What is faith?

[Blue_Horizon]

…correct…I do intend that they basically mean the same thing. Faith is something that combines belief and trust.

There is a story that is told of the tightrope walker who stretched a cable across Niagara Falls it goes something like…

He walked across 160 feet above falls several times, each time with a different and ever more daring feat - once in a sack, on stilts, on a bicycle, in the dark, and once he even carried a stove and cooked an omelet!

A large crowd gathered and a buzz of excitement ran along both sides of the river bank. The crowd “Oooohed!” and “Aaaaahed!” as the daredevil carefully walked across one dangerous step after another –
finally blindfolded and pushing a wheelbarrow.

Upon reaching the other side, the crowd’s applause was louder than the roar of the falls! The deredevil stopped and addressed his audience: "Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow?"The crowd enthusiastically shouted, “Yes, yes, yes. You are the greatest tightrope walker in the world. You can do anything!”

“Okay,” he said, “Who will get in the wheelbarrow…”
And here we have an illustration of the difference between “belief” and “faith”…

Peace
James

Thanks. I was trying to see how this might fit into more traditional understandings of faith.

Augustine reckons there are three meanings.
catholicmom.webs.com/apps/blog/show/6932264-truly-understanding-our-rich-catholic-faith One is about believing the things God says are true (e.g. “Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow”) = Credo Deo. Another is believing in God as a Person, surrendering oneself to him (e.g. “Who will get in the wheelbarrow…”) = Credo in Deum. Obviously when we say the Creed at mass we use this meaning.

As Aquinas has said, faith primarily terminates in the person of God not in the articles of faith about Him.

So thankyou for your example above, well put .

 

[JRKH]

Thanks. I was trying to see how this might fit into more traditional understandings of faith.

Augustine reckons there are three meanings.
catholicmom.webs.com/apps/blog/show/6932264-truly-understanding-our-rich-catholic-faith One is about believing the things God says are true (e.g. “Do you believe I can carry a person across in this wheelbarrow”) = Credo Deo. Another is believing in God as a Person, surrendering oneself to him (e.g. “Who will get in the wheelbarrow…”) = Credo in Deum. Obviously when we say the Creed at mass we use this meaning.

As Aquinas has said, faith primarily terminates in the person of God not in the articles of faith about Him.

So thankyou for your example above, well put .

Happy to help…I like how you equated the example into Augustine…

Belief is actually quite easy - Faith…that’s the toughy…Even when we want to, it’s hard to climb into that wheelbarrow.

Peace
James

 

[neophyte]

Hello…

“Have faith” are common words, but does the Bible ever actually define it? Is it having an unshakeable conviction like 2+2=4, or is it simply trying to believe, despite doubts?..

The Hebrew word aman is translated as “believe”, “trust”, “have faith”, and also “support”, “nourish”, and “make lasting”. A derivative word is omenat, meaning “pillars” or “supports of the door” as in 2 Kings 18:16. Another cognate is emunah, which is “faithfulness” or “trust”, as in Exodus 17:12 where God brought victory to Israel as long as Moses would hold his hands up. Aaron and Hur held up his hands so that they “remained emunah until sundown”. All of these illustrate that faith is an action that we take, which is exactly what the Catholic church teaches. Faith is a work, it’s about what you DO and not merely about what you believe.

We are not able to do this work by our own effort because of the effects of original sin. Each and every time we turn toward God and away from sin it is because God gave us at that moment the grace to be able to do it. It is completely and totally due to the grace of God, who enables all of us at some point in our lives to perform the work of freely responding to Him by performing the “obedience of faith”. At that moment we truly have the choice that Adam had, to submit to God or submit to ourselves, and we only have that choice because of God’s grace.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church expresses this by saying that faith is an act of the will in which one turns toward God and away from sin; in which we decide that we will cooperate, with our intellect and will, with the divine grace that God gives us to enable us to comply with the moral law; it is a free response of the human person to the initiative of God; it is a personal adherence of the whole man to the God who reveals himself. It is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work through charity.”

These are all actions, things we do in obedience to God. Thus the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:5 "Through Him we have received the grace of apostleship, to bring about the obedience of faith…” This obedience is the essence of Christianity: submission to the Eternal One who was enfleshed, and through that submission being brought into union with Him so that we may participate in His divine life.

Hello…
…so how do we know what’s Scripture, apart from the testimony of sinful human beings? Just trusting the Church isn’t going to do, because that requires faith again, which hasn’t been defined yet…

To trust the Church is to trust Christ, because Christ promised to protect Her from teaching error. The Church has defined the Canon, and I know that She is correct because Jesus said so.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

If Paul or any of the other apostles were unaware of certain truths concerning the faith then those truths are non-apostolic.

No, there is no verse in scripture which says that everything has to be found in the bible. But just as a historian who looks at all the relevant writings of antiquity, it is very easy to notice that the doctrines of Mary were novel ideas and that the modern devotion to mary is quite unapostolic in nature and practice, almost resembling a form of worship, not in theory but in practice.

Not according to John the Evangelist.

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

What do you mean?

 

[neophyte]

Not according to John the Evangelist.

What do you mean?

Please don’t derail the thread.

 

[JRKH]

The Hebrew word aman is translated as “believe”, “trust”, “have faith”, and also “support”, “nourish”, and “make lasting”. A derivative word is omenat, meaning “pillars” or “supports of the door” as in 2 Kings 18:16. Another cognate is emunah, which is “faithfulness” or “trust”, as in Exodus where God brought victory to as long as Moses would hold his hands up. Aaron and Hur held up his hands so that they “remained emunah until sundown”.

neophyte,
Wonderful exposition on the many ways that “faith” is reckoned in Hebrew. Thank you.

All of these illustrate that faith is an action that we take, which is exactly what the Catholic church teaches. Faith is a work, it’s about what you DO and not merely about what you believe.

Just to add to this, The converse is equally essential. Faith is about what you BELIEVE and not merely about what you do.
In the NT Jesus seeks to make the people of Israel understand that simply doing is not enough. St Paul picks up on this theme in his comments on the importance of “faith” over “law”. St James addresses the opposite extreme of the one who claims faith but does nothing. In short…one is not efficacious without the other.

Peace
James

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

faith is not a work. Faith remains to be that conviction of things which are promised and the confidence that God is true. Otherwise, how would Paul and James be able to distinguish them? If they were the same thing?

No, they are distinct in their concepts. However they live together like a body and soul. The physical body is not in any sense a soul and the soul is not in any sense a physical body, but they are there together.

 

[neophyte]

faith is not a work…

Bare assertion, completely unsupported by any real analysis.

Faith remains to be that conviction of things which are promised and the confidence that God is true.

Adherence to God, yes, which is exactly what I said and is something one does.

Otherwise, how would Paul and James be able to distinguish them?

James went to a lot of effort to explain that they are not merely two sides of the same coin, but that they are the coin.

I notice that you don’t bother to logically rebut either my analysis of the Hebrew or the statements of the Church about the nature of faith: that it is an act of the will by which we adhere to God, etc. Over the last four or five years I’ve posted this exact thing at least two or three dozen times both here and on other online forums, and no one ever has. JRKH’s response is literally the first.

No, they are distinct in their concepts. However they live together like a body and soul. The physical body is not in any sense a soul and the soul is not in any sense a physical body, but they are there together.

You prove my point. Body and soul can be discussed in the abstract as if they were diferent things, but in reality they are intimately united and inseparable: together they constitute a single substancial being. The body/soul is a unity, not a duality: they are united as matter and form.

 

[Erick_Ybarra]

You are correct then.

However, they can be distinguished but never seperated. Sure, God requires faith in order to be saved. And this is something we do. No doubt.

But faith is abandoning oneself to Christ and God, picking up our cross, like Abraham, and commmitment to live for his and hope for the promise

 

[JRKH]

You are correct then.

However, they can be distinguished but never seperated. Sure, God requires faith in order to be saved. And this is something we do. No doubt.

But faith is abandoning oneself to Christ and God, picking up our cross, like Abraham, and commmitment to live for his and hope for the promise

To me - the elements from both sides of the argument (Catholic and Protestant) come together in a wonderful whole.

Belief, trust and action all combine to build one upon the other. Belief, in the form of pure grace prompts one to act on the belief or a promise or requirement that is part of that belief.
Initially this act might be a sort of “feeling out” or “testing” of the belief…
Either way the act, being a response to initial grace, is a work…the work reinforces belief which, builds trust, which opens us to more grace which prompts more acts which reinforces belief which develops trust even further which opens us to more grace…
and on the cycle goes.

The longer this goes on the more changed we become. The more we ARE what we believe…The more immersed in grace we become and the more firmly fixed in faith we are.

In my mind…as the Spirit has given me to understand…while it is important to give to God the glory for the first action of instilling grace, we should not seek to try to dissect or compartmentalize these things too much. To do so risks slipping into various errors.

Peace
James

 

[neophyte]

…But faith is abandoning oneself to Christ and God, picking up our cross, like Abraham, and commmitment to live for his and hope for the promise

This is sounding more like Catholic theology. The Tiber is warm…