By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
The question of the authenticity of faith is one question, that of the credibility of a witness of faith, another.
Thus to ask whether faith is authentic is to ask whether it is realistic and so appropriate to, or authorized by, things as they really are. To ask, on the other hand, whether a witness of faith is credible is to ask whether the metaphysics and ethics necessarily implied by the constitutive assertions of the witness are true—namely, because they are verified by common human experience and reason.
Of course, if a witness of faith is credible in this sense, the faith for which it calls cannot but be authentic in the sense explained. On the other hand, if faith is authentic in this sense, a witness of faith calling for it must be constituted explicitly as such by assertions whose necessary implications, metaphysical and ethical, are true in the explained sense.
23 June 2002
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