If you have ever bought an item from a reputable company and then waited for it to be delivered, you have exercised that type of faith. The sales receipt in your hand gave you reason for faith in the company from which you bought the item. In a sense, that receipt was your title deed, your guarantee that you would receive what you purchased. If you had lost the receipt or had thrown it away, you would have lost the proof of your claim of ownership. Similarly, those who have faith that God will fulfill his promises are guaranteed to receive what they hope for. On the other hand, those who do not have faith, or who lose it, are not entitled to receive the things God promises.—
James 1:5-8.
In that sort of faith, there's generally plenty of evidence: you have lots of goods you've received from the company in the past, you can drive by their warehouse and see the company's logo displayed prominently, you'll pass the company's trucks as they deliver other people's orders, etc. You actually have a receipt or a sales contract.
Where the faith comes in is where you trust that the company will behave towards you the way it has behaved in the past.
It isn't a matter of faith that the company is a real thing: that's self-evident. The faith is only with regard to the
future behaviour of a thing that everybody agrees exists and has behaved in a certain way so far.
Do you think that faith in God is like (or can be like) this sort of faith? The customer can point to the warehouse and say "see - that's where my order will be processed" or to a truck and say "see - that truck is like the one that will deliver my order." Can you do that with God?
The second expression at
Hebrews 11:1, translated “evident demonstration,” carries the idea of producing evidence that contradicts that which only appears to be factual. For instance, the sun appears to revolve around the earth—rising in the east, moving through the sky, and setting in the west. However, evidence from astronomy and mathematics reveals that the earth is not the center of the solar system. Once you become familiar with that evidence and accept it as true, you have faith that the earth revolves around the sun—despite what your eyes tell you. Your faith is not blind. On the contrary, it gives you the ability to see things as they really are, not merely as they seem to be."
This description of faith seems to contradict the first definition you gave:
- by your first definition: faith is trust that what is self-evidently true now will continue to be true in the future.
-by your second definition: faith is the realization that what seems self-evidently true is actually false.
And I notice that your second definition also refers to evidence for belief... so where is it?
