8640 What is meant by "faith"....

October 9, 1963: Book 91

You humans are required to believe in something for which you lack evidence.... It is demanded of you that you should accept as truth what is communicated to you.... It is demanded of you that you also confess it yourselves. This is faith.... You therefore have to rely on the knowledge of the one who tries to impart his knowledge to you, and depending on his credibility you accept the knowledge. Earthly knowledge can now indeed be substantiated by evidence, and yet it is possible that such evidence is not accessible to you humans.... but you will nevertheless be convinced of the truth if you have complete faith in the one who imparts the knowledge to you. Such faith is nothing strange; it is simply a trust that the fellow human being is correctly informed and that what he imparts can be accepted without hesitation. But it is different with spiritual knowledge, for which proofs are not to be brought. Then it is up to you yourselves whether you trust the mediator of spiritual knowledge so much that you accept without hesitation that you therefore believe what he tells you. And you know that every person can err, that only on the part of God all error is excluded. How then should you procure for yourselves the inner conviction of the truth of what you are to believe? Because only a convinced faith is of value. Proofs cannot be produced, and the man who imparts knowledge to you can just as well impart an erroneous spiritual material to you, which you certainly do not contradict and therefore pretend a 'faith' outwardly, but which cannot be called faith as long as man lacks the inner conviction. And man can again only get this inner conviction from God Himself, from Him, Who knows about everything and Who also wants to give His creatures a light, so that they find their way out of darkness of spirit. Therefore man must turn to God in thoughts or in prayer, who wants to win a convinced faith. But man again only goes to God who inwardly confesses Him, who feels connected to him and who is therefore inwardly connected to Him because he lives in love. No man will have a living faith, which is without love.... Because the intellect will not be able to give him conviction, because spiritual areas, spiritual knowledge, cannot be fathomed with the intellect. Man will never reach spiritual knowledge intellectually. The intellect can well think through the knowledge received through the heart and take a stand on it, and as soon as love fills a man, the intellect will also not resist it. Then it will accept spiritual knowledge undoubtedly, also when it is offered to it on the part of a fellowman, because love in man gives it the light of recognition. One thing let it be said to you that there is no living faith without love, that intellect cannot replace love when it is about pure spiritual knowledge.... that on the other hand earthly knowledge, for which the proofs are only inaccessible to man, can be accepted believingly by intellect, as soon as the teacher seems to be credible to him. But there is no evidence for spiritual knowledge, and yet faith in it can become conviction in the human being, yet only ever when the human being, through a life of love, attains knowledge which is conveyed to him by God Himself through the spirit.... Then this 'working of the spirit in man' is proof enough, and then it can certainly also be spoken of a 'faith', and still it is no dead faith, but it has become alive through love, and convinced the man now represents that, what cannot be substantiated through proof. But when (now a) man has fullest trust and confidence in him who teaches him, also about spiritual knowledge, then he will also be able to believe; he will accept unchecked when he himself leads a love life, and he will build up on the spiritual knowledge imparted to him, i.e. always base his walk of life on the knowledge and make the will of God his own, which he gets to know through spiritual knowledge. And if he lives according to God's will then it will also become light in him, and he will learn to differentiate truth from error, he will also become knowledgeable and win a living, i.e. convinced faith...._>Amen

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