When belief is “baptized” by doubt: Transitions from credulity to faith

Abstract

Beginning with Luther's understanding of doubt using Genesis 3 as a template, the article explains how credulity differs from faith as the human mind interacts with shifting contexts and their doubts. In distinction from credulity, faith is an emergent phenomenon shaping personality and its social insertion. As faith mediates a compassionate orientation toward sufferers, it expresses the way in which the ultimate transcends into the penultimate or paramount reality dominated by the mechanisms of natural and social selection.