Faith is the Fundamental Substance of Reality

Something we do without realizing it is to interpret the scriptures and our faith through the lens of our cultural background. In our culture we are strongly influenced by Protestant theology. I sometimes joke that in the US everyone is a Protestant, even the Catholics. What I mean by that is we have been so thoroughly immersed in Protestant ways of thinking that we don't even realize we are doing it.

One of the places this shows up is how we talk about faith and knowledge. Because of our culture we are making implicit assumptions about what faith is and what it means to know something. Given those fundamental assumptions it is natural for someone to come to the conclusions, or ask the questions that you did.

Let me give an example of how we can unconsciously make an assumption that can lead to a paradox.

There is something called the "heap paradox". Suppose you have a heap of sand. In this particular heap there are 15,000,000 grains of sand. If you take a single grain of sand from the heap so that you now only have 14,999,999 grains, is it still a heap?

Any rational person would look at the sand sitting in a pile and say, "Yes. That is a heap of sand."

Now you take away another grain so that you have 14,999,998 grains. Is it still a heap? It should be.

Now you keep taking away single grains of sand until there are only 3 left. Can 3 grains of sand make a heap? Any rational person would look at it and say you need to get your eyes checked if you call 3 grains of sand a "heap of sand".

So at what point did the "heap of sand" turn into "not a heap of sand"? You could say that 15,000,000 grains were a heap. You could say that 1,500,000 grains were a heap. But at some point you get down to a minimum number and it stops being a heap. So, at what point did your "heap of sand" turn into "not a heap of sand"?

The inability to determine that is the "heap paradox", and it cannot be resolved.

But there was a problem with our mental exercise. We made a mistake and we didn't even realize it. And that mistake created the paradox.

By definition the number of things in a "heap" is undefined. Yes we can take a heap of sand and count the number of grains and get 12,749,873 grains. But the exact number isn't what makes it a heap. We use the word "heap" to mean a large, unknown, and not easily counted pile of things. The fact that we happen to know the number of things in the heap is unrelated to whether or not we call it a heap.

So, in the heap paradox we subtly shifted the definition of "heap" to include an exact value. Without realizing it we created the paradox.

A similar thing has happened in our culture with words like "faith" and "know". Over hundreds of years our understanding has drifted so that, while similar, we are missing something that was present in the original definition of the word we translate as "faith", and what it means to "know" something.

When Hebrews 11:1 is translated into English, because of hundreds of years of Protestant theology, we run into a paradox. In the original Greek the verse is,

Ἔστιν δὲ πίστις ἐλπιζομένων ὑπόστασις, πραγμάτων ἔλεγχος οὐ βλεπομένων.

This can correctly be translated as,

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (King James Version)

But there are other ways of translating this. For example,

Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (New International Version)

or,

Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see. (New Living Translation)

or,

To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see. (Good News Translation)

or,

Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. (Christian Standard Bible)

In the KJV the word that is translated as substance is "ὑπόστασις" (hypostasis). In Greek the word hypostasis literally means "to stand (-stasis) under (hypo-)". It means it is the thing that supports or is the source of everything. In philosophy hypostasis is the fundamental substance of reality. It is the thing that makes up everything.

But it can also mean to possess a claim, or to have title (or a deed) to a guaranteed agreement. It entitles someone to what is guaranteed under the particular agreement. (We still use this idea in modern English. If someone has a legal claim that can be heard in court, we say they "have standing". They have standing under the law to claim something such as property, or redress of wrongs.)

So another way of (very loosely) translating Hebrews 11:1 could be,

Our faithfulness gives us standing to actively wait for the proof of things that we cannot see.

Or it could be translated (again very loosely) as,

Our faith is the fundamental substance of reality that we trust gives proof of the things we cannot see [such as God].

So, how does that change the way we talk about faith and what it means "to have faith"? That is the question.