Noticia, Assentia, and Fiducia

14Jul10 Noticia, Assentia, and Fiducia

This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.

There are three Latin words that can all mean faith: noticia, assentia, fiducia. Noticia simply means that you saw something or took “notice” of its existence. Assentia means that you acknowledged or gave “assent” to the truth of something. But it is the third word that represents biblical faith: fiducia. This is a word that simply means to “trust.” We must think of biblical faith as more than an intellectual notation, more than a cognitive assent; it is placing one’s trust in truth. And because propositional truth in Scripture always points beyond itself to the author, we see that trusting a certain truth is grounded in our trust of the Truthgiver – we are to look to him who is the Author of our faith, the One who has written everything from the introduction to the conclusion. Therefore, faith is choosing to believe that the Bible is true regardless of any feelings or beliefs to the contrary. Faith always involves a choice of the will and an intention of the heart.

This is exactly what Jesus did; he kept the inward eyes of his heart upon his Father. When he asked his Father to raise Lazarus from the dead, he raised his eyes toward heaven and prayed. When he fed the 5,000, he took the five loaves and two fish and looked up toward heaven and gave thanks. And even as his followers stood “gazing intently” as their resurrected Savior ascended into heaven, they soon learned how to run the race of faith by “fixing their eyes on Jesus.” Throughout his whole life Jesus himself demonstrated this continuous and uninterrupted gaze of the soul in the direction of his Father. Likewise, he calls us to intentionally aim our hearts toward Jesus.

Tozer goes on to say that,

“. . . this one committal, this one great volitional act which establishes the heart’s intention to gaze forever upon Jesus. God takes this intention for our choice and makes what allowances he must for the thousand distractions which beset us in this evil world. He knows that we have set the direction of our hearts toward Jesus, and we can know it too, and comfort ourselves with the knowledge that a habit of soul is forming which will become, after a while, a sort of spiritual reflex requiring no more conscious effort on our part.

Faith is the least self-regarding of the virtues. It is by its very nature scarcely conscious of its own existence. Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied on the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do not see ourselves – blessed riddance. The man who has struggled to purify himself and has had nothing but repeated failures will experience real relief when he stops tinkering with his soul and looks away to the perfect One. While he looks at Christ, the very things he has so long been trying to do will be getting done within him. It will be God working in him to will and to do.”

Most of religion tinkers with your soul, forever trying to figure everything out and get everything right. But you must get your eyes off of all that nonsense and get your eyes onto Christ because when you do, he’ll take over the care of your soul.