Hebrews 11:1

2. INSPIRATIONAL. The glories of Faith in its illustrious examples of old, Hebrews 11:1 to Hebrews 12:2.

1. Now As if beginning to anticipate that too continued a strain of warning and rebuke might wear upon his hearers, our apostle now suddenly changes his tone to thrilling jubilation. From threatening penalty for unbelief he rises into a lofty peal of exultation over the glories of faith. This faith is not solely ground of safety; it is an inspiration to all sublime moral heroism. It is the basis within the soul of all divine hopes and of all heroic communion with higher things above the things of merely animal sense. This he illustrates by a long line of glorious examples in the sacred record from the creation to the Christian era. All this assumes and affirms that the true Christian faith is the heir and real continuance of that old faith, and that the now faithful Hebrews will be heirs of the faithful of all ages, and will form a real modern extension of the ancient line of faithful heroes. It is one of the many illustrations in Hebrews of what has been called Paul’s habit of “going off at a word,” (and a proof of his authorship of this book,) that this sublime paean is hung upon the word faith, in Hebrews 10:38, where it occurs in Paul’s favourite formula of justification by faith.

He now proceeds to show that faith is not only justifying but inspiring, ennobling, and exalting to the soul. We may further add, that the deduction of this heroic evolution of faith from the saving faith of Hebrews 10:38, amply refutes the preposterous pretence of some German expositors, (as Lunemann,) that the idea of faith in this epistle is different from Paul’s idea. Nothing is clearer than that, with Paul, faith is not only the mainspring of our salvation, but of our sanctification, and of all our Christian graces, virtues, and heroisms. Nowhere else, indeed, has he so fully expanded that view as here; and so we readily believe that it is by him that it is here expanded. Is The present proposition is not intended as a complete definition of faith; but is such a statement or modified definition as suits our author’s design of showing how faith is the quickening inspiration of lofty enterprise.

Substance The Greek word (compounded of υπο , under, and στασις , standing) signifies something that stands under an overlying object. Originally and literally, it signifies a basis, foundation, substratum. Our word substance, (derived from the Latin sub, under, and stans, standing,) has the same etymology, and etymologically the same meaning, for substance is a substratum, or base, underlying its properties. Hence our translators, as many scholars, here put the word substance. So Chrysostom says, “For since things are to hope unsubstantiated, faith grants to them a substance; or rather, does not so much grant, as be itself their substance, or existence.” But the true force of the writer’s proposition is, we think, best expressed by the stricter meaning of the word basis, or foundation. The whole current of the chapter shows that what he means is, that faith is within the soul the true subjective foundation of all subjective divine hopes and all supermundane heroisms. Hope, and the things held within the mental conception as things hoped for, have for their subjective basis faith; that power by which all that is transcendent and heroic is embraced in the mind. To translate the word confidence, as Lunemann, Delitzsch, and Alford do, is very flat. By that translation we have the truism that faith is confidence, just as confidence is faith; which are mere identical propositions. Indeed, faith and confidence are the same word in different languages; so that we have faith is faith. Things hoped for are viewed subjectively, as things within the hoping mind; and within the same mind their subjective basis is faith. The soul is a mirror in which are the images of faith as basis, and things hoped for as superstructure. Things hoped for is emphatic, suggesting the inspiring power of immortal and unlimited prospectives within our conception.

Evidence Rather, demonstration, as Alford and others. Things not seen are like a geometrical diagram, planting a demonstration of themselves in the perceiving mind. That demonstration is received and realized by the elevated faith faculty, or predisposition, and is itself a faith forever. And the more vivid the demonstration the more realizing the faith, and the more heroic the soul in the ascending direction. Things not seen, are the realities of God and his universe outside the visible world, which are revealed to our higher intuitions by nature, by divine manifestation, or by the written record. The animal man, the sensualist, never thinks of or truly embraces these truths. The worldly forget them. The atheist denies them.

And these are all incapable of that spiritual heroism recorded of the ancient worthies.

There is an obvious parallelism in the clauses substance of things hoped for evidence of things not seen. There appears, also, to be an anti-climax. The former clause is more impressive, and especially more impressive for the author’s inspiring purpose, than the latter. We would explain this by saying that the last is epexegetical, or explanatory; being, as it were, its confirmatory echo. Faith is the subjective prop of our hopes by being the realization of the great Unseen. How feeble a rendering confidence is of the word for substance, υποστασις , ( hypostasis,) and how uniformly it means the underlay, or basis of confidence, or other thing, is a point worthy further illustration. Thus (taking several examples in Robinson’s Greek Testament Lexicon) a classical author speaks of the hypostasis ( basis-energy) of the soul under endurance of torments; just as a horseman speaks of the “bottom,” or basal strength, of his steed. Another says, “all the hypostasis (underlying vigour) of the bowels.” Another, of “the appearance of wealth, but not the hypostasis,” (underlying reality.) So Paul (2 Corinthians 11:17) speaks of “this hypostasis, or basis of our boasting.” So (Hebrews 10:35) the beginning of our self-basing in Christ. So, also, several passages adduced from the Septuagint by Whitby, and feebly rendered by him confidence, or expectation. In Ruth 1:12 it is asked, Is there to me any basis of a husband? Ezekiel 19:5: All her basis was lost. Psalms 89:47: All my basis is from thee. In all these cases is meant rather the subjective underlay of a subjective confidence than the confidence itself.