Faith as attitude, trait, and virtue

The concept of faith is important both in the philosophy of religion and in religious practice. Faith—or at least religious faith—has been widely conceived as a kind of virtue. Both concepts play important roles in major theological and ethical traditions; but, for certain purposes, both can be best clarified by abstracting from highly specific contexts, such as those of the New Testament and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. The paper examines many important relationships between faith and virtue. Doing this requires at least partial accounts of both virtue and faith. Providing these accounts is facilitated by A consideration of faithfulness—a kind of fidelity—in relation to both concepts helps to provide the needed accounts of virtue and faith. The paper proceeds to distinguish faith simpliciter from religious faith in particular, to single out several kinds of religious faith, and to explore in what sense religious faith may constitute a virtue.