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"It is true that this primary sense of 'faith' is not its only sense -- not sense—not even in scripture or in the witness of the apostles -- and apostles—and that the distinction . . . between belief in God and belief about God ought never to be construed as implying their separation. Contrary to David Hume, not everything that can be distinguished can be separated, and this is nowhere more obvious, or important, than in this matter of the two senses of 'faith.' To trust in God's love as it is decisively re-presented to us through Jesus Christ, or to be loyal to God's love by loving God and, in God, all whom God loves, is clearly to presuppose that the mysterious whole encompassing our existence really is the God who, quite apart from our own trust and loyalty, loves both us and all our fellow creatures. Consequently, unless these beliefs about God were true -- unless true—unless strictly ultimate reality really were the God of all-embracing love -- there love—there clearly would be no point whatever either in our trusting in God's love or in our being faithful to God. Even so, the inseparability of belief in God from belief about God should in no way obscure the fact that the first is the primary sense of 'faith' in the witness of the apostles, as well as in scripture generally. The justifying faith in God attested by Paul and rediscovered by the Reformers is, first of all, trust in the promise of God's love declared to us through Jesus Christ and loyalty to the cause of God's love that all things be brought to their proper fulfillment, to God's glory (Faith and Freedom, rev. ed.: 45 f. [rev]).

"[W]hatever the outcome of arguments for and against belief in God, such belief itself also has its limits in that belief in God is one thing; faith in God, something else. Certainly, from the standpoint shared by Judaism and Christianity, faith in God is primarily a matter of trusting in God and being· loyal to God, as distinct from asserting -- even sincerely asserting -- Godasserting—even sincerely asserting—God's reality. Faith in God, in a word, is existential; while belief in God as such is merely intellectual. This is why liberation theologians can say quite rightly, however one-sidedly, that according to scripture, to know God is to do justice.

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