Protected from the Bible – What is faith?

Faith.

We all know what it means, right?

Are you sure?  Your definition could be incomplete.

Faith
The Biblical Concept The concept of faith has been radically redefined in some philosophical and theological circles during the past century. Those definitions rarely address the complexities of the biblical concept, a concept in which the whole person, the physical world, God’s Word, and God Himself play crucial roles. Those alternative definitions often do not grasp the objective and subjective characteristics of biblical faith.  ¹Parks, D. M. (2003). Faith, Faithfulness. In C. Brand, C. Draper, A. England, S. Bond, E. R. Clendenen, & T. C. Butler (Eds.), Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary (p. 547). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.

I started to write something called The problem of "Believe in God" about a couple of weeks ago, and this is the second time I needed to explain something in more detail before getting to "Believe in God".  The first one was The problem of “you and your household”.  It was about the change in family units over time - starting with Genesis and going through today's family types - and looked at how these changes have dramatically limited the meaning of "you and your family" when it comes to belief in God.

Now - I think it's necessary to examine the meaning of the simple word - "faith".  It has also changed over time - and not in a good way.  Like "you and your family" - the impact of "faith" is so much less than it was meant to be - so much less than it used to be - because it means so much less than it used to mean.

As usual, let's look at the definition from dictionary.com.  This is useful, not to see what "faith" means in the Bible, but to see what "faith" means to the average person - in everyday life.

Faith
noun

1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:  
   faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof:  
   He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:  
   the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:  
   to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief:  
   the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:  
   Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:  
   He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.

As usual, the word applies to a whole variety of different things.  As such, it's places no relative importance of any one definition over any other, except that the most commonly used ones are listed first.  Unfortunately, common usage doesn't always represent importance - just the way the word is used most often, no matter how trivial the meaning may be.  In fact, faith related to God doesn't even show up until the third definition.

It's not a good sign that God shows up third, when He is the one who said  (Ex 20:3) “You shall have no other gods before me."  Since dictionaries are based on common usage at the time they're published, this means we have relate faith to (1) someone else's ability and (2) scientific proofs more than we do to God.  That is a sad state of affairs.

What does the Bible mean by faith?

In contrast to the definition above, let's look at one from a dictionary of theological terms -

Faith

A biblical word that refers both to intellectual belief and to relational trust or commitment. The biblical authors generally do not make a distinction between faith as belief and faith as trust, but tend to see true faith as consisting of both what is believed (e.g., that God exists, that Jesus is Lord) and the personal commitment to a person who is trustworthy, reliable and able to save (that is, trust in the person of Christ as the way to salvation).  ²Grenz, S., Guretzki, D., & Nordling, C. F. (1999). In Pocket dictionary of theological terms (p. 50). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.