Page 44 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
Faith: The Substance
of Things Hoped For
T he letter to the Hebrews (11:1) contains the extraordinary
statement that “faith is the subsistence (ὑπόστασις =
reality) of things hoped for.” This points to a future—an
eschatological ontology—which cannot be explained if nature,
with its given laws, serves as the basis of our understanding of
truth. It is again only if we employ the idea of personhood that
we can make sense of this biblical statement. This is why the
whole idea is described as “faith.” Faith is nothing but the
freedom of the person to accept and assert as true that which
is not verified by the senses (“acceptance of things not seen”),
i.e., which is not naturally present.
One could understand this faith as a reality which is
expected to come but has not yet come. Such an understanding
would rule out the possibility of an an ontology of eschatological
presence. There would be no room in this case for a presence
of the future, not even in the form of absence. The present, in
this case, would bear a relationship with the expected future
only psychologically, not ontologically. Faith would be, in this
case, a psychological experience, a confidence and trust that
God’s promises will be fulfilled in the future. No need in such
a case to re-present the future or depict it in any way; the
entire present is filled with the psychological expectation of
the future.
Such, however, is not the understanding of faith in the
biblical and patristic tradition. The absence of God in creation
now is a presence in the sense of the anticipation and foretaste
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