In the New Testament the word pistis has a wide range of meanings all focusing on “faith and “faithfulness”. The tricky thing here is that while it means belief, it is often understood today as belief in spite of the evidence. We say things like: “Just have faith”, meaning only believe and it will come to pass. Also, we say things like: “I believe in you” (or him) meaning I trust you. We speak both of having faith “in” someone or something and having faith “that” someone or something will bring the result we wish for. Faith in this sense is a psychological thing. I am not interested in these uses of the term here. Let’s move on.
On the one hand, then, “faith” can be seen as a psychological, perhaps emotional thing, as a state of mind or being that entails confidence even though the result has yet to be decided. While this is one viable meaning for the word “faith”, I think it is very important to recognize yet another viable meaning of the term, namely that wherein it describes a behavioral dimension of a person’s life, as a person who can be relied on, someone who follows through, who “walks the talk.”
I think it is very important to keep these two senses of the term separate from each other lest the richness of the notion of faith be clouded over. Let me illustrate what I mean by referencing the well-known Chapter Elven of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament. This chapter is well known as the “Faith Chapter” and that for good reason. The trouble is that far too often believers have read this chapter which lists so many of the faithful people of the Old Testament as a list of those who have held fast to their beliefs in spite of evidence to the contrary. However, when one looks carefully at how the writer backs up the claim that these folks were “faithful”, it becomes clear that the emphasis is on their behavior, not their inner confidence or hope.
The list starts with Abel who “offered a sacrifice greater than Cain’s” and goes on listing Noah “who took good heed and built an ark to save his household,” and moves on to Abraham “who obeyed the call and left home to settle in a land as an alien”, then “by faith Abraham prepared to offer up his son Isaac but did not do so”, and further “By faith Moses led his people out of Egypt”, etc. etc. The list goes on and on praising these heroes of the Hebrew faith, not because they correctly believed this or that, nor because they felt strongly about this or that, but because they behaved in a certain way.
In my understanding of the quality of faith it is primarily a way of behaving, and only secondarily a way of involving ways of thinking or hoping. So when Jesus says: “Oh you of little faith.” He is complaining about the people’s behavior, their deeds, not their ability to hope or accept something in spite of the facts. “Pistos” in Greek carries a behavioral thrust that focuses on our actions, even sometimes as opposed to our statements of hopes.