionable because most religions have maintained what was of significance despite the cultural, social, environmental and technological changes. Though people believed that people of the future will be brighter than them, they never worshiped future people but a higher power.
Williams, Rowan (p. 23) talks of modern day Christians who talk to God and listen to hear from God. It clearly shows that religion is a current practice involving the worship of a supreme being and not future beings.
In this paper, the word religion is interchangeably used with the word theology. Theology is a word adopted from two Greek words; Theo’s meaning God and logos meaning knowledge. For this reason, theology is the knowledge of God. Comparing the two definitions, that is the definition of Faith and the definition of Religion or Theology, it can be established that these are entirely different things. For this reason, regarding Christianity as a Faith would be wrong and concerning the Christian Faith as a religion would also be wrong.
A link between Faith and religion or theology can be established in the aspect of knowledge. From the definitions of Faith and Theology above, knowledge has been used as one of the important dimensions of both words. It does not imply that both words have the same meaning, thus can be used interchangeably but are different with a universal aspect of seeking knowledge. By definition, knowledge can be explained by the awareness or familiarity that is gained through experience, getting information or education. For this reason, for one to have faith in something or someone, they must seek information and education concerning what they are putting their faith in, and make an informed decision of believing and trusting them. Since theology is the study of knowing God, it is, for this reason, a process with a goal and not an objective in itself. It means theology should be used as an instrument of gaining knowledge of God in order to make an informed decision of trusting and believing that God, hence having Faith in Him.
The explanation of Faith is contrary to Mark Twain’s description of Faith. Twain stated that Faith involves believing what one knows is not so, and that people with Faith are unreasonable. From our study’s definition of faith clearly shows that Faith is not a blinded irrational decision, but a conscious and well-informed decision to believe and trust someone or something. Twain’s statement that people with Faith are unreasonable can, for this reason, be challenged. Rationality can be explained as the ability of an individual to think critically and act, thus making sensible decisions. This paper assumes that reasonability results of action, which involves decision-making. For this reason, the word decision-making and reasonability will be used interchangeably to imply action.
The aspect of knowledge in the explanation of Faith clearly shows that critical thinking skills were involved in the decision-making process. For this reason, claiming that people with Faith are unreasonable would expose Twain’s lack of interest in research to know what is involved in Faith.
In conclusion, Faith is different is different from theology and religion. The only linking aspect of the three is knowledge. The aspect of knowledge in Faith also implies that Faith involves reasoning and critical thinking skills. For this reason, Faith is not unreasonable but requires rationality and conscious decision-making. Faith cannot be equated to believe or trust since it has the aspect of knowledge while believe and trust involves taking someone’s word at face value. It is also important to note that people with a similar Faith can also be grouped up and named according to their identity.

Works Cited

Feuerbach, Ludwig. “God as a Projection.” Excerpt from the Essence of Christianity. London: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print.
McGrath, Alister. “Getting Started: Preliminaries.” In Christian Theology: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. Print.
Tilley, Terrence. “Defining Faith.” In Faith: What it is and What it isn’t. New York: Orbis, 2010. Print.
Rowan Williams. “Bible.” In Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2014. Print.