Abraham (a man of "faith") and God

Yet even though these early tales show the patriarchs encountering their God in much the same way as pagan contemporaries, they do introduce a new category of religious experience. Throughout the Bible, Abraham is called a man of "faith". Today we tended to find faith as an intellectual assent to a creed, but, as we have seen, the biblical writers did not view faith in God as an abstract or metaphysical belief. When they praise the faith of Abraham, they are not commending his orthodoxy the acceptance of a correct theological opinion about God but his trust, in rather the same way as they say that we have faith in a person or an ideal. In the Bible, Abraham is a man of faith because he trusts that God would make good his promises, even though they seem absurd.

A History of God by Karen Armstrong, pages 17, 18

It is equally wrong to say that a Buddha existed in nirvana as that he did not exist; the word "exist" bore no relationship to any state that we can understand. We shall find that over the centuries, Jews, Christians and Muslims have made the same reply to the question of the existence of God. The Buddha was trying to show that language was not equipped to deal with a reality that lay beyond concepts and reason. Again, he did not deny reason but insisted on the importance of clear and accurate thinking and use of language. Ultimately, however, he held that a person's theology or beliefs, like the ritual he took part in, were unimportant. They could be interesting but not a matter of final significance. The only thing that counted was the good life; if it were attempted, Buddhists would find that the Dharma was true, even if they could not express this truth in logical terms.

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