The Cognitive Aspect of Christian Faith and Non-doxastic Propositional Attitudes

Abstract

Summary In the recent discussion, several authors have argued for the claim that propositional faith need not be doxastic, but also can be “non-doxastic”. Notable proponents of this view are William Alston, Robert Audi, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and J. L. Schellenberg. In this paper, I focus on Christian faith and consider whether its cognitive aspect can be understood solely in terms of Alston’s and others’ non-doxastic accounts. I argue for a negative answer. In my view, the cognitive aspect of Christian faith calls for, as a minimum, “a sub-doxastic attitude”. As there is no shared terminology on this topic, a proportion of this paper deals with conceptual clarifications.