"having faith" and "believing"

Yes, Helen, this has long been my understanding.We beleive, but do not trust, and where is our FAITH. The following has often helped me:

Forsaking
All
I
Trust
Him

put together and what do we have...........F.A.I.T.H.

yours, Jon.

 

I guess this is what I was getting at in my reply PM, did you get that?

I guess this also goes against OSAS?

[ November 14, 2002, 01:20 PM: Message edited by: Travis1980 ]

 

Grammatically, they are the same thing. "Faith" is noun form, "to believe" is the verb.

I think saying the belief is only mental assent while faith is something more is making a false distinction. Scripture uses both words in both ways.

For instance, James uses the word "faith" for something less than real saving faith when he says, "Can that faith save him?" The word "believe" is used that way, too--see John 2:23.

Although as a norm, I would say both are usually used in the saving sense, but let the context dictate.

[ November 14, 2002, 02:13 PM: Message edited by: russell55 ]

 

I agree with Russell.

 

shoot after i think about it,ain't sure i'm qualified to give opinion,anyway helen good stuff....the bible does say faith will be tried by fire....not sure about belief though.
............bill

 

I agree with Russell, also.

Ken

 

I studied the etymology of believe once, if I am not mistaken, and I may be, from what my studies led to, believe is more of a yielding than anything else.

This would take us to the Cross, where we must rest from our own works, or else be found unworthy of anything short of death.

God Bless.
Bro. Dallas

 

Yes I agree, pisteuo is the greek for believe and it also means to have faith and entrust. So in when we have faith in Christ or believe in Him for salvation, we are putting our trust in Him

 

Good question, Helen. My Mom was on her death bed and one day, after many of being semi-comatosed, she was very alert. We talked about many things spiritual. She took may hand and said "You just have to trust Jesus" I said to her " You know I believe". She said "More than believe you have to trust and it is so easy."

I knew what she meant. Trust comes from the heart.

By the way Helen, I read that you have adopted 5 special needs kids. God bless you for that. We have 3 foster kids we are adopting and boy are they ever special needs kids.

Take care.

 

Good point Dr. Bob.

Bro. Dallas

 

how about faith and belief????
yours, Jon.

 

I looked up "belief" in my concordance and it wasn't there. So the word "belief" is not in the translation that my concordance is based upon. I suspect that if you have a translation that uses the word "belief", it is translating the same word as "faith". But you could look it up in the concordance and find out for sure.

 

If Belief is the noun of believe, which could be merely referring to the existence is that not different to faith which requires not merely beleiving in the existence but trusting.
yours, Jon.

 

What we are really talking about here is the underlying Greek text. The word that is translated "faith"--which is the noun form of the word translated "to believe"--is the very same word that is also translated "belief" in some places in some translations.

For instance, in 2 Thessalonians 2:13 in the KJV, "belief of the truth" is the very same word translated "faith" in Hebrews 11:1. To define the two words differently is making a false distinction, because in the Greek text they are exactly the same word. They both, generally speaking, mean "trust" or "confidence" or "assurance" rather than a "mental assent" to certain facts, unless the context defines them differently, as it does in the two examples I gave in an earlier post.

[ November 16, 2002, 07:42 PM: Message edited by: russell55 ]

 

yes, but is that how the word believe is applied in practice in the 21st century.
yours, Jon.

 

To me, faith is closer to the term "trust" than it is to “belief.” This would explain how the followers of Christ "grew in faith" at their witness of his miracles. Faith is based on belief, just a trust is based on belief. So belief comes first even to a very small degree, then faith takes over in that trusting on the belief is required. This meaning prevents us from having faith based on proof. As one can believe based on proof, but scripture leads us to know that faith isn’t based on proof. Therefore, faith can’t mean belief.

Once you "believe" something it is an either/or proposition, whereas trust is something that can improve with events and time.

With all that said, we do use the word belief to mean faith at times, although I think it is wrongly used. If one is not sure of something, he may say “ I believe that will happen”. When the correct meaning and syntax should be “I have faith that will happen”. If one really believes it will happen he should have said "That will happen" ... without belief being part of the sentence.

There are other examples in scripture where the use of the word faith would be closer to "believe" in context; so we do have at least a couple of different meanings of the word even though I think the interpretations of the latter referenced uses of the word believe were incorrectly translated.

I maintain that “trust” is the true and only meaning of the word faith.

More exactly is that faith is "trust that Jesus is God."

[ November 16, 2002, 09:31 PM: Message edited by: post-it ]

 

I really don't see much point in trying to define the words differently than how scripture does, and in scripture they are used interchangeably to translate the same Greek word, so in scripture they have exactly the same definition.

I do understand that we may use the words differently in every day language.