Faith is set forth in the New Testament as an existential experience. However, the rational unfolding of authentic Christian faith discloses a thought content radically different from that developed in philosophical existentialism.

This radical difference between New Testament existentialism and much of modern existentialism is possible because existentialism is primarily a way of thinking rather than a discrete system of thought. Existential thinkers may differ widely regarding their concepts of God, the cause for man’s anxiety, or the meaning to man’s existence. Yet, they all share a common approach to these fundamental questions.

For example, existential thinkers, including Biblical writers, agree, above all else, that there is a basic distinction between essence and existence (that is, between the worlds of thought and reality), and that the world of reality, or existence, is primary. They believe that the truth about existence is not grasped by mere reason but by reflecting on the individual’s actual experience as a hoping, fearing, loving, willing, anxious person. Truth, for existentialists, is not grasped until the thinker experiences the impact of the vital questions of existence, such as death and ethical responsibility, in his own life of decision. In fact, insight into the basic problems of existence remains walled off to that person who refuses to involve his whole self in decision-making. Theoretical detachment is mere play-acting when existential questions are at stake, and thus does not lead to truth.

Yet, the chasm exists between a Biblical understanding of God, of life, truth, faith, subjectivity, anxiety, death, essence and existence, and what philosophically-oriented existentialists mean. The thought content of authentic New Testament faith is radically different from that of Sartre, Camus and Heidegger, on the one hand and that of Tillich and Bultmann on the other, because the existential experience of authentic Christian faith is, as developed in the New Testament, sui generis. It is unique primarily because the experience is God-initiated and not man-initiated.

Although Biblical writers agree with most other existentialists that truth must be inwardly appropriated, that man is unique and must not be de-humanized into organizational cogs or mere biological units, that anxiety must be recognized and dealt with constructively, that belief in God is not at the end of rational effort, etc., the vital difference and thus the fundamental issue that makes the Bible unique is that the Biblical writers insist that man cannot answer the basic questions of existence by self-reflection or mere decision-making. Christian faith begins as a personal response to a self-communicating God and the knowledge gained through this encounter is such that it can be learned in no other way that is, neither through reason, intuition, feeling, or historical research.

For the man of authentic faith, existence does precede essence. Only the Christian knows the meaning and purpose of human existence but this knowledge is his only after he realizes that he is a responsible person (that is, one able to respond), and that he has inescapable anxieties until he is reconciled with his Creator and Lord. But this information about his essential nature is not a matter of reason or even passive acceptance of someone else’s testimony. It is a knowledge which comes to him, that apprehends him-not knowledge which he “discovers” or apprehends by the normal methods of mental activity.

Faith-A Relationship Between Persons

The New Testament pistis (faith) is employed to describe the right relationship of responsible man to the Lordship of the self-communicating God. Theology, as set forth in the Bible, is the story of a personal relationship between the Creator God, the Eternal Person, and men and women who were created to be His personal counterparts. Regardless of the nature of man’s response to God’s self-communication, man can not escape being in some kind of relationship with his Maker. He cannot ignore the call of God; man can be responsible or irresponsible, but not un-responsible. Man is always responsible.

From the moment of creation the infinite dialectic from God’s side has been on one hand God’s self-affirmation as the Holy One (the One for whom there is no other), and on the other God’s self-communication, as the One who loves unconditionally. From man’s side as he responds to this eternal dialectic in God’s nature, the emphasis is Lordship and Fellowship-the central themes of the Bible and the whole point of Christian proclamation.

Because God can be Lord only over those who are able to respond with their decisions and loyalties, He made man “in His image” so that there could be fellowship between them. God can fellowship only with persons who can respond to his love with love. Thus man’s destiny was to exist as a loving person, a being in right relationship to all other persons. Man, in his freedom, thrived and fulfilled his destiny only when he remained in accord with his essential nature as created by God. To reject this original destiny for some other of his own making was to rebel against the will of a personal God. When “existence-for-love” did not become “existence-in-love” the original fellowship between God and man was severed; man had turned from God as his Lord and set himself up as autonomous.

Yet, because man was by nature made to relate to others (that is, an essence which fulfilled its purpose in the right kind of existence), he could not shake off his essential relationship to God even though he did his best to ignore or evade it. Man remained responsible because his flight from God was a personal decision (an existential decision) and because, in his rebellion, God did not leave him “without excuse.” In many ways, God has reminded men of their lostness, and also of His continuing desire for fellowship.

Thus, the aim of God’s self-communication has been to woo back the free response of trusting, loving human beings. His Word goes forth and faith responds: the personal act of faith becomes the correlate to the personal act of God’s self-communication. This personal transaction of fellowship is not the mere acceptance of something that happened in the past. It is not the mental assent to even true statements about God. Authentic faith is a contemporary event in the life of modern disciples in which the Word (the personal address of self-communicating God) speaks today through the Word of History and the Word of the Spirit just as vividly as in the past. In this experience a responding man knows that God has accepted him as a forgiven son with the same comparable self-authenticity shared by any of the gospel writers.

Ellen White understood well this existential nature of faith, that the faith experience lies on the existential level rather than the intellectual:

The faith that is unto salvation is not a mere intellectual assent to the truth. He who waits for entire knowledge before he will exercise faith cannot receive blessing from God. It is not enough to believe about Christ; we must believe in Him. The only faith that will benefit us is that which embraces Him as a personal Saviour; which appropriates His merits to ourselves. Many hold faith as an opinion. Saving faith is a transaction by which those who receive Christ join themselves in covenant relation with God. Genuine faith is life. A living faith means an increase of vigor, a confiding trust, by which the soul becomes a conquering power. (Italics in original.)¹

Relationship of Faith Reveals Truth About Man God

In linking faith with knowledge something other than normal cognition is being considered; authentic faith is not achieved by the means of normal intellectual or intuitive processes. From one point of view, the man of faith, instead of the knower, becomes the known and God is the knower. What faith learns is that God has spoken with unique authority and man’s best response is to believe what he hears-a belief which leads to an entirely new way of relating to reality, or existence. Often Ellen White emphasizes that “it is contrition and faith and love that enable the soul to receive wisdom from heaven. Faith working by love is the key of knowledge, and everyone that loveth ‘knoweth God.’ 1 John 4:7.”²

First, faith is the awareness of God as Lord who merits obedience and as Love who merits responding trust and love. When God says, “I am the Lord thy God, the Creator,” this means “Thou art my property.” There is something inherently absurd when a created being elects to disregard his Creator’s design for his life. But to understand God as Lord without knowing Him as Love would over-power man and lead to the most profound despair. At the heart of the Biblical presentation of salvation is faith as man’s answer to God’s claim and assurance. Man hears God call him, not as mere property, but as His son, accepted with all the privileges of a son. Thus the Holy Lord is also the Loving Father. This information is known for a certainty only by the man of faith.

But there is more that is learned. Faith is also the awareness of man’s state as rebel. Before God is known as Lord, man knows no other authority but his own to which he is responsible. But in the act of faith man learns Who alone it is Who has the right to call man to account. To turn from God is to reject not only legitimate authority but the truth about existence. When God is seen as Lord, the appeal to autonomy is seen in its powerlessness and ultimate collapse. The response of faith includes the disclosure and the removal of this deluded human craving for autonomy. Faith says, “Thou art the Lord, I belong not to myself but to Thee.”

Faith does not arise until a person realizes how desperate his need is and in this negative disclosure (not only of human distress but also his guilt in rebellion) there springs the hope that exactly where he is in need, a Person meets his personal needs. As with the centurion, so with all men, “in the teaching of Christ, . . . he found that which met the need of the soul.” A personal God breaks through the perimeter of man’s autonomy and is accepted as the loving invader who desires only the reclamation and restoration of property lost for awhile. For the authentic Christian, the anxieties of life are not natural to his existence and something to be bravely endured. He sees anxieties as an unnatural state which can be overcome by the grace of God.

Such was Nicodemus’s problem, and his experience is common to all men:

Nicodemus had come to the Lord thinking to enter into a discussion with Him, but Jesus laid bare the foundation principles of truth. He said to Nicodemus, It is not theoretical knowledge you need so much as spiritual regeneration. You need not to have your curiosity satisfied, but to have a new heart. You must receive a new life from above before you can appreciate heavenly things. Until this change takes place, making all things new, it will result in no saving good for you to discuss with Me My authority or My mission.⁴

Such disclosures in faith accentuate the existential nature of faith-that faith is not something discovered by ordinary mental processes and thus possessed by man. Truth here possesses man but only when the man of faith responds wholeheartedly by living in and doing the truth. (John 7:17).

Truth Discovered in Existentital Decisions

Truth is existentially apprehended because truth itself is a description of the right relationships which on the one hand should exist within all creation, and on the other hand, between all creation and its Maker. Nothing is static-all creation is in some kind of dynamic relationship with its counterparts. To thwart the proper or destined relationship is to reject life and to invite disaster. For this reason, “genuine faith is life.”⁵

God is not understood as Lord except to the man who recognizes his human impotency and who chooses to accept His claim and demands as well as His offers and assurances. The act of faith is a decision of obedience in response to God’s own personal encounter with man. The last words in the letter to the Romans seem to sum up well this encounter aspect of faith:

Now to him who is able to set you on your feet-according to my gospel, according to the preaching of Jesus Christ himself, and in accordance with the disclosing of that secret purpose which, after long ages of silence, has now been made known (in full agreement with the writings of the prophets long ago), by the command of the everlasting God to all the Gentiles, that they might turn to him in the obedience of faith. . . .⁶

Pistis, carrying in its meaning the fullest dimensions of trust and confidence, is the predominant relationship between the authentic Christian and God. “Faith includes not only belief but trust.”⁷ That trust leads to loving obedience only when man is convinced that God’s foundation for his life is more secure than his own. Pistis awakens only when man is confident that God will be as gracious with mercy and power as He has promised; trust awakens when man sees how God in His acts has proved Himself worth trusting.

Mis-trust (a-pistis of Hebrews 3:19) is the basis of all sin. Rebellion, the decision to set up some lord other than the Lord of Heaven, springs from mis-trust, and state of broken personal relations. Such was Paul’s argument in Hebrews 3 and 4:

Yes, it is all too plain that it was refusal to trust [apistis, lack of faith] God that prevented those men from entering his rest. Now since the same promise of rest is offered to us today, let us be continually on our guard that none of us even looks like failing to attain it. For we too have had a gospel preached to us, as those men had. Yet the message proclaimed to them did them no good, because they only heard and did not believe as well. It is only as a result of our faith and trust that we experience that rest.⁸

Reconciliation with God, “his rest,” is knowledge that can be gained only through personal decision. Neither keen logic nor breadth of intellect can grasp the truth about man’s essential nature or his destiny. Only when man begins with his existence, sees his nature as a dynamic tension of contradictions, studies the lamentable consequences of these contradictory inclinations and the human inability to cope with them, will he be prepared to receive the ever-present reconciling, problem-solving gospel of Jesus Christ. This personal analysis of the human situation may be either elementary or sophisticated but the very act of drawing the conclusion of human impotence in the face of God’s gracious offer is in itself an all-encompassing act of the whole man in decision. The accompanying fulfillment of God’s personal answer of “yes” to man’s “yes” is knowledge sui generis, beyond human comprehension on one hand but profoundly simple and self-authenticating on the other.

Ellen White could write the following only after her own existential experience of faith:

The perception and appreciation of truth, He said, depends less upon the mind than upon the heart. Truth must be received into the soul; it claims the homage of the will. If truth could be submitted to the reason alone, pride would be no hindrance in the way of its reception. But it is to be received through the work of grace in the heart; and its reception depends upon the renunciation of every sin that the Spirit of God reveals. Man’s advantages for obtaining a knowledge of the truth, however great these may be, will prove of no benefit to him unless the heart is open to receive the truth, and there is a conscientious surrender to every habit and practice that is opposed to its principles. To those who thus yield themselves to God, having an honest desire to know and to do His will, the truth is revealed as the power of God for their salvation.⁹

Faith Arises in Response to the Word

Here especially does the Biblical witness cut across all other forms of existential thought as well as any philosophically based epistemologies. The man of faith does not discover the truth about existence by any form of human activity, initiated by reason, intuition, feeling, or historical research. Authentic faith is first confronted by a Thou who stands over-against man and who presents himself as One worthy of trust. God, to the Christian, is not an inner power, or a “ground of being” but a Person who is infinitely other than man from the standpoint of time and being. The clearest expression of His address to man was conveyed in God Incarnate, in Jesus Christ as an historical event. For Christians, this historical encounter is bed-rock for Christian faith.

However, Jesus as the Man from Nazareth, the historical Person, is not, as such, the all-sufficient Word whom to know would evoke faith. If this were true, all those who saw and heard His daily witness would have recognized Him to be their Lord. The remarkable aspect of Peter’s testimony at Caesarea Phillipi (Matthew 16) was that here, for the first time, the nature of authentic Christian faith was revealed. The response of Jesus to Peter’s affirmation reveals that Christian faith is the product of a marvelous union of the historical Word and the interior Word.

The truth which Peter had confessed is the foundation of the believer’s faith. It is that which Christ Himself has declared to be eternal life. But the possession of this knowledge was no ground for self-glorification. Through no wisdom or goodness of his own had it been revealed to Peter. Never can humanity, of itself, attain to a knowledge of the divine Only the spirit of adoption can reveal to us the deep things of God, which “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man.”¹⁰

Faith could not arise without the historical Word; yet, neither could it arise apart from the interior Word which Peter was willing to acknowledge as the Word of truth. Peter acknowledged that what Jesus said historically and what the Spirit said within was the truth about Him as a man and that he needed what they offered as man’s solution.

Because the historical witness is fundamental to Christian faith, the apostles became the foundation of the Christian church. Without apostles there would be no Christian church; the apostles are distinguished from all later believers by the fact that he received his faith in direct, immediate, historical encounter with God and not through the mediation of other human beings. Their faith, as they witnessed to it, helped to generate the faith of others who through them found their own personal encounter with God.

The apostles were the first of the many communities of faith to follow. Those early believing communities considered it their responsibility to protect and preserve the historical witness of the apostles; they collected their writings and distributed them with a clear demarcation between them and all other religious writings.

But the transmission of the gospel was not merely a matter of conveying historical information. It was not only the message about Christ and His encounter with the first-hand apostles which the Church transmitted through the years. If the Church merely passed on the Bible as a factual document there would have been no “believers” in the days which followed. Genuine faith was not and is not “belief about” but an on-going response to the contemporary self-bestowing love of God which every generation may receive afresh. Peter’s confession, which became the paradigm and bed-rock of all faith to follow, accepted both the historical witness and the interior witness and this combined encounter brought Peter to his knees and transformed his life. The truth Peter learned through both the historical and interior Word was that he would solve his human problems if he learned how to love others as God had loved him, as well as to trust God for the answer to his most pressing existential needs. This was the gospel which shook the first generation.

The Experience of Faith Is Self-authenticating

The interior Word is the Holy Spirit. Jesus made clear that the chief function of the Spirit is to bear Him witness. The beautiful truth about the work of the Holy Spirit is that He not only makes the person of Jesus Christ present, but also personally packages the truth in such a way that it answers the special needs of each individual. This is basic to the existential dictum that “truth is subjectivity.” If truth is not individually appropriated, if truth does not speak meaning and solution to each particular individual, there will be no abiding conviction. There would be no personal faith and a personal Saviour.

John stressed the function of the Holy Spirit as that of witnesses to Christ but the “witnessing to” is not accomplished by mere referral to an historical event. Faith is no mere memory of a past event but life and activity in the presence of Him who creates anew and is Himself present in His gifts.

By faith we behold Him here and now. In our daily experience we discern His goodness and compassion in the manifestation of His providence. We recognize Him in the character of His Son. The Holy Spirit takes the truth concerning God and Him whom He hath sent, and opens it to the understanding and to the heart.¹¹

The work of the Holy Spirit is to make faith self-authenticating. The Biblical witness itself is the product of faith; it speaks of a God-man encounter which can be experienced by any man who is willing to listen to the God who is speaking. But the Bible remains pure history to the man who does not share its faith; its meaning is not grasped. However, when man responds to the Lord of the Scriptures, just as the Biblical writers once did, His Spirit within makes personally real the truth which gladdened the hearts of the apostles-”God is with us.” No line of logic, no appeal to the heterogen authority is now needed. The self-validating interior witness of the Spirit to the exterior historical witness requires nothing more in the way of proof; it is a self-authenticating witness no less real to men today than it was to the apostles.

Thus through faith they come to know God by an experimental knowledge. They have proved for themselves the reality of His word, the truth of His promises. They have tasted, and they know that the Lord is good.

The beloved John had a knowledge gained through his own experience. He could testify: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.”

So everyone may be able, through his own experience, to “set his seal to this, that God is true.” . . . He can bear witness to that which he himself has seen and heard and felt of the power of Christ. He can testify:

“I needed help, and I found it in Jesus. Every want was supplied, the hunger of my soul was satisfied; the Bible is to me the revelation of Christ. I believe in Jesus because He is to me a divine Saviour. I believe the Bible because I have found it to be the voice of God to my soul.” ¹²

The self-authenticating experience of faith verifies the validity of the Holy Scriptures. Archaeology, linguistics, history or even prophetic interpretation do not, in the last analysis, establish the fact that the information contained in the Bible is incontrovertibly true. All such human efforts to recover the past and to devise rational evidences, necessary and helpful as they certainly are, remain subject to the contingencies and relativities of anything humanly reconstructed or performed. Ellen White points out that “he who has a knowledge of God and His Word through personal experience has a settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures. He has proved that God’s Word is truth, and he knows that truth can never contradict itself.”¹³

The Bible was written after an existential experience and can be rightly understood only when the words written lead the reader into the same kind of experience which once prompted the written witness. The perversion of faith occurs when faith is reduced to an intellectual exercise of memory and assent. The arguments for such a misunderstood faith rest on the shifting contingencies of history and dogmatic reasonings and when the test comes, the perverted faith will be found insufficient. “Without a personal acquaintance with Christ, and a continual communion, we are at the mercy of the enemy, and shall do his bidding in the end.”¹⁴

For those who are concerned with the perennial problems of ancient history, such as the flood, creation, etc., the surest foundation for spiritual stability is the self-authenticating test of faith which verifies the validity of the apostles. “He who has gained a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience is prepared to engage in the study of natural science.”¹⁵

In summary, theoretical intellectualizing can not validate or even understand existential experiences. The contingencies present in the human understanding of knowledge have been apparent for centuries. The existential experience of faith possesses a logic far more satisfying than the normal processes of human argument, leading Ellen White to observe: “The truth as it is in Jesus can be experienced, but never explained. Its height and breadth and depth pass our knowledge.”¹⁶

Faith Transforms Existence

Men of faith have restored the right personal relationship with God and with their fellowmen. They are fulfilling the purpose of revelation in that they are reciprocating God’s initial invitation to fellowship. Thus, the man of faith glorifies God-he mirrors God’s way of life.

Hence, again, we are forced to use existential terms to describe the nature of faith. Faith is dynamic and involves the whole man in decision as he decides again and again to do God’s will, to relate to other persons as God has shown the way. Faith is not a means to a greater end; it is the great end which is also the great beginning. God can ask for nothing more than for the response of faith. Faith is not “believing something” but a happening which grips and changes the whole person.

Genuine faith will be manifested in good works; for good works are the fruits of faith. As God works in the heart, and man surrenders his will to God, and cooperates with God, he works out in the life what God works in by the Holy Spirit, and there is harmony between the purpose of the heart and the practice of the life. Every sin must be renounced as the hateful thing that crucified the Lord of life and glory, and the believer must have a progressive experience by continually doing the works of Christ. It is by continual surrender of the will, by continual obedience, that the blessing of justification is retained.¹⁷

Faith as related to God is trusting obedience and when related to man, it is love as God has loved us. According to Galatians 5:6, love is the experimental proof of faith. Love not only accepts other men as persons but also “as they are.” Sin treats persons as though they were objects of exploitation or enjoyment. Faith is the positive relationship-sin, the negative. Both are existential and when the Christian Church let both sin and faith slip into the intellectual, legalistic realm, untold damage was done to the Christian witness.

A legal religion is insufficient to bring the soul into harmony with God. The hard, rigid orthodoxy of the Pharisees, destitute of contrition, tenderness, or love, was only a stumbling block to sinners. They were like the salt that had lost its savor; for their influence had no power to preserve the world from corruption. The only true faith is that which “worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6) to purify the soul. It is as leaven that transforms the character.¹⁸

Faith does not consist in becoming free from the law; on the contrary, faith presses through the abstract character of the Law to the personal will which stands behind it, to the personal will of God who is Love. Faith hears God’s gift of grace but not without the simultaneous summons to obedience. With the indicative (“You are my son!”) there is always the imperative of discipleship (“Be my son!”).

Faith is inseparable from repentance and transformation of character. To have faith means to find and accept the gospel treasure, with all the obligations which it imposes.¹⁹

The task of “being what you are” is the Biblical program of sanctification. Faith and ethics are indissolubly entwined. Ethics become the manward side of the faith experience. Herein there is no cheap grace where man accepts the gift without attention to the claim of God’s Lordship.

A profession of faith and possession of truth in the soul are two different things. The mere knowledge of truth is not enough. We may possess this, but the tenor of our thoughts may not be changed. The heart must be converted and sanctified.

The man who attempts to keep the commandments of God from a sense of obligation merely-because he is required to do so-will never enter into the joy of obedience. He does not obey. When the requirements of God are accounted a burden because they cut across human inclination, we may know that the life is not a Christian life. True obedience is the outworking of a principle within. It springs from the love of righteousness, the love of the law of God. The essence of all righteousness is loyalty to our Redeemer. This will lead us to do right because it is right-because right doing is pleasing to God.²⁰

It is not enough for us to believe that Jesus is not an imposter, that the religion of the Bible is no cunningly devised fable. We may believe that the name of Jesus is the only name under heaven whereby man may be saved, and yet we may not through faith make Him our personal Saviour. It is not enough to believe the theory of truth. It is not enough to make a profession of faith in Christ and have our names registered on the church roll. “He that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us.” “Hereby we do know that we know Him if we keep His commandments.” 1 John 3:24; 2:3. This is the genuine evidence of conversion. Whatever our profession, it amounts to nothing unless Christ is revealed in works of righteousness.²¹

The ethical transformation of the Church is the reason for the delay in the second advent of Jesus Christ. The gospel is vindicated only when its claims are realized and validated in the lives of its adherents. Christianity is more a matter of exhibiting a product than of proclaiming news about God. The grand purpose of the life of Christ on earth was to demonstrate that man in his sinful existence can be elevated into a new existence which solves the twin human problems of meaning to life and the inter-personal relationships. Whether or not even the story of His beautiful life is true, for modern man at least, will depend upon the living witnesses to that power which the Church can exhibit. The world is tired of listening to words without power, and to power without meaning.

Our confession of His faithfulness is Heaven’s chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world. We are to acknowledge His grace as made known through the holy men of old; but that which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience. We are witnesses for God as we reveal in ourselves the working of a power that is divine. Every individual has a life distinct from all others, and an experience differing essentially from theirs. God desires that our praise shall ascend to Him, marked by our own individuality. These precious acknowledgements to the praise of the glory of His grace, when supported by a Christlike life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls.²²

The gospel is to be presented, not as a lifeless theory, but as a living force to change the life. God desires that the receivers of His grace shall be witnesses to its power.²³

Conclusion

Faith is an existential experience because it is concerned with moral decision and ethical transformation. Authentic faith cannot exist unless the whole man is involved in radical decisions daily. The most pressing human problems-death, anxiety, love, hate, etc.,-are the central concerns of authentic faith. At the heart of faith is the unshakable self-authenticating conviction that God has spoken to him, through both the historic and interior witness, in mutual corroboration. The man of faith is no detached spectator watching the game of life. His convictions regarding existential problems are not the products of human reasoning. He is a man who has been confronted and apprehended by his personal Lord. His destiny in faith is God-oriented and in the doing of his Lord’s will, he finds genuine freedom and the solutions to human existence.