Heb 11:6 ...and apart from faith it is impossible to please well, for it behoveth him who is coming to God to believe that He is, and to those seeking Him He becometh a rewarder.
Without strife over the word "requires", this certainly is an axiomatic statement. Yet it doesn't stand alone. To my mind, this goes well with it:
Act 17:22 And Paul, having stood in the midst of the Areopagus, said, `Men, Athenians, in all things I perceive you as over-religious;
Act 17:23 for passing through and contemplating your objects of worship, I found also an erection on which had been inscribed: To God--unknown; whom, therefore--not knowing--ye do worship, this One I announce to you.
Act 17:24 `God, who did make the world, and all things in it, this One, of heaven and of earth being Lord, in temples made with hands doth not dwell,
Act 17:25 neither by the hands of men is He served--needing anything, He giving to all life, and breath, and all things;
Act 17:26 He made also of one blood every nation of men, to dwell upon all the face of the earth--having ordained times before appointed, and the bounds of their dwellings--
Act 17:27 to seek the Lord, if perhaps they did feel after Him and find, --though, indeed, He is not far from each one of us,
Act 17:28 for in Him we live, and move, and are; as also certain of your poets have said: For of Him also we are offspring.
Act 17:29 `Being, therefore, offspring of God, we ought not to think the Godhead to be like to gold, or silver, or stone, graving of art and device of man;
Act 17:30 the times, indeed, therefore, of the ignorance God having overlooked, doth now command all men everywhere to reform,
Act 17:31 because He did set a day in which He is about to judge the world in righteousness, by a man whom He did ordain, having given assurance to all, having raised him out of the dead.'
Act 17:32 And having heard of a rising again of the dead, some, indeed, were mocking, but others said, `We will hear thee again concerning this;'
Act 17:33 and so Paul went forth from the midst of them,
Act 17:34 and certain men having cleaved to him, did believe, among whom is also Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman, by name Damaris, and others with them.
I think Paul here presented the "things" one must believe. If these "things" are not true, then Paul's faith (and mine) is for nothing. If one thinks the story of Samson might be exaggeration, or hyperbole, or symbolic, or even mythological...and that the jawbone of an a@@ might be the name of a fashioned weapon rather than the partial skeleton of a donkey, so what? If, however, Jesus did not rise from the dead...eat, drink, and be merry (if you can manage it).
That said, it still isn't faith which saves. Certainly not faith alone. All the men of faith listed in Hebrews died without the promise, though they all had faith. We're saved by grace...and grace came by Jesus Christ. Believe it or don't.