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intellectual understanding of dogmas, but a trust upon the promises of God. For both Jesus and Paul,
faith held the same central significance. Knowledge and familiarity with dogmas receded far into the
background.
(I.2.g) Aristocracy of Dogma
In an institutional church, the requirement of the "explicit faith" is, in practice, limited to priests,
preachers, and theologians, all of whom have been trained in dogmatics. Such an aristocracy of those
trained and learned in dogmatics arises within every religion that has been systematized into a theology.
These persons then claim, in different degrees and with varying measures of success, that they are the
real carriers of the religion. The view that the priest must demonstrate his capacity of understanding and
faith more than the average human mind is still widely diffused today, particularly among the peasantry.
This is only one of the forms in which there comes to expression in religion the "status" qualification
through education that is found in every type of bureaucracy, be it political, military, churchly, or private.
(I.2.h) Virtuoso of Faith
But even more fundamental is the aforementioned teaching, found also in the New Testament, of faith as
the specific charisma of an extraordinary and purely personal reliance upon god's providence, such as
the caregiver and the heroes of faith must possess. By this charismatic confidence in god's support, the
spiritual representative and leader of the community, as a virtuoso of faith, may act differently from the
layperson in practical situations and bring about different results, far surpassing normal human ability.
In the context of practical action, faith can provide a substitute for magical powers.
This anti-rational inner attitude characteristic of religions of unlimited trust in god may occasionally
produce an universalistic indifference to obvious practical and reasonable expectation. It frequently
produces an unconditional reliance on god's providence, attributing to god alone the consequences of
one's own actions, which are interpreted as pleasing to god. In Christianity and in Islam, as well as
elsewhere, this anti-rational attitude of faith is sharply opposed to "knowledge," particularly to
theological knowledge. Anti-rationality may be manifested in a proud virtuosity of faith, or, when it
avoids this danger of arrogant self-deification, it may be manifested in an unconditional religious
surrender and a spiritual humility that requires, above all else, the death of intellectual pride. This
attitude of unconditional trust played a major role in ancient Christianity, particularly in the case of Jesus
and Paul and in the struggles against Greek philosophy, and in modern Christianity, particularly in the
antipathies to theology on the part of the mystical spiritualist sects of the seventeenth century in Western
Europe and of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Eastern Europe.
(I.2.i) Faith and Intellect
At some point in its development, every genuine religion of faith brings about, directly or indirectly, that
"sacrifice of the intellect" in the cause of a super-intellectual, distinctive religious quality of absolute
trust and utter confidence which is expressed in the formula "I believe not because of absurd but in spite
of it" (credo non quod sed quia absurdum est). The salvation religions of a transcendental god stress,
here as everywhere, the inadequacy of the individual's intellectual ability before the exalted state of the
divinity. Such limitation of the intellect is altogether different from the Buddhist's renunciation of
knowledge concerning the world beyond, which is grounded simply because such knowledge cannot
accord with contemplation that alone brings salvation. It is also altogether different in essence from the
intellectual skeptic's renunciation of understanding the "meaning" of the world, against which salvation
religion must combat more vigorously than the Buddhist form of renunciation of knowledge. Skepticism
has been common to the intellectual strata of every period. It is evident in the Greek grave inscription
and in the highest artistic productions of the Renaissance, such as the works of Shakespeare; it has found
expression in the philosophies of Europe, China, and India, as well as in modern intellectualism.
Deliberate faith in the absurd as well as in triumphant joy is found in the sermons of Jesus over that the
charisma of faith has been granted by God to children and unlearned rather than to scholars. This faith
typifies the tremendous tension between salvation religion and intellectualism. Nevertheless, this type of
religion constantly has to use the intellect to its own purposes. As Christianity became increasingly
penetrated by Greek forms of thought, even in Antiquity but far more strongly after the foundation of
universities in the Middle Ages, it came to foster intellectualism. The medieval universities were
actually centers for the cultivation of logical arguments, created to counterbalance the achievements of
the Roman jurists in the service of the competing power of Imperialism.
Every religion of faith presupposes the existence of a personal god, as well as his intermediaries and
prophets, in whose favor there must be a renunciation of self-righteousness and intellectual knowledge at
some point or other. Consequently, religiosity based on this form of faith is characteristically absent in
the Asiatic religions.
(I.2.j) Faith and Mysticism
We have already seen that faith may take very different forms, according to its specific use. To be sure,
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