medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
On 12/22/11, Bob Kraft wrote:
> While we're at it, a couple of respondents mentioned using "faith" as a synonym for "religion," but that is also a "loaded" Christian term, and distorts the subject as well. It could be argued that classical Judaism is not primarily a religion of "faith," but of "practice," and similarly for various other "religion" options (including some of the "pagani" and/or "polytheistic" as well as "philosophic" perspectives). Basically, perhaps, the problem is with the definitions used for "religion" -- but that's an area perhaps left unexplored in this particular thread!
>
Is "faith" (in the sense of religious belief) always specifically Christian? I tend to use it as a quasi-equivalent of _pistis_ or of _fides_. And to think of the latter as characteristic of religions generally, in that a religious person trusts in the efficacy of one or more power to whom she or he attributes divinity, whether that's the god of Israel or Isis or the Tyche of Antioch. Thus one can speak of believers in such a particular efficacy as adherents of a particular faith. It's not clear what that has to do with whether or not such believers engage in a religion of practice as opposed to a religion of dogma (which I suspect is what Bob means when he says "religion of 'faith'").
Best again,
John Dillon
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