“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can move mountains”. “The just shall live, and live by faith”. “For by grace you have been saved through faith”. These are just a few sayings of scripture that I have heard echoed through my entire upbringing from church members in my community. I’ve grappled with what the meaning of faith is and how it works in its many facets of interpretations. In the book “Dynamics of Faith” Paul Tillich addresses faith on what is and what it isn’t. One way for me to really understand a concept is to fathom what the concept is not. Combing through the course reading I was able to accumulate what faith is not from 3 key distortions Tillich brings out about faith. In the Intellectualistic Distortion of faith he says, “The most ordinary misinterpretation of faith is to consider it an act of knowledge that has a low degree of evidence”. From this concept I gather that many deduce faith down to merely having a cerebral belief or knowledge, rather than faith itself. Trust in an authority is one way a person can gain knowledge of faith. Many will accept a proposition as faith given by an authority such as a minister or pastor with little to no evidence. Oftentimes our trust in an authority would be just enough to believe. Without this trust we hold for good authorities, our awareness and perception would be significantly smaller. With that said, acceptance of a proposition validated from an authority is not faith. Tillich barrows from Thomas Aquinas who states “the lack of evidence which faith has must be complemented by an act of will. This describes the sentiment of the second distortion called the Voluntaristic Distortion. This speaks of one having the will to believe as the basis and only that. I think that many people hinge their faith on moral interpretations of religion by creeds and commands. Commanding one to have faith in itself does not create faith alone. I can see how a person feels that they “need” religion to conjure and cultivate faith. Religious groups make millions of dollars and leaders pushing self help books giving moral assertions and instruction on what to follow to have faith. Some will feel as though they automatically have faith just from the mere fact that Amazon has received their book order conformation. This brings me to the third misinterpretation called “The Emotional Distortion”. Unlike accepting faith as a construct of intellect or act of will, this distortion appeals to ones feelings. Zooming my lens away from just the religious world to a broader perspective I can surmise that the emotional distortion is shared both by the sacred and secular. The acknowledgement of feeling is something that is very important to humans and is something that we all share. However, conceding on subjective feeling alone with out reason and a will to believe will magnify the distortion of faith. Neutralizing these three distortions, Intellectualistic, Voluntaristic and the Emotional Distortion I conclude that each of these concepts alone do not stand as a coherent rational answer for what faith is. “We now return to a fuller description of faith as an act of the human personality, as its centered and total act”. I notice in this quote Tillich brings up the word “personality”. As I understand personality it speaks of the aspect of a person that is expressed through ones intellect, will, and emotion. You cannot have a complete personality without holding these expressions together in totality. Tillich says, “if one of the functions which constitute the totality of the personality is partly or completely identified with faith, the meaning of faith is distorted”. So, again I understand that that personality is the vehicle that faith can and would be expressed. Now having knowledge of what faith is not, I can now with a basis of reference understand what faith is through Tillich’s interpretation. In the selective course readings I gather that faith is more of an act rather than a static frame of mind. Tillich writes, “An act of faith is an act of a finite being who is grasped by and turned to the infinite”. Here, I see that faith is the act of a person through the function and expression of the totality of personality. In addition Tillich uses the word “grasp” to point out that we have a certain hook into which we look towards the infinite. He coins the term “ultimate concern” to encapsulate the meaning of faith. In that a finite being is grasped by ultimate concern, still while one operates through the filter of limitation into which certain aspects of ones finite-ness plays a part. Doubt is one aspect of limitation that we deal with as it pertains to faith. Tillich says “faith includes an element of immediate awareness which gives certainty and an element of uncertainty”. When dealing with faith there is a built in level of risk that has to be taken. With this risk the characteristic of courage has to be displayed. I find this to be true in the sense of expressing ones faith there are certain things that may point in the direction of low probability in causation that would require courage to transcend what lies in front. In sum, I realize through Tillach’s interpretation of faith that it is not a function of one part of a person but it is an expression of the totality of ones being that resonates with a persons ultimate concern. When faith is in its form of completeness you and others would be able to see that action has been engaged.