Goines On: Heavenly Productions, Ltd.

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The psychology of “faith the substance of things hoped for” wouldn’t let go of Goines. He wondered about scientists who believe in the divinity of Jesus. Do they accept Christianity’s doctrine of salvation out of a deep need to know things beyond science’s reach, things they can then expect God to reveal to them someday?
    Remembering his college logic studies, Goines thought of another thing the writer of the letter to the Hebrews in Jerusalem could have been doing with the “faith is evidence” maneuver – establishing an axiom to throw in whenever he couldn’t prove something any other way.

Goines On: Evidence of things not seen

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Goines’ notion the day before, that faith itself could somehow seem to amount to evidence, kept nagging at him. He now remembered a Bible verse to that effect, the opening verse of Chapter 11 of a letter to the Hebrews in Jerusalem, thought to have been composed about 30 years after Jesus’ crucifixion: “...faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” – as though faith, or true-belief alone could transform a thing believed into a fact. The resurrection of Jesus, for example, which the letter writer seemed to think lacked other evidence. Otherwise, why the need for faith?