The Nature of Faith

By now we have clear historical evidence that Paul taught a central claim: God welcomes into His favor all who believe the good news announced by Christ. This teaching is often summed up as Justification through Faith.

Because this doctrine plays such a foundational role in the apostle Paul’s theology, we need to look carefully at what we mean by faith and belief, and at the kind of mental state these words describe. I will begin by examining how these words are used in modern English. Before we can understand their Hebrew and Greek counterparts, we must first understand what goes on in our own minds when we use them. The best way to do that is to reflect on our everyday thinking as expressed in our native language. Once we have done this, we can then compare our usage with that found in the biblical languages.

Righteousness and Law

Because the New Testament was written in an ancient language that we know only through ancient texts, understanding the precise meaning of Paul’s words requires careful linguistic study — especially of the Greek in which they were written. Theology, which, as we have seen, has already drawn insight from natural science, ethics, and history, now needs help from philology and grammar as well.

Two clusters of words immediately stand out in the passages we are examining: righteous, righteousness, and the righteousness of God on the one hand, and faith, belief, and believe on the other. These terms appear repeatedly in Paul’s teaching and are central to his thought. That alone makes them worth careful and sustained attention.

When we study New Testament language, we must remember that these words come from two very different worlds of thought. They are Greek words, shaped by Greek life, culture, and philosophy, and they draw meaning from the rich body of classical Greek literature. At the same time, the authors who used them were Jews, deeply immersed in the Hebrew Scriptures and shaped by Hebrew ways of thinking. The Septuagint — the Greek translation of the Old Testament — forms a crucial bridge between these worlds, translating Hebrew ideas into Greek language. Any serious study of New Testament terms must therefore consider both their use in classical Greek and their role as Greek equivalents of familiar Hebrew concepts.