You know, bible.org has a wonderful online theology course. I often recommend it to people as a primer on how theologians function in an academic context. It's not hostile, it's not an argument or apologetic. Just televised classroom discussions. I think it's interesting and thought-provoking, especially if you think "academic theologian" is a contradiction in terms.

The lectures are a couple hours long, and they're best approached as a course. But they've cut them up into ~15 minute answers to topics. There's a list here:

http://bible.org/article/258-theology-questions-and-answers

You might be particularly interested in numbers 33, 34, and 35 (How do various Christian traditions view truth?).

Number 199, "What does it mean to have faith?" also answers one of your direct questions. The bit from 6:50 is where he starts getting into the actual answer to that.