Faith is something that Christians share.
Trust is at the heart of faith. When we have faith in someone, it means that we trust them.
In order to share a Christian faith, we put our trust in God: we trust that he has shown us that Jesus is his Son.
Some people talk about faith as if it were an inferior or defective kind of knowledge. Knowledge is something that we can be certain about; faith is something that we just have to take on trust. But knowledge itself always involves a measure of faith.
Again, some people distinguish faith in someone or something from faith that something is the case. The one, they say, is a matter of trust, the other is a matter of belief.
Other people say that faith is the same as belief. They speak about Christians as people who are 'believers' - as if what you believe is the most important aspect of being a Christian. They see Christianity as being an enormous catalogue of (unreliable) assertions about God and the world.
From time to time, the Church has tried to lay down a list of the beliefs that Christians might hold in common. Some of these summaries of the Christian faith can be found in the creeds.
Yet others say that being a Christian is far more about how you live than what you believe, that to share a Christian faith is to trust God, to join in his Church and to try to live a Christian life.
© J D Yule 2003