What Is Faith?
Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power.
Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them.
What is faith then? Is it something other than belief? The Hebrew term “emuna” is alternately translated as “to have faith” “to believe” or “to trust.”
The Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, retains the same meaning in the term pisteuein, and this Greek equivalent is adopted in the New Testament.
Hebrews 11:1 defines faith as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
Read in the right way, this passage seems to render faith entirely self-justifying: perhaps the very fact that one believes in something which has not yet come to pass (“things hoped for) or for which one has no evidence (“things not seen”) constitutes evidence for it’s actuality (“assurance”).Let’s see how this works: I feel a certain, rather thrilling “conviction” that Nicole Kidman is in love with me. As we have never met, my feeling is my only evidence of her infatuation.
I reason thus: my feelings suggest that Nicole and I must have a special, even metaphysical, connection-otherwise, how could I have this feeling in the first place?
I decide to set up camp outside her house to make the necessary introductions…..clearly; this sort of faith is a tricky business.
