The article is articulated around Jacques Derrida’s seminar titled The university without condition, in which he proposes to think about the future of the university by considering a professor’s work as a profession of faith. The article begins by portraying the characteristics of the contemporary figure of the professional teacher, and offers a critical appraisal of the instrumental and technicist character of this model. To Derrida, the teaching profession does not consist solely of the transmission of a controlled set of objective knowledge and organized abilities; it constitutes much more profoundly a devoted commitment in the name of faith, faith in what is to come, a future that is unforeseeable and always uncertain. The article thus proposes to violate the modern sense of the teaching profession, always inhabited by a desire for control and efficiency, by reintroducing the elements of unpredictability and of faith that are appropriate to its vocational nature. The concepts of event, giving and faith are explored in order to reintroduce dimensions previously excluded from discourse on the profession, but which have the potential to nourish teachers’ identity and sense of responsibility in meaningful and gratifying ways. Three critiques of the concept of the profession of faith are also addressed.