Belief is only half of faith--if even so much as that. What if it so happens that I am the sort of ever-loving angel on earth that never has and never will cheat on his wife? Then I will be known as a "faithful" husband. Now what on earth has fidelity to one's wife or husband to do with "belief"?Clearly, a faithful person is no mere "believer" but far, far more than that; this is the kind of intrepid soul who Kierkegaard has dubbed a "Knight of Faith," who is in short, a lover. Oh, yes! and at that, one who in truth actually can't believe the thing that he would like to accept or know to be true--really, really is so. Faith is not to 'believe' the unbelievable, but to skip that as impossible and just throw your arms around it.
This person is quite simply beside himself, and though he still can't believe it, he would so absolutely adore for his desire to be true that there is no reason or logic or evidence on earth that can prevent him from making his move as though it were all so, because just maybe it is. On the other hand, he could remain loveless, or which is the same, 'faithless'. He could shove his hands in his pockets, turn aside and go home, alone, because why take the chance on the answer being, "No"?
This "movement" described in K.'s existentialist opus, Fear & Trembling is at first an act of love, a "leap" over an abyss of unknowing toward the object of adoration. This devil-may-care act of reckless abandon is a rebellious embrace of the wildest irrationality, just because we are so gloriously free to do that!
And so faith, like any other kind of love, is at once a devotion, even a vow, a promise, a pledge, a prayer; a discipline of fidelity which turns out to have a thoroughly unanticipated pay-off: you feel the love you gave, leaping right back to you over the abyss in a vision of that Beautiful Knowing described by the Apostle as the Knowing of being Known.
"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child,
I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."
And here is where a Webster's definition so hits the conceptual nail right on the etymological noggin, in its definition of "belief" . . .
1: a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing.
2: something believed; especially : a tenet or body of tenets held by a group.
3: conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence.
Like as not however, there's a lot of people who just don't really think of 'belief' as having much, if anything, to do with *evidence*. People tend to think that when you've got evidence, you've got knowledge, or something getting mighty close to 'proof'--so who needs belief?
Then you get people like me who think that *logic* has to do with knowing, not believing. I take logic as more than evidence, but for *proof*. If I see something as logical, I'm feeling like I'm knowing something, seeing something, trusting and feeling so totally confident about something that I'm shocked to see that this which fits my definition for knowledge only rises to what some say is "belief".
But maybe that's just me, as I know there are those who believe, or who have been taught in classes on Logic, to take it on faith, to trust the professor when he says that something can be logical without its being valid. I say they don't know what they're talking about, and that their education in Logic has been only to the half of it.
When you have what appears to be a logical proposition, based on some hackneyed syllogism that can be proven invalid, what you really have is proof that there is a lot more to govern the rules of logic than mere mathematical manipulation of the deductive apparatus of the syllogism. Except the syllogism is used in context of that which governs it; with all that *used to be taught* (hundreds of years ago) about Topics and Categories, you are like a person at the carnival, driving in circles in a Dodge-Em car called "Syllogism," while the real logicians are out zooming down a highly regulated straightaway in a 1936 Packard Speedster hitting on all Ten Categories--or i.e. cylinders: 10 categories;12 cylinders.
