that's better
What is faith?
- Thread starter iouae
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that's better
You often hear of people having faith when things are going well, but they loose their faith in times of a crisis.
iouae
Well-known member
Great points that faith has to be in God, not self or other things.
Just as a thought, I don't suppose the deeds of the faithful are the evidence for God?
Just substituting "faith is the substance (=deeds/) ......the evidence of things unseen (=God???)". That sounds like a stretch.
I still cannot get a handle on the works or no works aspect of this.
iouae
Well-known member
I wish someone would address this aspect of faith more.
How much of faith is "psyched up" meaning one works it up, or refuses to think negative thoughts or whatever? Or how much is worked up in you by a good sermon, only to wane the next day?
nikolai_42
Well-known member
I don't take "things unseen" to necessarily be God Himself. Rather, His promises in general - faith being necessary to lay hold of them because if we don't trust Him, we won't do what is necessary to lay hold. Indeed, we won't even trouble ourselves to learn what He calls us to. Because if we did get a glimpse of what He calls us to (and do so without faith) we would not be able to apprehend that for which we are apprehended. Indeed, the faith I see described here is all the work of God in a man that is necessary not only to fulfill His call, but to even know what it is.
iouae
Well-known member
That was a huge test.
The only thing which makes it possible IMHO is that God/Christ literally walked and talked with Ab both in telling him he would have a son, and in telling him to sacrifice that son.
It's not like some person getting voices in their head to do something, or reading a scripture and getting a hare-brained idea.
iouae
Well-known member
What you say ties in with the part of Heb 1:1 I have not addressed. "Now faith is the substance of THINGS HOPED FOR..."
I am sure that this is part of our calling. God places a hope there.
I am sure God placed a hope in Rahab's heart to want to be part of Israel, and the seed instantly grew into a tree - thus God could single her out from all, and give her the faith to save the spies.
Perhaps father Abraham learned the difference between a "burnt offering" and an "ascending offering", (Genesis 22:2)? Would that all concerned would learn the same.
nikolai_42
Well-known member
I think you are right.
iouae
Well-known member
The NT speaks of the "faith of Christ".
Would I be right in saying that Christ gives us His faith through the Holy Spirit putting thoughts in our heads. And that faith OF Christ also enables our faith IN Christ?
iouae
Well-known member
Typical liberal line of thinking.
Anybody?
iouae
Well-known member
The eternal optimism of the Christian mind...
We have to explore this further.
I think there is a sea of faith, but it has high and low tides. Elijah comes to mind as being bipolar in the faith department. But there is no doubting that solid and absolute faith he had in God between the mood swings.
iouae
Well-known member
Perhaps it is like a tiny grain of seed: though it may seem lost for now, yet perahps it is merely lost somewhere inside you.
If anyone can explain that parable of having faith the size of a seed one can throw mountains into the sea - I would love to hear it. To me it should read, if you have faith of a mountain you MIGHT get a seed to levitate.
PureX
Well-known member
'Faith' is an important phenomena that occurs on several levels and to varied degrees. Faith is the engine of our understanding of things. And so it is intrinsically tied to concepts like knowledge, belief, trust, and reason. And in the english language "faith" is also used to refer to the concepts that we choose to place our faith, in. (Which adds to the confusion surrounding the term.)
Faith, by itself, is the act of trusting in an unknown or unknowable concept of reality. But our interaction with reality affords us varying degrees of knowledge, so that faith is applied in relation to what we can know, what we can surmise by reason, and what we must trust to be true in spite of our not knowing that it is. Too much faith applied to these varied degrees of knowledge becomes pretense. Faith actually becomes counter-productive as it devolves into pretense. Because pretense is deliberately self-delusional.
Faith is an excellent tool, but it needs to be kept proportional to knowledge, reason, experience, and intuition.
Faith, by itself, is the act of trusting in an unknown or unknowable concept of reality. But our interaction with reality affords us varying degrees of knowledge, so that faith is applied in relation to what we can know, what we can surmise by reason, and what we must trust to be true in spite of our not knowing that it is. Too much faith applied to these varied degrees of knowledge becomes pretense. Faith actually becomes counter-productive as it devolves into pretense. Because pretense is deliberately self-delusional.
Faith is an excellent tool, but it needs to be kept proportional to knowledge, reason, experience, and intuition.
Faith is the confidence about what a truth is.
Faith is the assurance of what a truth is.
Faith is the general way of how humans reach a truth. Humans have no truths if they failed to deliver their faith, or to deliver their faith incorrectly.
Humans get to know the whole world around them through putting faith in other humans.
We get to know what are happening in every corner of this world by putting faith in ours news agencies. We have confidence that they broadcast the truths. They are our assurance to get to every piece of truth occurring in the world. Without such faith, we know nothing about this world.
We deliver the similar faith to get to the truth of God. God's chosen witnesses are our 'new agencies'.
Faith is the assurance of what a truth is.
Faith is the general way of how humans reach a truth. Humans have no truths if they failed to deliver their faith, or to deliver their faith incorrectly.
Humans get to know the whole world around them through putting faith in other humans.
We get to know what are happening in every corner of this world by putting faith in ours news agencies. We have confidence that they broadcast the truths. They are our assurance to get to every piece of truth occurring in the world. Without such faith, we know nothing about this world.
We deliver the similar faith to get to the truth of God. God's chosen witnesses are our 'new agencies'.
nikolai_42
Well-known member
I think it goes back to where the faith is placed and where it comes from. If you have to work it up yourself, you ultimately have to have some faith in yourself (since without you working it up, you wouldn't have it). But that, to my way of thinking, presents a problem when Jesus comes along and says on more than one occasion "Your faith hath made you whole." You see, it has to be of God originally - otherwise it isn't biblical faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. The just shall live by faith. If this is all God trying to convince man to "only believe" on his own, then the foundations are real shaky. Again, if someone believes for healing (as an example) and then gets sick again - does that mean their faith failed? If so, whose fault was it? Not God's, surely... But then it was their own fault - so in some sense, they were trusting in themselves (even if they didn't believe they healed themselves).
So if you have faith (in God...given and justified by God) as a grain of a mustard seed, anything is possible. But then we have to ask if that means we can ask anything out of our own desires and it will be granted? If we had worked up our own faith, certainly we could - because we would have convinced ourselves to believe in God and then (by extension) believed that we could ask for anything and we would receive it. But if it wasn't what God desired, is our faith actually faith? Rather, the one who lives by the faith of the Son of God in some real sense operates this way :
I have many things to say and to judge of you: but he that sent me is true; and I speak to the world those things which I have heard of him.
John 8:26
I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.
John 8:38
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
John 5:19
I mean if Jesus wouldn't (and couldn't) do anything but what the Father did and showed Him, how ridiculous (even blasphemous) is it for us to think we have to have our own personal faith - working it up and/or maintaining it on our own?
Faith means NOTHING trustworthy apart from the operation of God.
PureX
Well-known member
This is why faith without skepticism leads to blind pretense. And makes us arrogant, ignorant, and vulnerable to the manipulation of both liars and fools.
However, generally speaking, faith could be the one and only way for humans to reach a truth. You can trick people's faith into a lie though.