All About Faith

I. When Words Change, Context Matters

I think we often take language for granted. I’m not simply saying this because I’ve been labeled a “word nerd,” nor because I’m some kind of puritan about how language should be used. Language is a cultural tool—one we developed together—and it is always changing. This is especially true in a digital age shaped by speed, repetition, and social media.

     What’s interesting is that language anxiety is nothing new. In the past, self-appointed guardians of “proper” English condemned words such as colonize, notice (as a verb), desirability, contemplate, and balcony. Other once-suspect inventions include scientist, loneliness, hello, nerd, blurb, and bedazzled. All of them are now unremarkable.

     Even so, I’ve found it surprisingly difficult to persuade people of a simple point: if a word is used and understood, it functions as a word. I remember one conversation in particular with a friend who absolutely refused to accept this. He insisted that words could not simply come into existence through use. So I played a small trick. I used a word I was fairly certain he didn’t know and pretended to make it up.

“If enough people use the word floccinaucinihilipilification,” I said, “then it becomes a real word.”

He laughed and insisted that such absurd constructions could never be legitimized. I then showed it to him in the dictionary.

     The long-winded point is this: while nearly anything that can be communicated can become a word—and while words inevitably change over time—it matters how we read them. Context is not optional. If I were to read a letter from Abraham Lincoln in which he described himself as “most gay,” I would not assume he was making a declaration about sexuality. I would instinctively translate the word according to its historical usage.

     Yet time and again, we fail to extend that same courtesy to Scripture.

II. What The Pistis!

The Greek word pistis is most often translated into English as faith, but that translation carries assumptions that would have sounded strange—if not misleading—to ancient hearers. Even Strong’s definition, working within a New Testament framework, does not describe pistis as mere intellectual agreement. Instead, it speaks of conviction, trust, reliability, and faithfulness—relational qualities rather than abstract belief. Embedded in the word is the idea of dependability: of someone or something proven worthy of confidence over time.

     Outside Christian theology, pistis was already a well-established word in Greek usage. It appears in legal contexts, political rhetoric, philosophy, and everyday social relationships. In these settings, it referred to trust between friends, loyalty between allies, confidence in a speaker’s credibility, or assurance that a promise would be kept. In legal language, pistis could even refer to evidence or proof—not belief without grounding, but something that establishes trustworthiness. In other words, pistis was less about believing that something was true and more about placing confidence in someone or something because they had shown themselves reliable.

     This becomes clearer when we look at the word’s etymology. Pistis comes from the verb peithō (πείθω), meaning to persuade, to convince, or to win over. The movement matters. Peithō describes the process of persuasion; pistis names the state that exists after persuasion has occurred. It is not blind belief, nor is it wishful thinking. It is confidence born of being convinced—through experience, character, or demonstrated faithfulness. In that sense, pistis names a relationship, not a mental position.

     Seen this way, familiar passages begin to read differently. When we encounter phrases such as “take up the shield of faith” (Ephesians 6:16), “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26), “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), or the claim in Ephesians 2:8–9 that salvation is through faith and not works, the word doing the heavy lifting is not modern belief. What is being described is trust shaped by experience, loyalty tested over time, and confidence grounded in reliability.

     When Scripture says that we live by faith and not by sight, it is not calling for blind obedience. It is asking for trust in something that has shown itself trustworthy. The problem arises when pistis is flattened into the English faith. In modern usage, faith often implies belief without evidence, internal conviction detached from action, or even a kind of religious guessing. Historically and linguistically, pistis points elsewhere: toward relational trust, proven reliability, lived allegiance. The gap between those meanings is not small. It shapes how entire passages are read—and misunderstood.

III. That Which Came Before

The Greek word pistis does not stand alone. Behind it sits an even more concrete Hebrew concept. The Hebrew word emunah (אֱמוּנָה) comes from the root ’aman (א־מ־נ), which carries the sense of firmness, stability, support, and reliability. From this same root we get amen—not “I agree,” but “it is firm” or “it is trustworthy.” In the Hebrew Bible, emunah almost never means believing that something is true. It means faithfulness, steadfastness, and loyal commitment lived out over time. This is why Habakkuk’s well-known line reads as it does:

“The righteous shall live by his emunah.”

(Habakkuk 2:4)

In Hebrew terms, this does not mean that the righteous live by holding correct beliefs. It means they live by steadfast loyalty and faithful endurance. When this verse is translated into Greek in the Septuagint, emunah becomes pistis. Something narrows here—not into abstract belief, but from embodied covenant faithfulness into relational trust. Even so, the meaning remains far closer to loyalty than to mental assent.

     This background helps clarify what is often framed as a conflict between Paul and James. Both writers use the word pistis, but they address different distortions. Paul responds to the use of Torah observance as an ethnic boundary marker—circumcision, food laws, and identity practices that determined who belonged. When Paul says that a person is justified by pistis apart from works of the law, he is not opposing belief to obedience. He is opposing allegiance to Christ to allegiance to Torah-identity. Obedience is assumed to flow from pistis; what Paul rejects is covenant membership grounded in ethnic markers rather than loyalty to Jesus as Lord.

James, by contrast, confronts a different problem: verbal belief without embodied faithfulness. His insistence that “pistis without works is dead” draws the word back toward emunah—visible loyalty, enacted trust, reliability expressed in action. Paul and James are not disagreeing. They are responding to different failures. The word remains the same; the distortions differ.

     By the first century, pistis also carried political weight. In the Roman world, it functioned as allegiance language. Its Latin equivalent, fides, referred to loyalty, trustworthiness, fidelity to Rome, and oath-keeping. To declare allegiance was not a private spiritual act; it was a public and often costly commitment. Against that backdrop, the Christian confession “Jesus is Lord” was not devotional language. It was a reorientation of pistis away from Caesar. Faith was not internal belief. It was public loyalty—sometimes paid for with one’s life.

     So why, then, did translators get it so wrong? Not through ignorance, but through history. As Scripture moved from Greek into Latin, pistis became fides, and over time fides drifted toward inner belief rather than lived loyalty. Augustine emphasized internal faith and correct belief, and medieval scholasticism formalized faith as assent to propositions. By the time of the Reformation, Luther was fighting a system obsessed with merit and works, and he wielded “faith” against that abuse. But Luther inherited a late medieval understanding of fides, not a Hebrew or Roman one. Translation followed theology, not lexicography.

     English only compounded the problem. It has no single word that carries trust, loyalty, allegiance, faithfulness, confidence, and reliability all at once. Translators chose faith and hoped theology would fill in the gaps. It didn’t. What was lost was covenant loyalty, embodied trust, political allegiance, relational fidelity, and ethical obligation. What replaced it were belief-versus-works debates, internalized religion, and disembodied spirituality—concepts that would have sounded foreign to the Hebrew prophets, to Paul, to James, and to the first-century world they inhabited.

     The Bible was not mistranslated by accident. It was translated through centuries of theological conflict, each one narrowing pistis just a little more until it fit categories the ancient world never used. Reading the word carefully does not undermine Scripture. It allows it to speak again in its own voice.

Sources & Further Reading

For readers who would like to explore the linguistic and historical background of faith in more depth, the following works were especially helpful.

Greek Language and Usage

• BDAG (Bauer, Danker, Arndt, Gingrich), A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature

Widely regarded as the standard lexicon for Koine Greek. Defines pistis primarily in terms of trust, reliability, faithfulness, and confidence rather than abstract belief.

• Liddell–Scott–Jones (LSJ), Greek–English Lexicon

Documents classical and secular uses of pistis in legal, political, and relational contexts, including meanings such as trustworthiness, assurance, and pledge.

• Strong’s Concordance, G4102 (pistis)

Useful for tracing New Testament usage and noting the inclusion of faithfulness and reliability in its definition.

• Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains

Frames pistis within relational and trust-based semantic categories rather than propositional belief.

Hebrew Background

• Brown–Driver–Briggs (BDB), Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament

Defines emunah (אֱמוּנָה) as firmness, fidelity, steadfastness, and reliability rather than intellectual belief.

• HALOT (Koehler and Baumgartner), Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament

Confirms emunah as covenant faithfulness and enduring reliability, particularly in prophetic literature.

• Habakkuk 2:4 (Hebrew text and Septuagint comparison)

Illustrates the shift from emunah (faithful endurance) to pistis in Greek translation.

Paul, James, and Covenant Context

• N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God

Argues that pistis in Paul often carries the sense of covenant loyalty and allegiance rather than belief alone.

• Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ

A foundational study on pistis Christou and the relational and allegiant dimensions of faith language in Paul.

• James D. G. Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul

Explores Paul’s use of pistis in contrast to Torah “works” understood as ethnic boundary markers.

Roman World and Allegiance Language

• Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith

One of the most important studies on pistis and fides as loyalty, trustworthiness, and social obligation in the Greco-Roman world.

• Cicero, De Officiis

Demonstrates how fides functioned as public, ethical, and political loyalty in Roman thought.

Translation History and Theology

• Augustine, On Faith and Works

Illustrates the early narrowing of faith toward inner belief rather than lived fidelity.

• Alister McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification

Traces how “faith” came to be opposed to “works” in Western theology.

• Martin Luther, Preface to Romans

Shows how late medieval understandings of faith shaped Reformation-era theology and translation.

Note to Readers

The linguistic and historical observations in this article reflect mainstream scholarship in biblical studies and ancient languages. They are not intended to replace Scripture, but to help modern readers hear these words as they would have been understood in their original contexts.