foundation: the load-bearing base laid first under a building, and by extension the basis on which anything is established.
A foundation is the base a builder lays first, usually below ground, the part that carries the weight and keeps the walls from shifting. In the Greek of the New Testament era this was an everyday building word, the vocabulary of every construction contract. It named either the whole base course of stone or the single squared block whose alignment sets the line for everything raised on it.
The New Testament uses the word both plainly and as a picture, across a wide range:
- at its plainest it is literal stonework, the base of a prison or a half-built tower
- in a parable it is the base a wise builder digs down to lay on solid rock
- most often it stands for the basis on which something is established: the first preaching that brings a church into being, the person everyone else builds on, or the elementary teaching a beginner learns first
Behind the ordinary building word lies an Old Testament picture that gives it weight. Isaiah speaks of God laying a chosen, precious stone in Jerusalem, a foundation that will not be shaken, and the New Testament writers lean on that image. So the word carries more than "the bottom of a wall": it points to what God has set in place and what will not move. In a world of tents, tottering walls, shaken prison floors, and abandoned building projects, this is the word for what stands firm.
Nuances
What "God's firm foundation" refers to in 2 Timothy 2:19.
- majorityThe church, understood as the community of God's chosen people, sealed and authenticated as his own.; I. Howard Marshall (with P. H. Towner), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, ICC (1999); William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, WBC 46 (2000); Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (2006)
- minorityGod's own faithfulness, the divine fidelity that will always preserve a genuine people.; Luke Timothy Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy, AB 35A (2001)
Whether the elementary teaching listed in Hebrews 6:1-2 is distinctively Christian or a shared Jewish-Christian introductory syllabus.
- contestedA shared Jewish-Christian introductory syllabus, since strikingly little in the list is uniquely Christian.; Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews, Hermeneia (1989); Luke Timothy Johnson, Hebrews: A Commentary, NTL (2006); F. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT, rev. ed. (1990)
- contestedDecisively Christian instruction, though drawing on Jewish material.; William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8, WBC 47A (1991); Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NIGTC (1993); Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, NICNT (2012)
Whether "foundation" in 1 Timothy 6:19 keeps its ordinary sense in a deliberately mixed metaphor or carries a special financial sense.
- majorityAn intentional mixed metaphor: the "good foundation" is the secure future standing that generous believers store up by their present conduct, framed by the coming age and the true life named alongside it.; I. Howard Marshall (with P. H. Towner), A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, ICC (1999); Philip H. Towner, The Letters to Timothy and Titus, NICNT (2006); George W. Knight III, The Pastoral Epistles, NIGTC (1992)
- minorityA monetary sense, a "capital sum" or "reserve fund," which would resolve the mixed image into a single financial metaphor.; James Moffatt, A New Translation of the Bible (1935); Edgar J. Goodspeed, The New Testament: An American Translation (1923)