One of the biggest obstacles preventing me from simply embracing Christianity is that I am not entirely sure what it means to be a Christian. Specifically, I can not wrap my head around what it means to actually believe in Jesus, to the extent that belief becomes faith. By any reading of the New Testament, faith in Jesus Christ is absolutely fundamental to Christianity. But what does it really mean, and how do you know when you have it?
I have no problem with a purely intellectual belief in Jesus Christ. By this I mean that I can see myself thinking that statements like “Jesus existed,” “Jesus died and came back to life,” and even “Jesus was uniquely one with God” are true. But is that all there is to it? If I happen to think that Jesus is God, then I’m a Christian, and I have faith? If I think it a lot? If I think it really strongly? What?
Is the difference between faith and mere belief simply a difference of quantity, or altogether a difference of quality? I don’t know, but my intuition seems to be that it is the latter. Really believing in Jesus has to mean more than simply concluding that Jesus is true. So what is it? It can’t just be thoughts that translate into action, either (i.e., thinking it enough so that I try to change my life), because any thought can lead to action. If I think Borders has the book I want in stock, then I will go to Borders and buy this book. That can’t be the same thing as faith in Jesus Christ, can it?
Similarly, faith can’t just mean thinking something is true even though you do not have proof enough to be sure, since “proof enough to be sure” is basically impossible anyway. You can never be one hundred percent sure about anything–it could always be the case that your perceived reality is a complex delusion and nothing is really what you think it is, like the Matrix or something. So if thinking that Jesus rose form the dead even though I wasn’t there to see it happen is faith, then I also have faith by thinking that I am typing at my computer right now, since I can never be really sure. And that means again that faith in Jesus is really just the same thing as thinking that Jesus is true–mere belief–and not substantively different from any other thing I think.
The problem with mere belief is that mere belief is subject to change for a myriad of reasons. What I think about anything today may or may not be the same as what I think about it tomorrow, depending on a variety of factors. If thinking that Jesus is true is enough, then what happens when tomorrow I change my mind and decide that Jesus is not as plausible as I thought he was yesterday? Does intellectual honesty somehow prevent me from having faith in Jesus? If so, I’m not interested.
Sailing to Byzantium 
Having faith in Christ doesn’t mean checking your intellect at the door. In fact, that’s not what Christ wants at all! Jesus doesn’t want a bunch of brain dead robots following him!
Faith, according to Hebrews 11.1 is: “…the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith in Jesus in trusting in his work on the cross–dying for your sin. Basically he sacrificed himself for you. Your faith continues on beyond that that you trust him enough to come back and do what he promised he would do.
I hope that this helps and makes sense.
Nope, not even a little bit. It doesn’t seem like you read my post at all.
Zing!
Your Borders example might be closer to the definition of faith than you think, except maybe in scale. If Borders had a history of misrepresenting what they had in stock (say, you’d called them before and they’d said it was in stock, then went in and it wasn’t there), you’d be less inclined to go to the effort of going in to buy it; or if you did go in, you’d be worrying that it might be a wasted trip. But if you trusted them completely, you’d go in to buy it without a second thought.
An example I’ve used before is gravity. You have faith in gravity in the sense that when you get out of bed, you don’t grab hold of the edge for fear of falling to the ceiling (unless you have a hangover, I guess). That faith is based on years of unfailing experience, and to some degree on intellectual knowledge. You know how gravity works, your whole perception of reality includes it, and you’re confident to act in a way that would hurt you badly if it failed. There might be that tiny chance that you’re in the Matrix and what looks like a physical law could be changed at any moment, but you’re confident enough that you don’t worry about that chance.
The point is that your experience and intellectual knowledge, and your judgment of how accurate that knowledge is, affect how you perceive the world, which affects how you interact with it and how you feel about it and what assumptions you make about it. I define “faith” as the state of being confident to base your actions on something without a safety net. Intellectual knowledge is one way to get there, and so is experience (you don’t need to understand gravity to have faith in it) or some combination of them. So is shutting your mind to other possibilities, although that isn’t a very productive approach.
If, hypothetically, you reach the intellectual conclusion that Jesus is the son of God and so on, then that will affect how you understand the world – that there’s a God who’s interested in your personal faith and cares about you and has a set of moral guidelines that make sense. That will affect the way you act in ways that are left as an exercise to the reader.
If you can imagine yourself thinking that those things are true but not being able to confidently act as though they’re true, then I suspect you’re deluding yourself at some level. I’m not saying that as judgment, just that I know how from experience how easy it is.
If, like me, you reach the intellectual conclusion that there isn’t a god, then that affects how you perceive the world and how you interact with it. So, for example, I confidently sleep in on Sunday and don’t pray and make my own moral decisions that may or may not align with any particular Christian ones, and I don’t worry that I need a safety net to keep me from going to hell, or that my life could be more fulfilled by doing things differently. I guess that’s faith in a sense, although I wouldn’t call it that. 🙂
I did read your post and I answered the question, ‘But what does it really mean [faith in/believeing in Jesus], and how do you know when you have it’.
Faith in Jesus is trusting in his work on the cross to pay our sin debt so that we can get to heaven one day. When you trust in Jesus, you have to have the trust in him that his sacrifice was truly enough so that you can go to heaven. You konw that you have truly reached a point of having faith in Christ when your life in changed and you desire to be more like him, as far as your actions go.
“…then what happens when tomorrow I change my mind and decide that Jesus is not as plausible as I thought he was yesterday?”
This would be a sad thing to happen for to one who truly reached a point of having a true faith and trust in Jesus. If this happened, nothing would happen in an eternal sense. If you truly trusted in Christ, he’s still going to uphold his end of the bargain. Spiritually though, your fellowship would be cut off from God. If you had never reached reached a saving faith, well, then nothing really would happen, your life would go on and you would think the things that many people do, that Jesus was a liar, never exisited, or any number of other things.
David, if you’re right, then having faith in Jesus is just the same as mere belief, simply thinking that Jesus is true. For a religion that takes faith as a fundamental principle, all the talk about faith seems like a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Again, Tom, I’m not sure what there is to your definition of Faith that is substantively more than just merely thinking that Jesus is true. That kind of thing can be a cultural assumption (which is weird and unjust if salvation comes by faith). But you’re not telling me anything different than, say, thinking that it’s rainy outside. Yet you’re telling me that when I think this one particular thought something magic happens and I am reconciled to God, to the point that even if I change my mind about it someday it can’t be undone.
That sounds like complete nonsense.
There’s an interesting quote I like to ponder when trying to define “faith/Belief” in my mind…. If you believe a truck is coming toward you, you will
jump out of the way. That is belief in the reality of the truck.
If you tell people you fear the truck but do nothing to get
out of the way, that is not belief in the truck.
With my background though, I’ll lean towards David’s comments regarding faith. Using the gravity metaphor, faith as I define it is being SURE of something, without needing to go deeply into the Why of things. You may not have a firm grasp of Newtonian physics, and never need to take a course in applied calculus to know that stepping out of bed will put you on the floor. You have Faith in gravity, and can describe it in details if asked. but you don’t willfully ponder the effects each morning, unless you trip and tumble down the stairs. (if that makes sense).
Faith is the belief in how the world works, and is propped up with intellectual knowledge and spiritual musings. But Faith itself is one of those esoteric hard-to-fully-define things, like love. When you have it, you don’t really question it because there is no need. It simply IS.
(alternate analogy, knowing your friends and family love you, in that even if you don’t think about them each moment, they are there when you need them and support you. It’s kinda like that…I think.)
Interesting pondering anyway!
Here’s a recent blog-post I made to explain my thoughts on God/Jesus. Slightly off-topic, but might give you a perspective from another Seeker of Truth walking this questioning path… http://everthorn.net/Musing/2008/10/full-moon-oct-08-footsteps/?p=149
Faith is the belief in how the world works, and is propped up with intellectual knowledge and spiritual musings. But Faith itself is one of those esoteric hard-to-fully-define things, like love. When you have it, you don’t really question it because there is no need. It simply IS.
I think you are all defining it pretty well, but the problem is that I still can’t see what the difference is between faith in Jesus Christ and a mere conclusion about Jesus Christ.
It is becoming increasingly apparent that this core component of Christianity is completely unintelligible to me.
In thinking about this, I wonder if faith isn’t kind of a multi-step thing. There’s the “belief/hope in things you can’t see” part, but then there’s the next level–making a commitment to it. Jesus said the church was his bride, and I wonder if faith means having the hope/belief, and then committing to stick to it. It’s kind of not glamorous.
But I think that best describes my faith, if it can be called that, in my marriage. I love my husband, and I believe that he loves me. I trust him. But like with all things, I can’t know 100%–but my faith is that I commit to him anyway. I become vulnerable around him. And I honor that commitment even when it’s hard.
So your question is about what the standard is for “saving faith”, because if it’s just the same thing as “belief” then Christianity describes the arbitrary rules of a capricious god?
Well, yeah. 🙂
Okay, with my former Christian hat on, I think there is a difference between intellectual belief about something that you can say is true but doesn’t demonstrably affect your life, and a deeply-held belief that changes your actions and your life in a way that depends on it. The former, as I said before, involves deluding yourself at some level, and maybe that’s the point – the difference between “belief” on its own and “faith” is that faith makes your actions consistent with your beliefs.
I can understand (if not believe in, for other reasons) the idea of a god who doesn’t appreciate people claiming belief in him but acting in a way that’s more consistent with disbelief. Matthew 7:21, 2 Tim 3:5 and all that.
Not exactly. It’s not that it seems an arbitrary and capricious standard so much as it seems like an absurd standard. Salvation ultimately hinges on just so happening to think a particular thought about Jesus? And then something magic happens and you’re a new kind of person, or what? Because you thought the right thought one time? What? It just makes no sense.
I utterly fail to see how that’s anything more than a difference in degree. The question of whether a belief demonstrably affects your life or not is only a matter of whether the belief regards something that you need to make a decision about. I choose my route to class based on my knowledge about distance, metro lines, etc. Surely these aren’t more than mere intellectual beliefs, but they change my actions, don’t they?
Potayto, potahto. 😉
Well, if you’re perfectly consistent about it, then yes. But people are quite capable of saying and even convincing themselves that they believe one thing, and doing another, especially when it comes to big questions like religion and morality. What I’m saying is that faith is belief plus consistency. “Just belief” is belief plus hypocrisy.
Absolutely, and by my definition, that would be faith. The difference is that you have no reason not to act consistently with your beliefs in those cases, so calling it “faith” doesn’t imply that you’ve done anything special.
When it comes to Christianity or any religion, there are any number of reasons to convince people around you and even yourself that you believe it, but to act in a way that presumes that you’re on your own in practice.
Look, I’m an atheist trying to define the Christian God’s standard for faith. You’ll have to forgive me if I reach slightly odd conclusions. 🙂 I think this is a definition of “faith” that’s consistent with Christian doctrine, but at the end of the day my answer is still “there is no standard”.
You’ve raised the issue of epistemology in regards to confidence vs. delusion in general– since we don’t REALLY know anything, what difference is there between thinking Jesus is the savior and knowing Jesus is the savior, when epistemologically we can call knowing just an exaggerated form of thinking?
One possible answer would be that your argument from epistemology is unecessary, since the bottom line fact that we cannot KNOW does not prevent people– even intellectually unsophisticated people– from drawing a clear line between things they believe-so-much-they-would-say-that-they-know and things that they believe, but do not even pretend to know. Leave the objective world out of it– if you are going to be judged by the things in your heart, then the level of confidence you assign to different truths should matter. I thought the gravity analogy was effective– you don’t grab your bed *just in case* there is not gravity, even though in a philosophy class you would admit that you don’t have true knowledge re: gravity proper. Why can’t faith simply be a matter of whether you accept the knowledge of Christ as real even though you don’t ever really know anything?
Let’s set the gravity metaphor aside for a moment, because I think it is such an imperfect analogy that it is not even useful.
If faith is just stong belief in the truth of the tenets of Christianity (or the teachings of Jesus, or the Christology as expressed by Paul and the early church, or by Calvin or Luther or Arminius or whoever, or a combination of all of the above), then it seems too obvious to warrant inclusion as a fundamental principle. The fundamental principle of Christianity is that you believe Christianity is true? Duh. “Believing that the religion is true” is pretty much step one for every religion, whether it is so articulated or not.
Biblical faith is actually an action word. “Faithing” is a better way to put it. It’s not just simple intellectual acknowledgment. You believe that Jesus rose from the grave so then how should you live your life?
Having faith in Jesus involves putting on his character and learning to love the things he loves. At some point you have to intellectually concede that he actually existed to have a complete motivation to do that. But that belief can waver as you go about becoming like Jesus.
I’ll try my hand at analogy. You call up Borders and ask if they have a book in stock. The clerk says “yes, come on down”. You believe the clerk and then you show your faith in him by getting in the car and driving to the store. On your way you may doubt whether or not the clerk was sincere or if he understood you, but your faith continues to be acted out so long as you continue to drive to the store.
Belief and faith are different. Faith is acting out as if the belief is true. Belief causes faith, but faith can maintain itself and strengthen belief.
But again, any time we have a belief about something we interact with, we act based on that belief. It’s nothing special.
I don’t understand the objection. Perhaps I need to read through this again when I have a little more time. But the Bible isn’t saying that FAITH is the key but rather who you put faith in.
“Jesus existed,”
“Jesus died and came back to life,”
“Jesus was uniquely one with God”
According to the Bible these are all statements that Satan and the demons believe to be true. The Bible, at the very least, says that faith and belief are different things.
Faith (confidence or trust) in Jesus is responding to the belief of these statements through actions which show that you are submitting yourself to Jesus and his teachings. You declare Him the master of your life rather than yourself or anyone else.
Not sure if this thread is still active, but my two cents: you are obviously looking for something more than a dictionary definition of “faith.” I think what makes religious belief different from belief in the Borders catalog or gravity is the inherent unverifiability (for lack of a better word) of it. You can’t just walk to Borders and find out.
You respond by saying “but there’s never proof enough to be sure of anything.” Maybe there’s not proof enough for David Hume, but there’s proof. There’s proof enough to say, well, I’m 99% sure of gravity or the existence of your computer, or whatever, and I’m going to act accordingly. There’s a big difference between 99% proof and 0% proof. There’s also the idea that faith is something you can’t reason towards; you make the motion to faith without your reason. It’s a different capacity that you have or don’t have.
People have written about this. I think Kierkegaard would be up your alley. Start with Fear and Trembling. They might have it at Borders.
Then there’s the issue of whether a declaration of faith is enough for salvation, what salvation even means. Personally, I think Christianity wants you to love, not just say you believe something.