While the question ""Is faith reasonable?"" has continually occupied philosophers and theologians, little attention has been paid to what faith itself is. The Act of Faith remedies this neglect by looking at what it means for a person of Christian faith to believe.

Eric Springsted contrasts modern views of faith with the Christian tradition running from Augustine through Aquinas and Calvin. In reviewing such thinkers as Locke and Hume, Springsted discovers that behind modern discussions of the reasonableness of faith lie key assumptions about the human self, including the views that the good...