Does Hebrews 11:1 Teach that Faith is Belief Without Evidence or Reason?

This article was originally featured on ResistanceTV.

Faith, what is it?

In our modern context, many people think that “faith” means to believe that something is true without evidence or without adequate evidence.  This is something many skeptics will say in order to invalidate the legitimacy of faith.  In The God Delusion, Dawkins says

The dictionary supplied by Microsoft Word defines a delusion as ‘a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of psychiatric disorder’. The first part captures religious faith perfectly. (p. 28)

In A Manual for Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian says

If one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe the claim on the basis of faith.  “Faith” is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes it anyway. (pg. 9)

To be fair, a reason why many skeptics believe this is because many Christians also perpetuate this view of faith.  In Love Your God With All Your Mind, J.P. Moreland gives this account

A few years ago I conducted a series of evangelistic messages for a church in New York.  The series was in a high school gym, and both believers and unbelievers attended each night.  The first evening I gave arguments for the existence of God from science and philosophy.  Before closing in prayer, I entertained several questions from the audience.  One woman (who was a Christian) complained about my talk, charging that if I “proved” the existence of God, I would leave no room for faith.  I responded by saying that if she were right, then we should pray that currently available evidence for God would evaporate and be refuted so there would be even more room for faith! (p. 26, emphasis added)

Sadly Christians Believe Faith is Shallow

Unfortunately, many Christians do believe that faith is believing something without evidence, but many Christians, especially the ones in apologetic circles, will rightly point out that this is not what faith means.  Faith is compatible with evidence and reason.  Skeptics, however, will respond by citing Hebrews 11:1

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (ESV)

This verse, according to the skeptic, shows that the Bible agrees with their definition of faith, not with the definition of the Christian apologist.  If the Bible itself says that faith is belief without evidence, then that means the Christian is incorrect to say that faith can and even should involve evidence.

The skeptic, however, grossly misuses this verse when she uses it to support her case.  Hebrews 11:1 does not say that faith is belief without evidence, what I will call “blind faith” from now on.  I will give two reasons why this verse does not mean what the skeptic says it means.  First, taking the verse by itself without context does not lead us to the conclusion that it is talking about blind faith.  Second, when we look at the textual context that the verse is in, it cannot be talking about blind faith.

When one reads this verse critically, it is not clear how it means or implies blind faith.  Which part of the sentence suggests blind faith?  Is it “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for” part?  Being assured of things that you hope for is not a necessarily unevidential thing.  Is it the “conviction of things not seen” part?  This is probably what makes the skeptic think that this verse is talking about blind faith, since it says “not seen,” but “not seen” does not mean “no evidence.”  For example, many philosophers and mathematicians believe that numbers actually exist as abstract objects.  They cannot see, hear, taste, or touch numbers, but they still believe they exist because they think there are very good reasons to believe that numbers exist.  Seeing is not the only form of evidence.  Also, astronomers know that there are many other planets in the galaxy revolving around other stars.  These astronomers do not see many of these planets, but they know they are out there because there is good evidence that those planets are there.  They can see the effects the planets and their gravity have on other heavenly bodies that can be seen, like stars.  In both of these cases and in many others, people believe something exist because they have good reasons to believe them, but the evidence does not involve actually seeing the things in question.  The fact that Hebrews 11:1 says “not seen” at the end does not necessarily or automatically mean “no evidence,” so simply citing this verse does not prove that the Bible has the same definition of faith as the skeptic is proclaiming.  This gives us reason to doubt the skeptic’s claim that this verse confirms their belief, but it does not give positive evidence that the verse does not affirm blind faith.  If we look at the context of chapter 11, however, verse 1 clearly does not affirm blind faith.  

If one continues through chapter 11 or Hebrews, one will come across what is called the “Hall of Faith,” where the author of Hebrews lists off a number of people in the past who exhibited great faith in God.  This list of people includes Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Rahab, David, Gideon, and others.  The author of Hebrews would have believed that all of these people saw manifestations of God’s presence, examples of His power, and His faithfulness in keeping promises.  So, to the author of Hebrews, these people would have had a lot of evidence that God exists and is who He says He is.  If the author of Hebrews is teaching blind faith in verse one, he would not be using these people as examples of great faith.  Since he is using these people as examples of great faith, he must not be teaching that faith is blind in verse one.

Since blind faith does not fit into the context of chapter 11 and blind faith is not implied by the language of the verse, this means that the skeptic is wrong to use it as a response to Christians when they say faith is compatible with evidence.