1. THE DOCTRINE OF THE NEW JERUSALEM REGARDING FAITH

Faith is an Internal Acknowledgment of Truth

Faith today is taken to mean no more than the thought that a thing is so because it is something the church teaches, and because it is not evident to the intellect. For we are told, "Believe and do not doubt." If we reply, "I do not understand," we are told that that is why it should be believed.

Faith today is therefore a faith in the unknown and may be termed a blind faith. Moreover, because it is one person’s assertion received by another, it is an inherited faith. We will see in what follows that that is not a spiritual faith.

11. Because faith is an internal acknowledgment of truth, and because faith and truth are bound up together, as said in nos. 2, 4-6 above, it follows that an outward acknowledgment without an internal one is not faith, and that being persuaded of some falsity is not faith. An outward acknowledgment without an internal one is a faith in the unknown, and a faith in the unknown is mere information, stored in the memory, which, if affirmed, becomes a persuasion. Moreover, people caught up in such persuasions think that something is true because someone else has said so, or think that it is true because they have been convinced of it. And yet one can be as convinced of falsity as he can be of truth, and sometimes more strongly so.

By thinking that something is true from having been convinced of it, we mean thinking that something someone else has said is true and not pondering it before then, but only affirming it.