Blessed Are Those Who Have Not Seen and Yet Have Known By Faith: Knowledge, Faith, and Sight in the New Testament

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Abstract

The New Testament speaks of our having faith rather than sight. This distinction is not made to distinguish faith from knowledge. Rather, it is to distinguish one kind of knowledge from another. We may know by trust in reliable authority; this knowledge is necessarily secondhand, but it is knowledge all the same. This, I argue, is the New Testament idea of faith. Another way of knowing is firsthand. Sight in the New Testament, I argue, is a metonym for firsthand knowledge. In this article I consider the meaning of faith and sight in the relevant New Testament passages, with an extended exegesis of 2 Cor. 5:7 and Heb. 11:1.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)133–146
Number of pages14
JournalEvangelical Quarterly: An International Review of Bible and Theology
Volume91
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2020

User-Defined Keywords

  • 2 Corinthians 5:7
  • Biblical Epistemology
  • Hebrews 11:1
  • Faith
  • John 20:29
  • Knowledge
  • Sight

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