pistis

Semantic range

1. 1trust placed in a person
2. 2faithfulness, reliability — the quality of being trustworthy
3. 3the content of what is believed: "the faith"
4. 4a pledge or assurance given

Pistis translates Hebrew ʾĕmûnāh in the Septuagint, and carries the same double sense: believing and being reliable. Modern English has kept the first and lost the second, which is how "faith" came to sound like an opinion held without evidence.

Hebrews 11:1 defines it instead as hupostasis — substance, the thing that stands under — and elegchos, evidence or proof. Alma's chapter says the same in the vocabulary of experiment: faith is not a perfect knowledge, but it is a real hope acted on, and it can be tested by whether the seed swells (Alma 32:21, 27–35). Joseph Smith's Lectures on Faith call it "the first principle in revealed religion, and the foundation of all righteousness" and describe it as a principle of action and of power.

The genitive phrase pistis Christou (e.g. Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:16) can grammatically mean either "faith in Christ" or "the faithfulness of Christ." Scholars still argue it. Either reading leaves the Latter-day Saint doctrine intact — and the second adds a striking thought: that we are saved partly by His fidelity, not only by ours.

Where it appears

• Hebrews 11:1The definition, in terms of substance and evidence.
• Alma 32:21"Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things."
• James 2:17–18Faith without works is dead — the reliability half of the word.

See also

• אֱמוּנָהʾĕmûnāh
• אָמַןʾāman
• χάριςcharis
• ὑπομονήhypomonē