Chi-Keung Ng

Introduction

Most of the discussion in the literature concerning "faith" in the book of Hebrews centered around the following two questions:

(1) Was the author's concept of faith a Hellenistic one?

(2) Is there any difference between the faith in Hebrews and the faith in Paul's letter?

Discussion on 11:1

Concerning the first question, the opinion seem to be diversified. Graesser, as described by Betz, "holds that in Hebrews faith has become an abstract attitude without any personal relation to God or to Christ." According to Dennis, Graesser also regard faith in Hebrews as "much like the pistis that is treated among the virtues in Philo." On the other hand, as discussed in the article of Dennis, Dautzenberg suggested that the concept of faith in Hebrews as a natural "development of the Jewish notion of enduring fidelity rather than a later truncation of some supposed pristine notion of faith exemplified by a few passages within the major letters of Paul."

Most of these discussions based on the "definition of faith" in 11:1, especially the Greek word hypostasis (which translated as "substance" in KJV and "assurance" in RSV). According to Koester, in Philo and other Hellenistic writers, it normally means "an invisible, transcendent reality." Therefore, "faith is the reality of what is hoped for in the sense in which Jesus is the chatakter of the reality of the transcendent God in 1:3."

On the other hand, Betz, like Dautzenberg, argued that the concept of faith in Hebrews developed out of the OT, especially Isa. 28:16. He identified the foundation in Isa. 28:16 with hypostasis in 11:1 and concluded that "faith itself is a foundation, laid by God himself." Moreover, he also added a subjective dimension of faith: "faith is the subjective attitude of one 'who believes' (Isa. 28:16b)."

I think the question of whether the author was talking about a general concept of faith (which a non-Christian can also be said to possessed) depend also on the translation of 12:2. If "Jesus is the initiator and perfecter of faith", then "faith" can only be understood in the Christian context but if "Jesus is the initiator and perfecter of our faith", then faith can probably mean a more general phenomenon and "our faith" is just one particular.

Anyway, I do not see the significant of this discussion as we have already seen that whether the origin of the author's understanding of this word is from Greek philosophy or the OT, the meaning of "faith" is that it is an objective entity (whether it is called the foundation or the reality) on which hope based.

However, I have difficulty with this philosophical understanding of faith as an objective entity. What is the point the author include such abstract statement of faith here (remember that he is not writing a paper in philosophy or theology)? Maybe we are taking too seriously 11:1 as a "definition" or "description" of "faith." As noticed by Betz, this definition-like statements are also found in the OT Wisdom literature, e.g. "the fear of the Lord is hatred of evil (Prov. 8:13)" as well as in the praise of love in 1 Cor. 13. One cannot equate "the fear of the Lord" as "the hatred of evil" nor "love" as "patient". These are at best the corollaries of "the fear of the Lord" and of "love". I have the following suggestion on the interpretation of 11:1 which may seem a bit native (after all, the epistle was written to ordinary people not philosophers):

Since hope is formed when a person have faith in a promise, therefore, faith can natural be said of as the foundation or substance of hope. Moreover, faith allow one to "see the unseeable" (seeing him who is invisible 11:27).

If we take this understanding, the author was not writing to his audience a philosophical statement about faith but an encouragement or warning to them concerning faith. "If you have faith, it should produce in you a firm hope and you will see the thing not seen. It is just as the experience of those who came before us told us."

The understanding of faith from 11:3-12:3

On the other hand, it is possible to extract the author's understanding of faith from his long discussion following 11:2 as Culpepper and Wolterstorff did in their articles. However, our discussion in the following is different from these two authors.

11:3 is a strange statement: "we know because we believe." I am not sure how much this verse influenced Anselm's "faith seeking understanding" but it certainly shed some light on the "strength" of faith that the author had in mind. Faith is a jump beyond "reasons and experiences" (through which we have knowledge). Therefore, the kind of faith that the author was talking about is a very strong one that transcend the understanding and world view of the person (as in fact as already been suggested by the description: "seeing the unseeable"). There was a discussion in Wolterstorff's paper concerning whether "faith" should be held with full certainty, as suggested by Calvin, or tempered firmness, as suggested by Locke. I strongly suggest that the author of Hebrews would agree with Calvin.

Before we carry on, let us recall the view of Calvin and Locke on faith (as summarized in Wolterstorff's paper). For Calvin, faith "is the conviction that God is good to one based on one's trust in God's promise to one." and for Locke, "faith is the assent to any proposition, not made out by the deductions of Reason; but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God in some extraordinary way of communication."

Now, we go back to Hebrews. Following 11:3, our author called upon two witnesses from Genesis: Abel and Enoch. Note that in contrast with the faith formulas of both Calvin and Locke, there is no mention in the OT of anything that can be interpreted as promise nor proposition concerning these two Abel and Enoch and what our author considered as the results of their faiths have nothing to do with any saying of God at all. After these examples, the author gave an interesting remark: "But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

The first interesting thing about this remark is the saying "he that cometh to God must believe that he is." This saying is certain not for Christians because being a Christian, one should already believe that God exists. Nevertheless, it did apply for the generations of Abel and Enoch. Therefore, we find here the first expression of faith -- the primitive faith which is the basic and the necessity for God-human relationship: (1) believe that God exists; (2) believe that God reward those who diligently seek Him (which implies an absolute confidence and fearlessness before God).

The first witness that contains clear promise is that of Abraham (Noah's one is a bit ambiguous). In fact, there are three witnesses of Abraham and one of Sarah in this chapter. The three witnesses of Abraham all involved actions: went out, sojourned and offered up. The witness of Sarah did not include any action but she simply believed (we are not going to discuss the problem that in the account of Genesis, Sarah didn't really believe). The two actions: "going out" and "offering up" were in response to the direct commands of God. So, they can be regarded as expressed in terms of obedience. The action of sojourning and the trust of Sarah can be regarded as expressed in terms of perseverance. In fact, the two obedience faiths of Abraham are not quite the same. In the first case, the command involved a direct promise: "If you get out of your country..., I will make you into a great nation..." In the second case, no promise was given with the command. As commented by our author, here Abraham believed in an earlier promise of God, "That in Isaac shall thy seed be called" as well as the power of God to raise people from the dead. Therefore, there are at least two subtype here but we are not going to divide thing into such detail (which is difficult and may even be problematic).

The faith of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph is not very clear. Probably what is in the author's mind was that they believed in God's promise to Abraham concerning a great nation (as suggested by Culpepper). Therefore, these are examples of perseverance faith.

The faith of Moses' parent is again not clear. According to Gill, it is because his parent believed that God would deliver the Israelites out of Egypt (because of His promise to Abraham) and they have the conviction that Moses was the one through whom this delivery would happened (as they saw he was a proper child). If it is the case, then this is again a type of perseverance faith. However, this type is different from the above in the sense that it involved drastic action instead of just passive endurance and waiting. Again, we will not subdivide perseverance faith into subtype.

We regard the faith of Moses in 11:24 as the primitive one because the "reward" in 11:26 is related to the "rewarder" in 11:6 (note that Moses didn't meet God until he was in the desert and so this reward cannot come from any direct promise of God).

Similar 11:27 and 11:31 are example of primitive faith while 11:28, 11:29 and 11:30 are examples of perseverance faith. The witnesses of faith end with that of Jesus in 12:2.

Of course, these three "expressions of faith" in the above are not mutually exclusive. What we see in the above are just the essential one in each case. Moreover, as seen above, these three categories are rough ones and there is possibility for further subdivision. The reason that we talked about them is to show that the meaning of faith in Hebrews is probably boarder than what we originally thought (at least boarder than the understandings of Calvin and Locke). Faith was also used in a much boarder sense in this epistle than in Paul's writings. In fact, the faith in Paul's writing can be regarded as perseverance type (note that our use of perseverance is not the usual one and Sarah's faith as well as the faith of Moses' parent are in this category).