Estudo | Glenio Fonseca Paranaguá - The ABC of Faith – The Crisis
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The ABC of Faith – The Crisis
For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, astumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. I Corinthians 1:22:23.
On our last study we treated the cause Fide. The human being is not born believing in God. We all are, in regard to Christ, unbelievers by nature, and, in regard to life, materialists by inclination. Faith is not natural on Adam´s descendants. Nobody is bornbelieving in God.We are born spiritually dead and dismissed of any indication of faith. Christ is the author of faith and his word is the cause Fide. Without Christ humanity lives on sin, on its own account. Sinner is separated from God and unable to believe. A dead on the spirit can not understand the spiritual things, without first being born again, on the spirit, through the Holy Spirit.
The preaching of the word of Christ, focused on the Gospel, is the sperm of the Zoê life and the agent of faith on the transformation of an unbeliever existence, on a believer´s life. Facing the valley of dry bones, Ezekiel received a very strange order from the Lord. "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord". (Ezekiel 37:4)
The prophetic proclamation is the cause of the revival. A spiritual dead only will be able to be vivified by the preaching of the good news. The word of the Lord generates life on the spirit and faith in those who are hearing the word. But, how can a dry bone
To say, I hear the word of the Lord? It is impossible to have a spiritual audience, without having at first, the life of God, on the human spirit.
Preaching generates spiritual life, life that listens the word believing to repentance and incredulity. The transformation starts with the proclamation of the word of God. "Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breath upon these slain, that they may live". (Ezekiel 37:9)
The spiritual life comes on a miraculous and immaterial way. The Spirit of God and the prophetic word produce life on the dead spirit in intimate unbelief. Faith breaks from the hearing entrails from the vivified one by the power of the word of God, throwing confidence on the author of faith. Christ in giving us faith to believe in Him, is as a father who gives money to his little son who wants to give him a gift for father´s day. "So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host". (Ezekiel 37:10)
The metaphor of the prophet Ezekiel is a figure of the regenerator work. The preached word generates spiritual life and this regenerated life listens the word and receives the gift of faith to believe on the word. If the sinner had natural faith, his faith would be contaminated by the sin of incredulity. Then, how could an unbelief result on a pure belief? Atheism and faith exclude themselves mutually.
The sinner can not believe automatically in Christ. There is not spontaneous faith. There is not an instinct of faith on the natural man. The sin of sins is the incredulity
In face of Jesus Christ and nobody can believe in Christ without the miracle of the vivification, through the word of God. "My soul cleaves to the dust; revive me according to thy word!" (Psalm 119:25)
The child is born unbeliever and the parents made of him a religious. Religion is the action of the human being towards his god. The god of the religious being is made at his image and involved on the limits of his imagination. The God of the gospel is spiritual and is not understood by the natural mind.
The Christian religious education or of any other creed transforms an Atheist of birth on a doubtful, practiser of rituals. The religious formalities and the mystical or overpious practices do not make anybody believer in Christ. The Pavlov´s classical conditioning of dogs and the religious training of kids have the same effects. Many are conditioned to believe, but they do not trust truly on the sufficiency of Christ. They are trained with methodology, but they do not live by faith.
Faith transcends Physics. It is not natural from the human race. The Bible explains that faith comes by the preaching of the word of Christ. Every baby is born ignorant. He has the potentiality of knowledge, but he is born analphabet, and agnostic. The educational notions are given to him and he learns. Nevertheless faith is not learned. It is a gift of the grace that breaks out from the preaching of the word of God. The Kerukson, preaching is different from Didachê, teaching. To teach Bible to an unbeliever is foolishness.
The preacher anointed by the Holy Spirit preaches the message inspired by the word of God and touches on the dead spirit, generating the spiritual life and giving the capacity to the vivified to answer through faith on the preached word. "But the scripture consigned all things to sin, that what was promised to faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe." (Galatians 3:22)
Faith in Jesus Christ is faith proceeding from Jesus Christ, for he is the author and the consumer of faith. Now, if the natural man does not possesses faith naturally, then it is needed the miracle of the new birth so that the new creature may manifest himself by the faith donated by Christ, trusting in Christ.
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews says: "And without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him". (Hebrews 11:6). But, how can a person who was not born spiritually search for God who is a spirit? How can a three dimensional mind to get near to the spiritual reality that it can not discern?
On this case the Jews ask for signs. For them, miracles are evidences of the divine operation. But this question here brings extreme difficulties, because the existence of miracle is not the cause of faith. The sign can be caused by faith, but no sign can be the cause of faith. If faith would come by a visible prodigy, then faith would not be a spiritual reality, but the effect of something confirmed.
Who believes since a proved miraculous act, does not believe by faith. The evidence of a palpable fact just evidences that there is the game of a fact of science and not of faith.
A proved data can be the proof of faith, never its cause. The one who asks a sign to trust, he asks because he does not know what is faith, for if he knew, he would know that faith is the confidence on the author of the word who does not appear visibly on the stage. "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. " (Hebrews 11;1)
Visible hope is not hope. To have hope is to see the spiritual reality, without seeing the object of the expected concretization. Faith is the confidence of the hoped invisibility, in reason of the absolute consistence of who did the promise. There is no faith, but in God, for nobody is absolutely consistent and entirely reliable.
To trust in signs it is total unbelief in Christ. Jesus never gave credit in that he needed signs to ground his belief. "Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did; but Jesus did not trust himself to them". (John 2:23-24). They saw the signs of Jesus and Jesus saw that they did not have faith. Faith does not require signs, because a sign of faith is that it is not based in signs.
By another hand, says Paul analyzing the problem of faith, Greeks search for wisdom. Here also we have serious problems. In spite of faith not to be illogical, it goes beyond, on a lot, the limits of reason. Neither Science, nor Philosophy get to explain the dimensions of faith. If it were perfectly explainable by the natural man, it would not be truely a spiritual reality.
God is the eternal absconditus and the inscrutable from eternity to eternity. Nobody will be able to explain him, for "the maximum we know of God is nothing regarding to what he is", used to say Tomas de Aquino. A god that can be understood is not absolutely the absolute God. Now, if God is incomprehensible and faith is a gracious gift to his children, then faith will be incredible and enigmatic for the unbeliever "adamic"(from Adam) man.
The Lord God can be known on a personal relationship, never on his essence. We can know him in intimate communion, never in intellectual understanding. One of the dangers of the Greek sofia is the episode of arrogance. The Bible says that knowledge swells. Humility is the stamp of the authenticity of wisdom, once that PhD in deity is a menace to the body of Christ.
Ending: faith does not need any other sign, for the unique sign that causes faith is Christ. Faith must concretize itself, but it is not the concretization of faith that explains his cause. Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom, but we announce Christ crucified, foolishness to the Hellenic ones and scandal for the Hebrews, but for us, God´s Israel, we preach Christ, power of God and wisdom of God. He is the sign of faith and the incarnation of the absolute knowledge. Halellujah.