"Not faith (in the sense of a specific faith in orthodoxy, in progress, in man, in revolution, etc.) but a feeling for faith, that is an integral attitude (by means of the whole person) toward a higher and ultimate value."
     So said Russian writer Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin.  What can we make of this?  If we dig into Bakhtin's other writings, we see that he is not advocating faith as total subjectivity (which would render it inutile), but rather faith as a response to rational perceptions of an ultimate value.  What does this mean?  Fideism describes a faith in faith, a faith with no rational basis, a faith that simply makes us feel better.  For instance, when we hear of a person who is facing medical difficulties, we may respond that we will cultivate good thoughts about her situation, perhaps hoping that our thoughts will somehow shake loose a bit of good from the frigid and serrated mountains of the universe.  Yet how can they?
     Not that hope is not important.  It indisputably is.  But hope in hope or faith in faith will not physically remedy an objective concern.  Unless faith is rooted in a tangible, perceptible, and intelligible ultimate value, as Bakhtin implies in his other writings, it will assuage feelings but not palpably affect the situation.  So yes, faith is a feeling, but faith is also a commitment to and trust in the proven reality of a higher value.  Genuine faith is trust in the worth of a personally embodied value, a value embedded in and expressed by a larger cognitive presence.  Love and hope are wonderful things, true, yet they are most wonderful if they find origin and definition in a creature unencumbered by the vicissitudes of finitude, a creature of perpetuity, a creature who has the power to make all things new.
     A creature like, well, God.