Is that assent which we give to a proposition advanced by another, the truth of which we do not immediately perceive from our own reason and experience; or it is a judgment or assent of the mind, the motive whereof is not any intrinsic evidence, but the authority or testimony of some other who reveals or relates it. The Greek word, translated faith, comes from the verb, to persuade; the nature of faith being a persuasion and assent of the mind, arising from testimony or evidence.
1. Divine faith, is that founded on the authority of God, or it is that assent which we give to what is revealed by God. The objects of this, therefore, are matters of revelation. 1Jn 5:9.
2. Human faith, is that whereby we believe what is told us by men. The objects hereof are matters of human testimony or evidence.
3. Historical faith, is that whereby we assent to the truths of revelation as a kind of certain and infallible record, Jas 2:17, or to any fact recorded in history.
4. The faith of miracles, is the persuasion a person has of his being able, by the divine power, to effect a miracle on another, Mat 17:20. 1Co 13:2. or another on himself, Act 14:9. This obtained chiefly in the time of Christ and his apostles.
5. A temporary faith, is an assent to evangelical truths, as both interesting and desirable, but not farther than they are accompanied with temporal advantages; and which is lost when such advantages diminish or are removed, Mat 11:24. Luk 8:13.
6. Faith in respect to futurity, is a moral principle, implying such a conviction of the reality and importance of a future state, as is sufficient to regulate the temper and conduct.
7. Faith in Christ, or saving faith is that principle wrought in the heart by the Divine Spirit, whereby we are persuaded that Christ is the Messiah; and possess such a desire and expectation of the blessings he has promised in his Gospel, as engages the mind to fix its dependence on him, and subject itself to him in all the ways of holy obedience, and relying solely on his grace for everlasting life.
These are the ideas which are generally annexed to the definition of saving faith; but, accurately speaking, faith is an act of the understanding, giving credit to the testimony of the Gospel; and desire, expectation, confidence, &c. are rather the effects of it, than faith itself, though inseparably connected with it. Much has been said as to the order or place in which faith stands in the Christian system, some placing it before, others after repentance. Perhaps the following remarks on the subject may be considered as consistent with truth and Scripture:
1. Regeneration is the work of God enlightening the mind, and changing the heart, and in order of time precedes faith.—
2. Faith is the consequence of regeneration, and implies the perception of an object. It discerns the evil of sin, the holiness of God, gives credence to the testimony of God in his word, and seems to precede repentance, since we cannot repent of that of which we have no clear perception, or no concern about.—
3. Repentance is an after-thought, or sorrowing for sin, the evil nature of which faith perceives, and which immediately follows faith.—
4. Conversion is a turning from sin, which faith sees, and repentance sorrows for, and seems to follow, and to be the end of all the rest.
As to the properties or adjuncts of faith, we may observe,
1. That it is the first and principal grace: it stands first in order, and takes the precedence of other graces, Mar 16:16. Heb 11:6.—
2. It is every way precious and valuable, 1Pe 2:1.—
3. It is called in Scripture, one faith; for though there are several sorts of faith, there is but one special or saving faith, Eph 4:5
4. It is also denominated common faith; common to all the regenerate, Tit 1:4.—
5. It is true, real, and unfeigned, Act 8:37. Rom 10:10.—
6. It cannot be finally lost as to the grace of it, Php 1:6. Luk 22:32.—
7. It is progressive, Luk 17:5. 2Th 1:3.—
8. It appropriates and realizes, or, as the apostle says, is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, Heb 11:1.
The evidence or effects of faith, are,
1. Love to Christ, 1Pe 1:8. Gal 5:6.—
2. Confidence, Eph 3:1-21
4. Prayer, Heb 4:16.—
5. Attention to his ordinances, and profit by them, Heb 4:2.—
6. Zeal in the promotion of his glory, 1Co 15:58. Gal 6:9.—
7. Holiness of heart and life, Mat 7:20. 1Jn 2:3. Act 15:9. Jas 2:18; Jas 2:20; Jas 2:22.
See articles ASSURANCE and JUSTIFICATION, IN THIS WORK; and Polhill on Precious Faith; Lambert’s Sermons, ser. 13. 14, &c.; Scott’s Nature and Warrant of Faith; Romaine’s Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith; Rotherham’s Ess. on Faith; Dove’s Letters on Faith; A. Hall. on the Faith and Influence of the Gospel; Goodwin’s Works, vol. 4:
This is the great and momentous word in Scripture, which hath given rise to endless disputes, and employed the minds of men in all ages to explain; and yet to thousands still remains as obscure as ever. But notwithstanding: all that the bewildered and erroneous mind of man may say on faith, the scriptural account of faith is the simplest and plainest thing in the world. Faith is no more than the sincere and hearty assent and consent of the mind to the belief of the being and promises of God, as especially revealed to the churchin the person and redemption, work of the Lord Jesus Christ. JEHOVAH, in his threefold character of person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, hath mercifully been pleased to reveal himself as "forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, " and giving eternal life to the church in Christ Jesus. And these blessings are all declared to be in the person, and procured to the church by the sole undertaking of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the glorious Head of his body the church, the fulness of him "that filleth all in all."
The hearty, cordial, and sincere belief in these blessed truths of God is called faith, because it is giving credit to the testimony of God, and relying upon his faithfulness for the fulfilment of them. The apostle John, in his first Epistle, fifth chapter, and ninth and following verses, puts this doctrine in so clear a point of view, that, under divine teaching, if attended to, it would be impossible to mistake it. "If we receive (saith John) the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the witness of God which he hath testifiedof his Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself. He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son. And this is the record that God hath given to us, eternal life; and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life."
No form of words could have been more happily chosen to state what is the act of faith, and to put it in a clear and full light. Immense and unspeakable blessings are promised by God. It is not the greatness of the blessings which demands our faith, but the greatness of the Being promising. Indeed, the greater the blessings are, the greater would be the difficulty of believing, unless some other warrant and authority become the foundation for belief. The bottom, therefore, of all faith is, that what we are called upon to is thatcannot lie; JEHOVAH that will not lie. An Almighty Promiser that never can out - promise himself. Hence, when Moses at the bush desired a confirmation of the truth, the Lord gave him to deliver to Israel, by knowing his name, and having such assurances to make to them as might silence every doubt. "Behold, (said he, ) when I come to the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they shall say unto me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said untoMoses, I AM THAT I AM." That is, I AM a being self - existing, and eternal; and which, therefore, gives a being to all my promises. So that this is the sure ground of faith. Not the greatness and blessedness of the promise; but the greatness, blessedness, and faithfulness of the Promiser. And to believe in the almighty Promiser in his assurances in Christ, is faith. I only add, however, under this article, that though faith is the simplest and plainest act of the mind, yet both the possession and the exercise of it is the gift of God."Unto you, (saith an apostle, ) it is given to believe." (Phil. i. 29.) And hence every truly awakened and regenerated believer finds daily reason, to cry out, as the apostle did to Christ, Lord, increase our faith!" (Luke 17. 5.)
in Scripture, is presented to us under two leading views: the first is that of assent or persuasion; the second, that of confidence or reliance. The former may be separate from the latter, but the latter cannot exist without the former. Faith, in the sense of an intellectual assent to truth, is, by St. James, allowed to devils. A dead, inoperative faith is also supposed, or declared, to be possessed by wicked men, professing Christianity; for our Lord represents persons coming to him at the last day, saying, “Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?” &c, to whom he will say, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” And yet the charge in this place does not lie against the sincerity of their belief, but against their conduct as “workers of iniquity.” As this distinction is taught in Scripture, so it is also observed in experience: assent to the truths of revealed religion may result from examination and conviction, while yet the spirit and conduct may remain unrenewed and sinful.
2. The faith which is required of us as a condition of salvation always includes confidence or reliance, as well as assent or persuasion. That faith by which “the elders obtained a good report,” was of this character; it united assent to the truth of God’s revelations with a noble confidence in his promise. “Our fathers trusted in thee, and were not confounded.” We have a farther illustration in our Lord’s address to his disciples upon the withering away of the fig tree: “Have faith in God.” He did not question whether they believed the existence of God, but exhorted them to confidence in his promises, when called by him to contend with mountainous difficulties: “Have faith in God; for verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe (trust) that these things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.” It was in reference to his simple confidence in Christ’s power that our Lord so highly commended the centurion, and said, “I have not found so great faith, no not in Israel,” Mat 8:10. And all the instances of faith in the persons miraculously healed by Christ, were also of this kind: their faith was belief in his claims, and also confidence in his goodness and power.
3. That faith in Christ which in the New Testament is connected with salvation, is clearly of this nature; that is, it combines assent with reliance, belief with trust. “Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name,” that is, in dependence upon my interest and merits, “he shall give it you.” Christ was preached both to Jews and Gentiles as the object of their trust, because he was preached as the only true sacrifice for sin; and they were required to renounce their dependence upon their own accustomed sacrifices, and to transfer that dependence to his death and mediation,—and “In his name shall the Gentiles trust.” He is said to be set forth as a propitiation, “through faith in his blood;” which faith can neither merely mean assent to the historical fact that his blood was shed by a violent death; nor mere assent to the general doctrine that his blood had an atoning quality; but as all expiatory offerings were trusted in as the means of propitiation both among Jews and Gentiles, faith or trust was now to be exclusively rendered to the blood of Christ, as the divinely appointed sacrifice for sin, and the only refuge of the true penitent.
4. To the most unlettered Christian this then will be very obvious, that true and saving faith in Christ consists both of assent and trust; but this is not a blind and superstitious trust in the sacrifice of Christ, like that of the Heathens in their sacrifices; nor the presumptuous trust of wicked and impenitent men, who depend on Christ to save them in their sins; but such a trust as is exercised according to the authority and direction of the word of God; so that to know the Gospel in its leading principles, and to have a cordial of belief in it, is necessary to that more specific act of faith which is called reliance, or in systematic language, fiducial assent. The Gospel, as a scheme of man’s salvation, declares that he is under the law; that this law of God has been violated by all; and that every man is under sentence of death. Serious consideration of our ways, confession of the fact, and sorrowful conviction of the evil and danger of sin, will, under the influence of divine grace, follow the cordial belief of the testimony of God; and we shall then turn to God with contrite hearts, and earnest prayers, and supplications for his mercy. This is called “repentance toward God,” and repentance being the first subject of evangelical preaching, and then the injunction to believe the Gospel, it is plain, that Christ is only immediately held out, in this divine plan of our redemption, as the object, of trust in order to forgiveness to persons in this state of penitence, and under this sense of danger. The degree of sorrow for sin, and alarm upon this discovery of our danger as sinners, is no where fixed to a precise standard in Scripture; only it is supposed every where, that it is such as to lead men to inquire earnestly, “What shall I do to be saved?” and with earnest seriousness to use all the appointed means of grace, as those who feel that their salvation is at issue, that they are in a lost condition, and must be pardoned or perish. To all such persons, Christ, as the only atonement for sin, is exhibited as the object of their trust, with the promise of God, “that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Nothing is required of such but this actual trust in, and personal apprehension or taking hold of, the merits of Christ’s death as a sacrifice for sin; and upon their thus believing they are justified, their “faith is counted for righteousness,” or, in other words, they are forgiven.
5. This appears to be the plain Scriptural representation of this doctrine; and we may infer from it,
(1.) That the faith by which we are justified is not a mere assent to the doctrines of the Gospel, which leaves the heart unmoved and unaffected by a sense of the evil and danger of sin and the desire of salvation, although it supposes this assent; nor,
(2.) Is it that more lively and cordial assent to, and belief in, the doctrine of the Gospel, touching our sinful and lost condition, which is wrought in the heart by the Spirit of God, and from which springeth repentance, although this must precede it; nor,
(3.) Is it only the assent of the mind to the method by which God justifies the ungodly by faith in the sacrifice of his Son, although this is an element of it; but it is a hearty concurrence of the will and affections with this plan of salvation, which implies a renunciation of every other refuge, and an actual trust in the Saviour, and personal apprehension of his merits: such a belief of the Gospel by the power of the Spirit of God as leads us to come to Christ, to receive Christ, to trust in Christ, and
to commit the keeping of our souls into his hands, in humble confidence of his ability and his willingness to save us.
6. This is that qualifying condition to which the promise of God annexes justification; that without which justification would not take place; and in this sense it is that we are justified by faith; not by the merit of faith, but by faith instrumentally as this condition: for its connection with the benefit arises from the merits of Christ and the promise of God. If Christ has not merited, God had not promised; if God had not promised, justification had never followed upon this faith; so that the indissoluble connection of faith and justification is from God’s institution, whereby he hath bound himself to give the benefit upon performance of the condition. Yet there is an aptitude in this faith to be made a condition; for no other act can receive Christ as a Priest propitiating and pleading the propitiation, and the promise of God for his sake to give the benefit. As receiving Christ and the gracious promise in this manner, it acknowledgeth man’s guilt, and so man renounceth all righteousness in himself, and honoureth God the Father, and Christ the Son, the only Redeemer. It glorifies God’s mercy and free grace in the highest degree. It acknowledges on earth, as it will be perpetually acknowledged in heaven, that the whole salvation of sinful man, from the beginning to the last degree thereof, whereof there shall be no end, is from God’s freest love, Christ’s merit and intercession, his own gracious promise, and the power of his own Holy Spirit.
7. Faith, in Scripture, sometimes is taken for the truth and faithfulness of God, Rom 3:3; and it is also taken for the persuasion of the mind as to the lawfulness of things indifferent, Rom 14:22-23; and it is likewise put for the doctrine of the Gospel, which is the object of faith, Act 24:24; Php 1:27; Jud 1:3; for the belief and profession of the Gospel, Rom 1:8; and for fidelity in the performance of promises.
The assent of the understanding to any truth. Religious faith is assent to the truth of divine revelation and of the events and doctrines contained in it. This may be merely historical, without producing any effect on our lives and conversation; and it is then a dead faith, such as even the devils have. But a living or saving faith not only believes the great doctrines of religion as true, but embraces them with the heart and affections; and is thus the source of sincere obedience to the divine will, exhibited in the life and conversation. Faith in Christ is a grace wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit, whereby we receive Christ as our Savior, our Prophet, Priest, and King, and love and obey him as such. This living faith in Christ is the means of salvation-not meritoriously, but instrumentally. Without it there can be no forgiveness of sins, and no holiness of life; and they who are justified by faith, live and walk by faith, Mar 16:16 Joh 3:15,16 Mal 16:31 1Jn 5:10 .\par True faith is an essential grace, and a mainspring of Christian life. By it the Christian overcomes the world, the flesh, and the devil, and receives the crown of righteousness, 1Ti 4:7-8 . In virtue of it, worthy men of old wrought great wonders, Heb 11:1-40 Mal 14:9 1Co 13:2, being sustained by Omnipotence in doing whatever God enjoined, Mat 17:20 Mar 9:23 11:23-24. In 1Ch 1:8, faith is put for the exhibition of faith, in the practice of all the duties implied in a profession of faith.\par
Heb 11:1, "the substance of things hoped for (i.e., it substantiates God’s promises, the fulfillment of which we hope, it makes them present realities), the evidence (
"Yea, a man (holding right views) may say, Thou hast faith and I have works, show (exhibit to) me (if thou canst, but it is impossible) thy (alleged) faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works." Abraham believed, and was justified before God on the ground of believing (Gen 15:6). Forty years afterward, when God did" tempt," i.e. put him to the test, his justification was demonstrated before the world by his offering Isaac (Genesis 22). "As the body apart from (
But faith, apart from the spirit of faith, which is LOVE (whose evidence is works), is dead, as the body is dead without the spirit; thus James exactly agrees with Paul, 1Co 13:2, "though I have all faith ... and have not charity (love), I am nothing." In its barest primary form, faith is simply crediting or accepting God’s testimony (1Jn 5:9-13). Not to credit it is to make God a "liar"! a consequence which unbelievers may well start back from. The necessary consequence of crediting God’s testimony (
Faith is also an obedience to God’s command to believe (1Jn 3:23); from whence it is called the "obedience of faith" (Rom 1:5; Rom 16:26; Act 6:7), the highest obedience, without which works seemingly good are disobediences to God (Heb 11:6). Faith justifies not by its own merit, but by the merit of Him in whom we believe (Rom 4:3; Gal 3:6). Faith makes the interchange, whereby our sin is imputed to Him and His righteousness is imputed to us (2Co 5:19; 2Co 5:21; Jer 23:6; 1Co 1:30). "Such are we in the sight of God the Father, as is the very Son of God Himself" (Hooker) (2Pe 1:1; Rom 3:22; Rom 4:6; Rom 10:4; Isa 42:21; Isa 45:21-24; Isa 45:25).
(Gr.
The child believes its parent or its nurse, and reposes in this belief; and under certain conditions, the man believes the records of past history, the testimony of eye-witnesses, and the affirmations of trustworthy persons capable of understanding that which they affirm. And it is not too much to say that, apart from this principle and practice of belief, man, even in the full exercise of all his other intellectual powers, would be enveloped in such a cloud of ignorance on even the most ordinary subjects, that an arrest would be laid upon all the affairs of civilized life, and there must be an end of all social harmony and order. It is by this’means that we obtain a certainty, not of sight, not of demonstration, not of direct and immediate intuition, but yet a real and efficient certainty in many matters of high practical importance concerning which we must otherwise be hopelessly ignorant and in the dark. This principle lies at the foundation of human affections and family ties, of agricultural and commercial activity, and of a large portion of our most valuable knowledge in science, and our highest attainments in art. Above all, it is thus that we obtain our knowledge of many things divine, and especially of relations subsisting between God and ourselves; an acquaintance with which, as we shall hereafter see, is of the utmost importance to us, while yet, independently of the exercise of faith, it is utterly beyond the reach of every man living" (Rogers, Reason and Faith; Riddle, Bampton Lectures, 1852, lect. 1). Faith "is that operation of the soul in which we are convinced of the existence of what is not before us, of what is not under sense or any other directly cognitive power. It is certainly a native energy of the mind, quite as much as knowledge is, or conception is, or imagination is, or feeling is. Every human being entertains, and must entertain, faith of some kind. He who would insist on always having immediate knowledge must needs go out of the world, for he is unfit for this world, and yet he believes in no other. It is in consequence of possessing the general capacity that man is enabled to entertain specific forms of faith. By a native principle he is led to believe in that of which he can have no adequate conception in the infinity of space and time, and, on evidence of his existence being presented, in the infinity of God. This enables him to rise to a faith in all those great religious verities which God has been pleased to reveal" (McCosh, Intuitions of the Mind, part 3, book 2, chapter 5; see also part 2, book 2, chapter 4).
Guizot, Med. et Etudes Morales (transl. in Journal of Sacred Literature, 12:430 sq.), has a thoughtful essay in which he distinguishes natural beliefs from faith as follows: "No one can doubt that the word faith has an especial meaning, which is not properly represented by belief, conviction, or certitude. Custom and universal opinion confirm this view. There are many simple and customary phrases in which the word faith could not be replaced by any other. Almost all languages have a specially appropriated word to express that which in English is expressed by faith, and which is essentially different from all analogous words. This word, then, corresponds to a state of the human soul; it expresses a moral fact which has rendered such a word necessary. We commonly understand by faith a certain belief of facts and dogmas — religious facts and dogmas. In fact, the word has no other sense when employing it absolutely and by itself — we speak of the faith. That is not, however, its unique, nor even its fundamental sense; it has one more extensive, and from which the religious sense is derived. We say, I have full faith in your words; this man has faith in himself, in his power, etc. This employment of the word in civil matters, so to speak, has become more frequent in our days; it is not, however, of modern invention; nor have religious ideas ever been an exclusive sphere, out of which the notions and the word faith were without application. It is, then, proved by the testimony of language and common opinion, First, that the word faith designates a certain interior state of him who believes, and not merely a certain kind of belief. Secondly, that it is, however, to a certain species of belief — religious belief — that it has been at first and most generally applied. Now our natural beliefs germinate in the mind of man without the co-operation of his reflection and his will. Our scientific beliefs, on the other hand, are the fruit of voluntary study. But faith partakes of, and at the same time differs from, natural and scientific beliefs. It is, like the latter, individual and particular; like the former, it is firm, complete, active, and sovereign. Considered in itself, and independent of all comparison with this or that analogous condition, faith is the full security of the man in the possession of his belief: a possession freed as much from labor as from doubt; in the midst of which every thought of the path by which it has been reached disappears, and leaves no other sentiment but that of the natural and pre-established harmony between the human mind and truth."
II. Christian Faith. — So far as faith is a voluntary act, quality, or habit of man, it is psychologically the same in the theological sense as in common life; the difference lies in the objects of the faith. In order to venerate or love a fellow-man, we must believe in his worthiness; so, for the fear and love of God, which are fundamental elements of the Christian life, faith must pre-exist. But this direction of the soul towards God does not spring from the natural working of the human mind; it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8), and is wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit through the word of the Gospel and the free grace of Christ (Rom 10:17; 1Co 1:21). Fides donum dei est, per quod Christum redemptorem nostrum in verbo Evangelii recte agnoscimus (Form. Concord. 3:11). Not that the Holy Spirit endues the soul with any new faculty for the single purpose of receiving Gospel truth; but it quickens and directs an existing faculty, at the same time presenting to it an appropriate object. The true faith. thus excited, is an operation at once of the intellect, the heart, and the will. As said above, this faith, so far as it saves man in Christendom, is specifically trust in Christ as a personal Savior. In further treating it, we give,
(I.) The uses of the words
2. We find
In the Acts and Synoptical Gospels, the import of the word (whether assent or trust, or both conjoined) must be decided by the context.
The result of our examination is, that "faith" in the N.T. includes three elements, each and all necessary to the full meaning of the word, while one or another of them may hbecome prominent according to the connection, viz.
1. In the early Church, the Pauline doctrine of faith as a condition of justification was universally maintained. But the Eastern thinkers did not give much attention to faith in a doctrinal way, and its true meaning was not prominently developed, nor was the distinction between faith and works (as conditions) sharply drawn. During the Apologetic period (from A.D. 100 to A.D. 250), while attention was "principally directed to theoretical knowledge,faith was for the most part considered as historico- dogmatic faith in its relation to
2. The Latins, more earnest on the practical than on the theoretical side, seem to have had deeper notions of faith (see Tertullian, cited above). But the minds of theologians were turned almost wholly to the doctrines of sin, grace, and free will (Pelagian controversy), and not to the appropriation of redemption by faith. The relations of faith to knowledge were set forth clearly and strongly, however, in the maxim Fides prcecedit intellectum, first announced by Origen, and adopted by Augustine (Epist. 120:3; ed. Migne, 2:453, cited by Shedd, History of Doctrines, 1:162). Compare also Augustine, De Utilitate Credendi, c. 23, where he shows the natural analogies for faith; e.g. that friendship among men, filial piety, etc., are grounded on faith. He makes a distinction between fides quae; and fides qua creditur (De Trin. 13:2); and uses the phrase fides Catholica in the objective sense, to denote the body of doctrine "necessary to a Christian" (De temp. serm. 53; and adv. Jud. c. 19). Augustine, says Melancthon, did not set forth fully Paul’s doctrine, though he came nearer to it than the Scholastics (Letter to Brentius, opp. ed. Bretschneider, 2:502).
3. In the scholastic period the idea of the kingdom of God degenerated into that of an ecclesiastical theocracy, and the outward side of the religious life (penance and good works) was prominent. Nevertheless, the great doctrinal truths of Christianity were carefully studied, and the aim of the greatest thinkers (e.g. Anselm) was to show that faith can be verified to the intellect as truth, while, at the same time, it is the necessary condition of science, as well as of salvation. "First of all," he says, "faith must purify the heart: we must humble ourselves, and become as little children. He who believes not cannot experience; he who has not experienced cannot understand. Nothing can be done till the soul rises on the wings of faith to God" (De Fide Trinitat. c. 2). The great Greek theologian, John of Damascus (8th century), who may be considered as beginning the period of scholastic theology, defined faith as consisting of two things:
1. belief in the truth of revealed doctrines, the
Not merely Abelard, but also most of the other schoolmen, understood by Justificatio per fidem not objective justification, but a subjective character of the disposition, which proceeds from faith, the true inward sanctification in love which arises out of faith. Bernard, on the other hand, was led by his experience to a more objective view: ’No one is without sin (Sermo on Solomon’s Song, 23, § 15); for all righteousness it is enough for me that he is gracious to me who has redeemed me. Christ is not merely righteous (Ib. 22, § 8), but righteousness itself.’ The scholastic doctrine on this point received a fixed form through Peter Lombard (Sentent. in, dist. 28). He makes a threefold distinction in faith: Deum credere, Deo credere, and in Deum or Christum credere. The two first amount merely to holding a thing to be true, but the last is the faith by which we enter into communion with God. With such a faith love is necessarily connected, and this faith alone is justifying. Love is the effect of this. faith, and the ground of the whole Christian life. Applying to faith the Aristotelian distinction between theform as the formative principle (
4. John Wessel (t 1489) was a precursor of the Reformation in his views on faith, as well as on many other points. None of the theologians of the Scholastic age expressed the principle of faith so fully in the Pauline spirit as Wessel. He considers it "not a mere taking for granted of historical facts, but the devotion of the whole mind to fellowship with God through Christ; it is the basis of the whole higher life; not merely in the relations of man to man, but also in the relations of man to God" (Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation, Edinb. 1855, 2:468).
Practically, at the dawn of the Reformation (and for ages before), Christian people were taught by their pastors that the pardon of sin was to be secured, not bh faith in the merits of Christ, but by penitential observancms and good works, followed by priestly absolution; andfaith itself was generally held to be simply the reception of the teaching of the Church. In practice, faith was transformed into credulity.
(III.) The Protestant and Roman Catholic Doctrines of Faith compared. — The ProtestantDoctrine. — The central point of the Reformation, in a doctrinal point of view, was justification by faith. Its development will be treated in our article SEE JUSTIFICATION; we can here only briefly give the distinction between the Protestant and Roman Catholic doctrines of faith: 1. that of the Reformers; 2. that of the Roman Catholic Church.
1. The Reformers. — The Reformers, in opposition to the Scholastic doctrine of justification as a subjective work (the making just), brought out prominently the Objective idea of justification (as a work donefor us by Christ). "On the other side, correspondingly, they regarded faith as subjective, and as the principle of the transformation of the whole inner life" (Neander, Dogmas, 2:662). The prominent position of faith in the theology of the Reformers was a fundasmental part of the change that was taking place, at the time, in the general religious views of Christendom. " The mind was not satisfied with an objective and outward salvation, however valid and reliable it might be. It desired a consciousness of being saved; it craved an experience of salvation. The Protestant mind could not rest in the Church, neither could it pretend to rest in an atonement that was unappropriated. The objective work of Christ on Calvary must become the subjective experience and rejoicing of the soul itself. While, however, the principle and act of faith occupies such a prominent place in the soteriology of the Reformation, we should not fail to notice that it is never represented as a procuring cause of justification; it is only the instrumental cause.
Protestantism was exceedingly careful to distinguish justification from legal righteousness on the one hand, and from sanctification by grace on the other. It could not, consequently, concede to anv species of human agency, however excellent, a pecular and atoning efficacy. Hence we find none of that supplementary or perfecting of the work of Christ by the work of the creature which is found in the papalu sotetiology. And this applies to the highest of acts, the act of faith itself. Faith itself, though the gift and the work of God, does not justify, speaking accurately, but merely accepts that which does justify" (Shedd, History of Doctrines, 2:337-8). Luther was led to the true Pauline doctrine of faith by his profound conviction of the desperate condition of humanity, not simply from its sense of finiteness (which could only have led him to faith as a realization of the invisible and eternal), but also and chiefly from the crushing sense of personal guilt on account of sin. He regards faith not merely as a mere attribute, but, "so to speak, as a substantial and divine thing, so far as it cleaves to God, and God is in it. Faith is in the state of the unio mystica, union with God; and yet it is, at the same time, man’s true existence." It is no mere intellectual act, but a giving up of the whole man to trust in Christ; and conversely, a penetration of the whole man by the life of Christ. "Faith makes new creatures of us. MY holiness and righteousness do not spring from myself; theys arise alone out of Christ, in whom I am rooted by faith" (Dorner, Person of Christ, 2:58, 64). In the Preface to the Epistle to the Romans Luther says: "Faith alone justifies, and it alone fulfils the law; for faith, through the merits of Christ, obtains the Holy Spirit. And then, at length, from the faith thus efficaciously working and living in the heart, freely (fluunt) proceed those works which are truly good... . But faith is an energy in the heart; at once so efficacious, lively, breathing, and powerful as to be incapable of remaining inactive, but bursts forth into operation. Neither does he who has faith (moratur) demur about the question whether good works have been commanded or not; but even though there were no law, feeling the motions of this living impulse putting forth and exerting itself in his heart, he is spontaneously borne onward to work, and at no time does he cease to perform such actions as are truly pious and Christian. Faith, then, is a constant fiducia, a trust in the mercy of God toward us; a trust living and efficaciously working in the heart, by which we cast ourselves entirely on God, and commit ourselves to him; by which, cer to fraeti, having an assured reliance, we feel no hesitation about enduring death a thousand times." "Luther laid the greatest stress at all times on the assurance of salvation, and of the divine truth of Christianity.
The ground certainty, on which all other certainty depends, is with him the justification of the sinner for Christ’s sake apprehended by faith; of which it is only the objective statement to say that to him the fundamental certainty is Christ as the Redeemer, through surrender to whom faith has full satisfaction, and knows that it stands in the truth" (Dorner, Geschichte d. Prot. Theol., Miunchen, 1867, page 224). — "To believe those things to be true which are preached of Christ is not sufficient to constitute thee a Christian; but thou must not doubt that thou art of the number of them unto whom all the benefits of Christ are given and exhibited, which he that believes must plainly confess, that he is holy, godly, righteous, the Son of God, and certain of salvation, and that by no merit of his own, but by the mere mercy of God poured forth upon him for Christ’s sake" (Luther, Serm. on Gal 1:4, in Fish, Masterpieces of Pulpit Eloquence, 1:462). Zwingle held that faith, in the sense of the appropriation by man, through grace, of the redemptive work of Christ, is the only means or instrument of salvation. It was one of his grounds of objection to the Roman and Lutheran doctrines of the Eucharist that these doctrines detract from the glory of faith by representing it as insufficient for salvation (Dorner, Person of Christ, div. 2, volume 2, page 116). Melancthen, in a letter to Brentius, May, 1531, says: "Faith alone (sola) justifies, not because it is the root (radix), as you write, but because it lays hold of Christ, on whose account we are accepted. It is not love, the fulfilling of the law, which justifies, but faith alone, not because it is a perfection in us, but only because it lays hold on Christ" (edit. Bretschneider, Hal. Sax. 1835, 2:501). Calvin (Institutes, book 3, chapter 11) treats of faith at large, and distinguishes it from "a common assent to the evangelical history," and refutes the nugatory distinction made by the schools between fides forsata and fides informis. "The disputes of the schools concerning faith, by simply styling God the object of it, rather mislead miserable souls by a vain speculation than direct them to the proper mark. For, since God, ’dwelleth in the light which, no man can approach unto,’ there is a necessity for the interposition of Christ as the medium of access to him." "This evil, then, as well as innumerable others, must be imputed to the schoolmen, who have, as it were, concealed Christ by drawing a veil over him; whereas, unless our views be immediately and steadily directed to him, we shall always be wandering through labyrinths without end. They not only, by their obscure definitions, diminish, and almost annihilate, all the importance of faith, but have fabricated thee notion of implicit faith, a term with which they have honored the grossest ignorance, and most perniciously deluded the miserable multitude." "Is this faith to understand nothing, but obediently to submit our understanding to the Church? Faith consists not in ignorance, but in knowledge; and that not only of God, but also of the divine will... . For faith consists of a knowledge of God and of Christ, not in reverence to the Church.
In short, no man is truly a believer unless he be firmly persuaded that God is a propitious and benevolent Father to him, and promise himself everything from his goodness; unless. he depend out the promises of divine benevolence to him, and feels an undoubted expectation of salvation. He is no believer, I say, who does not rely on the security of his salvation, and confidently triumph over the devil and death" (Calvin, Institutes, book 3, chapter 2).
The passages from the several Confessions will be given more fully in the art. SEE JUSTIFICATION; we cite here a few. Augsburg Cosfession. — "Men are justified freely for Christ’s sake through faith when they believe that they are received into favor, and their sins are remitted for Christ’s sake; this faith doth God impute for righteousness upon him" (Art. 4). The nature of saving faith is set forth in Art. 20: "It is to be observed here that a mere historical belief; such as wicked men and devils have, is not here meant, who also believe is the history of the sufferings of Christ, and in his resurrection from the dead; but that genuine faith is here meant which causeth us to believe that we can obtain grace and forgiveness of sins through Christ, and which giveth us the confidence that through Christ we have a merciful God, which also gives us the assurance to know God to call upon him, and to have him always in remembrance, so that the believer is not without God, as are the Gentiles" (compare the Apology for the Confession, art. 2, 3). Heidelberg Catechism. — Qu. 21. "What is true faith? Ans. It is not only a certain knowledge whereby I hold for truth all that God has revealed to us in his word, but also a hearty trust, which the Holy Ghost works in me by the Gospel, that not only to others, but to me also, forgiveness of sins, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are freely given by God, merely of grace, only for the sake of Christ’s merit." Remonstrants’ Confession’ (11:1). — "Faith in Christ is a firm assent (assensus) of the mind to the word of God, joined with true trust (fiduci) in Christ, so that we not only faithfully receive Christ’s doctrine as true and divine, but rest wholly on Christ himself for salvation." Westminster Confession (10, 14)."Faith, thus receiving and resting on Christ and his righteousness, is the alone instrument of justifications; yet it ... is no dead faith, but worketh by love. By this faith a Christian believeth to be true whatsoever is revealed in the word ... but the principal acts of saving faith are accepting, receiving, and resting upon Christ alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life, by virtue of the covenant of grace. This faith is different in degrees, weak or strong; may be often and many ways assailed and weakened, but gets the victory, growing up in many to the attainment of a fell assurance through Christ." In all the Confessions, both Lutheran and Reformed, faith is held to be a laying hold on Christ, by whom we are saved (and not by our own works, or by any work of sanctitication done in us).
2. Roman Catholic Doctrine. — The Augsburg Confession (Art. 20) speaks of the long desuetude of the doctrine of faith in the Church, and the substitutiopof childish and needless works (fasts, pilgrimages, etc.), of the great cause of its corruption, and furnishing the chief occasion for the reformation of doctrine. "Our adversaries now," they say (A.D. 1530), "do not preach concerning these unprofitable works as they were wont: moreover, they have now learned to make mention of faith, about whichm, in former times, entire silence was observed. Theys now teach that we are not justified before God by works alone, but join faith in Christ thereto, and say faith and works justify is before God; which doctrine imparts more consolation than mere confidence in good works." This was the chief theological dispute of the Reformation, and was also the main topic of theological discussion at the Council of Trent (1545-63). A few of the divines there (the archbishop of Sienna, the bishop of Cava, and others) held that faith alone justifies; but this ancient doctrine was too inconsistent with the sacerdotal system to find favor with the majority. "Great pains were taken to discuss thoroughly the assertion that ’man is justified by faith,’ and to affix some determinate meaning to that expression; but the task was not easy. Some busied themselves in searching for the different seamses in which the word ’faith’ is used in Scripture, which they made to amount to fifteen, but knew not in which it is employed when applied to justification. At length, after much disputing, it was agreed that faith is the belief of all things which God has revealed, or the Church has commanded to be believed. It was distinguished into two sorts: the one said to exist even in sinners, and which was termed unformed, barren, and dead; the other peculiar to the just, and working by charity, and thence called formed, efficacious, and living faith. Still, as father Paul observes, ’they touched not the principal point of the difficulty, which was to ascertain whether a man is justified before he works righteousness, or whether he is justified by his works of righteousness" (Cramp, Text-book of Popery, chapter 7).
The decision of the Council is as follows (sess. 6; c. 8): "When the apostle says that man is justified ’by faith,’ and ’freely,’ these words are to be understood in that sense in which the Catholic Church hath always held and explained them, nanmely, that we are said to be justified ’by faith’ because faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation and root of all justification, without which it is impossible to please God, and come into the fellowship of his children; and that we are said to be justified ’freely,’ because nothing which precedes justification, whether faith or works, can deserve the grace thereof." Here, two things are to be noted:
(1) That the Roman idea of faith in general is that of the acceptance of the body of doctrine taught be the Church: "’La foi necesssaire pour la justification est la foi Cathohique d’apres laquelle nous croyons ce que Dieu a revels a son eglise" (Drioux, note to his edit. of Aquinas’s Summa, 6:600); thus substantially making the intellect alone the seat of faith, as Bellarmine expressly puts it in his contrast between the Protestant and the Roman ideas of faith: "haeretici fidem fiduciam esse definiunt; Catholici fidem in intellectu sedem habere volunt" (De Justif. 1:4). How thoroughly external a thing this faith may become in practice is evinced by the fact that the recitation of a creed, in Romanist language, is called an "act of faith" (Bergier, Dict. de Theologie, 3:54).
(2.) That, accordingly, the Council of Trent makes faith only the "beginning of human salvation" (salutis humanae initium), and "the root of all justification" (radix omnis justificationis). If faith is simply an intellectual act, it is fitly described as only the "beginning" of justification, and not its instrument. So Mohler, in commenting on this passage, expressly says that "Roman Catholics consider faith as the reunion with God in Christ especially by means of the faculty of knowledge, illuminated and strengthened by grace" (Symbolism, N.Y. 1844, page 204). In the same vein is the definition given by the Catechism of Trent, viz. that the "faith necessary to salvation is that faith by which we yield our entire assent to whatever has been revealed by almighty God" (Baltimore edit. page 19). It is plain that the notion of faith, as Protestants hold it, and as they believe that Paul held it, is totally wanting in the Roman doctrine. Naturally, too, with this conception of faith, the Romanists deny that faith alone justifies, affirming, in the way of the Scholastics (see above), that faith must be informed by charity, as the germ of new obedience, a gift bestowed first in baptism, and renewed by confession and absolution. So J.H. Newman (Difficulties of Anglicanism, cited by Hare, Contest with Rome, page 113) declares that Roman "Catholics hold that faith and love, faith and obedience, faith and works, are simply separable, and ordinarily separated in fact; that faith does not imply love, obedience, or works; that the firmest faith, so as to move mountains, may exist without love that is, true faith, as truly faith in the strict sense of the word as the faith of a martyr or a doctor." On this Hare remarks: "This belief is not faith. To many persons, indeed, it may appear that this is little more than a dispute about words; that we use the word faith in one sense, and the Romanist in another, and that it is not worth while to argue about the matter. But when we call to mind how great are the power and the blessings promised to faith by the Gospel, it surely is a question of the highest moment whether that power and those blessings belong to a lifeless, inert, inanimate notion, or to a living, energetic principle. This is the great controversy between Romanism and Protestantism. Their stay is the opus operatumn, ours Jides operans — faith, the gift of God, apprehending him through Christ, renewing the whole man, and becoming the living spring of his feelings, and thoughts, and actions" (Contest with Rome, note 1). A letter of Bunsen’s in 1840 illustrates the Roman idea of faith, as it had taken root in the mind of J.H. Newman before he went over to Rome. A pastor in Antwerp (named Sporlein) was troubled about episcopal ordination, and came to England for light. He was invited to breakfast at Newman’s, and found him and a number of his friends ready to hear him. "He unburdened his heart to them, and they gave their decision — the verdict of a Newmanic jury on a case of conscience, viz. that ’Pastor Sporleln, as a Continental Christian, was subject to the authority of the bishop of Antwerp.’ He objected that by that bishop he would be excommunicated as a heretic. ’ Of course; but you will conform to his decision.’ ’How can I do that,’ exclaimed Sporlein, ’without abjuring my faith?’ ’But your faith is heresy.’ ’How? Do you mean that I am to embrace the errors of Rome, and to abjure the faith of the Gospel?’ ’There is no faith but that of the Church.’ ’But my faith is in Christ crucified.’ ’You are mistaken; you are not saved by Christ, but by the Church’ " (Memoir of Bunsen, by his Widow, London, 1868, 1:614).
(IV.) Later Protestantism. —
1. Whatever minor differences may have arisen in Protestant theology as to faith, all evangelical theologians agree in the following points:
1. That saving faith not only recognises the supernatural, but also accepts and trusts absolutely on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as Savior;
2. that this saving power is the gift of God;
3. that it invariably brings forth good works;
4. that the faith which appropriates the merits of Christ must be a living faith;
5. that it is not the faith, nor the vitality of the faith, which justifies and saves man, but it is the object of the faith, i.e., the merits of Christ the Redeemer, and therefore that it is an error to attach a saving quality to any merely subjective faith. The earlier Reformers and Confessions made assurance an essential part of saving faith, but this doctrine was not long held. SEE ASSURANCE; SEE JUSTIFICATION.
2. Divisions of Faith — Faith is divided by the theologians into fides historica and fides salvifica (historical faith and saving faith). The former is intellectual knowledge and belief of the Christian doctrine; the latter a genuine appropriation of the merits of Christ unto salvation. True faith embraces both. The parts of faith, in theological language, are three:
a. Notitia (act of the intellect), knowledge, instruction in the facts and doctrines of Christianity (Rom 10:14).
b. Assensus (act of the will), assent to the doctrine, or reception of it as true and credible.
c. Fiducia (act of the heart), trust or confidence in the divine word. "True and saving faith in Christ consists both of assent and trust; but this is not a blind and superstitious trust in the sacrifice of Christ, like that of the heathens in their sacri’fices, nor the presumptuous trust of wicked and impenitent men, who depend on Christ to save them in their sins, but such a trust as is exercised according to the authority and direction of the word of God; so that to know the Gospel in its leading principles, and to have a cordial of belief in it, is necessary to that more specific act of faith which is called reliance, or, in systematic language, fiducial assent" (Watson, Institutes, 2:243).
3. Faith in Christ; justifying Faith as Condition of Salvation. —
(a.) Though the entire revelation of God is set forth, in one sense; as the object of faith (Luk 24:25-26; Hebrews 11), yet Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the dying and risen Redeemer, is
When a different state of mind ensues, it is ascribed to the quickening influence of the Spirit, an influence which may be ordinarily resisted. By that influence men are ’pricked in their heart;’ and the heart is prepared to feel the dread impression which is conveyed by the manifestation of man’s perishing state, not merely in the doctrine of the word, but as it stands in the Spirit’s application to the heart and conscience. But, though this was previously credited, and is still credited; and though its import and meaning are now more fully perceived as the perishing condition of the awakened man is more clearly discovered, the faith of affiance does not therefore follow. ’A person in these circumstances is not to be likened to a man drowning, who will instinctively seize the rope as soon as it is thrown out to him. There is a perverse disposition in man to seek salvation in his own way, and to stand on terms with his Savior. There is a reluctance to trust wholly in his atonement, and to be saved by grace. There is a sin of unbelief; an evil heart of unbelief; a repugnance to the committal of the soul to Christ, which the influence of grace, not merely knowledge of the opposite truth and duty, must conquer. Even when this is subdued, and man is made willing to be saved in the appointed way, a want of power is felt, not to credit the truth of the sacrifice of Christ, or its merits, or its sufficiency, but a want of power to trust wholly, and with confidence, in it, as to the issue It is then that, like the disciples, and all good men in all ages, every man in these circumstances prays for faith; for this power to trust personally, and far himself, in the atonement made for his sins. Thus he recognizes Christ as ’the Author and Finisher of faith,’ and faith as the gift of God, though his own duty: then there is in the mind an entire renunciation of self on the one hand, and a seeking of all from Christ on the other, which cannot but be followed by the gift of faith, and by the joy which springs, not from mere sentiment, but from the attestation of the Spirit to our acceptance with God. ‘Then the Holy Spirit is given, not only as the Comforter, but as the Sanctifier.’ It is in this way, too, that faith saves us to the end, by connecting us with the exerted influence and power of God, through Christ. ’The life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’ These are views which will, it is true, be a stumbling-stone and a rock of offense to the philosophers of this world. But there is no remedy in concession. Still this will stand, ’’Whosoever receiveth not the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein’" (Watson, Works, London, 1835, 7:224).
Pye Smith (First Lines of Christian Theology, book 5, chapter 5, § 3) defines the specific act of saving faith to be that act of the mind which directly and necessarily arises from the principle of faith, which is the proper and characteristic exertion of that principle, and in which the real nature, design, and tendency of genuine faith is made apparent. This act or exercise is expressed in Scripture by the terms “coming to Christ — looking to him — receiving him — eating the flesh of the Son of Man, and drinking his blood — trusting in him, and being fully persuaded of his truth and faithfulness." It is that which our old and excellent divines usually denoted by the phrase (perhaps too familiar, but very expressive and easily understood) closing with Christ. President Edwards expresses it thus: "The whole act of acceptance, or closing of the soul or heart with Christ" (Works, 8:546). "Faith is an assured resting of the soul upon God’s promises of mercy in Jesus Christ for pardon of sins here and glory hereafter" (Dr. Owen’s Catechism).
4. It has been said (above) that Protestant theologians are substantially agreed as to the nature of saving faith. But there is a class of divines in the Church of England (the so-called sacramental or Romanizing party) who seem to have gone back wholly to the scholastic doctrine of faith, if not, indeed, to that of Rome. One of the best writers of this school is bishop Forbes, of Brechin, who, in treating on Art. 11 of the Church of England, asserts that the faith by which we are justified is not the fiducia of Luther, but is "that beginning and root of the Christian life whereby we willingly believe, etc.," thus adopting the very phraseology of Trent in framing his definition of faith. So, also, he adopts Bellarmine’s statement that "love is the vivifying principle of the faith which impetrates justification." While he admits that the fathers often affirm that we are justified by faith alone, he adds that "they never intended, by the word alone, to exclude all works of faith and grace from the causes of justification and eternal salvations" (Explanation of the 39 Articles, London, 1867, 1:177 sq.).
These views are sot Protestant; yet bishop Forbes, and the set of theologians who agree with him in going back to Romish doctrine, still belong to a Church which calls itself Protestant, in happy contrast, we cite another divine of the same Church, Dr. O’Brien, who, in his excellent treatise on Justification by Faith (Lond. 2d ed. 1863), after a clear statement of the nature of Christian faith as "trust in Christ; an entire and unreserved confidence in the efficacy of what Christ has done and suffered for us, a full reliance upon him and his work," protests against the error that, "in justification, faith is accounted to us for righteousness because it is in itself a right principle, and one which naturally tends to produce obedience to divine precepts;" and he shows that, " while it is the fit instrument of our justification, and the seminal principle of holy obedience, it is, notwithstanding, the instrument of our justification, essentially and properly, because it unites us to the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we have an interest in all that he has done and suffered. God having, in his infinite wisdom and mercy, appointed that we should be pardoned and accepted for the sufferings and for the merits of another, seems most fitly to have appointed, too, that our voluntary acceptance of this his mode of freely forgiving and receiving us, by putting our trust in him through whom these blessings are to be bestowed upon us, should necessarily precede our full participation of all the benefits of this gracious scheme, and that nothing else should... . If for our justification it be essential, and sufficient, that we be united to Christ — one with Christ — found in Christ — does not the act whereby we take him for our defense against that wrath which we feel that we have earned — whereby, abjuring all self-dependence, we cast ourselves upon God’s free mercies in the Redeemer, with a full sense of our guilt and our danger, but in a full reliance upon the efficacy of all that he has wrought and endured; does not this act, whereby we cleave to him, and, as far as in us lies, become one with him, seem the fit act whereunto to annex the full enjoyment of all those inestimable benefits which, however dearly purchased they were by him who bought them, were designed to be, with respect to us upon whom they are bestowed, emphatically free? With less than this, our part in the procedure would not have been, what it was manifestly designed to be, intelligent and voluntary; with more, it might seem to be meritorious. Whereas faith unites all the advantages that we ought to look for in the instrument whereby we were to lay hold on the blessings thus freely offered to us: it makes us voluntary recipients of them, and yet does not seem to leave, even to the deceitfulness of our own deceitful hearts, the power of ascribing to ourselves any meritorious share in procuring them" (page 119- 121).
The relation of faith to works, and the question of the apparent difference between the doctrine of Paul and that of James on this point, will be treated in our article SEE WORKS. We only remark here that the Protestant theology (as has been abundantly shown in the extracts already given) holds that true faith always manifests itself by love and good works (see Augsburg Confession, Apology, c. 3); any other faith is mere belief, or what St. James calls "dead faith." The minor differences among Protestants as to the nature of faith depend chiefly upon differences as to the nature of justification. SEE JUSTIFICATION.
See, besides the works already cited, Edwards, Works (N.Y. edit., 4 volumes, 8vo), 1:110; 2:601 sq.; 4:64 sq.; Waterland, Works (Oxf. 1843), 6:23-29; Pearson, On the Creed, art. 1; Wardlaw, Systematic Theology (Edinb. 1857, 3 volumes, 8vo), 2:728 sq.; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics (Edinb. 1866, 8to), pages 37, 38 sq.; Knapp, Christian Theology, § 121 sq.; Browne, On 39 Articles (N.Y. 1865), page 308 sq.; Burnet, On 39 Articles, art. 11; Nitzsch, Christliche Lehre, § 143; Monsell, Religion of Redemption (Lond. 1867, 8vo), page 219 sq.; Bohmer, Christl. Dogmatik (Breslau, 1840), 1:4; 2:259 sq.; Perrone (Romans C.), Prcelectiones Theologicce (ed. Miane, 2 volumes), 2:1414 sq.; Mohler (R.C.), Symbolism (N.Y. 1844), book 1, chapter 3, § 15, 16; Buchanan, On Justification (Edinb. 1867, 8vo), page 364 sq.; Hare, Victory of Faith (reviewed in Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1860, art. 2); Lepsius, Paulin. Rechtfertigungslehre (Leips. 1853, 8vo), page 94 sq.; Usteri, Paulin. Lehrbegriff (Zr. 1824, 8vo); Ritschl, Altkathol. Kirche (Leips. 1857, 8vo), page 82 sq.; Schulz, Die Christliche Lehre v. Glauben (Leips. 1834, 8vo); Cobb, Philosophy of Faith (Nashville); Neander, Katholicismus u. Protestantismus (Berlin, 1863, 8vo), pages 131-146; Hase, Protestant. Polemik (Leips. 1865, 8vo), page 242 sq.; Baur, Katholicismus und Protestantismus (Tiibingen, 1836, 8vo), pages 259-264; Elliott, Delineation of Romanism, book 1, chapter 2; Baur, Dogmengeschichte (Leips. 1867, 3 volumes, 8vo), 3:200 sq.; Cunningham, Historical Theology, chapter 21; Beck, Dogmengeschichte (Tiibingen, 1864, 8vo), page 364-369. SEE JUSTIFICATION; SEE SANCTIFICATION.
Faith. Heb 11:7. Faith is distinguished from credulity in that it does not accept anything as true which is not based on sufficient evidence; it is contrasted with unbelief in that it accepts whatever is proposed to it when the testimony thereof is adequate. Faith may be dead, if it be merely in the understanding, admitting facts as true, but not realizing their bearing upon ourselves. Such a faith is that historical faith, which credits the narrative of our Lord’s passion and death, but seeks not, through them, remission of personal guilt. The faith of devils goes farther than this; for they "believe and tremble," Jas 2:19; but they find no means of release from their apprehended doom. True "faith is the substance (or realizing) of things hoped for, the evidence (or sure persuasion) of things not seen." Heb 11:1. With such a faith "Abraham believed God; and it was counted unto him for righteousness." Gen 15:6; Rom 4:3; Gal 3:6. So those who believe in Christ, accepting his offered mercy, relying on his never-forfeited word, are for his sake regarded as God’s children. Hence men are said to be "justified by faith." Rom 3:23-26; Rom 6:1. Faith, if genuine, will work by love, Gal 6:6, yielding the fruits of a holy life and conversation. Mat 7:20; Jas 2:26. There are various shades of meaning belonging to the word "faith" in Scripture; sometimes it means the gospel revelation. Act 6:7; Rom 10:8. The precious gift of faith and the increase thereof should be earnestly sought in humble prayer. Luk 17:6; Php 1:29.
This may be called saving faith. It is confidence in God founded on His word; it is believing in a person, as Abraham believed God . "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." Joh 3:36. There is no virtue or merit in the faith itself; but it links the soul with the infinite God. Faith is indeed the gift of God. Eph 2:8. Salvation is on the principle of faith in contrast to works under the law. Rom 10:9. But true faith is manifested by good works. If a man says he has faith, it is reasonable to say to him, "Show me thy faith" by thy works. Jas 2:14-26. Otherwise, if the faith does not manifest itself, it is described as ’dead,’ and is altogether different from real, active belief. A mental assent to what is stated, as a mere matter of history, is not faith. A natural man can believe such things: "the devils also believe and tremble," but true faith gives joy and peace.
There is also the power and action of faith in the Christian’s walk: "we walk by faith; not by sight." 2Co 5:7. We see such faith exemplified in the lives of the Old Testament saints, as given in Heb 11. The Lord had often to rebuke His disciples for their want of faith in their daily walk. The believer should have faith in the living God concerning all the details of his daily life.
THE FAITH is at times referred to in the sense of ’the truth;’ that which has been recorded, and which the Christian has believed, to the saving of his soul. For this the Christian should contend earnestly; for it is fundamental; and many false prophets are gone into the world, and have even crept into association with the saints unawares. Jud 1:3.
Belief without evidence
* See Animal faith
FAITH (Heb.
1. Introductory.
2. The idea of ‘faith’ in the OT.
3. Later Jewish idea of ‘faith.’
4. ‘Faith’ in the Gospels: (1) in the Synoptics; (2) in the Fourth Gospel.
5. Some characteristics of the Johannine conception of ‘faith.’
6. The Johannine and Pauline conceptions of ‘faith’ contrasted.
7. The place of ‘faith’ in the teaching of Jesus.
Literature.
1. Introductory.—In the NT the term ‘faith’ has two main meanings, which may be distinguished as active and passive senses, viz.: (1) belief, ‘the frame of mind which relies on another,’ and (2) fidelity, ‘the frame of mind which can be relied on.’ Of these the former is the predominant use, and is marked by a rich, copious, and distinctively Christian development.
The two senses—the active and passive—both logically and grammatically pass by an easy transition from one to the other, and are not always clearly distinguishable, or are actually combined (as, e.g., in
The Gr.
2. The idea of faith in the OT.—Faith as an active religious principle is relatively far less prominent in the OT than in the NT. The solitary instance in which the active meaning certainly emerges in the Heb. substantive
The object of ‘faith,’ as expressed (with a religious connotation) by the verb (
3. Later Jewish idea of ‘faith.’—In early Rabbinical and other Jewish literature the term for ‘faith,’ besides its Biblical meaning of ‘faithfulness,’ also denotes active trust in God. This as a religious principle is emphatically praised by the Rabbis, and regarded by them as highly meritorious. The classical example is, as has already been stated, the faith of Abraham (Gen 15:6), which became one of the commonplaces of theological discussion not only in Rabbinical circles but also in the Hellenistic school of Alexandria,* [Note: In Philo the career of Abraham is made the subject of elaborate and frequent comment and allegory. Lightfoot (op. cit.) remarks: ‘If we look only to the individual man, faith with Philo is substantially the same as faith with St. Paul. The lessons drawn from the history of Abraham by the Alexandrian Jew and the Christian Apostle differ very slightly.’] while its occurrence in the NT is, of course, a familiar fact. The most instructive example in Rabbinical literature is to be found in the early Midrashic work the Mekhilta (on Exo 14:30).† [Note: The original can be seen in Weiss’ ed. of the Mekhilta, 25b, 26. The Mekhilta is a halakhic midrash on part of Exodus, dating in its present form from the first part of the second Christian century, but containing much earlier material. It is invaluable for illustrating early Jewish ideas and religious thoughts of the Apostolic age.] The passage runs as follows:
‘The people feared the Lord. So long as they were in Egypt they did not fear God, but now: the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and His servant Moses. If they believed in Moses, much more did they believe in the Lord. From this thou mayest learn that whoever believes in the faithful Shepherd is (regarded) as if he believed in the word of Him who spake and the world was.… Great is faith whereby Israel believed in Him who spake and the world was; for because Israel believed in the Lord, the Holy Spirit abode upon them, and they sang the song: for immediately after the words: they believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant, follow the words (Exo 15:1): Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song to the Lord. In like manner thou findest that Abraham our Father inherited this world and the world to come only by the merit of faith (
In the early Rabbinical literature ‘faith’ wavers in meaning between ‘belief’ and ‘fidelity (to the Law).’ The former is prominent in the Apocalypse of Baruch (1st cent. a.d.) But the latter is characteristic of the later period, ‘faith ‘and ‘works’ being co-ordinated or combined.* [Note: Charles’ note on Apoc. Bar. liv. 21: ‘Faith in the Talmud is in one of its aspects regarded as a work which, as the fulfilment of the Law, produces merit.’] ‘Faith’ (
The words about the power to remove mountains (Mar 11:23 f. || Mat 21:21 f.) occur also in a different connexion in Mat 17:20 (and in the rebuke administered to the disciples for their ‘lack of faith’ in dealing with the epileptic—a case of special difficulty). They have a proverbial ring,* [Note: For the possible interpretation of the words בהר יהוה יראה (Gen 22:14) as a proverb = ‘In the mountain (.e. when perplexity is at its height) Jahweh will provide,’ see C. J. Ball in note, loc. Cf. Zec 4:7.] and may easily have been used by our Lord more than once (cf. Luk 17:6 ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye would say to this sycamine tree, Be thou rooted up,’ etc.).
In one instance ‘faith’ is used in the Synoptic Gospels in a way that suggests the technical sense so frequent in the Epistles, viz. Luk 18:8 (‘When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth’?) Here ‘faith’ = faith in Himself as Messiah and Redeemer.
In the Acts and Epp.
The usual sense of the verb in the Fourth Gospel is a soteriological one. It expresses saving faith directed to the Person of Christ. In some instances, it is true, the immediate object of the faith is the wonder-working power of Jesus (the ‘miracle-faith’): Joh 4:48 (‘Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will in no wise believe’), Joh 11:40.§ [Note: Mat 8:13, Mar 5:36; Mar 9:23-24, Luk 8:50.] But here also the same remark applies as to the similar cases in the Synoptics, that the soteriological meaning lies very close to, and is sometimes almost indistinguishable from, the other (cf. Joh 4:48 with Joh 4:53 and Joh 9:38, and Joh 11:40 with Joh 11:15 and Joh 12:39). In the following instances, however, the direct soteriological significance is clear and unmistakable: Joh 3:15; Joh 3:18, Joh 4:41-42; Joh 4:53, Joh 5:44, Joh 6:36; Joh 6:47; Joh 6:64, Joh 9:38, Joh 10:25-26, Joh 11:15, Joh 12:39, Joh 14:29, Joh 16:31, Joh 19:35, Joh 20:31. Of these passages the two last are particularly instructive: ‘That ye may believe’ (Joh 19:35), and ‘These are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name’ (Joh 20:31). Here faith occupies a fundamental place. Its essential object is defined to be the belief that Jesus is ‘the Christ, the Son of God.’
Once again the conclusion is reinforced that the undefined ‘to believe’ is practically a synonym for ‘to be a Christian.’ Indeed, it may be inferred from the NT usage generally of
5. Some characteristics of the Johannine conception of ‘faith.’—The fundamental conception of ‘faith’ in the Fourth Gospel coincides with that of the other NT writers; it consists essentially in trustful self-committal to Christ and His salvation. Only it is concerned less than in the Synoptics with the appropriation of directly physical relief; it moves rather in the sphere of spiritual and eternal facts, and directs itself more exclusively to the Person of Christ. Trust in God and in Christ are equated (Joh 14:1); faith characterizes those who recognize His Divine mission (cf. also Joh 16:30), and they are described as those ‘who believe in his name.’ The result of faith is an acknowledgment of Christ’s unity with the Father (Joh 10:38, Joh 14:10).
Faith (
There is evident in the treatment of faith characteristic of the Fourth Gospel a spirit of protest against the false and exaggerated views of knowledge that were beginning to affect the Church. The subtle and pervasive danger of Gnosticism, with its dangerous glorification of a merely intellectual knowledge, and its contempt for simple faith, had to be met. This was effected in the Fourth Gospel, ‘on the one hand by deepening the idea of knowledge to the knowledge of experience’ (which is the fruit of simple faith), ‘and on the other by insisting upon the immediate entrance of every believer into the possession of salvation.’† [Note: B. Warfield in Hastings’ DB i. 836 (art. ‘Faith’).] The writer of the Fourth Gospel ‘would indeed have believers know what they believe, and who He is in whom they put their trust, and what He has done for them, and is doing, and will do in and through them; but this is not that they may know these things simply as intellectual propositions, but that they may rest on them in faith, and know them in personal experience.‡ [Note: Warfield, ib.] Nothing is more characteristic of the Johannine conception than the insistence on the present experience and participation in eternal life of believers. ‘He that believeth hath eternal life’ (Joh 3:36, Joh 5:24, Joh 6:47; Joh 6:54; cf. 1Jn 3:14-15; 1Jn 5:11-13). The inheritance of the true Christian was not merely a future boon,—though the future had in store for him a greater glory than that of the present,—but the simple believer, by the mere act of faith, was already placed on a plane of life to which no knowledge could attain.’
It is worth noting in this connexion that
6. The Johannine and Pauline conceptions of ‘faith’ contrasted.—This is not the place for an extended review of the Pauline view of faith, but one or two salient points of contrast with the Johannine may be briefly indicated. The different method of presentation in each case is explained by the different circumstances under which each was formulated. In the interests of spiritual religion the Apostle of the Gentiles was forced to wage uncompromising war with Jewish legalistic conceptions of religion, and prejudices in favour of their own privileged religious position, which (naturally enough) were ingrained in the Jewish consciousness, and threatened to pass over into the Christian Church.† [Note: As has already been pointed out above, ‘faith’ was regarded in Jewish circles as of the highest religious significance and value; only, in the background of the Jewish mind there always lurked the consciousness of privilege and superiority.] As against Jewish privilege and advantages, St. Paul vindicated and maintained the great principle that in the domain of salvation there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile, and that the Jew has no other righteousness than that which comes through faith in Jesus Christ (Gal 3:7 f.), being in this respect in exactly the same position as the Gentile (cf. Rom 3:30). From this certain important results follow: (1) That ‘no man is justified by the law’ (Gal 2:16; Gal 3:11, Rom 3:20), and (2) that ‘a man is justified by faith alone, apart from works of law.’ This thesis was splendidly developed by St. Paul in his great dialectic. The absolute sufficiency of this saving faith is above all shown in the contemplation of its object. ‘It is because faith lays hold of Jesus Christ, who was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification (Rom 4:25), and makes us the possessors of the righteousness of God through Him, that there is no room for any righteousness of our own in the ground of our salvation (Rom 10:3, Eph 2:8)’ (Warfield). See, further, Justification.
On the other hand, the Johannine presentation is determined by an environment of different circumstances. The false emphasis laid on a merely intellectual knowledge had to be met. Hence the insistence in the Fourth Gospel on the true knowledge of Christian experience which is the fruit of a simple faith. It is regarded as a precious and permanent present possession. Briefly, it may be said that ‘faith with St. John is rather contemplative and philosophic, where with St. Paul it is active and enthusiastic.’‡ [Note: Sanday-Headlam, Romans, p. 32.]
7. The place of ‘faith’ in the teaching of Jesus.—Christ no less than St. Paul combated the prevailing tendency among the Jews to rest in a position of privilege (cf. Mat 3:9, Rom 2:17). But the dominant characteristic of His teaching, as reported both in the Synoptics and in the Fourth Gospel, is the consistent way in which He strives to draw all faith to Himself. Even when His language is general in character (Mar 11:22, Mat 21:22, Mar 9:24, Luk 18:8), He speaks in a way that necessarily fixes attention upon His own Person as God’s unique representative on earth. The soteriological significance of the so-called ‘miracle-faith’ has already been pointed out above. This comes out especially in such a passage as Mat 9:2, where healing of the body is conjoined with the claim to forgive sins. That Christ is the proper object of this soteriological faith is sufficiently attested even in the Synoptic account (Luk 8:12-13; Luk 22:32, Mat 18:6 [|| Mar 9:42], Luk 7:50; cf. Luk 24:25; Luk 24:45). It is in the Fourth Gospel, however, in the intimate discourses of Jesus which are there preserved, that the fullest account is given of the teaching of our Lord on this subject. Here, as is natural, faith in its higher aspects is consistently and abundantly set forth, as reflected and mirrored in the recollection of the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved.’ In the Fourth Gospel we are confronted with the personal testimony of the disciple who was uniquely fitted both by temperament and by character to receive and assimilate the deepest thoughts of his Master.
The testimony of the Fourth Gospel on this subject cannot be more adequately summed up than in the words of Warfield:* [Note: cit. ib.] —
‘In these discourses, too, Jesus’ primary task is to hind men to Him by faith. The chief difference is that here, consonantly with the nature of the discourses recorded, much more prevailing stress is laid upon the higher aspects of faith, and we see Jesus striving specially to attract to Himself a faith consciously set upon eternal good. In a number of instances we find ourselves in much the same atmosphere as in the Synoptics (Joh 4:21 f., Joh 4:48 f., Joh 9:35); and the method of Jesus is the same throughout. Everywhere He offers Himself as the object of faith, and claims faith in Himself for the highest concerns of the soul. But everywhere He begins at the level at which He finds His hearers, and leads them upward to these higher things. It is so that He deals with Nathanael (Joh 1:51) and Nicodemus (Joh 3:12); and it is so that He deals constantly with the Jews, everywhere requiring faith in Himself for eternal life (Joh 5:24-25; Joh 5:28, Joh 6:35; Joh 6:40; Joh 6:47, Joh 7:38, Joh 8:24, Joh 10:25; Joh 10:36, Joh 12:44; Joh 12:46), declaring that faith in Him is the certain outcome of faith in their own Scriptures (Joh 5:46-47), is demanded by the witness borne Him by God in His mighty works (Joh 10:25; Joh 10:36-37), is involved in and is indeed identical with faith in God (Joh 5:25; Joh 5:38, Joh 6:40; Joh 6:45, Joh 8:47, Joh 12:44), and is the one thing which God requires of them (Joh 6:29), and the failure of which will bring them eternal ruin (Joh 3:18, Joh 5:38, Joh 6:64, Joh 8:24). When dealing with His followers, His primary care was to build up their faith in Him. Witness especially His solicitude for their faith in the last hours of His intercourse with them. For the faith they had reposed in Him He returns thanks to God (Joh 17:8), but He is still nursing their faith (Joh 16:31), preparing for its increase through the events to come (Joh 13:19, Joh 16:29), and with almost passionate eagerness claiming it at their bands (Joh 14:1; Joh 14:10-12). Even after His resurrection we find Him restoring the faith of the waverer (Joh 20:29) with words which pronounce a special blessing on those who should hereafter believe on less compelling evidence—words whose point is not fully caught until we realize that they contain an intimation of the work of the Apostles as, like His own, bringing men to faith in Him (Joh 17:20-21).’
The fundamental position of faith in the Christian religion, which is so strikingly expressed and implied throughout the whole NT literature, justifies the distinction of the old and new covenants as the ages before and after the ‘coming of faith’ (Gal 3:23; Gal 3:25). At the same time the way had been prepared for this historically by the circumstances of the time. The more the fulfilment of Israel’s national hopes by special Divine interposition seemed to recede, the more stress was laid upon the necessity of trust and faith in the Divine ordering as a religious duty.
Literature.—A comprehensive treatment of the whole subject will be found in B.B. Warfield’s art. ‘Faith’ in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible . To the literature there cited add R. J. Knowling, Ep. of St. James (1904), p. xlii ff., 53 ff.; R. St. J. Parry, Discussion of the Ep. of St. James (1903), p. 43 ff.; J. R. Illingworth, Reason and Revelation (1902), p. 204 ff., Christian Character (1904), p. 63 ff.; G. Ferries, Growth of Christian Faith (1905); W. Herrmann, Faith and Morals (1904), p. 7 ff. See also artt. Belief, Doubt, Justification, Righteousness.
G. H. Box.
(
; comp. 
, Deut. xxxii. 21):
By: Kaufmann Kohler
In Biblical and rabbinical literature, and hence in the Jewish conception, "faith" denotes not belief in a dogmatic sense (see Saul of Tarsus), but either (a) faithfulness (from the passive form "ne'eman" = "trusted" or "trustworthy," Deut, l.c.; comp. Deut. xxxii. 4: "a god of faithfulness" ["emunah"; A. V. "truth"]; Ps. xxxvi. 6 [A. V. 5]; Prov. xx. 6, xxviii. 20 "a man of faithfulness" [A. V. "a faithful man"]; Hosea ii. 22 [A. V. 20]: "I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness"; Jer. vii. 28: "faithfulness [A. V. "truth"] is perished"; Ecclus. [Sirach] xlvi 15) or (b) confidence and trust in God, in His word, or in His messenger (Hab. ii. 4: "The just shall live by his faith"; comp. Gen. xv. 5 [A. V. 6]: "He [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and he counted it to him for righteousness"; II Chron. xx. 20: "Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established"; Isa. vii. 9: "If ye will not believe [that is, have faith], surely ye shall not be established").
In this sense of perfect trust in God the Rabbis laud and insist on faith as highly meritorious (see the classical passage on "amanah" in Mek., Beshallaḥ, 6 with reference to Ex xiv. 31); whereas those lacking faith ("meḥusare amanah," Mek., Beshallaḥ, Shirah, 2; comp. 
], Matt. vi. 30), are greatly blamed; the world's decline is brought about by the disappearance of "the men of faith" (Soṭah ix. 12).
Only in medieval times did the word "emunah" (faith) receive the meaning of dogmatic belief, on which see Articles of Faith.
FAITH.—Noun for believe, having in early Eng. ousted ‘belief’ (wh. see) from its ethical uses. By this severance of noun and vb. (so in Lat. fides—credere, French foi—croire) Eng. suffers in comparison with German (Glaube—glauben) and Greek (pistis—pisteuô). But ‘faith’ has a noble pedigree; coming from the Latin fides, through Norman-French, it connotes the sense of personal honour and of the mutual loyalty attaching to the pledged word.
1. In OT.—This word, the normal NT expression for the religious bond, is found but twice in the OT (EV
2. In NT.—The NT use of pistis, pisteuô, is based on that of common Greek, where persuasion is the radical idea of the word. From this sprang two principal notions, meeting in the NT conception: (a) the ethical notion of confidence, trust in a person, his word, promise, etc., and then mutual trust, or the expression thereof in troth or pledge—a usage with only a casual religious application in non-Biblical Greek; and (b) the intellectual notion of conviction, belief (in distinction from knowledge), covering all the shades of meaning from practical assurance down to conjecture, but always connoting sincerity, a belief held in good faith. The use of ‘faith’ in Mat 23:23 belongs to OT phraseology (see Deu 32:20, quoted above); also in Rom 3:3, Gal 5:22, pistis is understood to mean good faith, fidelity (RV
(1) In this way faith came to signify the religious faculty in the broadest sense,—a generalization foreign to the OT. Philo Judæus, the philosopher of Judaism, thus employs the term; quoting Gen 15:6, he takes Abraham for the embodiment of faith so understood, viewing it as the crown of human character, ‘the queen of the virtues’; for faith is, with Philo, a steady intuition of Divine things, transcending sense and logic; it is, in fact, the highest knowledge, the consummation of reason. This large Hellenistic meaning is conspicuous in Heb 11:1 b, Heb 11:6; Heb 11:27 etc., and appears in St. Paul (2Co 4:18; 2Co 5:7 ‘by faith not by appearance’). There is nothing distinctively Christian about faith understood in the bare significance of ‘seeing the invisible’—‘the demons believe, and shudder’; the belief that contains no more is the ‘dead faith,’ which condemns instead of justifying (Jas 2:14-26). As St. James and St. Paul both saw from different standpoints, Abraham, beyond the ‘belief that God is,’ recognized what God is and yielded Him a loyal trust, which carried the whole man with it and determined character and action; his faith included sense (a) of pisteuô (which lies in the Heb. vb. ‘believe’) along with (b). In this combination lies the rich and powerful import of NT ‘believing’: it is a spiritual apprehension joined with personal affiance; the recognition of truth in, and the plighting of troth with, the Unseen; in this twofold sense, ‘with the heart (the entire inner self) man believeth unto righteousness’ (Rom 10:10). Those penetrated by the spirit of the OT could not use the word pistis in relation to God without attaching to it, besides the rational idea of supersensible apprehension, the warmer consciousness of moral trust and fealty native to it already in human relationships.
(2) Contact with Jesus Christ gave to the word a greatly increased use and heightened potence. ‘Believing’ meant to Christ’s disciples more than hitherto, since they had Him to believe in; and ‘believers,’ ‘they that had believed,’ became a standing name for the followers of Christ (Act 2:44, Rom 10:4, 1Co 14:22, Mar 16:17). A special endowment of this power given to some in the Church seems to be intended by the ‘faith’ of 1Co 12:9 (cf. Mat 17:19 f., Luk 17:5 f.). Faith was our Lord’s chief and incessant demand from men; He preaches, He works ‘powers,’ to elicit and direct it—the ‘miracle-faith’ attracted by ‘signs and wonders’ being a stepping-stone to faith in the Person and doctrine of God’s Messenger. The bodily cures and spiritual blessings Jesus distributes are conditioned upon this one thing—‘Only believel’ ‘All things are possible to him that believeth.’ There was a faith in Jesus, real so far as it went but not sufficient for true discipleship, since it attached itself to His power and failed to recognize His character and spiritual aims (see Joh 2:23 ff; Joh 4:48; Joh 6:14 ff; Joh 7:31; Joh 8:30 ff; Joh 11:45; Joh 12:11 ff; Joh 14:11), which Jesus rejected and affronted; akin to this, in a more active sense, is the faith that ‘calls’ Him ‘Lord’ and ‘removes mountains’ in His name, but does not in love do the Father’s will, which He must disown (Mat 7:21 ff., 1Co 13:2). Following the Baptist, Jesus sets out with the summons, ‘Repent, and believe the good news’ that ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’ (Mar 1:15); like Moses, He expects Israel to recognize His mission as from God, showing ‘signs’ to prove this (see Joh 2:11; Joh 2:23; Joh 3:2 etc.; cf. Act 2:22, Heb 4:2). As His teaching advanced, it appeared that He required an unparalleled faith in Himself along with His message, that the Kingdom of God He speaks of centres in His Person, that in fact He is ‘the word’ of God He brings, He is the light and life whose coming He announces, ‘the bread from heaven’ that He has to give to a famished world (Joh 6:33 ff; Joh 8:12; Joh 11:25; Joh 14:6 etc.). For those ‘who received him,’ who ‘believed on his name’ in this complete sense, faith acquired a scope undreamed of before; it signified the unique attachment which gathered round the Person of Jesus—a human trust, in its purity and intensity such as no other man had ever elicited, which grew up into and identified itself with its possessor’s belief in God, transforming the latter in doing so, and which drew the whole being of the believer into the will and life of his Master. When Thomas hails Jesus as ‘My Lord and my God!’ he ‘has believed’; this process is complete in the mind of the slowest disciple; the two faiths are now welded inseparably; the Son is known through the Father, and the Father through the Son, and Thomas gives full affiance to both in one. As Jesus was exalted, God in the same degree became nearer to these men, and their faith in God became richer in contents and firmer in grasp. So sure and direct was the communion with the Father opened by Jesus to His brethren, that the word ‘faith,’ as commonly used, failed to express it: ‘Henceforth ye know (the Father), and have seen him,’ said Jesus (Joh 14:7); and St. John, using the vb. ‘believe’ more than any one, employs the noun ‘faith’ but once in Gospel and Epp. (1Jn 5:4)—‘knowing God, the Father,’ etc., is, for him, the Christian distinction. Their Lord’s departure, and the shock and trial of His death, were needful to perfect His disciples’ faith (Joh 16:7), removing its earthly supports and breaking its links with all materialistic Messianism. As Jesus ‘goes to the Father,’ they realize that He and the Father ‘are one’; their faith rests no longer, in any degree, on ‘a Christ after the flesh’; they are ready to receive, and to work in, the power of the Spirit whom He sends to them ‘from the Father.’ Jesus is henceforth identified with the spiritual and eternal order; to the faith which thus acknowledges Him He gives the benediction, ‘Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed’ (Joh 20:29; cf. 1Pe 1:8). To define this specific faith a new grammatical construction appears in NT Greek: one does not simply believe Jesus, or believe on Him, one believes into or unto Him, or His name (which contains the import of His person and offices)—so in Mat 18:6, and continually in Jn. (Joh 2:11; Joh 2:23; Joh 3:18; Joh 3:36; Joh 4:39; Joh 6:29; Joh 6:35; Joh 7:38 f., Joh 9:35; Joh 11:25 f., Joh 12:36 f., Joh 14:1; Joh 14:12, Joh 17:20 etc.; also in Paul)—which signifies so believing in Him as to ‘come to Him’ realizing what He is. By a variety of prepositional constructions, the Greek tongue, imperfectly followed in such refinements by our own, strives to represent the variety of attitude and bearing in which faith stands towards its Object. That the mission of Jesus Christ was an appeal for faith, with His own Person as its chief ground and matter, is strikingly stated in Joh 20:31: ‘These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life in his name.’ Christian faith is the decisive action of the whole inner man—understanding, feeling, will; it is the trustful and self-surrendering acknowledgment of God in Christ.
(3) Further, Jesus called on the world to ‘believe the good news’ of His coming for redemption. This task, marked out by OT prophecy, and laid on Him at His birth (Luk 1:68-79; Luk 2:38) and baptism (Joh 1:29), from an early period of His ministry Jesus connected with His death (see Joh 2:19-22; Joh 3:14 f.: and later, Mat 16:16-28; Mat 20:28, Luk 9:31; Luk 12:50, Joh 12:23-25). The words of Mat 26:28, which must be vindicated as original, make it clear that Jesus regarded His death as the culmination of His mission; at the Last Supper He is ready to offer His ‘blood’ to seal ‘the new covenant’ under which ‘forgiveness of sins’ will be universally guaranteed (cf. Jer 31:33 f.). Having concentrated on Himself the faith of men, giving to faith thereby a new heart and energy, He finally fastens that faith upon His death; He marks this event for the future as the object of the specifically saving faith. By this path, the risen Lord explained, He had ‘entered into his glory’ and ‘received from the Father the promise of the Spirit,’ in the strength of which His servants are commissioned to ‘preach to all the nations repentance and remission of sins’ (Luk 24:46-48; cf. Act 2:22-38). Taught by Him, the Apostles understood and proclaimed their Master’s death as the hinge of the relations between God and man that centre in Christ; believing in Him meant, above all, believing in that, and finding in the cross the means of deliverance from sin and the revelation of God’s saving purpose toward the race (Act 3:18 f., Act 20:28, 1Co 1:18-25, 2Co 5:14-21, 1Pe 3:18, Rev 1:4-6, etc.). Faith in the resurrection of Jesus was logically antecedent to faith in His sacrificial death; for His rising from the dead set His dying in its true light (Act 4:10-12), revealing the shameful crucifixion of Israel’s Messiah as a glorious expiation for the guilt of mankind (Heb 2:9, Rom 4:25, 1Pe 1:21). To ‘confess with one’s mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in one’s heart that God raised him from the dead,’ was therefore to fulfil the essential conditions of the Christian salvation (Rom 10:9), since the Lord’s resurrection, including His ascension which completes it, gives assurance of the peace with God won by His accepted sacrifice (Heb 7:25; Heb 9:11-14; Heb 10:19; Heb 10:22); it vindicates His Divine Sonship and verifies His claims on human homage (Rom 1:4, Act 2:36, 1Pe 1:21); it guarantees ‘the redemption of the body,’ and the attainment, both for the individual and for the Church, of the glory of the Messianic Kingdom, the consummated salvation that is in Christ Jesus (1Co 15:12-28, Rom 8:17-23, Eph 1:17-23, Act 17:31, Rev 1:5; Rev 1:17 f., etc.). In two words, the Christian faith is to ‘believe that Jesus died and rose again’ (1Th 4:14)—that in dying He atoned for human sin, and in rising He abolished death. St. Paul was the chief exponent and defender of this ‘word of the cross,’ which is at the same time ‘the word of faith’ (Rom 10:8); its various aspects and issues appear under the terms Justification, Atonement, Propitiation, Grace, Law (in NT), etc. But St. Peter in his 1st Ep., St. John in his 1st Ep. and Rev., and the writer of Hebrews, each in his own fashion, combine with St. Paul to focus the redeeming work of Jesus in the cross. According to the whole tenor of the NT, the forgiving grace of God there meets mankind in its sin; and faith is the hand reached out to accept God’s gifts of mercy proffered from the cross of Christ. The faculty of faith, which we understood in its fundamental meaning as the spiritual sense, the consciousness of God, is in no wise narrowed or diverted when it fixes itself on ‘Jesus Christ, and him crucified’; for, as St. Paul insists, ‘God commendeth his own love to us in that Christ died for us,’ ‘God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself.’ ‘The glory of God’ shines into men’s hearts, His true character becomes for the first time apparent, and calls forth a full and satisfied faith, when beheld ‘in the face of Christ’ (Rom 5:8, 2Co 4:6; 2Co 5:18-21).
G. G. Findlay.
In general, is an assent of the mind to the truth of some proposition on the word of another, God or man. It differs from assent in matters of science in that the latter is based on evidence of fact, whereas the former is based solely on the word of another. Divine faith is therefore the holding of some truth as absolutely certain because God, Who can neither deceive nor be deceived, has spoken it. It is not merely a feeling or a suspicion or an opinion, but a firm, unshakeable adherence of the mind to a truth revealed by God. The motive of Divine faith, or the reason why we believe, is God’s authority, His unfailing knowledge and truthfulness. We believe the truths of faith not because our minds understand them, can see them, but because the Infinitely Wise and Truthful God has revealed them. This motive of faith must not be confused with motives of credibility. These latter are the signs, and among them the surest are miracles and prophecies, by which we can conclude with full certitude that God has revealed and that therefore there is a strict obligation to accept the truths He has made known. It is these motives of credibility which precede the act of faith and which make it essentially reasonable to assent to the truths of faith, for once it is certain that God has spoken, it is unreasonable to withhold assent to His truths. All that God has revealed and nothing else is the object of Divine faith, for it is that and that alone which can be accepted on the word of God. Though a man may be able by his own resources to learn the main truths revealed by God, the normal and usual way is through the Church which has been commissioned by Christ to teach in His name and with His authority. Divine faith is a supernatural act and therefore requires the grace of God. This grace is given to all adults who do not place any obstacle in its way. Without faith no man can be saved. For infants the virtue of faith received at the time of Baptism suffices, but for adults an act of supernatural faith that God exists and rewards the good and punishes the evil is necessary for salvation.
I. THE MEANING OF THE WORD(Pistis, fides). In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word means essentially steadfastness, cf. Exod., xvii, 12, where it is used to describe the strengthening of Moses’ hands; hence it comes to mean faithfulness, whether of God towards man (Deuteronomy 32:4) or of man towards God (Ps. cxviii, 30). As signifying man’s attitude towards God it means trustfulness or fiducia. It would, however, be illogical to conclude that the word cannot, and does not, mean belief or faith in the Old Testament for it is clear that we cannot put trust in a person’s promises without previously assenting to or believing in that person’s claim to such confidence. Hence even if it could be proved that the Hebrew word does not in itself contain the notion of belief, it must necessarily presuppose it. But that the word does itself contain the notion of belief is clear from the use of the radical, which in the causative conjugation, or Hiph’il, means "to believe", e.g. Gen., xv, 6, and Deut., i, 32, in which latter passage the two meanings -- viz. of believing and of trusting -- are combined. That the noun itself often means faith or belief, is clear from Hab., ii, 4, where the context demands it. The witness of the Septuagint is decisive; they render the verb by pisteuo, and the noun by pistis; and here again the two factors, faith and trust, are connoted by the same term. But that even in classical Greek pisteuo was used to signify believe, is clear from Euripides (Helene, 710), logois d’emoisi pisteuson tade, and that pistis could mean "belief" is shown by the same dramatist’s theon d’ouketi pistis arage (Medea, 414; cf. Hipp., 1007). In the New Testament the meanings "to believe" and "belief", for pisteon and pistis, come to the fore; in Christ’s speech, pistis frequently means "trust", but also "belief" (cf. Matthew 8:10). In Acts it is used objectively of the tenets of the Christians, but is often to be rendered "belief" (cf. xvii, 31; xx, 21; xxvi, 8). In Romans, xiv, 23, it has the meaning of "conscience" -- "all that is not of faith is sin" -- but the Apostle repeatedly uses it in the sense of "belief" (cf. Romans 4 and Galatians 3). How necessary it is to point this out will be evident to all who are familiar with modern theological literature; thus, when a writer in the "Hibbert Journal", Oct., 1907, says, "From one end of the Scripture to the other, faith is trust and only trust", it is hard to see how he would explain 1 Cor. xiii, 13, and Heb., xi, 1. The truth is that many theological writers of the present day are given to very loose thinking, and in nothing is this so evident as in their treatment of faith. In the article just referred to we read: "Trust in God is faith, faith is belief, belief may mean creed, but creed is not equivalent to trust in God." A similar vagueness was especially noticeable in the "Do we believe?" controversy- one correspondent says- "We unbelievers, if we have lost faith, cling more closely to hope and -- the greatest of these -- charity" ("Do we believe?", p. 180, ed. W. L. Courtney, 1905). Non-Catholic writers have repudiated all idea of faith as an intellectual assent, and consequently they fail to realize that faith must necessarily result in a body of dogmatic beliefs. "How and by what influence", asks Harnack, "was the living faith transformed into the creed to be believed, the surrender to Christ into a philosophical Christology?" (quoted in Hibbert Journal, loc. cit.).II. FAITH MAY BE CONSIDERED BOTH OBJECTIVELY AND SUBJECTIVELYObjectively, it stands for the sum of truths revealed by God in Scripture and tradition and which the Church (see FAITH, RULE OF) presents to us in a brief form in her creeds, subjectively, faith stands for the habit or virtue by which we assent to those truths. It is with this subjective aspect of faith that we are here primarily concerned. Before we proceed to analyze the term faith, certain preliminary notions must be made clear.(a) The twofold order of knowledge. -- "The Catholic Church", says the Vatican Council, III, iv, "has always held that there is a twofold order of knowledge, and that these two orders are distinguished from one another not only in their principle but in their object; in one we know by natural reason, in the other by Divine faith; the object of the one is truth attainable by natural reason, the object of the other is mysteries hidden in God, but which we have to believe and which can only be known to us by Divine revelation."(b) Now intellectual knowledge may be defined in a general way as the union between the intellect and an intelligible object. But a truth is intelligible to us only in so far as it is evident to us, and evidence is of different kinds; hence, according to the varying character of the evidence, we shall have varying kinds of knowledge. Thus a truth may be self-evident -- e.g. the whole is greater than its part -- in which case we are said to have intuitive knowledge of it; or the truth may not be self-evident, but deducible from premises in which it is contained -- such knowledge is termed reasoned knowledge; or again a truth may be neither self-evident nor deducible from premises in which it is contained, yet the intellect may be obliged to assent to it because It would else have to reject some other universally accepted truth; lastly, the intellect may be induced to assent to a truth for none of the foregoing reasons, but solely because, though not evident in itself, this truth rests on grave authority -- for example, we accept the statement that the sun is 90,000,000 miles distant from the earth because competent, veracious authorities vouch for the fact. This last kind of knowledge is termed faith, and is clearly necessary in daily life. If the authority upon which we base our assent is human and therefore fallible, we have human and fallible faith; if the authority is Divine, we have Divine and infallible faith. If to this be added the medium by which the Divine authority for certain statements is put before us, viz. the Catholic Church, we have Divine-Catholic Faith (see FAITH, RULE OF).(c) Again, evidence, whatever its source, may be of various degrees and so cause greater or less firmness of adhesion on the part of the mind which assents to a truth. Thus arguments or authorities for and against a truth may be either wanting or evenly balanced, in this case the intellect does not give in its adherence to the truth, but remains in a state of doubt or absolute suspension of judgment; or the arguments on one side may predominate; though not to the exclusion of those on the other side; in this case we have not complete adhesion of the intellect to the truth in question but only opinion. Lastly, the arguments or authorities brought forward may be so convincing that the mind gives its unqualified assent to the statement proposed and has no fear whatever lest it should not be true; this state of mind is termed certitude, and is the perfection of knowledge. Divine faith, then, is that form of knowledge which is derived from Divine authority, and which consequently begets absolute certitude in the mind of the recipient(d) That such Divine faith is necessary, follows from the fact of Divine revelation. For revelation means that the Supreme Truth has spoken to man and revealed to him truths which are not in themselves evident to the human mind. We must, then, either reject revelation altogether, or accept it by faith; that is, we must submit our intellect to truths which we cannot understand, but which come to us on Divine authority.(e) We shall arrive at a better understanding of the habit or virtue of faith if we have previously analysed an act of faith; and this analysis will be facilitated by examining an act of ocular vision and an act of reasoned knowledge. In ocular vision we distinguish three things: the eye, or visual faculty the coloured object, and the light which serves as the medium between the eye and the object. It is usual to term colour the formal object (objectum formale quod) of vision, since it is that which precisely and alone makes a thing the object of vision, the individual object seen may be termed the material object, e.g. this apple, that man, etc. Similarly, the light which serves as the medium between the eye and the object is termed the formal reason (objectum formale quo) of our actual vision. In the same way, when we analyze an act of intellectual assent to any given truth, we must distinguish the intellectual faculty which elicits the act the intelligible object towards which the intellect is directed, and the evidence whether intrinsic to that object or extrinsic to it, which moves us to assent to it. None of these factors can be omitted, each cooperates in bringing about the act, whether of ocular vision or of intellectual assent.(f) Hence, for an act of faith we shall need a faculty capable of eliciting the act, an object commensurate with that faculty, and evidence -- not intrinsic but extrinsic to that object -- which shall serve as the link between faculty and object. We will commence our analysis with the object:-III. ANALYSIS OF THE OBJECT OR TERM IN AN ACT OF DIVINE FAITH(a) For a truth to be the object of an act of Divine faith, it must be itself Divine, and this not merely as coming from God, but as being itself concerned with God. Just as in ocular vision the formal object must necessarily be something coloured, so in Divine faith the formal object must be something Divine -- in theological language, the objectum formale quod of Divine faith is the First Truth in Being, Prima Veritas in essendo -- we could not make an act of Divine faith in the existence of India.(b) Again, the evidence upon which we assent to this Divine truth must also be itself Divine, and there must be as close a relation between that truth and the evidence upon which it comes to us as there is between the coloured object and the light; the former is a necessary condition for the exercise of our visual faculty, the latter is the cause of our actual vision. But no one but God can reveal God; in other words, God is His own evidence. Hence, just as the formal object of Divine faith is the First Truth Itself, so the evidence of that First Truth is the First Truth declaring Itself. To use scholastic language once more, the objectum formale quod, or the motive, or the evidence, of Divine faith is the Prima Veritas in dicendo.(c) There is a controversy whether the same truth can be an object both of faith and of knowledge. In other words, can we believe a thing both because we are told it on good authority and because we ourselves perceive it to be true? St. Thomas, Scotus, and others hold that once a thing is seen to be true, the adhesion of the mind is in no wise strengthened by the authority of one who states that it is so, but the majority of theologians maintain, with De Lugo, that there may be a knowledge which does not entirely satisfy the mind, and that authority may then find a place, to complete its satisfaction. -- We may note here the absurd expression Credo quia impossibile, which has provoked many sneers. It is not an axiom of the Scholastics, as was stated in the "Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale" (March, 1896, p. 169), and as was suggested more than once in the "Do we believe?" correspondence. The expression is due to Tertullian, whose exact words are: "Natus est Dei Filius; non pudet, quia pudendum est: et mortuus est Dei Filius; prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est; et sepultus, resurrexit; certum est, quia impossibile" (De Carne Christi, cap. v). This treatise dates from Tertullian’s Montanist days, when he was carried away by his love of paradox. At the same time it is clear that the writer only aims at bringing out the wisdom of God manifested in the humiliation of the Cross; he is perhaps paraphrasing St. Paul’s words in 1 Cor., i, 25.(d) Let us now take some concrete act of faith, e.g. "I believe in the Most Holy Trinity." This mystery is the material or individual object upon which we are now exercising our faith, the formal object is its character as being a Divine truth, and this truth is clearly inevident as far as we are concerned; it in no way appeals to our intellect, on the contrary it rather repels it. And yet we assent to it by faith, consequently upon evidence which is extrinsic and not intrinsic to the truth we are accepting. But there can be no evidence commensurate with such a mystery save the Divine testimony itself, and this constitutes the motive for our assent to the mystery, and is, in scholastic language, the objectum formale quo of our assent. If then, we are asked why we believe with Divine faith any Divine truth, the only adequate answer must be because God has revealed it.(e) We may point out in this connexion the falsity of the prevalent notion that faith is blind. "We believe", says the Vatican Council (III, iii), "that revelation is true, not indeed because the intrinsic truth of the mysteries is clearly seen by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God Who reveals them, for He can neither deceive nor be deceived." Thus, to return to the act of faith which we make in the Holy Trinity, we may formulate it in syllogistic fashion thus: Whatever God reveals is true but God has revealed the mystery of the Holy Trinity therefore this mystery is true. The major premise is indubitable and intrinsically evident to reason; the minor premise is also true because it is declared to us by the infallible Church (cf. FAITH, RULE OF), and also because, as the Vatican Council says, "in addition to the internal assistance of His Holy Spirit, it has pleased God to give us certain external proofs of His revelation, viz. certain Divine facts, especially miracles and prophecies, for since these latter clearly manifest God’s omnipotence and infinite knowledge, they afford most certain proofs of His revelation and are suited to the capacity of all." Hence St. Thomas says: "A man would not believe unless he saw the things he had to believe, either by the evidence of miracles or of something similar" (II-II:1:4, ad 1). The saint is here speaking of the motives of credibility.IV. MOTIVES OF CREDIBILITY(a) When we say that a certain statement is incredible we often mean merely that it is extraordinary, but it should be borne in mind that this is a misuse of language, for the credibility or incredibility of a statement has nothing to do with its intrinsic probability or improbability; it depends solely upon the credentials of the authority who makes the statement. Thus the credibility of the statement that a secret alliance has been entered into between England and America depends solely upon the authoritative position and the veracity of our informant. If he be a clerk in a government office it is possible that he may have picked up some genuine information, but if our informant be the Prime Minister of England, his statement has the highest degree of credibility because his credentials are of the highest. When we speak of the motives of credibility of revealed truth we mean the evidence that the things asserted are revealed truths. In other words, the credibility of the statements made is correlative with and proportionate to the credentials of the authority who makes them. Now the credentials of God are indubitable, for the very idea of God involves that of omniscience and of the Supreme Truth. Hence, what God says is supremely credible, though not necessarily supremely intelligible for us. Here, however, the real question is not as to the credentials of God or the credibility of what He says, but as to the credibility of the statement that God has spoken. In other words who or what is the authority for this statement, and what credentials does this authority show? What are the motives of credibility of the statement that God has revealed this or that?(b) These motives of credibility may be briefly stated as follows: in the Old Testament considered not as an inspired book, but merely as a book having historical value, we find detailed the marvellous dealings of God with a particular nation to whom He repeatedly reveals Himself; we read of miracles wrought in their favour and as proofs of the truth of the revelation He makes; we find the most sublime teaching and the repeated announcement of God’s desire to save the world from sin and its consequences. And more than all we find throughout the pages of this book a series of hints, now obscure, now clear, of some wondrous person who is to come as the world’s saviour; we find it asserted at one time that he is man, at others that he is God Himself. When we turn to the New Testament we find that it records the birth, life, and death of One Who, while clearly man, also claimed to be God, and Who proved the truth of His claim by His whole life, miracles, teachings, and death, and finally by His triumphant resurrection. We find, moreover, that He founded a Church which should, so He said, continue to the end of time, which should serve as the repository of His teaching, and should be the means of applying to all men the fruits of the redemption He had wrought. When we come to the subsequent history of this Church we find it speedily spreading everywhere, and this in spite of its humble origin, its unworldly teaching, and the cruel persecution which it meets at the hands of the rulers of this world. And as the centuries pass we find this Church battling against heresies schisms, and the sins of her own people-nay, of her own rulers -- and yet continuing ever the same, promulgating ever the same doctrine, and putting before men the same mysteries of the life, death and resurrection of the world’s Saviour, Who had, so she taught, gone before to prepare a home for those who while on earth should have believed in Him and fought the good fight. But if the history of the Church since New-Testament times thus wonderfully confirms the New Testament itself, and if the New Testament so marvellously completes the Old Testament, these books must really contain what they claim to contain, viz. Divine revelation. And more than all, that Person Whose life and death were so minutely foretold in the Old Testament, and Whose story, as told in the New Testament, so perfectly corresponds with its prophetic delineation in the Old Testament, must be what He claimed to be, viz. the Son of God. His work, therefore, must be Divine. The Church which He founded must also be Divine and the repository and guardian of His teaching. Indeed, we can truly say that for every truth of Christianity which we believe Christ Himself is our testimony, and we believe in Him because the Divinity He claimed rests upon the concurrent testimony of His miracles, His prophecies His personal character, the nature of His doctrine, the marvellous propagation of His teaching in spite of its running counter to flesh and blood, the united testimony of thousands of martyrs, the stories of countless saints who for His sake have led heroic lives, the history of the Church herself since the Crucifixion, and, perhaps more remarkable than any, the history of the papacy from St. Peter to Pius X.(c) These testimonies are unanimous; they all point in one direction, they are of every age, they are clear and simple, and are within the grasp of the humblest intelligence. And, as the Vatican Council has said, "the Church herself, is, by her marvellous propagation, her wondrous sanctity, her inexhaustible fruitfulness in good works, her Catholic unity, and her enduring stability, a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefragable witness to her Divine commission" (Const. Dei Filius) . "The Apostles", says St. Augustine, "saw the Head and believed in the Body; we see the Body let us believe in the Head" [Sermo ccxliii, 8 (al. cxliii), de temp., P.L., V 1143]. Every believer will echo the words of Richard of St. Victor, "Lord, if we are in error, by Thine own self we have been deceived- for these things have been confirmed by such signs and wonders in our midst as could only have been done by Thee!" (de Trinitate, 1, cap. ii).(d) But much misunderstanding exists regarding the meaning and office of the motives of credibility. In the first place, they afford us definite and certain knowledge of Divine revelation; but this knowledge precedes faith; it is not the final motive for our assent to the truths of faith- as St. Thomas says, "Faith has the character of a virtue, not because of the things it believes, for faith is of things that appear not, but because it adheres to the testimony of one in whom truth is infallibly found" (De Veritate, xiv, 8); this knowledge of revealed truth which precedes faith can only beget human faith it is not even the cause of Divine faith (cf. Suarez, be Fide disp. iii, 12), but is rather to be considered a remote disposition to it. We must insist upon this because in the minds of many faith is regarded as a more or less necessary consequence of a careful study of the motives of credibility, a view which the Vatican Council condemns expressly: "If anyone says that the assent of Christian faith is not free, but that it necessarily follows from the arguments which human reason can furnish in its favour; or if anyone says that God’s grace is only necessary for that living faith which worketh through charity, let him be anathema" (Sess. IV). Nor can the motives of credibility make the mysteries of faith clear in themselves, for, as St. Thomas says, "the arguments which induce us to believe, e.g. miracles, do not prove the faith itself, but only the truthfulness of him who declares it to us, and consequently they do not beget knowledge of faith’s mysteries, but only faith" (in Sent., III, xxiv, Q. i, art. 2, sol. 2, ad 4). On the other hand, we must not minimize the real probative force of the motives of credibility within their true sphere- "Reason declares that from the very outset the Gospel teaching was rendered conspicuous by signs and wonders which gave, as it were, definite proof of a definite truth" (Leo XIII, Æterni Patris).(e) The Church has twice condemned the view that faith ultimately rests on an accumulation of probabilities. Thus the proposition, "The assent of supernatural faith . . is consistent with merely probable knowledge of revelation" was condemned by Innocent XI in 1679 (cf. Denzinger, Enchiridion, 10th ed., no. 1171); and the Syllabus Lamentabili sane (July, 1907) condemns the proposition (XXV) that "the assent of faith rests ultimately on an accumulation of probabilities." But since the great name of Newman has been dragged into the controversy regarding this last proposition, we may point out that, in the Grammar of Assent (chap. x, sect. 2), Newman refers solely to the proof of faith afforded by the motives of credibility, and he rightly concludes that, since these are not demonstrative, this line of proof may be termed "an accumulation of probabilities". But it would be absurd to say that Newman therefore based the final assent of faith on this accumulation- as a matter of fact he is not here making an analysis of an act of faith, but only of the grounds for faith; the question of authority does not come into his argument (cf. McNabb, Oxford Conferences on Faith, pp. 121-122).V. ANALYSIS OF THE ACT OF FAITH FROM THE SUBJECTIVE STANDPOINT(a) The light of faith. -- An angel understands truths which are beyond man’s comprehension; if then a man were called upon to assent to a truth beyond the ken of the human intellect, but within the grasp of the angelic intellect, he would require for the time being something more than his natural light of reason, he would require what we may call "the angelic light". If, now, the same man were called upon to assent to a truth beyond the grasp of both men and angels, he would clearly need a still higher light, and this light we term "the light of faith" -- a light, because it enables him to assent to those supernatural truths, and the light of faith because it does not so illumine those truths as to make them no longer obscure, for faith must ever be "the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that appear not" (Hebrews 11:1). Hence St. Thomas (De Veritate, xiv, 9, ad 2) says: "Although the Divinely infused light of faith is more powerful than the natural light of reason, nevertheless in our present state we only imperfectly participate in it; and hence it comes to pass that it does not beget in us real vision of those things which it is meant to teach us; such vision belongs to our eternal home, where we shall perfectly participate in that light, where, in fine, in God’s light we shall see light’ (Ps. xxxv, 10)."(b) The necessity of such light is evident from what has been said, for faith is essentially an act of assent, and just as assent to a series of deductive or inductive reasonings, or to intuition of first principles, would be impossible without the light of reason, so, too assent to a supernatural truth would be inconceivable without a supernatural strengthening of the natural light "Quid est enim fides nisi credere quod non vides?" (i.e. what is faith but belief in that which thou seest not?) asks St. Augustine; but he also says: "Faith has its eyes by which it in some sort sees that to be true which it does not yet see- and by which, too, it most surely sees that it does not see what it believes" [Ep. ad Consent., ep. cxx 8 (al. ccxxii), P.L., II, 456].(c) Again, it is evident that this "light of faith" is a supernatural gift and is not the necessary outcome of assent to the motives of credibility. No amount of study will win it, no intellectual conviction as to the credibility of revealed religion nor even of the claims of the Church to be our infallible guide in matters of faith, will produce this light in a man’s mind. It is the free gift of God. Hence the Vatican Council (III, iii;) teaches that "faith is a supernatural virtue by which we with the inspiration and assistance of God’s grace, believe those things to be true which He has revealed". The same decree goes on to say that "although the assent of faith is in no sense blind, yet no one can assent to the Gospel teaching in the way necessary for salvation without the illumination of the Holy Spirit, Who bestows on all a sweetness in believing and consenting to the truth". Thus, neither as regards the truth believed nor as regards the motives for believing, nor as regards the subjective principle by which we believe -- viz. the infused light -- can faith be considered blind.(d) The place of the will in an act of faith. -- So far we have seen that faith is an act of the intellect assenting to a truth which is beyond its grasp, e.g. the mystery of the Holy Trinity. But to many it will seem almost as futile to ask the intellect to assent to a proposition which is not intrinsically evident as it would be to ask the eye to see a sound. It is clear, however, that the intellect can be moved by the will either to study or not to study a certain truth, though if the truth be a self-evident one -- e.g., that the whole is greater than its part -- the will cannot affect the intellect’s adhesion to it, it can, however, move it to think of something else, and thus distract it from the contemplation of that particular truth. If, now, the will moves the intellect to consider some debatable point-e.g. the Copernican and Ptolemaic theories of the relationship between the sun and the earth -- it is clear that the intellect can only assent to one of these views in proportion as it is convinced that the particular view is true. But neither view has, as far as we can know, more than probable truth, hence of itself the intellect can only give in its partial adherence to one of these views, it must always be precluded from absolute assent by the possibility that the other view may be right. The fact that men hold much more tenaciously to one of these than the arguments warrant can only be due to some extrinsic consideration, e.g. that it is absurd not to hold what the vast majority of men hold. And here it should be noted that, as St. Thomas says repeatedly, the intellect only assents to a statement for one of two reasons: either because that statement is immediately or mediately evident in itself -- e.g. a first principle or a conclusion from premises -- or because the will moves it to do so. Extrinsic evidence of course comes into play when intrinsic evidence is wanting, but though it would be absurd, without weighty evidence in its support, to assent to a truth which we do not grasp, yet no amount of such evidence can make us assent, it could only show that the statement in question was credible, our ultimate actual assent could only be due to the intrinsic evidence which the statement itself offered, or, failing that, due to the will. Hence it is that St. Thomas repeatedly defines the act of faith as the assent of the intellect determined by the will (De Veritate, xiv, 1; II-II, Q. ii, a. 1, ad 3; 2, c.; ibid., iv, 1, c., and ad 2). The reason, then, why men cling to certain beliefs more tenaciously than the arguments in their favour would warrant, is to be sought in the will rather than in the intellect. Authorities are to be found on both sides, the intrinsic evidence is not convincing, but something is to be gained by assenting to one view rather than the other, and this appeals to the will, which therefore determines the intellect to assent to the view which promises the most. Similarly, in Divine faith the credentials of the authority which tells us that God has made certain revelations are strong, but they are always extrinsic to the proposition, "God has revealed this or that", and consequently they cannot compel our assent; they merely show us that this statement is credible. When, then, we ask whether we are to give in our free assent to any particular statement or not, we feel that in the first place we cannot do so unless there be strong extrinsic evidence in its favour, for to believe a thing merely because we wished to do so would be absurd. Secondly, the proposition itself does not compel our assent, since it is not intrinsically evident, but there remains the fact that only on condition of our assent to it shall we have what the human soul naturally yearns for, viz., the possession of God, Who is, as both reason and authority declare, our ultimate end; "He that believeth and is baptized, shall be saved", and "Without faith it is impossible to please God." St. Thomas expresses this by saying: "The disposition of a believer is that of one who accepts another’s word for some statement, because it seems fitting or useful to do so. In the same way we believe Divine revelation because the reward of eternal life is promised us for so doing. It is the will which is moved by the prospect of this reward to assent to what is said, even though the intellect is not moved by something which it understands. Hence St. Augustine says (Tract. xxvi in Joannem, 2): Cetera potest homo nolens, credere nonnisi volens’ [i.e. other things a man can do against his will but to believe he must will]" (De Ver., xiv, 1).(e) But just as the intellect needed a new and special light in order to assent to the supernatural truths of faith, so also the will needs a special grace from God in order that it may tend to that supernatural good which is eternal life. The light of faith, then, illumines the understanding, though the truth still remains obscure, since it is beyond the intellect’s grasp; but supernatural grace moves the will, which, having now a supernatural good put before it, moves the intellect to assent to what it does not understand. Hence it is that faith is described as "bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).VI. DEFINITION OF FAITHThe foregoing analyses will enable us to define an act of Divine supernatural faith as "the act of the intellect assenting to a Divine truth owing to the movement of the will, which is itself moved by the grace of God" (St. Thomas, II-II, Q. iv, a. 2). And just as the light of faith is a gift supernaturally bestowed upon the understanding, so also this Divine grace moving the will is, as its name implies, an equally supernatural and an absolutely gratuitous gift. Neither gift is due to previous study neither of them can be acquired by human efforts, but "Ask and ye shall receive."From all that has been said two most important corollaries follow: That temptations against faith are natural and inevitable and are in no sense contrary to faith, "since", says St. Thomas, "the assent of the intellect in faith is due to the will, and since the object to which the intellect thus assents is not its own proper object -- for that is actual vision of an intelligible object -- it follows that the intellect’s attitude towards that object is not one of tranquillity, on the contrary it thinks and inquires about those things it believes, all the while that it assents to them unhesitatingly; for as far as it itself is concerned the intellect is not satisfied" (De Ver., xiv, 1). (b) It also follows from the above that an act of supernatural faith is meritorious, since it proceeds from the will moved by Divine grace or charity, and thus has all the essential constituents of a meritorious act (cf. II-II, Q. ii, a. 9). This enables us to understand St. James’s words when he says, "The devils also believe and tremble" (ii, 19) . "It is not willingly that they assent", says St. Thomas, "but they are compelled thereto by the evidence of those signs which prove that what believers assent to is true, though even those proofs do not make the truths of faith so evident as to afford what is termed vision of them" (De Ver., xiv 9, ad 4); nor is their faith Divine, but merely philosophical and natural. Some may fancy the foregoing analyses superfluous, and may think that they savour too much of Scholasticism. But if anyone will be at the pains to compare the teaching of the Fathers, of the Scholastics, and of the divines of the Anglican Church in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with that of the non-Catholic theologians of to-day, he will find that the Scholastics merely put into shape what the Fathers taught, and that the great English divines owe their solidity and genuine worth to their vast patristic knowledge and their strictly logical training.Let anyone who doubts this statement compare Bishop Butler’s Analogy of Religion, chaps. v, vi, with the paper on "Faith" contributed to Lux Mundi. The writer of this latter paper tells us that "faith is an elemental energy of the soul", "a tentative probation", that "its primary note will be trust", and finally that "in response to the demand for definition, it can only reiterate: "Faith is faith. Believing is just believing’". Nowhere is there any analysis of terms, nowhere any distinction between the relative parts played by the intellect and the will; and we feel that those who read the paper must have risen from its perusal with the feeling that they had been wandering through -- we use the writer’s own expression -- "a juggling maze of words."VII. THE: HABIT OF FAITH AND THE LIFE OF FAITH(a) We have defined the act of faith as the assent of the intellect to a truth which is beyond its comprehension, but which it accepts under the influence of the will moved by grace and from the analysis we are now in a position to define the virtue of faith as a supernatural habit by which we firmly believe those things to be true which God has revealed. Now every virtue is the perfection of some faculty, but faith results from the combined action of two faculties, viz., the intellect which elicits the act, and the will which moves the intellect to do so; consequently, the perfection of faith will depend upon the perfection with which each of these faculties performs its allotted task; the intellect must assent unhesitatingly, the will must promptly and readily move it to do so.(b) The unhesitating assent of the intellect cannot be due to intellectual conviction of the reasonableness of faith, whether we regard the grounds on which it rests or the actual truths we believe, for "faith is the evidence of things that appear not"; it must, then, be referred to the fact that these truths come to us on Divine infallible testimony. And though faith is so essentially of "the unseen" it may be that the peculiar function of the light of faith, which we have seen to be so necessary, is in some sort to afford us, not indeed vision, but an instinctive appreciation of the truths which are declared to be revealed. St. Thomas seems to hint at this when he says: "As by other virtuous habits a man sees what accords with those habits, so by the habit of faith a man’s mind is inclined to assent to those things which belong to the true faith and not to other things" (II-II:4:4, ad 3). In every act of faith this unhesitating assent of the intellect is due to the motion of the will as its efficient cause, and the same must be said of the theological virtue of faith when we consider it as a habit or as a moral virtue, for, as St. Thomas insists (I-II, Q. lvi, ), there is no virtue, properly so called, in the intellect except in so far as it is subject to the will. Thus the habitual promptitude of the will in moving the intellect to assent to the truths of faith is not only the efficient cause of the intellect’s assent, but is precisely what gives to this assent its virtuous, and consequently meritorious, character. Lastly, this promptitude of the will can only come from its unswerving tendency to the Supreme Good. And at the risk of repetition we must again draw attention to the distinction between faith as a purely intellectual habit, which as such is dry and barren, and faith resident, indeed, in the intellect, but motived by charity or love of God, Who is our beginning, our ultimate end, and our supernatural reward. "Every true motion of the will", says St. Augustine, "proceeds from true love" (de Civ. Dei, XIV, ix), and, as he elsewhere beautifully expresses it, "Quid est ergo credere in Eum? Credendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in Eum ire, et Ejus membris incorporari. Ipsa est ergo fides quam de nobis Deus exigit- et non invenit quod exigat, nisi donaverit quod invenerit." (Tract. xxix in Joannem, 6. -- "What, then, is to believe in God? -- It is to love Him by believing, to go to Him by believing, and to be incorporated in His members. This, then, is the faith which God demands of us; and He finds not what He may demand except where He has given what He may find.") This then is what is meant by "living" faith, or as theologians term it, fides formata, viz., "informed" by charity, or love of God. If we regard faith precisely as an assent elicited by the intellect, then this bare faith is the same habit numerically as when the informing principle of charity is added to it, but it has not the true character of a moral virtue and is not a source of merit. If, then, charity be dead -- if, in other words, a man be in mortal sin and so without the habitual sanctifying grace of God which alone gives to his will that due tendency to God as his supernatural end which is requisite for supernatural and meritorious acts -- it is evident that there is no longer in the will that power by which it can, from supernatural motives, move the intellect to assent to supernatural truths. The intellectual and Divinely infused habit of faith remains, however, and when charity returns this habit acquires anew the character of "living" and meritorious faith.(c) Again, faith being a virtue, it follows that a man’s promptitude in believing will make him love the truths he believes, and he will therefore study them, not indeed in the spirit of doubting inquiry, but in order the better to grasp them as far as human reason will allow. Such inquiry will be meritorious and will render his faith more robust, because, at the same time that he is brought face to face with the intellectual difficulties which are involved, he will necessarily exercise his faith and repeatedly "bring his intellect into submission". Thus St. Augustine says, "What can be the reward of faith, what can its very name mean if you wish to see now what you believe? You ought not to see in order to believe, you ought to believe in order to see; you ought to believe so long as you do not see, lest when you do see you may be put to the blush" (Sermo, xxxviii, 2, P.L., V, 236). And it is in this sense we must understand his oft-repeated words: "Crede ut intelligas" (Believe that you may understand). Thus, commenting on the Septuagint version of Isaias vii 9 which reads: "nisi credideritis non intelligetis", he says: "Proficit ergo noster intellectus ad intelligenda quae credat, et fides proficit ad credenda quae intelligat; et eadem ipsa ut magis magisque intelligantur, in ipso intellectu proficit mens. Sed hoc non fit propriis tanquam naturalibus viribus sed Deo donante atque adjuvante" (Enarr. in Ps. cxviii, Sermo xviii, 3, "Our intellect therefore is of use to understand whatever things it believes, and faith is of use to believe whatever it understands; and in order that these same things may be more and more understood, the thinking faculty [mens] is of use in the intellect. But this is not brought about as by our own natural powers but by the gift and the aid of God." Cf. Sermo xliii, 3, in Is., vii, 9; P.L., V, 255).(d) Further, the habit of faith may be stronger in one person than in another, "whether because of the greater certitude and firmness in the faith which one has more than another, or because of his greater promptitude in assenting, or because of his greater devotion to the truths of faith, or because of his greater confidence" (II-II:5:4).(e) We are sometimes asked whether we are really certain of the things we believe, and we rightly answer in the affirmative; but strictly speaking, certitude can be looked at from two standpoints: if we look at its cause, we have in faith the highest form of certitude, for its cause is the Essential Truth; but if we look at the certitude which arises from the extent to which the intellect grasps a truth, then in faith we have not such perfect certitude as we have of demonstrable truths, since the truths believed are beyond the intellect’s comprehension (II-II, Q. iv, 8; de Ver., xiv, and i, ad 7).VIII. THE GENESIS OF FAITH IN THE INDIVIDUAL SOUL(a) Many receive their faith in their infancy, to others it comes later in life, and its genesis is often misunderstood. Without encroaching upon the article REVELATION, we may describe the genesis of faith in the adult mind somewhat as follows: Man being endowed with reason, reasonable investigation must precede faith; now we can prove by reason the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the origin and destiny of man; but from these facts there follows the necessity of religion, and true religion must be the true worship of the true God not according to our ideas, but according to what He Himself has revealed. But can God reveal Himself to us? And, granting that He can, where is this revelation to be found? The Bible is said to contain it; does investigation confirm the Bible’s claim? We will take but one point: the Old Testament looks forward, as we have already seen, to One Who is to come and Who is God; the New Testament shows us One Who claimed to be the fulfilment of the prophecies and to be God; this claim He confirmed by His life, death, and resurrection by His teaching, miracles, and prophecies. He further claimed to have founded a Church which should enshrine His revelation and should be the infallible guide for all who wished to carry out His will and save their souls. Which of the numerous existing Churches is His? It must have certain definite characteristics or notes. It must be One Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, it must claim infallible teaching power. None but the Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church can claim these characteristics, and her history is an irrefragable proof of her Divine mission. If, then, she be the true Church, her teaching must be infallible and must be accepted.(b) Now what is the state of the inquirer who has come thus far? He has proceeded by pure reason, and, if on the grounds stated he makes his submission to the authority of the Catholic Church and believes her doctrines, he has only human, reasonable, fallible, faith. Later on he may see reason to question the various steps in his line of argument, he may hesitate at some truth taught by the Church, and he may withdraw the assent he has given to her teaching authority. In other words, he has not Divine faith at all. For Divine faith is supernatural both in the principle which elicits the acts and in the objects or truths upon which it falls. The principle which elicits assent to a truth which is beyond the grasp of the human mind must be that same mind illumined by a light superior to the light of reason, viz. the light of faith, and since, even with this light of faith, the intellect remains human, and the truth to be believed remains still obscure, the final assent of the intellect must come from the will assisted by Divine grace, as seen above. But both this Divine light and this Divine grace are pure gifts of God, and are consequently only bestowed at His good pleasure. It is here that the heroism of faith comes in; our reason will lead us to the door of faith but there it leaves us; and God asks of us that earnest wish to believe for the sake of the reward -- "I am thy reward exceeding great" -- which will allow us to repress the misgivings of the intellect and say, "I believe, Lord, help Thou my unbelief." As St. Augustine expresses it, "Ubi defecit ratio, ibi est fidei aedificatio" (Sermo ccxlvii, P.L., V, 1157 -- "Where reason fails there faith builds up").(c) When this act of submission has been made, the light of faith floods the soul and is even reflected back upon those very motives which had to be so laboriously studied in our search after the truth; and even those preliminary truths which precede all investigation e.g. the very existence of God, become now the object of our faith.IX. FAITH IN RELATION TO WORKS(a) Faith and no works may be described as the Lutheran view. "Esto peccator, pecca fortiter sed fortius fide" was the heresiarch’s axiom, and the Diet of Worms, In 1527, condemned the doctrine that good works are necessary for salvation.(b) Works and no faith may be described as the modern view, for the modern world strives to make the worship of humanity take the place of the worship of the Deity (Do we believe? as issued by the Rationalist Press, 1904, ch. x: "Creed and Conduct" and ch. xv: "Rationalism and Morality". Cf. also Christianity and Rationalism on Trial, published by the same press, 1904).(c) Faith shown by works has ever been the doctrine of the Catholic Church and is explicitly taught by St. James, ii, 17: "Faith, if it have not works, is dead." The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, canons xix, xx, xxiv, and xxvi) condemned the various aspects of the Lutheran doctrine, and from what has been said above on the necessity of charity for "living" faith, it will be evident that faith does not exclude, but demands, good works, for charity or love of God is not real unless it induces us to keep the Commandments; "He that keepeth his word, in him in very deed the charity of God is perfected" (1 John 2:5). St. Augustine sums up the whole question by saying "Laudo fructum boni operis, sed in fide agnosco radicem" -- i. e. "I praise the fruit of good works, but their root I discern in faith" (Enarr. in Ps. xxxi, P.L., IV, 259).X. LOSS OF FAITHFrom what has been said touching the absolutely supernatural character of the gift of faith, it is easy to understand what is meant by the loss of faith. God’s gift is simply withdrawn. And this withdrawal must needs be punitive, "Non enim deseret opus suum, si ab opere suo non deseratur" (St. Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. cxlv -- "He will not desert His own work, if He be not deserted by His own work"). And when the light of faith is withdrawn, there inevitably follows a darkening of the mind regarding even the very motives of credibility which before seemed so convincing. This may perhaps explain why those who have had the misfortune to apostatize from the faith are often the most virulent in their attacks upon the grounds of faith; "Vae homini illi", says St. Augustine, "nisi et ipsius fidem Dominus protegat", i. e. "Woe be to a man unless the Lord safeguard his faith" (Enarr. in Ps. cxx, 2, P.L., IV, 1614).XI. FAITH IS REASONABLE(a) If we are to believe present-day Rationalists and Agnostics, faith, as we define it, is unreasonable. An Agnostic declines to accept it because he considers that the things proposed for his acceptance are preposterous, and because he regards the motives assigned for our belief as wholly inadequate. "Present me with a reasonable faith based on reliable evidence, and I will joyfully embrace it. Until that time I have no choice but to remain an Agnostic" (Medicus in the Do we Believe? Controversy, p. 214). Similarly, Francis Newman says: "Paul was satisfied with a kind of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus which fell exceedingly short of the demands of modern logic, it is absurd in us to believe, barely because they believed" (Phases of Faith, p. 186). Yet the supernatural truths of faith, however they may transcend our reason, cannot be opposed to it, for truth cannot be opposed to truth, and the same Deity Who bestowed on us the light of reason by which we assent to first principles is Himself the cause of those principles, which are but a reflection of His own Divine truth. When He chooses to manifest to us further truths concerning Himself, the fact that these latter are beyond the grasp of the natural light which He has bestowed upon us will not prove them to be contrary to our reason. Even so pronounced a rationalist as Sir Oliver Lodge says: "I maintain that it is hopelessly unscientific to imagine it possible that man is the highest intelligent existence" (Hibbert Journal, July, 1906, p. 727).Agnostics, again, take refuge in the unknowableness of truths beyond reason, but their argument is fallacious, for surely knowledge has its degrees. I may not fully comprehend a truth in all its bearings, but I can know a great deal about it; I may not have demonstrative knowledge of it, but that is no reason why I should reject that knowledge which comes from faith. To listen to many Agnostics one would imagine that appeal to authority as a criterion was unscientific, though perhaps nowhere is authority appealed to so unscientifically as by modern scientists and modern critics. But, as St. Augustine says, "If God’s providence govern human affairs we must not despair or doubt but that He hath ordained some certain authority, upon which staying ourselves as upon a certain ground or step, we may be lifted up to God" (De utilitate credendi); and it is in the same spirit that he says: "Ego vero Evangelio non crederem, nisi me Catholicae Ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas" (Contra Ep. Fund., V, 6 -- "I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not oblige me to believe").(b) Naturalism, which is only another name for Materialism, rejects faith because there is no place for it in the naturalistic scheme; yet the condemnation of this false philosophy by St. Paul and by the author of the Book of Wisdom is emphatic (cf. Romans 1:18-23; Wisdom 13:1-19). Materialists fail to see in nature what the greatest minds have always discovered in it, viz., "ratio cujusdam artis; scilicet divinae, indita rebus, qua ipsae res moventur ad finem determinatum" -- "the manifestation of a Divine plan whereby all things are directed towards their appointed end" (St. Thomas, Lect. xiv, in II Phys.). Similarly, the vagaries of Humanism blind men to the fact of man’s essentially finite character and hence preclude all idea of faith in the infinite and the supernatural (cf. "Naturalism and Humanism" in Hibbert Journal, Oct., 1907).XII. FAITH IS NECESSARY"He that believeth and is baptized", said Christ, "shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned" (Mark 16:16); and St. Paul sums up this solemn declaration by saying: "Without faith it is impossible to please God" (Hebrews 11:6). The absolute necessity of faith is evident from the following considerations: God is our beginning and our end and has supreme dominion over us, we owe Him, consequently, due service which we express by the term religion. Now true religion is the true Now true religion is the true worship of the true God. But it is not for man to fashion a worship according to his own ideals; none but God can declare to us in what true worship consists, and this declaration constitutes the body of revealed truths, whether natural or supernatural. To these, if we would attain the end for which we came into the world, we are bound to give the assent of faith. It is clear, moreover, that no one can profess indifference in a matter of such vital importance. During the Reformation period no such indifference was professed by those who quitted the fold; for them it was not a question of faith or unfaith, so much as of the medium by which the true faith was to be known and put into practice. The attitude of many outside the Church is now one of absolute indifference, faith is regarded as an emotion, as a peculiarly subjective disposition which is regulated by no known psychological laws. Thus Taine speaks of faith as "une source vive qui s’est formee au plus profond de l’ame, sous la poussee et la chaleur des instincts immanents" -- "a living fountain which has come into existence in the lowest depths of the soul under the impulse and the warmth of the immanent instincts". Indifferentism in all its phases was condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus Quanta cura: in Prop. XV, "Any man is free to embrace and profess whatever form of religion his reason approves of"; XVI, "Men can find the way of salvation and can attain to eternal salvation in any form of religious worship"; XVII "We can at least have good hopes of the eternal salvation of all those who have never been in the true Church of Christ"; XVIII, "Protestantism is only another form of the same true Christian religion, and men can be as pleasing to God in it as in the Catholic Church."XIII. THE OBJECTIVE UNITY AND IMMUTABILITY OF FAITHChrist’s prayer for the unity of His Church the highest form of unity conceivable, "that they all may be one as thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee" (John 17:21), has been brought into effect by the unifying force of a bond of a faith such as that which we have analysed. All Christians have been taught to be "careful to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, one body and one spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all" (Ephesians 4:3-6). The objective unity of the Catholic Church becomes readily intelligible when we reflect upon the nature of the bond of union which faith offers us. For our faith comes to us from the one unchanging Church, "the pillar and ground of truth", and our assent to it comes as a light in our minds and a motive power in our wills from the one unchanging God Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Hence, for all who possess it, this faith constitutes an absolute and unchanging bond of union. The teachings of this faith develop, of course, with the needs of the ages, but the faith itself remains unchanged. Modern views are entirely destructive of such unity of belief because their root principle is the supremacy of the individual judgment. Certain writers do indeed endeavour to overcome the resulting conflict of views by upholding the supremacy of universal human reason as a criterion of truth; thus Mr. Campbell writes: "One cannot really begin to appreciate the value of united Christian testimony until one is able to stand apart from it, so to speak, and ask whether it rings true to the reason and moral sense" (The New Theology, p. 178; cf. Cardinal Newman, "Palmer on Faith and Unity" in Essays Critical and Historical, vol. 1, also, Thomas Harper, S.J., Peace Through the Truth, London, 1866, 1st Series.)----------------------------------- I. Patristic. -- The Fathers in general have never attempted any analysis of faith, and most patristic treatises De fide consist of expositions of the true doctrine to be held. But the reader will have already noticed the precise teaching of ST. AUGUSTINE on the nature of faith. Besides the gems of thought which are scattered throughout his works, we may refer to his two treatises De Utilitate Credendi and De Fide Rerum quae non videntur, in P.L., VI, VII. II. Scholastics. -- The minute analysis of faith was worked out by the theologians of the thirteenth century and onwards they followed mainly the lines laid down by St. Augustine. ST. THOMAS, Summa, II-II, QQ. i-vii; Quaest. Disp., Q. xiv; HOLCOT, De actibus fidei et intellectus et de libertate Voluntatis (Paris, 1512); SUAREZ De fide, spe, et charitate, in Opera, ed. VIVES (Paris, 1878), XII; DE LUGO, De virtute fidei divinae (Venice, 1718); JOANNES A S. THOMA, Comment. on the Summa especially on the De Fide, in Opera, ed. VIVES (Paris, 1886), VII; CAJETAN, De Fide et Operibus (1532), especially his Commentary on the Summa, II-II, QQ i-vii. III. Modern Writers. -- The decrees of the Vatican Council, a handy edition by McNabb (London, 1907); cf. also Coll. Lacencis, VIII; PIUS X, Syllabus Lamentabili Sane (1907); id., Encyclical, Pascendi Gregis (1907); ZIGLIARA, Propaedeutica ad Sacram Theologiam (5th ed., Rome, 1906), 1, xvi, xvii; NEWMAN, Grammar of Assent, Essay on Development, and especially The Ventures of Faith in Vol. IV of his Sermons, and Peace in Believing and Faith without Demonstration, VI; WEISS, Apologie du Christianisme, Fr. tr., V, conf. iv, La Foi, and VI, conf. xxi, La Vie de la Foi; BAINVEL, La Foi et l’acte de Foi (Paris, 1898); ULLATHORNE, The Groundwork of the Christian Virtues, ch. xiv, The Humility of Faith; HEDLEY, The Light of Life (1889),ii; BOWDEN, The Assent of Faith, taken mainly from KLEUTGEN, Theologie der Vorzeit, IV, and serving as an introductory chapter to the tr. of HETTINGER, Revealed Religion (1895); MCNABB, Oxford Conferences on Faith (London, 1905); Implicit Faith, in The Month for April, 1869; Reality of the Sin of Unbelief, ibid., October, 1881; The Conceivable Dangers of Unbelief in Dublin Review Jan., 1902; HARENT in VACANT AND MANGENOT, Dictionnaire de th&eaccute;ologie catholique, s. v. Croyance. IV. Against Rationalist, Positivist, and Humanist Views. -- NEWMAN, The Introduction of Rationalistic Principles into Revealed Religion, in Tracts for the Times (1835), republished in Essays Historical and Critical as Essay ii; St. Paul on Rationalism in The Month for Oct., 1877; WARD, The Clothes of Religion, a Reply to Popular Positivism (1886); The Agnosticism of Faith in Dublin Review, July, 1903. V. The motives of faith and its relation to reason and science. -- MANNING, The Grounds of Faith (1852, and often since); Faith and Reason in Dublin Review, July, 1889; AVELING, Faith and Science in Westminster Lectures (London, 1906); GARDEIL, La cr&eaccute;dibilit&eaccute; et l’apolog&eaccute;tique (PARIS, 1908); IDEM in VACANT AND MANGENOT, Dictionnaire de th&eaccute;ologie catholique, s.v. Cr&eaccute;dibilite. VI. Non-Catholic writers. -- Lux Mundi, i, Faith (1Oth ed. 1890); BALFOUR Foundations of Belief (2nd ed., 1890); COLERIDGE, Essay on Faith (1838), in Aids to Reflection; MALLOCK, Religion as a Credible Doctrine (1903), xii. VII. Rationalistic Works. -- The Do We Believe correspondence, held in the Daily Telegraph, has been published in the form of selections (1905) under the title, A Record of a Great Correspondence in the Daily Telegraph, with Introduction by COURTNEY. Similar selections by the Rationalist Press (1904); SANTAYANA, The Life of Reason (3 vols., London, 1905-6); Faith and Belief in Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1907. Cf. also LODGE, ibid., for Jan., 1908, and July, 1906. HUGH POPETranscribed by Gerard Haffner The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VCopyright © 1909 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, CensorImprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
1. Etymology
2. Meaning: A Divergency
3. Faith in the Sense of Creed
4. A Leading Passage Explained
5. Remarks
6. Conclusion
In the Old Testament (the King James Version) the word occurs only twice: Deu 32:20 (
1. Etymology
The history of the English word is rather interesting than important; use and contexts, alike for it and its Hebrew and Greek parallels, are the surest guides to meaning. But we may note that it occurs in the form “feyth,” in Havelok the Dane (13th century); that it is akin to fides and this again to the Sanskrit root
2. Meaning: A Divergency
Studying the word “faith” in the light of use and contexts, we find a bifurcation of significance in the Bible. We may distinguish the two senses as the passive and the active; on the one side, “fidelity,” “trustworthiness”; and “faith,” “trust,” on the other. In Gal 5:22, e.g. context makes it clear that “fidelity” is in view, as a quality congruous with the associated graces. (the Revised Version (British and American) accordingly renders
3. Faith in the Sense of Creed
Another line of meaning is traceable in a very few passages, where
4. A Leading Passage Explained
It is important to notice that Heb 11:1 is no exception to the rule that “faith” normally means “reliance,” “trust.” There “Faith is the substance (or possibly, in the light of recent inquiries into the type of Greek used by New Testament writers, “the guaranty”) of things hoped for, the evidence (or “convincing proof”) of things not seen.” This is sometimes interpreted as if faith, in the writer’s view, were, so to speak, a faculty of second sight, a mysterious intuition into the spiritual world. But the chapter amply shows that the faith illustrated, e.g. by Abraham, Moses, Rahab, was simply reliance upon a God known to be trustworthy. Such reliance enabled the believer to treat the future as present and the invisible as seen. In short, the phrase here, “faith is the evidence,” etc., is parallel in form to our familiar saying, “Knowledge is power.”
5. Remarks
A few detached remarks may be added: (a) The history of the use of the Greek
6. Conclusion
In conclusion, without trespassing on the ground of other articles, we call the reader’s attention, for his Scriptural studies, to the central place of faith in Christianity, and its significance. As being, in its true idea, a reliance as simple as possible upon the word, power, love, of Another, it is precisely that which, on man’s side, adjusts him to the living and merciful presence and action of a trusted God. In its nature, not by any mere arbitrary arrangement, it is his one possible receptive attitude, that in which he brings nothing, so that he may receive all. Thus “faith” is our side of union with Christ. And thus it is our means of possessing all His benefits, pardon, justification, purification, life, peace, glory.
As a comment on our exposition of the ruling meaning of “faith” in Scripture, we may note that this precisely corresponds to its meaning in common life, where, for once that the word means anything else, it means “reliance” a hundred times. Such correspondence between religious terms (in Scripture) and the meaning of the same words in common life, will be found to be invariable.
1. In the Acts of the Apostles.-In the Acts faith is spoken of as (1) inspired by Christ, (2) directed to Christ, (3) corresponding to Christian teaching.
(1) After St. Peter had healed the lame man, he explained that the miracle had been wrought by the power of God by faith in the name of the ‘Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead’; ‘yea, the faith which is through him (ἡ äéʼ áὐôïῦ) hath given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all’ (Act_3:16). The health-bringing faith both in the apostles and the cripple had been inspired by Jesus, the Holy One.
(2) More frequently the faith is directed to Jesus Christ. Thus the general statement is made: ‘Many believed on (ἐðὶ) the Lord’ (Act_9:42). St. Paul enjoins the Philippian jailer: ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ’ (Act_16:31). Similarly Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, ‘believed in the Lord with all his house’ (Act_18:8; ἐðßóôåõóåí ôῴ êõñßῳ = ‘believed the Lord’). In all these cases the faith is directed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
(3) In several passages ‘the faith’ is equivalent to the Christian faith or Christian religion. In describing the multiplying of the disciples in Jerusalem it is said: ‘A great company of the priests were obedient to the faith’ (Act_6:7). In Cyprus Elymas opposed the apostles, ‘seeking to turn aside the proconsul from the faith’ (Act_13:8). St. Paul returned to the towns in Asia, ‘confirming the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith’ (Act_14:22). In each of these cases ‘the faith’ has already become the phrase to express all that is implied by believing in Christ.
We can see the transition from (2) to (3) in the expression used by St. Peter when speaking of the work of God among the Gentiles. He says that God mode do distinction, ‘cleansing their hearts by faith’ or ‘by the faith’ (Act_15:9).
This leads us to note that in Acts faith is made the medium for healing, cleansing, and salvation. The largest result of faith is announced by St. Paul when he promises to the jailer salvation for himself and his household as the blessing given to faith in Jesus Christ. The gift of the Holy Spirit is associated with faith in Christ, as in the case of Cornelius and his friends who welcomed the preaching of the gospel by St. Peter, so that ‘while Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all them which heard the word’ (Act_10:44). More generally the gift of the Holy Spirit follows baptism and the laying on of hands, as in the case of the disciples of John the Baptist (Act_19:2) and the Samaritans whom Philip had led to believe in Jesus Christ (Act_8:17).
It is noteworthy that in describing both Stephen and Barnabas it is said of each that he was ‘full of faith and of the Holy Spirit’ (Act_6:5; Act_11:24), and probably it is implied that each had received not only the permanent gift of the Spirit (äùñåÜí, Act_2:38) but also the graces (÷áñßóìáôá, 1Co_12:9) imparted by Him through a full and obedient faith.
2. In the Epistle of St. James.-This Epistle must have been written either in the very earliest apostolic times or in a period that is almost post-apostolic. The whole Epistle is practical and undogmatic, and lays the chief emphasis on ethical observance. The writer appreciates the value of faith when he refers to those who are ‘rich in faith’ (Jam_2:5) and to the ‘prayer of faith’ (Jam_5:15); but in the section of the Epistle which deals with faith and works, it is not too much to say that he looks upon faith with a measure of suspicion. In this argument (Jam_2:14-26) the writer evidently defines ‘faith’ in his own mind as intellectual assent to Divine truth, and with his undogmatic prepossessions he becomes almost antidogmatic in tendency. The Apostle describes this faith not as false or feigned, but as having such reality only as the faith of demons in the oneness of God, To him ‘faith’ is far from being an enthusiastic acceptance of a Divine Redeemer.
If the Epistle was written in very early times, the argument must move more on Judaic than on Christian grounds, and a certain corroboration of this is found in the fact that the illustrations are taken from OT examples like Abraham and Rahab, and that the typical example chosen is belief in the unity of God, which was the war-cry of the Jew as it became in later days that of the Muhammadan. If the later date is chosen, then time must be left for a general acceptance of Christian truth so that ‘faith’ had become assent to Christian dogma. In either case the argument of the Epistle cannot be regarded as a direct polemic against the teaching of St. Paul. The two writers move in different spheres of thought, so that, while words and phrases are alike, their definitions are as the poles asunder. An instance of this is found in the words with which St. James closes the section on ‘faith.’ The Apostle has already declared: ‘Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself’ (Jam_2:17), so now he sums up: ‘As the body apart from the spirit is dead, even so faith apart from works is dead’ (Jam_2:26). Here we find that so far from faith being the inspiration of works, as St. Paul might suggest, St. James teaches that works are the inspiration of faith. Faith may be a mere dead body unless works prove to be an inner spirit to make it alive. This declaration agrees with the writer’s whole attitude, for throughout this letter he insists that the practical carrying out of ‘the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ’ is found in obedience to ‘the royal law’; ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ This practice of the will of Christ makes faith to be alive.
3. In the Epistles of St. Paul.-In the writings of St. Paul ‘faith’ and ‘grace’ are the human and the Divine sides of the great experience that revolutionized his own life and the lives of many to whom the gospel was brought. Occasionally faith is spoken of as being directed to God, but commonly it is directed to Jesus Christ. Thus in Gal_2:16 St. Paul writes: ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, save (but only, ἐὰí ìÞ) through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jeans that we might be justified by faith in Christ.’ Here the reiteration is singular, but the insistence on ‘faith in Christ’ is characteristically Pauline. To St. Paul the only faith that is of value is the faith that rests on Jesus Christ our Lord, who was made in the likeness of men, died for our sins, and rose again from the dead. The Death of Christ occupies so large a place in his thought that he is determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1Co_2:2), while he insists so strongly on the Resurrection as to declare: ‘If Christ hath not been raised; your faith is vain’ (1Co_15:17).
This revolutionizing faith is awakened by the preaching of the gospel: ‘Belief cometh of hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ’ (Rom_10:17), i.e. by the word concerning Christ, or, as it is called earlier (Rom_10:8), ‘the word of faith,’ i.e. the word that deals with justifying faith. This faith, according to St. Paul, brings salvation. Thus in Eph_1:13 ‘the word of the truth’ is the medium by which faith comes, and through faith comes salvation. So in Eph_2:8 it is said: ‘By grace have ye been saved through faith’ (äéὰôῆò ðßóôåùò, not äéὰ ôὴí ðßóôéí, i.e. through faith as a means, not on account of faith as a ground of salvation). Hearing and faith are associated in a similar way in the Epistle to the Galatians, as the means by which the gift of the Spirit came. ‘Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?’ (Gal_3:2), and the meaning varies little whether we conceive of faith as the accompaniment of hearing or as its product. It is possible to infer from Eph_1:13 f. that the gift of the Spirit was received after, not contemporaneously with, the act of faith. ‘Having also believed, ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.’ The sealing with the Spirit is posterior to the act of faith and may be associated with the rite of baptism, which came to be known as a sealing ordinance.
St. Paul dwells frequently upon faith as a definite act in his own life and in the lives of Christian converts. Two instances only need be given. In Gal_2:16 he says: ‘We believed on Christ Jesus,’ where the verb ἐðéóôåýóáìåí denotes one definite net in the past when they turned in faith to (åἰò) Christ Jesus. Even more marked is the sentence in Rom_13:11 : ‘Now is salvation nearer to us (ἤ ὄôå ἐðéóôåýóáìåí) than when we believed,’ i.e. than when we by a definite act of faith became Christians, In St. Paul’s experience and teaching this act of faith leads to a life of faith, so that he can write of himself: ‘That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Gal_2:20). Faith is not a solitary act but a continuous attitude of the inner life towards Christ Jesus. But this does not imply that either at the beginning or during its course this faith is perfect; it may be halting even when real, and when living it grows ever stronger ‘by faith unto faith’ (Rom_1:17). Faith is weak in the experience of many, sometimes in opposition to the enticing power of evil when flesh lusts against spirit, sometimes in opposition to law as a ground of salvation, and sometimes in failing to appreciate what Christian truth implies. This last form of weakness is discussed by St. Paul towards the close of the Epistle to the Romans 14, where those weak in faith do not understand the extent of their freedom in Christ, and find themselves bound in conscience by irritating non-Christian customs. St. Paul commends a faith that is stronger and freer, but he declares that none mast act in defiance of their faith. They must be clear in mind and conscience before they break even these customs. ‘Whatsoever is not of faith is sin’ (Rom_14:23). Even when Christians are perfect (ôÝëåéïé, Php_3:15), possessors of a mature faith as well as full knowledge, they have not reached the goal, but they must still press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Php_3:14).
For St. Paul faith was an experience that touched the inmost part of his nature, but it had perforce to find outward expression. Faith and profession ore necessarily united. The believer in Christ must be a witness for Christ. The statement of Rom_10:10 puts succinctly what St. Paul constantly implies: ‘With the heart man believeth unto righteousness, and with the month confession is made unto salvation.’ These are not so much independent acts as two sides of the same act. Internally faith in Christ brings a change of heart, externally it implies confession of the Lord. This confession finds its formal expression in baptism, and the Apostle expected that in this way as well as in more homely ways this public confession would be made. In St. Paul’s view the believer in Christ must be a professing Christian.
If faith must be associated with such outward testimony it must be even more intimately associated with many Christian graces, and especially with love or charity. St. Paul in his eulogy of love (1 Corinthians 13) declares that among the great abiding virtues love is the chief. ‘lf I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing’ (1Co_13:2). This exalted praise of love is the more remarkable because St. Paul is the champion of faith in the great controversy of which we get his own statement in the Epistles to Galatians and Romans (Galatians 2, 3, Romans 1-5). St. Paul’s experience on the way to Damascus when he was convinced of the Messiahship and Lordship of Jesus of Nazareth became the dominant factor in all his life, and led to his abandonment of allegiance to law and to the strenuous vindication of the place of faith in the religious life. Before his conversion St. Paul had sought justification with God by a religious obedience to the Law, bat Faith in Jesus Christ changed his whole attitude and revolutionized his whole thought. Faith in Christ was not conceived by him primarily as bringing a now power in attaining the end that he had previously kept in view, for now he believed that justification had been attained at once through faith in Christ by the grace of God, Justification was the beginning of true life, not a blessing to be attained at the end (Gal_2:16).
The faith which receives this blessing is faith in Christ Jesus. This faith in conceived by St. Paul not as a mere intellectual assent or as a recognition of the unseen world, but as an enthusiastic trust in Christ as Saviour, and as a complete devotion to Him as Lord. The whole inner nature, including mind, heart, and will, is committed to Him in trust and devotion. In receiving Jesus as Christ, St. Paul gave himself to Jesus as Lord. This saving faith became the medium of all Divine blessing to St. Paul, and, drawing upon his own experience, he taught that it would be and must be the medium of blessing to all. Hence he gloried in the gospel, ‘for therein is revealed a righteousness of God by faith unto faith’ (Rom_1:17). The gospel could thus become a universal message for mankind, for it dealt with all men alike as sinners, and offered to all who believed in Christ the righteousness of God, ‘being justified freely by has grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Rom_3:24).
After this illuminating experience of the grace of God came to St. Paul he turned back to the OT and found in its pages that in the religious experience there narrated the blessings of God had come also through faith. Thus ‘to Abraham his faith was reckoned for righteousness’ (Rom_4:9, Gal_3:6). So David pronounced blessing upon the man unto whom God reckoneth righteousness apart from works (Rom_4:6). He found that God’s method had always been the same. His grace had reached its end when a human heart had responded in faith. This truth is utterly opposed to St. Paul’s former belief that righteousness came by the Law, and both in Rom. and Gal. he labours to prove that, whatever the work of the Law was, it was not to gain a right standing with God. It had a mission even concerning faith, but it was the mission of an attendant slave to bring those who were in ward unto Christ; but when that mission was fulfilled, they were no longer under law, but were all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal_3:24-26). Thus the Christian life is regarded as a free, loving, spiritual service, of which faith in Christ is the prime origin and the constant inspiration.
In the Pastoral Epistles that are usually associated with the name of St. Paul we find ‘the faith’ frequently used as equivalent to the Christian faith or teaching. Thus in 1 Tim. we find: ‘Some made shipwreck concerning the faith’ (1Ti_1:19). Deacons must hold the ‘mystery of the faith in a pure conscience’ (1Ti_3:9). ‘In later times some shall all away from the faith’ (1Ti_4:1). ‘If any provideth not for his own, and specially his own household, he hath denied the faith’ (1Ti_5:8). It is inferred by some that the use of ‘the faith’ in this sense implies a late date for this Epistle, possibly considerably after St. Paul’s death; but it is significant that in Gal., which is among the very earliest of the Pauline Epistles, there is found the expression: ‘Before the faith came, we were kept in ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed’ (Gal_3:23). Here the Apostle describes the early period not as the time before faith came, for faith was found already in the OT, but as the time before the faith came, i.e. the faith of Christ. Thus in this early-Epistle we have the starting-point for the later use.
4. In the Epistle to the Hebrews.-In this Epistle faith has not the content that has been found in the Epistles of St. Paul. It is true that when the writer is speaking of ‘the first principles of Christ’ he mentions first, in a manner suggestive of St. Paul’s phrases, the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God’ (ἐðὶ èåüí, Heb_6:1). But even here ‘dead works’ is not used in the Pauline sense as works done apart from Christ or as works of themselves, and ‘faith’ is not the enthusiastic trust in Christ which St. Paul enshrines as the central feature of experience and dogma. In Heb., faith may he defined in general terms as the human response to the word of God. When man refuses to respond, he is guilty of unbelief and of hardness of heart; when he responds to God speaking to him, then he believes. God sent His word through agents, such as angels (Heb_2:2) and prophets (Heb_1:1), but especially in the last times He has spoken through His Son, and has borne witness to this message by ‘signs and wonders, by manifold powers, and by gifts of the Holy Ghost’ (Heb_2:3-4). Faith is the obedient response to this word of God, and has been found in all those who have become ‘the cloud of witnesses’ (Heb_12:1). The secret of the assurance, devotion, and endurance of the OT saints is found in their unceasing confidence in the God who revealed Himself to them (Heb_1:1). The greatest example of this faith was Jesus Himself, ‘the author and perfecter of faith’ (Heb_12:2), who led the way in the career of faith and embodied in His own life its full realization. This believing response to the word of God produces within the mind certain activities, the chief of which the writer describes when he gives faith its well-known definition (Heb_11:1): ‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for (or it gives substance to things hoped for), the proving of things not seen (or the conviction of unseen realities.)’ Faith is the conviction of the reality of things not made known through the senses, and, so far as religion is concerned, it is produced by the word of God.
It ought to be observed that throughout this Epistle there is also implied a faith in the work of God by Christ, the great High Priest and Mediator of a new covenant. Possibly this work ought to be regarded as a part of the word of God, for the writer conceives of God’s word coming in the OT through such works as the arrangements of the tabernacle (Heb_9:8), as well as by spoken message, and the work of Christ may he conceived as in its entirety the message of God to men. On the other hand, it is possible that the writer, having described the complete priestly work done by Christ, regards faith as the response to the call then made by God to enter into His immediate fellowship. Those who respond will draw near to God ‘in frill assurance of faith’ (ἐí ðëçñïöïñßᾳ ðßóôåùò, Heb_10:22).
5. In the Epistles of St. Peter.-There is little that is distinctive in the doctrinal teaching of these Epistles, and analogies may be found with both St. Paul and St. James. The writer of 1 Pet. makes Christ the object of faith, ‘on whom (åἰò ὄí), though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable’ (1Pe_1:8). He also makes Christ the means of faith in God: Christ ‘was manifested at the end of the times for your sake, who through him (äéʼ áὐôïῦ) are believers in God’ (åἰò èåὸí, 1Pe_1:20-21). Similarly those who are suffering greatly are called upon to ‘commit their souls in well-doing unto a faithful Creator’ (1Pe_4:19), where in a unique phrase God as Creator is presented as the object of trust. Throughout 1 Pet. salvation is regarded as future, certainly near at hand, but still as an inheritance to which Christians are to look forward. Hence the se who are begotten unto this living hope must look upon the trials they are undergoing as tests of their faith (1Pe_1:6), and must recall that, as Christ suffered in the flesh, they must arm themselves with the same mind (1Pe_4:1). But the real defence is the power of God, by which they are guarded through faith (1Pe_1:5). Faith brings under the power of God those who are tried, so that at last they will receive the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls (1Pe_1:9).
6. In the Epistles of St. John.-‘Faith’ is not the dominant conception in these Epistles, but ‘light,’ ‘knowledge,’ ‘love.’ Faith and love are presented as twin commands: ‘This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another’ (1Jn_3:23). The thought is somewhat varied when the writer says that a believer in Christ receives new life from God, and one sign of that new life is that he loves God who begat him, and also every other one who is begotten in the same way (1Jn_5:1). True faith includes genuine love. The knowledge of God, of Christ, and of ourselves leads to faith. ‘We know and have believed the love which God hath in us’ (1Jn_4:16); but faith also develops into a deeper and surer knowledge: ‘These things have I written unto you, that ye may know that ye have eternal life, even unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God’ (1Jn_5:13).
Through faith there comes also victory over the world and all the powers of the world. ‘This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith’ (1Jn_5:4). Thus he that believes that Jesus is the Son of God passes by the way of forgiveness, knowledge, and love into an assured confidence and a great victory over the world and the things that are in the world.
7. In the Apocalypse.-It is unnecessary to examine the Apocalypse in detail, for it does not deal with either the nature or the defence of faith. In some respects it rises to a higher level as poetic and prophetic expression is given in it to the energy of the deep religious faith that abounds in the heart of the writer. In the Apocalypse we have described for us in words and pictures the unity and power of God, the dominion of Christ over the Church and the world, and the triumphant victory of the Kingdom of God over all the powers of evil. With all its problems and mysteries, this book has proved in times of despair the means of begetting and sustaining faith in Jesus Christ as ‘the ruler of the kings of the earth’ (Rev_1:5).
8. Conclusion.-In whatever ways the apostles differ in their method of regarding faith, they agree in the underlying thought that in and by it there is oneness with Jesus Christ. This union is dwelt upon by St. Paul especially in passages that deal with the ‘unio mystica’ (Eph_1:23, 1Co_12:12, etc.), but it appears also in the argument of 1 Jn. (1Jn_2:24). To make this oneness real, there is required less mere intellectual discernment than willingness of heart to commit soul and life to God in Christ. This faith is the answer of the heart to the grace of God, and is associated always with repentance and is accompanied by love and other Christian graces. Thus the writer of 2 Pet. is at one with all the apostles in saying to Christians that when they become partakers of the Divine nature (2Pe_1:4) they are bound to add to the faith-that is fundamental-virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, love of the brethren, love. Faith, that makes a believer a sharer in Christ’s salvation, makes him also a sharer in Christ’s mind and character.
Literature.-H. Bushnell, The New Life, 1860, p. 44; J. C. Hare, The Victory of Faith3, 1874; J. T. O’Brien. The Nature and the Effects of Faith4, 1877; N. Smyth, The Reality of Faith, 1888, also The Religions Feeling-a Study for Faith. n.d.; J. Kaftan, Glaube und Dogma3, 1889: C. Gore, in Lux Mundi12, 1891. p. 1; J. W. Diggle, Religions Doubt. 1895, p. 28; J. Haussleiter, ‘Was versteht Paulus unter christlichem Glauben?’ in Greifswalder Studien, 1895, p. 159ff.; G. B. Stevens, Doctrine and Life, 1895, p. 191; A. Schlatter, Der Glaube im NT2, 1896; J. Martineau, Faith and Self-Surrender, 1897: W. Herrmann, Faith and Morals, 1904; G. Ferries, The Growth of Christian Faith, 1905; E. Griffith-Jones, Faith and Verification, 1907; W. R. Inge, Faith, 1909; H. C. G. Moule, Faith, 1909; P. Charles, La Foi, 1910; P. Gardner, The Religions Experience of St. Paul, 1911, p. 206: H. Martensen-Larsen, Zweifel und Glaube, 1911; D. L. Ihmels, Fides implicita und der evangelische Heilsglaube, 1912; A. Nairne, The Epistle of Priesthood, 1913, p. 336ff.; W. M. Ramsay, The Teaching of Paul, 1913, pp. 56, 163, 176, 182.
D. Macrae Tod.
- Trust or confidence, especially in God; belief in the truth of revealed religion.
In the original language of the New Testament, the noun ‘faith’ and the verb ‘believe’ are different parts of the same word. Although faith involves belief, by far the most important characteristic of faith (in the biblical sense) is reliance, or trust.
To have faith in a person or thing is to rely wholly on that person or thing, and not to rely on oneself. The Bible usually speaks of faith in relation to people’s trust in, or dependence on, God and his works. This dependence may concern aspects of physical life such as God’s provision of food, health, protection from harm and victory over enemies (Psa 22:4-5; Psa 37:3-4; Psa 46:1-3; Mat 6:30-33; Heb 11:33-35), but above all it concerns aspects of spiritual life such as God’s provision of salvation and eternal life (Psa 18:2; Psa 40:4; Psa 71:5; Psa 73:26; Pro 3:5; Jer 17:7; Joh 3:16; Rom 1:16; Rom 5:1).
Saved by faith
Whether in the era before Christ or after, people have been saved only through faith in the sovereign God who in his mercy and grace forgives sin; and the basis on which God forgives sin is the death of Jesus Christ (Rom 3:24-26; Rom 4:16; Rom 4:22-25; 2Co 4:13; Gal 3:11; see JUSTIFICATION; SACRIFICE). People can never be saved from sin, never be accepted by God, on the basis of their good works or their law-keeping. They can do nothing to deserve or win God’s favour (Rom 4:1-5; Rom 9:30-32; Rom 10:3-4). God saves people solely by his grace, and they receive this salvation by faith (Eph 2:8-9).
Faith in itself does not save. It is simply the means by which the sinner accepts the salvation that God offers. God’s salvation is not a reward for faith; it is a gift that no one deserves, but any person can receive it by faith (Rom 3:25; Rom 5:15). For example, if someone out of kindness decides to give a friend a gift, the friend must accept that gift in order to own it. But the gift is given freely; it is not a reward for the friend’s act of acceptance.
Again, faith is not something a person can boast about. There is no merit in faith. All the merit lies in the object of faith, God, who through Jesus Christ has become the Saviour of sinners (Joh 3:16; Joh 3:18; Joh 7:31; Joh 17:20; Act 20:21; 1Jn 5:12-13). Consider another example. If a sailor in a sinking ship jumps into a lifeboat, that lifeboat means everything to the sailor. His faith in jumping into it, far from being an act of merit, is an admission of helplessness. The lifeboat, the object of faith, is what takes the sailor to safety.
Faith in God is not effort, but the ceasing of effort. It is not doing, but relying on what Christ has done. It is an attitude whereby guilty sinners gives up their own efforts to win salvation, no matter how good they be, and completely trust in Christ, and in him alone, for their salvation (Act 16:30-31; Gal 2:16). Without such an attitude, no person can receive God’s salvation (Heb 11:6 a).
The faith by which people receive salvation is not merely an acknowledgment of certain facts (though this is necessary, since believers must know who and what they are trusting in; Joh 2:22; Joh 3:12; Joh 6:69; Joh 8:24-25; Rom 10:9-10; Heb 11:6 b; 1Jn 5:20). Rather it is a belief by which believers commit themselves wholly to Christ in complete dependence. It is not just accepting certain things as true (for even God’s enemies may have that sort of belief; Jas 2:19), but trusting in a person, Jesus Christ. Some may say they have a general faith in God, but if they refuse to have specific faith in Jesus Christ, their ‘faith’ is a form of self-deception (Joh 5:24; Joh 14:6; 1Jn 2:23).
So basic is faith to Christianity, that the New Testament uses the name ‘believers’ as another name for Christians (Act 5:14; Rom 3:26; 1Ti 4:12). Likewise it uses ‘the faith’ as another name for Christianity (1Ti 5:8; 1Ti 6:10; 1Ti 6:21).
Living by faith
Christians are not only saved by faith, they live by faith. They continue to rely on the promise and power of the unseen God rather than on what they see and experience in the visible world (1Co 2:5; 2Co 5:6-7; Col 1:23; Col 2:7; Heb 11:1). Their lives are lived in constant dependence on God. Christ has borne the penalty of sin on their behalf and now lives within them. Only as they trust in his power can they experience in practice the victory, peace and joy that their salvation has brought (Gal 2:20; Gal 5:6; Eph 1:19). The strength of the faith by which they live depends largely on the strength of their personal relationship with Jesus Christ (Rom 14:1; 2Th 1:3; 2Pe 1:5-8; 2Pe 3:18).
A professed faith that does not produce a change for the better in a person’s behaviour is not true faith; it is not a faith that leads to salvation. Those who have genuine faith will give clear proof of it by their good conduct (Gal 5:6; 1Ti 5:8; Jas 2:18-26).
Sometimes the Bible speaks of faith in the special sense of trust in God to do something unusual or supernatural (Mat 9:22; Mat 9:28; Mat 17:19-20; Mar 2:5; Mar 9:23; Luk 7:9; Luk 8:25; Jas 5:14-15; see DISEASE; MIRACLES; PRAYER). To some Christians God gives a gift of special faith that enables them to do what otherwise they could not do (Rom 12:3; Rom 12:6; 1Co 12:9; see GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT).
A firm conviction that produces a full acknowledgment of God’s truth; a belief and hope in God and his Word in response to the message of salvation (see John 1:12).
Having a certainty in what you hope for even though you may not be able to see it (see Hebrews 11:1-40).
—New Believer’s Bible Glossary
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" (Heb 11:1). It is synonymous with trust. It is a divine gift (Rom 12:3) and comes by hearing the Word of God (Rom 10:17). It is the means by which the grace of God is accounted to the believer who trusts in the work of Jesus on the cross (Eph 2:8). Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). It is by faith that we live our lives, "The righteous shall live by faith" (Hab 2:4; Rom 1:17).