Last week we proposed that what we have heretofore called faith is not really faith at all. The idea that we can somehow control God, by our prayers, our piety, and our behavior—that we can leverage God to work things out to our advantage—is not faith but something I’ve labeled antifaith. I also propose that…

For more than six months, we’ve been studying the topic of faith, looking for definitions of it. Where does faith come from? What are its sources? What is the quantity and the quality of faith in terms of how it’s to be utilized? Some weeks we’ve almost despaired, wondering if faith exists at all. Several…

Today we’re going to talk about faith and the senses. As we were wrapping up our discussion last week, a consensus seemed to be developing that faith is an experience outside of the senses—some kind of extrasensory experience. Science, in contrast, is highly dependent upon the senses. We evaluate things by sight, touch, hearing, smell,…

We’ve been discussing faith since August in the context of Jesus’s comments to the Pharisees in the “Woes” that they should pay more attention to the weightier matters of the law—Mercy, justice and faith. What does your faith require proof of? Maybe a better way of putting it is: How much evidence is required for…

As we’ve seen in our discussion so far, faith is an elusive subject. I hope you’re not too tired of it yet, because I feel we’re making some progress and understanding it a little bit more as our discussion progresses. Last week, we looked at two aspects of faith: Ordinary, common, universal faith—the faith of…

Last week we looked at faith as a spiritual gift. Like all spiritual gifts, faith is not shared by everyone. This is a hard concept to get around. These gifts are individually given. They may be permanent or transient gifts. They are given for the good of the community, and they’re often given in times…