Faith

Faith

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FAITH. This entry consists of three articles. The first expounds upon the concept of faith as it is expressed in the Old Testament. The second treats the concept in the Hellenistic period, focusing especially on the New Testament. The third article discusses the peculiar NT expression pistis Christou, which is often rendered “faith in Christ” but may mean “faith of Christ.”

OLD TESTAMENT

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A. Introduction

B. Terminology

C. Biblical Descriptions of Faith

1. Abraham

2. David

3. Prophets

D. Believing and Doing

E. OT Faith in Holistic Perspective

1. Remembrance

2. Faith Confronts Fear

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A. Introduction

Faith is a peculiarly Christian concept. While other religious traditions have aspects of what the churches have come to name “faith,” none has the specific quality of intellectual assent that distinguishes faith from fidelity. The problem of faith and the central discussion of it arises in the context of the medieval attempts to codify and integrate the Christian experience into the emerging philosophical language of the scholastics. From these attempts there arose a uniquely Western view of faith which finds exquisite expression in the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. “Faith is the act of the intellect when it assents to divine truth under the influence of the will moved by God through grace” (Summa Theologica II.II.q2.a.9).

But such a view intellectualized the experience of God and appeared to reduce this inexpressible encounter to a sort of syllogism. In the period of the Reformation it was precisely to this point that Luther and the early reformers came seeking new ways to express it. Luther, of course, appealed to a biblical idea of faith, distinguishing it sharply from this scholastic model.

While there was rich territory to mine in the writings of St. Paul and, indeed, in the Gospels themselves, the notion of faith in the Hebrew Bible was not so clearly articulated as to allow the fullest development of the reformed theology.

The Hebrew Bible, in fact, does not really have a word for faith. The New Testament term which is used to express the idea is pistis, which occurs frequently. Pistis does translate, or at least approximate, the sense of faith as assent. But pistis does not express very well the variety of meanings encompassed in the Hebrew Bible’s terminology. The Hebrew terms are much more elastic.

B. Terminology

The Hebrew Bible uses the root ˒mn to express what we are calling “faith.” The verb ˒amān occurs in the Qal, Nip˓al, and Hip˓il forms. In the Qal form it never means “believe” but expresses the basic sense of the root “to sustain, support, carry” (2 Kgs 18:16).

The root occurs in the Nip˓al form referring to daughters carried at their mothers’ sides (Isa 60:4): it refers to firm places (Isa 22:23); permanent posts in the royal service (1 Sam 2:35; 1 Kgs 11:38); to the people of Israel in perpetuity (Isa 7:9); to a variety of notions all of which have the sense of firmness, stability, confidence (1 Sam 2:35; 3:20; Deut 7:9, 12; Isa 49:7; Jer 42:5; 1 Kgs 8:26; Pss 89:29, 111:7; Neh 9:8).

The root occurs in the Hip˓il, he˒emı̂n, a significant number of times (52) in the Hebrew Bible. The Hip˓il form often occurs with the prepositions b and l, and in several instances with subordinate clauses introduced by kî (Exod 4:5, 31; Isa 43:10; Job 9:15; Lam 4:12). It is also used in the absolute, without an object. The general sense of the word in the Hip˓il is “to be firmly set in/on something.” With the preposition b it means to have confidence (1 Sam 29:12), and with the preposition l it seems to mean “to hold something to be true,” “to believe” (Gen 45:26). Three significant passages occur with the Hip˓il. The first is Gen 15:6, “And [Abraham] believed in Yahweh and He counted it as righteousness in him.” Further in Exod 3:1–22, the narrative has a dialogue between Moses and God where Moses noted that if he were sent even at God’s command the people would not believe him. Again in Exod 4:28–31 the people are said to “believe” or “not to believe.” Another instance of the word coming close to the idea of “belief in” something is in Isa 7:9, the oracle of Isaiah to Ahaz: “If you do not believe you will not endure.” In the latter the two nuances (to believe and to be firm) of the meaning are nicely expressed.

In these instances the sense of trusting and having confidence is most noticeable. In Isa 43:10–12 the Hip˓il occurs in a context that would readily lend itself to the understanding of faith as “assent.” “You are my witness, says the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe in me and understand who I am.” Here the intellectual quality seems clear: knowing and believing. A distinction is made in some authors (Pfeiffer 1959: 155) between “profane” and “religious” use of the term “believe.” For example, Gen 45:26, where Jacob refuses to believe the report of his sons that Joseph was indeed alive and in Egypt, would be a “profane” use. But “faith” in the primary sense (that it has in the communities of faith) is faith in God, “not only in his ˒emet but all his characteristics and attributes (truth, constancy, goodness, love, justice, holiness, his claims on humanity), in a word, everything that makes God God” (Pfeiffer 1959: 157).

The root also occurs in the nominal forms ˒emet and ˒emunâ, both meaning “steadfastness,” “reliability,” and the like, and both are also used for the concept “truth.” The word ˒emet is translated in the LXX by pistis, aletheia, and dikaiosune, “because in the biblical context truth is grounded upon the divine faithfulness and the covenant relationship which sets it up” (Torrance 1956: 112).

This brief overview of the etymological situation is intended simply to point out the variety of meanings which are attached in Hebrew to the root ˒mn. Even the Greek pistis which generally translates the verbal forms is said to be nuanced in its use. One author even goes so far as to say that it “is never used to signify faith in the LXX but always translates the sense of faithfulness” (Torrance 1956: 111).

The classic statement of this remains Martin Buber’s Two Types of Faith (1951). Buber argues that the differences between the Christian and Jewish religious experience lies primarily in the distinction between pistis and ˒emunâ, believing in something and fidelity. Buber, of course, approached the question from an existentialist point of view. He was especially concerned with the “objectification” of God in the Christian act of faith.

This distinction can also very clearly be found in the examination of the Hebrew Bible and the models of faith which are present there. The central texts are Gen 15:6 and Hab 2:4. But these two texts need to be seen in the context of the description of faith in the Hebrew Bible.

C. Biblical Descriptions of Faith

Faith is described rather than defined in the Hebrew Bible. The description tends to be used in two ways, one where the relationship of Israel to Yahweh is described and the other where the relationship of certain key figures to Yahweh is described. Two models are clear, Abraham and David. One could certainly add others (Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Ruth, Deborah, etc.), but in a sense Abraham and David are paradigmatic for an understanding of faith. The common characteristics of the two are their unswerving loyalty to Yahweh even in the face of what appear to be insurmountable obstacles, and second is the purely gratuitous character of their chosenness.

1. Abraham. In a way Abraham best exemplifies the notion of faith in the religion of ancient Israel. Perhaps that is the key role from a purely theological point of view that Abraham plays. The faith story of Abraham is clearly a conflation of varied traditions and so the role of Abraham is not to be seen as some well-delineated historical chronicle. Rather Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph (Isaac plays a very slight part in the history) found and articulate the notion of “relationship” which is at the root of the Yahweh-Israel connection. The stories about them are told almost as “afterthoughts” to this primary notion. They come from the classic traditions, traditions amalgamated over time and first clearly documented in the Davidic-Solomonic monarchy (CMHE, 294–95).

Von Rad argues that the oldest statement of faith in the Hebrew Bible is found in Deut 26:5, the “wandering Aramean” story. In that statement he notes: “the events in the saving history up to the conquest were still very simply enumerated as facts in chronological sequence, without any special theological connection being brought out between the patriarchal era and that which followed or between the individual facts themselves generally” (ROTT 1: 170). He further argued that the story of the patriarchs was to be seen as a history of “promise and fulfillment” (ibid.). The absence of tradition, cult, priesthood, and calendars, the utter simplicity and unquestioning character of the narrative, he thought, all indicated a developed and conscious theological view, rather than evidence of “primitive religion” in early Israel.

If one examines the story of Abraham from Genesis 12–15 it is most striking that the whole emphasis is on the notion of testing. Leaving aside the gratuitous character of the choosing (to which we will return), what is uppermost in the stories is the sense that this is a test, almost Jobian in its premises. Abraham is given divine instructions without explanations and is expected to fulfill these instructions unquestioningly. This he does over and over. Despite the hesitancy and ridicule he encounters from his wife and family, he leads them on in response to the demands.

Now the rationale for the response lies surely in the promise. “Leave your own country, your kinsmen, and your father’s house, and go to a country that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make your name so great that it shall be used in blessings” (Gen 12:1–2). But again the promise is based on a logical impossibility, since Abraham is “old” and since he has no offspring, and since Sarah is barren. The whole idea that this promise represented a real possibility is ludicrous. It may have represented what Johnson said of the second marriage of a friend, “the triumph of hope over experience,” but it clearly did not represent a measured response. This same motif of the impossible dream occurs again and again in this narrative, reaching its peak in Gen 18:12 where Sarah laughs.

But the promise is fulfilled in Genesis 21. Only the tale is not finished because, immediately after, Yahweh tests a final time in the story of the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). Again von Rad writes extensively on this.

That which happened to Abraham in this story is called in the very first verse a “testing.” For in commanding Abraham to offer up Isaac, God apparently destroys his whole continually reiterated promise to Abraham. All the blessings which he had promised to bring about were all bound up with Isaac. The story of the offering up of Isaac goes beyond all the previous trials of Abraham and pushes forward into the realm of faith’s extremest experience where God himself rises up as the enemy of his own work with men and hides himself so deeply that for the recipient of the promise only the way of utter forsakenness by God seems to stand open.

 (ROTT 1: 174)

The story of Abraham contains the notion of promise and fulfillment as von Rad shows. But that aspect is not sufficient, for surely Abraham’s relationship with the God whom he worshiped was much more complex than this. Abraham was tested and the testing it would seem was not peripheral to but foundational for the relationship.

It might be helpful to consider a further remark of von Rad concerning the patriarchal narratives. “For it is by no means the case that the later Israel simply projected herself and the theological ordering of her life and problems back into the era of the ancestors. Rather she here depicted a relationship to God of a quite peculiar and unique character” (ROTT 1: 125).

It would be important to note that it is in this complex of narratives that the Hebrew Bible uses the word “faith” in a sense close to what contemporary theologies mean (Gen 15:6). But as we noted earlier it occurs in this sense only twice in the Hebrew Bible.

2. David. The second figure we should consider in the notion of faith in ancient Israel is David. David has, of course, much greater historical data in his stories but, as is evident from the two variants of his origins (1 Samuel 16 and 17), there is considerable legend and lore associated with him. Whatever the purpose of hero stories may have been, it is David’s peculiar relationship with Yahweh that interests the writer. Whether David was chosen out of the sons of Jesse by an oracle to Samuel, or emerged as a war hero out of the conflicts with the Philistines, he is established clearly in the court of Saul as a rival to Saul and to his dynasty. It is in this rivalry that the book of Samuel is set, and the reflection on the issues of kingship itself and then on the character of the two first kings, Saul and David, is the theological point of the book.

The story of David cannot be disconnected from the Deuteronomistic History. The whole piece of the Deuteronomistic work and reflection is intimately woven together. And the most astonishing aspect of the story is the utter gratuitousness of the relationship and the way in which “chosenness” supplements “testing” as the central piece of the work.

Once we begin to consider the model of David we are necessarily compelled to examine the notion of covenant as it pertains to the faith of ancient Israel. In a very brief synopsis we ought to note that there are two distinct “covenants” in Israel. See also COVENANT. The Sinai covenant articulates a relationship based on mutual (although as this pertains to Yahweh the term is certainly analogical) obligations and promises: “You shall be my people. I shall be your God” (Exod 19:5). “You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). The second is an unconditional covenant or a covenant of grant (Weinfeld 1970: 185). The Davidic covenant falls into this latter category. The promises made to David do not depend on David’s future responses or those of his descendants. The oath which Yahweh takes on behalf of David is the result of David’s previous activity. “In other words, it is the ancestor who is the human partner in the covenant” (Levenson 1985: 101).

David’s actions are clear enough. He is called. He responds. He serves Yahweh’s purpose. He is the agent of historical change in Israel. He is the instrument of God’s power against the enemies of Israel. For the Hebrew Bible David is the paradigm of the faithful Israelite. David’s fidelity is manifested in his history, by which is meant that David’s life history is the model of fidelity. His activities prosper as he obeys the call(s) of Yahweh. His victories over the Philistines contrast sharply with the continuous failure of Saul and his descendants to achieve the goals of the promised land. Of course, one could argue that the events are constructed to prove the claim or that David’s political astuteness is mythologized into a religious calling. And from a historical-critical point of view that may very well be. But theologically, or perhaps more correctly, as a lesson in faithful living, David’s intense loyalty, his unswerving devotion to the cause of extending the land which God had promised to Abraham, those things make David the paradigm. He listened and obeyed unquestioningly (again in sharp contrast to Saul). So he achieved goals, and the goals he achieved made real the divine promise.

Thus, as in the binding of Isaac, David too was “tested,” not so much in specific acts, but in the whole thrust of his life. His life’s actions are a response to the call he had received. And, as a result of his fidelity to the call of Yahweh, he is made the bearer of unconditional promises from God.

Thus, in Abraham and in David, the two poles of the life of faith in the Hebrew Bible are illustrated: in Abraham obedience and fidelity, in David chosenness and reward. The Hebrew Bible does not contrast these two as if they represented opposites. Rather in its narrative and its structure it continually illumines now one side, now the other of this model of fidelity.

3. Prophets. Another important model of the life of fidelity is the prophet. The prophetic message reflects not primarily an ethical instruction, but rather a call to an ongoing relationship of trust. If one considers the parade example of “faith” in Isa 7:9, where Ahaz’s timidity is reprimanded by a reminder of the power of Yahweh (Pfeiffer 1959: 160–62), it is clear that the faith which Ahaz is called to exhibit is not an intellectual act but an act of trust in the action of the God of Israel.

Further, the examples of the prophetic call and mission demonstrate over and over again that what is required is not understanding but trust. The prophet does not seek to understand God’s way or God’s call to him but seeks to respond to an imperative by acting appropriately. In fact, of course, it is often the case that reason and understanding serve as barriers to responding (Jer 15:10–18).

The opposite of faith in the prophets is not unbelief; it is apostasy, because the faith which is required is not an act of assent but a commitment to a tradition, to a body of received things. The prophetic faith is clearly based in the covenant, especially the Sinai covenant, and expresses itself in acts of fidelity, not in creedal formulas. The passage of Jeremiah at the Temple gate (chap. 7) is quite illustrative. The interpretation of this passage as a polemic against temple worship is a complete misunderstanding of the context and scope, indeed the power of the passage. The prophet does not condemn temple or priests, or ritual—quite the opposite. He condemns the contempt of these, the reduction of these “holy things” to mere formulas. He asserts the fundamental necessity of conversion of heart in the act of doing those things which are required, because to do these things without an upright heart is to apostasize and be unfaithful.

In this the prophetic message reflects the Deuteronomistic proposition that faithfulness consists in the acknowledgement and keeping of commandments (ROTT 1: 379).

D. Believing and Doing

Again, it is important to reiterate the basic idea that faith in the Hebrew Bible is a multifaceted idea which is more clearly exemplified than explained. Perhaps to further illustrate the point we might consider a series of other texts related to the Hebrew notion of faithfulness.

Mic 6:8

God has told you what is good

and what is it that the Lord asks of you?

Only to act justly, to love loyalty;

to walk wisely before your God.

Here the notion of fidelity is tied to the actions of the “good” person. This is a classic text for “activist” religion, but, in fact, it really addresses a more fundamental notion: the tight connection between believing and doing.

Deut 30:1–2

. . . If you turn back to him and obey him and obey him heart and soul in all that I command you this day, then the Lord your God will show you compassion and restore your fortunes.

In this passage faith is seen as a response to a command of God. And the reward of faith (a loving relationship to Yahweh) is conditioned on that obedience. So we find the theme of “commanded love” (Moran 1963: 83–87). Obedience is an essential element in the faith relationship. All the “models” of faith were obedient first and foremost.

Jer 29:10–14

If you invoke me and pray to me, I will listen to you: when you seek me, you shall find me; if you search with all your heart, I will let you find me . . . I will restore your fortunes and gather you again from all the nations and all the places to which I have banished you.

There are two important aspects of Hebrew faith in this passage. First, the faithful seek God. They not only wait for God, they actively search for God and for God’s purpose. And this search is a total commitment (with all your heart). And this search is not an intellectual quest (with all your heart). The second point to be noted in the text is the historical consciousness which grounds the relationship. The relationship is not ethereal but real, concrete, earthly (prosperity, return from exile, restoration).

Ps 103:17–18

But the Lord’s love never fails those who fear him, his righteousness never fails their sons and grandsons who listen to his voice and keep his covenant, who remember his commandments and obey them.

The Psalms, of course, reflect the worship of Israel, and so the theme of the Psalms leads us into the heart of the believer’s self-understanding. The notions that stand out here are (a) the fidelity of God, (b) the obedience of the follower, and (c) the remembrance of the acts of God.

God’s fidelity is foundational. “The words ‘faith’ and ‘to believe’ (he˒emin) do not properly describe a virtue or quality of man, in the sense that virtues such as prudence or courage are ascribed to him, they describe man taking refuge from his own frailty and instability in God who is firm and steadfast” (Hebert 1955: 374).

Obedience we have already discussed. So finally there is the notion of remembrance (Heb zikkārôn). This important notion identifies the historical and “eschatological” dimensions of the faithful life as a catalytic concept for understanding the faith of the Hebrew Bible. But before discussing this idea and its role in understanding the faith of the Hebrew Bible, it is necessary to recapitulate what has been discussed already.

We have explored the etymological data in the Hebrew Bible from which it should be clear that faith and fidelity are intertwined inextricably in the Hebrew Bible, that is, faith is primarily not an intellectual act but an attitude which encompasses the two-sided sense of the root ˒mn: steadfastness, which addresses the concept of acts of obedience; and trust or confidence, which rests on the notion of God’s constancy and fidelity. Moreover, there is a dual sense associated with trust: one aspect touches the notion of hope and future directedness; and the other alludes to the idea of assent, but not assent to a proposition so much as assent to a way of life that is consistent with the claims of God upon the community.

There is an important factor present in all the texts that ought not to be overlooked. That is the sense of faith as residing in a community. It would require another lEngthy article to elaborate on the notion of the individual and the corporate in the Hebrew Bible, but it seems fairly clear that at least in its early phases, or at least in the presentation of its early phases, the faith of Israel was seen primarily as a relationship between the faithful community and Yahweh. It was not a “conversion” experience that brought individuals to faith. It was their inclusion in the community of Yahweh, the People of the Lord.

It is sometimes argued that the evolution of Israel’s religion from the epic narrative to the prophetic interpretation includes the notion of a change in the nature of faith from a community-based to an individually-based idea. Both von Rad and Vischer argued for the origins of Israel’s idea of faith in corporate notions. Von Rad saw it emerging from the Holy War ideology, and Vischer saw it coming from the cult. Many have argued that the prophetic faith uncoupled the notion of individual faith from the faith of the community (Pfeiffer 1959: 163). Such evidence as we have gives no clear indication either way. But the intellectual movements of the late biblical period did involve a general development of the notion of individuality, so such a development in the religion of Israel would not be surprising. Moreover, in the late biblical period, after the Maccabean revolt, the whole question of which community represented the faithful Israel necessarily involved the notion of the holiness and fidelity of the members. Apocalyptic ideas of sin, evil, punishment, reward, and the like also influence the notion of faith.

To attempt to identify the chief among all the strands that are interwoven in the notion of Hebrew faith is an awesome task. It may be, also, a fruitless and even deceptive task. Believers and scholars, historians, and the curious all look for the unique and special qualities of Israel’s faith. And because the search often begins with the conclusion, the quest is simply confirmation.

Further, the faith of the OT is alive and well in a living community, indeed in a number of living communities of faith. And so there is a history and a course of development that each of the communities keeps, cherishes, studies, and elaborates. So the task of commentary is not uncharted. Indeed, the tasks may be so well charted that there is very little room for comment.

E. OT Faith in Holistic Perspective

At the risk of reviving a long debate over biblical theology, it seems appropriate to comment finally on the faith of the OT from a holistic point of view. It is a progressive development that comes from a common and identifiable source, because, whatever the manner of its development, every development claimed continuity with the original.

1. Remembrance. It seems that among the many themes and strands thus far explored, one in particular might serve as the central focus of Israel’s faith: the idea of “remembrance” (Heb zikkārôn). The core of Israel’s faith is found now, as it always has been, in the elements of the Seder meal and celebration of Passover. Since the Mosaic period the community of Israel has gathered on the 14th day of Nissan (or the appropriate alternatives in history) to celebrate, to pray, and to remember. The central notion among these three, in the writer’s view, is that of remembering.

The notion of remembrance as a central religious concern in the culture of the ANE can be illustrated in the Aramaic inscriptions from Zinjirli, where the king predicates the blessing of God toward his offspring on their fidelity to the remembrance of the king’s name and deeds forever (KAI 214.21). So much of our knowledge of the culture and religion of the ANE is built precisely on the habit of memorializing. And, as with the Pannamū inscription, remembrance is not a single act of recollection. It is in effect the re-creation of the deed.

“Moses said to the people, ‘Keep this day in remembrance, the day you came out of Egypt from the house of slavery, for it was by sheer power that Yahweh brought you out of it’” (Exod 13:3–4).

For ask now of the days that are past, which were before you, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from one end of heaven to the other, whether such a great thing as this has ever happened or was ever heard of. Did any people ever hear the voice of a god speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and still live? Or has any god ever attempted to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, and by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

But take care what you do and be on your guard. Do not forget the things your eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart all the days of your life; rather—tell them to your children and your children’s children.

  (Deut 4:9–10)

It is this remembering that is the essence of the faith of Israel. In the stories of Israel’s triumphs and its tragedies, through glory, destruction, love, and hate, fidelity and apostasy are the two constant and enduring aspects of Israel’s remembrance of Yahweh’s deeds. In the retelling of the myth of the fateful night on which the angel of death passed by the Israelite children to destroy Egypt’s firstborn, Israel’s whole meaning is gathered. So even today, among all the religious ceremonies and cultic acts we experience or learn about, there is no more solemn or sacred night, no more poignant or “pregnant” question than this which the youngest child is to ask: Why is this night different from every other night?

2. Faith Confronts Fear. At the beginning as now, the question confronts the very nature of faith itself, because faith in the OT, as all faith by its very nature, confronts fear. Not just fear, but the fear. The fear that limits the possibilities of human life—fear of death, fear of self, fear of the universe. And Israel’s faith asserts that the universe of human experience is the domain of human freedom.

When you raise your eyes to heaven, when you see the sun, the moon, the stars, all the array of heaven, do not be tempted to worship them and serve them.

  (Deut 4:19–20)

What both enthralls and enslaves human beings is this overpowering sense of being unable to control not just nature, but one’s destiny. What the faith of Israel affirms in the Seder and Passover is to place humanity under the power not of nature, or fate, or political, or economic forces, but in the power of the God of Life itself. And so it confirms the ultimate freedom of the believers.

But this freedom was not left abstract. This freedom is founded on a relationship, and this relationship is described in a significant way through the analogy of a covenant. The covenant analogy illustrates the tension between the Creator God and God’s creative partner—the human community—and specifically the community of Israel as the chosen instrument of the divine love. And since God declares humanity free and gives over to it the power to create nature anew, and further, since God requires the exercise of this dominion as a condition for ongoing relations, the stage is set for the long drama of conflict between the divine and the human, between this world and the world to come, time and eternity, between moral absolutes and ethical compromise. It is a monumental struggle exquisitely illustrated in the story of Job, who serves as a brilliant metaphor of the faithful models (Moses, Abraham, David) discussed above.

Because the faith of Israel rests on this strange and unique relationship between the believing community and God, it is always difficult and dangerous to try to explain it too carefully. The danger of the covenant analogy is to reduce this creative tension to a somewhat narrow, legalistic idea. It is rather a co-creative union. And the danger of historicizing the faith of Israel is that one fails to Engage the journey that this co-creative union represents. The journey does not deny the history. It simply refuses to absolutize the history. The history of Israel is not past- but future-oriented. God is not bound. God is not predictable except that his ḥesed endures. So, wherever hope triumphs over despair (or logic), wherever justice vanquishes injustice, wherever the creative potential of humanity emerges to respond to the needs for life, for love, for the solution to social, political, or economic problems, there the God of Israel is affirmed. God gives existence its completeness.

These triumphs come at a cost, however. The compulsion to seek security gives the status quo a legitimacy to challEnge God, since it seeks to answer rather than to ask questions. So the prophetic element emerges as a vital part of the faith of Israel. Prophets reveal the eternal in the temporal, proclaim the future against the present, and make the remembrance of God real.

Bibliography

Alfaro, J. 1961. Fides in Terminologia Biblica. Greg 42: 463–505.

Antoine, P. 1938. Foi. DBSup 3: 276–91.

Barr, J. 1961. Semantics of Biblical Language. Oxford.

Buber, M. 1951. Two Types of Faith. Trans. P. Goldhawk. London.

Ebeling, G. 1963. Word and Faith. Trans. J. W. Leitch. Philadelphia.

Gelin, A. 1955. La foi dans l’AT. LumVie 22: 431–42.

Hebert, A. G. 1955. Faithfulness and Faith. Theology 58: 373–79.

Levenson, J. 1985. Sinai and Zion. New York.

Michalon, P. 1963. La foi, rencontre de Dieu et Engagement envers Dieu, selon l’AT. NRT 85: 587–600.

Moore, G. F. 1927. Judaism. 2 vols. Cambridge.

Moran, W. S. J. 1963. The Ancient Near Eastern Background of the Love of God in Deuteronomy. CBQ 25: 82–87.

Pfeiffer, E. 1959. Glaube im Alten Testament. ZAW 71: 151–64.

Procksch, O. 1950. Theologie des alten Testaments. Gütersloh.

Segalla, G. 1968. La fede come opzione fondamentale in Isaía e Giovanni. SPat 15: 355–81.

Smend, R. 1967. Zur Geschichte von h˒myn. Pp. 284–90 in Hebraische Wortforschung: Festschrift W. Baumgartner. VTSup 16. Leiden.

Torrance, T. F. 1956. One Aspect of the Biblical Conception of Faith. ExpTim 68(57): 111–14.

Weinfeld, M. 1970. The Covenant of Grant in the Old Testament and in the Ancient Near East. JAOS 90: 185.

Weiser, A. 1967. Erwägungen zu h˒mn. VTSup 16: 372–86.

———. 1968. Glauben im AT. ZTK 65: 129–59.

  Joseph P. Healey

Freedman, D. N. (1996, c1992). The Anchor Bible Dictionary (2:744). New York: Doubleday.

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FAITH  The most concise biblical definition of faith is found in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (11:1). In this chapter faith is exemplified by memorable figures from salvation history who, having heard the call of God, obeyed at once. By faith they became heirs of the covenant and pilgrims on earth searching for a better heavenly country (11:13, 16).

The writer explains that “through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God” (11:3); i.e., faith grants the possibility of understanding things one can never know with evidential certitude. Faith also prompted the parents of Moses to hide him in the bullrushes despite Pharaoh’s edict: i.e., faith gives courage to choose the good, or life itself, without fear of the consequences (11:23). Faith also sees one through persecution because of loyalty to the word of God (vv. 24–28, 35–39), even though receipt of God’s promises is not complete in mortal life (cf. St. Augustine, Enchiridion, 6-8).

The cornerstone of NT faith is the Resurrection: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain” (1 Cor. 15:17). Because miracles (especially the Resurrection) are central to the meaning of faith, the commitment of faith is intrinsically resistant to purely rational analysis. Nor does it depend upon a consensus of human judgment (Rom. 3:3; cf. 14:22–23). For the writer to the Hebrews, faith is at bottom simply an acknowledgment of Jesus as “author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2); hence, “without faith it is impossible to please him” (Heb. 11:6).

The term faith is used in a variety of ways in English literature, most derived, through centuries of tradition, from the Bible itself. First, in the OT, the Heb. noun ‚emunah has the basic sense of trustworthiness and corresponds to the verb “to believe,” ‚emun (e.g., Deut. 7:9; Ps. 89:1–33). It normally refers to the “faithfulness” of God rather than the “faith” of persons (cf. Rom. 3:3; Gal. 5:22). The substantial development of this term, however, is in the NT (cf. John 3:1–5). Jesus refers to faith strong enough to work miracles (Matt. 17:20; 9:28); the sense here is of absolute trust (cf. Lat. fiducia) or reliance upon the preexisting faithfulness of God; to believe God is to rely on his word (e.g., Gen. 15:1–6; Exod. 4:15, 28–30). The degree to which individuals trust God, as the story of St. Peter’s attempt to walk out to meet Christ on the water suggests, is the degree to which they can overcome the typical limitations of their human nature (Matt. 14:23–33). Here the word of God which must be trusted is Jesus himself.

Second, St. Paul says that faith is a product of the word written and the word preached: “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Rom. 10:17). While faith thus defined must have an intellectual content, mere assent to facts or truths does not count as “saving” faith: as the characterization of Mephistopheles in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus makes clear (e.g., 1.3.320-27), “the devils also believe, and tremble” (James 2:19). Faith does not merely “accept the Gospel”; it accepts it as God’s irrefragible word (2 Thess. 2:13). Third, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:17–26), not proscriptively but evidentially. For the “faith which comes by hearing” is also acceptance of the truth about one’s self; hence repentance and faith which “justifies” are intimately connected (Acts 2:38–44; 17:30, 34; 26:20). St. Thomas Aquinas insists that the person must be primary in the act of faith; just as an individual’s word is believed, so also the formal aspect of faith consists in the fact that God is believed (Summa Theol. 2.2.q.11,a.1; q.2,a.2). In the “act of faith,” says Aquinas, a person enters into a personal relationship with the God who speaks to him.

Finally, the term “the Faith” signifies the whole body of Christian doctrine and precept; this use of the term has its origin in the letters of Paul, where Gk. pistis is used as such a metonym (Gal. 1:23; 1 Tim. 4:1, 6; cf. Rom. 1:5). It is in this latter sense that the Epistle of Jude exhorts its readers “that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (v. 3). Fides so defined is unitive (the word is cognate with Sanskrit bhidh, “unite” or “bind together”); and in the NT the goal of faith is said to be unity (Eph. 4:5, 13).

The burden of early patristic commentary falls on the second and fourth aspects of faith, what Tertullian called the “rule of faith”—the core of credal and catechetical doctrine necessary to salvation (or membership in the church). St. Augustine illustrates the chief reason for this focus in his Enchiridion —protection of the fledgling church from rampant syncretism and heresy. He is also at pains to say that persons are not saved “through the merit of their own works” or by the determination of their own free will, but are dependent upon grace. He quotes Paul, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). But that his readers may understand good works are not wanting “in those who believe” Augustine is careful to quote also the following verse, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (v. 10; Enchiridion, 30-31).

Despite concern for the “rule of faith,” matters of faith soon grew too theologically complex for simple and untutored laypeople. The praeambula fidei or  antecedens fidem, as 13th-cent. scholastics called them, were “antecedent” philosophical questions concerning the nature of humanity, the character of God, the demonstrability of moral law, the problem of knowledge, and the relationship of nature and grace (to name a few). This corpus was elaborated with such dense and labored prolixity that matters of reason and faith could seem almost at odds. One of Aquinas’s major efforts was to resolve this problem: reason, he said, enables us to perceive the “divine signs”; however, it is grace which makes us to see in them a call to personal faith (Summa Theol. 2.2.q.1,a.5 ad 1). But an unfortunate effect of the sheer industry as well as method of the scholastics was that the rational element proved more amenable to philosophical analysis. The questions of grace operating at a personal level to create faith or of God’s faithfulness being the foundation of faith’s possibility, clear in both Augustine and Aquinas, tended to slip into the background. Fides quaerens intellectum, faith seeking understanding, was the privilege of a few: for the majority all that was held necessary (or possible) was fides in ecclesiam or “implicit faith.”

Partly for this reason, faith is often opposed to heresy or apostasy in medieval poetry; in Cleanness one learns of “folke in her fayth waʒt founden vntrue,” who “forloyne her fayth and folʒed other goddes” (1161-65). In St. Erkenwald the first Roman missionary to Britain, St. Augustine of Canterbury, is praised for having “preched he here the pure fayth and plantyd the trouthe” (13). The term “god fayth” (good faith) is found dozens of times in works of the Pearl Poet, Langland, and Chaucer with much the same value as in modern usage, except that on occasions it bears a residue of its origins in the notion of “God’s faithfulness” as the model for trustable intent, usually reinforcing the natural pun: “In god fayth quoth the godman with a goud wille” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1969); “In goud faythe quoth Gawayn God yow forʒelde” (1535; cf. 1264).

The Augustinian monk Martin Luther found implicit faith unsatisfactory. Studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, he discovered anew the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, in the initial sense above, and also as declared in Eph. 2:8–9. His resulting opposition to any evidence of justification by works or merit (the sale of indulgences, quantified penances, etc.) put him on his collision course with the authority of Rome, and at the same time, inadvertently perhaps, established the modern notion of faith as essentially a personal and hence subjective matter: Hier steht ich. “Every man is responsible for his own faith, and he must see to it for himself that he believes rightly. As little as another can go to hell or heaven for me, so little can he believe or disbelieve for me; and as little as he can open or shut heaven or hell for me, so little can he drive me to faith or unbelief ” (Secular Authority, 211). That is, no sacrament of the church, be it baptism or penance, can, for Luther, give “justifying faith.” Accordingly, the scholastic’s “faith informed by love” was not sufficiently articulate for Luther: sacrifice did not for him “grant” faith; sacrifice only became meaningful where faith was already established in the heart. “What justified Abel was by no means his sacrifice, but his faith; for by this he gave himself up to God, and of this his sacrifice was only the outward figure.” Luther was not fond of the Epistle of James and felt it should possibly be dropped from the canon because of its emphasis on works. His rejection of natural theology in favor of the Reformation formula sola fide, sola scriptura, solus Christus set him sharply at odds with the orthodox Catholic definition of “faith” in its sense of fides in ecclesiam.

Calvin, who disputes Augustine and Erasmus that Heb. 11:1 provides a definition of faith, nevertheless offers an Erasmian modification of Luther’s emphasis: “It is faith alone which justifies, but the faith which justifies is not alone” (Comm. on James, 2:14-25; cf. Comm. on Hebrews, 11:1; for his own definition of faith see Inst. 3.2.7, 14). On the dispute concerning faith and works, or, as it was styled, between Paul and James, Calvin observes: “When Paul says we are justified by faith, he means precisely that we have won a verdict of righteousness in the sight of God. James has quite another intention, that the man who professes himself to be faithful should demonstrate the truth of his fidelity by works” (Comm. on James, 2:21). Thus Calvin sees the arguments of Paul and James as distinct but complementary.

The 16th cent. in England was characterized by a collapsing of all previous distinctiones of discussion concerning faith into matters of catechism and conformity. The 1562 Articles of Religion of the Church of England and the Official Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches of the same year, although largely drafted by Cranmer, were an imposition of “consensus” in the form of an itemized “test of faith.” St. Thomas More had suggested in his Utopia that this was not a proper definition of the Christian state, and he is famous for reminding his accusers (in the spirit of Rom. 3:3; 14:22–23) that faith does not depend upon a consensus to be valid (see Roper’s Life). Protestant poetics, as developed in Sidney’s Defense of Poetry (1579-80), argues that poetry is to be preferred to philosophy as a means of teaching virtue because, in effect, it naturally engages the mystery of faith—meaning here something not unlike “the suspension of disbelief.” In Spenser’s Faerie Queene the personification of faith is not in the minor character Fidessa but in the Redcrosse Knight himself and in Una, who comprise faith in its institutional and unitive senses.

Seventeenth-century treatments tend to deal with a broader spectrum of the theological and psychological aspects of faith. Donne, whose language about faith in his poems is often applied to courteous or amorous analogy, reflects in his “1613 Ecologue” that “As, for divine things, faith comes from above, / So, for best civil use, all tinctures move / From higher powers” (65-67); in his verse letter to the Lady Carey he wishes “to speake things which by faith alone I see” (12), not the hidden things of God, of course, but such as he imagines of the lady in question. Similarly, in “To the Countesse of Bedford,” he parodies a theological commonplace: “Reason is our Soules left hand, Faith her right, / By these we reach divinity, that’s you.” Faith is here again a synonym for innocence of experience which nonetheless imagines it. In another theological allusion,

Then back again to implicit faith I fall,

And rest on what the Catholique voice doth teach.

That you are good: and not one Heretique

Denies it. (15-18)

On a higher plane, when he wishes to compliment George Herbert’s mother in “To the Lady Magdalene Herbert,” he compares her to her namesake, saying that in Mrs. Herbert “An active faith so highly did advance, / That she once knew, more than the Church did know, / The Resurrection.” As a priest and student of theology, however, Donne was keenly aware of the tendency of rationalism to kill personal faith and prays in his “Litanie,” “Let not my mind be blinded by more light / Nor Faith, by Reason added, lose her sight.”

Herbert’s poem on faith celebrates its power to transform vision and understanding:

   Faith makes me any thing, or all

That I beleeve is in the sacred storie:

And where sinne placeth me in Adam’s fall,

   Faith sets me higher in his glorie. (“Faith,” 16-20)

In a passage later much admired by John Wesley, Jeremy Taylor warns against equating faith with mere belief. He writes that

though a great part of mankind pretend to be sav’d by Faith, yet they know not what it is, or else wilfully mistake it, and place their hopes upon sand or the more Unstable water [i.e., their baptism as an infant]. Believing is the least thing in a justifying Faith. For Faith is a conjunction of many Ingredients; and Faith is a Covenant, and Faith is a law, and Faith is Obedience, and Faith is a work, and indeed is a sincere cleaving to and a closing with the termes of the Gospel in every instance, in every particular. (Righteousness Evangelical [1663], 205)

While neither Henry Vaughan nor Herbert would in the end disagree with Taylor, Vaughan’s conversion poems in Silex Scintillans (1650) include one on “Faith” which stresses the centrality of belief. Observing how “when the Sun of righteousness / Did once appear” the limitations of natural revelation as well as the Law and its liturgy ceased to have spiritual power in themselves, he describes how in their stead:

So are now Faith, Hope, Charity

   Through him Compleat;

Faith spans up blisse; what sin, and death

   Put us quite from,

Lest we should run for’t out of breath,

   Faith brings us home;

So that I reed no more, but say

   I do believe,

And my most loving Lord straitway

   Doth answer, Live. (35-44)

Vaughan, converted in part through the poetry of Herbert, in this respect joins with him in anticipating the mainstream of evangelical piety in the 18th cent.

At the same time a skeptical fideism influenced by developments among French Catholic writers was gaining ground in England. Its roots trace to earlier writers such as Pico della Mirandola, who published (1520) a six-book argument, itself indebted to Sextus Empiricus, dedicated to showing the insufficiency of human reason for certitude. Dividing all philosophers into three groups—the dogmatists who claim certitude, the academics who deny, and the skeptics (or Pyrrhoists) who do neither but rather doubt, Mirandola placed himself in the last category.

This line of thinking influenced Montaigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond (1580), which argues that human learning may be dangerous and quite often useless, whereas “only humilitie and submission is able to make a perfect honest man. Every one must not have the knowledge of his dutie referred to his own judgment, but ought rather to have it prescribed unto him, and not be allowed to chuse it at his pleasure and free will” (Essays [trans. Florio], 2.189). Montaigne applies this argument for the necessity of “higher authority” to “the lawes of religion and Politik decrees.”

Montaigne’s disciple Pascal, of Jansenist (French Augustinian) sympathies, and a near contemporary of Jeremy Taylor, applied Montaigne’s argument more directly to matters of faith: “If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious and supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous” (Pensées [trans. Trottier], 78). In effect, it is more rational to submit to authority in religion, says Pascal, than not: “There is nothing so conformable to reason as the disavowal of reason.”

In the Church of England, whose officially “rationalist” position was still closely reflected in Richard Hooker’s The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593-97), Montaigne and Pascal were nearly anathema, and in the 18th cent. the influence of “Port-Royal” mystical fideism was roundly repudiated in pulpit and treatise alike. The appeal of Catholic fideism of this stripe to figures as diverse as John Wesley, John Fletcher, Elizabeth Rowe, and William Cowper made the evangelical and Methodist adherents susceptible to hysterical charges of Jesuitical subterfuge, a “secret Catholicism.”

Ironically, this association was made possible by Catholic apologetic strategies for undermining Calvinist and Anglican “rational religion,” including such famous and controversial works as Father Simon’s Critical History of the Old Testament (trans. 1682)—which called into question the reliability of the text of the Bible itself. Skeptical fideism had not since Aquinas been welcomed by Catholic theologians as a means of “defending the faith” inside the Church. (Montaigne and Thomas Browne were alike put on the Index.) Hence the Jesuits opposed Jansenism in France with passionate intensity, even as they and others used parallel arguments in England to achieve apologetic objectives. Fiat Lux (1661) by the Franciscan John Canes begins by establishing a case for skepticism concerning the powers of reason and ends by leading the reader to fideist submission to the authority of the Church. Although this was “answered” by John Owen’s Animadversions (1662), in which the Independent pastor and spiritual writer analyzed Canes’s strategy, pointing out that it steers “poor unstable souls … to the Borders of Atheism, under a pretense of leading them to the Church” (156), in fact the tactic was quite effective in a number of cases.

Despite the efforts of Chillingworth (Religion of Protestants [1638]), Stillingfleet (Rational Account of the Protestant Religion [1665]), and Tillotson (The Rule of Faith [1666]), Anglican theology during this period may have, in fact, proved weakest in the point it most wished to defend—a rationally grounded faith, with the more rational buttressing for faith arguably coming from Dissenters such as Richard Baxter, John Owen, and literary apologists such as John Milton, whose prose works as well as poetry show he was not shy of attempting a rational justification of faith.

The popular mind in this period was, however, quite evidently open to such a skeptical fideism, as is well evidenced by the remarkable popularity of Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici (1642) through the 17th and early 18th cents. Browne suggests, in ways which also recall Donne’s “Litany 7,” that it is better to remain in ignorance and believe than to strive for that knowledge which seems to make belief unnecessary. Browne comments that it is the devil’s stratagem to persuade us to “raise the structures of … Reason,” while using the resulting overbalance “to undermine the edifice of … Faith” (Works, 1.31-32). The task of an intelligent person of science and learning is also then to teach “haggard and unclaimed reason to stoop to the lure of Faith. … And this I think is no vulgar part of Faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to Reason, and against the arguments of our proper Senses” (17-18). (Here Browne almost precisely anticipates Kierkegaard, who also drew on Pascal.)

Browne’s Religio Medici was one of the most important books in the life of John Dryden; Father Simons’s Critical History was another. Together they led Dryden to reject the rationalist apologetic of the Church of England and to conclude with Burnet that “there was no certain proof of the Christian religion, unless we took it from the authority of the church as infallible” (Burnet, History, 1.1.335). The choice for one convinced of the skeptical argument was thus between atheism and submission to the authority of Rome, and for Dryden, as Louis Bredvold has observed, “skepticism became a high road leading from Anglicanism to Rome” (Bredvold, 86). His own Religio Laici (1682), its title drawn from Browne, and his The Hind and the Panther (1687) reflect this movement to a Catholic definition of faith. In the first poem, that reason which “pale grows … at Religion’s sight” leads him to cry out for dependable authority: “Such an Omniscient Church we wish indeed; / ’Twere worth Both Testaments, and cast in the Creed …” (282- 83). In the second poem Dryden urges: “Let reason then Her own quarry fly … how can finite grasp Infinity?” (104-05; cf. Religio Laici, 39-40, 114).

The real issue defining faith grew out of what might have been seen in earlier times as a lack of faith; a profound need for certitude made the central question in this period one of authority. For most Protestants authority remained in the Bible itself and was mediated through individual reason and judgment; Catholics, seeing the apparent undependability of this process, found certitude in the infallible authority of Rome. For a Protestant, faith was to be grasped and integrated in personal terms; for a Catholic, faith was more pronouncedly implicit and an institutional matter.

Accordingly, literary discussions of faith in the 18th cent. tend to confuse faith as personal belief and subscription to ecclesiastical authority more readily even than their 16th- and 17th-cent. precedents. Subjectively asserted personal belief, a central feature in the spirituality of Quakers (the “inner light”), Baptists, Congregationalists, and a variety of Dissenters, was dismissed by rationalist latitudinarians such as Archbishop John Tillotson and philosopher John Locke (Discourse Concerning Human Understanding, chap. 19) as lamentable “enthusiasm.” Against the appeal to personal experience of “enthusiasts” Tillotson typically argues for the rational ethical principles of “Christian religion,” effectively a reduction of the content of faith to “observable duty” and moral principles (Sermon 1 [1695]: “Of the great Duties of Natural Religion, with the Ways and Means of Knowing them”) which are to be derived by observation from general human practice.

The question of authority, of its origin and relation to institutional faith, is explored in Swift’s ecclesiastical satire A Tale of a Tub (1704), in which Martin (i.e., Luther, but here identified with the Anglican Church), Jack (Calvin and the Dissenters), and Peter (Roman Catholicism) adulterate their inherited vestments of faith. (Although Martin comes off least scathed, he is not entirely spared.) An implicit purpose of Swift’s work is to ask the question, “What has happened to original faith?” For a Catholic like Alexander Pope, whose “Messiah” (1712) parallels Isaiah and the Pollio of Virgil, answering the question could lead to a different conclusion altogether from Dryden’s, one in which the Deist’s universalism seems a way out of the impasse. In a poem which he later affixed to his Essay on Man (1734), Pope pledges his faith to the

Father of All! In every Age,

In every Clime ador’d,

By Saint, by Savage, and by Sage,

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord! (“The Universal Prayer”)

In some respects the evangelical revival under Wesley accented the confusion, even in its own attempt to revitalize personal faith. Among the Dissenters, Isaac Watts—a rigorous Cartesian, author of a student textbook on Logick (1725), and a Calvinist—laid strong emphasis upon rational grounding for faith. However, one of his own parishioners, Elizabeth Rowe, wrote her popular poems and Devout Exercises (1737) almost completely under the influence of the Port Royal mystics. John Wesley, despite his strong rationalist tendencies, articulated a doctrine of salvation which, like Luther’s, depended on personal faith alone (“The Scripture Way of Salvation” [1765]), stressing the subjective element of personal experience as the measure of faith. For the evangelical Anglican writer Hannah More, the rational foundation of faith suggested in Calvinist theology toughened her early neo-Gothic Romanticism and made her later work outward, analytical, and apologetically directed; for the Calvinist evangelical Cowper, whose emotional instability eventually predominated in his work, the question of personal faith was increasingly entangled in subjective uncertainty. His poetry emphasizes hope (“Hope,” “Lively Hope, and Gracious Fear”) rather than certitude, and when addressing faith he takes refuge in the Augustinian-Calvinist doctrine that faith cannot be self-generated and must be given by God (“Praise for Faith,” in Olney Hymns, 65).

The subjective element in faith, even the self-generation of faith, is a bridge leading to the Romantics. The faith in “divine Nature” and in himself which Wordsworth works out in “The Prelude” is derived, like the self-generated “system” of Blake’s theology, from earlier Christian epistemologies, and faith as a means of knowing for Wordsworth is, as for Wesley, a matter of “inner light.” In “Resolution and Independence” “Genial faith, still rich in genial good” (38) is a threatened tranquility, one supported only by the resolve which gives “human strength” (112). When he reflects, however, on institutional faith, Wordsworth finds it in decay (“Decay of Piety”), and in his “Ecclesiastical Sonnets” he wonders about an earlier age in which “faith thus sanctified the warrior’s crest / While from the Papal Unity there came, / What feebler means had failed to give, one aim / Diffused thro’ all the regions of the West” (no. 9). Now, in another age, that Unity is attested “By works of Art, that shed, on the outward frame / Or worship, glory, and grace, which who shall blame / That ever looked to heaven for final rest?”

It was not the ardent atheism of Shelley and Byron, nor Coleridge’s laborious journey from Unitarianism to Trinitarian faith, nor Coleridge’s influence through Aids to Reflection (1825) on Sterling, Kingsley, and the young Christian socialists which most accurately anticipated the balance of the 19th cent. Rather, it was Wordsworth’s idealization of art as a means of faith. Aestheticism, variously developed by the Morrises, Christina Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelites, and even Oscar Wilde, is fundamentally a movement from identifying the shape of faith with its expression in art and architecture to a substitute faith in art itself, or “faith in the sublime.” As such, like the Christian socialism of Kingsley, Fabian socialism of G. B. Shaw, or Marxism of William Morris, faith is no longer faith in the biblical sense, but rather an optimism and even reverence concerning human achievement.

Matthew Arnold, an ardent opponent of faith in the biblical sense in Literature and Dogma (1873), God and the Bible (1887), and St. Paul and Protestantism (1870), could, while placing his faith in the same liberal sphere, nevertheless mourn a loss of religious faith of the sort that gives a kind of quiet certitude. His famous “Dover Beach” is, among other things, a lament for an age which has used up all its mythologies. From the perspective of the 17th cent., at least, the romanticized fideism of Tennyson would have seemed ill-formed and substantially without biblical content; the poetry of Robert Browning seems as tantalized by the power of faith (Saul) as, in earlier times, its perversion (a theme in the dramatic monologues), but nonetheless it lacks any substantial positive address to personal faith. Despite some apparent similarities in the subject matter of religious poetry, the underlying pietas had been radically altered. The theme of the loss of faith, or rejection of faith, so vivid in the fiction of Hardy (see esp. Jude the Obscure) and the poetry of Swinburne (e.g., “Hymn of Man”), overshadowed the theme of “faith given,” as in Francis Thompson’s “Hound of Heaven,” or “faith experienced,” as in the poems of Hopkins.

Much of the same was true in America. Earlier Calvinist and Puritan poets wrote confidently of a faith they securely possessed because it had been granted by God and passed on in the covenant of grace, but they had relatively little to say about the personal struggle to find faith. Faith, too, could become a matter of “manifest destiny.” James Russell Lowell celebrates the rewards of public faith in his famous Harvard “Oration Ode” (1810) when he writes “’Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, / But the high faith that failed not by the way.” The content of the faith Lowell has in mind is surely biblically derived, but tends to be literarily directed to a revelation of the divine in nature, in a manner distinct from Wordsworth only to the degree that it maintains more of the familiar language of institutional piety. William Cullen Bryant’s “Forest Hymn” represents a more widespread aspiration:

Be it ours to meditate

In those calm shades thy milder majesty,

And to the beautiful order of thy works,

Learn to confirm the order of our lives.” (cf. “I Cannot Forget with what Fervid Devotion”)

For the Calvinist rebel Melville such sentiments as Bryant (or Transcendentalists like Thoreau) expressed and the ideals of public faith of a “covenant America” were two sides of the same coin, and alike repulsive. In The Confidence-Man (1857) he has Satan himself come on board the American ship of faith, Fidele, and by taking up the arguments of skepticism familiar from Father Simon’s Critical History and Montaigne, demonstrate that there are in fact no biblical Christians on board.

In the 20th cent. public or institutional faith has largely ceased to be a vital issue. James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is one of the last major treatments of the theme of loss of faith familiar from the 19th cent. The modern era, perhaps more than any previous, emphasizes individual personal identity and has produced some literarily significant individual pursuits (and affirmations) of biblical faith. The classic case is T. S. Eliot, whose Dryden-like progress grows through a dark and weary skepticism (“Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Service,” The Waste Land, and “The Hollow Men”) to a revelation of personal faith (“Journey of the Magi”) and finally an affirmation of public faith (e.g., Four Quartets). In one of the choruses from The Rock, heavily influenced by medieval and 17th-cent. spiritual writers, Eliot asks his readers to

Remember the faith that took men from home

At the call of a wandering preacher. Our age is an age Of moderate virtue

And of moderate vice

When men will not lay down the Cross

Because they will never assume it.

Yet nothing is impossible, nothing,

To men of faith and conviction.

Let us therefore make perfect our will.

God, help us. (8) Novelist and Catholic convert Graham Greene views the age as one of frankly immoderate vice. Brighton Rock (1938) introduces his notion of the only plausible ground of faith, not a rational theology but a realization of the “otherness,” “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.” The End of the Affair (1951) is designed to suggest, from a Catholic perspective, the modern need for personal faith; his earlier novel The Power and the Glory (1940) in its penultimate scene offers a back-porch analysis of the divergence between a subjective Lutheran and rigorously objective Catholic definition of faith.

Attempts at a traditionalist theology of faith have been made from the Catholic perspective by G. K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy; The Everlasting Man) and from the Anglican by C. S. Lewis (Surprised by Joy; Mere Christianity), both writers enjoying wide popularity as Christian apologists, lay theologians, and writers of fiction. In these authors, as in the poets David Jones (Anathemata; The Sleeping Lord) and R. S. Thomas (Pieta; Laboratories of the Spirit), there is evident nostalgia for the clearer definitions of an earlier age, but also a principled working out of a biblical tradition of faith in the secular modern context.

While American literature of the later 20th cent. offers fewer notable examples of such declarative addresses to faith, a similar recrudescence is discernible. Sometimes, as in the case of John Updike, it comes in the voice of American antinomianism, and hence, as in Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” surprises:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

The stark “either/or,” on reflection not so surprising in a Lutheran and American writer, leads Updike to impatient rebuke of 19th- and 20th-cent. poetry about faith:

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door. (Telephone Poles and Other Poems, 72-73; cf. 1 Cor. 15:17; Acts 14:27)

In another fashion, Flannery O’Connor makes much the same point in her short story “The Enduring Chill.” In it a skeptical young student, embarrassed by what he imagines to be intellectually lowbrow origins, aspires to affect a Catholic prospect on faith partly because he imagines it to be much more “rational” and partly because he hopes it will offend his Baptist mother. The humor of the story lies in the young man’s outrage and defeat when the garrulous Irish Jesuit priest who comes to give him last rites insists that the “faith which comes by hearing” can only be obtained by his first accepting the truth about himself: “How can the Holy Ghost fill your soul when it’s full of trash?” the priest roars. “The Holy Ghost will not come until you see yourself as you are—a lazy, ignorant, conceited youth!” (The Complete Stories, 377; cf. 2 Tim. 1:6–14).

See also theological virtues.

Bibliography. Brantley, R. Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism (1984); Bredvold, L. The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (1934; rpt. 1962); Cragg, G. R. From Puritanism to Romanticism (1984); Grant, P. Six Modern Authors and Problems of Belief (1979); Lewalski, B. Protestant Poetics (1979); Ridenour, G. M. “Justification by Faith in Two Romantic Poems.” WC 10 (1979), 351-52; Vos, A. Aquinas, Calvin, and Contemporary Protestant Thought (1985).

Jeffrey, D. L. (1992). A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.

3:

Faith —  Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phil. 1:27; 2 Thess. 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests. 

   Faith is the result of teaching (Rom. 10:14–17). Knowledge is an essential element in all faith, and is sometimes spoken of as an equivalent to faith (John 10:38; 1 John 2:3). Yet the two are distinguished in this respect, that faith includes in it assent, which is an act of the will in addition to the act of the understanding. Assent to the truth is of the essence of faith, and the ultimate ground on which our assent to any revealed truth rests is the veracity of God. 

   Historical faith is the apprehension of and assent to certain statements which are regarded as mere facts of history. 

   Temporary faith is that state of mind which is awakened in men (e.g., Felix) by the exhibition of the truth and by the influence of religious sympathy, or by what is sometimes styled the common operation of the Holy Spirit. 

   Saving faith is so called because it has eternal life inseparably connected with it. It cannot be better defined than in the words of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism: “Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel.” 

   The object of saving faith is the whole revealed Word of God. Faith accepts and believes it as the very truth most sure. But the special act of faith which unites to Christ has as its object the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 7:38; Acts 16:31). This is the specific act of faith by which a sinner is justified before God (Rom. 3:22, 25; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9; John 3:16–36; Acts 10:43; 16:31). In this act of faith the believer appropriates and rests on Christ alone as Mediator in all his offices. 

   This assent to or belief in the truth received upon the divine testimony has always associated with it a deep sense of sin, a distinct view of Christ, a consenting will, and a loving heart, together with a reliance on, a trusting in, or resting in Christ. It is that state of mind in which a poor sinner, conscious of his sin, flees from his guilty self to Christ his Saviour, and rolls over the burden of all his sins on him. It consists chiefly, not in the assent given to the testimony of God in his Word, but in embracing with fiducial reliance and trust the one and only Saviour whom God reveals. This trust and reliance is of the essence of faith. By faith the believer directly and immediately appropriates Christ as his own. Faith in its direct act makes Christ ours. It is not a work which God graciously accepts instead of perfect obedience, but is only the hand by which we take hold of the person and work of our Redeemer as the only ground of our salvation. 

   Saving faith is a moral act, as it proceeds from a renewed will, and a renewed will is necessary to believing assent to the truth of God (1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4). Faith, therefore, has its seat in the moral part of our nature fully as much as in the intellectual. The mind must first be enlightened by divine teaching (John 6:44; Acts 13:48; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 1:17, 18) before it can discern the things of the Spirit. 

   Faith is necessary to our salvation (Mark 16:16), not because there is any merit in it, but simply because it is the sinner’s taking the place assigned him by God, his falling in with what God is doing. 

   The warrant or ground of faith is the divine testimony, not the reasonableness of what God says, but the simple fact that he says it. Faith rests immediately on, “Thus saith the Lord.” But in order to this faith the veracity, sincerity, and truth of God must be owned and appreciated, together with his unchangeableness. God’s word encourages and emboldens the sinner personally to transact with Christ as God’s gift, to close with him, embrace him, give himself to Christ, and take Christ as his. That word comes with power, for it is the word of God who has revealed himself in his works, and especially in the cross. God is to be believed for his word’s sake, but also for his name’s sake. 

   Faith in Christ secures for the believer freedom from condemnation, or justification before God; a participation in the life that is in Christ, the divine life (John 14:19; Rom. 6:4–10; Eph. 4:15,16, etc.); “peace with God” (Rom. 5:1); and sanctification (Acts 26:18; Gal. 5:6; Acts 15:9). 

   All who thus believe in Christ will certainly be saved (John 6:37, 40; 10:27, 28; Rom. 8:1). 

   The faith=the gospel (Acts 6:7; Rom. 1:5; Gal. 1:23; 1 Tim. 3:9; Jude 1:3). 

Easton, M. (1996, c1897). Easton's Bible dictionary. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

4:

FAITH Belief in that which has no tangible proof; trust in God.

Definition of Faith In the OT and NT, “faith” carries several meanings. It may mean simple trust in God or in the Word of God, and at other times faith almost becomes equivalent to active obedience. It may also find expression in the affirmation of a creedal statement. Thus, it also comes to mean the entire body of received Christian teaching or truth—“the truth.” In Colossians 2:7, the term suggests something to be accepted as a whole and embodied in personal life. In 2 Timothy 4:7, Paul witnesses to having “kept the faith.”

Faith in the Old Testament The OT also strongly emphasizes faith as confidence in God’s covenant or in the covenant God made with Abraham and his descendants. The call of Abraham and the promise that his descendants would be used in the history of redemption became the basis of the narratives of the OT, being seen as the working out of that covenant. Once the nation Israel was brought into being, God sustained and protected it. The exodus from Egypt is a prominent indication that God was at work restoring his people to the Promised Land. The obedience of the people of God as the proper expression of faith is seen clearly in the OT. Without seeing God, his people believed and obeyed him. Abraham left his native land to go into unknown territory. The people of Israel left Egypt following the leadership of God to a land they could not see. The promise of God gave them courage to possess the land promised to them. After the exodus, the covenant of Abraham was confirmed with the people of Israel by the sprinkling of blood (Ex 24:6–7). There was to be strict obedience to God’s commands as an expression of faith. This response of human faith to the Lord’s faithfulness was national and collective. There also were commands to, and instances of, personal faith.

Not only the narrative and legal portions of the OT but also the poetic and prophetic writings emphasize faith. The Psalms abound in expressions of personal confidence in the Lord even in dark times. Habakkuk points out that “the righteous shall live by his faith” (Hb 2:4). From such instances it is clear that, as the Lord’s education of Israel proceeded, the matter of faith in God’s faithfulness became more and more a matter of individual and personal response, and it is in the Prophets that several ingredients—such as trust, obedience, fear, and certainty—blend into the understanding of such personal faith.

Faith in the New Testament As over against the OT, where the accent is on the faithfulness of God, in the NT the emphasis is placed on the active, responding faith of the hearer to the promised, final revelation in the Messiah, Jesus. Both verb and noun regularly describe the adequate response of people to Jesus’ word and to the gospel.

The Synoptic Gospels The most striking feature of the synoptic Gospels (quoted below from the rsv) is the use of faith without identifying its object: “If you have faith as a grain of mustard seed” (Mt 17:20); “When Jesus saw their faith” (Mk 2:5); “Your faith has saved you” (Lk 7:50). Jesus is portrayed as one who by his work and word opens the door to faith and makes faith possible. The question is not whether the faith is in Jesus or in the Father; the implication is undoubtedly both, but as with every true bearer of the Word of God, the eye of faith is turned to the One who sends.

On more than one occasion, Jesus denies the request for a miracle to substantiate his words (Mt 12:38–39; 16:1–4). Faith is response to the Word alone without any supporting props. No sign is to be given but the sign of Jonah. In the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19–31), Jesus denies the request for the spectacular and insists that the hearer must respond to the word given to him (cf. Jn 20:29). The Word demands self-surrender and commitment. Hence, the very nature of the Word and of faith becomes an obstacle to the proud and the powerful.

Faith is the medium by which the power of God is made visible. It moves mountains, heals the sick, and is the means of entrance into the kingdom. It may be mingled with doubt, as with the father who sought healing for his son (“I believe; help my unbelief!” [Mk 9:24]), or as with John the Baptist in prison, who, even with his doubts, was confirmed by Jesus as the greatest of the offspring of woman (Mt 11:2–15). Peter’s (and the other disciples’) perception was faulty, but Jesus affirms Peter’s confession as the foundation stone of the church. The synoptic Gospels portray the early faith of the disciples in all its limitations and weaknesses, yet it is still faith in that it is their positive response to Jesus’ word and work.

The Fourth Gospel Faith is an especially significant concept in the Gospel of John (quoted below from the rsv), though the word (in the Greek) occurs only as a verb. Quite often the reference has to do with the acceptance that something is true, that is, simple credence, or belief: “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me” (Jn 14:11); “If you believed Moses, you would believe me” (Jn 5:46).

Even more significant is the special expression “to believe into” in the sense of putting one’s trust into another. The particular form of the expression is without parallel before the fourth Gospel and may well express the strong sense of personal trust in the eternal Word made flesh. In John 3:16, whoever puts trust in him has eternal life. Those who put their trust in him are given power to become sons of God—to be born of God (Jn 1:12). They will never thirst (6:35); they will live, even though they die (11:25).

In other places, John speaks of trust or faith in an absolute sense, that is, without referring to the one in whom trust is placed. In John 11:15 Jesus arrives after the death of Lazarus and is glad “in order that you might believe.” The outcome is going to be faith. Similarly, in the prologue (1:7), John the Baptist bears witness in order that through him all might believe. As Jesus satisfies the doubt of Thomas concerning the resurrection, he says, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe” (20:29). In these and other passages the fundamental outcome of Jesus’ witness to himself is trust.

Faith and knowledge are closely related. In John 6:69 Peter says, “We have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” In his priestly prayer Jesus says that eternal life is to “know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Also, God is seen through the eyes of faith. No one has ever seen God, but the Only Begotten has revealed him (1:18). He who has seen Jesus has seen the Father (14:9).

To believe is also expressed in the verb “receive.” Those who receive Christ are given power to become the sons of God (Jn 1:12). Trust is that form of knowing or seeing by which the glory of God (1:14; 17:4) is made present.

Paul’s Writings In Paul’s letters (quoted below from the rsv), he writes about faith from a number of angles. He sets faith over against “works of the law” as the only and true basis for righteousness (Rom 1–4; Gal 1–4) and appeals to Abraham to prove his point: “Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness” (Gn 15:6; cf. Rom 4:5; Gal 3:6). This is entirely apart from the law (Rom 3:21); righteousness is the gift of God through faith in Christ, specifically in his atoning work. Behind Paul’s conviction lies his awareness of the radical and pervasive sinfulness of humans that renders each one helpless. Humanity is dead in sin but is made alive by faith in the word and work of Jesus mediated through the gospel.

Faith, then, is faith in Jesus Christ. The number of metaphors Paul employs to describe the consequences of faith is staggering. It is by faith that believers are justified (Rom 5:1), reconciled (2 Cor 5:18), redeemed (Eph 1:7), made alive (2:5), adopted into the family of God (Rom 8:15–16), re-created (2 Cor 5:17), transported into a new kingdom (Col 1:13), and set free (Gal 5:1). Faith is, for Paul, the sine qua non of every aspect of salvation, from the grace that convicts to the receiving of the full inheritance at the coming of the Lord.

In Paul’s letters, faith is bound up with love so that the great exponent of justification by faith becomes also the articulate exponent of distinctive Christian love. To say that faith is indispensable to salvation is only part of the truth, for faith expresses itself through love: “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal 5:6); “If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing” (1 Cor 13:2). Love is both the genesis and the ultimate expression of faith. Hence, even for Paul there can be no total separation between faith and works. This love of which Paul speaks is the essential fruit of the Spirit through whom the life of faith is lived. Only by virtue of the indwelling Spirit does faith find expression in love.

General Epistles James speaks of faith as being completed by works (Jas 2:22). He opposed that concept of faith that thinks primarily of creedal assent, of believing that something is true without acting upon it. James, like Paul, assumes the primacy of faith, but he is warning against those who would draw wrong conclusions. Faith apart from works is not faith; it is barren (v 20). The practical dimension of faith is the burden of much of this epistle.

The writer of Hebrews recognizes that faith has always been characteristic of the people of God and their specially called leaders. Faith makes substantial what is otherwise nebulous and uncertain; it makes evidential what is not visible. By faith the people of God have a more certain ground for their lives and their actions than the world is able to discern (Heb 11:1). The great cloud of witnesses (12:1) bear testimony by their faith to the faithfulness of God.

Faith is opened up by the Word of God, finds expression through the Holy Spirit who is given, and bears witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

Elwell, W. A., & Comfort, P. W. (2001). Tyndale Bible dictionary. Tyndale reference library (471). Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale House Publishers.

5:

FAITH (Gk. pistis). Belief or trust—especially in a higher power. The fundamental idea in Scripture is steadfastness and faithfulness.

Scripture’s Use of the Word.  The word is used in Scripture (1) most frequently in a subjective sense, denoting a moral and spiritual quality of individuals, by virtue of which men are held in relations of confidence in God and fidelity to Him; and (2) in an objective sense, meaning the body of truth, moral and religious, which God has revealed—that which men believe. Examples of this use of the word are not numerous, though they occur occasionally, as in Phil. 1:27; 1 Tim. 1:19; 6:20–21; Jude 3, 20.

The word occurs only twice in our English version of the OT, the idea being expressed by other terms, such as “trust,” etc.

This article is confined in the further discussion to faith in the sense first named. The following points are of chief importance:

Philosophical.  Faith, viewed philosophically, must be regarded as lying at the basis of all knowledge. Anselm’s famous utterance “Crede ut intelligas,” “Believe that you may know,” expresses the truth in contrast with the words of Abelard, “Intellige ut credas,” “Know that you may believe.” Truths perceived intuitively imply faith in the intuitions. Truths or facts arrived at by logical processes, or processes of reasoning, are held to be known because, first of all, we have confidence in the laws of the human mind. Our knowledge obtained through the senses has underneath it faith in the senses. To this extent Goethe spoke wisely when he said, “I believe in the five senses.” A large part of knowledge rests upon human testimony, and of course this involves faith in the testimony.

The distinction between matters of faith and matters of knowledge must not be drawn too rigidly, inasmuch as all matters of knowledge are in some measure matters also of faith. The distinction, when properly made, chiefly recognizes the different objects to which our convictions relate, and the different methods by which we arrive at these convictions. The convictions themselves may be as strong in the one case as in the other.

Theological.  Faith in the theological sense contains two elements recognized in the Scriptures: there is an element that is intellectual and also an element, of even deeper importance, that is moral. Faith is not simply the assent of the intellect to revealed truth; it is the practical submission of the entire man to the guidance and control of such truth. “The demons also believe, and shudder.”

Indispensable as is the assent of the intellect, that alone does not constitute the faith upon which the Scriptures lay such emphasis. The essential idea is rather that of fidelity, faithfulness, steadfastness. Or, as has been well said, “Faith, in its essential temper, is that elevation of soul by which it aspires to the good, the true, and the divine.” In illustration may be cited particularly John 3:18–21; Rom. 2:7; 4:5; Heb. 11; James 2:14–26.

Intellectual.  Viewed more particularly with reference to its intellectual aspect, faith is properly defined as the conviction of the reality of the truths and facts that God has revealed, such conviction resting solely upon the testimony of God.

These truths and facts are to a large extent beyond the reach of the ordinary human processes of acquiring knowledge. Still, they are of the utmost importance in relation to human life and salvation. God has therefore revealed them. And they who accept them must do so upon the trustworthiness of the divine testimony. This testimony is contained in the Holy Scriptures. It is impressed moreover by the special sanction of the Holy Spirit. (See John 3:11, 31–33; 16:8–11; 1 John 5:10–11, and many other places.)

Results of Faith.  They who receive the divine testimony and yield to it become partakers of heavenly knowledge. Their knowledge comes by faith, yet nonetheless it is knowledge. The Scriptures, it is true, recognize the difference between walking by faith and walking by sight, and thus the difference between the objects and methods of sense-perception and those of faith. Also the difference is noted between the acquisition of human learning and philosophy and the contents of the divine revelation. But still the Scriptures represent true believers as persons who “know the things freely given to us by God.” Christ said to His disciples, “To you it has been granted to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God” (Luke 8:10; see also John 8:31–32; 1 Cor. 1:5–6, 21–30; 2:9–16; Eph. 1:17; 1 Tim. 2:4).

Reason and Faith.  The relation of reason to faith is that of subordination, and yet not that of opposition. The truths of revelation are in many cases above reason, though not against it. Such truths were revealed because reason could not discover them. They are therefore to be accepted, though the reason cannot demonstrate them. But this inability of reason to discover or to demonstrate is one thing; irrationality, as involving absurdity, or contradiction of the intuitions of the intellect or conscience, or contradiction of well-established truth, is another.

Reason has its justly recognized and appropriate function in examining and weighing the evidences of revelation, as well as in interpreting or determining the force of the terms in which the revelation is given. But when the reality and meaning of revelation are thus reached, reason has done its work, and it remains for faith to accept the contents of the revelation, whatever they may be.

It should be said, however, that the evidence of the saving truth of revelation, most convincing for many, is not that which appeals directly to reason. Many lack ability or opportunity to investigate the rational evidences of Christianity. But to them with all others the announcement of the truth comes attended by the ministration or direct testimony of the Holy Spirit. They are thus made to feel that they ought to repent and believe the gospel. If they yield to this conviction they obtain forgiveness of their sins and become new creatures in Christ Jesus. The Spirit bears witness to their acceptance with God. And thus in the experience of salvation they have unquestionable proof of the reality of revelation. In all this reason is subordinate to faith but by no means opposed to it (1 Cor. 1:21–31; John 16:8–11; Rom. 8:14–17; 1 John 5:9–11).

Condition of Salvation.  As has been assumed in the foregoing, faith is the condition of salvation. It is not the procuring cause but the condition, or instrumental cause. It is frequently associated in the Scriptures with repentance; thus the conditions of salvation, as commonly stated in Protestant doctrine, are repentance and faith. But in reality true faith and true repentance are not separate or to be distinguished too rigidly from each other. Faith is fundamental. Repentance implies faith. Faith is not saving faith unless it includes repentance. (See Repentance.) Saving faith may therefore be properly defined for those who have the light of the gospel as such belief in the Lord Jesus Christ as leads one to submit completely to the authority of Christ and to put complete and exclusive trust in Him for salvation. (See John 3:14–16.)

Faith, which is the condition of salvation, is also, in an important measure, one of the results of salvation. In the justified and regenerated soul, faith is deepened and developed by the influence of the Holy Spirit. In its essential quality faith is unchanged, but it acquires greater steadiness, and as the Word of God is studied and its contents spiritually apprehended faith becomes broader and richer in the truths and facts that it grasps.

Thus in its beginning and completion faith is one of the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). e.mcc.

bibliography: W. H. P. Hatch, The Pauline Idea of Faith (1917); C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (1935); J. Barr, Semantics of Biblical Language (1961); J. G. Machen, What Is Faith? (1962); B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies (1962); N. Turner, Christian Words (1980), pp. 153–58.

Unger, M. F., Harrison, R. K., Vos, H. F., Barber, C. J., & Unger, M. F. (1988). The new Unger's Bible dictionary. Revision of: Unger's Bible dictionary. 3rd ed. c1966. (Rev. and updated ed.). Chicago: Moody Press.

6:

FAITH.

I. In the Old Testament

In the OT the word ‘faith’ is found twice only in av (Dt. 32:20; Hab. 2:4), but rsv has it eighteen times. Twelve times it is used of breaking faith (e.g. Lv. 5:15; Dt. 32:51) or acting in good faith (Jdg. 9:15f.), while the other six passages speak rather of trust. We should not, however, conclude from the rarity of the word that faith is unimportant in the OT, for the idea, if not the word, is frequent. It is usually expressed by verbs such as ‘believe’, ‘trust’ or ‘hope’, and such abound.

We may begin with such a passage as Ps. 26:1, ‘Vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord without wavering.’ It is often said that the OT looks for men to be saved on the basis of their deeds, but this passage puts the matter in its right perspective. The Psalmist does indeed appeal to his ‘integrity’, but this does not mean that he trusts in himself or his deeds. His trust is in God, and his ‘integrity’ is the evidence of that trust. The OT is a long book, and the truths about salvation are stated in various ways. The writers do not always make the distinctions that we, with the NT in our hands, might wish. But close examination will reveal that in the OT, as in the NT, the basic demand is for a right attitude to God, i.e. for faith. Cf. Ps. 37:3ff., ‘Trust in the Lord, and do good … Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.’ Here there is no question but that the Psalmist is looking for an upright life. But there is no question, either, that basically he is advocating an attitude. He calls on men to put their trust in the Lord, which is only another way of telling them to live by faith. Sometimes men are urged to trust the Word of God (Ps. 119:42), but more usually it is faith in God himself that is sought. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart; and do not rely on your own insight’ (Pr. 3:5).

The latter part of this verse frowns upon trust in one’s own powers, and this thought is frequent. ‘He who trusts in his own mind is a fool’ (Pr. 28:26). A man may not trust to his own righteousness (Ezk. 33:13). Ephraim is castigated for trusting ‘in your chariots (Heb. ‘way’) and in the multitude of your warriors’ (Ho. 10:13). Trust in idols is often denounced (Is. 42:17; Hab. 2:18). Jeremiah warns against confidence in anything human, ‘Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart turns away from the Lord’ (Je. 17:5). The list of things not to be trusted in might be multiplied, and it is the more impressive alongside the even more lengthy list of passages urging trust in the Lord. It is clear that the men of the OT thought of the Lord as the one worthy object of trust. They put not their trust in anything they did, or that other men did, or that the gods did. Their trust was in the Lord alone. Sometimes this is picturesquely expressed. Thus he is ‘my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom 1 take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold’ (Ps. 18:2). Faith may be confidently rested in a God like that.

Special mention must be made of Abraham. His whole life gives evidence of a spirit of trustfulness, of a deep faith. Of him it is recorded that ‘he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness’ (Gn. 15:6). This text is taken up by NT writers, and the fundamental truth it expresses developed more fully.

II. In the New Testament

a. General use of the word

In the NT faith is exceedingly prominent. The Gk. noun pistis and the verb pisteuō both occur more than 240 times, while the adjective pistos is found 67 times. This stress on faith is to be seen against the background of the saving work of God in Christ. Central to the NT is the thought that God sent his Son to be the Saviour of the world. Christ accomplished man’s salvation by dying an atoning death on Calvary’s cross. Faith is the attitude whereby a man abandons all reliance in his own efforts to obtain salvation, be they deeds of piety, of ethical goodness or anything else. It is the attitude of complete trust in Christ, of reliance on him alone for all that salvation means. When the Philippian jailer asked, ‘Men, what must I do to be saved?‘, Paul and Silas answered without hesitation, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved’ (Acts 16:30f.). It is ‘whoever believes in him’ that does not perish, but has everlasting life (Jn. 3:16). Faith is the one way by which men receive salvation.

The verb pisteuō is often followed by ‘that’, indicating that faith is concerned with facts, though there is more to it than that. James tells us that the devils believe ‘that God is one’, but this faith does not profit them (Jas. 2:19). pisteuō may be followed by the simple dative, when the meaning is that of giving credence to, of accepting as true, what someone says. Thus Jesus reminds the Jews that ‘John came … in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him’ (Mt. 21:32). There is no question here of faith in the sense of trust. The Jews simply did not believe what John said. This may be so also with respect to Jesus, as in Jn. 8:45, ‘you do not believe me’, or the next verse, ‘if I tell the truth, why do you not believe me?’ Yet it must not be forgotten that there is an intellectual content to faith. Consequently this construction is sometimes used where saving faith is in mind, as in Jn. 5:24, ‘he who hears my word and believes him who sent me, has eternal life’. The man who really believes God will, of course, act on that belief. In other words, a genuine belief that what God has revealed is true will issue in a true faith.

The characteristic construction for saving faith is that wherein the verb pisteuō is followed by the preposition eis. Literally this means to believe ‘into’. It denotes a faith which, so to speak, takes a man out of himself, and puts him into Christ (cf. the NT expression frequently used of Christians, being ‘in Christ’). This experience may also be referred to with the term ‘faith-union with Christ’. It denotes not simply a belief that carries an intellectual assent, but one wherein the believer cleaves to his Saviour with all his heart. The man who believes in this sense abides in Christ and Christ in him (Jn. 15:4). Faith is not accepting certain things as true, but trusting a Person, and that Person Christ.

Sometimes pisteuō is followed by epi, ‘upon’. Faith has a firm basis. We see this construction in Acts 9:42, where, when the raising of Tabitha was known, ‘many believed in the Lord’. The people had seen what Christ could do, and they rested their faith ‘on’ him. Sometimes faith rests on the Father, as when Paul speaks of believing ‘in him that raised from the dead Jesus our Lord’ (Rom. 4:24).

Very characteristic of the NT is the absolute use of the verb. When Jesus stayed with the Samaritans many of them ‘believed because of his word’ (Jn. 4:41). There is no need to add what they believed, or in whom they believed. Faith is so central to Christianity that one may speak of ‘believing’ without the necessity for further clarification. Christians are simply ‘believers’. This use extends throughout the NT, and is not confined to any particular writer. We may fairly conclude that faith is fundamental.

The tenses of the verb pisteuō are also instructive. The aorist tense points to s single act in past time and indicates the determinative character of faith. When a man comes to believe he commits himself decisively to Christ. The present tense has the idea of continuity. Faith is not a passing phase. It is a continuing attitude. The perfect tense combines both ideas. It speaks of a present faith which is continuous with a past act of belief. The man who believes enters a permanent state. Perhaps we should notice here that the noun ‘faith’ sometimes has the article ‘the faith’, i.e. the whole body of Christian teaching, as when Paul speaks of the Colossians as being ‘established in the faith’, adding ‘just as you were taught’ (Col. 2:7).

b. Particular uses of the word

(i) In the Synoptic Gospels faith is often connected with healing, as when Jesus said to the woman who touched his garment in the crowd, ‘Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well’ (Mt. 9:22). But these Gospels are also concerned with faith in a wider sense. Mark, for example, records the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘All things are possible to him who believes’ (Mk. 9:23). Similarly, the Lord speaks of the great results of having ‘faith as a grain of mustard seed’ (Mt. 17:20; Lk. 17:6). It is clear that our Lord called for faith in himself personally. The characteristic Christian demand for faith in Christ rests ultimately on Christ’s own requirement.

(ii) In the Fourth Gospel faith occupies a very prominent place, the verb pisteuō being found 98 times. Curiously the noun pistis, ‘faith’, is never employed. This is possibly due to its use in circles of a Gnostic type. There are indications that John had such opponents in mind, and it may be that he wanted to avoid using a term of which they were very fond. Or he may have preferred the more dynamic meaning conveyed by the verb. Whatever his reason, he uses the verb pisteuō more often than any other writer in the NT, three times as often, in fact, as the first three Gospels put together. His characteristic construction is that with the preposition eis, ‘to believe into’, ‘to believe on’. The important thing is the connection between the believer and the Christ. Accordingly, John speaks again and again of believing in him or of believing ‘in the name’ of Christ (e.g. Jn. 3:18). The ‘name’, for men of antiquity, was a way of summing up the whole personality. It stood for all that the man was. Believing on the name of Christ, then, means believing in all that he is essentially in himself. Jn. 3:18 also says, ‘He who believes in him is not condemned: but he who does not believe is condemned already.’ It is characteristic of Johannine teaching that eternal issues are decided here and now. Faith does not simply give men assurance of everlasting life at some unspecified time in the future. It gives them everlasting life here and now. He that believes on the Son ‘has’ everlasting life (3:36; cf. 5:24, etc.).

(iii) In Acts, with its story of vigorous missionary advance, it is not surprising that the characteristic expression is the use of the aorist tense, to indicate the act of decision. Luke records many occasions wherein people came to put their trust in Christ. Other constructions are found, and both the continuing state and the permanent results of belief find mention. But decision is the characteristic thing.

(iv) For Paul, faith is the typical Christian attitude. He does not share John’s antipathy to the noun, but uses it more than twice as often as he uses the verb. It occurs in connection with some of his leading ideas. Thus in Rom. 1:16 he speaks of the gospel as ‘the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith’. It means a great deal to Paul that Christianity is more than a system of good advice. It not only tells men what they ought to do, but gives them power to do it. Again and again Paul contrasts mere words with power, always with a view to emphasizing that the power of the Holy Spirit of God is seen in the lives of Christians. This power becomes available to a man only when he believes. There is no substitute for faith.

Much of Paul’s controversial writing centres round the dispute with the Judaizers. These men insisted that it was not enough for Christians to be baptized. They must also be circumcised, and, being thus admitted to Judaism, endeavour to keep the whole of the Mosaic law. They made obedience to the law a necessary pre-condition of salvation, at least in the fullest sense of that term. Paul will have none of this. He insists that men can do nothing, nothing at all, to bring about their salvation. All has been done by Christ, and no man can add anything to the perfection of Christ’s finished work. So it is that Paul insists that men are justified ‘by faith’ (Rom. 5:1). The doctrine of *justification by faith lies at the very heart of Paul’s message. Whether with this terminology or not, he is always putting the idea forward. He vigorously combats any idea of the efficacy of good deeds. ‘A man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ,’ he writes to the Galatians and proceeds, ‘even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law.’ He adds resoundingly ‘because by works of the law shall no one be justified’ (Gal. 2:16). Clearly, for Paul, faith means the abandonment of all reliance on one’s ability to merit salvation. It is a trustful acceptance of God’s gift in Christ, a reliance on Christ, Christ alone, for all that salvation means.

Another outstanding feature of Pauline theology is the very large place the apostle gives to the work of the Holy Spirit. He thinks of all Christians as indwelt by the Spirit (Rom. 8:9, 14), and he connects this too with faith. Thus he writes to the Ephesians concerning Christ, ‘you also, who have believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, which is the guarantee of our inheritance’ (Eph. 1:13f.). Sealing represented the mark of ownership, a metaphor readily understood in an age when many could not read. The Spirit within believers is God’s mark of ownership, and this mark is put on men only as they believe. The apostle goes on to speak of the Spirit as ‘the guarantee (Gk. arrabōn) of our inheritance’. Paul employs here a word which in the 1st century meant a down-payment, i.e. a payment which at one and the same time was part of the agreed price and the guarantee that the remainder would be forthcoming. Thus when a man believes he receives the Holy Spirit as part of the life in the age to come, and as an assurance that the remainder will infallibly follow. (*Earnest.)

(v) The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews sees that faith has always been a characteristic of the people of God. In his great portrait gallery in Heb. 11 he reviews the worthies of the past, showing how one by one they illustrate the great theme that ‘without faith it is impossible to please’ God (Heb. 11:6). He is particularly interested in the opposition of faith to sight. Faith is ‘the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (Heb. 11:1). He emphasizes the point that men who had nothing in the way of outward evidence to support them nevertheless retained a firm hold on the promises of God. In other words, they walked by faith, not by sight.

(vi) Of the other writers in the NT we must notice James, for he has often been held to be in opposition to Paul in this matter. Where Paul insists that a man is justified by faith and not by works James maintains ‘that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone’ (Jas. 2:24). There is no more than a verbal contradiction, however. The kind of ‘faith’ that James is opposing is not that warm personal trust in a living Saviour of which Paul speaks. It is a faith which James himself describes: ‘You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder’ (Jas. 2:19). He has in mind an intellectual assent to certain truths, an assent which is not backed up by a life lived in accordance with those truths (Jas. 2:15f.). So far is James from opposing faith in the full sense that he everywhere presupposes it. Right at the beginning of his Epistle he speaks naturally of ‘the testing of your faith’ (Jas. 1:3), and he exhorts his readers, ‘show no partiality as you hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory’ (Jas. 2:1). He criticizes a wrong faith but assumes that everyone will recognize the need for a right faith. Moreover, by ‘works’ James does not mean what Paul means by that term. Paul thinks of obedience to the commands of the law regarded as a system whereby a man may merit salvation. For James the law is ‘the law of liberty’ (Jas. 2:12). His ‘works’ look uncommonly like ‘the fruit of the Spirit’ of which Paul speaks. They are warm deeds of love springing from a right attitude to God. They are the fruits of faith. What James objects to is the claim that faith is there when there is no fruit to attest it.

Faith is clearly one of the most important concepts in the whole NT. Everywhere it is required and its importance insisted upon. Faith means abandoning all trust in one’s own resources. Faith means casting oneself unreservedly on the mercy of God. Faith means laying hold on the promises of God in Christ, relying entirely on the finished work of Christ for salvation, and on the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit of God for daily strength. Faith implies complete reliance on God and full obedience to God.

Bibliography. D. M. Baillie, Faith in God, 1964; B. B. Warfield in HDB; J. G. Machen, What Is Faith?, 1925; G. C. Berkouwer, Faith and Justification2, 1954; J. Hick, Faith and Knowledge2, 1966; O. Becker, O. Michel, NIDNTT 1, pp. 587–606; R. Bultmann, TDNT 6, pp. 1–11; A. Weiser et al., TDNT 6, pp. 174–228.  l.m.

Wood, D. R. W., Wood, D. R. W., & Marshall, I. H. (1996, c1982, c1962). New Bible Dictionary. Includes index. (electronic ed. of 3rd ed.) (357). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

7:

faith, in the Bible trust in, or reliance on, God who is himself trustworthy. The nt and the Greek ot express the understanding of faith primarily with two terms (pistis, pisteuein), which are related to the primary ot verb ‘to be true’ or ‘be trustworthy’ (’aman). The ot concept is considerably broader than this term and its cognates, yet ’aman remains the most profound expression to describe faith in the ot. 

Faith in the OT: It is important to recognize the context in which the concept of faith functions in the ot. God stands at the center; it is his initiative and faithfulness as described by the ot writers in creation, in the Exodus event, in the covenant and the subsequent history of Israel that allow his people to respond to his fidelity. Since God’s promises are intended for his people, the emphasis of faith is not focused primarily on the individual, but on the relationship of the people of Israel to God. However, in the Psalms, and to a limited extent in Deutero-Isaiah (i.e., Isa. 40-55) and elsewhere, the individual expression of faith is given attention. The prophets intensify the covenant dimension of faith and in Isaiah the imagery of faith is given a new and creative impulse. Throughout the ot the focus of faith is exclusively on the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: ‘And Israel saw the great work which the Lord did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord; and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses’ (Exod. 14:31). God’s mighty acts allow and call for trust and belief in him. 

The Hebrew verb means, for the most part, ‘to be true’; lying behind this is the root meaning ‘solid,’ ‘firm.’ This sense of ‘to be true’ is intensified in the passive (Niphal) form of the verb so that one can speak of a person as ‘trustworthy’ or ‘reliable.’ The causative (Hiphil) form of the verb suggests the acceptance of someone as trustworthy or dependable. Thus, one accepts God as trustworthy and believes his word (Deut. 9:23) and his promises, as is the case with Abraham in Gen. 15:1-6: ‘And he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness.’ It has been argued that it is the use of the verb in the causative form that encompasses the most personal relationship of faith between God and the believer. 

The primary nouns derived from the verb ‘to trust’ (’aman) are ‘firmness, stability’ (’emunah; Isa. 33:6: ‘and he will be the stability of your times…’) and ‘truthfulness, fidelity, faithfulness’ (’emet; Ps. 71:22: ‘I will also praise thee with the harp for thy faithfulness, O my God’). Throughout the ot stability results in security and together they are signs of God’s fidelity to his people. Another term used in this connection refers to Yahweh’s loving-kindness in a covenant context (ḥesed; Ps. 33:18: “Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love”). God chose Israel (Deut. 7:6-7: ‘the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession…’) and his loving-kindness is demonstrated by the many blessings they have received. This covenant relationship presupposes a mutuality of obligation (Deut. 7:9: ‘Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments…’); Israel’s response of faith is possible only because of God’s prior and continued faithfulness. Out of this mutuality of obligation the paradoxical relationship between faith and fear in the ot (Exod. 14:31 above) becomes more intelligible. The covenant relationship between God and his people results in an exclusive demand (Exod. 20:3; Deut. 6:5; 18:13; 1 Kings 8:61; Isa. 38:3) of obedience (Noah in Gen. 6:9, 22; 7:5; Abraham in Gen. 22:1-18; Joshua in 1:7-8; 24:22-31; Samuel in 1 Sam. 15:17-33) in which idols must be totally rejected (Isa. 42:17). In fact, the opposite of faithfulness is apostasy, as, for example, in Deut. 32:20, in which the phrase ‘children in whom is no faithfulness’ is synonymous with idolatry. Since the faith of Israel is always reflective of God’s fidelity and loving-kindness, it must be expressed not only in obedience but also in praise (Pss. 5:11; 9:10; 13:5; 18:1-3; 22:1-5; 27:14; 62:1, 5-8; 141:8). 

The prophets deepen the meaning of faith in several ways. For Isaiah (7:1-9) security does not rest in political power but in utter trust in God; in fact, the totality of life must be based on such trust in him (Isa. 7:9: ‘If you will not believe, surely you shall not be established’). This point is also stressed in Isa. 28:16, a verse of importance for the nt: ‘Therefore thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I am laying in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘He who believes will not be in haste.’’’ Deutero-Isaiah broadens the concept of faith in the direction of hope and knowledge. Typical of the former is Isa. 40:31: ‘But they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ Faced with difficult predicaments, the energy of faith results not in despair, but in hope. The broadening of faith in the direction of knowledge is particularly evident in Isa. 43:10: ‘ ‘You are my witnesses,’ says the Lord, ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, that you may know and believe and understand that I am He.’ ’ Knowledge is not used here in a speculative sense; the reference is to the knowledge of God’s fidelity and loving-kindness experienced in history. 

Faith in the NT: For the nt understanding of faith, Hab. 2:4 is an important reference: ‘Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faithfulness.’ Here the characteristic meaning of trust (’emunah) is well summarized: fidelity to God as the sign of the righteous person. God alone can be the object of trust and faithfulness because he ‘is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold’ (Ps. 18:2). 

In the nt the noun and verb denoting faith (pistis/pisteuein) appear frequently. In the synoptic Gospels, they are used least frequently, and among them it is used with least precision in the Gospel of Mark. Faith for Mark can have as its object God (Mark 11:22: ‘And Jesus answered them, ‘Have faith in God’ ’) or faith in Jesus as the manifestation of God’s power (Mark 5:36; 9:23-24). Closely related to this last usage are the direct references of Jesus to the faith of his audience (Mark 2:5: ‘And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven’ ’; Mark 5:34: ‘And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease’ ’; Mark 10:52: ‘And Jesus said to him [the blind man], ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well’ ’). Finally, Mark can have the gospel, in a way not dissimilar to Paul, as the object of faith (Mark 1:15: ‘Jesus came…saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent, and believe in the gospel’ ’). Lack of faith can be referred to in a similar way (Mark 4:40: ‘He [Jesus] said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?’ ’). In the Gospel of Luke faith is often used in the most general sense of faithfulness (Luke 16:10-12; see also 1:20, 45: ‘And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord’). In addition, faith is used with the verb ‘to save’ (7:50: ‘And he said to the woman, ‘Your faith has saved you; go in peace’ ’; 8:12: ‘believe and be saved’). 

The Gospel of Matthew further intensifies the theme of faith. At the conclusion of the story about the healing of the centurion’s slave, Matthew adds the words: ‘And to the centurion Jesus said, ‘Go; be it done for you as you have believed’ ’ (Matt. 8:13). Similarly, Matthew modifies the Marcan and Lucan account of the healing of two blind men by inserting the question from Jesus: ‘ ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They said to him, ‘Yes, Lord’ ’ (Matt. 9:28). Other Matthean passages also emphasize faith. In the account of the Canaanite woman Matthew alters the Marcan account precisely for this purpose: ‘Then Jesus answered her, ‘O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.’ And her daughter was healed instantly’ (Matt. 15:28). Similarly, in an encounter with the chief priests and the elders Matthew elevates the issue of faith: ‘Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the harlots believed him; and even when you saw it, you did not afterward repent and believe him’ ’ (Matt. 21:31b-32; cf. Luke 7:29-30). In a polemical passage dealing with scribes and Pharisees Matthew accuses them of neglecting the weightier matters of ‘the law, justice and mercy and faith’ (Matt. 23:23; Luke 11:42 does not contain the reference to faith). In the passage dealing with the false christs and false prophets Matthew twice uses the verb ‘to believe’ while Luke does not (Matt. 24:23-25; Luke 17:23-24). This same pattern can be found in Matt. 17:19-20 and in Matt. 21:21. The former is an account of the boy possessed by a spirit who was healed by Jesus. Of the three evangelists, only Matthew adds this statement of Jesus by way of response to the disciples’ question, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’: ‘Because of your little faith.’ In Matt. 21:21 there is a clear intensification over against Mark 11:22. In Mark Jesus answers, ‘Have faith in God’; in Matthew Jesus answers, ‘Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and never doubt…’ 

Paul’s Concept of Faith: In the apostle Paul one finds the broadest and profoundest articulation of the concept of faith in early Christianity. Faith has as its object God (1 Thess. 1:8), specifically God’s salvific manifestation through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Thess. 4:14). This act of God in Christ is preached (Rom. 10:17: ‘So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ’) and is received by faith (Rom. 3:25), a faith that rests ‘in the power of God’ (1 Cor. 2:5). Those who have received the good news of God’s act in Christ, namely, the gospel, are called ‘believers’ (1 Thess. 1:7). There is only one gospel (1 Cor. 15:11) and its goal is salvation (1 Cor. 1:21). 

For Paul the concept of faith is a dynamic one. Thus, he can refer to the ‘activity of faith’ (1 Thess. 1:23), an activity that manifests itself in love (Gal. 5:6: ‘faith working through love’). Faith involves ‘progress’ (Phil. 1:25); it is not something static, captured once for all, but involves striving (Phil. 1:27: ‘with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel…’) and it increases (2 Cor. 10:15) and it is an energy at work in believers (1 Thess. 2:13). Since faith is not a static possession, Paul urges that faith be established (1 Thess. 3:2) and made firm (1 Cor. 16:13; 2 Cor. 1:24), for it is possible not only to have deficiencies in faith (1 Thess. 3:10; Rom. 14:1) but also to believe in vain (1 Cor. 15:2; Rom. 11:20). Essential for Paul’s understanding of faith is the conviction that God assigns to each the measure of faith he wishes (Rom. 12:3, 6; 1 Cor. 12:9). Yet no matter what that measure of faith is, the obedience of faith is expected from all (Rom. 1:5; 16:16). 

Paul on several occasions uses the triadic formulation ‘faith, love and hope’ (1 Thess. 1:3; 5:8; 1 Cor. 13:13). On the one hand, as noted above, faith must be active in love; without love faith is empty. On the other hand, faith must be grounded in hope so that it recognizes that the first-fruits of God’s promises manifested in the death and resurrection of Christ will be fulfilled on the last day (Gal. 5:5; Rom. 6:8; Rom. 15:13: ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope’). The specific hope of faith is rooted in the resurrection of Christ as an anticipation of the fulfillment of the last day (1 Cor. 15:14, 17; 2 Cor. 4:14: ‘knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence’). Yet this faith that is received in baptism (Gal. 3:27-28) and allows one entrance into the body of Christ, the church, is a faith that has as its model the suffering and death of Jesus and so during this earthly sojourn faith may well be called to a cruciform existence (Rom. 8:18; Phil. 1:29: ‘For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake…’). Further, this new act of God in Christ received by faith involves not only new existence for the believer but for the world itself (Rom. 8:18-25). 

Particularly in Galatians and Romans Paul links his concept of faith to terms like the righteousness of God and justification and to a negative attitude toward the works of the law. This development of his thought is brought about, on the one hand, by his conflict with certain Judaizers, and, on the other hand, his reflections of the relation of Jews and Gentiles. Thus, in Gal. 2:16 he can write that ‘a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ…’ and in Rom. 10:4 that ‘Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified.’ These points are articulated at length with much use of the ot, including Gen. 15:6, in such chapters as Galatians 3 and Romans 4. For Paul the villain is not the law, but sin, which renders its usefulness ineffective. Thus the basic dilemma of the human situation is captivity to sin (Rom. 3:9-18). Christ has come to free humanity from this captivity; whether Jew or Greek, all have sinned and all can come to God in Christ only through faith (Rom. 3:21). Thus Paul can ask rhetorically: ‘Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!’ (Rom. 7:24-25a). 

The same dynamic of faith is evident when Paul links faith with righteousness/justification language, as, for example, in Rom. 1:16-17: ‘For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to every one who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed through faith for faith; as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.’ ’ The righteousness of God, which faith receives as God’s gift, is viewed as part of a much broader historical and eschatological context. It is for Paul God’s sovereignty over the world that reveals itself eschatologically in Jesus. When Paul speaks of the ‘gift of righteousness’ in Rom. 5:17 he is referring to a gift that is both present and future, already received and still expected. It is a gift that recognizes God’s sovereign power and the fact that the believer is placed under that power in obedient service. For the person who is justified, who has received the gift in faith, salvation is not yet completed in the present; it has still to be consummated and fulfilled on the last day. Only as Christians wait and hope are they saved (Rom. 8:23-25; Gal. 5:5). It is precisely for this reason that the apostle is so careful in his language about present and future as, for example, in Rom. 6:8 (‘But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him’) and Rom. 5:9 (‘Since, therefore, we are now justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God’). This process of the Christian life is similarly emphasized in Philippians (2:12-13; 3:9-14). While the Christian life is for Paul a single process, he does stress three different nuances of the process: justification, an initiating event that is actualized and made concrete through sanctification; sanctification, a present process, dependent upon justification, that has future implications, namely, consummated salvation; and salvation, a gift to be consummated in the future, already anticipated and partially experienced in justification and sanctification and definitely dependent upon them. 

Other NT Writings: Other nt writings that stress the concept of faith include the Gospel of John, where only the verb form is found. The author describes his Gospel as intended to produce faith: ‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:30-31). This Evangelist’s view of faith is very much linked to the contingency of his situation, especially his dialogue and polemic with Judaism, many of whom do not believe (9:18) and reject faith in Jesus (5:38) despite the signs performed (4:48) and the testimony of Scripture, Abraham, and Moses. The view of faith found in the Fourth Gospel is also closely linked to its understanding of Christology, namely, Jesus as the one sent by the Father as his revealer (John 6:29: ‘Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’ ’). The Acts of the Apostles is also a rich witness to the nt concept of faith. Here the term ‘believer’ is used with frequency (e.g., Acts 2:44) and the object of belief is the preaching of the apostles (Acts 4:1-4). In James 2:14-20, the view of faith that insists that faith without works is useless is most likely not a criticism of Paul, but of those who have lost sight of the Pauline relationship between the activity of faith and its expression in and through love. The oft quoted verse from Hebrews, ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen’ (11:1), has no specific Christian emphasis as it stands; the entire chapter serves as a model for the purposes of exhortation and reaches its culmination and Christian interpretation in chapter 12: ‘Therefore…let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…’ (12:1-2). This reference to Jesus as ‘the pioneer and perfecter’ of faith expresses concisely the dynamic conception of faith found in much of the nt. See also Hope; Love; Righteousness. K.P.D. 

Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row, P., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). Harper's Bible dictionary. Includes index. (1st ed.) (298). San Francisco: Harper & Row.

8:

Faith

A central theological concept representing the correct relationship to God. Heb. ˒mn and Gk. pisteúein demand a variety of renderings besides belief, faith, and trust, especially faithfulness. They may be used for God or human beings. A continuing question involves distinguishing personal faith with which a person believes and “the faith” with an objective content, something to be believed.

Biblical theology usually roots NT faith in the OT, and some speak of a Judeo-Christian concept, even of a “fundamentally identical” OT and NT notion. Actually, Hebrew lacks a word for “faith” (˒ĕmûnâ is rare and equals “fidelity”). This, plus other factors, caused Martin Buber to distinguish two types of faith: OT/Judaic (˒ĕmûnâ), which was tribal, national, communal trust and fidelity, based on the covenant; and Christian (Gk. pɩ́stis), which was individualistic persuasion or faith, belief in something.

In the OT, along with ˒āman, terms like bāṭaḥ (“trust; be confident, secure”), qāwâ (“hope”), yāḥal and ḥāḵâ (both “wait in hope”) come into consideration. The basic idea of ˒āman is “constancy,” something that is lasting (Isa. 33:16) or someone who is reliable (8:2). More important is the hiphil he˒ĕmɩ̂n, “become steadfast, acquire stability,” used of a person or of God. Applied to human beings, the term often has a negative connotation: “do not believe or rely on… (a person)” (Jer. 12:6; Mic. 7:5; Job 4:18) or a message (Gen. 45:26; 1 Kgs. 10:7; Isa. 53:1).

Three nouns from ˒mn appear in the OT: (1) ˒ĕmeṯ, originally meaning “stability” (Isa. 38:8; NRSV “security”), comes to denote faithfulness or truth (Gk. alḗtheia), on the part of a person (Exod. 18:21; NRSV “trustworthy”) or God (Ps. 31:5 [MT 6]; 146:6) and God’s word (Ps. 119:43; 142; 160). God’s works are faithful (Ps. 111:7), and the promises express faithfulness (Zech. 8:8); on this God, worshippers rely (Ps. 40:11 [12], with ḥeseḏ). This reliability makes it possible for mortals to trust in God. (2) The noun ˒ĕmûnâ suggests conduct that grows out of a relationship, faithfulness, especially in inner attitude and conduct on the part of an individual (Prov. 14:5; 20:6; 1 Sam. 26:23) or of God (Ps. 89:2, 5, 8, 49 [3, 6, 8, 50]; Deut. 32:4; Isa. 33:6). (3) Heb. ˒āmēn was used in response to God in prayer (Neh. 8:6), or with ritual curses (Deut. 27:15, 16; Neh. 5:13).

Following God’s call to Abram and promise to make him and Sarah a great nation and a blessing (Gen. 12:1–3), the vision and word of the Lord present God’s promise about posterity (15:1–5), followed by a covenant binding God (not Abram) to the promise (vv. 7–21). As a result, Abram acknowledged God’s power to fulfill it.

In Isaiah the prophet will wait for the hidden God and hope in him during crisis times when Israel withheld faith (cf. Isa. 7:9; 30:15).

Some stress Jesus’ call to faith and recognition of it in individuals; others find in Jesus only a Cynic sage, or little that is recoverable. There is some agreement that, according to the Synoptics, Jesus taught faith in God (Mark 11:12 par.) as a basis for “prayer faith” (Mark 11:24 par.) and “mountain-moving faith” (11:23 par.; 1 Cor. 13:2). Unlike the Fourth Gospel, where miracles can produce faith (John 2:11; 4:52–54; 20:30–31), for Jesus in the Synoptics “supplicating faith” leads to miracles (Mark 9:24–27; 2:5, 12 par.; 6:5–6 par.).

A new and specifically Christian use of pɩ́stis comes in terms of acceptance of the kḗrygma or apostolic proclamation about the crucified and risen Jesus (Gal. 3:2, 5). Gk. pɩ́stis becomes a technical term for reaction to gospel preaching, an act of faith with regard to the story about Jesus coupled with the promise of future salvation (Acts 4:4, with 3:19–26; 13:48, with vv. 38–39, 46–47; Rom. 10:9–14). This future hope was part of the kerygma (1 Thess. 1:9–10). Christians are “believers” (Acts 2:44; Rom. 1:16; 3:22), “members of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10).

Paul inherits and exhibits much of this early Christian understanding. The personal faith that comes from hearing the word and confessing Jesus’ lordship includes “the obedience of faith” or commitment (Rom. 1:5; cf. 16:26). Hence faith relates to ethics, in close relationship to its expression toward the future as “hope” and toward others as love (1 Thess. 1:3; Rom. 12:1–2, 9–10; 13:8–10).

Paul’s contribution involved relating faith to righteousness and justification (cf. Gal. 3:6–14; Rom. 4). He connects faith with “gospel” for salvation (Rom. 1:16), “peace” and “access to God” (5:1–2), the Spirit (Gal. 3:2, 5, 14), “in Christ” (Gal. 3:25–26). “Reconciliation” parallels justification by faith (Rom. 5:9–11), “redemption” (3:24–25). “Fellowship” (koinōnɩ́a) is connected with God’s being faithful (1 Cor. 1:9) and our participation in Christ (Phil. 3:9–10), and “grace” is frequently linked with “faith.” For Paul faith becomes the criterion, not “works of the law” such as circumcision and regulations involving clean and unclean, which marked Jews off from others and so precluded a universal mission.

Some Christians may be “weak in faith” (Rom. 14:1), while others can be regarded as “strong” or enabled (15:1). Faith is something that can grow (2 Cor. 10:15) or be lacking in some aspects (1 Thess. 3:10) but then become strong in its conviction (Rom. 4:20–22; 14:5). It is not static in the face of threats but dynamic, showing itself in action (1 Thess. 1:3), through love (Gal. 5:6).

Hebrews has 32 instances of Gk. pɩ́stis, mostly in ch. 11, about what people in Israel did “by faith.” God is the object of faith (6:1; cf. 11:6). Those addressed have come to faith in the gospel message (4:2–3; 6:12). Faith means “full assurance” (10:22), but there is grave danger of those addressed falling away into unbelief (3:12; cf. v. 19). In 11:3–12:2 pɩ́stis can be trust in God’s promise (11:11), accepting what God said (v. 8), or denote what motivated Abraham to sacrifice Isaac (vv. 17–18) or moved Moses (vv. 24–25) or how we understand the world’s creation (v. 3; cf. 1:2).

Luke-Acts stress coming to faith as conversion, to “hear the word, believe, and be saved” (Luke 8:12–13; Acts 10:43; 13:19; 16:31; 20:21; 24:24). In miracle stories, faith saves (Luke 7:50; 17:19). “The apostles” can ask “the Lord, ‘Increase our faith’” (Luke 17:5). Mary is a model of faith in the beatitude at Luke 1:45. Questions appear as to the existence of faith on the part of the disciples (Luke 8:25; 18:8). Jesus prays that Peter’s faith not fail (Luke 22:32). In Acts “the faith” becomes a term for Christianity (Acts 6:7; 13:8; cf. Luke 18:8).

Faith arises out of confrontation with Jesus’ word(s) (John 2:22; 4:41, 50; 5:24) as well as his deeds (miracles) and testimony to Jesus (1:7; 4:39; 17:20). Such encounter calls for decision, leading to faith or judgment (John 3:36; 5:24). The Johannine concept of believing also involves “keeping” or “remaining in” Jesus’ word (John 14:23; 15:20; 8:31; 15:4), with a considerable emphasis on “knowing” (17:3, 7, 21; 16:27–30; 6:69; 1 John 4:16). The Fourth Gospel also explores the relation of “seeing” and “believing,” notably in the story of Thomas (John 20:25–29; cf. 4:48).

Bibliography. A. Dulles, The Assurance of Things Hoped For: A Theology of Christian Faith (Oxford, 1994); J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids, 1997); W. Henn, One Faith: Biblical and Patristic Contributions Toward Understanding Unity in Faith (New York, 1995); H.-J. Hermisson and E. Lohse, Faith (Nashville, 1981); J. Reumann, Variety and Unity in New Testament Thought (Oxford, 1991); W. H. Schmidt, The Faith of the Old Testament (Philadelphia, 1983); I. G. Wallis, The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions. SNTSMS 84 (Cambridge, 1995).

John Reumann

Freedman, D. N., Myers, A. C., & Beck, A. B. (2000). Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (453). Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans.