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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Reason, Faith & Authority: a Shiite Perspective The Nature of Faith Faith is a voluntary act of human kind, although some degrees of faith may require special grace and guidance of God. Man needs to try to be faithful and make preparations for faith. One reason for holding faith as a human act is that according to the Qur'an the people are held responsible or accountable for being faithful or non-faithful.

People, on occasions, are blamed in the Qur'an for their failure in becoming faithful and this shows that it is because of their own decision. The other reason is that in the Qur'an or hadiths people are encouraged to have faith by referring to its good outcomes. The other reason is that faith may decrease or increase depending on human practices and characters.

Imam Ali (A), the first Shi'ite Imam, says: “Do not be jealous because jealousy eats away faith just as fire eats away dried wood.”15 Among philosophers of religion, there are two main views about the nature of faith: the propositional view which takes faith as “belief that” ( fides ) and the non-propositional which takes faith as “belief in” ( fidusia ). Of course, each may imply the other secondarily and in practice a faithful person is the one who both believes that God exists and trusts Him.

However, the question is which one primarily constitutes the faith Reflecting on relevant verses of the Glorious Qur'an, normally the assumption among philosophers of religion is that in Islam faith has a propositional nature. For example, we read: “… the believers; they all believe in Allah and His angels and His books and His apostles; we make no difference between any of his apostles; and they say: we hear and obey, our Lord”.

16 “the believers are only those who believe in Allah and His Apostle then they doubt not”. 17 I think faith means acceptance of or submission to certain truths and involves three elements, but it is not identical with any of them: (a) A heartfelt knowledge. This knowledge is propositional. No one can be faithful while he is in doubt.

It should be noted that according to the Glorious Qur'an, faith is different from knowledge, because sometimes a person may have knowledge in its most certain form, but lack faith. Sometimes people know some truths, but deny them unjustly or arrogantly.18 The knowledge, thus, prepares the ground for faith, and faith needs knowledge; but it is not knowledge.