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 Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
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Helping San Diego, California and beyond since 1997.
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General Information
Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true (Phil. 1:27; 2 Thess. 2:13). Its primary idea is trust. A thing is true, and therefore worthy of trust. It admits of many degrees up to full assurance of faith, in accordance with the evidence on which it rests. Faith is the result of teaching (Rom. 10:14-17). Knowledge is an essential element in all faith, and is sometimes spoken of as an equivalent to faith (John 10:38; 1 John 2:3). Yet the two are distinguished in this respect, that faith includes in it assent, which is an act of the will in addition to the act of the understanding Assent to the truth is of the essence of faith, and the ultimate ground on which our assent to any revealed truth rests is the veracity of God.
Historical faith is the apprehension of and assent to certain statements which are regarded as mere facts of history. Temporary faith is that state of mind which is awakened in men (e.g., Felix) by the exhibition of the truth and by the influence of religious sympathy, or by what is sometimes styled the common operation of the Holy Spirit. Saving faith is so called because it has eternal life inseparably connected with it. It cannot be better defined than in the words of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism: "Faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace, whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation, as he is offered to us in the gospel." The object of saving faith is the whole revealed Word of God.
Faith accepts and believes it as the very truth most sure. But the special act of faith which unites to Christ has as its object the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ (John 7:38; Acts 16:31). This is the specific act of faith by which a sinner is justified before God (Rom. 3:22, 25; Gal. 2:16; Phil. 3:9; John 3:16-36; Acts 10:43; 16:31). In this act of faith the believer appropriates and rests on Christ alone as Mediator in all his offices. This assent to or belief in the truth received upon the divine testimony has always associated with it a deep sense of sin, a distinct view of Christ, a consenting will, and a loving heart, together with a reliance on, a trusting in, or resting in Christ. It is that state of mind in which a poor sinner, conscious of his sin, flees from his guilty self to Christ his Saviour, and rolls over the burden of all his sins on him. It consists chiefly, not in the assent given to the testimony of God in his Word, but in embracing with fiducial reliance and trust the one and only Saviour whom God reveals. This trust and reliance is of the essence of faith.
By faith the believer directly and immediately appropriates Christ as his own. Faith in its direct act makes Christ ours. It is not a work which God graciously accepts instead of perfect obedience, but is only the hand by which we take hold of the person and work of our Redeemer as the only ground of our salvation. Saving faith is a moral act, as it proceeds from a renewed will, and a renewed will is necessary to believing assent to the truth of God (1 Cor. 2:14; 2 Cor. 4:4). Faith, therefore, has its seat in the moral part of our nature fully as much as in the intellectual. The mind must first be enlightened by divine teaching (John 6:44; Acts 13:48; 2 Cor. 4:6; Eph. 1:17, 18) before it can discern the things of the Spirit.
Faith is necessary to our salvation (Mark 16:16), not because there is any merit in it, but simply because it is the sinner's taking the place assigned him by God, his falling in with what God is doing. The warrant or ground of faith is the divine testimony, not the reasonableness of what God says, but the simple fact that he says it. Faith rests immediately on, "Thus saith the Lord." But in order to this faith the veracity, sincerity, and truth of God must be owned and appreciated, together with his unchangeableness. God's word encourages and emboldens the sinner personally to transact with Christ as God's gift, to close with him, embrace him, give himself to Christ, and take Christ as his.
That word comes with power, for it is the word of God who has revealed himself in his works, and especially in the cross. God is to be believed for his word's sake, but also for his name's sake. Faith in Christ secures for the believer freedom from condemnation, or justification before God; a participation in the life that is in Christ, the divine life (John 14:19; Rom. 6:4-10; Eph. 4:15,16, etc.); "peace with God" (Rom. 5:1); and sanctification (Acts 26:18; Gal. 5:6; Acts 15:9). All who thus believe in Christ will certainly be saved (John 6:37, 40; 10:27, 28; Rom. 8:1). The faith=the gospel (Acts 6:7; Rom. 1: 5; Gal. 1:23; 1 Tim. 3:9; Jude 3).
Noun corresponding to the verb "believe," for which the Hebrew is heemin, the hiphil form of aman, and the Greek (LXX and NT) pisteuo. The latter is a key word in the NT, being the term regularly used to denote the many sided religious relationship into which the gospel calls men and women, that of trust in God through Christ. The complexity of this idea is reflected in the variety of constructions used with the verb (a hoti clause, or accusative and infinitive, expressing truth believed; en and epi with the dative, denoting restful reliance on that to which, or him to whom, credit is given; eis and, occasionally, epi with the accusative, the most common, characteristic, and original NT usage, scarcely present in the LXX and not at all in classical Greek, conveying the thought of a move - ment of trust going out to, and laying hold of, the object of its confidence). The Hebrew noun corresponding to aman (emuna, rendered pistis in the LXX), regularly denotes faithfulness in the sense of trustworthiness, and pistis occasionally bears this sense in the NT (Rom. 3:3, of God; Matt. 23:23; Gal. 5:22; Titus 2:10, of man).
The word emuna normally refers to the faithfulness of God, and only in Hab. 2:4 is it used to signify man's religious response to God. There, however, the contrast in the context between the temper of the righteous and the proud self sufficiency of the Chaldeans seems to demand for it a broader sense than "faithfulness" alone, the sense, namely, of self renouncing, trustful reliance upon God, the attitude of heart of which faithfulness in life is the natural expression. This is certainly the sense in which the apostolic writers quote the text (Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38), and the sense which pistis, like pisteuo, regularly carries in the NT, where both words are used virtually as technical terms (John preferring the verb, Paul the noun) to express the complex thought of unqualified acceptance of, and exclusive dependence on, the mediation of the Son as alone securing the mercy of the Father.
Both normally bear this whole weight of meaning, whether their grammatical object is God, Christ, the gospel, a truth, a promise, or is not expressed at all. Both signify commitment as following from conviction, even in contexts where faith is defined in terms of the latter only (e.g., compare Heb. 11:1 with the rest of the chapter). The nature of faith, according to the NT, is to live by the truth it receives; faith, resting on God's promise, gives thanks for God's grace by working for God's glory.
Some occasional contractions of this broad idea should be noticed:
Christian faith rests on the recognition of apostolic and biblical testimony as God's own testimony to his Son.
Faith, so regarded, says Paul, first "came" with Christ (Gal. 3:23 - 25). The Gospels show Christ demanding trust in himself as bearing the messianic salvation. John is fullest on this, emphasizing (1) that faith ("believing on," "coming to," and "receiving" Christ) involves acknowledging Jesus, not merely as a God - sent teacher and miracle worker (this is insufficient, John 2:23 - 24), but as God incarnate (John 20:28), whose atoning death is the sole means of salvation (John 3:14 - 15; 6:51 - 58); (2) that faith in Christ secures present enjoyment of "eternal life" in fellowship with God (John 5:24; 17:3). The epistles echo this, and present faith in various further relationships. Paul shows that faith in Christ is the only way to a right relationship with God, which human works cannot gain (see Romans and Galatians); Hebrews and 1 Peter present faith as the dynamic of hope and endurance under persecution.
During the patristic period, however, the idea of faith was so narrowed that this assent came to be regarded as the whole of it. Four factors together caused this: (1) the insistence of the anti Gnostic fathers, particularly Tertullian, that the faithful are those who believe "the faith" as stated in the "rule of faith" (regula fidei), i.e., the Creed; (2) the intellectualism of Clement and Origen, to whom pistis (assent on authority) was just an inferior substitute for, and stepping stone to, gnosis (demonstrative knowledge) of spiritual things; (3) the assimilation of biblical morality to Stoic moralism, an ethic not of grateful dependence but of resolute selfreliance; (4) the clothing of the biblical doctrine of communion with God in Neoplatonic dress, which made it appear as a mystical ascent to the supersensible achieved by aspiring love, having no link with the ordinary exercise of faith at all.
Also, since the doctrine of justification was not understood, the soteriological significance of faith was misconceived, and faith (understood as orthodox) was regarded simply as the passport to baptism (remitting all past sins) and to a lifelong probation in the church (giving the baptized opportunity to make themselves worthy of glory by their good works).
The scholastics refined this view. They reproduced the equation of faith with credence, distinguishing between fides informis ("unformed" faith, bare orthodoxy) and fides caritate formata (credence "formed" into a working principle by the supernatural addition to it of the distinct grace of love). Both sorts of faith, they held, are meritorious works, though the quality of merit attaching to the first is merely congruent (rendering divine reward fit, though not obligatory), and only the second gains condign merit (making divine reward due as a matter of justice). Roman Catholicism still formally identifies faith with credence, and has added a further refinement by distinguishing between "explict" faith (belief which knows its object) and "implicit" faith (uncomprehending assent to whatever it may be that the church holds). Only the latter (which is evidently no more than a vote of confidence in the teaching church and may be held with complete ignorance of Christianity) is thought to be required of laymen for salvation. But a mere docile disposition of this sort is poles apart from the biblical concept of saving faith.
The Reformers restored biblical perspectives by insisting that faith is more than orthodoxy, not fides merely, but fiducia, personal trust and confidence in God's mercy through Christ; that it is not a meritorious work, one facet of human righteousness, but rather an appropriating instrument, an empty hand outstretched to receive the free gift of God's righteousness in Christ; that faith is God - given, and is itself the animating principle from which love and good works spontaneously spring; and that communion with God means, not an exotic rapture of mystical ecstasy, but just faith's everyday commerce with the Savior. Confessional Protestantism has always maintained these positions. In Arminianism there resides a tendency to depict faith as the human work upon which the pardon of sin is suspended, as, in fact, man's contribution to his own salvation. This would be in effect a Protestant revival of the doctrine of human merit.
Liberalism radically psychologized faith, reducing it to a sense of contented harmony with the Infinite through Christ (Schleiermacher), or a fixed resolve to follow Christ's teaching (Ritschl), or both together. Liberal influence is reflected in the now widespread supposition that "faith," understood as an optimistic confidence in the friendliness of the universe, divorced from any specific creedal tenets, is a distinctively religious state of mind. Neo orthodox and existentialist theologians, reacting against this psychologism, stress the supernatural origin and character of faith. They describe it as an active commitment of mind and will, man's repeated "yes" to the repeated summons to decision issued by God's word in Christ; but the elusiveness of their account of the content of that word makes it hard sometimes to see what the believer is thought to say "yes" to.
Clearly, each theologian's view of the nature and saving significance of faith will depend on the views he holds of the Scriptures, and of God, man, and of their mutual relations.
J I Packer
Bibliography
E D Burton, Galatians; B B Warfield in H D B and
Biblical and Theological Studies; G H Box in H D C G; J G Machen,
What is Faith? B Citron, New Birth; systematic theologies of C
Hodge (III) and L Berkhof (IV, viii); D M Baillie, Faith in God; G
CBerkouwer, Faith and Justification; J Hick, Faith and Knowledge; O
Becker and O Michel, N I D N T T, II; A Weiser, T D N T, VI; D M
Emmet, Philosophy and Faith.
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