Faith

Roberto Jimenez

Dianne Alaimo

REL 110RS

1 October 2015

FAITH

        In the Gospel of Mark, he talks about how people would come to Jesus expecting miracles in order to believe that he was the Son of God. But Mark tells us in his Gospel that without “Faith” there are no miracles. Mark also mentioned that many people came to believe in Jesus because they were healed by him or were witness of the healing them selves. The two main points that Mark mentions about Faith in his gospel, are that in order for a miracle to happen, faith was a prerequisite and without faith, there is no miracle. Even in todays’ world, people are expecting divine miracles in order to believe or strengthen their faith, others start to question what ever little faith they have in themselves, the world, and in God.

        Many believe that in order to have faith in God, a miracle or a divine revelation first needs to happen; otherwise just believing in God should be enough to earn an individual its way into heaven. But in the Gospels we are taught that faith comes from within an individual and that is when the healing and miracles take place.

        What is “Faith”? According to The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary:

        “Faith, in the Bible trust in, or reliance on, God who is himself trustworthy. The         New Testament (NT) and the Greek Old Testament (OT) express the         understanding of faith primarily with two terms (pistis, pisteuein), which are         related to the primary OT verb “to be true” or “be trustworthy” (‘aman). The OT         concept is considerably boarder that this term and its cognates, yet “aman remains         the most profound expression to describe faith in the OT” (p. 323).

        Faith is to actively trust and believe in God’s promise and is the verification of the many things that we do not get to see. There are many misconceptions about the notion that faith is an actual fact of believing many impossible propositions. Many believe that faith is something the Church has created in order to separate the righteous from the unrighteous or the wheat from the chaff, however, faith is what creates that uncomfortable, challenging, and very special relationship with God. Faith and trust in God is not something that the just came about in the past few years within the Christianity, faith can be traced back to the Old Testament. According to The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary:

        “It is important to recognize the context in which the concept of faith functions in         the OT. God stands at the center: it his initiative and faithfulness that descried by         the OT writer in creation, in the exodus event, in the covenant and the         subsequent history of Israel that allow his people to respond to his fidelity. Since         God’s promises are intended for his people, the emphasis is not focused primarily         on the individual, but on the relationship of he people of Israel” (p. 324).

        Other examples where we can find faith references in the Old Testament are in scriptures such as Genesis when God tells Abraham that Sarah will be conceiving at a very advance age and Abraham silently says to himself that it could not happen, but God tells him to have faith in Him. Also, God tests Abrahams’ faith later on when he is asked to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac and an Angel later tells Abraham to stop since he has proven his faith. In the Old Testament, faith is a gift from God to us, which awakens faith in us in order to have that personal and intimate relationship with God.

        As for the New Testament, trusting in God is having faith in Him, which is something the disciples fail to show over and over again. Both Gospels of Mark and Matthew talk about how the disciples were in a way ignorant to what Jesus was trying to teach them about the kingdom of God and of who He was as the Son of God. Faith in a way, takes the form of a movement in the New Testament and it also becomes the key step for an individuals’ heart to truthfully accept Jesus as the true Son of God. As stated by The HarperCollins Bible Dictionary, this are some of “the direct references of Jesus to the faith of his audience (Mark 2:5 “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘My son, your sins are forgiven”; Mark 5:34: “And he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease’”; Mark 10:52: “and Jesus said to him [the blind man], ‘Go your way; your faith has made you well’”).

        Faith has been challenged and discussed outside the church for many reason, some claim that faith is the same as hope and others go into more detail of what faith is by using a theologian approach to it. Paul Morrisey, in his article “Faith in Faith” examines the reasoning of Servais Pinckaers, OP, an influential twentieth-century Belgian moral theologian. Morrisey notes that Pinckares strongly feels that as a theologian and a scholar of the word of God, he is a believer before all else and “believes that starting with faith does not mean abandoning Catholic theology for a more Protestant theology (that is, separating faith and reason). Rather, he places himself in the tradition

Of St. Paul, St. Augustine, the Fathers of the Church, and Aquinas in placing the greatest importance on the Gospel, on Christ, on the New Law, on the action of the Holy Spirit, on grace, on the theological virtues, and on the gifts of the Holy Spirit” (Morrisey 90). Pinckares also mentions that the Christian ethic foundation is faith in Jesus Christ that can be found in the letters of Paul. According to Morrisey, Pinckares agrees greatly with St. Thomas Aquinas and mentions:

         “The teaching method St. Thomas proses to us, like that of the Fathers of the         Church, includes two movements. The first consists in planning faith in the         disciples as the root of the wisdom of God, placing in mind and heart as a         foundation and source of divine truth. Faith is the acceptance of the preaching of         the Cross…as a mystery hidden from human eyes. It is not contrary to reason but         rises above it and summons us to abandon our human reasoning in order to         receive this higher wisdom as a sheer gift from the Holy Spirit” (Morrisey 89).