Defining Faith That is Founded on Feeling

Do not fear any of those things

which you are about to suffer.

Indeed, the devil 

is about to throw some of you

into prison,

that you may be tested, 

and you will have tribulation

ten days.

Be faithful until death,

and I will give you

the crown of life.

Revelations 2:10

     Allow some remarks on this definition of faith that makes it a conviction that is founded on feeling.  (1) There are forms of faith of which this is not true.  Faith as a word so cognate with feelings that attempts to consign it with a voluntary assent make it not true.  Often we believe in a thing unwillingly, those things that may be repugnant to our feelings. (2) Speaking of religious faith, or faith that has religious truth as it object, it is not necessarily true for there may be faith without love, such as, speculative faith, or dead faith.  (3)  The exercises of faith in good men does not make it true in many cases.  Taking Isaac for instance, against his will he believed that Jacob would be preferred over Esau.  Isaac against his will gave Jacob the blessing that Isaac was going to give to Esau, against his will, this good man, blessed Jacob.  Jacob believed that his descendants would live in Egypt as slaves: (Genesis 15:14).  Jacob would have known this indictment by God to Abraham.  Even the prophets believed in the seventy years of captivity for the Israelites.  The Apostles wrote and believed in the apostasy in the church and that apostasy was to occur between their age and second coming of the Lord.  These men all believed, they had faith that those things they knew would certainly take place.  Those things which were repugnant, even repulsive to their feelings.  Thomas Aquinas gave an unsatisfactory answer when he rest faith ultimately on feeling for he believed that a man was constrained by his will, i.e., his feelings to believe all that the Scriptures contain, to believe in the Scriptures.  The question is: Why did the prophets believe in the captivity, and the Apostles in the apostasy?  Was it because of their feelings from the effect of those truths?  Ne!  They believed on the authority of God.  Is not God invisible?  No man has seen God, and yet they believed his testimony; why?  Possibly because God testimony carries conviction, is not He able to cause the deaf to hear, and the blind to see?  Another answer may be that it was because they were good men.  Not matter the case the question carries us further than faith as the ground.  They believe because God had revealed the facts.  Now as good men the rendering of them susceptible to that conviction can be attributed to the evidence given them, but it did not constitute that evidence. 

     (4)  Examining saving faith, that faith that is attributed tot he fruit of the Spirit, the product of regeneration, it is to be admitted that the exercise of that faith is attended by feeling, a feeling that is appropriate to its object.  But it is not to be referred to the nature of that object.  Notice that it is the point of contact, as says Van Till, theologian and Christian apologist, that determines for to often our feelings, therefore if our point of contact or that object that has the referral of feeling, is not God, His Word, His Son, the Holy Spirit, then a person will be misguided as to their feelings for they would be focused on the a non-Biblical object, or an obtuse point of contact.  Some examples to illuminate this definition of faith and its feelings; beauty when seen brings delight, a good report brings joy, in many cases spiritual things is attended with an unspeakable joy and full of glory.   

     (5)  Considering faith and its attended truth, it is the self-evidencing light that it has that must be apprehended with a conviction that what is being apprehended it what it really is or else there is not apprehension of any truth of the object.  As to true believers the consciousness of truth is based on the evidence of truth, it is the ground of their faith and in one sense it is subjective.  Example: to see the glory of God in the face of Jesus and believe that He is God manifested in the flesh.  This is subjective as to the evidence seen in the face of Jesus and their knowledge of  the man Jesus. but still subjective for they did not actually see God.  When a true Christians see from their own fallen state the representations of sinfulness, guilt, and helplessness in the Scripture they receive these representations as true.  Christians embrace the plan of salvation on the basis of their necessity of moral judgments and religious aspirations.  True Christians always fall back on the authority of God as they have determined Him to be the author of these feelings by which the testimony of the Spirit is revealed to the consciousness.  The Westminister Confession of faith, chapter one, paragraph five states: We may be moved and induced by the testimony of he Chruch to a high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture (1 Timothy 3:15).  And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of he only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts (1 John 2:20, 27; 16:14,14).

     The ultimate ground of faith, therefore, is the witness of the Spirit. Not feeling outside of that witness that is grounded in God's Word.  the point of contact for our faith is God's Word by means of the exercising in our hearts, in our consciousness, the Holy Spirit. Too much emphasis, ill-advised emphasis, is placed on objectivity and objects outside of God's Word.  This is misleading in the least, and does not give conviction founded upon truth.  This we must guard against.

"Who is a God like You, 

Pardoning iniquity 

And passing over the 

    transgression of His heritage?

He does not retain His anger

    forever

Because He delights in mercy."

                          Nahum 1:18

God Bless

Richard Crumb