I was attended an online church meeting recently, when a speaker paraphrased Alma 32:21, saying that faith is hoping for things we can’t see but that are true.
I’ve seen this usage before. For example, take this quote from the Gospel Principles manual:
Faith is a “hope for things which are not seen, which are true”.
“Chapter 18: Faith in Jesus Christ”, Gospel Principles, 2009, p. 101.
Or this quote from a member of the Seventy:
Hope is another important particle of faith. Alma told the humble Zoramites that faith was not a perfect knowledge of things. It was a “hope for things which are not seen, which are true”.
Ringwood, M. “Faith, Hope, and Relationships”, Ensign, Jan. 2013, p. 56.
Or this quote from a CES educators broadcast given by a member of the Twelve:
These teachings highlight three basic elements of faith: (1) faith as the assurance of things hoped for that are true, (2) faith as the evidence of things not seen, and (3) faith as the principle of action in all intelligent beings.
Bednar, D. “Seek Learning by Faith”, Liahona, Sep. 2007, p. 18.
Or the entry for “faith” in the Bible Dictionary:
Faith is to hope for things which are not seen, but which are true, and must be centered in Jesus Christ in order to produce salvation.
“Faith”, Bible Dictionary.
(Joseph B. Wirthlin quoted this entry in a 2002 General Conference talk.)
Or the entry for “faith” in the Guide to the Scriptures:
Faith includes a hope for things which are not seen, but which are true.
“Faith”, Guide to the Scriptures.
Or the entry for “hope” in the Index to the Triple Combination:
faith is to hope for things not seen which are true,
“Hope”, Index to the Triple Combination.
Or this article from The Friend:
Faith is hope for things that we cannot see but are true. We believe that Jesus Christ is our Savior, and we trust Him to help and guide us.
“Article of Faith 4”, The Friend, Apr. 2011, p. 22.
Or this article from The New Era; although, this is technically paraphrasing Ether 12:6 (not Alma 32:21), which doesn’t even include the phrase which is true, or even just the word true.
Faith is hope for things that are true but not seen.
“55 Truths in the Book of Mormon”, The New Era, Sep. 2017, p. 25.
Or this entry from a 2004 CES teacher resource manual for the Book of Mormon curriculum.
Faith is a “hope for things which are not seen, which are true”.
“Alma 30–35”, Book of Mormon Teacher Resource Manual, 2004, pp. 165–73.
And so on.
I bring this up because there are couple of issues with this usage.
First, it’s an incorrect reading of the text. This verse never says that faith is hoping for unseen but true things. Actually, it never defines faith at all. Let’s look at the actual text:
And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.
Alma 32:21, The Book of Mormon, p. 289.
See? If you look carefully, the verse doesn’t actually say that faith is hoping for things which are not seen but that are true.
What it does say, however, is that if we have faith, we hope for unseen but true things. In other words, faith is what motivates us to hope for unseen but true things.
Using this verse as seen in the sources above is problematic. Obviously, the verse doesn’t actually say what the people quoting/paraphrasing it say it does. However, there’s another reason why it’s problematice.
Which brings me to the second issue I have with this issue: it’s impossible for us to know that an unseen thing is true.
Speaking of knowing, let’s look at the first half of Alma 32:21, as quoted above: “faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things”. Alma differentiates between faith and knowledge. In fact, he expands on that a bit earlier in some previous verses:
Yea, there are many who do say: If thou wilt show unto us a sign from heaven, then we shall know of a surety; then we shall believe. Now I ask, is this faith? Behold, I say unto you, Nay; for if a man knoweth a thing he hath no cause to believe, for he knoweth it.
Alma 32:17–18, The Book of Mormon, p. 289.
To Alma, knowledge and faith are separate. If you know something, you no longer have faith in it.
If I put my slippers on my feet, for example, I know they are on my feet. I can remember placing them on my feet, I feel them on my feet, and I can see them on my feet. I have no reason to have faith in something I can see.
And the ability to see (or not see, in this case) appears to be a critical component of faith.
Take this other scripture:
And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.
Ether 12:6, The Book of Mormon, p. 509.
Moroni realized that not being able to see something is critical to being able to having faith in it. There must be an unknown component involved in faith. Otherwise, as Alma said, it’s knowledge, not faith.
And surely, it works the other way: if we cannot see it, then it’s not knowledge.
If I have no memory of putting my slippers on my feet, if I can’t feel slippers on my feet, and if I can’t see slippers on my feet, then I have no knowledge that slippers are on my feet. I don’t know that there are slippers on my feet.
I can believe that there are slippers on my feet. I can be confident that there are slippers on my feet. I can hope that there are slippers on my feet. My belief, confidence, and hope can be unbelievably strong, even. But I will never know that there are slippers on my feet.
It’s likewise for spiritual matters.
There’s no way for us to know that God exists. Well, unless God appears before us, I suppose. Until that happens, God remains unseen, and as such, we can only hope that God exists—have faith.
Because until we see God, it’s never knowledge. And spiritual experiences don’t count as seeing.
Using spiritual experiences as proof of God’s existence assumes that God exists and was responsible for those experiences. But then we’re back to still lacking proof that God exists and was responsible for those spiritual experiences. That’s fallacious; specifically, it’s called circular reasoning.
“I know God exists because He sent me spiritual experiences.”
Whether those experiences were feelings, coincidences, or something else, none of them are actual proof that God exists, let alone was the source of those experiences.
Same goes for things like “I know the scriptures are true.” or “I know that I will see my loved ones again when I die.” There’s no evidence for these things, so one’s understanding of them can’t be based on knowledge: one can’t know them.
Which isn’t to say there isn’t value in assigning spiritual matters to God. My point here isn’t to say that God doesn’t exist. For just as we can’t know that God exists, we can’t know that God doesn’t exist. The same lack of evidence failing to prove God’s existence also fails to prove God’s nonexistence.
One can conclude that God doesn’t exist because of lack of evidence, but that conclusion is made without proof. Perhaps the person who concludes this does so because the lack of evidence is compelling enough to convince them.
I find the lack of evidence for the existence of Bigfoot, for example, compelling enough to not believe in Bigfoot. Others might take a similar approach for their conclusion regarding God’s existence.
On the other hand, one can conclude that God does exist despite the lack of evidence, but that conclusion is likewise made without proof. As noted earlier, perhaps that conclusion was reached because of experiences this person classified as spiritual, which then they assigned to God, even though there is no evidence that God exists nor that God was responsible for those experiences.
But, as I said, there still might be value to a person to believe that certain experiences came from God or hope that God exists.
Again, my point isn’t to prove that God doesn’t exist: that’s not something that can yet be proven.
My point is that we can’t say that we know God exists. This is currently an unknowable conclusion. And since we can’t know God, we can’t know whether God is true. That’s where the above framing of Alma 32:21 falls apart.
For if faith truly is hoping for things that are unseen but are true—as presented in the sources above—yet we can’t know that unseen things are true, then faith is impossible.
Just as saying God exists because your spiritual experiences came from God is a circular argument, so, too, is the claim that faith is hoping for things that are unseen but are true.
After all, how do you determine something is true before you have faith in it if you can never see it or otherwise verify its existence? You have to have faith in its truthfulness? Then how do you determine faith in that? How do you determine the truthfulness of the truthfulness of God’s existence (or the Book of Mormon, or the First Vision, or any other spiritual certainties)?
So, just to sum up, saying that faith is hoping for that which is unseen but true is not only a misreading of the text, it’s logically unsound and makes no sense.
