Volume 92, Issue 3, Summer 2018
Religious Epistemology
Jonathan Matheson
Pages 499-513
Gritty Faith
Recently there has been renewed philosophical interest in both the nature and value of faith. A central issue in this literature is whether faith requires belief. Non-doxastic accounts of faith maintain that having faith that p does not require believing that p. In this paper I connect the literature on non-doxastic accounts of faith to the empirical literature on grit. Grit is passionate perseverance to obtain long term goals, and it has been found to be an excellent predictor of success. I argue that the motivations for non-doxastic accounts of faith support conceiving of faith as grit. I also argue that conceiving of faith as grit comes with a number of advantages. In particular, such a move shows how faith can be voluntary, rational, and valuable.