"Undaunting faith and courage"--Is this usage correct?

I came across a sentence in a published book (A Light Kindled: The Story of Priscilla Mullins):

"His voice echoed the urgency of the situation, yet it was strengthened with the calm resolve that only a man of undaunting faith and courage could display at such a moment."

Is this a correct usage of undaunting to modify faith and courage, or should the sentence read:

"His voice echoed the urgency of the situation, yet it was strengthened with the calm resolve that only a man of undaunted faith and courage could display at such a moment."

"Daunt" means "to overcome with fear; intimidate" or "to lessen the courage of; dishearten", which seems to imply that someone other than the party being daunted is doing the daunting. Therefore, the way the sentence is now structured makes it sound like "his" faith and courage is undaunting to someone outside of himself, whereas if the sentence read "undaunted faith and courage," it might better convey the intended meaning--that "his" faith and courage was undaunted by the circumstances.

I know my explanation is a bit jumbled, but I hope you get my drift. The way the author is using undaunting to mean unmoving or something of the sort. But I don't think this is the correct use of the reverse of daunting.

Solution 1:

Your insight into this possible choice is very apparently correct; retaining "undaunted" as the proper form is the solution. An ngram shows that both modifiers are used, "undaunting" being comparatively rare. Yet, an examination of the books shows that this latter is used with the same meaning as "undaunted", whereas the idea you put forward is what seems unavoidable, "undaunting" being a participial adjective only and its sense being therefore derived from "to daunt" (to subdue, to quell). This modification amounts not to faith and courage being indomitable as one would expect, but to their would be action as being ineffective in subduing or checking sth/sb. I admit that I do not understand these numerous occurrences of "undaunting" where I expect "undaunted" in the examples provided by Google books.