Introduction To Christianity - pg. 57

"Faith comes from what is heard", says St. Paul (Rom. 10. 17). This might seem like a very transient factor, which can change; one might be tempted to see in it purely and simply the result of one particular sociological situation, so that one day it would be right to say instead, "Faith comes from reading" or "from reflection". In reality it must be stated that we have here much more than the reflection of a historical period now past. The assertion "faith comes from what is heard" contains an abiding structural truth about what happens here. It illuminates the fundamental differences between faith, and mere philosophy, a difference which does not prevent faith, in its core, from setting the philosophical search for truth in motion again. One could say epigrammatically that faith does in fact come from "hearing", not - like philosophy - from "reflection". Its nature lies in the fact that it is not the thinking-out of something which can be thought out and which at the end of the process is then at my disposal as the result of my thought. On the contrary, it is characteristic of faith that it comes form hearing, that it is the reception of something that I have not thought out, so that in the last analysis thinking in the context of faith is always a thinking-over of something previously heard and received.