Chapter 6 : Faith
Faith
336
F
ROM the wisdom of the ancients came the following teaching: the
universe, and each and every thing in it, relates to goodness and
truth. Therefore all aspects of the church relate to love or goodwill and
faith, since everything that is called good flows from love or goodwill
and everything called truth flows from faith.
Now, goodwill and faith are two distinct things, yet they become one
in us and make us people of the church—they cause the church to exist
within us. For this reason, among the ancients it was a matter of con-
tention and dispute which of the two should be primary and rightly be
called the firstborn. Some of them said it was truth and therefore faith.
Others said it was goodness and therefore goodwill. Some people observed
that soon after we are born we learn to talk and think; then talking and
thinking lead to the development of our intellect through study, that is,
through learning and understanding what is true. Then we use these
means to learn and understand what is good. First, therefore, we learn
what faith is, and afterward what goodwill is. The people who adopted
this point of view considered true faith to be the firstborn and goodwill to
be born later. For this reason they accorded faith the rights and privileges
of the firstborn.
They overwhelmed their own intellect, however, with an abun-
dance of arguments in favor of faith to the point where they did not see
that faith is not truly faith unless it is connected to goodwill, and nei-
ther is goodwill truly goodwill unless it is connected to faith. The two
unite. If the two do not unite, neither of them amounts to anything in
the church. Below I will show that they are completely united.
[ 2 ] Now, in this introduction to the chapter I will just take a few
words to disclose how the two unite or in what way, since this will help
shed light on what follows.
From the standpoint of time, faith (meaning truth as well) is pri-
mary, but from the standpoint of purpose, goodwill (meaning goodness as