[211] Chaps. ii. 1-5; iii. 1, 6; iv. 11, 16; vi.
[212] Chap. x. 19.
[213] =meta alêthinês kardias= (x. 22).
[214] =megan= (x. 21).
[215] =apo syneidêseôs ponêras= (x. 22).
[216] Lev. viii. 6, 30.
[217] Eph. v. 26.
[218] Chap. iii. 1.
[219] =eis paroxysmon= (x. 24).
[220] =ethos= (x. 25).
[221] Matt. xxiv. 27.
[222] =hekousiôs= (x. 26).
[223] Chap. x. 29.
[224] =pneuma tês charitos=.
[225] See chap. vi. 6.
[226] Chap. x. 26.
[227] =zêlos= (x. 27).
[228] Chap. x. 28.
[229] =paradeigmatizontas= (vi. 6).
[230] Chap. iii. 12.
[231] Chap. xii. 21.
[232] =empesein=.
[233] Deut. xxxii. 36.
[234] Chap. vi. 10.
[235] =phôtisthentes= (x. 32).
[236] =athlêsin=.
[237] =pollên=.
[238] =houtôs anastrephomenôn= (x. 33).
[239] Reading =heautous= (x. 34).
[240] =eis peripoiêsin= (x. 39).
[241] =mê apobalête=.
[242] =mikron hoson hoson= (x. 37).
[243] Reading =mou= (x. 38).
[244] =peripoiêsin= (x. 39).
[245] Dean Merivale, _Romans under the Empire_, chap. lix.
"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen. For therein the elders had witness borne to them. By faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that what is seen hath not been made out of things which do appear."--HEB. xi. 1-3 (R.V.).
It is often said that one of the greatest difficulties in the Epistle to the Hebrews is to discover any real connection of ideas between the author's general purpose in the previous discussion and the splendid record of faith in the eleventh chapter. The rhetorical connection is easy to trace. His utterances throughout have been incentives to confidence. "Let us hold fast our confession." "Let us draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace." "Show diligence unto the full assurance of hope." "Cast not away your boldness." Any of these exhortations would sufficiently describe the Apostle's practical aim from the beginning of the Epistle. But he has just cited the words of Habakkuk, and the prophet speaks of faith. How, then, does the prophet's declaration that the righteous man of God will escape death by his faith bear on the Apostle's arguments or help his strong appeals? The first verse of the eleventh chapter is the reply. Faith _is_ assurance, with emphasis on the verb.
But this is only a rhetorical connection, or at best a justification of the use the author has made of the prophet's words. Indeed, he has already in several places identified confidence with faith, and the opposite of confidence with unbelief. "Take heed lest there be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief; ... for we are become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end."[246] "They could not enter in because of unbelief; ... let us therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, that no man fall after the same example of disobedience."[247] "Be not sluggish, but imitators of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises."[248] "Having therefore boldness to enter into the holy place, ... let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith."[249]
Why, therefore, does the author formally state that faith is confidence? The difficulty is a real one. We must suppose that, when this Epistle was written, the word "faith" was already a well-known and almost technical term among Christians. We infer as much as this also from St. James's careful and stringent correction of abuses in the application of the word. It is unnecessary to say who was the first to perceive the vital importance of faith in the life and theology of Christianity. But in the preaching of St. Paul faith is trust in a personal Saviour, and trust is the condition and instrument of salvation. Faith, thus represented, is the opposite of works. Such a doctrine was liable to abuse, and has been abused to the utter subversion of morality on the one hand and to the extinction of all unselfish greatness of soul on the other. Not, most certainly, that St. Paul himself was one-sided in teaching or in character. To him Christ is a heavenly ideal: "The Lord is the Spirit;" and to him the believer is the spiritual man, who has the moral intellect of Christ.[250] But it must be confessed--and the history of the Church abundantly proves the truth of the statement--that the good news of eternal salvation on the sole condition of trust in Christ is one of the easiest of all true doctrines to be fatally abused. The Epistle of St. James and the Epistle to the Hebrews seem to have been written to meet this danger. The former represents faith as the inner life of the spirit, the fountain of all active goodness. "Faith, if it have not works, is dead in itself. Yea, a man will say, Thou hast faith, and I have works; show me thy faith apart from thy works, and I by my works will show thee my faith."[251] St. James contends against the earliest phases of Antinomianism. He reconciles faith and morality, and maintains that the highest morality springs out of faith. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews contends against legalism,--the proud, self-satisfied, indifferent, hard, slothful, contemptuous, cynical spirit, which is quite as truly and as often an abuse of the doctrine of salvation through faith. It is the terrible plague of those Churches which have never risen above individualism. When men are told that the whole of religion consists in securing the soul's eternal safety, and that this salvation is made sure once for all by a moment's trust in Christ, their after-life will harden into a worldliness, not gross and sensual, but pitiless and deadening. They will put on the garb of religious decorum; but the inner life will be eaten by the canker of covetousness and self-righteous pride. These are the men described in the sixth chapter of our Epistle, who have, after a fashion, repented and believed, but whose religion has no recuperative power, let alone the growth and richness of deep vitality.