Faith and Faithfulness (Part 3)

This is the third in a series of studies on the topic of faith and faithfulness. (If you are coming to this page from a search engine, I recommend this link for a table of contents of the topics covered in this series.)

This post is a brief detour.   I started to wonder— dictionary definitions notwithstanding— whether I am making a straw man argument; am I misrepresenting the assumed position of some imaginary Christians about their interpretation of the word faith.  Have I been wrong to assume that some are taking faith to mean belief and only belief?  Let's see if we can find anything on the Internet that looks like a belief only interpretation of faith.

The first hit on Google for the search term "faith" is a link to Audio Bibles by Faith Comes By Hearing— a great site that has audio bibles in various language available for download.  However, it is not a site specifically discussing the topic of faith.

The second hit on Google for the search term "faith" is the Wikipedia article on faith.  Following is the text that the Wikipedia article begins with.

Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.  The word "faith" can refer to a religion itself or to religion in general. As with "trust", faith involves a concept of future events or outcomes, and is used conversely for a belief "not resting on logical proof or material evidence." Informal usage of the word "faith" can be quite broad, and may be used in place of "trust" or "belief."
Faith is often used in a religious context, as in theology, where it almost universally refers to a trusting belief in a transcendent reality, or else in a Supreme Being and/or this being's role in the order of transcendent, spiritual things.
Faith is in general the persuasion of the mind that a certain statement is true.  It is the belief and the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, based on his or her authority and truthfulness.

The Wikipedia article includes a picture of a sculpture intended to illustrate this concept of faith.  The "veil symbolizes the impossibility to know directly the evidences."  This sculpture illustrates a faith as belief perspective— it isn't about faithfulness.

The subsection of the article on faith in Christianity is more balanced.   It adds the following:

Faith is an act of trust or reliance. Rather than being passive, faith leads to an active life of obedience to the one being trusted.... Faith is not to be confused with belief or believe as these are two separate and distinct words and meanings. Men can and do believe in many things, and in the Bible it is stated that Satan "believes" in fact or actuality Satan "knows" whom God is, but does not have the faith for salvation.

The subsection of the article on faith and Judaism makes an interesting comment.  I wonder, is this perspective at all different from that of the Apostle James in James 2:14-26?

Although Judaism does recognize the positive value of Emunah (faith/belief) and the negative status of the Apikorus (heretic), faith is not as stressed or as central as it is in other religions, e.g. Christianity. It is a necessary means for being a practicing religious Jew, but the ends is more about practice than faith itself.

 Another Wikipedia article entitled Faith in Christianity begins this way:

Faith in Christianity, as in other Abrahamic religions, centers on a belief in God, a belief in the reality of a transcendent domain that God administers as his kingdom, and in the benevolence of God's will or plan for humankind. Christianity differs in that it centers on a belief in the ministry of Jesus, and in his place as the prophesied Christ, as substantiated by his Passion and Resurrection.

A more faith as faithfulness stance is discussed later in the subsection of this article on the New Testament:

Belief, in this context is non-synonymous with faith because, belief primarily conveys the mental action, thought of confidence, trust, and/or firm persuasion, not the physical act. Depending on the context, the Greek word may also be understood to mean "faithfulness" or "fidelity" (cf. 1 Thess 3:7; Titus 2:10); indeed, Karl Barth consistently translates "pistis" as "the faithfulness of God" in his commentary Epistle to the Romans.

Later, describing faith in a Protestant context, the article adds text taking a faith as belief stance:

Protestant Christian C.S. Lewis described his experience of faith in his book Mere Christianity by distinguishing between two usages of the word. He describes the first as follows:

"Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels ... In the first sense it means simply Belief."

Several paragraphs later he continues with:

"Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."

I found an article on the Internet entitled Believe/Faith.   The article has a lot to say that appears to be taking a stance opposite the one that I am taking.

Oddly enough, the most important Gospel word-family in the Greek NT is obscured in English. This is because we translate the Greek verb pisteuo by the Anglo-Saxon word believe, and the related noun pistis by the totally unrelated word faith (from the Latin fides, by way of French).

At least partly due to this lack of similarity, many preachers who are weak on grace are able to maintain that the Greek lying behind one or both of the English words includes a whole possible agenda of works, such as commitment, repentance, perseverance, etc.

Are repentance and perseverance behaviors of those who are "weak in grace"?  I just did a search for repent (and similar words, repentance, etc.) and found 66 hits in the New Testament.  What are we to make of Ephesians 6:18 – "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints"?  The article goes on:

Actually, believe and faith, as the Greek shows, are just the verb and the noun for a concept that is really no different in English than in Greek. That concept is taking people at their word, trusting that what they say is true.

The author illustrates his point by substituting faith for belief (or belief for faith) in several verses and then says that these examples "show that believe and faith really convey the same meaning."

Of course, one must believe to be faithful, but one may believe in the sense of "the devils also believe" (James 2:19) and be unfaithful.

This seems to be a topic with quite a variety of perspectives and some debate.  I don't think I have set up a straw man argument.