The Spiritual Quest Against Religion
In this lecture, historian and divinity professor Alec Ryrie shows that in Elizabethan England it was commonly thought, both by theologians and everyday people, that faith and doubt, rather than being opposed, were in fact two sides of the same coin. He quotes William Perkins, whom he calls Elizabethan England's "greatest theology," saying, "True faith, being imperfect, is always accompanied by doubting." Ryrie noted that a common maxim was that if one did not have doubts about the existence of God, then one did not really have faith.