February 7, 2008

Barry Shafer Response to Letter form Mark Wuggazer

Re: “Lessons from the Town of Bedrock,” YouthWorker Journal, January/February 2008

Dear Mark,

Thank you for your careful reading of “Lessons from the Town of Bedrock,” YouthWorker Journal, January/February 2008. I appreciate your heart for students and your commitment to truth—a desperately needed combination to minister to today’s students.

I want to assure you that my assertion regarding the connection between behavior and “believe/belief” was not cooked up from a webpage or from a nice-sounding urban legend. Rather, this has come from what’s amounted to a 10-year personal study of the gospel of John and a long-time curiosity with the Greek word pisteuo, particularly as it relates to John’s use and its use in extra-biblical works. To further assure you, I want you to know how right you are when you wrote that Jesus accomplished all we need for faith and salvation. Any actions we do are because of our faith, not in order to achieve faith. Behavior connected with belief comes about after our salvation.

You volunteered the possibility that you misinterpreted my point, which it seems you did. You also strongly raised some questions that need to be addressed. Because you question my scholarly basis, I’m going to have to sound more scholarly and schoolmarm-ish than I like. To the casual reader who might happen along, I apologize, but I’ll seek to make it as painless and enjoyable, as possible.

First, to your questions regarding my assertion that the Greeks’ word for “believe” indicated a level of belief that synergized with behavior: I’ll be touching on the noun form “belief” (pistis) and the verb form “believe” (pisteuo).

You asked for scholarly, peer-reviewed research published by a reputable publisher. So, let’s start with the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Eerdmans), the granddaddy of them all (known in scholar circles as “Kittel’s”) and probably the largest dictionary of Koine Greek.

In this work’s article on the pisteuo word family, you’ll see numerous instances of ancient Greek literature using the word pisits to convey a sense of trust that leads to obedience or to some sort of action. I’ll grab a few examples. Aeschylus of Eleusis used pisits to describe a “confidence” in using weapons. Xenophon of Athens, a student of Socrates, writing in Historia Graeca, used a form of pisitis to denote the “faith” needed between parties in the enacting of a treaty. Similarly, in Xenophon’s work Anabasis, he used the adjectival form of pisitis to describe those who entered into a contract together as “trustworthy.”<!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--> In all of these examples the different parties had such a high belief in something that they acted upon that belief by using a weapon, signing a treaty, or by entering into a contract.