fideism
(ˈfaɪdɪɪz(ə)m)
Also F-.
[f. L. fides faith + -ism.]
Any doctrine according to which all (or some) knowledge depends upon faith or revelation, and reason or the intellect is to be disregarded, as a. = traditionalism; b. a Roman Catholic theory developed from Kantian idealism; c. in Protestant usage, also derived from Kant, with reference to justification by faith. Hence ˈfideist, fideˈistic a.
| 1885 [see traditionalism]. 1895 Dublin Rev. Apr. 313 As to Fideism, see Dr. Hettinger's interesting classification of its four stages, as corresponding to the four stages of Rationalism, in his ‘Fundamental Theologie’, 1879, vol. ii. pp. 348–9. 1903 Hibbert Jrnl. I. 556 ‘Fideism’ denotes the material principle—the nature and condition of salvation through Christ. 1908 Programme of Modernism 142 Such scepticism destroys the certitude of the fact of revelation and ends in blind fideism. 1909 Cath. Encycl. VI. 68/2 Fideism owes its origin to distrust in human reason, and the logical sequence of such an attitude is scepticism. Ibid., For some fideists, human reason cannot of itself reach certitude in regard to any truth whatever. Ibid., It is also a fideistic attitude which is the occasion of agnosticism..and other modern forms of anti-intellectualism. 1912 F. von Hügel Eternal Life ii. xii. 344 Rome is finely free from all Fideism or Pietism. 1957 Oxf. Dict. Chr. Ch. 503/1 Scholastic theologians regularly charged the Modernists with ‘Fideism’. 1966 Cath. Dict. Theol. II. 296/1 Fideistic tendencies also appeared during the Middle Ages. Ibid., Fideists like the Abbé Louis Bautain... The doctrine of the last-named is the fullest..expression of fideism and indeed has come to be almost identified with fideism. 1967 Philos. XLII. 191 (title) Wittgensteinian Fideism. |