RE: Question about "faith"
September 16, 2020 at 3:35 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2020 at 4:49 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(September 16, 2020 at 3:22 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: If we thunk really hard, we'd find that the dictonary's description of faith as trust was an effect of secular use...which doesn't express the fullness of a religious faith.
To the contrary, faith as belief without evidence is a byproduct of secular, more modern uses of the word, no doubt influenced by the rise of modern atheism.
Faith is a rather old religious word, crossing several languages, and dating back to periods when everybody thought God existed. That is why I quoted my definition from it's etymology. The Greek word used for faith in the NT, the only definition that matters, also leans towards trust. You can see remnants of that definition in English as well. Note that a faith-ful person is a loyal and trustworthy person; not a person that believes things blindly. Biblehub's Greek concordance describes faith in terms of a trust or warranty.
Why would faith go from being a bad thing (blind belief) within Christianity and become a good thing (trust) in secular parlance lol. It's clearly the opposite. Faith as trust is the religious use of the word. And as society became more secular it naturally took on the negative connotation of blind belief.