Faith and Philosophy

Volume 7, Issue 4, October 1990

The Nature of Christian Faith

The Epistemological Significance of the Inner Witness of the Holy Spirit

This paper seeks to explore the significance of a specific kind of religious experience for the rationality of religious belief. The context for this is a gap between what is often allowed as rational and what is embraced as certain in the life of faith. The claim to certainty at issue is related to the work and experience of the Holy Spirit; this experience has a structure which is explored phenomenologically. Thereafter various ways of cashing in the epistemic value of the purported claim to certainty are examined.