Which is the more difficult word, "love" or "antidisestablishmentarianism?" At first glance, many would say the latter, but that is because long, multisyllabic words seem scary. When you get right down to it, "antidisestablishmentarianism" is easy to break down into its etymological roots, and the definition is quite narrow and specific. It means the belief that a church that has received government support should continue to do so and should not be disestablished. "Love," on the other hand, is a word applied to a romantic interest, a favorite type of pizza, devotion to one's country, and the driving force behind the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Through constant use and familiarity, it has taken on so many meanings as to be nearly meaningless, and the same is true of another common word, "faith." It has come to have a sort wispy sense, something light and delicate and otherworldly, but, as we will see, it is a concrete, robust word capable of supporting the massive edifice of a human life.
Etymology and Theology
Trinity, Andrei Rublev, 1425
Hebrews 11:1 is a well known verse that states in the King James Version, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." The Greek word translated substance is ὑπόστασις (hypostasis), which breaks down into two parts meaning to stand beneath. The English word "substance" is itself little more than a transliteration of the Latin word used in the Vulgate translation substantia, which means the same thing as the Greek. The light may be starting to dawn for you as you think, "How nice! Faith is that which stands beneath my hopes. It is the foundation on which hope is built." If you stopped here, you would certainly be blessed with a good understanding. Hope indeed is not merely a fanciful wish, but something with a strong foundation, but as infomercials on late-night television used to say, "But wait! There's more!"
That Greek word hypostasis took on new meaning in the fourth century A.D. with the Cappodocian Fathers Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen. Their thinking, along with the Holy Spirit-led work at the First Council of Constantinople in 381, led to a phrase that summarizes the orthodox Christian understanding of the Trinity, μία οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις (mia ousia, treis hypostaseis), a phrase that is typically translated, "one being/essence, three persons." In Christian theology, the idea of hypostasis goes beyond that which stands beneath. It contains more than the notion of a foundation. Hypostasis expresses the very idea of God the Father qua Father, God the Son qua Son, and God the Holy Spirit qua Spirit.
Look again at Hebrews 11:1. Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for. Suddenly we see something real about faith, taking "real" in the literal sense from its Latin root res, meaning "thing." When something has been realized or has become real, it has been "thingified." It is more than just an abstract thought. Faith is not fancy, but the real foundation of hope, as real as the three persons of the Holy Trinity.
Etymology and Philosophy
The second half of that verse expands on this idea by stating that faith is the evidence of things not seen. The word translated "evidence" is ἔλεγχος (elenchos), and any student of philosophy in general or Socrates in particular will know that this word carries a lot of freight. Most commonly seen in its latinized spelling, elenchus is the method by which Socrates would test the ideas of others in an effort to find the truth. It involved the vigorous back-and-forth discussion that we find in the dialogues of Plato, dialogues that were in essence a verbal crucible in which the dross of falsehood was burned away until only the pure truth of a matter remained.
This is what faith is, according to Hebrews 11:1. It is the unsparing process that arrives at truth, even when that truth cannot be grasped by the physical senses.
Putting It All Together
Faith is something robust and vigorous. It is solid and alive. Because it is hypostasis and elenchos, it is capable of supporting hope and indeed our very lives. Foundations, of course, can be composed of many materials, so the real question is about what our faith is made of. The kind of faith that Hebrews 11:1 is referring to is the kind best described in the words of the 1834 hymn by Edward Mote.
In 1982 a British hard rock band released its fifth album, and in 2023, the television game show Jeopardy! aired the latest of its more than eight thousand episodes. What could either of these possibly have in common? They each have something to say about contemporary biblical literacy.
Less Than Subtle
David Coverdale formed Whitesnake in 1978 following the breakup of the legendary Deep Purple in 1976. Even before this group became MTV darlings in the late '80s as they led the hair metal charge through a cloud of Aqua Net, they were a well established, bluesy, hard rock outfit with a fair amount of success around the world. What they were not was subtle. The closest their often sex-drenched lyrics came to nuance was the frequent wink-wink, nudge-nudge of the double entendre.
In 1982 Whitesnake released their fifth album, Saints & Sinners, and the title track contains some interesting lines. The song opens with,
Get ready for Judgement Day
And the final curtain call
Don't lie when you testify
'Cause the Good Lord knows you're all
Saints an' sinners, priests an' thieves
Saints an' sinners, priests an' thieves
When Moses stood on the Red Sea shore
Laying the law on the line,
He said, "Don't come knockin' at the Pearly Gates
If you all you did was have a real good time."
Later in the song we get the refrain, "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful."
Whitesnake could never be confused with a Christian band like for King & Country, so what on earth are lyrics like these doing in one of their songs? They make for reasonably good rock lyrics, but notice what in 1982 Coverdale could reasonably assume his audience would understand: a reference to the Christian expectation of an event commonly referred to as Judgment Day; the Christian expectation of a final accounting at that time when all must testify about their lives; a reference to the Old Testament figure Moses; the connection between Moses and the Ten Commandments of the Hebrew law; the location of Moses at the Red Sea as he led the Israelites out of bondage; and the Pearly Gates, a phrase long used as synecdoche to refer to Heaven itself. This last is based on Revelation 21:21 in which the twelve gates of Heaven are made of pearls. As for the prayer, it is from the Church of England and was once common throughout British schools.
I have no idea whether David Coverdale was attempting to infuse Christian doctrine into his lyrics in an attempt at subtle evangelism, but what is undeniable is that he confidently assumed his audience would get the references. These were in the lyrics to his new album's title song, and this savvy entertainer was not about to fill that song with obscure references that no one would understand.
Blank Stares for 200
On Tuesday, June 13, 2023 the television game show Jeopardy! sparked a minor furor across social media as all three contestants failed to answer a question. They did not get it wrong. They simply could not answer at all.
The clue read, "Matthew 6:9 says 'Our Father which art in heaven', this 'be thy name.'" Social media was quickly inflamed with those who could not believe that not one of the contestants knew that the missing word was "hallowed." Even atheists weighed in to say that they would have known the answer.
What's Going On?
I can hear some of the responses now. "That's from the King James Version, which was published in 1611. There's no need to know something that old today." "It doesn't matter whether someone knows the words of the Bible. What matters is being kind to people." Setting aside the poor reasoning of such responses for now, let's consider what may be going on with these two examples. Why was a hard rock musician in 1982 able to write a lyric with multiple, biblical references that he could expect his audience to understand, and why were these three contestants on a game show based on wide-ranging knowledge unable to answer a biblical question in 2023? To be fair, these are not perfectly comparable, and I am not citing hard research on biblical literacy from either era, but it may be they are indicators of what is going on in education.
Simply put, we have been moving away from requiring students to know factual knowledge for some time. We decry methods of direct instruction as "drill and kill" and malign the lecture as being forced onto students from "the sage on the stage," even as we promote the model of the teacher as "the guide on the side." We advocate for the teaching of higher level thinking skills and relegate factual knowledge to that which can easily be accessed online, and there are reasons for this.
It is indeed a missed opportunity if, in the presence of bright, developing minds, we never move beyond factual knowledge to the more abstract realms of speculation, but we are doing an equal disservice if we jump too early to the latter and stay there to the exclusion of the former. We often do this because we teachers enjoy the higher, abstract, deep levels of engagement. We don't want to focus on basic math facts and grammar when there are the delights of advanced science and poetry to explore. We also want to avoid requiring students to know discrete facts because this usually requires study and memorization, and in a world in which there are significant challenges to these practices through familial and cultural forces, we want to do anything and everything to mitigate academic failure and promote success. And finally, if I may be so blunt and bold, we teachers who must support our own families are unwilling to trust our financial livelihoods to the scores of students on tests. It is far easier to create a smokescreen of inquiry-based projects and critical thinking so that no one can really hold anyone accountable for anything.
What Now?
Some of these are issues to be addressed by educators, but the particular matter of biblical literacy rests squarely on parents and church leaders. If we parents are deferring our calling and responsibility to equip our children in the faith to church leaders alone, we are derelict in our duty. If church leaders are mostly focused on growing the numbers of children and youth in the church or building relationships among them, they are derelict in their duty. In Paul's second letter to Timothy, he says of the young man, "from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." What will it take, not to get to the point where most people could handle a sermon by the likes of St. Augustine or St. Chrysostom as they did in the fourth and fifth centuries, but merely to the point where even the audience at a hard rock concert would know what was being talked about?
