By Elias Ayala (MDiv & M.A.T.)
No, that is not the biblical idea of faith. Faith in the Bible is more in line with “trusting”. We have faith in God in the sense that we trust him. He has proven reliable in the past and therefore we can trust in him in the present, and in the future fulfillment of his promises.
The mistake is to suggest that faith in the Bible primarily refers to the idea of having “faith” (or a belief without evidence) that God exists. However, the Bible teaches that “all men know God exists because he has revealed himself through what has been made such that men are without excuse for rejecting him (Romans 1:18-21). Now the skeptic may reject this biblical claim if he wishes, but he at least needs to properly understand the claim if he is to critique the idea of faith as the Bible presents it.
The Bible never argues for the existence of God. It assumes God’s existence and calls foolishness the denial of God’s existence. Now this is not to say that Christians should not present arguments (they should), but the point is that nowhere in the Bible does it teach that “faith” is a belief without evidence.
We need to remember that the context of scripture is that God has unmistakably revealed himself to all men on the one hand (General Revelation), and revealed himself more specifically to his covenant people (Special Revelation) on the other. Hence, the faith that is taught in scripture is the idea of “trusting” in a God who has already revealed himself and demonstrated his faithfulness and reliability throughout redemptive history. Biblical faith is not belief without evidence, it is a “trust” based upon the evidenced faithfulness of a covenant keeping God.
