What Faith Really Means

 

 

 

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for.

3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

4 By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.

5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.”[a] For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she[b] considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.

13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

Faith is a commonly misunderstood concept. It is often presented as mere belief in the existence of God; or as mere assent to the proposition that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. 

It has to do instead, as this passage seems to show us, with accepting the reality of the world we do not see—the spiritual world, the Kingdom of Heaven. This ties in with Jesus’s response to Thomas, who refused to believe in the resurrection until he saw and touched the wounds: “blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”

Faith, according to the passage, is also “Confidence in what we hope for”; but we must distinguish it from the sister virtue of Hope: Faith, Hope, and Charity. The stress is on “confidence.” “Trust” seems like a rough cognate. Faith is prior, and the basis for hope.

It is not that we believe “without evidence.” It is a delusion to limit evidence to the physical senses. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in that philosophy. There is conscience, there are self-evident truths, there is reasoning from first principles, there are intimations, there are dreams, there are private revelations, there are emotional truths. You cannot see love, but it is real.

“What is seen was not made out of what was visible.” That is, the eternal, spiritual world, the Kingdom of Heaven—is prior to the physical world. See Plato on this: his “ideal forms.” Also see the modern scientific theory of the “Big Bang.”

“By faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.” The physical world is mortal, and all things in it fade and die. The spiritual, on the other hand, is eternal. See Parmenides on this. Memories are evidence of this.

“By faith he [Abraham] made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.”

In other words, the “promised land” is not any part of the physical world, not Canaan or Judea, but the kingdom of heaven. So long as we are in this physical world, we are exiles.

“All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised.”

So did God fail to keep his promise? Were they foolish to keep faith? No—the point is that the promised world is not this physical world. “All these people were still living by faith when they died”—that is, they were still alive when they died, and continue to live, in the promise. Death exists only in the physical realm.

“They were longing for a better country.” This has been taken as the motto for the Order of Canada: “They sought a better country.” Supposedly meaning that recipients sought to make Canada a better country. But this interpretation is shown to be wrong by the very next phrase: “a heavenly one.” This falsification of the Biblical passage seems to make the point that earthly powers are in eternal opposition to heavenly ones.

“If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.” 

This seems to open the door to the concept praying to saints. For “the country they had left,” in context, refers to the physical world, and “they” refers to a series of dead patriarchs. If they think of the physical world, they can return at any time. 

Of course they can. Heaven is prior to earth. Heaven is perfect happiness, and any unresolved wish would prevent heaven from being heaven. Therefore, it must be possible to return, to intervene, or to communicate with the living.

But not reincarnation. Not ghosts.

Having achieved the Beatific Vision, one naturally would not want to turn one’s thoughts back to the soil. One might do so, like a Bodhisattva, in self-sacrifice, to help someone you love below.