Chapter 4: Faith
1. What order should be followed in discussing faith?
a)Its scriptural names in both the Old and the New Testament.
b)Its psychological nature. The following question should be discussed: What is faith as an activity of the soul? This is one of the most difficult psychological questions, which becomes even more complicated by its theological ramifications.
c)Its soteriological meaning as a link in the order of salvation. Scripture does not speak solely of faith in general but it occupies a very special place as saving faith.
2. What word is used most in the Old Testament to express the concept of believing?
The verb he'emin, hip‘il from 'mn. The qal means “to strengthen,” “to support,” “to uphold,” but does not appear other than in the participle. The active participle omen means someone who cares for and raises a child, a pedagogue. The passive participle has the sense of the nip‘al and means “strong,” “lasting,” “to be permanently trustworthy,” thus approximately the same as the qal passive participle. The specific sense of the hip‘il is rendered best by “demonstrating faithfulness” or “generating faithfulness,” “establishing oneself.” Without doubt, we are shown by this an active disposition of the soul, an action that produces change.
he'emin is connected with the preposition b and the preposition l. The difference between the two constructions appears to lie in this: that the latter is used preferably for holding something to be true, the former for a trustful resting in a person or in a truth. Both appear for believing God or in God. “So you rebelled against the mouth of the LORD your God and did not believe him” (Deut 9:23; l is used here). “Then Moses answered and said, ‘But behold, they will not believe me nor listen to my voice, for they will say, “The LORD did not appear to you” ’ ” (Exod 4:1). Genesis 15:6, the verse repeatedly cited by Paul, which speaks of the justifying faith of Abraham, has b: “And he believed the LORD, and He reckoned it to him for righteousness.” Of course, in the case of Abraham, something different and something more is meant than that he held the promise of God to be true. As this promise was a matter of life for Abraham, so this promise was also a living testimony for him, and his faith was not merely concerned with the truth in the abstract but with the God of the truth. A personal relationship came about between the consciousness of Abraham and God. Thus we may already say in general that he'emin b is the trustful acceptance of the testimony of a person that becomes a basis of certainty for us through the conscious conception of that person.
The independent substantive that would mean “faith” does not occur with he'emin. It is true that emunah appears, but this word does not belong in the hip‘il. It belongs in the nip‘al and the qal passive participle; hence it is rendered as “steadfastness,” “permanency,” “trustworthiness.” This can already be seen from the fact that in most cases the Septuagint translates it with alētheia, “truth.” It is also applied to God Himself, “For the word of the LORD is right, and all His work is faithful [‘emunah]” (Psa 33:4); of men, “O LORD, do not your eyes look for faithfulness [‘emunah]?” (Jer 5:3). In Habakkuk 2:4, the verse in which ‘emunah certainly comes the closest to the New Testament concept of “faith,” the latter is surely not meant simply in general but specifically as steadfast in unwavering faith. Talmudic Hebrew is the first to adopt a separate word for the concept of believing as a noun—namely, heimanutha.
3. Does the Old Testament use still other words for the same concept?
Yes it has:
a)batach, “to be sure,” in construct with b, thus to trust in someone. “But I have trusted in your lovingkindness” (Psa 13:5); that is, “I consider myself safe and reassure myself in the consciousness of your lovingkindness.” “In him my heart trusts” (Psa 28:7). Here, too, the personal relationship comes out. Depending on the testimony is accompanied by and derives its strength from this personal relationship.
b)chasah, “to hide,” “to take refuge in,” likewise in construct with b. Here again the emphasis is on the trusting side of faith and not on the purely intellectual “accepting as true.” “Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for my soul trusts [chasayah] in you and in the shadows of your wings I take refuge [echseh]” (Psa 57:1).
c)qawah (from the qal, only the participle qowei), properly, is to be “intense,” “strong,” “taut.” In the pi‘el qawweh is intensive, “focusing the mind on something.” This can be taken more in the sense of “hoping.” However, it can also be taken as an intensive focusing of the intellect that definitely expects the realization of what is desired. Faith is thus again indicated from its active side. qawweh is in construct with the accusative or with el. “But they who wait on the LORD will renew their strength” (Isa 40:31). “Wait on the LORD; be strong, and He will strengthen your heart; yes, wait on the LORD” (Psa 27:14). This waiting, therefore, is not a passive state, depleted of all expressions of life. Rather, it is an extending and securing of the heart, a reckoning on Jehovah connected with the inner strength of the soul.
4. What are the various elements belonging to the concept of believing that we can gather from these various designations?
a)Faith is an activity of the intellect as it accepts the testimony of another (he'emin l).
b)Faith can be much more than an activity of the intellect. As trust it is that deeply moral action by which, in order to have stability, man, as it were, puts himself into another (he'emin b).
c)As such, faith does not have a passive but an active, dynamic form (chasah b).
d)As trust, faith is accompanied to a greater or lesser degree by a sense of security. Faith not only seeks certainly but finds it and also produces certainty. It knows itself to be certain and safe (batach b) and lives in a reality with its conceptions that is not yet present (qawah).
5. Which are the words for “faith” and “believing” in the New Testament?
Pistis and pisteuein, which are related to peithein, “to persuade”; peithesthai,” to be persuaded”; pepoithenai, “to trust.”
6. What two meanings does pistis have in Classical Greek?
a)It means “a conviction,” based on the trust of a person that as such differs from knowledge resting on one’s own research. By Plato, “faith” is set against “knowledge,” pistis against epistēmē. A conviction concerning the existence of the gods is called pistis, faith.
b)It means such trust itself, as that on which the above-mentioned conviction is based. Such trust is more than an intellectual conviction that someone is trustworthy. It presupposes a personal relationship with him whom one trusts, a sharing of life, a forsaking of oneself and resting in another.
7. Is the word in this latter sense also used with reference to the gods by the Greeks?
No; according to the Greek understanding, the relationship between the gods and men is not of such a nature that one can speak of an intimate contact, of a resting of man in the gods. “Belief in the gods” (pistis theōn), therefore, nearly always means theoretically holding to be true what is asserted regarding the gods or by the gods. The gods are not favorable or inclined toward men. They must be moved to friendship by sacrifices and gifts, and never condescend to the degree that man can conceive of truly trusting them. Compare this with what was noted about hilaskesthai in connection with the doctrine of satisfaction.1 This notion of having confidence in the gods is so far removed from the Greek spirit that even in the first of the meanings mentioned above, in the sense of “believing in the gods,” the verb pisteuein tous theous is not yet used. This would have in itself too much of the sound of trust. Thus, the Greeks chose a purely intellectual word, in which every personal element is lacking, and called it nomizein theous, “believing in gods.”
8. From where, then, did the New Testament derive its usage of the words pistis and pisteuein?
For the translation of the Old Testament concept of he'emin it chose a word that was used by the Greeks chiefly of the mutual relationship between human beings and only partially of the relationship between divine and human beings. Thus the sense of the word is determined not by the pagan Greek but by the Old Testament meaning. The concept of faith toward God comes from the thought world of revelation and not from Hellenic life. But the word that, as a substantive, expresses this act of faith comes from Greek vocabulary. As we saw, the Old Testament lacks a separate noun that means “faith.”
9. With how many meanings do pistis and pisteuō occur in the New Testament?
a)Here, too, they not uncommonly have the meaning of testimony that is brought to us by another person for acceptance as true. This is a cognitive conviction regarding the reality and trustworthiness of what someone says and that cannot be verified by us, for which we must therefore rest in a personal trust that we place in that person. “I told you, and you do not believe it [namely, that I am the Christ]. The works that I do in the name of my Father, those bear witness to me” (John 10:25). “Look, you scoffers, marvel and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work that you will not believe even if someone tells it to you” (Acts 13:41). “You believe that there is one God; you do well; the demons also believe and tremble” (Jas 2:19). “Now if we have died with Christ, then we believe that we will also live with Him” (Rom 6:8). “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep” (1 Thess 4:14; cf. John 3:12; 6:36; 10:37–38). The usual construction with this meaning is with the accusative of what is accepted as true and the dative of the person on whose testimony one relies. Naturally, a clause with hoti can replace the accusative: “For I believe God that it will be so, even as it was told me” (Acts 27:25); “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming” (John 4:21). Here we clearly have both elements: the personal and the natural, and the first as the basis on which the second rests. Also, where faith is used in a cognitive sense, trust is included. Faith can never be a purely cognitive act. It is always only a question of which of the two elements comes most to the fore.
This meaning applies to all those who speak of faith in contrast to seeing and perceiving: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe” (John 4:48); “For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7). In other places, however, it seems again that faith and sight do not exclude each another but go together: “And he saw and believed … and Jesus said to Thomas, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed’ ” (John 20:8, 29). In such cases, pisteuein is apparently either synonymous with being convinced—knowing—entirely apart from the ground on which the conviction rests, or it refers to believing in something invisible on the basis of seeing something else; for example, “We no longer believe because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and know that this is truly the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). Here, then, believing the testimony of the woman ceased and was replaced by hearing, where believing the witness heard from Christ continued.
Hebrews 11:1, which provides a definition of faith, deserves special discussion. However, it is not a definition of faith in its specific form in which it appears as saving faith, but in its most general sense. This appears already from the fact that it is not “faith” with the definite article (namely, specific, justifying faith) but without an article—“faith is.” Of this faith it is now said that it is a elpizomenōn pragmatōn, “a substance of things hoped for.” The substance of a thing is what manifests the stability and durability of its existence, what makes it real. The characteristics of a thing may change; the substance lasts. When there are things hoped for—that is, things that one does not yet possess but of which one still has knowledge through the testimony of another—then faith is what imparts to us proof and reality. When we believe something, then by that faith we have a distinctive reality before us. It has an effect on us that in a certain sense corresponds to the reality. In this, then, lies in part the certainty and in part the activity of the conviction of faith. By faith we learn to reckon on the things we hope for as if they are really seen by us.
Further, faith is an elenchos “of the things one does not see.” An elenchos is “a proof,” a thing from which the reality of something else is proven. If I believe something that is not seen, then my faith fills the place of proof, evidence. By my faith I am assured of an invisible entity, as I am assured of something by a proof.
What then is the distinction between “things hoped for” and “things that are not seen”? It appears to be the following. Things hoped for can become visible sometimes; they are not so only for the moment. On the other hand, things that cannot be seen can already be present at this moment, but by their nature they are unsuited to become objects for observation—thus spiritual, imperceptible things. For the former, which have the goal of being seen and observed, a substance is necessary by which they receive a certain reality for us until such a time as the full reality dawns. When that substance itself comes, then the faith-substance that temporarily replaced it ceases; faith is exchanged for sight. For this contrast, compare Romans 8:24–25: “Now hope that is seen is not hope. Why will someone also hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” It is otherwise with invisible spiritual things. These cannot and may not have a substance for us but a proof or evidence—that is, we must be fully convinced of their reality but not feel the unspiritual urge to want to touch and see them. With respect to them, faith can never cease to be faith. Thus, while on the one hand faith is one of the things that pass away, on the other hand it is also something permanent. For example, that the world was made by the word of God nobody other than God Himself beheld, and also its beholding cannot be reproduced for anybody but for all eternity must remain a matter of faith. Hebrews 11:7 speaks of “things that are not yet seen,” which roughly corresponds with “things that are expected.”
b)At the same time, the concept of “faith” does not lie entirely within the cognitive sphere. Even when one admits that faith is a conviction in understanding that rests on a personal relationship of trust, one has not yet expressed everything that the New Testament means by faith. There is an antecedent trust and consequent trust. If I trust a person completely, then in a given case I will be prepared to accept the testimony he gives as true. Here, trusting is first and believing second. If now, however, he has provided testimony that affects my life interests, then I am presented with a unique situation by which I am engaged with him under this particular aspect, reach out to him, abandon myself to him. This, then, is no longer the general trust that I place in him but something new and special. This is consequent trust.
Now, when in an array of places Scripture speaks of believing as such a trust, then the two other elements are evidently presupposed by that. I cannot rely on someone and put my trust in him if I do not (a) possess a trust in general in the trustworthiness of his person, and (b) maintain a conviction concerning the truth of the particular testimony that constitutes the object of my consequent trust. In all trusting faith, these three elements are present and connected. If a doctor assures me that I will be regaining my health, and if this assurance is to put me at ease, I must first have a reasonable trust that he means it and does not have an untrustworthy character; further, the conviction that his statement contains the truth; and finally, the complete peace of mind that results. However difficult it may be to analyze this last element precisely, it is in any case something special.
The Apostle Paul in particular elaborated this side of the concept of faith. In John, the emphasis is more on attaching faith to the testimony that Christ gives of the Father, thus on the confidence that Christ is the true Messiah and holding His message to be true. In Paul, all the emphasis is on the trust that His merits are a sufficient ground of righteousness, a trust that releases us from all further striving after a righteousness of our own. For Paul, believing is opposed to doing, and everything associated with this opposition belongs to the essence of faith. From this it already follows that believing must be something other and more than accepting a testimony to be true, for in the latter in itself there is not an opposition to doing. Neither could Paul have regarded faith as a moral work that had become a replacement for the works of the law. Finally, his meaning also cannot be that believing is internal obedience to the law of love, while the law itself would merely demand a legalistic external obedience. The latter is precisely not the case. The law demands inner form. The man who is mindful of his justification before God wishes to give it to God. The man who believes learns, in the wrestling of his soul to offer God righteousness, to look away from himself and to rest in the Mediator for his standing before God, on which his entire destiny hangs.
Thus we see that for saving faith the will in any case has an important part, and at the same time we can already say in advance that the whole man with all his capacities will be involved, for believing is a life issue in which it is a matter of death or life for the awakened sinner. For the opposition between faith and works, compare Romans 10:5–6; Galatians 3:23–25; Romans 4:13–14; 3:28. This faith that trusts in another can now be directed to God insofar as He declared the merits of Christ to be sufficient when He raised Him from the dead. When we rely on that declaration of God—not merely acknowledging God in general as true or believing this declaration theoretically but making it the ground of our trust in the face of the just demands of God—then we exercise saving faith. So God appears as the object of faith in Romans 4:24, “But also for our sakes, to whom it will be imputed, namely to those who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead” (cf. Col 2:12).
Usually, however, faith is presented as something that is directed to the Mediator, Christ. It is called “believing in Christ” (pisteuein eis Christon)—actually, “into Christ” (cf. Rom 10:14). That is, the action of the soul by which it abandons its own doing and relies on the doing of Christ is presented as a local movement of the will into Christ. There is a relocation of the resting point of life. Where it formerly lay in the self-righteous sinner himself, it now comes to lie in Christ. It is also called “believing in Christ” (pisteuein en Christō). The thought here is not so much of a movement into Christ as of its result, “resting in Christ” (Gal 3:26). Also occurring is pisteuein epʼ autō, “believing in Him” (Rom 9:33; 10:11, in a citation from the Septuagint of Isa 28:16), which has approximately the same meaning as eis Christon. Finally, the apostle also speaks of a “faith of Jesus Christ” (pistis Iēsou Christou) with the objective genitive—thus a faith of which Christ as mediator is the object, a trust by which one depends on Him (Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16; 3:22).
Above, we have already seen that in the letters of Paul, too, the wider meaning of faith—that of holding to be true on the basis of antecedent trust—is not absent. However, in every place where the reference is to justification by faith, faith has the sense described above of consequent trust. Where that is not the case, it can very well be trust in the veracity of the person and the faith that results from His words. In 1 Corinthians 2:8 it occurs in this wider sense, and so in many other places. Now, it is natural that in practice both meanings, although logically distinct, flow imperceptibly into each other at the same time. Whoever trusts Jesus Christ as mediator and believes from the heart that He speaks the words of God, that person will also accept the main part of His message: that one must abandon self and be justified by believing. And, conversely, whoever does the latter cannot do that without at the same time unconditionally submitting to all the truth that Christ proclaims. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). In Romans 1:17, therefore, it is said of the gospel that in it “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.” That is, from the faith that Christ is the Mediator ordained by God—if this is at least more than bare historical faith and worked in the heart by God the Holy Spirit—flows of itself trusting, justifying faith. It goes from faith (antecedent trust, plus holding to be true) to faith (consequent trust).
10. Is faith also described sometimes in other terms in Scripture?
Yes, Scripture uses a number of images in order to make the act of faith clear.
a)One of these is the image of seeing that occurs in John 3:14–15, compared with the account of the lifted-up serpent that the bitten Israelites must see. In this example, faith was represented by seeing. In fact, all the elements of faith are resident in seeing. First, it includes a rational element, for all seeing is a cognitive act. Seeing includes separating, distinguishing. Further, it includes an element of the will, for to pay attention to something, to feast one’s eyes on something, observing it, is a sign of delight in what one observes. Finally, there is an element of satisfaction, of trust, for continually paying attention to something includes letting one’s gaze come to rest, withdrawing it from all else and concentrating on one point.
b)Another image is that of eating and drinking, of hungering and thirsting (cf. Matt 5:6; John 6:48, 50, 53–58). This image is most suited to illustrate for us the essence of faith, and includes the following:
1.Hungering and thirsting, eating and drinking are expressions of life. Likewise, faith is the expression of the regenerate life.
2.Eating and drinking are actions by which one takes to himself nourishment from the outside and identifies with it. Likewise, faith draws the Mediator to one’s self.
3.Eating and drinking occur not only with the conviction that the food or the drink is available but also with a more or less strong conviction that it will satisfy our hunger and our thirst. Similarly, appropriating the Mediator is always accompanied by a certain degree of trust that He saves us.
c)A similar image is that of “accepting,” in which a movement of the hand is in view. In John 1:12, this accepting of Christ is put on the same line with believing in His name.
11. What, therefore, is our result concerning this New Testament linguistic usage?
According to the New Testament, “believing” includes:
a)Antecedent trust in a person with whom one comes into contact (pisteuein tini).
b)Holding as true a testimony that is brought to us by such a person (pisteuein ti).
c)Consequent trust in that person in connection with a testimony that affects our life interests (pisteuein eis tina, en tini, epi tina).
12. Is the word pistis also found in the New Testament with another meaning than that of “faith”?
Yes, it also has the meaning of “faithfulness,” “steadfastness,” “trustworthiness”; thus when the apostle asks, “For what if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?” (Rom 3:3); likewise pistis for “faithful” (e.g., Rev 2:10).
13. What word did Latin use for the concept of “believing”?
The verb that seemed most suited to translate pistis was credere. But it lacked a related noun and adjective for “faith” and “faithful.” Therefore fides and fidelis were taken over to fill this gap. Originally, the meaning of both is more like “trustworthiness” and “trustworthy” than “trust” and “trusting.” Nevertheless, already before the rise of Christianity their meaning bordered on that of pisteuein. According to Cicero, fides is firma opinio [a firm belief]. Another Latin word is fiducia, which has more the active meaning of “trusting” but is only used to any extent by later writers.
14. What is the derivation of the Dutch word gelooven?
Gelooven comes from a word that appears in Gothic as galaubjan, as its adjective galaubs, connected with liubs, “dear,” “precious.” Therefore, galaubjan originally meant “regard as precious.” One may compare “to you who believe He is precious” [1 Pet 2:7]. Our gelooven is related to “to betroth,” “to promise,” “to permit.” The English “belief” is the same word. The English “faith,” on the other hand, comes from the Latin fides, and therefore also has a double meaning: “trust” as well as “trustworthiness.”
15. What needs to be discussed in treating the psychological aspect of faith?
We have to deal here primarily with two questions, namely:
a)What is the ground of certainty on which one in faith accepts certain things as true, and what is the nature of the certainty that is thus obtained?
b)What capacities of the soul are involved in the act of faith, or what is the proper center of the act of faith?
16. What different answers have been given to the first question?
Some have answered that faith is being subjectively assured, and then in distinction from being objectively assured, for which there are other terms. This distinction is connected with a popular usage known to us all. It is said, “I only believe that but don’t know it for sure.” So according to this view, believing lies between decisive certainty—resting on reliable, objective grounds—and a loose, superficial opinion on which one hardly relies. Locke described faith in this way. In the same sense, the skeptic Hume replaced knowing, which he regarded as impossible, with believing. Still later, Kant followed the same path in his famous distinction between “believing” and “knowing,” although he did not so much seek the difference in the differing degrees of certainty. According to Kant, my faith in God, freedom, and immortality have rational certainty but are not objective knowledge. I can certainly say, “I am rationally certain that these three exist,” but not, “It is rationally sure that they exist.” Certainty always remains within myself and can never be transferred to another. We can constrain anyone of a sound mind to accept a judgment that rests on objective grounds but cannot force anyone to believe. To believe must be given to him as it is given to us. In the Netherlands this view is defended by Doedes, among others.
17. What should be noted against this conception?
a)That it limits the significance of faith entirely to the terrain of the intellect. It is then only a subjective weighing of grounds and the question of how much worth I wish to ascribe to one or other ground. Faith becomes the result of adding or subtracting evidence. However, this is a very unspiritual and unworthy view of faith. Scripture and experience both teach us that faith is a deeply moral act and not a detached conviction that we have formed on grounds satisfactory to us.
b)In this view, faith becomes something that has less certainty than knowledge. The grounds are not strong enough, one thinks, to justify an assertion of knowledge, and therefore we say that we merely believe something. But according to Scripture, a characteristic of faith is precisely firmness of conviction. One may read Hebrews 11 and ask whether the men of God whose faith is described there acted as they did on the basis of something that they did not regard as certain enough to know it (cf. also 2 Tim 1:12).
c)If we consider the matter in this way, then the essence, the distinctiveness of faith lies in something entirely negative—namely, in the absence of sufficient objective grounds. In this view, accepting something as true where there are not sufficient grounds that would be valid for everyone is faith. This of itself cannot be. If this definition is to have even a semblance of being correct, one must bring to light the character of those subjective grounds that compensate for the absence of objective grounds. And then it will be evident that faith certainly bears a positive character that is derived precisely from this character of its grounds.
d)That the popular use of “believe” in this sense is warranted must be granted. Whatever may be the basis for this usage, in no case may it be made the basis for our determining the concept of faith.
18. Is there still another way one can seek the distinguishing characteristic of faith in something subjective?
Yes, some wish to bring faith into a close connection with the will. Kant, for example, already did this, as do presently, following him, the neo-Kantian theologians in Germany. Our sense of our own worth, our moral significance, demands the truth of certain things that we do not know objectively and cannot prove. I consider the connection of virtue and happiness as the highest good; therefore, I must also believe in a God who causes this connection, in a future life in which it will be able to be realized. One speaks therefore of “value judgments” that need to be distinguished from “purely intellectual judgments.” A value judgment is a judgment concerning a thing that rests on my assessment of the value of that thing. Thus, here the will becomes the mother of the judgment; I believe in something because I am pleased to do so.
19. What is your objection to this explanation of faith?
a)That it ascribes something to the will that cannot rightly be its due and that a person who loves the truth will never grant to his will—namely, to pronounce a judgment on what is true and what is not true. That task falls to the intellect. It is certainly true that the desire for something all too often becomes the mother of belief in it. But that is a defect in us, and when there are matters of great importance at stake we are not at all blind to the groundlessness of such a mistake. The most fervent desire for something has brought no one to a firm, unshakable faith.
b)The accord of our will with a person belongs in fact to the trust in general that we put in him. If our will directly opposes his, our trust will never reach that degree of believing him at his word. At the same time, it should be noted that in many a case this general prior trust can amount to a minimum. If a criminal acknowledges his crime, which up to that moment he had stubbornly denied, shortly before his execution, I will very probably believe his confession. Yet one could hardly say that this belief is based on a great deal of trust in his love of the truth, or on the assent of my will to any extent.
c)In a great many cases, people are compelled to believe what they are extremely grudging to believe. According to the view being discussed here, one would just about have to be able to believe whatever one wanted. This is not so. In certain circumstances, the objects of belief present themselves with equally compelling force to our consciousness as do what one likes to call the things of science. Many who lack the gift of faith and wander about in the wilderness of skepticism have voiced the wish, “O that I may believe more, but I cannot!”—clear evidence that it does not depend on the will.
20. Has it also been attempted to seek what is characteristic of faith in the uniqueness of its object?
Yes. In connection with Hebrews 11:1 and some other passages mentioned above, it has been maintained that believing is accepting as true something that is invisible. However, the word invisible can be taken in more than one sense. In the first place, it can mean something that by its nature cannot be seen—that is, cannot be observed—whose reality cannot come directly into contact with my cognitive capacity. Further, it can mean something that by its nature is not unsuited to become an object of observation for me but in fact has never been subject to my observation. Thirdly, it can also mean something that previously, perhaps even countless times, has been observed by me, but now at this moment, while I assent in faith to its reality, is outside the scope of my observation.
Concerning the first meaning of invisible, this must always remain an object of faith for me. For example, the fact that in my own soul there are depths of life that I can never observe is established for me by faith—that is, on the basis of the testimony of the Word of God. Here, what is invisible and what I believe coincide. This can also be granted for instances of the second meaning. I am convinced of the existence of many visible, observable things that I have so far never observed myself or never will observe. None of us have ever seen Peking [Beijing]. Yet we all accept that a town of that name exists. We are assured of the truth of something invisible to us, and can call that faith. For the third meaning, however, it is clearly different. That a great lake is located on the west side of the state of Michigan is an established fact for us all. However, we are not inclined to call this faith, although we are only relatively seldom in a position to convince ourselves of its reality by personal observation. And so there are many invisible things that we nonetheless know. Every perception of our senses in the next moment, as soon as it has passed, will have become an object of believing.
Only in the case of the first two meanings, therefore, is what is invisible an object of faith. But solely because it is invisible, or for another reason? Apparently the latter. We speak of faith with respect to things that are completely invisible or never seen by us, since their existence can become known to us only by the testimony of another. The entire invisible world that comprises the object of our faith, which becomes a reality for us by faith and in which we live by faith, can only be placed before our spiritual gaze by the declaration of God’s Word. It not only lies behind the world of phenomena, but above it is a higher world than that in which we go about observing. But from this it is evident how it is not so much what is invisible that we call the object of faith, but in a broader sense what is inaccessible, what for us is personally inaccessible, with which we can have contact only by the intervening testimony of another person. If one wishes to stay with what is invisible, many things may be enumerated that cannot be seen and yet are not really objects of faith. General propositions that are derived with deductions from other propositions and into whose truth we thus have an immediate logical insight represent a reality that can never be observed by us as such. That the three angles of a triangle equal two right angles is a proposition that is only thought of in its universality but can never be seen in its all-inclusive reality. Yet no one says that he believes this, and everyone asserts that he knows it. The reason is that here we do not rely on the testimony of another but independently have a logical insight into the truth of this proposition. Therefore, here is something invisible that is not an object of believing but of knowing. It is, however, not something that is unattainable in the sense described above, for we can reach this proposition with our capacity for logical reasoning; we can arrive at it directly.
With the objects of faith that is not so. They lie outside and above us, and no reasoning in the world brings us in proximity to them. Therefore, criticism of this definition—that believing is conviction about what is invisible—has at the same time shown us in which direction we will have to seek the right definition.
21. Must what distinguishes faith be sought in the object that is believed or in the particular way in which one holds to be true what is believed?
Both views are, as has now been amply shown, untenable and one-sided. We will therefore have to say that what distinguishes faith is to be sought:
a)Not in the nature of its object. One and the same thing, without changing, can be an object of faith now and an object of knowledge tomorrow. If a good friend tells me about San Francisco, I believe that those things are true; if I visit the city tomorrow, my believing changes into knowing.
b)Not in the nature of the subject alone. It is not possible for me to pass randomly from a state of knowing into that of believing by an arbitrary change. It is not up to me whether I will to know or believe something. In the one as well as in the other case, there is something objective outside of me that compels me either to know or to believe.
c)Certainly in the nature of that by which my knowledge of something is mediated. If this knowledge is realized by immediate contact with the object in my experience or by logical reasoning, then I speak of knowing. If this is not the case, but the personal testimony of another intervenes between me and what in itself is inaccessible for me, then I speak of believing.
d)Certainly in the subjective activity that results from this personal mediation. It is wrong to say that believing is a subjective holding to be true that lacks the certainty of objective knowing. But it would be no less wrong if one wished to deny that faith has its distinctiveness as a subjective disposition and act in man. The difference does not lie in the greater or lesser degree of firmness or certainty. But still there is a subjective difference between the way in which in my knowing I accept something to be true and the way I assent to it in believing. In the latter the activity of my soul is different than in the former. The result may be the same in both cases, but the path along which it was reached was not the same, and the subjective experiences also differed. That we are no longer able to see this difference clearly is to be ascribed to the fact that in our daily living the experiences of believing and knowing are mingled at every point. Anyone, however, if he makes some effort, can reflect on the difference.
This subjective difference of which we have spoken follows directly from what is objective. The mediation between the truth and me by another person is the reason that I am brought into a distinctive disposition toward this truth. By this the one-sidedness, which we need to reject in the opinions discussed above, has disappeared.
22. On the basis of what has been said, how could we define “faith” in general?
Faith is an acceptance as true by which we do not rest in ourselves but in the testimony of another.
23. According to this definition, what must already be reckoned as objects of faith?
With some reflection it will be apparent that our entire human society, all spiritual communion with others, and by far the greater part of our thinking and acting rests on faith. Faith is the warp and woof in the fabric of human life. Without faith no one could exist in society. Life is a large ocean of which only a small segment falls within our horizon, and this small segment is nearly endlessly suffused with what we can know only by faith.
a)The highest truths, the roots of all our knowledge, the propositions that are not subject to further argumentation are objects of faith for us. It is not true, as the Rationalists maintain, that for this knowledge our reason rests self-sufficiently in itself. It rests in God. He is the ground of our knowing, and His veracity is for us the guarantee for the trustworthiness of this foundation of all knowledge. If one considers how these highest truths are interwoven through all our thinking and knowing, how nearly all things at every point are dependent on it, then from that alone is already to be derived how much in our consciousness rests on faith. At the same time, it is evident from this how absurd it is to elevate knowledge at the expense of faith or to despise the latter for the sake of knowledge. There is no knowledge that in its deepest ground would not rest on faith. As creatures, believing is a law of life for us. We stand on the terrain of a world for which in its necessity we can only demonstrate by far only the smallest part. The greater part we accept on the basis of testimony. We are not constituted to rest in ourselves but to rest, with our convictions as well as in all other respects, in God.
In these matters, faith will never cease or be eradicated. Viewed in this way, it is a characteristic of being a creature that never can be lost. The angels have such faith. Man had it before his fall, and has to exercise it after his fall. Only God does not believe, since He has no one greater than Himself in whom He can believe and rest. He is immediately in contact with things by His omniscience, and all truth has its ground in His being. He does not rest in the truth, but the truth rests in Him. He knows and understands everything in His own being.
b)In our sense experience, too, there is an element of faith. With some reflection one will recognize that even our knowledge that seems to be the most immediate is nevertheless mediate. How do we know that our senses are not deceiving us? That they are fitted to reflect the world in our consciousness as it really is? How do we know that no idealistic appearance deceives us? Only by faith in God our Creator, who has given us this nature and this capacity to know, can man be kept from skepticism in the face of all these questions. Therefore, present in all skepticism is defection from God, a falling away from Him, that has moral significance.
c)All spiritual communion with our fellow creatures rests on faith. Cooperation with others would be completely impossible if God had not given us the capacity to accept as true the testimony of others and rely on it, if He had not so curbed the deceitfulness inherent in all men by nature, at least on its external side, that a reality corresponds to this faith. However often our trust may be disappointed, without faith we cannot live at all, and every day we trust, more or less, most people with whom we come into contact.
d)Our knowledge of the past, no longer present, rests on the testimony of previous generations. All our historical knowledge rests on faith. None of those historical facts allows for direct investigation, for time has borne them away. Yet among them are facts that are perhaps more certain for us than many a thing that we observe with our eyes.
e)For what is meant under (a) and (b) above, we depend on the veracity of God, and so our faith is a fides divina [divine faith]. For what is meant under (c) and (d) above, we rely on the fidelity of men, and our faith is a fides humana [human faith]. In a certain sense, both faiths go together and follow each other so far as divine revelation is concerned.
Historical faith in revelation, as long as the testimony of the Holy Spirit in the heart is lacking, is in large part a faith that also arises within us by the mediation of men. In the first instance, a child believes Scripture because it has been taught that by its parents and teachers. Some who lack a deeper faith have spoken of believing the content of Holy Scripture on historical grounds that support the fact that here one has a divine revelation. This historical faith is not to be despised, and once one has recognized what an important role authority plays in our human life, then one will not find it at all strange that an element of historical authority is mixed with our conviction concerning the truth of Scripture. This, however, is a provisional position and not the foundation on which a Christian must rest in life and in death. This can only be by a direct faith in God, resting on the testimony of the Holy Spirit. It is good to believe historically in revelation because miracles accompany it and guarantee it as divine. But it is better to believe directly because of the testimony the Spirit gives through the Word. Still, in the first case, too, there is really a testimony of God, at least if one sees the miracle itself. But however one may come to the conviction that Scripture is the revelation of God, in any case its content as a whole can only be an object of faith. The state of affairs is as follows: Some accept the divine origin of Scripture on historical grounds; others accept it on the basis of the testimony of the Holy Spirit. In both cases one believes the contents of Scripture as God’s testimony since God addresses us through it.
24. After deducing all this, does much still remain for knowing?
What has been said has shown that a conviction in which we would have to rest entirely in ourselves really does not exist for us human beings. With the deepest roots of our knowledge we are anchored in the truthfulness of God. And inasmuch as not one conviction is entirely detached from those roots, it too rests on the same basis. Now, however, one can in his reasoning momentarily abandon this foundation of faith. One can presuppose as true the general grounds on which everything depends without bearing in mind their distinctive character as truths of faith. And then, taking those grounds as a point of departure, one can assume other derived truths on account of their connection with those grounds. One has a logical insight into these derived truths and is convinced of them, not on the basis of a testimony but on the basis of his own reasoning. Here, then, one has to do with knowledge, but it can only appear to be true knowledge since one has lost sight of and not taken into account the basis of faith on which these derived truths, too, ultimately rest. One sees now how very limited the area of knowledge is, and that in real life believing and knowing are blended.
25. What is the second question regarding the psychology of faith that needs to be considered?
The question of what capacities of the soul are involved in the act of faith. This question, of course, stands in the closest relationship to the other: Of how many parts does faith consist? It is really another formulation of the latter question. Believing is an expression of the human spirit, and so includes as many parts and acts as there are capacities of this spirit in operation.
26. Is the question posed here easy to answer?
No; down through history, it has been answered in various ways and currently still divides theologians. This does not surprise us. Faith is an expression of life, and everything that relates to life has this characteristic: that to our consciousness in experience it is simple and uncomplicated; for our intellect, in contrast, [it is] complex and complicated. Thus it does not involve a contradiction if we maintain that faith is at the same time extremely simple and extremely complex. The same may be said of a number of other activities of the intellect or the soul. In order to bring about a simple—an apparently entirely natural—activity, many factors have often been involved that we usually do not observe. How wonderful is the composition of our eye; how natural is the act of our seeing for our own perception! This is so, too, with faith. The simplest Christian can exercise it without taking into account what he thereby does. But all this does not relieve us from the obligation also to consider faith more closely and analyze it, and, insofar as it is given to us, to understand it. For regeneration there can be no thought of doing that, but certainly for faith, an act that falls within conscious life.
27. Is faith something that presupposes a new capacity of the soul? That is, is it not the case that one does not believe with the capacities with which one performs all other spiritual acts?
Some have assumed that, but entirely wrongly. It is certainly true that our capacities must be worked on by the Holy Spirit in a supernatural manner before we can exercise saving faith. But this does not prove that the Holy Spirit implants a new capacity within us besides the others that we already possess. The Holy Spirit regenerates the heart; and as the intellect, will, and emotion flow from the heart, this root of life, so they have in principle received at regeneration the capacity to be active believingly, each in its own way. Neither in the natural man is there a separate organ for faith. By giving us a threefold capacity of the soul, God has so equipped us that we can do all the actions that belong to our spiritual life without having the need for a new organ. And if one were to once begin to assume a separate capacity for faith, one could do that with the same right for other expressions of life: for love, hope, etc.
28. If we ask about the capacities operative in faith or about the parts in which faith consists, do we then have in view faith in general or saving faith in particular?
Both. We cannot assume that the word “faith,” when it is used for various things, would have nothing in common in each of those senses. However much historical faith and saving faith in the narrower sense also differ from each other, they must still have the general form of faith in common with each other, or they could not be designated by the same name. So, if one says that saving faith has these or those parts, that these or those capacities are active in it, then this could apply in the main to everything that is called faith. The difference derives from the content of what is believed and the relationship it has to our living. In saving faith, both are such that it is completely impossible for an unregenerate person, with his capacities, to act on them in faith. If we say that faith consists of knowledge, assent, and trust, we usually mean saving faith. However, this also applies to faith in the widest sense. By no means, then, do we maintain that the unregenerate person cannot exercise knowledge, assent, and trust in earthly matters or toward God historically. As often as he exercises faith in any connection, this general form of faith is present. On the other hand, we maintain that he cannot be active with knowledge, assent, and trust toward the objects of saving grace, toward the Mediator, applied to his own soul. In this specific connection he does not have saving knowledge, or assent, or trust.
29. Do all agree in enumerating the actions that belong to faith?
No, although most speak of three actions or aspects of faith: (1) knowledge (notitia); (2) assent (assensus); (3) trust (fiducia).
Some wished to reduce these three to two, either by removing knowledge as first or trust as last. They maintained, namely, that knowledge was certainly the necessary prerequisite for faith, but therefore was still not yet identical with faith—not a piece or part of it. Others said that trust (fiducia) certainly flowed from faith as its necessary consequence, but that this did not give the right to confuse it with the core, the essence of faith, or to include it within faith. All this is still apart from the unscriptural view of the Roman Catholics, who not only wish to exclude knowledge from faith itself but also even deny that it is the necessary prerequisite of faith.
Others again did not limit to these three aspects but extended them. Witsius, among others, considers faith to include seven actions, after he first has recalled in a rather nominalistic fashion how there are not really separate capacities in the soul but ultimately they are all one. He enumerates in succession: (1) knowledge, (2) assent, (3) love, (4) hunger and thirst for Christ, (5) accepting the Lord Christ, (6) leaning on Christ, (7) surrendering ourselves to Christ; to which then the conclusion is added, as the closing act of faith accompanied by a blessed peace of the soul: (8) Christ is mine!
One sees immediately that here is a very penetrating and complete enumeration of the differing aspects of faith, but not an exact psychological classification.
30. Does knowledge belong to the essence of faith?
Yes; and to understand this well, the sentiments of the Roman Catholics, which in more than one respect deviate from Scripture, must first be rejected. Rome eliminates the great difference there is between historical and saving faith. It demands nothing more than a historical assent to the truth, without a heartfelt trust having to be included. This means that it has also applied its principle of externalization to faith and thereby adapted it to the masses.
The second peculiarity in Rome’s view of faith is that the element of knowledge is eliminated and everything included in assent. If only assent is present, knowledge may be lacking, and there will still be faith. In order to accentuate this, Rome makes a distinction between fides implicita, “undeveloped faith,” and fides explicita, “developed faith.” The first works without knowledge of the truth, the second with knowledge of the truth. If only one is ready to believe what the church believes, this counts as faith for him. That is the principle of clericalism applied to the concept of faith. As the clergy performs many other things for the laity, so they can also believe for them, and a blind assent is all that is demanded of the laity itself. The result is that an independent quest of the divine testimonies is unnecessary for the common people and is opposed rather than promoted by the church. The language of the church is an alien language that the people do not understand. The preaching of the Word moves into the background, the rite into the foreground, and the latter works on the emotions more than on faith.
The third point, finally, that characterizes Rome’s doctrine of faith is the distinction between fides informis, “unformed faith,” and fides formata, “formed faith.” The former is the bare assent to historical faith described above. Formed faith is faith formed and perfected by love so that it becomes justifying faith. This is connected with the error of the Roman church in the article of justification. Because they do not view this as a judicial act of God that imputes to us the merits of Christ but as an infusion of subjective righteousness, as a making righteous, so too a character must be ascribed to faith that accords with that doctrine. Now, love is the root of all Christian virtues. Faith that makes righteous (holy) subjectively will therefore be able to consist in nothing other than love. This distinction between formed and unformed faith is therefore nothing other than the principle of works-holiness applied to the concept of faith. And we see that by its three fundamental errors of externalization, clericalism, and works-holiness, Rome has transformed faith into its own caricature.
Concerning the second point of difference, which is only at issue here, we hold that the act of faith is completely impossible without knowledge. The disposition to believe something can be present without knowledge, but not the act. Thus it is not at all apparent what would remain of the act of faith if one removed knowledge. If one says that a conscious intention remains to accept as true all that someone says, then we answer that this can only be called trust in a person in the most general sense, but it cannot bear the name of faith. And furthermore, even this, too, will still include a certain measure of knowledge, for this general trust in the person also undoubtedly stems from knowledge of the person and of certain statements that he has made. However great or little the knowledge may be, there is always knowledge where there is faith. The danger resident in Rome’s conception is just this: It makes this knowledge of faith, which it cannot do without, into knowledge of the authority and trustworthiness of the church instead of knowledge of the authority and trustworthiness of God. So, as the object of faith, the church comes to stand in the place of God. Man is not made aware of God and the Savior so that trust might develop from this knowledge. He is simply placed before the church and the clergy, and from what is proclaimed to him about their authority, a blind submission must develop in him that is called “faith.”
The scriptural view of faith is a completely different one. It includes that a thing, in order to be believed, must be known. This is sufficiently evident from the manner in which, for example, in the Gospel of John, knowledge of God is interchanged with faith in God, knowledge with faith in the Savior. In this way, to know God and Christ is eternal life. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God (Rom 10:14, 17; John 6:69). Believing is accompanied with confession, but then there must be something to confess and something made known. One is warned in Scripture that by lack of knowledge one can be destroyed (Hos 4:6). That God accompanies the operations of His grace with external calling presupposes the same principle. And that believing is characterized by the image of seeing also allows no other view. In Isaiah 53:11, it is said that by His knowledge the Servant of the Lord will justify many, a proof that saving faith includes a certain degree of knowledge.
31. Can we establish in advance how great must be this knowledge required for faith?
No, we can only say in general that the knowledge must be sufficient to produce a conception of what one believes. For every exercise of faith, only knowledge of the particular object to which faith is directed and with which it is inseparably connected is necessary. To the degree that someone has a clear historical understanding of the content of Scripture, to that degree will he also be able to exercise faith in a historical sense with respect to Scripture. To the degree that someone has a clear and distinct knowledge of the person of the Mediator, of His offices and states, to that degree his exercise of faith will also be richer and more comprehensive. Therefore, knowledge is not only essential for faith, but also the criterion for the extent of faith and for its inward riches. Still, it is true that saving faith can be accompanied by a minimum of knowledge. In any case, we must hold that its object is not the truth of God in general but specifically the Mediator of the covenant of grace. Of course, everyone who believes savingly in the Mediator will also be prepared to believe all of the testimonies of God. Still, in the first place, his faith is not directed to them in general, and a great ignorance of the truth in detail is in itself not a proof of the absence of saving faith.
32. With what things must this knowledge of faith not be confused?
a)In the first place, it must not be confused with comprehending the things that one believes. Comprehending means having a clear discernment of a thing, of the basis from which it exists, and of the necessity with which it derives from that basis. At the same time, however, it is evident from this that comprehending and believing are not the same. What we believe is something positive; what we comprehend is a natural-logical conclusion.
b)Neither must the knowledge of faith be confused with a bare portrayal of things. To portray is not to know. And were the knowledge of faith a bare portrayal, then it would not belong to the essence of faith. This may already be ascertained from the fact that someone can have a picture of certain things without having faith in these things. If this portrayal was knowledge, and knowledge an essential part of faith, then unbelievers would have an essential part of faith. And the above-mentioned reasoning of those who would exclude knowledge from faith would then in fact be conclusive. They do say that knowledge is required for faith and necessarily precedes it, but it is therefore not a part of faith. But that is not what is meant. Our knowledge that we intend to have viewed as an essential part of faith is more than a bare portrayal, in which case it would still be completely in doubt whether or not a reality corresponded to it. The knowledge of faith is of that sort that it immediately places things as real to our view. Any divide between the portrayal of the thing and the reality of the thing is alien to it. That is exactly the deep sense of the statement in Hebrews 11:1: “Faith is the substance of things that one hopes for, and an evidence of things that one does not see.” From the outset, the representation of the knowledge that we carry in our consciousness of the objects of faith is colored by this distinctive reality. The knowledge of faith is a cognizance of truths inseparably connected with the thought that those truths express realities. It is not as if, like a judge, we first hear the testimony of God and, in the meantime, maintain our intellect in a neutral attitude in order only later to decide calmly how great the evidence is and what may or may not be true of what is testified. If it really happened in this manner, knowledge would have to go its way alone for a time, without being accompanied by that consciousness of reality. In other words, it would not be knowledge, but only cognition. Believing presupposes antecedent trust, by which all questions are cut off regarding whether or not the testimony is to reality. As soon as God opens His Word in order to address us, the knowledge of faith begins to work and immediately therefore also appears as faith-knowledge, bears in itself the character of faith, and has a distinctive coloration. It is extremely difficult to analyze this uniqueness psychologically, but one can appeal to each experience. We hold, therefore, that knowledge is an essential part of faith, is resident in faith, even at the risk that it will be difficult for us to differentiate knowledge and trust.
33. Does what is said here also apply to saving faith—namely, that knowledge is an essential part of faith and not merely its prerequisite?
Yes, this applies both to saving faith as well as to faith in the wider sense. This saving faith also begins with a knowledge that presents the truth to our view as real. By this knowledge it brings us, as it were, into contact with the living Christ. The picture of the Mediator that we receive in our consciousness is a picture based on knowledge and not a portrayal of fantasy. We do not regard it as a portrait of a stranger, who as far as we are concerned can be the creation of the fantasy of the painter, but with the active interest of seeking sinners, we drink in His features; we become cognizant of the truth as the only means that can bring us into a relationship with Christ. Hence this knowledge is an essential part of saving faith. It is the first act of receiving the Savior into our soul. He enters within through the gate of our thought-life in order also to be appropriated immediately by our will and to rule over our affections.
And knowledge, as belonging essentially to faith, also becomes here the criterion for the extent of faith, if not the plumb line of its depth. Since faith begins with receiving the figure of the Savior, so believing fully would have to begin with taking in that figure in all its fullness, from all sides and with all its features. To admit Him as prophet, priest, and king, as our rich, full messiah through the windows of the intellect into the heart, would be the first act of an ideal and perfect faith.
From this it at the same time follows that in saving faith there is something different and more than the old knowledge of historical faith. Many imagine it as if assent and trust came with that old historical faith, in order then with these three to form saving faith. This is not the case. On the basis of that earlier knowledge a new knowledge arises—completely different and to be compared with nothing else—with which only a true believer, regenerated by God’s Spirit, knows. In this is also a new proof how, for those who have saving faith, knowledge is not merely a conditio sine qua non of faith but also a part of the act of faith itself. If it were merely the old historical knowledge augmented with assent and trust, then there would be no difference, as far as that knowledge is concerned, between those who have saving faith and those who do not have it. And from this it would again follow that knowledge was not included in faith but preceded it. Clearly, it is the reverse. For the regenerate, faith is irradiated and permeated with knowledge; it radiates knowledge; it is a seeing and knowing faith.
34. To what extent can one still say that the knowledge of faith precedes saving faith?
The distinction has already been made above between faith in a wider and in a narrower sense. All agree that the object of saving faith in the narrower sense is the Lord Christ, the Mediator. To believe in Him is what justifies us before God. On the other hand, having knowledge of our sins and that before God we are worthy of eternal damnation—namely, a spiritual knowledge—belongs to faith in the wider sense. Someone who is convicted of his guilt and his depravity has that conviction, since he believes God’s declaration concerning it. Now, it is obvious that the knowledge present in the latter is necessary for the knowledge of saving faith. A certain degree of consciousness of sin is necessary for the exercise of justifying faith. But it would clearly be wrong to say that justifying faith includes this knowledge as a part of its essence. The knowledge that is a part of justifying faith focuses, as does that faith as a whole, on Christ, the Mediator. It does this under the impression of the knowledge of sin. But still, if we wish to speak accurately, this knowledge of sin does not belong with it as a part. The faith that justifies and saves looks on the Savior, not on the danger. Surely, when one desires to look with interest on the Savior, a view of the danger precedes. And surely, looking to the Savior may be continuously interchanged with looking to the danger. Yes, even more: Since the Savior in His quality as savior is completely the opposite of the danger, looking on Him naturally includes the idea of the danger. His suffering and death can only be viewed in direct connection with sin. We may therefore say that in practice this more nuanced distinction between faith in the wider sense and faith in the narrower, saving sense very rarely becomes conscious. But that is ultimately so with all the elements of the act of faith, and therefore this experience can never hinder us from distinguishing as accurately as possible. We say, therefore, that consciousness of sin precedes saving faith as an indispensable requirement but does not belong to the knowledge of faith itself.
35. How is the definition of saving faith that our Catechism gives to be understood?
The [Heidelberg] Catechism [21] says: “A true faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in His Word, but also an assured trust,” etc.2 However, by this is not meant that all the truths revealed in God’s Word are directly the object of saving faith, and that even where knowledge of them is lacking one would still need to speak of believing them. Only opposition to Rome is expressed in the definition. Rome said: “Believing is only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold as true all that God has revealed.” Protestants: “Not only a certain knowledge, but also,” etc.
36. Can one also put too much emphasis on knowledge as part of faith?
Yes, the Rationalists do that. They have the whole of religion occupied with rational conviction. There is also a dead and deadening orthodoxy that has this feature in common with Rationalism. No one side of faith may be elevated at the expense of the others. Such one-sidedness always calls forth a reaction that degenerates into the opposite extreme, and so balance is never reached. Schleiermacher’s doctrine of feeling followed the rationalistic religion of reason.
37. Is it easy to distinguish the assent of faith from knowledge as described above?
No. As we have seen from the start, knowledge is present from the outset with the awareness that it takes note of truth and that it has to do with realities. That is already an implicit assent. It is precisely assent that makes this knowledge such a unique act. In order to distinguish both clearly, we could limit knowledge to becoming cognizant of the truth. Against that, however, are two objections:
a)In distinguishing in this way, one obtains a conception of the knowledge of faith that is falsified by reality. Nowhere is there such knowledge of faith that it would not be under the formative influence of assent. One can compare our sense perception with the knowledge of faith. In the former, two elements are also present: the reception of sense impressions and the assent that a reality outside us corresponds to them. Now, however, the knowledge that we have by our sense perception nowhere appears detached from the assent that what is perceived is real. With that knowledge, assent is given automatically. It seems absurd to us to think that we would know and not agree. Likewise with faith. When we have someone whom we trust completely, then it does not occur to us first to consider his words in the abstract. We know already assenting and assent already knowing; the one permeates the other. Someone who with us heard the same thing but did not assent would also know it in a different way. Knowing in the way we do is equivalent to assenting.
b)In distinguishing in this way, one could also lose sight of the distinction between historical and saving faith. The knowledge of these two differs precisely in this: that the latter is a knowledge that is accompanied by the warmth and glow of conviction. And precisely by that, it becomes a wholly new knowledge that is permeated by this saving assent that casts a new light on everything. When by His illumination the Holy Spirit makes the truth clear to the eye of our soul, it can no longer be denied. Receiving its impression in the consciousness coincides with assenting to it.
For this reason, it is better to say that knowledge and assent are not two different acts, but two sides of one and the same act. They work reciprocally on each other and are simultaneous, and we cannot say that the one is independent of the other. In the same moment that the one begins to be active, the activity of the other begins. Furthermore, knowledge is the receptive and more passive, assent the expressive and more active side of the act of faith. And for the consciousness, both are fused together as an indissoluble unity.
38. Show that according to Scripture assent belongs to faith as an essential part.
John 3:33 reads, “The one who receives his testimony has sealed that God is true.” Here the verb lambanein is used—literally, “to long for something in order to take it.” This expresses very precisely the more active side of assent. It is still more than a receiving; it is an accepting and assimilating (cf. also Col 2:5–6).
39. Is this assent an act of the intellect or an act of the will?
This is very difficult to decide. One could say in general that the decision on the truth or the reality of a thing is due to the intellect. Everything about whether it is true or untrue belongs to the sphere of the intellect and not under the jurisdiction of the will. This is why many discuss the assent of faith as a purely intellectual act, certainly an act of the enlightened intellect effected by God’s Spirit, but with that still an act performed by the capacity of the intellect. In fact, some go even further and draw not only assent in its entirety but also trust within the intellect, so that they insist on viewing the whole of faith not as an act of the will but as an act of the intellect. Now, it is certainly clear that knowing as such, when faith is excluded, is a purely intellectual act. The conviction that this or that conclusion follows from premises does not include an act of the will. It is otherwise when the testimony of another is the ground on which I assent to the truth. A moral element is present in that assent. This appears, above all, in such cases where my assent to testimony that someone gives stems from an antecedent trust in general that I place in his person. Man in his sinful condition has an inclination to withdraw into himself, and this sinful, selfish directing of his will also reveals itself in his intellectual life. If now he does not seek the basis for a judgment of the intellect within himself but in another, then that is a turning from himself and a resting in another. We believe that this does not occur without the will. The assent of faith is an act by which man submits to the authority of another. That demands an act of the will. Of course, the expression of the verdict itself—“this or that is true”—is reserved for the intellect. To say that the will does this would be a confusion of concept and would make faith an arbitrary act. But no one will be able to deny that in any case this act of the intellect is preceded and accompanied by a movement of the will. Also, in the assent of faith the capacities of the soul concur and penetrate each other in their activity.
40. What question is connected with what has just been posited?
The question regarding the actual formal act of faith. While some placed it in the assent of the judging intellect, others thought that it was to be sought in consequent trust. The objection that Brakel and others had against the first view resided mainly in the fact that faith was thus made a matter of the intellect. It is already evident from what was just said above, however, that in every act of faith something more than the intellect is at work: the capacity of judgment that decides what is true and not true. And, conversely, as will be still further evident below, a true trusting of faith is unthinkable apart from intellectual assent. Thus we can already note provisionally that the pending dispute appears to rest again and again on a one-sided emphasis on one act of faith.
41. Which is the third act or side of faith?
Trust, which we can describe as resting in the testimony of another for anything significant that affects our lives.
42. Describe in more detail in what this trust consists.
a)It is not an exclusively intellectual act. If I believe the statement of the doctor that I will be healthy again, and this intellectual act now becomes the starting point of a trusting disposition, then in the latter there is already more than an intellectual judgment. Without the judgment, “that is the truth,” the disposition of trust cannot be present. Also, the former could not be present where the latter is lacking. They are inseparably connected with each other, but still not the same.
b)It is also not an act of the feeling. Of course, the doctor’s statement above, for someone who hovered between life and death, exercises a great influence on his emotional life. The emotions of fear and anxiety, agitation, etc., will disappear to make room for the opposite emotions. There is thus most decidedly an effect of faith on feeling, or rather a retroactive effect of feeling on the consciousness of faith that will nowhere and never be entirely absent. Nevertheless, feeling is not trusting. Two people can be endowed with faith in different degrees. Faith in A can be stronger than in B. But B is an impassioned person in whom emotional life has developed much more strongly than intellectual life and the life of the will. The result will be that B, with his lesser degree of faith, at the same time has more emotional activity in connection with this faith than A. His joy, his delight, his praise will be much stronger. But no one would gather from this that more inward power of faith is at work in him than in his more calm and sedate brother. A strongly trusting faith is certainly compatible with certain natures where strong emotional activity is absent. Trust is not resident in feeling.
c)So then, nothing else is left but to locate trust in the will. Not, however, in the will as the capacity for particular expressions of the will, but understood more deeply as the direction and disposition of the soul. There is in man an impulse by which he moves out toward certain things. There must be a certain object for this impulse in which he comes to rest. In a sick person there is an irresistible yearning, a tendency in which his entire life participates. If the doctor declares that the sick person will get better, this yearning lays hold of that declaration, rests in it, and finds its end for which it reached out. Trust exists in this. This may also be applied to saving faith. In the awakened sinner is an impulse, a desire, a striving, a hungering and thirsting after God’s righteousness. The soul extends itself toward this, moves itself in this direction, so that the whole life is drawn thither. Now when God, as the physician of the soul, testifies that in Christ satisfaction of His righteousness is obtained, then this urge for righteousness that God approves finds its rest in this testimony and settles itself in it as its end point. And that is the trust of saving faith.
d)One now sees clearly in what the uniqueness of this trust is to be sought as distinct from a bare act of the intellect and a mere movement of emotion. An intellectual judgment of the truth or untruth of something—also of the testimony of another—can occur for me without my having a direct interest in it. The fact remains outside me. Antecedent, personal trust certainly does not occur without an act of the will, but it is an inclination of the will of a different sort than that meant here. The trust spoken of here always presupposes an interest, a being involved with the truth communicated by the testimony. This interest can be greater or smaller, depending on whether it affects a less significant part of my life or my life at its core. For saving faith, at issue is a question of life and death for the sinner: How can I, a sinner, live before God? Hence, trust is a trust for life that affects the soul at its core. Emotion, on the other hand, does share this distinctiveness with the trust of faith in that it interests me personally and is not outside me, but it is purely subjective; emotion causes me to rest in myself. The trust of faith, in contrast, is the resting of the impulse of my life in something that lies outside me, is distinguished from me, something objective.
43. Is it correct to say that the intellect is active in the knowledge of faith, the will in the assent of faith, and emotion in the trust of faith?
No, this idea must be rejected. Emotion can on no account be taken as the seat of faith. Moreover, the activities of the intellect and trust and those of the will and trust may not be so separated. On the whole, it is true that, in the knowledge of faith, the intellect comes to the fore; in assent and trust, the will; but also, a complete separation may not be maintained here. Our result, in general, is this: The seat of faith, as far as its activity is concerned, is in the intellect and in the will, while these expressions are always accompanied more or less by emotion. On the other hand, the seat of faith, as disposition, is in the heart as the common root of intellect and will.
44. How many types of faith are distinguished?
One is accustomed to distinguish (a) faith that is believed (quae creditur); (b) faith with which one believes. The first, then, stands for the content of faith, as we speak, for example, of “the Protestant faith.” The question, however, is whether Scripture uses the word “faith” in this sense. It appears at least to come close to it a few times (cf. Jude 3, 20; both explanations are possible in 1 Tim 1:4, 19; 2:7; 3:9; 4:1, 6; 5:8; 6:10, 21). Faith with which one believes (qua creditur) is faith as disposition and act of man. It is further distinguished into: (1) historical faith; (2) temporary faith; (3) faith in miracles; (4) saving faith.
45. What is historical faith?
A mere assent to revealed and known truth. The designation “historical faith” does not mean that the object of this faith is only history—that is, a description of bygone things and past events—for to it also belong truths that are still valid at this moment. Neither is the meaning that one accepts certain things as true on the testimony of history, for one can have the living witness before him. In a certain sense, Nicodemus exercised historical faith when he said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God” [John 3:2]. The designation means, rather, that one accepts divine truths as one accepts history for which one does not have a personal interest, and one nonetheless gives credence. History is taken here in the sense of something that we stand apart from and only instills in us theoretical interest. Other designations that have been proposed are: “contemplating faith” or “faith of bare assent” (Witsius); “speculative faith” (Hodge).
46. On what grounds may this historical faith rest?
On more than one. It can be a merely authoritative faith—that is, holding something to be true based on the testimony of parents or a teacher or public opinion in general. It can also rest on historical research into the hallmarks of divine revelation. Finally, it can also have its basis in inner evidence that the truth possesses as coming from God and, for which, by common grace, the eye of man is more or less opened.
47. Where does Scripture speak of this faith?
Among other places, in James 2:19, some have “a faith of the devils”; Matthew 7:26, “hearing and not doing”; John 11:42, “that they may believe that you sent me”; Acts 26:26, “I know that you believe them [the prophets].”
48. What is “temporary faith”?
It is assent to the truth for a time with an application to oneself, not without some emotion and fruit, but out of an unregenerate heart.
49. From where is the designation derived?
From Matthew 13:20–21, “But as to what was sown in rocky places, this is the one who hears the word and who immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself but endures for a time [proskairos estin],” etc. What is said there of seed sown among thorns (Matt 13:22) also must be understood of temporary faith.
50. To what extent is this designation “temporary faith” applicable?
Insofar as temporary faith is not finally lasting in duration. In death, it is surely taken from a person, and he learns to know himself as an unbeliever. However, it can also continue until death if there are no particular circumstances that intervene in order to bring his unrighteousness to light. In oppression and persecution, it is immediately revealed in its true character. Conversely, it can also arise in extraordinary circumstances—for example, in times of great distress, of war and contagious diseases—and then, as soon as these dangers have blown over, it disappears again. Some have wanted to call it a hypocritical faith, but incorrectly, for conscious hypocrisy is not at issue here. Those with temporary faith in fact think that they have true faith. The designation “presumed faith” would then be better, but not, as Witsius wants to call it, “an arrogant or conceited faith.”
51. By what is temporary faith distinguished from historical faith?
By the personal interest it shows in the truth and by the retroactive effect of feeling on the truth. The word is received, that is, personally appropriated, and received with joy, that is, appropriated with emotion.
52. By what is temporary faith distinguished from saving faith?
It is very difficult to specify or ascertain this difference for a third party, although there is a profound difference. Christ says, “It has no root in itself.” Thus, saving faith is embedded in the regenerated root of the soul and is an expression of spiritual life that originates from this depth. Temporary faith is an action of the soul that has been brought about externally at the periphery, on the exterior of the consciousness. It is precisely for this reason that it vanishes as soon as this activity from the outside ceases, and the unregenerate ground of life can reveal itself as it is in reality.
Now, however, since no one can scrutinize the root of his own life, the question then arises how he can be assured that the faith he exercises is not temporary but saving faith. Many characteristics are enumerated by theologians, and since the assurance of faith is possible through self-examination, and Scripture stirs us up to examine whether we are in the faith [2 Cor 13:5], there must be signs. The main issue will reside in this: Temporary faith runs on feeling and has a subjective basis. It rests on the enjoyment that the activities of faith bring along with the truth and, to this extent, is selfish in nature. Where it is no longer sustained by this pleasurable caress of feeling, it becomes vexed and ceases. Thus, there do not always need to be external advantages by which it is driven, and the allure of a more inward caress of soul can be the cause in back of it. A believer has therefore to ask himself whether he is being led and driven in his activities of faith by this subjective urge for enjoyment, this craving for false assurance, by antinomian, transitory sympathies, or by a passion for the honor of God by hungering and thirsting after His righteousness. The latter is always something that can only be worked by the regenerating operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart.
53. Is there more in this temporary faith than ordinary historical knowledge?
There can be knowledge in it that is different not in principle but still in degree than ordinary historical knowledge. Scripture speaks of “having once been enlightened” (Heb 6:4). This certainly falls under the rubric of temporary faith, although this is not to say, conversely, that all temporary faith falls under the rubric of Hebrews 6:4–8. If the latter were so, the exercising of temporary faith would exclude obtaining saving faith. Thus, a special, enlightening work by the Holy Spirit is possible by which the truth makes a deep impression on man, and one or other aspect of the truth begins to work on his will so that delight in the truth results. Normally, then, this temporary faith will not be directed to the truth in general but very specifically to the heart of the truth, to the gospel of redemption. In this, too, it is different than historical faith, for the latter makes no distinctions and treats all truth with the same indifference.
54. Who have eliminated the distinction between this temporary faith and saving faith?
All who teach an apostasy of the saints and thus suppose that the difference lies only in time. If someone’s faith continues until death, then it is saving faith, for then the possibility of apostasy ceases. Conversely, if it vanishes earlier, then it is not saving faith. So, in particular, the Remonstrants, who lack the deeper concept of faith and whose saving faith is basically nothing more than an extended and enduring temporary faith. According to us, the two are specifically different.
55. What is miracle faith?
The assurance on the testimony of another that a miracle will certainly occur by me or to me (Matt 17:20; 1 Cor 13:2; Acts 14:9–10). It appears from some of these passages that this faith was in relation not only to miracles, in the narrower sense, but is associated with the extraordinary gifts of grace in general. Man has a natural confidence that he can perform this or that activity. God, however, can grant to him to perform activities that as such lie beyond the reach of human nature and for which he feels himself unable. Every attempt to do them must happen in faith. This is even clearer when man is merely the instrument or proclaimer of a miraculous work performed directly by God Himself. Then he must trust absolutely the miracle proclaimed, that God will not put him to shame.
56. Is this miracle faith in an active sense always accompanied by saving faith?
No, for it only includes trust in God in the physical realm, while saving faith is a trust in God and Christ in a spiritual respect. This miracle faith is certainly a glorious gift, but does not so affect the root of human life so that it could only be given to someone who is regenerate. To be elevated above the limitation of our material nature by trusting in God’s miraculous power can be accompanied by unbelief in the deeper sense (Matt 7:22–23, 27; cf. Matt 10:1, 4).
57. Is miracle faith also spoken of in a passive sense?
Yes; then it is the certainty that a miraculous work will be done to me (John 11:40; Acts 14:9). Since the miracles of the Lord undoubtedly have a symbolic significance and picture His work of spiritual deliverance, it was in all respects fitting that faith was required in the recipients. Thus this passive miracle faith appears as a direct reflection of saving faith. In some instances, it merges with the latter, so that implications are drawn from it that are connected with saving faith (cf. Matt 8:10–13). Still, in no way is it to be identified with saving faith, and it can be present without it. The multitude that followed Jesus because of bread certainly possessed miracle faith but otherwise was unbelieving; compare John 11:22 with 25–27, where both kinds of faith are clearly distinguished.
58. Is there still a place for such miracle faith at the present time?
Roman Catholics affirm this and substantiate this affirmation with stories of miracles that serve for defending their church. Protestants would rather answer negatively. If miracle faith will be real faith, then there must be a specific promise of God to which it can point. The Roman Catholic church believes that such a promise has been given once for all to the church in general—that is, to the clergy. It is entirely fitting that in a church that extends the line of revelation and lays claim to infallibility for itself, miracles occur as accompanying signs of revelation. For us, this is a priori improbable. We lack the promise of God that in one or other particular case He will do miracles. Otherwise, it is not entirely right to say, “Miracle faith no longer exists,” and to claim, “Miracles no longer occur.”
59. From what standpoint must saving faith be discussed?
From a soteriological standpoint. With that in view, we have thus come to the third part of our treatment. In order to understand well what this saving faith is, one must relate it to the rest of the steps of the order of salvation. Light can only be shed on its mysterious nature if one poses the question: What is the reason why this faith occupies such a prominent place in the order of salvation that it overshadows all the other aspects? What is there in faith by which it is suited to be the great condition of salvation? Why are we saved by faith and not in any other way? That is, we cannot arrive at clarity here by a penetrating psychological analysis or by examining the activity of faith within ourselves, but only by considering faith objectively on the basis of God’s Word as an appropriate phenomenon whose uniqueness corresponds to the uniqueness of the way of salvation along which God saves sinners. However much that is mysterious faith may otherwise possess, on this point it must be clear and comprehensible.
60. How can this saving faith be defined?
The best definition is that of the [Heidelberg] Catechism [21]: “A true faith is not only a certain knowledge, whereby I hold to be true what God has revealed to us in His Word, but also a sure confidence, which the Holy Spirit works by the gospel in my heart, that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness and salvation, are given by God, out of pure grace, only for the sake of the merits of Christ.”
61. In what does the significance, the form, and the essence of faith lie?
Not in a single one of the three aspects that it possesses—not in knowledge, assent, or trust in itself—but in the unique relationship to God in which these three—knowledge, assent, and trust—place us.
62. In what, then, does this unique relationship consist?
In this: that our consciousness, worked upon by the Holy Spirit, turns away entirely from our own doing as the ground of our righteousness before God, and to the triune God, and specifically to the Mediator, as they appear in the covenant of grace, in order to rest in that.
63. What is the result of this?
That precisely by this consciousness of faith within us God receives the honor that is due to Him by virtue of His plan of grace, and that we appear to ourselves stripped of all honor and merits.
64. Is it therefore incidental that salvation is tied to true faith?
No, this is far from incidental and, if one looks at it from this standpoint, in all respects natural. God saves sinners without their contributing anything. His plan of salvation is a plan of grace, His way of salvation a covenant of grace through and through, by which He alone can lay claim to honor. True, God also treats men as rational beings in this way of salvation—that is, the manner in which He saves and blesses them must be reflected and recognized in their consciousness. The sinner must know how he is saved, what his righteousness before God is, that nothing is to be ascribed to his own merits, that all his salvation lies in Christ. If this did not happen—if God transferred the sinner at once out of his state of misery into the state of blessedness—then man would surely be saved but God would not be glorified in His work of grace. Man must recognize that it is God who as the triune God of the covenant accomplishes his salvation. Faith is that gift of God’s grace by which this recognition is brought about in man, in a manner to be described presently in more detail.
The absence of faith in a person who is being saved would be equivalent to the absence of any recognition of God’s grace. The covenant of grace and faith presuppose and demand each other as the objective and the subjective. For man, there is no covenant of grace if there is no faith. And as he lives out of and in faith, to that extent he lives out of and in the covenant of grace. Now, however—since on this point man may not be considered completely neutral—we must go a step still further and say: The absence of faith in a sinner is equivalent to the presence of a being-holy-by-works, self-righteous condition of the soul. The supposition entertained above that someone could simply be transferred from the state of misery into the state of beatitude is fundamentally an unthinkable, an impossible supposition. Man is so created by God that he cannot simply have salvation; he must furthermore have a basis for salvation on which it rests. Now if faith in the Mediator is not this basis, then there is another basis, namely, faith in one’s own merits, faith in oneself, the caricature of faith, self-righteousness. Therefore, the only choice here is between a consciousness of holiness by works and a consciousness of faith. One will see that this is said with a view to fallen man, man as a sinner, and not with a view to man in the state of rectitude. It was otherwise for Adam before the fall. This dilemma was not applicable to him. He could be right before God without saving faith. But a sinner cannot. He must be one or the other, either ascribing to himself the honor of his righteousness and salvation (and then he does not believe), or giving the honor to God (and then he exercises saving faith).
65. Must it be inferred from this conception that believing is nothing other than an insight into, a conception, a correct idea of the relationships of the covenant of grace?
By no means. Faith is not something that plays out in the intellect and bypasses the life of man. As saving faith, its uniqueness is just that it is a consciousness in which the deepest longing of the soul reaches closure and in which, therefore, the whole man is involved. To exercise saving faith means to have a conviction of the gracious action of God in Christ, but then with a living, personal application to myself. That is, saving faith may only be conceived of from the standpoint of an awakened sinner who has become sensitive to the justice of God. Where this sensitivity to God’s justice is lacking, the yearning in one’s life to stand as just before God and to be saved in His judgment is also inconceivable. Where, on the other hand, this sensitivity is restored, then too that yearning will immediately begin to be active and become for the sinner the greatest—as it were, the only—concern, in which his whole life concentrates and focuses itself in his consciousness. Thus, providing that one starts here and does not for one moment lose sight of this, one may certainly say that for the awakened sinner faith is the conviction that his salvation lies in Christ as a free gift of God’s grace.
66. Does one then have the right to say that faith is an act of the intellect?
This question must be answered in different ways. If one means that saving faith remains enclosed entirely within the sphere of the intellect and contains nothing other than intellectual activities, then this is certainly incorrect. If one means that a firm conviction of the intellect is the terminus of the activity of faith, where, as it were, it ends up, then that can be granted. There has been considerable dispute about this question, and even Reformed theologians diverge here. Some insisted that saving faith was to be understood essentially as a cognitive, intellectual act. Others—in fact the majority—sought the essence of the activity of faith in an act of the will. The former make up the line that, as Kuyper says, runs from Calvin through Voetius to Comrie and, in Kuyper’s judgment, is the purest. The second conception is found in the definition of our Catechism given above, and furthermore in the majority of Reformed theologians. In de Heraut [The Herald] of May 31, 1885 (no. 388), one can find quoted the grounds presented by Brakel for the second view and by Comrie for the first.
Concerning the question itself, it seems to us impossible to accept either one of these two conceptions to the exclusion of the other. Saving faith is neither a bare intellectual nor a bare volitional act. If I were to say the former, then I would sever the root of life in which the conviction of faith grows. If I were to say the latter, then the danger threatens that faith again appears as a work, as a deed, and not as a recognition of God’s doing for me.
If, on the other hand, I accept both conceptions and keep them in the closest connection, then they correct each other’s one-sidedness. One realizes then that believing is more than the conviction that something is true. It is a resting of the deepest longing of spiritual life in such a conviction, and in that the will is certainly involved. However, one also realizes that believing is not a new work that has replaced the works of the law and by which I now should be justified before God. By believing, my will must not be put into motion to accomplish something before God, but at issue is that the movement of my will should coincide with the judgment of my intellect, in which I am convinced of the gracious imputation of God. So, although faith in its final ramification is a conviction of the intellect, yet it would not have any significance if the direction of my entire life were not expressed in that conviction. My heart must concur that God declares me to be righteous in Christ, and in the conviction that God does that every longing of my heart must participate. Only so does it become a whole-hearted conviction by which the imprint of the honor of God is not only impressed into my intellect but into the whole of my consciousness.
It is evident already in the manner in which the defenders of the first opinion express themselves that they really do not exclude the will. They say, for example, that believing is being persuaded, and that this being persuaded is the essence of faith that the various forms of faith have in common. But however much being persuaded occurs in the intellect, everyone still understands that this does not happen without the will. That is expressed [in Dutch] in the preposition over- [in overreding, “persuade”]. There are no logical grounds that God advances to persuade me. Rather, He places His testimony before me and by the Holy Spirit inclines my consciousness to hold that testimony to be true in a wholehearted manner.
67. Of how many parts does saving faith consist?
Of three parts: knowledge, assent, and trust.
68. How is this knowledge of faith to be viewed?
a)As far as its nature is concerned, it is a spiritual knowledge that must be distinguished as such from the knowledge of historical faith. The believer possesses a different knowledge of truths than someone who accepts them as true merely historically. This has already been discussed sufficiently above.
b)As far as its object is concerned it focuses on the Mediator of the covenant of grace. One could perhaps think that the object should be taken more broadly. For one thing, saving faith surely accepts the testimonies of God concerning the satisfaction obtained by the Mediator, as Paul expresses it [cf., e.g., Rom 10:9], to believe in God who has raised Christ from the dead. But everyone recognizes that this amounts to the same thing. This testimony of God is a testimony concerning the Mediator, so that ultimately our faith still focuses on Him as its object. On the other hand, one could say that the sinner must surely believe much more than what is connected with the Mediator. He will have to express sincere faith and be wholeheartedly convinced of the truth of the declaration of God concerning his own lost condition. So here is an object for his faith that is not the Mediator.
We answer here as follows: Such faith is indeed prerequisite to saving faith, and without accepting the testimony of God concerning his lost condition, no one can exercise true faith. Still, it is less correct to reckon all this to the essence of saving faith itself. It precedes and accompanies it, but does not in the strict sense belong to it. It is necessary to hold to this, since otherwise one would have the sinner look too much within and at himself just when he needs to look away from himself and to Christ. We say, therefore, that saving faith has the Mediator as object, and its knowledge consists in knowing the Mediator in the broadest sense of the word.
Here there must now be noted the connection that exists between faith as accepting as true the testimony of God in a broader sense, and faith as accepting as true the testimony of God regarding Christ, thus in a narrower sense. This connection is very close. If we say that Scripture is the object of faith in the first sense and Christ, as mediator, in the second sense, then we can express the connection in this way: The Mediator is the principal content of Scripture; the entire Scripture is so arranged as to bring the image of the Mediator before our eyes. Someone who believes savingly therefore no longer regards Scripture as a loose amalgamation of parts that he should accept piecemeal without an inner connection. This is the Roman Catholic mechanistic understanding of faith. A Roman Catholic believes in bits and pieces, time and again, as much as the church dispenses to him and approves as advisable for him. The genuine believer takes the whole of Scripture as a living organism produced by the Holy Spirit to present Christ to him. On every page of Scripture, he finds traits and traces of the Mediator. He regards each declaration of God in this light. One should purpose to grasp this close connection vividly—that we recognize and know nothing of Christ other than through and from Scripture. Thus, there are not two objects of our faith standing independently next to each other. It is not Scripture plus Christ, but Christ in Scripture, and Scripture in its center, Christ. While on the one hand, for the eye of faith, the word of Scripture changes imperceptibly into the image of a person, on the other hand that person bears completely the traits of a word, for we do not yet behold Him in concrete form but know Him only from the Word. Once we see Him Scripture will thereby become superfluous, and He Himself in His visible appearance will be the object of our beholding. But for the present we still have the Scriptures concerning Him and Him in the Scriptures. That is already expressed by the designation “Word of God.” The Mediator is the eternal and eternally abiding Word. Scripture is also Word of God, but then a Word appearing in time and passing away again with time. For us, both are inseparably connected.
c)The extent of this knowledge of saving faith can differ considerably. For one it can be very great, very slight for another. All considerations being equal, however, one can say that a richer degree of knowledge will lead to a richer development in the life of faith, while limited knowledge will always have to hinder the development of that life.
d)The knowledge of saving faith is not a bare cognition of things that are its object. If we were to posit this, we would also have to say that knowledge is prerequisite for and not part of faith. But we do not say this. According to our view, in knowledge the essence, the uniqueness, of faith already emerges. We have seen above that knowledge of a thing always includes awareness of its reality. By knowing something we come into contact with it as with a reality. When now in this way one comes into contact with the gospel concerning the Mediator as with a reality, then the activity of the principle of faith already lurks there—still imperfectly, but at the same time unmistakably. Our self-righteous heart does not want it to be that salvation will be obtained in this way. It still has in itself by nature, its sinfulness notwithstanding, an impulse to be something before God. It will not allow itself to be persuaded of the reality of the free imputation of the merits of the Mediator. That God would declare the sinner righteous without his own help seems foolishness to the natural man. Even where the Holy Spirit has initially enlightened the eye of the soul, and thus deep knowledge of sin is present, there still can be a struggle because of the natural aversion that asserts itself against such a procedure of God. Thus, before there is present in the sinner such knowledge of faith that makes the grace of God in Christ appear to him as an absolute reality, he must be dissuaded of his own righteousness. Thus, one sees how already in the knowledge or in the assent of faith—for these may not be separated here—there is an element of the true essence of faith. This knowledge is being persuaded of something against which the natural mind testifies with all the force of its works-holiness. In historical faith, knowledge and assent naturally do not have this significance, for they are thoroughly superficial and reside merely in the intellect, without a personal, living interest being involved. Because it occurs apart from this interest and the ignorant sinner does not concern himself with his right standing before God, it is relatively easy for him to agree that God in Christ forgives the sinner and deals with him according to grace. But as soon as his right standing before God becomes a personal question, he will also be much more involved to know this action of grace as a reality. And only by the grace of the Holy Spirit will he be able to possess this knowledge of saving faith.
e)Furthermore, as far as the uniqueness of the object known is concerned, saving faith is something invisible in the absolute sense, something that cannot be seen. That God for Christ’s sake manifests grace, that He transferred our sins to Christ and transferred the righteousness of Christ to us, are invisible things that we can believe only because of God’s testimony. Thus it is not only the case that in the covenant of grace God takes away the meriting of salvation and obliges man to look away from himself and to rest entirely in the work of God, but the sinner must also accept God’s Word that He in fact maintains this way of salvation with him. He cannot observe God and look into the depth of His divine consciousness. Even if he had been able to see Christ suffering on the cross with his own eyes, apart from faith he would still not be able to see that this suffering was a suffering that He bore as mediator for the sins of His people, a suffering as surety. Even then, everything would ultimately still come down to the testimony of God concerning the meaning of those sorrows. Therefore, for this faith man from the outset must bring his consciousness captive under the authority of God. Already in the initial stage, he must entrust himself unconditionally to God with no other certainty than that God cannot lie. The one who receives the Mediator by faith has sealed that God is truthful. This aspect of faith, too, is in all respects normal. The principle of the first sinful act was unbelief and made God a liar. In the same way, the principle of the act of faith that saves and justifies is a principle of faith by which, without reservation, we acknowledge the truthfulness of God in a matter that concerns us personally and in which our highest interests are at stake.
f)Regarding the activity of this knowledge of faith, it is twofold: one more active, and one more passive or receptive. The following is meant by this distinction. The genuine believer not only approves of the truth of God when, without his action, it is placed before his consciousness, but he is also actively engaged with that truth, to probe it, to be acquainted with it, to draw it into his consciousness. The knowledge of faith is effective knowledge. Although it is true that with every new acquaintance with the content of truth the believer must once again bow before the convincing power of that kingly word of his God and thus once again maintain the receptive character of faith, this still does not in any respect hinder the other side from constantly revealing itself. Faith seeks out the truth to which it wills to submit. It is not something that sits silently, not something passive, not a lifeless mirror that catches what is placed before it, but a stream of living water, an active consciousness incessantly in motion to embrace the truth. It is completely impossible to understand the nature of saving faith correctly if we do not keep this difference in mind. By faith a union of the soul with the Mediator arises in the consciousness. To believe, then, is not to have a conviction concerning the Mediator as a third party based on the testimony of God, but to be engaged with the Mediator Himself as a living person, to go to Him, to take in His image as it is delineated by Scripture, and to feast on beholding Him—acts that are all of an active nature. By these two poles we can recognize faith, and for each healthy, well-developed faith, they both must be present. If someone says that he submits believingly to the testimony concerning the Mediator and yet is not actively engaged with the Mediator, his faith cannot be genuine. We will not merely have read to us a document that acquits us of terrible punishments and gives us the right to great possessions, but we will want to have it in our hands—to touch it and reread it. Likewise, someone who believes in the Mediator will not be satisfied with having that Mediator depicted by someone else. He will, as it were, have Him in his hands, inspect and examine Him, actively embrace Him, familiarize himself with Him in all respects.
Therefore, one can best distinguish bare historical faith from saving faith by keeping in mind this twofold character of faith. Idle assent, too indifferent to offer resistance, can be found sufficiently with the ignorant. Also, with such people it is not uncommon to encounter a theoretical interest in and search for the truth. But the unity of these two characteristics—active search for the truth and passive submission at every point to the overpowering impact of the truth—is a mark of true, saving faith. This two-sided character, moreover, is not limited to the knowledge of faith but pervades all the activities of faith. We will meet this again in trust. It also comes out in the images Scripture uses to depict faith. “Accepting” is more an expression for faith as receptive; “hungering and thirsting” are images referring more to the outgoing activity of faith.
69. Does trust also belong to the essence of saving faith?
Yes, as the definition in our [Heidelberg] Catechism 21 says, it is an assured confidence (certa fiducia) that not only to others, but to me also, remission of sin, everlasting righteousness, and salvation are given by God.
70. Show from Scripture that this is so.
In Ephesians 3:12 the apostle says, “In whom [that is, in Christ Jesus] we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him.” Hebrews also speaks of the “boldness” of faith (Heb 4:12), of a plērophoria of hope in connection with faith (Heb 6:11–12); “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (en plērophoria pisteōs; Heb 10:22). Plērophoria really means “full-spiritedness.” Further, there is a boast of faith (Rom 5:11; cf. also Matt 14:31–32, where Peter’s lack of confidence is called “little faith” by the Lord; Luke 8:25; Jas 1:3). In Galatians 2:20 the apostle describes the object of his faith as “the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
71. Should we understand this trust of faith as an intellectual conviction that may be summarized in the sentence: “I am justified before God?”
No; although this could seem so according to our Catechism, it is nonetheless not so. It cannot be, for the reason that one then comes into conflict with the teaching of Scripture that says that justification is by faith. According to this conception, justification would precede faith. Faith would be nothing other than the conviction by which we become informed subjectively of objective justification. Further, it would follow from this that someone lacking this firm conviction cannot possess the trust of faith. How few are there who perceive such conviction in themselves and still exhibit all the marks of possessing and exercising the genuine trust of faith?
72. What has occasioned conceiving of the trust of faith in this sense?
a)All those who teach a doctrine of eternal justification must certainly end up forming this conception of the nature of faith. Justification is then complete from eternity, and nothing remains for faith other than accepting it. Faith is then understood as the firm assurance that one is justified in Christ from eternity. Connected with this is when theologians such as Comrie and Holtzius, who taught an eternal justification, also put greater emphasis on the intellectual character of faith and thought that every activity of the will should be excluded. This was demanded by their entire system. However, in treating the doctrine of justification we will see how speaking of an eternal justification completely conflicts with the conception of Scripture. Consequently, the correlate of this misconception, this peculiar one-sided view of faith as trust, must be abandoned.
b)The Reformers also put great emphasis on faith as consciousness of assurance. Most of them maintained that fiducia was the essence, the heart of the act of faith, that this firm assurance, “I am justified,” was in fact what God demanded of the sinner. On this point their statements are very strong. For example, Calvin says, “We will obtain the right definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and certain knowledge of God’s good pleasure toward us”; “that we not only judge that the promises of mercy that God offers are true apart from us but not with regard to us, but rather that we make them ours by embracing them inwardly”; “in a word, only he is a true believer who, being fully convinced that God is a gracious and kind Father to him, hopes all things from His kindness; only he who affirms the promises of divine favor toward himself has an undoubted expectation of salvation” [Institutes, 3.2.7, 16]. Compare also the definition of our [Heidelberg] Catechism.
How did the Reformers arrive at this conception? In order to understand this we need to realize what Rome had taught the people. With all the aids at its disposal it had kept the conscience in fear and a state of tension and denied in principle the possibility of absolute assurance concerning one’s state of justification. The standing of sinners before God goes up and down with their works. The normal, desired situation is that one lives in constant anxiety, in continual fear for his salvation. However, this anxiety and fear have essentially a character of salvation by works. They accompany the consciousness that one must earn salvation and that it will never be complete. The Reformers protested against that unrest of salvation by works. They could not do this better than by putting the emphasis on calm, unshakable trust as the foremost part of faith. Whoever exercises this trust stands at the furthest possible distance from Rome’s error. This is why they brought rest to the consciences of people and insisted that one must hold firmly to the conviction of forgiveness in Christ. Thus, the truth is that the Reformers placed in the foreground that aspect of faith that was useful to them for their polemic against Rome. In doing that, however, they did not want to deny in the least that faith as trust also had other sides. And one may never understand their description of faith other than as a protest against the uncertainty resulting from salvation by works. There is an uncertainty, a lack in faith as trust that rests directly on principles of self-righteousness. There is also a lack of assurance that can have other causes. Only the former is a criterion for the weakness of faith. The latter, on the other hand, is a product of misunderstanding and ignorance.
One now sees that the motive by which the Reformers were led when they sought the essence of faith in fiducia was entirely different than that by which Comrie, et al., were led. The line Calvin-Voetius-Comrie can certainly be drawn formally, but on their differing points differing principles were also at work.
73. To what extent can we say that trust belongs to the essence of faith?
Faith must show in all its parts and aspects that distinctive quality that causes us to renounce ourselves and to rely on the work of the Mediator. Now, it is easy to see that many doubts are possible concerning the application of the work of the Mediator to myself that flow directly from a salvation-by-works tendency of the soul. If someone says, “Christ certainly died for sinners but not for such a great sinner as I am; my unrighteousness is too great; I may not apply His merits to me,” then one senses that here a lack of trust comes to light—in other words, that someone who speaks like this still has to learn to abandon himself completely and has to learn to surrender himself to Christ. On the contrary, if someone can silence all such whisperings and has a firm trust that his sins do not have to stand in the way—if he may also triumph over this last vestige of self-trust and, freed from his own fears and cares, may lay down to rest in Christ—then no one will be able to deny that here the power of faith is manifested. Thus, there is a point where trust and faith merge, where distrust, unbelief, and lack of assurance is lack of faith. And one may safely determine that there is no saving faith where this assured trust is totally lacking.
Usually, a twofold distinction is made between (1) trust that takes refuge, and (2) assured trust. What is meant with the first is turning to and being occupied with the Mediator as meeting one’s needs; with the second, the posture of the soul that finds stability and certainty in (1). We need, however, to say that there is no saving faith without a certain measure of trust in both senses. The believer who is occupied with Christ and pleads His merits for himself cannot do this without more or less relying on them and drawing security from them. It does not matter whether he brings that to his consciousness; it is still present. And one will be able to convince a person of this presence if one poses the question to him: “If at this moment Christ as mediator vanishes, would your anxiety and lack of certainty then become greater or not?” To that even the least trusting person will have to answer, “Much greater.” But with that answer is also granted that a certain measure of assured trust was present that had not entered the consciousness. If it were possible for someone to be occupied with the Mediator and behold His image without that being accompanied by minimal assurance and confirmation, then we would have to say that person does not have saving faith. But such a case cannot occur. The awakened sinner lays hold of the Mediator and is occupied with Him because he is constrained to do that by the longing of his soul for certainty. He needs to find security somewhere, for man cannot exist without certainty or he will fall into despair. Therefore, where utter despair is not present and at the same time man no longer trusts in himself, trust in the Mediator must be in him.
74. Can one also misuse the proposition that in all saving faith there is a certain degree of assured trust?
Yes, this proposition has sometimes been misused in an antinomian sense. If someone is settled in the certainty of “I am saved” and, at the same time, lives in indifference about all other things, then this would be sheer antinomianism. Therefore, two things must be pointed out, both of which are of the greatest importance:
a)That also in the trust of faith the honor of God must impel us. For the sincere believer it is never only a matter of the salvation of his soul in a hedonistic sense. If that were the case, a sense of assurance must lead to passivity. But this should not be. The believer is under the impact of having violated God’s law, of missing the mark concerning this law, of everything coming down to fulfilling the law. If now he arrives at the assured trust that the merits of Christ will be applied to him, too, then it is an assurance that not only includes “I am safe” but that simultaneously includes “I stand righteous before God.” Thereby the root of all antinomianism is cut off. The confident trust that leads to antinomianism is self-deception, not the trust of saving faith.
b)The trust of faith has two sides: a more active and outgoing and a more receptive side. Faith is not only insistent on the assurance that it has security in Christ, but it also seeks that security, relies on it, and rests in it. By this, too, that genuine faith that would lead to false passivity is excluded.
75. What is the object of this trust of faith?
Again, the Mediator, in the most extensive sense of the word, or “the Mediator as ordained by God in His mediatorial work for the salvation of lost sinners and as presented for that end in the promise of the gospel” (Owen [in The Doctrine of Justification by Faith, chapter 1]).
76. Demonstrate that in this is encompassed everything that one is otherwise accustomed to propose as the object of this trust.
a)Many say that the object of this trust is the grace, love, and mercy of God. So, as seen above, Calvin and the Reformers in general. This was also connected with their reaction against the error of Rome. The mercy of God had almost completely disappeared from Rome’s horizon. It was only about works and merits. Therefore, it was necessary to stress that the sinner needs to believe that there is grace and forgiveness with God. On the other hand, however, one may never forget that this grace is possible only in Christ. Faith, therefore, does not trust in God’s mercy in general, as a mercy that as such can simply overlook sins, but on God’s mercy as a mercy such that it arranges for a ransom—thus on the mercy that is made possible by Christ’s merits.
b)Others say that the righteousness of the Mediator is the object of our trust. This, too, is somewhat one-sided. For, (1) the righteousness of the Mediator must be imputed and granted to us by an act of God’s grace. Thus, if our trust of faith did not include the grace of God, it would be an unfounded or premature trust. (2) The righteousness of the Mediator is not all there is to the Mediator. The believer abandons himself to the Mediator totally and under every aspect, since He has been given to us by the Father for wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and complete redemption [cf. 1 Cor 1:30].
c)Still others say that the promises are the object of faith. In a certain sense, that is true. One should note, however, that according to the ordering of God, faith is not directed to ideas but to a living person, in whom those promises are “yes” and “amen” [2 Cor 1:20]. The promises only have the purpose of presenting the living Mediator before us in His true stature. Compare what is said above concerning the connection between Scripture and Christ.
77. How is this trust of faith worked in the sinner?
Our [Heidelberg] Catechism [21] says, “Which the Holy Spirit works in my heart by the preaching of the gospel.” Two things are present here:
a)Faith, the principle of which is given in regeneration, does not come to outward expression other than by contact with the preached gospel. The gospel is not only the object on which it focuses, but also the instrument by which it is put into operation.
b)Beside this mediate operation of the gospel, however, there is also an immediate working of the Holy Spirit in the heart, by which the sinner is moved to put his trust in the gospel. This trust of faith always has the character more or less of something simple, unreasoned. One will not be brought to it by a syllogism, but the Holy Spirit works in us such that we cannot do otherwise than trust the Mediator. There will always remain an element here that cannot be made entirely clear by reasoning.
One can, however, indicate somewhat further the different steps along which the believer comes to this trust. It will appear that the trust of faith is not only the last and most complete expression of faith, but also that it accompanies the activity of faith from the beginning—in other words, that it is not trusting “I am justified,” for the latter can only be construed as the ripest fruit of faith.
a)Before anything else one must see the sinner as convinced of being worthy of condemnation and of being lost.
b)The sinner convinced of this receives spiritual insight into the fitness of the Mediator to meet his needs.
c)In connection with this, the initial trust of faith develops, for the thought, “There is a mediator,” cannot but produce a certain degree of trust and keep from utter despair.
d)In being engaged further with that mediator, the sinner is placed increasingly in the situation of those to whom He is commended by the promises of the gospel. The promises of God are that for such who are so disposed, Christ is intended. The sinner recognizes his own image in the sinner so portrayed; in the Mediator, he recognizes the counterpart of his needs. All this does not so much occur by logical reasoning as by an immediate empathy with the truth of Scripture.
e)In this way, the general promises of God contained in Scripture are in a certain sense made personal for the believer, so that for him it is as if God came to him personally with the Mediator. A personal relationship develops between him and the Mediator. It is no longer a matter of truths about God and concerning the Mediator with which he engages speculatively, but it is the living God and the living Mediator Himself before whom he is placed.
f)Placed in this personal relationship, the sinner cannot neglect to make firm his trust on what is thus addressed to him by God in Christ. Lack of all assurance would be distrust. The way of salvation in which the glorification of God shines has his approval so fully that he accepts it completely and in trust assents to the promises, saying, “Lord, it is so, just as you say.”
From all this it is evident that there are various things with which the trust of faith is linked: the urgent need of the sinner, the fitness of the Mediator, a personal relationship with God. But behind and above all these things is the Holy Spirit, who produces the trust of faith in a way that can never be entirely explained.
78. Does the trust of faith focus on the promise, “God has loved you personally”?
This is certainly involved in the trusting activity of faith. That is, if a believer undertakes to reason about his trust, he will have to come to the conclusion that by trusting he is also bound to accept such a promise. But one cannot claim that this belongs to the essence of faith itself. The conclusion follows not so much from an analysis of the object of faith itself as from a comparison of it with other known truths. Election is not the object of saving faith. If there were no election and God would save all sinners, then the character of saving faith could nonetheless be the same. All that the sinner must have as the ground of his trust is that there is a special mercy in God, a love of good pleasure distinguished from His love of benevolence. That certainly belongs to the object of the trust of faith. The believer does not trust in God’s benevolence in general, for he perceives that despite this he could perish but that a wonderful, wholly unique love for sinners was necessary to ordain the Mediator. However, whether this love is extended to many, to few, or to all is a consideration with which the believer is not concerned in the first place.
This is not to deny that there is also an activity of faith with regard to election. In this, too, the believer learns to glorify God’s free grace that he is saved and not others. This, too, is an acknowledgment of faith, inasmuch as it compels him to deny every ground of salvation in himself. But it is not the heart of justifying faith.
Similarly, a judgment needs to be made about the other question much discussed by theologians: whether it belongs to the essence of faith that Christ died for me personally, or if this is to be considered as a consequence of faith. The answer given was that it does not belong to what faith consciously conceives that Christ died for me personally in distinction from dying for A or B; certainly, on the other hand, it was answered, there was a personal reckoning in the death of Christ that was not a matter of course but flowed from the free love of God. And, finally, also involved in the trust of faith is that this particular reckoning also applied to me.
79. What is understood by the “syllogism of faith”?
The syllogism of faith, also called the actus reflexus [reflexive act], consists in this reasoning:
a)Major premise—God has promised salvation to all believers.
b)Minor premise—I am a genuine believer.
c)Conclusion—Therefore, I can count on my salvation, certainly and firmly.
Scripture mentions this actus reflexus frequently. For example, “Examine yourselves, whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Or do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless somehow you are rejected” (2 Cor 13:5).
Now, many thought that the trust of faith was only obtained by this syllogism and that what our [Heidelberg] Catechism [21] means by its “assured trust,” and what the Reformers mean by trust, is nothing other than the conclusion of this reasoning. However, one senses why this cannot be and also cannot be meant by the Reformers or our Catechism. The object of faith cannot be some mode or the condition of our soul, but only the testimony of God. So, if I base my trust on the presence of faith within my own soul, then this would involve trust itself falling outside faith. There is then: (a) faith, and (b) trust, resting in the fact that I have faith. My trust, therefore, is not the trust of faith (trust exercised by faith), but trust in the presence of faith. We therefore say:
a)This actus reflexus is not something that is joined with faith and follows on faith but does not belong to faith itself.
b)On the basis of Scripture, our Catechism and the Reformers have taught that there is an assurance that does not rest on reasoning about faith but flows directly from faith, an actus directus [direct act] of faith.
c)This direct assurance is involved in the essence of faith, not merely in its well-being. That is, there is no saving faith in which it could be entirely lacking. In a great many instances, the believer himself would recoil from forthrightly professing what is already involved in his trust. Therefore, one may not make the confidence of faith, in order to confirm it as certain, the distinguishing mark of faith. The negative criterion is better.
80. Is this trust of faith the bare recognition that there is no salvation other than in Christ the Mediator?
No, this was the contention of the Remonstrants, who yet again made faith so defined into a work that man must perform. The recognition that salvation lies in Christ alone is indeed included in faith, but is only a part of it. Rather, the trust of faith consists in this: that I become personally engaged with this conviction. If it remained with that conviction, saving faith would not be present.
81. Is the trust of faith directed to testimony about the Mediator, or to the living Mediator Himself?
The latter, although that does not exclude the former. We ought to consider the matter as follows: The entire mediatorial work of Christ is the object of faith. Although a part of this work as mediator is now already in the past and can never be repeated, from that it may nonetheless not be inferred that we put our trust in an abstract fact. The same Mediator, who fulfilled this work in the past, also lives now to keep it in lasting memory and to make it effective by His intercession. Christ as the heavenly high priest embodies at the same time the suffering Christ—that is, all the fruits of His sufferings are at His disposal. And saving faith is focused on this Christ. God’s ordaining is such that trusting in the work of the Mediator and trusting in the person of the Mediator may not be separated. The former without the latter is of no value at all. And they are therefore so closely connected that, through this personal relationship to the Mediator in which the believer is placed, his awareness would be strengthened that he has everything from the Mediator. The unity in life of mystical union and the consciousness of that unity in the personal trust of faith thus both serve the same end, namely, to give us a deeper impression of imputation by free grace.
82. Does the essence of faith then consist in love for the Mediator?
To maintain this would bring us onto Roman Catholic terrain, because, as has already been noted, for Rome love is seen as the “form” of faith—that is, love is what gives faith its distinguishing character. Still, there are some who have called faith an unfailing form of love (cf. the enumeration above of the acts of faith in Witsius). There is evidently a difference in principle between believing and loving. It is true that saving trust in the Mediator may not be conceived of without it being accompanied by love for Him. But this does not at all prove that faith and love must be regarded as identical. The difference is this: that love is an act by which I devote myself to the beloved object, while faith, conversely, resides in an appropriation of the object of my faith for myself. In faith I seek for myself a certainty on which I can live before God, and so in faith there is always an element of personal interest. In love, on the other hand, I am not inquiring after such a personal interest. This does not mean that, in a selfish manner, saving faith is only concerned with its own salvation. Rather, it has this distinctive quality: that in the work of salvation, too, its concern before everything else is the glory of God, so that the faith of Abraham can be portrayed as giving glory to God (Rom 4:20). But this seeking the glory of God for my person and by my person is precisely the reason why I exercise faith in the Mediator. In order that the glory of God may shine in my personal relationship to God, I take hold of the Mediator as the means established by God to that end and put my trust in Him. Out of the personal relationship of faith in which I have hereby been placed to Him, love naturally develops as a fruit of faith. In the same way, all the other Christian virtues are resident in faith as in a root. But they do not contribute to the formal perfecting of faith, although in retrospect they can serve as grounds for recognizing the genuineness of faith.
83. Is faith a deed, a work?
Yes. Although one can speak of faith as a disposition or as a principle that has not yet developed, faith is usually presented as an activity of the soul. But in the justification of a sinner, faith, although an act, does not occur in the quality of a deed or work. The Remonstrants maintained the latter. The Reformed say: In no respect does faith as a deed have the power to justify us, for like all the deeds of the human soul before death, it is defiled by sin and itself has need of the righteousness of the Mediator. The connection in which it stands to justification can only be indicated further in discussing the latter.
84. Who is the author of faith?
Mentioned as such is:
a)God. It is the Father who draws the sinner to Christ (John 6:44). For the sake of Christ it is given by grace not only to believe in Him but also to suffer for Him (Phil 1:29). Ephesians 2:8 says expressly, “By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourself; it is God’s gift.” Although one may think that “this” (touto) does not refer to “faith,” which is certainly possible, in any case it must have reference to all that precedes—namely, to “by grace you have been saved through faith,” whereby faith is obviously included. In Colossians 2:12 mention is made of “the faith of the working of God.”
b)Further, God the Holy Spirit. According to 1 Corinthians 12:3, no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, therefore, is called, “the Spirit of faith” (2 Cor 4:13).
85. How is this faith effected—mediately or immediately?
As to its principle, immediately in regeneration; as to its outward expression, in part immediately in the direct act of conversion, in part also mediately through the preaching of the gospel. Our [Heidelberg] Catechism [21] alludes to the latter when it says that faith is worked in the heart by the preaching of the gospel.
86. Will it not do to have faith originate with the sinner in a completely mediate manner?
No, this is Pelagian or semi-Pelagian. One must then grant to the natural or at least unregenerate man the capacities for an expression of life such as believing is.
87. What is the difference between a “seed of faith” and a “disposition of faith”?
The former is given in regeneration, and thus is faith as an undeveloped potentiality. A disposition, on the other hand, is the inclination developed by the activity of faith that furthermore now underlies this activity. From this it follows that for adults, when they are regenerated, the principle or the seed of faith also immediately becomes a disposition of faith. For children it is otherwise. Children who die before years of discretion and are children of the covenant are regarded as having also received the seed of faith with regeneration. For them, however, one can hardly speak of a disposition (habitus), although some theologians do use this terminology. Those who express themselves more accurately speak of a seed of faith (semen fidei).