RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Fagnani Faith
his college was as an administrator, being distinguished for his business capacity and good sense, his urbanity and patience, his entire unselfishness, his reliability, his interest in individuals, his extraordinary skill in handling men, and his power to i>ring things to pass, so under him the institution throve greatly. He edited the memoirs of President Finney (New York, 1876), and the latter's Systematic Theology (Oberlin, 1878) . His other publications include Moral Philosophy; or, The Science of Obligation (New York, 1869); Woman's Right to the Ballot (1870; an affirmative statement); Oberlin, the Colony and the College (Oberlin, 1883) ; Elements of Theology, Natural and Revealed (1892). Bibliography: A. T. Swing, Life of James Harris Fairchild, New York, 1907.
FAITH.
I. The New Testament Conception. The Background (§1). The Teaching of Jesus (§ 2). Paul (§ 3). II. The Doctrine in Theology. Before the Reformation (§ 1). The Reformation and Modern Theology (§ 2). Faith in Systematic Theology (§ 3).
I. The New Testament Conception: Like every
New Testament conception, the idea of faith goes
to the Old Testament for the key to its meaning.
It was born when the political fortunes of Israel
entered on their decline. The division of the
kingdom and the increasing helpless-
i. The ness of a small state lying across the
Back- highway between Mesopotamia and
ground. Egypt conditioned its growth and character. It dealt with the future of the nation (Isa. vii. 9, viii. 17, xxvi. 1 sqq., xxviii. 16). As secular conditions grew less favorable, the mind of the representative Israelite, the prophet, stayed itself more and more on the living God, the base and spring of the nation's existence. Thus the idea of faith is inseparable from the development of prophetic monotheism. It is bound up with the unity and holiness of God and with the divine dominance over nature ind history.
Faith is man's part in the self-revelation of God, the method of which is vitally connected with its matter. God reveals himself through the experience and history of the chosen nation, and faith is man's assent to God's self-revelation in and through the nation's experience. By means of faith, the iivine control over nature and history in the interest of a distant but authoritative moral end is ritally apprehended so as to constitute the very pith and marrow of man's moral nature. It is an ict of trust, a bias and bent of the working will in nan's breast, a mood in which he waits steadfastly md joyously for God's assertion of his right of way in history (Isa. xxxviii. 16; Hab. hi. 17-19).
In prophetism a supreme conception is only half Dlocked out. The essential quality of faith is disposed, but its scope and method are not clearly ipprehended. Judaism did much to supplement the ffork of later prophetism (Jeremiah and Ezekiel). The subjective side of life was developed. The lation ceased to be the exclusive unit of thought md emotion, and the individual came, in some
degree, to his rights. In apocalyptics (the Book of Daniel, etc.) the divine control of history is wrought up into a splendid imaginative presentation that has vast power of appeal to the common consciousness. AH this helped to enrich the conception of faith. But with the gain came a heavy loss. The apocalyptist weakened the connection between the moral ideal and the forces of history, so that the moral end becomes more or less detached from the moral process.
It was the Savior who restored the sound connection between prophecy and history. The staple of his thought was the messianic 2. The idea, the national hope of Israel. Teaching But by fulfilling the ideal of the sufof Jesus, fering servant of the Lord he transcended Judaism. Of the two methods which his age proposed to him, the violence of the zealot and the dualistic pessimism of the apocalyptist (IV Esdras), he chose neither. He realized the kingdom of God in character, the character of man built upon the character, that is to say, the fatherhood of God. The kingdom of God is in the heart and under the eye of those who have eyes to see (Luke xvii. 21). The law of its realization is the law of service (Mark x. 45). The thought of force is expelled from the idea of God and the conception of man (Matt. xxvi. 52). The Savior carried the messianic idea out of politics (Matt. xxii. 21), but without weakening the hold of the moralizing will in God and man upon history. Saving faith, with Jesus as with the prophets, means an entire confidence in the divine control of nature and history. But by laying the foundations of eschatology in character, the Savior fulfilled the logic of prophetism and achieved spiritual and moral universalism without the loss of social vigor and organizing power (Sermon on the Mount; John xiii.-xvii.).
The work of Christ was summed up in the founding of a church or community devoted to his person and committed to his views and claims. This community was a new type. Its dominant mental quality was the open vision of the kingdom of God manifesting itself in ecstatic forms (the glossolalia, and I Cor. ii. 9 sqq.; see Ecstasy), not capable of translation into terms of the common good (I Cor. xiv. 20-25). But its fundamental quality was constructive prophecy (I Cor. xiv. 12), the ethical interpretation of contemporary society and history (" signs of the times ") in their bearing on the well-being and destiny of the Christian communities. The creed of these communities was the belief in the triumph of the crucified Savior (Acts ii.— vii.), expressing itself in the impassioned conviction of his resurrection and second coming. This faith was the cleansing element in life (Acts xv. 9), freeing the heart of the believer from fears regarding the inability or unwillingness of God to keep the promises made to the fathers (Acts iii. 20), and inspiring a joyous confidence in the end of the Christian's personal and social existence, which gave to the imitation of Jesus a saving and redemptive aspect (St. Stephen's dying prayer). This community is a messianic community. Dedication to the eternal, the common good, is the essence of its life (hapanta
Faith