Risking to Rationally Believe: Risk vs. Trust as Rational Evidence of Christian Faith and Belief

Abstract

In this MA thesis, I argue that risk serves as a form of rational evidence within Christian faith and belief (CFB), unlike trust. I assume that CFB rests on some evidence, even in its seeming absence, as any kind of faith and belief. Yet I do not equate CFB with any faith-belief. Instead, I search for "rational evidence" in CFB since we need some evidence, not proof of God’s existence. Otherwise, CFB appears to be an idiosyncratic matter, driving to an “anything-goes” skepticism. And I identify this rational evidence in "internal risk" rather than in "external trust", as is expected etymologically, given that faith and belief correlate linguistically with trust. Although trust has a risky component from the beginning, what happens when you are rationally, but non-instrumentally, thrown at risk for CFB from the outset, too? And this topic is usually neglected in the analytic philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and religious epistemology. In this framework, the "what-if" and "when-at" types of risk arise. Two novels by J.D. Salinger and Marilynne Robinson exemplify these new types of risk and serve as "thought experiments". Thus, I show that risk, as evidence, is a reverse “leap of faith” because it is rational.