Robert J. Hutchinson defends his M.Phil dissertation, What is Faith, on October 21, 2025, at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Why do some people live with a deep confidence in life and in their ultimate destinies? Why do others struggle with doubt and anxiety about the future?

The Philosophy of Religion may provide an answer: I propose that faith comes in two forms, what I like to call Metaphysical and Religious.

What Faith Really Means

Most people think faith means accepting religious doctrines without evidence.

But this misses something crucial about how faith actually works.

Faith, at its core, simply means trust.

When you sit in a chair, you have faith, that is, you trust, that it won’t collapse.

When you drive on the freeway, you have faith that other drivers will follow the rules of the road.

When you marry someone, you have faith in them despite incomplete knowledge of their character.

All these involve the same basic elements:

• Making a decision based on partial information
• Taking calculated risks
• Trusting despite uncertainty
• Building habits of reliance over time

Faith works in the same way.

It’s about trusting in God and what God has revealed, not blind belief in propositions.

Two Different Sources of Trust

Here’s where it gets interesting. People develop trust in God from two very different sources of evidence – what philosophers call impartialist and partialist.

Metaphysical Faith (MF) comes primarily from “impartialist” evidence and experiences most people can access.

The wonder you feel looking at a starry night sky.

Your sense that moral “facts” exist: for example, that torturing babies is always wrong regardless of what people think about it.

The intuition that effects must have causes.

The feeling that life has meaning and purpose.

These experiences cross religious boundaries. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and even many non-religious people all share them.

They point toward something greater than ourselves.

Religious Faith (RF) is trust in God based on the partialist evidence and experiences of particular religious communities and their teachings.

The testimony of prophets like Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad. Sacred texts like the Bible, Torah, or Quran. The authority of religious institutions and their interpretations. Private mystical experiences within specific traditions.

These sources are limited to particular groups. They’re not accessible to everyone in the same way.

Why This Distinction Matters

Understanding these two types of faith, Metaphysical and Religious, helps explain several puzzles about how people view God and their own lives.

First, why do people from different religions often seem to share similar outlooks?

They may disagree about specific doctrines. But they often share a deep trust in life’s ultimate goodness and in the divine source of that goodness.

This reflects, I believe, their shared Metaphysical Faith.

Second, why do some people lose their faith, their trust in God, when they question religious teachings?

The answer is that they are confusing their Metaphysical Faith with their Religious Faith.

When particular religious beliefs are challenged, some people mistakenly think that means all trust in God must go.

But questioning specific religious claims doesn’t require abandoning all hope. Quite the opposite.

Third, why do some supposedly “non-religious people” still live their lives with confidence, joy and an overwhelming sense of purpose?

They may reject organized religion while maintaining a Metaphysical Faith.

They do trust in God, however they conceive God to be, while questioning the teachings of a given religion.

The Complexity of Real Belief

Most believers actually combine both types of faith.

For example, a Christian might trust in God because of:

… wonder at the universe’s complexity (Metaphysical Faith)

… belief in Jesus’s resurrection (Religious Faith)

… moral intuitions about love and justice (Metaphysical Faith), and

… the authority of their church’s teaching (Religious Faith)

These different sources of faith complement and reinforce one another.

Yet they’re logically separate. You can have one without the other.

What This Means for Our Divided World

This framework helps explain religious disagreement without dismissing anyone’s experience.

People can reasonably disagree about the specifics of Religious Faith.

The historical evidence for a particular religious claim is often contested.

Religious institutions sometimes conflict with one another.

Sacred texts often require interpretation that reasonable people dispute.

But Metaphysical Faith operates differently.

It’s based on widely shared human experiences.

It doesn’t require accepting anyone’s authority.

And it’s compatible with scientific investigation and rational inquiry (as are many forms of Religious Faith).

A More Honest Conversation

Perhaps our public discussions about religion would improve if we recognized this distinction.

Instead of asking, “Do you believe in God?” we might first ask:

“Do you trust that existence has ultimate meaning?”

“Do you feel wonder that points beyond the material world?”

“Do you sense moral truths that transcend human opinion?”

These questions get at what underlies Metaphysical Faith.

They’re less divisive than arguments about specific religions – whether God spoke to Mohammed or Joseph Smith received golden tablets.

They acknowledge the spiritual dimension of human experience.

And they don’t require accepting contested historical claims.

The Risk of Trust

Both types of faith, Metaphysical and Religious, involve genuine risk.

Metaphysical Faith could be mistaken.

The awe someone feels in the face of the cosmos could mean nothing special.

Religious Faith could be based on false claims about the founders of a religion.

But risk is unavoidable in human life.

We make countless decisions based on incomplete information.

We trust people who might betray us.

We commit to values that might prove hollow.

The question isn’t whether to take risks. The question is which risks are worth taking.

Living with Uncertainty

Perhaps the most honest position is to acknowledge that both types of faith involve uncertainty.

We don’t have complete mathematical proofs for God’s existence based on premises everyone accepts.

Yet in the face of uncertainty, it is still rational to base one’s life choices on the best evidence at someone’s disposal.

Faith, trust in God, is itself part of that evidence.

It allows people to live with confidence, hope, and a sense of purpose. It grounds their commitment to love, justice, and truth.

Whether that trust is justified remains an open question.

But it’s a risk many thoughtful people choose to take.

And understanding the two forms of faith helps explain why.

Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of numerous books of popular history, including Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth (Thomas Nelson), The Dawn of Christianity (Thomas Nelson), The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible (Regnery) and When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City (Doubleday). Email him at: roberthutchinson@substack.com

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The debate over Evolution, Creation and Adam and Eve is one of my least favorite topics.  That’s because I’ve accepted the theory of evolution ever since fourth grade, when it was first explained to me in science class by a Dominican nun.

As a result, debating evolution feels a lot like debating the Pythagorean theorem: It’s something I studied 40 years ago… long ago accepted… but makes my head hurt even thinking about.

This is one of the many differences between Catholics and Protestants, I’ve found.  Catholics rarely if ever think about evolution.  For Protestants, it’s one of their favorite subjects, a principal “litmus test” for theological orthodoxy in many churches.

It took the agnostic New Testament scholar Bart Ehrmann nearly 20 years of rigorous graduate education before he could finally come to accept what I learned in fourth grade:  that human beings have existed on the earth for hundreds of thousands of years… and their physical bodies likely developed out of more primitive animal forms.

When I was in high school, one of my Jesuit teachers showed me a copy of Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Humani generis in which the pope explained that “the doctrine of evolution, insofar as it inquiries into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter” is not incompatible with Christian faith as revealed in the Biblical texts.  Here is the key section (36):

For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter – for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.

The key point for Catholics, the pope explained, is that human beings are all descended from a real, historical, single human pair (called in Hebrew ha-adam and Hava, Adam and Eve), however they may be conceived.

Theologically, this belief is known as monogenism, the view that human beings are descended from a single couple.

Ironically enough, scientists in the 1950s were leaning toward another viewpoint, that of polygenism, the belief that the human race developed from many different independent groups.  I have to admit, to my teenage mind, the theory of polygenism seemed much more plausible.  After all, doesn’t it make more sense that there were many different groups of primates all over the world and humans “evolved” independently from those groups?

Nevertheless, I’ve never had any problem believing in both the Genesis account of creation and in various scientific theories of evolution.  Neither of the twin fundamentalisms in this debate — that of some evangelical Protestants or that of atheist scientists like Richard Dawkins — appealed to me.

Pope Pius XII’s explanation made more sense to me:  The first 11 chapters of Genesis, the pope explained, do not conform “to the historical method used by the best Greek and Latin writers or by competent authors of our time” yet constitutes history in “a true sense.”

The inspired text, he added, “in simple and metaphorical language adapted to the mentality of a people but little cultured, both state the principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation, and also give a popular description of the origin of the human race and the chosen people.”

Precisely:  Genesis is …

(1) a “popular description of the origin of the human race,” using

(2) “simple and metaphorical language,” that nevertheless contains

(3) “principal truths which are fundamental for our salvation.”

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