For By Grace You’ve Been Saved Through… Allegiance?
I’ve become convinced, with the help of books like Matthew Bates’ Salvation by Allegiance Alone, that in most contexts Christians should stop using the word “faith.”
The conviction comes from two angles. 1) Over the past few decades Biblical scholars have learned that the Greek word pistis, often translated “faith or “belief,” has a much wider, more robust meaning than that, and 2) our modern usage of the word “faith” has become completely disconnected from the way that the Bible uses the word.
In today’s world, “faith” is what is needed when a strong conviction has no evidence to support it. It’s an irrational belief in something far-fetched — as in “blind faith” or a “leap of faith.” Those who have “faith” are thought to be willfully neglecting truth in order to maintain their improbable beliefs.
Most Christians will recognize that this is not how the Bible uses the word. But an even bigger problem is the way that Christians have come to use it.
If you analyzed how Christians spoke about faith you’d quickly get the impression that it’s primarily about mental assent. Faith is believing in something. Or, at the very best, trusting in something. It occurs exclusively in one’s head — it is a mental affirmation of certain truths (i.e. that Jesus died on the cross for your sins).
