[24] was a real experience of my generation, and only for THIS reason did I come to this concept of faith^a as ultimate concern. In view of these dangers of a misguided faith, the question arises: How is it possible to affirm anything, in terms of faith? My answer (some of you have seen or read my book, The Courage to Be) is: Courage^b!--courage to take upon oneself the risk of faith^c, the courage to affirm one's own being in spite of the threat of idolatric distortion. This courage is demanded by every human being, and the real danger, which may lead to complete neurotic or psychotic breakdown, is that he is not able to develop this courage any more and may come to ruin, which may result in self-destruction. But courage cannot result from willful acts ("I WANT to have courage!") etc. Last Tuesday I spoke about what faith was NOT, in terms of an affirmation of a statement without much evidence. Here in this city, which is the city of William James^d, I also should speak about the term "will to believe." But faith is neither a matter of will. You cannot PRODUCE faith, you cannot produce the courage to affirm yourselves, in the ULTIMATE sense, by will-power. You can have will-power to follow through your ultimate concern in terms of complete surrender, but you cannot do it in terms of the production of faith. He who produces faith with an act of will (in theological groups, often called "obedience") must either already have faith or he commits a willful act which breaks down sooner or later. We must therefore say: the courage^e to be, to have a concrete content of faith, is possible only in the state of being grasped by this ultimate itself, and of accepting the risk to accept this content. Are there no criteria between wrong and true faith, between idolatric and destructive faith, and true and healing faith? There is one criterion. And this criterion is that whenever something finite claims to be the bearer of ultimate concern, it must sacrifice itself in its finitude! This is the last criterion. And in the whole history of religion, only those finite realities which denied their own finitude at the same time in which they claimed ultimate meaning, were matters of true faith. This is the greatness of the fight of the Prophets of the Old Testament. There was the concrete content of faith, the Covenant between Yahweh and His nation. And the Prophets realized that