Philosophical faith and revealed religion: is the demand to accept revealed propositions as exclusive truth the leap into authority I name it, or is revealed religion an irreducible category of genuine encounter with Transcendence that philosophy cannot reach?

Karl Jaspers, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

Philosophical faith is the form of faith available to one who refuses the leap into authority — who will not accept any proposition as binding merely because tradition, scripture, or hierarchy assert it. Revealed religion, in the form claimed by orthodox Christianity or any creedal religion that demands assent to propositional content, abdicates philosophical reason by submitting truth to authority.

Bultmann's demythologizing is a partial step in the right direction and the only theological position with which sustained philosophical dialogue is possible — yet even there the residual claim to a privileged event of revelation marks the limit beyond which philosophy cannot follow.¹²³

Sources

1. We are not judging God but the demands of men. Statistically, what appears in the faith in revelation is God's Word for only a minority of mankind; in fact, it is God's Word for only a second minority within the first. For us it is a world of ciphers, not of divine realities - a suspended language of Transcendence, not a real act of God -a challenge to interpret possible meanings, not a demand for obedience.

   Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 323–324

2. For Kierkegaard an essential attribute of faith is that it relates to a unique historical event and is itself historical. It is not experience, not something immediate that can be described as given. It is rather a primal awareness of being through the mediation of history and thought. Philosophical faith realizes this.

   The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, p. 9

3. The brittleness, together with the Protestant principle of religious freedom, might let new forms arise precisely where Christianity is now weakest, both ecclesiastically and as a practical faith. What I say is mere thought without action. It is the churches that would have to do all this - and thus, at the same time, to think it better than I can.

   Philosophical Faith and Revelation, pp. 322–323

Where the argument is made

• Der philosophische Glaube (1948) — translated as The Perennial Scope of Philosophy (1949) — the six Basel lectures on philosophical faith
• Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (1962) — translated as Philosophical Faith and Revelation (1967) — the developed engagement with revealed religion
• the 1953 Bultmann exchange Die Frage der Entmythologisierung with my response Wahrheit und Unwahrheit der Mythologie
• Way to Wisdom (1950) chapter IV on the Idea of God
• Philosophy Is for Everyman (1965) on faith

How the argument was received

The position is developed across the late authorship from Der philosophische Glaube (1948) through the 1953 Bultmann exchange to Der philosophische Glaube angesichts der Offenbarung (1962). The most-pressed position in the Schilpp volume, with four dedicated chapters (Ricoeur, Holm, Lichtigfeld, Löwenstein) pressing from Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and history-of- religion angles. I responded substantively in the Reply to My Critics. The position has not been retracted; the 1962 book is its most considered statement.