Faith

Note: Last Updated 7/9/2025.

Yevgeny Zamyatin:

Knowledge, self-confident knowledge, which is sure that it is faultless, is faith.

(Eugene Zamiatin, We, trans. Gregory Zilboorg, [New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1924], “Record Eleven,” p. 70.)

R. C. Sproul:

Christianity may contain mystery and paradox, but it is not irrational. If the leap of faith is a leap into the absurd, it is fatal. Scripture calls us to leap out of the darkness into the light—it is not a leap into the darkness where one hopes that God is waiting with a net.

(R. C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas, [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2000], p. 157.)

Henri Blocher:

The researcher can never formulate a hypothesis, conceive of an experiment, not to mention determine the result of that experiment, without building on a certain number of presuppositions. He needs some criteria to determine the end result. These are prior to the very formulation of his hypotheses. He does not leap into the void. He has a starting point, something he has previously established. Every system rests on a certain number of prior postulates or premises. At bottom, his is an act of faith.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 67-68.)

Note: See further, for example, Laws of Logic and Uniformity of Nature.

C. S. Lewis:

Belief, in this sense, seems to me to be assent to a proposition which we think so overwhelmingly probable that there is a psychological exclusion of doubt, though not a logical exclusion of dispute.

(C. S. Lewis, “On Obstinacy in Belief”; In: C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, [New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1960], p. 16.)

Note: See further: C. S. Lewis, “On Obstinacy in Belief”; In: C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, [New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1960], pp. 13-30.

Henri Blocher:

     Let us first of all correct a misconception concerning faith. When some contrast faith with rational processes, they see faith only as an emotional overflow from the “heart,” in the modern sense. This is a fundamental misunderstanding if we are talking about biblical faith. Holy Scripture never recommends a faith that would devolve into irrational escapism (“You’re so lucky to have faith!”). The apostle Paul specifically wrote: “I speak as to sensible people; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Corinthians 10:15 ESV). Biblical faith is based on evidence. Now, is faith itself “evidence” or is it more a “conviction based on evidence”? In the famous faith “theorem” found in Hebrews 11:1, translators opt for either one or the other of these two expressions. It is pointless to try to determine definitively here which is the best exegetical and philological reading. What is significant, though, is that demonstration or evidence is associated with faith. The association of the two is commonplace. Thus, in the book of Acts, it is written that the risen Lord presented himself to his disciples in multiple ways, and that he gave them “many convincing proofs that he was alive” (Acts 1:3 NIV). The apostle Paul, when exposing before the Athenian philosophers the role that Jesus will exercise as judge at the end of times, avers that God gave a “proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31 NIV). The notion that faith and evidence are fundamentally opposed is anything but biblical. Faith finds firm footing rather in duly attested facts.

     Misunderstandings have occurred on this score for two main reasons.

     The word “heart” has changed meaning (see chapter two) and is no longer employed today, in common usage, in the biblical sense. It signifies for our contemporaries the seat of the affections, and thus is opposed to reason: “Faith of the heart = irrational approach.” In the scriptural sense, as we will recall, the heart is first and foremost the organ of thought and desire, as if it were the very center of the individual, the seat of the will and reason. Heart is rightly translated as “common sense” or “understanding” when it occurs in the book of Proverbs or in the book of Hebrews, for this is the true meaning of the word! That the heart is the organ of faith is evident in the Bible; however, faith is not reducible to mere emotional impulse. Faith entails a completely rational comportment (where the will has a large part). The semantic evolution of the word heart has led some people astray.

     A second reason for opposing faith and reason, mentioned earlier as well, is the occurrence in the Bible of certain admonitions against the wisdom of this world as well as its claims to understanding (1 Corinthians 1-2). For quite a number of readers, in too great a rush to delve any deeper or adversely predisposed by the ambient anti-intellectual subculture within evangelicalism, the apostle Paul would oppose faith and knowledge per se, while condemning the use of reason. What Paul rejects rather is the corrupted intellect, functioning according to the philosophic principles of a humanity hostile to God and idolatrous of its own attainments. It is a mind led astray by pride that is opposed to the true wisdom of God. His wisdom alone makes us wise unto salvation, whereas the present age mocks it and treats it as “foolishness.” In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul states quite categorically: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2 NIV). It is not a question then of dismissing the intellect or of taking refuge in a kind of comforting escapism. No, faith is an act solidly grounded in the evidence which the Lord provides through the revelation he gives of himself and his plans.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 62-64.)

Cf. Henri Blocher:

     We must first of all stress the theme of the “heart” as the organ of thought. If we classify the texts of the Old Testament describing the functions attributed to the heart, those which are intellectual in nature are the most often evoked. The heart is the core of the thinking person. In the book of Proverbs, we often find the expression “who lacks understanding,” as one of the ways in which the fool is characterized. Literally, it is “who lacks heart.” The translation “understanding” is not inaccurate here, though the Hebrew word (there are two forms, lev and levav) is elsewhere translated “heart.” The notion has now evolved in meaning. For us, the heart is the seat of affections. This was not the case in previous times when it referred to courage (“Rodrigue, do you have heart?”). In the Bible, the heart is first the locus of the intellect, then of the will, and clearly later, that of emotion. In the Gospels, if the inspired authors who record the words of Jesus specify that loving God with “all your heart” is to love him with “all your mind” (for example in Mark 12:30), it is because in Greek, “heart” especially evoked “courage.” It was necessary to add the latter term related to the mind so that the Greek readers might fully understand. In Jeremiah 31:33, the prophet proclaims to the Israelites that God “will write his law on their hearts.” In Hebrews 10:16, which quotes this passage, after the word used to translate “heart” the inspired writer adds the Greek term for “understanding” (in 8:10, the reversed word order confirms their equivalence). This detail is significant, for the heart is not only the seat of understanding; it is also the locus of the will, while emotions, too, play a role. This fact precludes reason from being considered a separate entity. In a sense, we might say that there is no “reason” only people who reason. There are only “hearts,” or “interior beings,” who are complex networks of intellectual, volitional, and affective functions. Confronted with their world, confronted with the data of experience, humans endowed with a heart seek at once to distinguish objects and their components, to grasp them together, to seek the connections linking them. These are the two main functions of the mind and they are inseparable: to discern and to understand; namely, to identify necessary relationships. We comprehend and our reason is satisfied when we are not content to see that two things follow one another, but see why it was necessary that they follow one another.

(Henri Blocher, Faith & Reason, [Peabody: Hendrickson 2017], pp. 28-30.)

Note: Cf. Proverbs 9:4; 10:21; 15:21; 17:16; 18:2.

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria