The true (original) meanings of Faith, Sin & Prophecy

Researching the earliest Christian thinking, which is highly neo-Platonic, I’ve been reading and listening to a variety of sources.

I recently came across a discussion about the way in which certain words, usually used in a religious context, have been altered in meaning in relatively recent times.
These alterations in meaning may account for some of the misunderstandings and mis-readings both within Christianity, between Christians and atheists, and between Christians and other religious thinking generally.

So I wanted to share Dr John Vervaeke’s brief description of three words used in our language that didn’t originally mean what we use them to mean now.

Faith didn’t used to mean ‘believing in things for which there is no scientific evidence’. That’s a historically recent idea.
Faith was your sense of Da’ath, the sense that you’re on course, on the right path, the right Way, involved and evolving with things as life progresses.
Knowing what to do at life’s turning points (kairos); how and when you need to change something in your life; who you need to change into.
We think this way still — how it’s going, is this relationship on course, am I progressing, is this the kind of person I want to be, is it going well, etc. That’s Da’ath.

Sin in the original meaning is the sense that you’re off course, off the path not the modern sense of simply doing something immoral.
If I become self-deluded or closed-minded, I can become off-course, step off the path and so lose or damage my faith, lose that sense of Da’ath without realizing it; become sinful.

Prophecy isn’t about telling you what’s going to happen, but rather a call to awakening. The job of the prophet is to wake you up right now to how you are off course (sinful). A prophet is not a fortune teller; a closer analogy might be a mentor or trusted friend who wakes you up to something you needed to see and be made aware of. So you can move away from sin; to get back on the path; to return to faith in your life.

Make of that what you will!