What is "Faith"?

[Silvertusk]

Hello Silvertusk

Why do you need this "concept of blind faith" that you so envy?
What has it to do with Christianity?

The Greek word behind "faith" in the New Testament is pistis.
As a noun, pistis is a word that was used as a technical rhetorical term for forensic proof.

I understand that examples of this usage are found in the works of Aristotle and Quintiallian, and over 240 times in the New Testament.

Here is just one of those many examples, this one found in the passage Acts 2:22-36 for you to consider.

Peter's primary appeal in that particular passage was threefold:
He appealed to...
(1) the evidence of the wonders and signs performed by Jesus
(2) the empty tomb
(3) fulfillment of OT prophecy.
In short, his appeals were evidentiary.

Of course you might wish to dispute the validity of the evidence, but in context this is beside the point.
The point is that Peter grounded belief in Christianity on evidence -- or, as the definition of pistis in Acts 17:31 would put it, proofs.

I have quoted or paraphrased the above from a paper by James Patrick Holding entitled Fallacious Faith - Correcting an All-too-Common Misconception which you may read in full here.
He also gives other examples of the way the word "faith" is misused due to a lack of knowledge of it's meaning in Scriptural context.

Having said this here, I think it might be more appropriate to continue such a discussion on another thread more closely related to this subject, or to start a new thread in the relevant forum if you wish.

Ji Judah.

I am envy of the fact that people with blind faith do not have doubts. I envy people with that absolute peace of mind that everything can and will be explained by God, even if you do not understand it now. The fact that they don't understand it doesn't worry it.

Everything you said is absolutely correct and it was pointed out by my minister as well. Jesus said to Thomas - blessed are the people who believe and do not see. We are seperated by 2000 years and maybe because of that we are blessed because in that respect we are still believe and do not see. But in this secular athiestic world (at least the one it is turning into) - it is getting harder and harder to believe. I wish I just believed and did not question. But like you pointed out in scripture - that is just the way it is and has to be it seems.

Thankyou for your thoughts.

Silvertusk.

[Judah]

Yes, I have met folks like that.
But they are often not very good at answering questions about their faith when genuine seekers need to know, and they are also at risk of believing distortions of the truth because they never question it.
Happy questioning regardless, Silvertusk, and may your faith grow with the answers you find.

[Kurieuo]

Judah, thanks for your post on faith and especially the link. I once took that "faith" meant more than "believing," yet then I began getting a little confused after reading over Hebrews 11. I never knew the word for "faith," was also translated elsewhere as "assurance." This brings further clarity to this issue and many related ones for me so thanks.

Kurieuo.

[Judah]

It's interesting you should say that, Kurieuo.
A Baptist pastor on line gave me a set of very good questions to help me explore Hebrews 11 on the subject of faith, and also the relationship between faith and works. I learnt a lot from working on those questions.
However I was still bemused and frustrated by the idea presented to me by unbelievers that faith excluded reasoning and required a serious lack of intelligence, and therefore Christians were irrational and stupid for being Christians.
It was James Holding's paper that made better sense of "faith" for me too.

(Of course, for Aetheists to have faith in their assumption that there is no God, what would that make them by their own understanding of faith? And surely doubly so! )

[Kurieuo]

I do agree a lot with Holding, but I'm not sure he clarifies one thing. It seems as though he leaves the reader thinking that the English word "faith" has the full meaning of pistis (translated as "faith" or "assurance"). As such, the reader is left with the sense that whenever one talks of "faith," it always carries the connotations of being based upon reason.

It is true that many people believe "faith" is a belief inspite of reason, and I think Holding successfully debunks this view. Yet, Holding appears to go the polar opposite (I may be wrong), to try and portray "faith" as always carrying the meaning of belief based upon reason. Yet, I do not believe the word "faith" in and of itself says anything about whether a person's belief is blind or "assured" by reason. However, when "faith" is used as a translation from pistis, then "faith" should be analysed in the light of pistis which carries a sense of assurance as Holding reveals.

I may seem like a nitpick, but I just thought this an important point for I was previously confusing the word "faith" as having the implications of being based upon reason in and of itself. This may be true of "faith" in the Biblical sense as translated from pistis, but the general English sense of "faith" I believe says nothing about what whether or not ones belief is based upon reason.

Kurieuo.

[Judah]

I think that is an important piece of "nitpicking".

I see something very similar with the use of the word "love". Folk have a lot of different ideas about what is meant by God's love, and until you start talking about agape, philia, eros, or storge, then what someone is actually meaning by "love" can be very different to that which the Scriptures are making reference. And it goes beyond that further to one's own understanding of what love is and what it is not.

(Should we be on a new thread discussing these things?)

[Judah]

Oh goody, a new "faith" thread.
I'll be back.

[Kurieuo]

There was also talk of "faith" a while back in the thread at http://discussions.godandscience.org/vi ... 6&start=20 which you might also be interested in.

Kurieuo.

[Judah]

Coming back to this topic of faith, I really like something that Lee Strobel wrote in his book "Case for a Creator". He had looked at the evidence for the existence of God in numerous fields of science - cosmology, astronomy, physics, biochemistry, biology. While the evidence does not prove absolutely the existence of God, however it all pointed to a very high probablilty that God did indeed exist.
What Lee then said about faith is that he saw it as a reasonable step in the same direction pointed by the evidence.
And given that we are ready enough to "have faith" in a great many other things without requiring 100% absolute proof, I question why we have to be so unsure of ourselves when it comes to the existence of God.