Does Faith that Jesus will Save You Amount to Knowledge that Jesus will Save You?

[Sunstone]

For well over 2,000 years, the Western philosophical tradition has defined 'knowledge' as "justified true belief". In the early 1960s, a further qualification was added to the distinction by the majority of philosophers. That was the justified true belief must include a Gettier Defeat. Yet, we need not concern ourselves with Gettier Defeats here because, in this context, they are irrelevant. I only mention them because if I had not, some pettifogger would have, and quite possibly taken the thread off-topic.


So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, ca we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

 

[Fool]

For well over 2,000 years, the Western philosophical tradition has defined 'knowledge' as "justified true belief". In the early 1960s, a further qualification was added to the distinction by the majority of philosophers. That was the justified true belief must include a Gettier Defeat. Yet, we need not concern ourselves with Gettier Defeats here because, in this context, they are irrelevant. I only mention them because if I had not, some pettifogger would have, and quite possibly taken the thread off-topic.


So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, ca we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

ooooh, i learned a new word. pettifogger. neat


if you believe and follow through, i'm assuming that the "justify true belief" is realized. so to save would only require the believer to believe and not to literally be saved by the savior physically. by heeding the warnings/instructions which are the recipe to salvation. you can't save someone from themselves. they have to repent from their own self-aggrandizing.

 

[sun rise]

Gettier Defeat

Oh thou who brings this up only to tell us to ignore it, thou art a philosophical tease of the worst order.

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

Is belief sufficient to justify a true belief? Is faith sufficient to justify a true faith?

Thou hast caused me to go into definitional purgatory explicating the various nuances between 'faith' and 'belief' while some, the unwashed undoubtedly, use them synonymously.

In the end, my mind skated over the OP question as a figure skater slides over the ice in an arena except for the mogul of the word 'justify'.

To repeat the wisdom of someone I know who once asked: "what good is turning up all the burners on your stove if you are not cooking anything"? So I next looked at the mogul word "justify"

For something to 'justify' , it has to pass one or two definitional tests: "show or prove to be right or reasonable." or "declare or make righteous in the sight of God". 'one of the elect, justified by faith'

Right? Reasonable? Righteous?

I picked reasonable and answered 'yes' to the OP question.

 

[Muffled]

For well over 2,000 years, the Western philosophical tradition has defined 'knowledge' as "justified true belief". In the early 1960s, a further qualification was added to the distinction by the majority of philosophers. That was the justified true belief must include a Gettier Defeat. Yet, we need not concern ourselves with Gettier Defeats here because, in this context, they are irrelevant. I only mention them because if I had not, some pettifogger would have, and quite possibly taken the thread off-topic.


So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, ca we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

I believe there is no way for sure to know the future or what God might consider best for us.

I do believe that a promise that has been consistently kept is a strong basis for faith that Jesus will continue to do so.

 

[PureX]

So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, can we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

As I understand faith, it takes up where knowledge leaves off. Meaning that if I "know" "X" to be so, I don't need faith to believe in it being so. Whereas, when I can't "know" "X" to be so, I can choose to place my faith in it being so, and then live accordingly; to find out if it's so.

 

[Sunstone]

Oh thou who brings this up only to tell us to ignore it, thou art a philosophical tease of the worst order.

Thanks for the encouragement... I think. There's actually a story behind Gettier Defeats.

For at least 2,300 years -- probably longer -- philosophers agreed that knowledge was defined as "justified true belief". They all thought the issue as settled. I mean, who would not -- the definition had withstood 'the test of time', right?

But in philosophy, one should NEVER assume anything is settled. As it happened, an American philosopher, Edmund Gettier, published a very short paper in 1963 that pointed out cases in which a person could have a justified true belief and yet that belief still would not be one most of us would think of as 'knowledge'. Those cases came to be known as 'Gettier cases'.

Basically, Sunrise, they are cases in which a person arrives at a justified true belief out of coincidence. That's a rough way of putting it. Thus, a Gettier Defeat is a rule or principle for eliminating such cases from the category of things labeled 'knowledge'.

Only problem is, no one has yet invented a Gettier Defeat that hasn't got problems with it. So, folks are still trying.

 

[Vouthon]

So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, ca we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

I would say that the 'faith' that Jesus will save is distinct from having 'knowledge' (in the justified, quantifiable, factual, measurable sense) that he will actually save us.

For a start, let's clarify precisely what one means by "faith": traditional Christian theology rejects the caricature that faith is simple, unthinking confidence to the truth of some postulate. That's actually a heresy we call fideism.

The medieval scholastic theologian St. Thomas Aquinas held that faith was not mere convinced, untested opinion: on the contrary, he argued that it should be understood as a mean (in the Platonic sense) between science (i.e. demonstration) and opinion.

Certainly, the Bible and mainstream Christian tradition have never held that faith should just be accepted because it's so clear that it's the truth:

“Test everything that is said to be sure it is true, and if it is, then accept it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

The traditional teaching has never viewed faith simply as a matter of just believing a collection of bits of information that God has revealed. St Anselm’s phrase, "faith seeking understanding" (fides quaerens intellectum), is applicable here.

However, the tradition also distinguishes two different species of 'knowledge'. And in this respect, the traditional Christian response (as outlined by Pope Benedict XVI in his Introduction to Christianity) rejects the idea that factual knowledge is the only species of human knowing. Divine faith and knowledge, in Benedict's estimation, “are two basic forms of human attitude or reaction to reality, neither of which can be traced back to the other because they operate on completely different planes.”


See:

For Benedict belief is not a lesser or incomplete form of knowledge, as in, “I believe that it may rain, but I do not know for sure.” Rather, “belief is ordered, not to the realm of what can be or has been made, although it is concerned with both, but to the realm of basic decisions that man cannot avoid making.” Belief, then, is not essentially about content and facts (though there are surely reasons for believing), but about meaning, “without which the totality of man would remain homeless, on which man’s calculations and actions are based, and without which in the last resort he could not calculate and act, because he can only do this in the context of a meaning that bears him up.”​

To say, “I believe,” therefore, is not a casual remark about the weather, nor is it a sheepish disavowal of morality, as politicians and presidential candidates tend to use the phrase today. To say, “I believe,” according to Ratzinger, is to take a stand on a ground within reality which one trusts completely. This chosen ground for belief is the source of meaning in one’s life, and it cannot be verified by empirical data because it exists outside the realm of the quantifiable. Yet this ground, since it has meaning, has truth, and only in standing on truth can one understand belief, and with it, meaning...

For the Christian, taking a stand on the truth of being itself means entrusting oneself to the Logos, to the God who is meaning and reason, and therefore creative love. The Christian, according to Ratzinger, does not entrust himself to a “something” but to a “Someone” who, because of love, came into the world to make eternal meaning, truth, and love visible to all. The Christian therefore confesses, “I believe in you, Jesus of Nazareth, as the meaning (Logos) of the world and of my life.”​

See this encyclical by Pope John Paul II, which cites the First Vatican Council from the 19th century:


Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998) | John Paul II

On the basis of mistaken and very widespread assertions, the rationalist critique of the time attacked faith and denied the possibility of any knowledge which was not the fruit of reason's natural capacities. This obliged the Council to reaffirm emphatically that there exists a knowledge which is peculiar to faith, surpassing the knowledge proper to human reason, which nevertheless by its nature can discover the Creator. This knowledge expresses a truth based upon the very fact of God who reveals himself, a truth which is most certain, since God neither deceives nor wishes to deceive.6

9. The First Vatican Council teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation are neither identical nor mutually exclusive:

“There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object. With regard to the source, because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by divine faith. With regard to the object, because besides those things which natural reason can attain, there are proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which, unless they are divinely revealed, cannot be known”.7 Based upon God's testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32)
​

 

[PearlSeeker]

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?

No. It needs some reasonable confirmation of credibility.

 

[capumetu]

For well over 2,000 years, the Western philosophical tradition has defined 'knowledge' as "justified true belief". In the early 1960s, a further qualification was added to the distinction by the majority of philosophers. That was the justified true belief must include a Gettier Defeat. Yet, we need not concern ourselves with Gettier Defeats here because, in this context, they are irrelevant. I only mention them because if I had not, some pettifogger would have, and quite possibly taken the thread off-topic.


So, given the definition of knowledge as a justified true belief, ca we say we have knowledge Jesus will save us when we only have faith Jesus will save us?

Put differently, is faith sufficient to justify a true belief?


Not at all Sun, fact is almost everyone has faith that they are saved Pro 21:2 Yet Jesus said few are on the road to life Mat 7:14. Verse 21 shows what is required for salvation, doing God's will.