“What is Faith?” by Dr. Don B. Garlington

Introduction

Christianity is preeminently the religion of faith. We call it “The Christian Faith.” Paul can speak of ‘the faith’ in Galatians 3. He said that before ‘the faith’ came we were under tutors, those who were disciplining us to be able to recognize the Messiah when He actually came. Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” We will focus our thoughts upon the Lord’s giving of Himself for us and His rising again.

Now faith, of course, plays a very large part in reformed theology. When I was in seminary they told us that faith consisted of three parts. Of course, going through a reformed seminary we had to know a little bit of Latin, so those three parts were ‘notitia, ascensus and fiducia.’ We were told that if we didn’t know those three words we couldn’t graduate, and so I made sure that I learned them! Notitia is knowledge. Knowledge of an object. Ascensus means that you assent to or consent to the reliability of that object of knowledge. And finally fiducia which means faith, reliance. So faith is knowledge, assent and trust, or reliance.

If you are doing a study of faith in terms of our systematic theology, that is fair enough, but as the Biblical materials present themselves, they actually present it to us from a somewhat different slant and point of view.

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