Friday, June 26, 2009

Defining "Faith"

The NYTimes has asked readers to submit a short, pithy definition of "faith."

It begins with the famous definition from Hebrews 11, moves to a skeptical view, and then ends with sort of a middle-of-the-road definition. Read, and, if you are interested enough, respond:

June 26, 2009, 11:00 AM
Weekend Competition: Define Faith
Hundreds of co-vocabularists offered their definitions of “Money” in April, and “America” in May. This weekend, Schott’s Vocab is soliciting definitions of faith.

Faith is described in the Bible as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

H. L. Mencken called faith “an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.”

And, Samuel Butler said of faith, “You can do very little with it, but you can do nothing without it.”

Co-vocabularists are invited to submit their own definitions of faith, the pithier the better, by appending a comment to this post.


Respond here.

Of if you would like to respond on this blog, that might be interesting as well.

2 comments:

Brandon said...

Ambrose Bierce:

Faith
n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

jacob said...

I thought you might be interested in learning about OUR Jewish traditions, one which has embraced the real Christ of the gospel, the Law and the prophets.

If this doesn't interest you, I apologize in advance.

If you are interested let me tell you that we are the Frankist Association of America. One of our members has a new book out:

http://www.amazon.com/Real-Messiah-Throne-Origins-Christianity/dp/1906787123/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245892844&sr=8-1

I am not that I am trying to sell you something. If you can't afford the book you can see the website of one of our teachers - http://www.stephanhuller.blogspot.com.

I just wanted to let you and the scholarly world that there have always been more than one type of Judaism in the world at any one time. Some forms of the faith had to learn to hide their beliefs in order to survive and perpetuate themselves.

Shalom, God Bless
Everything is perfect with God

Beth El Jacob Frank