Hebrews 11:1

CHAP. Hebrews 11:1. Having affirmed that our distinguishing quality as Christians is not apostasy, but faith, and that the issue in our case is not perdition, but the gaining of that life of the soul which apostasy threatens, he now proceeds to show that faith is the quality of the spiritual life. This faith means the belief of things still future; such belief as makes them realities to us: and the evidence of things unseen, such evidence as answers objections and produces conviction (compare Aristotle's definition of ἴλεγϰος). It means, among other things, patient waiting, heroic suffering, and is illustrated by reference to the lives and history of men of all ages and of every economy. The words of this verse have sometimes been regarded as a definition of faith, or as a description of it; but properly they are no definition, for the terms of each proposition are not interchangeable; nor are they a description; they rather seize upon one quality of faith which is most appropriate for the writer's purpose, and help us to understand what faith is by calling attention to properties not peculiar to it, but still deeply significant. Faith, then, has to do with what is future and is an object of hope, viz. blessing and reward. More widely, it has to do with what is unseen, whether in the future, the present, or the past. Similarly the things which it believes are either historical facts, as ‘things' means in chap. Hebrews 6:18, or spiritual realities, as ‘things' means in chap. Hebrews 10:1. If they are future and are objects of desire, they are hoped for; and if they are not objects of hope, but still believed, they are things unseen. All are unseen, whether hoped for or not. So the last clause of the verse describes the wider class. Faith gives weight and force to what would be otherwise unsubstantial; and faith is itself, in an important sense, a proof of the truth of what it believes. The feeling of the solid body which the hand sustains is itself a proof that the body is solid. The consciousness of the light is decisive evidence that the sun has risen not to others, but to the man himself.