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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Investigations And Challenges Chapter 17: Faith as the Essence of Invitation of the Prophets (Part 2) The Truth of Faith In the previous session, by citing Qur'anic verses, we arrived at the conclusion that faith is the essence of the prophets’ invitation a fact that can with utmost clarity and explicitness be deduced from the Holy Qur’an. In the end, we raised questions which must be answered in order to make clearer the discussion.

One of the important subjects which are tackled in this issue and also the subject of many discussions nowadays in the academic circles inside and outside the country is “the truth behind faith.” All of us know that once a person has faith in something, a kind of confirmation of its existence exists in his self whether it is faith in a person or the existence of an attribute in a person or faith in a thing. In both cases, faith is accompanied by confirmation.

Now, the question is: What kind of confirmation is this? In a bid to better clarify the question, we have to say that it is sometimes a logical confirmation while at other times, psychological. Sometimes, confirmation is such that we consider the relationship between two elements of a case (subject and predicate, or antecedent and consequence) and we can observe that the relationship between them is logically positive. We then confirm the case and its authenticity.

The status of confirmation to the existence of this logical relationship is either because it is among the obvious things such as the case of “The whole is bigger than the part”, or because it is among the analytical cases, for example, or some other existing ways. This is a logical confirmation; that is, once the intellect considers both sides of the cases, a positive relationship between them will logically become clear.

The point here is that logical confirmation is not always accompanied by and linked with psychological confirmation. For example, while a certain relationship is logically present between the subject and the predicate of a case, since it is a theoretical case and the concerned person is not aware of the proofs and evidence substantiating it, the existence of such a relationship may be doubted.

It is like the case of a schoolchild to whom a particular geometrical case is not yet proved, and the teacher has not taught it to him.