7. The place of ' faith ' in the teaching of Jesus. I Literature.
568
FAITH
FAITH
1. Introductory.— Iv. the NT the term 'faith' has two main meanings, which may he distin- guished as active and passive senses, viz. : (1) belief, ' the frame of mind which relies on another,' and {2)JideHfi/, 'the frame of mind which can be relied on.' Of these the former is the predominant use, and is marked by a rich, copious, and distinctively Christian development.
The two senses — the active and p^ive — both logically .ind grammatically pass by an easy transition from one to the other, and are not always clearly distinguishable, or are actually com- bined (as, «.(;., in o( Tia-To/, 'the faithful,' applied to the Chris- tian fellowship). In the OT the guoii-active sense of 'trust,' «ith the nieaninic 'exhibit faithfulness or confidence,' is ex- pressed by the Hiphil I'DKrr (constr. mth 3 = 'to believe in reliance on or in,' followed by the object or ground of the belief ; with '' in a weaker sense, ' to believe,' the object here denoted by S being not so much that in which the confidence is reposed, as that on the (attesting) strength of which it is reposed in tlie absolute object). No noun-deri\ati\e from the Hiphil occurs in the OT (denoting ' f.iith ' as an acti\e principle). The substantive ni^CN 'firnmess,' 'steadfastness,' 'fidelity' (notice the passive form) is the nearest equivalent for 'fiutli'; but it alw.ivs occurs with the passive sense, with the possible exception of Hab 24 (' the just shall live bj/ his. faith ')." In this passiige the active principle of trust in God seems to be con- trasted sharply with arrogant self-sufficiency.
The Gr. -rte-r,; (T.iTTsio.), seems to have followed the reverse order of development (from acti\'e to passive). Here the pre- dominant meaning is active ' faith,' ' trust,' ' belief ' (in Classical usage, however, with the slightest possible association with religious ideas). The LX.X use of the word (T,»-T«=,n:?c.^ usually ; sometimes nj^! and n:,p.x) probably reacted upon the Hebrew, and on this supposition it is possible to explain the active sense which is certainly present in Rabbinical Hebrew, and wiiich may be seen in ti»e late Hebrew of Sirach (e.g, 4615). t In the Aramaic of the Targums the active sense is fixed in a substantive derived from the .^phel, KniJ^'.l (used in Gn 15'' of Abraham's /a (7A). Cf. the Syriac equivalent of rritrris in the NT
]Ln 1 Vi .CT1.
2. The idea of faith In the OT.— Faitli as an active religious principle is relatively far less pro- minent in Jthe (JT than in the NT. The solitary instance in which the active meaning certainly emerges in the Heb. .substantive njrax has already been referred to. But even the verb (i'^sn) is by no means common with a religious connotation. TrvLst or confidence in God and the unseen are, of course, essential to spiritual religion, and receive nifinifolil expression, especially in the Psalms (note tin- u-.' in this connexion of (?, Sy)^^ n?3 with God :i- "I'l'' ! r.ut,as Lightfootj has remarked, 'it is iu.li'.l :i rli^uacteristic token of tlie difference be- tween tlie two covenants, that under the Law the "fearol the Lord" holds very much tlie s.aiiie place as "faith in God," "faith in Christ," under the Gospel. Awe is the prominent idea in the earlier dispensation, trust in the later.'
The object of ' faith,' as expressed (with a re- ligious connotation) by the verb (psKn) in the OT, is sometimes the words or oomiuandiiients of God, or a particular word or wcrk of (I.hI, or the Divine revelation, or the Iii\i!i.- ju.- timers the prophets, or God Himself in lli- .^n I'iinch. Of tuis last usage the examples :iir tlir iiiii>t im- portant (Gn 15°, Ex W, Nu 14" 20'-, Dt P-, 2 K 17", 2 Ch 20-°, Ps 78'^, Jon 3»).§ Here the verb is construed Avith 3. The classical instance is, of course, Abraham's faith (Gn 15«), which, \vith a true instinct, has been recognized, both by Jewisli and Christian religious exegesis, as the supreme example of faith in its active exercise as a religious principle.
3. Later Jewish idea of « faith.'— In early l{ab- *Targ., however, pD"pn' pnonp Sy. Perhaps, as Light- foot {Galatians, p. 148) suggests, the 'transitional or double sense * should be recognized in the passa^.
f !» iriWa «ii«S ixfi^irH Tfe^iiTii! ; Heb. nm ^("nj in:iDK)3 (Strack).
t Op. cit. p. 1.51
§ Add to these the cases where it is construed absolutely : Ex 431, Is 79 2S10, Ps ll(il» ; and cf. Ps 2713,
binical and other Jewish literature the term for 'faith,' besides its Biblical meaning of 'faithful- ness,' also denotes active trust in God. This as a religious principle is emphatically praised by the Rabbis, and regarded by them as highly meri- torious. The classical example is, as has already been stated, the faith of Abraham (Gn 15"), wliicn became one of the commonplaces of theological dis- cussion not only in Rabbinical circles but also in the Hellenistic school of Alexandria,* while its occurrence in the NT is, of course, a familiar fact. The most instructive example in Rabbinical litera- ture is to be found in the early Midrashic work the Mekhilta (on Ex l'i*').t The passage runs as follows :