ABSTRACT
A certain conception of trust dominates the work of contemporary philosophical friends of religion. It probably has more than one source. Its general character, however, has been pointed out by Lars Hertzberg: trust is equated with reliability (Hertzberg 1994). In some ways, the link between the two notions is easy to understand. After all, we live in suspicious and dangerous times. The command, ‘Trust it’, given without supporting reasons would, in many circumstances, be foolish, or worse, even fatal. ‘He told you that he would invest your money and obtain better returns than you’d ever dreamt of – a person you hardly knew – and you trusted him, you must have been crazy.’ We could multiply such examples indefinitely. No wonder, then, that we are accustomed, in many walks of life, to use the term ‘trust’ conditionally. Unconditional trust sounds like a paradigm of irrationality. It makes no sense to trust anyone, it is argued, unless one has good reasons for doing so.
