Twelve Words 6 min read Lesson 9 of 12

The Greek word behind faith, and why the New Testament could mean trusting and being trustworthy at once

Pistis: Faith and Faithfulness in One Word

In English, faith is something you have and faithfulness is something you show, and the two are different words. In Greek they are one word, and so are belief and trust. Every time your New Testament says faith, the writer had all of those in hand, and the sentence you are reading sometimes turns on which he meant.

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Lesson 9 of 12 · Greek

Pistis is trust and trustworthiness in one word: the confidence you place in someone, and the reliability that earns it. In the Greek Old Testament it rendered the Hebrew emunah, firmness and faithfulness, the noun of the same root as emet and amen. So when the New Testament says faith, it means leaning on God, believing what he has said, and staying faithful — and the writer usually means all three, with one uppermost. English broke the word into faith and faithfulness and lost the join. Read faith in your New Testament and ask each time whether it is the leaning, the believing, or the holding on, and notice how often it is the third.

The definition that is not one

Hebrews gives the sentence every reader knows, and it is less a definition than a description of what faith does.

Now faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen. — Hebrews 11:1 · WEB

Read the comment on The Assurance of Things Hoped For

Assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen — and then a chapter of people who acted on what they could not see, which is the definition by example. Abel offered, Noah built, Abraham went out, Moses refused: faith in Hebrews 11 is not something the patriarchs held. It is something they did, and kept doing.

πίστις pístis G4102

from πείθω; persuasion, i.e. credence; moral conviction (of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God or a religious teacher), especially reliance upon Christ for salvation; abstractly, constancy in such profession; by extension, the system of religious (Gospel) truth itself:--assurance, belief, believe, faith, fidelity.

From a verb meaning to persuade, to be persuaded, to trust: the noun is trust, confidence, belief, and equally faithfulness, reliability, a pledge — the word a Greek used for the good faith between parties to an agreement. The Greek Old Testament used it for emunah, the Hebrew word for steadiness and faithfulness, most famously in Habakkuk. The New Testament uses it some two hundred and forty times, and the two senses are never separated in the Greek the way they are in the English.

From Habakkuk to Romans

The verse Paul built his argument on was about faithfulness before it was about faith, and the Greek word let it be both.

“Behold, his soul is puffed up. It is not upright in him, but the righteous will live by his faith.” Habakkuk 2:4 · WEB
The righteous shall live by his faith: in Hebrew, by his emunah, his steadiness — the prophet is contrasting the proud who will not stand with the just who hold.
“For in it is revealed God’s righteousness from faith to faith. As it is written, “But the righteous shall live by faith.”” Romans 1:17 · WEB
Paul quotes it: from faith to faith, the righteous shall live by faith. The Greek word can carry the Hebrew sense and adds the sense of trust.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,” Galatians 5:22 · WEB
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace… faith: here the WEB says faith and most versions say faithfulness, and the Greek word is the same one.
“Immediately the father of the child cried out with tears, “I believe. Help my unbelief!”” Mark 9:24 · WEB
I believe; help my unbelief: the verb of the word, prayed by a man who had some and not enough.

The third of those is the whole lesson in one verse. Where the list of the Spirit’s fruit reaches pistis, translators have to choose between faith and faithfulness, and they choose differently, because the Greek did not make them choose.

The faith of Christ, or faith in Christ

Here the largest open question the word carries, and it should be marked plainly. Paul writes, several times, a phrase the Greek allows to be read two ways.

yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because no flesh will be justified by the works of the law. — Galatians 2:16 · WEB

Read the comment on Not by Works of the Law

Justified by faith in Christ, in nearly every English Bible; the Greek is pistis Christou, "faith of Christ," and the older versions, the King James among them, wrote exactly that. The question is whether the genitive means faith that has Christ as its object — our believing in him — or Christ’s own faithfulness, his obedience to the point of death, by which we are set right. Both readings are grammatically sound; both have serious defenders; both are true things Paul says elsewhere. The difference is whether, in this sentence, the saving thing is what we do toward Christ or what Christ did. This lesson does not decide it. It says that the word’s two senses are why the question can be asked at all.

Faith without works

James, who is often read as Paul’s opponent, is using the word’s other sense.

Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead in itself. — James 2:17 · WEB

Read the comment on Faith That Says but Does Not Give

Faith without works is dead. If faith means only believing, James is contradicting Paul; if faith means the trust that holds and shows itself in what it does, he is saying what Hebrews 11 says with its list of people who built and went and refused. The two senses of one Greek word are most of the reason the two apostles have seemed to disagree.

What the word asks

It asks for both halves at once: to lean, and to keep leaning. Faith in the New Testament is never only a thing believed. It is a weight placed on God and left there, and the leaving is what the Old Testament called faithfulness and what the Greek word never stopped meaning.