Abstract

Thomas Aquinas and the Scholastic tradition have defined the noetic content of Christian faith, fide, as a sort of ungrounded belief — not knowledge — motivated by grace. Calvin and the Reformed tradition, instead, have seen that content as a sort of knowledge made possible by grace. Both theologians agree that faith produces trust in God, but the way they respectively understand the ground of such trust depends upon their respective ways of understanding the noetic content of faith. The aim of the present paper is to to explain in what sense Christian faith, as understood by John Calvin, is or involves a certain kind of trust or reliance.