The term fideist, one who argues for fideism, is very rarely self-applied.

The fideist seeks truth, above all: and affirms that reason cannot achieve certain kinds of truth, which must instead be accepted only by faith.

Another refuge of fideist thinking within the Catholic Church is the concept of "signs of contradiction".

He believed that God had revealed to humans great truths which "they could not have found by their natural light", which would mark him as a Fideist.

At Fuller Theological Seminary, he became familiar with the fideist tradition in Christianity that emphasizes faith over reason.

The fideist therefore "urges reliance on faith rather than reason, in matters philosophical and religious," and therefore may go on to disparage the claims of reason.

However, other schools within Protestantism are more inclined to base their theology upon fideist premises, especially those descending from thinkers such as Kierkegaard and Karl Barth.

This is especially true of the best-known Wittgensteinian philosopher of religion, D. Z. Phillips, who is also the best-known "Wittgensteinan fideist."

Bayle was a self-pronounced Protestant, and as a fideist he advocated a separation between the spheres of faith and reason, on the grounds of God being incomprehensible to man.

However, though seemingly contradictorily, he also wrote in the latter work that human reason "strives not against faith, when enlightened, but rather furthers and advances it", bringing claims he was a fideist into dispute.

This book, a significant production of the revival of Pyrrhonic skepticism in its fideist mode, was to have a significant impact on such thinkers and writers as Montaigne, René Descartes, and Goethe.

Neo-orthodoxy became the main school oriented around this new fideist perspective, although several movements descending from it such as liberation theology and postliberalism continue to bear the fideist stamp, in that they have little or no interest in seeking philosophical or scientific prestige for their claims.