So I've been thinking more about what I talked about in my "Certainty" post. Mostly about it's implications on my understanding of faith. See, before I saw faith as a kind of means to knowledge. When people would say, "I know the Church is true," or "I know that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God," it was because of their faith they obtained that knowledge.
After all, as it states in Alma 32, "faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things." Whether accurate or not, the accepted interpretation of this seems to be that one is supposed to use that faith to obtain that perfect knowledge. Perhaps a discussion of what "perfect knowledge" means would be helpful, but that's for another post.
Either way, in Hebrews 11 faith is equated with an assurance, meaning faith is a kind of surety, even if it's not a perfect knowledge. However, since I can't be completely sure of many of the laws and principles of the Gospel, how am I to have faith in them? How is that faith supposed to lead to a perfect knowledge? What is a perfect knowledge of something that is subject to change?
I reached a conclusion that I feel really good about. Not only that, since reaching this conclusion, I've found that I'm not the only one who has; I'm currently taking Philosophy of Religion and the professor has reached the same conclusion. Not only that, the professor explained that the Greek word for faith--pistis--actually supports my conclusion.
The conclusion, as hinted at in the title to this post, is this: faith is trust.
Thus, one doesn't have faith in a what, but in a whom. As expressed so simply in the 4th Article of Faith, the first principle of the Gospel is "faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." When we have faith, we trust God, meaning all three members of the Godhead. Thus we don't have faith in principles and laws, but in the principle- and law-Giver. We do what He tells us to do, which ends up being more centered around ordinances than principles, for principles can contradict each other (just take the classic example of mercy and justice).
Either way, this is a small yet significant change in most members' understanding of faith, one that members would benefit greatly from.
