The Canon  /  Pillars  /  Word of Faith

Pillars · 1942

The Two Kinds of Faith

by E. W. Kenyon

Word of Faith (originator); evangelical 'overcomer' / faith-cure teaching

The Two Kinds of Faith distinguishes intellectual or sense-based belief from a heart faith that acts on God's word before evidence appears. Its central claim is that the believer's spoken confession of God's promises calls health and provision into being.

Reading "believe that ye receive" as a spiritual law, the book casts conviction prior to evidence as the operative act and recasts divine supply as the redeemed believer's legal right. Historians document that this mechanism drew substantially on the New Thought mental-causation current, given a biblical frame.

Within the Word of Faith tradition the work is the originating template that later teachers carried to a mass audience. The honest framing presents it as a sincere experiment in faith while rejecting the corollary that suffering reflects the sufferer's failure.

Practices it teaches

Positive Confession — speaking God's Word over yourself until 'what I confess, I possess'

For E. W. Kenyon, the operative act of faith is the confession — the believer's own spoken agreement with what God has already said.

Acting on the Word — the faith that acts, independent of sense evidence

For E. W. Kenyon, faith is not a feeling and not mere mental agreement — it is action. He drew a sharp line between sense-knowledge faith (believing only what the five senses report) and the real thing, which he…

Meditation in the Word — letting scripture sink in until it becomes 'revelation reality'

For E. W. Kenyon, confession and action both depend on something prior: the Word must first become real to you.

Lineage

What it drew on
New Thought / 'mind-science' currentsFaith Cure & Higher Life movementsHoliness movementPentecostal healing revivalism
What it shaped
Kenneth E. HaginKenneth CopelandOral Robertsthe wider Word of Faith movement

The author

E. W. KenyonPositive confession: the believer speaks God's promises into reality Full voice →

Key terms

Kindred books