Theology 1.0: What is faith?

Napoleon's tomb, Paris 2011

A misused word?

Due to the huge misunderstandings concerning the word faith, I generally avoid using the term to describe my Christian journey. Some of my friends portray faith as belief without evidence, or even belief in spite of the evidence (Dawkins, 2006).

In this post I will attempt to examine the term "faith" in slightly greater detail.

I have faith in ....

Let's use a more down-to-earth example. Let's say a 19th Century French soldier says he has faith in the French Emperor Napoleon. What is he actually saying? Is he stating 

A) I propose a metaphysical entity named "Napoleon", whose property consist of being "French" and "Emperor"

B) I place my trust in Emperor Napoleon to get me through this age and crisis.

Naturally (I hope), we would incline to accept definition B.

Who do Christians place their hope in?

So let's extend this example. When Christians say they place their faith in Christ, what do they actually mean? In what do they trust Jesus for?

One of my favourite way to think about is the way the Gospel of John introduces Jesus.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." -- John 1: 1-5 (NIV)

What does this "Word" mean? Written in Greek for the non-Christians Greeks, the way the Greeks would have understood it is "logos". A brief search at wikipedia would reveal how the Greeks treated the use of the word "Word". To the Greek Stoics, the logos was the reason for existence and the universe. To followers of Aristotle, logos was what separated humans from nature. To ordinary Greeks it mean the divine objective root from which everything flows.

Immediately, the Gospel of John throws a challenge to the Greeks, and they would have understood. The claim is this: Jesus is the ultimate reason for humanity. He can be trusted to for our existence, and to be counted on for true joy and to get us through the hardest of times.

With a claim this big, it must be examined carefully. So my readers, if you have not experienced the joy of knowing Jesus, why not come and see?

"He is so happy! I can almost believe that he has found God.” -- Atheist novelist Franz Kafka, after reading a book written by the Christian poet GK Chesterton.

Conclusion

Ladies and gentlemen, don't be so quick to dismiss faith as anti-intellectual or dangerous. Who people of faith place their trust in? As a Christian, I invite you to come and see.

References

Dawkins, R. (2006) The God Delusion

For futher reading

What is this Word?