"Faith is ... the certainty of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1)
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The Assurance of Faith?

1/25/2017

 
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​“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). 

Hebrews 11:1 is a scripture we all know well in the context of faith – it is, after all, the Bible’s own definition of faith.  But in the New International Version of the Bible – quoted above – that so many of us use regularly, the word “assurance” is perhaps a poor choice of translation into English.

On a scale of one to ten – where one is something that might possibly happen and ten is something that will happen without any doubt – most of us would rank the word “assurance” as perhaps a five!  The word does not really convey a lot of certainty – we speak of having to “reassure” people because the original assurance may not have been enough.   Other English translations use stronger words such as “evidence” (KJ and NKJV) or “proof” (HCB), and these seem to better convey the sense of what Hebrews is telling us.

Actually, the underlying Greek word which is translated “assurance” in Hebrews 11:1 is hypostasis – a word formed from stasis “to stand” and hypo “under.” The combined hypostasis or “standing under” refers to the ground on which something is built or the foundation of a house or other building.  In fact, this basic meaning of “foundation” gave rise in ancient Greek to the use of hypostasis to mean, by extension, “real estate” or “property” and specifically the title deeds or documents recording the ownership of property. In the ancient world, just as today, home or property ownership was recorded in “title deeds” and these documents were kept as the proof of ownership. Archaeologists have found such deeds hidden under the floors of homes in many cultures.

This usage of the word hypostasis for “title deed” was anciently very common.  J.H. Moulton and G. Milligan's authoritative Vocabulary of the Greek Testament states that hypostasis can mean “property, effects, written undertaking, agreements of sale, evidence of ownership” and that “… in all cases there is the same central idea of something that underlies visible conditions and guarantees future possession.”  Moulton and Milligan conclude that this is the essential meaning of hypostasis in Hebrews 11:1, so we can legitimately translate this verse as “Faith is the title deed of that which we do not see.”

Just as ancient peoples carefully placed the title deeds to their homes in places where they would be protected, today we usually place the title deeds to our homes or other property in our bank’s safe deposit box.  If we ever need proof that we own our home and that it is indisputably ours, we need only look to the title deed we have stored in the bank.   In saying that faith is the “title deed” of that which we hope for, but do not yet see, the author of Hebrews is using a far stronger word than “assurance.”  Hebrew s 11:1 is telling us in effect that the faith we are given is the title deed – the guarantee – of our possession of something even if we do not see it now.  That assurance is a ten on the scale of one to ten – it’s a certainty we can take to the bank.

What We Give Up for Love

1/11/2017

 
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In his book, The Love That Made Mother Teresa (Sophia Institute Press, 2014), David Scott tells of experiences Mother Teresa shared of heroic love in the lives of others.  One of these examples is particularly moving:

“She told us of the sacrifices made by leper parents, who must give up their newborns immediately upon birth or risk infecting them for life with the disease. She told us the story of one couple saying good-bye to their three-day-old baby:

Each one looked at the little one, their hands going close to the child and then withdrawing, trying, wanting to kiss the child, and again falling back. I cannot forget the deep love of that father and mother for their little child. I took the child, and I could see the father and mother as I was walking. I held the child toward them, and they kept on looking until I disappeared from their eyes. The agony and pain it caused! . . . But because they loved the child more than they loved themselves, they gave it up.”

This story is heartbreaking in itself, but equally heartbreaking – in fact far more so because of the sheer numbers involved – are the children destroyed before birth by parents who may choose to part with children out of some form of self-love rather than from love of the child. 
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Perhaps one of the greatest indicators of if we are actually living as Christians is whether we are giving up things for the sake of others, rather than for our own sake. The things we give up in this way may be our own convenience, plans, preferences, or ultimately even our personal happiness or well-being.  If we are to truly follow the Christian way of life, we must look at our own  lives and ask what we should be giving up for love.   ​

What Was the Forbidden Fruit?

1/4/2017

 
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The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden,  but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” … When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves (Genesis 3:2-7).

The question being asked here is not what kind of fruit (as in apples and oranges) was the forbidden fruit, but what did that fruit represent?  Many people believe that the forbidden fruit symbolized sexual relations between the first man and woman because after eating it we are told that they became aware of their nakedness and experienced shame (Genesis 3:7) and because the punishment given by God to the woman was regarding childbearing  (Genesis 3: 16), which might be understood as the result of sexual knowledge.  Additionally, some scholars have claimed,  in the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic we find a historical-literary parallel of coming to human knowledge through sexual experience in the story of the wild man Enkidu  who is civilized and made human when he slept with the prostitute Shamhat – after which the wild animals flee from him, and the woman tells him: “You are wise, Enkidu. You have become like a god.”

But when we look at these arguments individually they do not stand up to scrutiny.  First, we should realize that despite the surface similarities of the Enkidu story and that of Adam and Eve, the two are very different.  Enkidu is not the first person to be civilized – he is rather an anomaly in the world, made by the gods to be an equal of the hero Gilgamesh.  There is a closely similar ancient story of the seduction of the wild man Rsyasrnga in the Indian Mahabharata epic.   In both cases the stress is on an anomalous situation, not the origin of the state of humanity, and in both cases, nothing was forbidden – we simply have a story of a wild man who is tamed by a woman.

When we look closely at the biblical account itself, we find that the punishment of Eve does not necessarily have anything to do with sexuality – it is more a punishment of the woman’s role in society at that time,  just as the man was punished in his role – working the ground.  In both cases the punishment is one of pain – whether through labor with the earth (Genesis 3:17-19) or labor with children (Genesis 3:16).  In fact, the same Hebrew word for pain or sorrow, itstsabon,  is used of both the woman’s punishment and that of the man.  Even the apparent oblique reference to sexuality in the mention of childbirth is unsure, as  Genesis is not clear whether the promised pain with children is meant to refer to the act of childbirth, to child rearing, or to both. 
 
Finally, the argument that the forbidden fruit represented sexual relations is demolished by the fact that Genesis specifically records that the man and woman were commanded to produce children: “God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number …” (Genesis 1:18), so that which was commanded could hardly be that which was forbidden.
What the fruit of the forbidden tree represented is, however, clearly demonstrated in its name and what we are told about it.  The forbidden tree was introduced by God to Adam as “.. the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:11), and it is simply this knowledge that the fruit represented.

Genesis makes clear that the knowledge of good and evil was a divine prerogative: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil ... And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:5, 22).   In these statements we see that what was forbidden had nothing to do with sex (the very fact that God stressed the knowledge concerned would make man like himself disproves that), and that it was simply knowledge of evil which God's command was forbidding.

We can find other verses in the Bible where knowledge of good and evil is shown to be a prerogative of God and his servants.  In 2 Samuel 14:17 the widow from Tekoa compared David to an angel who was able to discern between good and evil , and in 2 Samuel 14:17 Solomon asked God for the specific ability to distinguish between right and wrong.  

The knowledge of good and evil is not in itself wrong, only the way that knowledge is acquired.  Rather than being willing to learn from God, Genesis tells us that Adam and Eve chose to learn by their own experience.  The forbidden fruit was knowledge gained by experience in contradiction to God’s command.

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    Unless otherwise stated, blog posts are written by R. Herbert, Ph.D.,  who writes for a number of Christian venues – including our sister site: TacticalChristianity.org
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