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defines faith, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence [elenchus] of things not seen.” What is interesting is the use of the term “elenchus” in this passage.
“Elenchus” in Homer (8th century) is variously: to put to shame, to treat with contempt, to question with the aim of disproving, with the aim of censure, accusation, to accuse someone and perhaps to convict him—oftentimes in uses where superior officers dress down rank and file soldiers. In courts of law the term is also used: to bring charges, to bring accusations, but also to bring proofs, evidence, to offer convincing proofs. Pre-Socratics like Parmenides (early 5th century) use it as Socrates does: as argument, scrutiny, cross-examination for the purpose of refutation or disproof.
In Koine, the verb elencho is “I accuse, rebuke, reprove,” and also “I expose, I show to be guilty, I prove” (in the sense of putting the lie to a public statement). It’s in John 3:20; 1 Cor 14:24; Eph. 5:11, 13; James 2: 9. Souter’s Lexicon of the New Testament lists elenchus as “proof, possibly a persuasion” (Souter, 1917). This evidence points to a straightforward fact: in the Apostolic Age, the word elenchus expands in an important new context to take on the sense that is on stage in Hebrews 11, that is, people began using the word in a new way. They advocated, practiced, and helped make a success of using the word “elenchus.” Socrates used this term to indicate a rigorous process of argumentation by strict application of logic. In the new sense elenchus is used as conviction or persuasion or some other species of willing and satisfied affirmation—without argument—without going through the Socratic process of rigorous argumentation.
Socrates earned the right to claim a conclusion from philosophical examination. The anonymous author of Hebrews writes instead that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction or persuasion (elenchus) of things not seen. If Socrates were to hear this phrase, I imagine he’d say, “This may be conviction, but it is not an argument, not a crossexamination and test by scrutiny, but is a jump without any justification—without proof, and without earning it. Where is the virtue in this?”
For more, see American mathematician James A. Lindsay’s, “Defining Faith via Bayesian Reasoning” (Lindsay, 2012). Lindsay provides a cogent analysis of faith using Bayes’ theorem.
The exceptions to this are those people who are not pretending. These individuals are either delusional, or they’re victims of a wholesale lack of exposure to alternative ideas and different epistemologies. In the latter case, many people in the Islamic world fall into this category. For example, most of the people in Saudi Arabia are not pretending to know something they don’t know about the Koran. They’ve never encountered nor been given an opportunity to genuinely engage in competing ways of understanding reality. In a very real sense, they’re epistemological victims. Additionally, anyone reared by fundamentalist parents deserves credit for the exceptional struggle from indoctrination to enlightenment.
A recent move by apologists is to avoid the use of the word “faith” entirely, and instead to use the word “trust.” Given that the word “faith” is inherently problematic, I think this is an excellent strategy. The counter to this, however, is identical: “Without sufficient evidence how do you know what to trust?” If the response is, “There’s sufficient evidence,” then your reply should be, “Then you don’t need faith.”
In this vein, I’ve also heard faith defined as, “An attitude about things we don’t know.” When asked to spell out the nature of this attitude, it seems to be a kind of confidence or assurance or untroubled conviction, which in normal parlance is what we associate with the attitude of a person who has adequate justification for saying, “I know.”
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