Two forms of Faith?

I'm taking a class at Pitt called "Bible as Literature" which is exactly what it's called. It treats the Bible as a literary text, often comparing it to folklore traditions or hand-me-down etiologies (or stories) to explain why the world is as it is (How the Israelites came about, who God is, why we are mortals...)

I like the class only because it gives me a chance to read the Bible more closely with my wife. We used to read one chapter a day together. Now we read four or five a night, and pay even more attention to the details.

Tuesday night, our professor tried to make a case that the Old Testament understanding of Faith is completely different from Faith in the New Testament. At first he said there were very few uses of the word "faith" in the OT (which he refers to as the "Hebrew Bible" and not the Old Testament). When I told him that "faith" appears multiple times throughout the Psalms, he recanted and then addressed the class to explain the two faiths.

In the OT, he says, Faith is a complete reliance of God and a form of self-abandonment. In the NT, faith is what allows us to take action. He says that in the NT, the saints "act in faith." What he fails to recognize is that every command God gave the people of the OT required them to act in faith by trusting on God's protection.

I told my professor I completely disagreed with him on his assessment of the two faiths.

Yes, it's true that faith requires action, but that's true both in the Old and New Testaments. The faith in one. That doesn't mean it has to look exactly the same every time (after all, we're talking about something that is portrayed in people with different characters). Furthermore, Faith, in every instance in the Bible is always committed by submitting to God's will and abandoning our own. Even when the people of God take action in Faith, they allow HIM to take charge. Faith is uncomfortable for Christians precisely for this reason. Because we have to abandon ourselves, our desires and our reliance upon our own powers.

In Matthew 14, Jesus condemns Peter after he becomes afraid while walking on water.

And immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and caught him,
and said to him, "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?" And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. (Verses 31-32)

Peter had no power of his own to walk on water. He failed because he doubted God. It is Jesus who stretches his hand out to Peter, not the other way around, to show that God is always in control. All we can do, in faith, is submit. This faith has nothing to do with Peter’s action. After all, he did step off the boat and into the water. His actions failed because of his doubt.

Also in Hebrews 11 and Romans 4, the New Testaments authors quote the OT when talking about faith. I'll visis this later on...