A Look at Faith

What is Faith? Examples of Faith in Our Popular Culture:

1. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: starring Harrison Ford & Sean Connery as Indy’s father) – At the end of the story, Indy must retrieve the Holy Grail to save his father’s life. He makes it through a long corridor of obstacles; only to find he is standing on the edge of a deep chasm he must cross. He steps out “in faith” and finds he is actually walking on a camouflaged footbridge. Therefore, we see that FAITH = BELIEVING IN THE FACE OF CONTRADICTORY EVIDENCE.
2. Revolutions: the third movie in The Matrix trilogy. In the final scene the Oracle is asked if she always knew that Neo was “The One”? She replies, “Oh no. But I believed. I believed.” Therefore, we see that FAITH = BELIEVING WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING.
3. Polar Express: The boy, who is skeptical about whether Santa Clause is real, finally is lead to say, "I believe, I believe." Just then, Santa appears to him. Therefore, we see that FAITH = BELIEVING MAKES IT REAL. (1) For that matter, can one's faith make God exist? Can one's faith make the Bible true, or make Jesus rise from the dead? Hopefully you answered NO to these questions. (1)

The Leap of Faith
As seen above, is it any wonder why our culture does not have a clear understanding about the nature of biblical faith? Furthermore, one of the most common assertions about faith in God or Jesus as the Messiah is nothing more than a "leap of faith." But is this really what the Bible teaches? Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), became one of the foremost contributors to existential philosophy because of a reaction to one of the largest influences on his life, that being George Hegel, who believed the only way to discover reality was through rationalism. (2) Another contributing factor to Kierkegaard’s existentialism was the experience he had in his formal church that was located in Denmark.

It was there that practicing faith with passion was discounted. Out of his reaction to the cold formalism, Kierkegaard discovered what was important was to have an existential encounter with God. (3) The phrase itself “leap of faith” finds its origins in the writings of Kierkegaard. For him, since man finds his authentic existence in a relationship with the Creator, the decision to believe must involve a criterionless choice, a leap of faith into the dark.(4) Even though Kierkegaard says there are no rational grounds to take the “leap of faith,” the individual must do so or he will forever remain in an inauthentic existence. (5)
Kierkegaard was correct in calling people to a passionate experience with God. After all, faith is not simply about adhering to a set of objective, historical, propositions.

However, the subjective nature of existentialism leads to one of the most important questions in religious dialogue: What god is the individual encountering? Do not all religious experiences require an external test for truth? After all, while there are some similarities in faiths such as truth, a God, right and wrong, spiritual purpose in life, and communion with God, they all also have some glaring differences such as the nature of God, the afterlife, the nature of man, sin, salvation, and creation. In their book Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli give a summary of faith. It is very helpful.

Kreeft and Tacelli say we must distinguish between the act of faith from the object of faith- believing from what is believed. The object of faith means all things believed. For the Christian, this means everything God has revealed in the Bible. This faith (the object, not the act) is expressed in propositions. Propositions are many, but the ultimate object of faith is one. The ultimate object of faith is not words, but God’s Words (singular), indeed-Himself. Without a relationship with the living God, propositions are pointless, for their point is to point beyond themselves to God. But without propositions, we cannot know or tell others what God we believe in and what we believe about God.

The act of faith is more than merely an act of belief. We believe many things-for example that the Chicago White Sox will win this years World Series and that New Zealand is beautiful but we are not willing to die for those beliefs, nor can we live them every moment. But religious faith can be something to live every moment. It is much more than belief and much stronger, though belief is one of its parts or aspects. There are four aspects of faith:

1. Emotional faith: is feeling assurance or trust or confidence in a person. This includes hope (which is much stronger than a wish and peace (which is much stronger then mere calm.). 2. Intellectual faith: is belief. It is this aspect of faith that is formulated in propositions and summarized in creeds. 3. Volitional faith: is an act of the will, a commitment to obey God’s will. This faith is faithfulness, or fidelity. It manifests itself in behavior, that is, in good works. 4. Faith: begins in that obscure mysterious center of our being that Scripture calls the ‘heart.” Heart in Scripture does not mean feeling, or sentiment, or emotion, but the absolute center of the soul, as the physical heart is at the center of the body. “Keep your heart with all viligence” advised Solomon, “for from it flow the springs of life.” (Proverbs 4:23).

Biblical Faith/The Faith of the Apostles- Issues of Eyewitness Testimony Issues of Eyewitness Testimony

Considering that most of the major world religions or faith claims are based on some sort of revelation, it is important to realize that since they are all contradictory revelations, they all cannot be true. Islam as well as Morminism are just two examples. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, claimed an angel appeared to him and directed him to what are called the golden plates. Smith then showed them to eleven others. Smith is supposed to be responsible for translating these plates into The Book of Mormon. Like the apostles of Jesus, Smith suffered and died for his beliefs. However, there is a major difference between the eleven witnesses to the gold plates and the apostles of Jesus. While six of the eleven witnesses left the Mormon Church, we have no record of the apostles of Jesus (Paul, James and John, others) even leaving the early Christian movement.(6)

Furthermore, in the case of the Mormon claim as well as supposed supernatural sightings etc, they fail the test of coherence. In examining an ancient document, a historian asks does an event or teaching fit well with what is known concerning other surrounding occurrences and teachings. Coherence involves the extraordinary consistency of Jesus’ resurrection with his unique life and teachings, including his predictions of his death and resurrection.(7) All the eyewitness testimony coheres with Jesus’ entire ministry, His divine claims, His actions, the use of Jewish divine categories such as Wisdom, Shekinah, the Memra, the Name, Son of Man, etc, and His ministry that is built on the messianic expectations of the Hebrew Bible.

In evaluating an ancient text, a historian will ask the following questions: (1) Is there early testimony? (2) Is there eyewitness testimony? (3) Is there multiple attestation? (4) Does the text show the principle of embarrassment, enemy attestation, and coherence (as mentioned above)? The New Testament passes all these tests. (8) To read more about the reliability of the New Testament- feel free to read this article called Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him And Why It Matters by Craig Blomberg: http://www.henrycenter.org/files/blomberg.pdf
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony by Richard Bauckham.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates the nature and origin of knowledge. How do we know something? The role of testimony is one of the primary ways humans can know anything about historical events. Testimony as an epistemological enterprise plays a large role in the most recent work by British scholar Richard Bauckham in his book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Bauckham does a superb job in evaluating how testimony can be treated as historical knowledge. He also compares the use of eyewitness testimony in the Gospels and the survivors of the Holocaust.

The first followers of Jesus were exclusively Jews. The book of Acts gives a reference to the early followers of Jesus as "the sect of Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5).This sect of Judaism had to spread the message of Jesus in a culture that was Jewish but had also been impacted by Hellenism. The word “Hellenistic” was given to describe the period of history that started with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. and ended when Rome conquered Alexander’s empire in 30 B.C.(9) Could the early messianic community reach their fellow countrymen or a Greek audience by asking their audiences to take a "leap of faith?" In studying the apologetic methodology of the Apostles, they primarily appealed to fulfilled prophecy and the resurrection as the basis for the evidence of Jesus’ Messiahship (Acts 2:14-32-39; 3:6-16, 4:8-14; 17:1-4; 26:26; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8). They also appealed to objective eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:2-4; John 1:14; 19:31-35-36; 20:24, 30-31; 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1-3). When the Apostles had to reach out to the Gentile or pagan community, they appealed to nature (Acts 14:14-17; Rom. 1:18-21).

Jesus and Evidence: Dr. Douglas Groothuis of Denver Seminary carefully looked at the variety of approaches that were utilized by Jesus in talking to His audience. He notes that one passage that is quite helpful to this issue is Matthew 11:13. John the Baptist, who was languishing in prison after challenging Herod, sent messengers to ask Jesus the question: “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” In response to John, Jesus did not rebuke John’s question. He did not say, “You must have faith; suppress your doubts.” Nor did He scold, “If you don’t believe, you’ll go to hell and miss heaven.” Instead, Jesus recounted the distinctive features of His ministry:

Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me. (Matt. 11:4–6; see also Luke 7:22). Jesus’ works of healing and teaching are meant to serve as positive evidence of His messianic identity, because they fulfill the messianic predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures. What Jesus claimed is this:
1. If one does certain kinds of actions (the acts cited above), then one is the Messiah.2. I am doing those kinds of actions.3. Therefore, I am the Messiah. (10)

Biblical faith involves an objective element (the existence of God, Jesus' resurrection), and the subjective appropriation, moved by the grace of God, of those truths. (11) For example, in James 2:19, it says that the demons believe that God exists. Objectively speaking, the Holy Spirit works in conjunction with the evidence for the truthfulness of the Christian faith to enable us to understand that God exists. However, from a subjective perspective, we also must place our trust in God, which can only happen with the help of the Holy Spirit (John 16: 12-15).

A good example of this is seen in Acts 17:1-4, “And according to Paul's custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, This Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women." In this passage, we see that the Holy Spirit worked through the objective evidence of the Tanakh (the acronym that is formed from the first three parts of the Hebrew Bible: Torah (the first five books of the Bible), Nevi’ im (the Prophets), and K’ tuvim (the Writings) which caused some of Paul's audience to understand that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. However, the Holy Spirit also caused Paul's audience to place their trust in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

Biblical faith also involves a commitment of the whole person. In the Tanakh, the Hebrew word for heart is "leb," or "lebad." While the word "heart" is used as a metaphor to describe the physical organ, it is also the center or defining element of the entire person. It can be seen as the seat of the person's intellectual, emotional, affective, and volitional life. In the New Testament, the word “heart” (Gr.kardia) came to stand for man’s entire mental and moral activity, both the rational and the emotional elements.(12)

Sources: 1. These three examples of faith are courtesy of Summit Ministries. Available at http://www.summit.org/resources/tc/2008/05/is-faith-blind.php2. Erickson, M. Christian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. 1998, 40-47. 3. Ibid.4. Craig, W.L. Reasonable Faith. Wheaten, ILL: Crossway Books. 1984, 56.5. Ibid.6. See See Habermas. G.R. and Licona, M. L. The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004, 185-186. 7. Ibid. 8. See Burridge, R. And Graham Gould. Jesus: Then And Now.Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2004, 29.9. Nash, R.The Gospel and the Greeks. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing. 1992, 10.10. Groothuis, D. Jesus: Philosopher and Apologist: Available at http://www.theapologiaproject.org/JesusPhil.pdf.11. Clark, K.J., Lints, R., and James K.A. Smith. 101 Key Terms In Philosophy And Their Importance For Theology. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 26.12. W.E. Vine, Unger, Merrill F. and William White Jr. Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary Of Old And New Testament Words. Nashville: TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1985, 297.

Copyright 2009-Eric Chabot