WHAT IS FAITH?
The apostles were Jews who never understood belief outside of living in obedience to the faith in a covenant relationship with God.
Should we accept the word faith as it is understood in our modern world or should we look at how the concept of belief was understood by the apostles? If we do not understand it as the apostles did then we do not have the foundation of faith established by God.
What the apostles lived and what modern Christianity believes is not the same thing. From the word faith, comes the foundation of Christianity. It is also the foundation of a huge problem when it comes to living as Christ enjoined. The word faith was developed around the same time that we moved from middle English to modern English. It was also developed at around the same time as the Reformation; the development of Protestantism. The word may be a product of the Reformation.
Someone with the objective of removing its true meaning may have changed it. At the time of the apostles, the concept of belief was expressed in the words, “Fide” in Latin and “Pistis” in Greek. These words mean, “I believe”, But, they do not mean “I believe,” as modern Christianity understands them. The modern word “Faith” is a noun. The words “Fide” and “Pistis” were for the most part, in the early church, expressed as verbs of action. They express not a noun of simply intellection ascent but an active, living, obedient, committed, beloved faith, in God through his church. Both of the words “Fide” and “Works”, were associated with works. We are discussing two different types of belief: Intellectual ascent or a faith that requires action on our part which is often confused with good works of our own.
Let us first put to rest this idea that we can achieve merit before God with works of our own.
We cannot create efficacious works on our own. Only God is good. We are saved by grace because, as opposed to the mosaic law of rule, fear, and temporal punishment for not following the law for Jews only, through the grace of God, we are able to perform works in unconditional love. Not our works, but God working through us in active faith. By way of the cross, the Holy Spirit came into the world and wrote the eternal laws of love on our hearts, our conscience. This in some ways is a new heaven and a new earth. It is moving toward the eternal reality. Paul tells us, “And this is the testament which I will make unto them after those days, saith the Lord. I will give my laws in their hearts, and on their minds will I write them:” (Hebrews 10:16)
Laws are meant to be followed. This is the law of love as opposed to the Mosaic Law followed as rule, fear and, punishment for not following the law administered by the Jewish authority. “A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death. They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:27)
From the beginning of Christianity the words, “to believe” meant to “hold dear, to commit to, to beloved.” The German equivalent is the word “belieben” which means “give allegiance to.”
“Etymologically, “believe” is related to a broad range of familiar words, some archaic, like life (dear, willing), some still in use, like “beloved,” and “love”. The history of “believe” in its various forms----ranging from Old English be loef to the early modern English synonym “beloved”, through the seventeenth- century misspelling that gave us “believe” instead of “beleeve”---is a chronicle of its gradual change in meaning…In the fourteenth century, about the time of John Wycliffe (1330-1384), important changes began to take place that mark the transition from Middle English to Modern English. A new word, “faith,” was coming into use as the English form of the Latin Fides. Early evidence of the transition can be seen in two versions of the English Bible attributed to Wycliffe, both based on the Latin Vulgate. In the first, bilefe translates fides, whereas in the second, “faith” appears in a number of places. By the seventeenth century the transition was virtually complete. The 1611 King James Authorized Version used the word “faith” 246 times, while using “belief” only once. The Oxford English Dictionary, which describes this evolution (s.v. belief), states,
…the word faith, though being through O[ld] F[rench] fei, faith, the etymological representative of the L[atin fides, it began in the 14th c[entury] to be used to translate the latter, and in course of time almost superseded “belief” esp[ecially] in theological language, leaving ‘belief” in great measure to merely intellectual process or state…Thus “belief in God” no longer means as much as “faith in God”.
Marthaler The Creed
There is no verb form for the word faith in modern English. Our creed is a true article of faith because it is what was lived, acted on.
“The idea of commitment, it should be noted, is also at the root memory of the original Latin. Etymologically, credo, it seems, is a compound of two other Latin words, cor, cordis, “heart” (as in the English derivatives “cordial, “concord”, and “accord”) …The primary meaning of credo in classical Latin was to “entrust”, to commit”.
Paul called us to obedience to the faith which is a living and active faith. The word obedience would not have been used by Paul unless he saw “believe” as a verb.
IBID
We can see how this is true by understanding the opposite of belief.
For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.
John 3:16
What does it mean to believe if Paul says it is his job to bring about obedience to the faith and Christ says, “ not everyone who says Lord Lord will enter the kingdom of heaven accept those who do the will of my Father?
What does it mean to believe if the apostles did not understand belief outside of a covenant relationship and Christ said , this is my blood of the New Covenant, do this?
Raising this sacrament of the liturgy of the Eucharist to a command for Christianity? An article of belief in Christianity?
John 3:16. This is a summation of belief.
John 3:16 is referring to living obedience to the faith of the New Covenant.
To not believe is disobedience/ apiethe.
To not live in the mosaic law was disobedience why would you think it would be any different in the New Covenant?
Here are a few Greek dictionary entries for this word apeithe?
"from two of the most scholarly and reputable reference works on the Greek of the New Testament.
36.23 apeithe? unwillingness or refusal to comply with the demands of some authority—‘to disobey, disobedience.’ ‘whoever disobeys the Son will never have life’ (literally ‘… will never see life’) Jn 3:36. ‘God’s wrath comes upon those who do not obey him’ Eph 5:6.
(Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 467–468.)
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apeithe?. This word means “to be disobedient” and is a significant term in the LXX (Greek Old Testament) for disobedience to God. In the NT it is used of the wilderness generation in Heb. 3:18, that of the flood in 1 Pet. 3:20, all sinners in Rom. 2:8, and Gentiles in Heb. 11:31. Rom. 11:30. “
To believe” is the opposite in Acts 14:1–2, and unbelief is parallel. We find an absolute use in Acts 14:2. Rom. 15:31; 1 Pet. 2:7. Important phrases are disobeying the word (1 Pet. 2:8), the gospel (4:17), and the Son (Jn. 3:36).
(Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 819–820.)�*******************************************
Disobeys occurs only here in John’s Gospel; it is obviously the opposite of believes, and so JB and Phps translate “refuses to believe.” It is possible to argue that the meaning of disobeys throws some light on the meaning of believes, that is, this kind of belief is the belief which leads to obedience.
Therefore one may translate “Whoever obeys the Son has eternal life, and whoever disobeys the Son will never have life.” However, it is better to retain the terms “believes” and “disobeys,” since the very lack of clear opposition tends to reinforce the meaning of the respective terms”.
Source Steve Ray Catholic Convert.com
These are rules of obedience in order to live as a Christian according to Gods covenant command.
If they do not listen to even the church treat them as heathens and publicans.
Mt 18:17
If they hear you they hear me if they reject you then they reject me and the one who sent me.
Lk 10:16
That the manifold wisdom of God may be made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places through the church.
Eph 3:10
13And after they had held their peace, James answered, saying, Men and brethren, hearken unto me: 14Simeon hath declared ( decree, dogma) how God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. 15And to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written,
16After this I will return, and will (((build again the tabernacle of David, which is fallen down; )))and I will build again the ruins thereof, and I will set it up:
17That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles, upon whom my name is called, saith the Lord, who doeth all these things.
Acts 15
Believe is to live in obedience to the faith in the New Covenant.
Everything that God does for us is to reverse what happened to us in the Garden of Eden.
From disobedience to obedience.
Obey your prelates who have the rule over you for they watch over your souls.
Hb 13:17
From ego to humility in belief because Gods words are true not because we understand them.
My flesh is true food.
Jn 6:55
True belief living the narrow road of the sacramental life in obedience to the faith in love of Christ, is the process of transforming grace to return to the garden.
And we all, who with unveiled faces ( This is my body. O you foolish Galatians who before your very eyes Christ is portrayed as crucified before you ) contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
2 Cor 3:18
Diabolical faith alone , scripture alone, once saved always saved, born again without baptism…
Are made by man in fallen nature; they reverse the process of spiritually returning to the garden .
Luther said Satan hated the Holy Mass and the communion of Saints and loved his new doctrine of faith alone. Obviously Luther believed he created it.
Be holy for I am Holy.
1 Pt 1:16
But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins
1 Pt 4:8
Follow peace and holiness with all men, without, no man shall see God.
Hb 12:14
This is my body.
Obedience to the word.
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