Hebrews 11:1
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Hebrews 11:1:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen Some translations say "assurance of things hoped for." |
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The concept of 'faith' is not only central to Heb 11:1-12:2 (27x)
and to the book of Hebrews as a whole (41x), but to the entire scope of biblical revelation. Therefore it is imperative to grasp the scriptural meaning of faith in order to understand how Hebrews employs it. In extra-biblical Greek, this concept generally signifies "to trust, rely on." With a personal object it can acquire the nuance "to obey.” In the LXX, the root pist- almost exclusively translates the root Nmx. The best examples are found in Gen 15:6 and Hab 2:4. The Hebrew root occurs often in the Hiphil stem where, according to Weiser, it means "to declare God NmAx<n," "to say Amen to God.” Used in this sense, the word denotes a response to the consistency of God. The importance of the OT for the writers of the NT leads to frequent use of this concept. The new meanings given to the concept in the NT are: acceptance of preaching (I Thes 1:8-9); content of faith (Rom 10:9); personal relation to Christ (Gal 2:20); and the message itself (Gal 1:23). These meanings of faith are sufficiently differentiated from the OT meanings to warrant their being taken as "Christian" usages of the term. In the book of Hebrews, the concept pist-, like so many theological concepts in the book, serves the hortatory purpose of the author. It is closely related to the word of God (4:2, 3) and the promise of God (6:12; 10:23; 11:11). It is the major focus around which the OT history is presented, first with the unbelief of the desert generation (3:7-4:11), and later with the faith of the elders (chap. 11). This hortatory use of faith has misled some into taking pi<stij in Hebrews 11 to mean exhortation. The concept has been identified with obedience (Bultmann, Eichler ), hope (Huxhold ) and endurance (Graesser ; the word is u[pomonh<, also translated "steadfastness" or "perseverance "). The underlying problem with these hortatory definitions is that faith is conceived of as a virtue or human power. That Graesser sees faith in Hebrews in this way is clearly illustrated by his contrast with Paul's use of the term: With Paul, generatio fidei. ..whereby faith-when it has first of all been awakened through the Word-is then itself an "eschatological phenomenon," that is, "that which conveys justification to men on the basis of dikaiosu<nh Here, with Hb, cooperatio fidei, whereby faith as instrument. ..is brought in by the hearer himself as the means, as the power, with the help of which he puts himself in a wholly settled position and perseveres in it. As a further contrast to Paul, Graesser contends that faith in Hebrews is not faith in Christ: "The specifically Christian ('Christological') faith finds no further development in Hb, neither in the reflective manner of the Apostle Paul, nor in the unreflective manner of the Synoptics." One need look no further than Heb 12:2 and the call to "look to Jesus" to conclude that in Heb 11:1-12:2 faith is preeminently Christological. The whole "faith cycle" beginning at 10:32 leads up to the climactic identification of faith (the means of endurance) with "seeing the unseen," that is, Jesus himself. Taking the book of Hebrews as a whole, it seems clear in light of the development of the teaching on the High Priestly ministry of Christ, and the strong exhortation to "enter God's presence boldly" on the basis of that ministry (4:14-16; 10:19-25) that faith in Hebrews is pointedly Christological. If the phrase pi<stij ei]j Xristo<n faith in Christ' is not used in Hebrews, the idea is certainly implied throughout. Even where faith refers simply to God (6:1; 11:6), the background is the teaching of chap. I, that Christ, in contrast to the angels, is God. In developing the point that faith is a virtue provided by man, Graesser contrasts the view with that of Paul, which connects faith with the Word of God. But in Hebrews, as in Paul, the object of faith is the word of promise. First, by contrast, unbelief is the rejection of the word which is heard (4:1-3). Then, positively, faith focuses on the promise (6:12). Therefore, with the personal object (Christ) and the promise in mind it is best to understand faith in Hebrews (indeed, throughout Scripture as a whole) in the general sense of trust: "from a purely formal standpoint there is nothing very distinctive in the usage of the NT and early Chr. writings as compared with Gk. usage. As in Greek.....pisteu<ein means ‘to rely on’, ‘to trust’, ‘to believe’.“ The connection of this trust with God's Word is aptly summed up by Gerhard Delling who, in another context (and almost in passing), speaks of pi<stij which is firm confidence in the fulfillment of God's promise." In Heb 11:1-12:2 faith may be defined as an attitude of trust by which the believer sees the unseen and thereby sets his hope on the divine promise. The elders trusted that they would eventually be "brought to completion" and qualified to enter their heavenly fatherland, that is, the presence of God. They therefore anticipated the work of Christ as High Priest which would make that entrance possible for them. They "saw the unseen" both in terms of time (the future event of the cross) and of space (looking to heaven they considered themselves strangers on earth). Inasmuch as they looked to God, they also looked to Jesus who is the eternal God. The believers to whom Hebrews is addressed live in the age of the New Covenant and the fulfillment of the promises. The event of the cross and the current ministry of Christ in intercession are the bases for confident entrance into God's presence in prayer. They live now, however, like the elders once did, on the earthly scene, where there is a great race to be run in order finally to reach the heavenly city. Their situation involves suffering, which calls for endurance. The key to enduring is faith, confident trust in God's promise that "He shall come and not delay" (10:37), looking to the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith to lead them on to their final perfection. --Grace Theological Journal 8.1 (1987) 131-140 Copyright © 1987 by Grace Theological Seminary. |
Faith is the reality of things hoped for. James Hastings wrote "Faith in God is a moral act; it is not an emotion, an impression, the result of considerations which act upon a man from without; it is an act in which he exercise moral choice. To have faith we must will to have it. This is not to say there can be true faith apart from reasonable grounds of faith. But these grounds may exist, they may be apparent, and yet faith may be absent, because the temper and spirit of the man may make him reluctant to exert his will, or because he misconceives the nature of the act. Men confound faith and opinion; even in opinion a man's moral habits and tendencies count for a great deal; and what we often predict man's opinion will be from what we know of his character. But in the formation of opinion he the will has no direct function except to compel the intellect to investigate the facts by which opinion should be determined. In faith the case is wholly different. When the facts which should command faith are present and seen, faith may be withheld. Faith is an act of the will; and if we suppose that we shall come to believe in God in Christ as the result of external forces which compel belief, we shall not believe at all. And when faith, resting on adequate grounds is assaulted by doubt, the doubt must be met by a resolute decision. ("The Great Texts of the Bible; James Hastings; Charles Scribners Sons; 1912).
Faith is not belief without proof but trust without reservations--trust in a God who has shown himself worthy of that trust. To use a trinitarian framework: God the Father makes these promises; God the Son confirms them in his words and deeds; and the Holy Spirit reassures us of their reliability and seals those promises within our heart. What is faith? Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Heb 11:1). What does it mean to believe by faith or know by faith? The word I have a problem with in that sentence is the word "believe." I do not necessarily see them as the same thing, so that one could not really "Believe" by "faith." I can believe, or I can have faith in something I believe is real. I cannot have faith without the "something" in which I believe in. In other words, on issues pertaining to Christianity, if there was no God, then having faith in "God" would be highly illogical to the point, quite possibly, of being psychologically deficient in light of reality. The Hebrews verse goes on to indicate that "we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God," which would be an understanding based on the simple fact that no one was around at creation. I do not know that it would be possible to simply believe that "In the beginning God created," with no real belief that there is a God. As to the second part of the question, the Hebrews chapter goes on to mention people who did various things via faith from great miracles to martyrdom. But the only common base of knowledge in those applications is that the people "knew" God would deliver them, and He did for them all, but some only by death, since death is its own form of deliverance. The true person of faith basically looks beyond this life. How does one distinguish between someone who says that they know by faith and someone who says that they believe because they believe? The use of the expression "believe because they believe" seems a rather circular reasoning. So, if I was to distinguish between someone who claims to "know by faith" and one who claims to "believe because they believe" I would probably be more receptive to the one who knows by faith as opposed to the other since one I could not even imagine anyone asserting with any stability of reason. However, it would also depend, in a comparison, what the one person is claiming to "know by faith." Is belief by faith a valid method to determine what is true? Not sure how to respond again because "belief by faith" sounds rather foreign to me. I suppose it might aid in determining the validity of a future event, like eternity, or a past event like creation, but I dont know how else anyone could weigh it in any objective manner. How does a believer determine what to have faith in? Again, the mixing of the words, but the faith would come from the belief and not vice versa. How one determines the existence of God varies. It would be hoped that the one applying the faith has already sorted out which "God" he believes in before acting in any capacity of faith. How should a believer determine what to have faith in? How do you know? Again, the mixing of the word "believe" and "faith" make the question hard to understand. If the believer has not predetermined an object or God to which he is able to use the title of "believer," than the faith part would be a ludicrous step into a world of fantasy. How do you know? Through weights, through measures, through investigations, the ways that one chooses a belief are probably endless. My observation has been that most everyone holds some form of world view, even if they could not identify it by asking them, they have some kinds of ways in which they approach the world and determine how they will react in various day to day situations. As long as they remain comfortable and secure in their world view, then they have no reason to weigh any other "reality" outside their own. It is generally during times of trouble, when ones worldview is shaken, that they might make some attempt to climb outside of their world view and decide how to adjust. It is at that time that people will move towards God or against God. However, that time is probably so subjective experientially that to answer "how do you know?" might be different for everyone. The mind is a complicated piece of workmanship. What is the difference between faith and gullibility? Is faith a virtue? Why or why not? Gullibility would be a person readily believing information sometimes to an absurd extent. It does not necessitate that the information is false or true, as one who is gullible could randomly accept a true objective, however it was probably an accident rather than thoughtful choice. Faith, as I stated previously, is acting on belief and, hopefully, belief of substance. Is faith a virtue? Probably in the eyes of God since, according to the Bible, no one can please Him without it. But no one could act in faith in God without first knowing that God exists. So, in some sense, one might be able to say that faith is an active fruit of belief. There are two kinds of faith. I shall call one "assenting" and the other "saving." Assenting faith is an intellectual persuasion of the truth of the thing taught. There are those who have assenting faith, but will not repent, and therefore do not gain a saving faith. Assenting faith often exists without saving faith, for most men have assenting faith. Very few have saving faith; but the latter cannot exist without the former. |
| The Christian concept of “faith” is often either misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented by skeptics and critics of Christianity. Christians are not called to believe blindly. In fact, the Christian worldview is an evidential worldview grounded in the eyewitness testimony of those who saw Jesus provide evidence of His Deity. Sometimes Christians contribute to the misunderstanding by failing to see the evidential nature of Christianity and the reasonable nature of “faith”. As I teach on this topic around the country, Christians often offer this passage in the Book of Hebrews to defend a definition of blind faith:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. Is the writer of Hebrews commending a form of blind faith in which we simply hope for “things not seen”? No. The author is encouraging his readers to continue to trust in the promises of God, in spite of the fact they haven’t yet been fulfilled (and might not even be fulfilled in their lifetimes). This trust in “things not seen” is not unwarranted, however. The promises of God are grounded in what God has already done. In other words, the author of Hebrews is asking his readers to trust what can’t be (or hasn’t yet been) seen, on the basis of what can be (or has been) seen. To make this point clear, the writer of Hebrews offers a short list of historic believers who trusted God’s promises for the future on the basis of what God had done in the past: Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph are described as believers who “died in faith, without receiving the promises” (verse 13). The promises of God were yet “things not seen”. In spite of this, these believers held firm to the promises of God on the basis of what they had seen. The author of Hebrews demonstrates this point with perhaps the best example of a believer who possessed a reasonable, evidential faith: Moses. Hebrews 11:24-27 By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured, as seeing Him who is unseen. Exodus 13:3 Moses said to the people, “Remember this day in which you went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the Lord brought you out from this place. Deuteronomy 5:15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the sabbath day. Deuteronomy 7:18 You shall not be afraid of them; you shall well remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: Deuteronomy 15:15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you; therefore I command you this today. Deuteronomy 24:18 But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and that the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I am commanding you to do this thing. Moses was the supreme example of a man who had a deep, reasonable trust based on the evidence God had provided him. His faith wasn’t blind, it was evidentially reasonable. He had seen God in the burning bush, watched how God used him in front of pharaoh, saw miracle after miracle, and witnessed the power of God. On the basis of this evidence, his confidence grew and Moses was ultimately transformed from a coward to a champion. Christianity is grounded in the evidence of the eyewitness gospel accounts. These documents make claims about the history of the First Century and the birth, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. As such, these claims are both verifiable and falsifiable. As we grow in our confidence related to the reliability of the Gospels, our reasoned trust in what they claim (and what they promise) will also grow. The gospels describe many “things not seen”. God is immaterial and invisible, and many of the promises of God are yet unfulfilled. But we can trust the things we can’t see on the basis of the things we can. We can move in faith toward the future on the basis of what God has demonstrated in the past. |
It has been said that he who defines the terms, wins the debate. Skeptics know this and take advantage of it. Witness some of the famous definitions of "faith" provided by unbelievers. Mark Twain, for example, quipped, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so." Closer to our own day, the atheist author Sam Harris defined faith as "the license religious people give themselves to keep believing when reasons fail." Richard Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist of our generation, claims: "Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence."
The one thing all of these definitions have in common is the explicit or implicit idea that faith is in conflict with reason. Unfortunately, some Christians in the history of the church have said things that have provided support for this view of the relationship between faith and reason. Martin Luther, for example, made very strong negative statements about reason, many of which are quoted by skeptics in their attempts to prove that Christianity is inherently irrational. Luther called reason "the Devil's greatest whore." He said in a number of different contexts that reason should be destroyed. The context is crucial, because in these instances Luther was talking about the arbitrariness of unaided human reason to discern divine things. Still, his tendency toward hyperbole has played into the hands of skeptics.
The vast majority of Christians throughout history, however, have not rejected the right use of reason. This stems from their attempt to be faithful to the teaching of Scripture, which itself provides reasons to believe. John wrote his entire Gospel to provide reasons to believe that Jesus is the Christ (John 20:30–31). John, Peter, and Paul appeal to evidence for the claims they make (1 Cor. 15:5–6; 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1–4). All human beings believe certain things based on the testimony of others. Christians believe what they believe based on the testimony of the Apostles. Such faith is a gift, but it is not divorced from reason. --Keith Mathison: Faith and Reason
The one thing all of these definitions have in common is the explicit or implicit idea that faith is in conflict with reason. Unfortunately, some Christians in the history of the church have said things that have provided support for this view of the relationship between faith and reason. Martin Luther, for example, made very strong negative statements about reason, many of which are quoted by skeptics in their attempts to prove that Christianity is inherently irrational. Luther called reason "the Devil's greatest whore." He said in a number of different contexts that reason should be destroyed. The context is crucial, because in these instances Luther was talking about the arbitrariness of unaided human reason to discern divine things. Still, his tendency toward hyperbole has played into the hands of skeptics.
The vast majority of Christians throughout history, however, have not rejected the right use of reason. This stems from their attempt to be faithful to the teaching of Scripture, which itself provides reasons to believe. John wrote his entire Gospel to provide reasons to believe that Jesus is the Christ (John 20:30–31). John, Peter, and Paul appeal to evidence for the claims they make (1 Cor. 15:5–6; 2 Peter 1:16; 1 John 1:1–4). All human beings believe certain things based on the testimony of others. Christians believe what they believe based on the testimony of the Apostles. Such faith is a gift, but it is not divorced from reason. --Keith Mathison: Faith and Reason
| These infidel books habitually assume that, if we refuse their nostrums, superstition is our only refuge. This is quite in keeping with the amazing conceit which characterises them. Wisdom was born with the Agnostics! They have monopolised the meagre stock of intelligence which the evolutionary process has as yet produced for the guidance of the race! But there are Christians in the world who have quite as much sense as they have, who detest superstition as much as they do, and who have far more experience in detecting fallacies and exposing frauds. And if such men are Christians it is not because they are too stupid to become infidels.
For faith is not superstition; and in presence of a Divine revelation unbelief betokens mental obliquity, if not moral degradation. Thoughtless people are betrayed into supposing that there is something very clever in “not believing.” But in this life the formula “I don’t believe” more often betokens dull-wittedness than shrewdness. It is the refrain of the stupidest man upon the jury. A mere negation of belief moreover, is seldom possible; it generally implies belief in the alternative to what we reject. The sceptic may hesitate, in order to examine the credentials of a revelation. But no one who has a settled creed ever hesitates at all. And the Atheist has such a creed; he believes that there is no God. If we do not believe a man to be honest, we usually believe him to be a fraud. If we refuse the testimony of witnesses about matters that are too plain and simple to allow of mere misapprehension or honest mistake, we must hold them to be impostors and rogues. And nothing less than this is implied in the position held by men like Herbert Spencer and Leslie Stephen. But the infidel will deny that he impugns the integrity of the Apostles and Evangelists; he only questions their intelligence. He asks us to believe that they were so weak and credulous that their testimony to the miracles, for example, must be rejected. But the miracles were not rare incidences of dark-room seances; they were public events which occurred day by day, and usually in the presence of hostile critics. No person of ordinary intelligence, therefore, could have been mistaken as to the facts. What then do we know of the men on whose evidence we accept them? Their writings have been translated into every known language. They hold a unique place in the classic literature of the world, and the sublime morality and piety which pervade them command universal admiration. Certain it is therefore that if the New Testament is to be accounted for on natural principles, its authors must have been marvellously gifted, both intellectually and morally. And yet these are the men whose testimony is to be flung aside with contempt when they give a detailed description of events which happened in open day before their eyes. To talk of offering them a fool’s pardon is absurd. If their narratives be false, we must give up all confidence in human nature, and write them down as an abnormally clever gang of abnormally profane impostors and hypocrites. But this alternative is more untenable than the other. It is absolutely certain that the men of the New Testament were neither scoundrels nor fools. And no more than this is needed to undermine the infidel position. It is not necessary to prove that the Gospels are a Divine revelation; it will suffice to show that they are credible records; and this much is guaranteed to us by the character of the men who wrote them. |
Does faith precede reason or does reason precede faith?
It is first helpful to clarify what one means by “faith.”
Some may cite Hebrews 11:1 and snidely conclude that faith is simply “hope.” In fact, in his manual for talking people out of their unreasonable commitments to “the faith virus,” Peter Boghossian has defined faith as “pretending to know things you don’t.”
Greg Koukl clarifies this position; "Simply put, faith and knowledge are functional opposites. The only place for faith, then, is in the shadows of ignorance . . . . Ironically, this same perspective has been promoted by Christians themselves. ‘If I know that God exists,’ they challenge, ‘or that Jesus rose from the dead, or that Heaven is real, then where is room for faith?’” But this is obviously incorrect. “The opposite of knowledge is not faith, but ignorance. And the opposite of faith is not knowledge, but unbelief."
The notion of faith as religious wishful thinking may accurately characterize some worldviews, but it is not reflective of an accurate understanding of classical Christianity. First, consider 1 Pet 3:15, which commands believers to be able always to defend (apologia) the reasons for their belief. The common biblical word for faith is pistis, which represents an active trust that is grounded in one’s convictions—which are based in understanding, not hope. It might be helpfully clarified that both hope and faith look to the future with a sort of longing or expectation, but hope is unable to move beyond desire without the aid of conviction. I may hope to get a PS4 for my birthday, but I’ve no reason to have faith that this will be the case.
Conviction, then, is the grounding of faith. And, as Dr. Tim McGrew has pointed out, “faith,” rightly understood, ventures action in wager of conviction. That is, one does not have faith that chickens exist, because nothing is ventured. However, one who jumps from a plane has faith that their parachute is properly packed.
A second helpful point is that the term used for “hope” often (as in Heb 11:1) has a specific reference—a salvific expectation. We hope to be saved, and we have confidence in our expectations for salvation because of our understanding of God—not to mention an amazingly cumulative case of evidences (assuming that we remove our proclivities toward a naturalistic presuppositional bias).
Hebrews 11:1 is too often misrepresented to mean that faith is “hoping in things without evidence.” In actuality, however, that is not what it says. It reads; “Now faith [pistis] is the assurance [hypostasis; lit. “foundation” or what Plantinga might call a properly basic belief] of things hoped for [elpizō; a trust in salvation], the conviction [elegchos; “proof”] of things unseen [blepō; of the bodily eye]. Clearly, the author is certain that faith is not an ungrounded wishful emoting, but a conviction, based on a proof, concerning a truth that must necessarily surpass the natural limitations of a closed empirical system.
Koukl expounds upon the biblical themes of knowledge, action, and evidence: In Exodus 3, Moses was told to perform miracles “That they might know there is a God.” When people witnessed the power of the Lord, they “feared the Lord, and they believed” (Exodus 14:31). In Mark 2, Jesus forgave sins and then proved His authority with evidence via supernatural healing. In Acts, on the day of Pentecost, Peter appeals to 1) fulfilling of prophesy; 2) eye-witness accounts of Christ risen; and 3) the effects of the Holy Spirit that could be clearly seen and heard on that day. Finally, 1 John begins by appealing to what had been heard, seen, beheld, handled, and manifest, “that you may know.” Upon such careful reflection, a distinct pattern emerges: 1) evidence reveals 2) knowledge of God, in whom 3) active trust is placed.
Returning to the question then, as to whether faith precedes reason, the question seems misguided. Experience precedes reason; reason informs conviction; and conviction guides action. All of this is faith. While one does not actually have it until the final step—i.e., the point at which one would be willing to venture one’s actions accordingly—one cannot have it without the former steps. Therefore, “faith” is not one of the steps, but the holistic understanding.
Apply this to a naturalistic worldview. One experiences the empirical world and reasons that there can only be empirically verifiable things. From this conviction, one is willing to live one’s life as if there is no authority to which one will ultimately be held accountable—i.e., they have faith that they can live according to their own autonomy and face no possibility of eternal penalty.
This is what Pascal was attacking when he posed his famous wagering consideration: To believe in the God of Christianity would be to embrace the potential for infinite gain or only finite loss, whereas choosing not to believe in God ventures a wage of only finite gain, but the potential for infinite loss. Both positions are wagering.
Faith is not wishful thinking. It is the holistic process of conviction informing action.
--Ratio Christi
It is first helpful to clarify what one means by “faith.”
Some may cite Hebrews 11:1 and snidely conclude that faith is simply “hope.” In fact, in his manual for talking people out of their unreasonable commitments to “the faith virus,” Peter Boghossian has defined faith as “pretending to know things you don’t.”
Greg Koukl clarifies this position; "Simply put, faith and knowledge are functional opposites. The only place for faith, then, is in the shadows of ignorance . . . . Ironically, this same perspective has been promoted by Christians themselves. ‘If I know that God exists,’ they challenge, ‘or that Jesus rose from the dead, or that Heaven is real, then where is room for faith?’” But this is obviously incorrect. “The opposite of knowledge is not faith, but ignorance. And the opposite of faith is not knowledge, but unbelief."
The notion of faith as religious wishful thinking may accurately characterize some worldviews, but it is not reflective of an accurate understanding of classical Christianity. First, consider 1 Pet 3:15, which commands believers to be able always to defend (apologia) the reasons for their belief. The common biblical word for faith is pistis, which represents an active trust that is grounded in one’s convictions—which are based in understanding, not hope. It might be helpfully clarified that both hope and faith look to the future with a sort of longing or expectation, but hope is unable to move beyond desire without the aid of conviction. I may hope to get a PS4 for my birthday, but I’ve no reason to have faith that this will be the case.
Conviction, then, is the grounding of faith. And, as Dr. Tim McGrew has pointed out, “faith,” rightly understood, ventures action in wager of conviction. That is, one does not have faith that chickens exist, because nothing is ventured. However, one who jumps from a plane has faith that their parachute is properly packed.
A second helpful point is that the term used for “hope” often (as in Heb 11:1) has a specific reference—a salvific expectation. We hope to be saved, and we have confidence in our expectations for salvation because of our understanding of God—not to mention an amazingly cumulative case of evidences (assuming that we remove our proclivities toward a naturalistic presuppositional bias).
Hebrews 11:1 is too often misrepresented to mean that faith is “hoping in things without evidence.” In actuality, however, that is not what it says. It reads; “Now faith [pistis] is the assurance [hypostasis; lit. “foundation” or what Plantinga might call a properly basic belief] of things hoped for [elpizō; a trust in salvation], the conviction [elegchos; “proof”] of things unseen [blepō; of the bodily eye]. Clearly, the author is certain that faith is not an ungrounded wishful emoting, but a conviction, based on a proof, concerning a truth that must necessarily surpass the natural limitations of a closed empirical system.
Koukl expounds upon the biblical themes of knowledge, action, and evidence: In Exodus 3, Moses was told to perform miracles “That they might know there is a God.” When people witnessed the power of the Lord, they “feared the Lord, and they believed” (Exodus 14:31). In Mark 2, Jesus forgave sins and then proved His authority with evidence via supernatural healing. In Acts, on the day of Pentecost, Peter appeals to 1) fulfilling of prophesy; 2) eye-witness accounts of Christ risen; and 3) the effects of the Holy Spirit that could be clearly seen and heard on that day. Finally, 1 John begins by appealing to what had been heard, seen, beheld, handled, and manifest, “that you may know.” Upon such careful reflection, a distinct pattern emerges: 1) evidence reveals 2) knowledge of God, in whom 3) active trust is placed.
Returning to the question then, as to whether faith precedes reason, the question seems misguided. Experience precedes reason; reason informs conviction; and conviction guides action. All of this is faith. While one does not actually have it until the final step—i.e., the point at which one would be willing to venture one’s actions accordingly—one cannot have it without the former steps. Therefore, “faith” is not one of the steps, but the holistic understanding.
Apply this to a naturalistic worldview. One experiences the empirical world and reasons that there can only be empirically verifiable things. From this conviction, one is willing to live one’s life as if there is no authority to which one will ultimately be held accountable—i.e., they have faith that they can live according to their own autonomy and face no possibility of eternal penalty.
This is what Pascal was attacking when he posed his famous wagering consideration: To believe in the God of Christianity would be to embrace the potential for infinite gain or only finite loss, whereas choosing not to believe in God ventures a wage of only finite gain, but the potential for infinite loss. Both positions are wagering.
Faith is not wishful thinking. It is the holistic process of conviction informing action.
--Ratio Christi
