Faith is often confused with knowledge. As if you have to be a theologian or Bible teacher in order to “believe correctly”. One should agree to teachings and interpretations, perhaps even dress in a certain way, behave in an appropriate manner and more such things. You need to know all that: Bible, rules of conduct, views. But is that actually true?
It can be quite confusing when you sit down in a church or congregation or attend a Bible study group out of sheer curiosity. Of course, every community has its own character, but what should you do if you don’t understand anything about what’s going on?
What faith is
Faith is essentially “trust”. This has already been mentioned in many other articles. However, trust is not supposed knowledge. Trust is not about facts, not about texts, but about an alignment of the heart. Strictly speaking, faith has nothing to do with Bible knowledge, rules of conduct or anything like that. Faith is trust. More precisely: faith is trust in God. The rest is just embellishment.
The mystery of faith
Paul speaks to Timothy about the “mystery of faith” (1 Timothy 3:9). He talks about the requirements for people who fulfill a role in the community. They should “keep the mystery of faith in a pure conscience”. Anyone who wants to take on responsibility in the community should take this to heart.
Two things are mentioned here: Firstly, it is assumed that there is such a thing as a “mystery of faith”. Those who live as if they know everything or need to know everything fail to realize that you cannot and do not need to know everything. There is a secret of faith. That should be clear to everyone. Not knowing is not a shame, but perhaps only the openness that there is more than just knowledge. Paul mentions this directly. This mystery of faith is not wrong because something is “unclear”, but this mystery should be “kept”.
There is a secret of faith. That should be clear to everyone.
The mystery of faith is a reality that cannot be measured exactly. Everyone believes for themselves (Rom 14:22) and cannot describe everything. No two people think and believe identically. It would also be misleading to think that only you understand everything and that everyone else is wrong. The limitation of human thought and faith is a given, but perfection is not required. Everyone remains perfectly imperfect.
The mystery of faith is lived in the fact that imperfect man does not know everything, but can leave everything in trust to his God. Those who believe authentically make room for trust in God. Paul describes this with the words “keep in a pure conscience”.
One should be aware that this mystery of faith would not be a specific mystery, but it concerns faith itself. It is the secret “of faith”. This may seem a little vague if you like to “know what makes God and the world tick”. A mystery of faith is therefore in tension with evangelical ideas that faith “can be precisely defined with the right doctrine”.
Living faith
The mystery of faith is sober. It has to do with the human experience of faith, in which not everything can be explained. This does not make Paul a mystic, nor should we confuse mysticism with this mystery. There is no “exact doctrine”. Living faith grows in the field of tension between knowledge, experience and trust in God, without fixating on one concept.
Alphabet soup
No one mentioned in the Bible “believed in the Bible”. A “Bible faith” is a phenomenon of the evangelical movement and is unknown in the Bible itself. This is easy to understand, because in the time of the Old or New Testament, the Bible did not exist in its current form. So you couldn’t “believe in the Bible”, as is often described as necessary today.
In the time of the Old or New Testament, the Bible did not exist in its present form. So you couldn’t “believe in the Bible”.
Nevertheless, there were of course many writings before they were compiled into a Bible. Around the time of Jesus, there were many Old Testament writings. However, these were not compiled and “canonized”. The same applies all the more to the books of today’s New Testament. Paul, for example, wrote his letters in the time of the New Testament. He did not write the letters “as part of the Bible”, but as simple letters addressed to individuals or religious communities. It was only later that its value was recognized and it was included in the canon of the Bible as a testimony. That was long after the letters were written.
Although the Bible did not exist as we know it today, many believers paid close attention to the available scriptures. You learned and realized that you could trust the certificates. But not only that. Religious people are sometimes quite human and legal in their thinking. One could even develop a fixation on letters and a certain interpretation that one considers “infallible”. Paul warns, for example:
“For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.”
2 Corinthians 3:6
Of course, this statement is not made in a vacuum. Paul reports directly from his own experience. You can’t just quote this text and at the same time think that the context doesn’t matter. The point here is not that letters are something “bad”, while spirit is something “good”. Paul speaks in context about the fact that he and those with him “became servants of a new covenant”. The spirit and the new covenant belong together, just as the letter and the old covenant belong together. It’s about the service and the change in it.
The letter kills
If you read the apostle’s letters carefully, you will repeatedly see the conflict between the good news that Paul proclaims and the religious customs and assumptions that existed in the Jewish religion at the time. However, this is not a demonization of all Jewish people nor of all their views. Paul is talking about a change that has taken place. The contrast he draws is intended to help us grasp the new direction.
Paul states that his message does not live from the letter, but from the spirit. Something new has been created. He uses a visual language to draw out a contrast. The visual language comprises the terms “letters” and “spirit”. The change is what he is pointing to.
Here is the contrast: the “ministry of the letters (characters)” is the one that was “set in stone”, which is an allusion to the two tablets of stone that Moses received on the mountain for the people of Israel (Ex 19-20). The contrast is between this law and the grace of proclamation. These terms should not be treated superficially. The law is not evil either. The law is “holy, righteous and good” (Rom 7:12). But Moses’ instructions were not intended to make us perfect. Anyone who tries this discovers that what is good (1 Timothy 1:8) has the opposite effect, even death (Romans 7:7-10).
If the letter kills, then only because it concerns the law and this was given precisely to prove the inadequacy of man (Rom 3:19).
Anyone who idolizes following certain ideas, believing in letters or the like ends up in trouble. Grace, which is the hallmark of Paul’s preaching, speaks a different language. Grace liberated. An “alphabet soup” can’t do that. The deification of the Bible is neither a goal nor a requirement and certainly not a solution.
You don’t have to be a theologian
Faith is not dependent on a degree. Neither from a theological education nor from Bible studies. Both can be useful and enriching, but it doesn’t make faith better just because you gain more knowledge.
Faith is trust and knowledge is not a goal. In everything, we need the art of differentiation, or, as Paul describes it:
“That your love may overflow more and more in knowledge and all understanding, so that you may test what is more significant.”
Phil 1:9-10
No extremes
You don’t need extremes to be able or allowed to believe. One extreme would be that you absolutely have to adhere to this or that doctrine, you have to cling to this or that culture in order to be recognized or loved. Another extreme position would be if no information were to apply at all, as if it were only about “spirit”, which can be whimsical and vague and stand for anything you believe in. Those in Christian circles who only ever propagate “spirit” perhaps mean something like “spiritual to my taste”. Those who test will find a way between the extremes. Not everything is vague and intangible on the one hand, but on the other hand not every detail can be defined.
If you avoid extremes, you also avoid manipulation. No one has to believe what this or that person says. That would be absurd. It seems much healthier to set out alone or with others to find out what makes sense.
Faith is not about knowledge or insight. Faith stands for itself. He who believes is in a relationship. Those who are alive reach out for confirmation of life. It may look one way for one person and another for another. Some will focus intensively on the Bible, others on something else. One is not better than the other. One Christian is no better than another Christian. Happy is he who is aware of his limitations and still reaches out to God. Together we recognize much more (Eph 3:18-19).
The benefits of the Bible
Anyone who only deals with themselves and their ideas is cultivating a kind of navel-gazing. You don’t gain any new insights. Engaging with the Bible openly breaks any navel-gazing by confronting us with other people and their testimonies. In the Bible, the focus is not on man, but on God. We can learn new things when we engage with the Bible.
The goal
Engaging with the Bible is an enriching experience. Not because it is about knowledge, but because this debate enables us to make positive changes.
“All Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
2Tim 3:16-17
Paul spoke of “all Scripture” and meant the Scriptures known to him. That would be what we know today as the Old Testament. This scripture is “inspired by God” (Greek: theopneustos or God-breathed). It is also useful for teaching, convicting and rebuking as well as for instruction in righteousness. All of this has one goal, namely that the man of God (the believer) may be perfect, namely “fully skilled in every good work”. In other words, the Bible prepares us for a positive attitude to life and a pragmatic view of this world.
The Bible prepares us for a positive attitude towards life and a pragmatic view of this world.
But there is more.
“For all things that are written aforetime are written for our learning, that we through perseverance and the encouragement of the scriptures might have hope.”
Rom 15:4
In the Bible we read about people in difficult circumstances. They are role models. They have persevered. So through your testimony, which we read in the Bible, there is something like hope. When we read about God’s promises, we can develop expectation and confidence.
When we read about God’s promises, we can develop expectation and confidence.
The key word for the future is “confidence”. It is precisely when you discover that God will one day lead everything back to Himself (Romans 11:33-36) that you can take courage for everyday life. This outlook can inspire our lives. Today is also on the way to this future of God. In this way, the Bible shapes a view, confidence and outlook on life.