Faith and God
I suppose I’ve never really properly understood the concept of faith as it is used within Christianity. I’m sure there are sophisticated definitions of the term but here I’m focusing on what I understand some to be saying. This may or may not be representative of the ‘correct’ understanding.
I’ll describe a scenario. A person goes before a preacher and says that they want their broken toe healed. The preacher claims that if they have ‘faith’ that God will work a miracle then their toe could be healed. Others in the room are encouraged to have faith as well. The problem I have is determining who exactly these individuals have ‘faith’ in. Is it faith in themselves that they have properly determined the prescriptions for a miracle and satisfied those prescriptions? If so then that appears to me to be nothing but false confidence. They are essentially saying “I don’t know if a miracle will occur but I will chose to conclude with confidence (’great faith’) that one will occur.”
Figure One
I’ve summarised this in Figure One. I’ve diagrammed the other possibility in Figure Two.
Figure Two
In Figure Two I’ve shown another understanding of the term ‘faith’, faith that God’s will will be done. It seems unusual to suggest that people require faith that a perfectly powerful being has the power to achieve it’s desired end. Another possibility is that faith is being used to mean faith that God has chosen to desire a given outcome, and outcome you also desire, but then it’s not at all clear how that could affect the outcome. If God desires it, it will be done regardless of the faith that humans have in it.
I am not saying that I have thought of all the possibilities, rather that I cannot see how some people who claim to have faith in God for a given miracle are not simply having faith that they’ve determined what they need to do in order for God to make a miracle and faith that they’ve done it or that they greatly desire an outcome and are to remain confident of it occurring in spite of the fact that they are really not sure.
I believe that some elements of Roman Catholicism (Thomism) have a different concept of faith and I’m sure that within Orthodoxy and Protestantism there are similarly sophisticated definitions that may make more sense.
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