Faith in the New Testament: A Study in Biblical Theology

By Adolf Schlatter

A classic study now available in English

First appearing in 1885, Schlatter's Der Glaube im Neuen Testament (Faith in the New Testament) is a thorough analysis of the concept of faith. Taking into account Old Testament, rabbinic, and key first-century writings, Schlatter provides an exhaustive study on the meaning and implications of faith in the New Testament. It is a philological masterpiece, making its translation into English a great contribution to New Testament theological studies. This fresh translation retains the substance and style of his original work, giving a new audience direct access to Schlatter's work. Schlatter's rigorous thought remains invaluable today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Aug 24, 2022
• ISBN: 9781683596202

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Faith in the New Testament

A Study in Biblical Theology

Adolf Schlatter

Translated by Joseph Longarino

Copyright

Faith in the New Testament: A Study in Biblical Theology

Copyright 2022 Lexham Press

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Print ISBN 9781683596196

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Table of Contents

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The fruitlessness of the secondary literature on faith; the historical task; a look back on the pre-Christian period; the portrayal of the church alongside that of the apostles; the relationship between historical analysis and faith.

I.FAITH BEFORE JESUS

First Chapter: Faith in the Palestinian Synagogue

The concept of 'mn, n'mn, 'mt, h'myn; the relationship in the Old Testament between faithfulness and faith toward God; the Aramaic equivalents of 'mt and h'myn; faith in the law; the divided heart; faith in the teaching; the coordination of faith and works; the postulate of unconditional assurance; hindrance to faith and its consequences; the hidden God; the double result.

Second Chapter: Faith among the Greeks and in the Greek Synagogue

The basic notion of pistis and pisteuein; Polybius’s linguistic usage; juridical and philosophical pistis; the detachment of pistis from the gods; the Greeks’ political education; the parallels between Polybius’s linguistic usage and the Semitic word; the Septuagint; the entry of alētheia into Jewish Greek; faith in Josephus; the definition of faith in Philo; the antitheses of faith; the unity between faith and faithfulness; faith as the recompense for piety; the relation of faith to Scripture; the portrayal of faith in the figures of Abraham and Moses; the subordinate place of faith in the entirety of the system; the Jewish character of faith.

II.FAITH IN THE WORDS OF JESUS

Third Chapter: John the Baptist

The subordination of faith to repentance in the baptismal preaching.

Fourth Chapter: The Words of Jesus about Faith in the Synoptic Gospels

Jesus’s acceptance of the baptismal preaching; the linguistic usage of pistis; faith as absolute power over the world; limitless assurance; faith in the natural sphere of life; the plea directed to Jesus; the relation of faith to the messianic expectation; faith as the goal and condition of healing; the relation of faith to the whole activity of Jesus, to Jesus’s death, to future salvation; repentance and faith; faith and love; the origin of faith if from God.

Fifth Chapter: Faith in the Fourth Gospel

Linguistic usage; the truth; the affirmation of Jesus’s messiahship; the relation of faith to Jesus’s words and works, to Scripture, and to the Baptist; obstacles to faith; Jesus’s death and resurrection; the conditions for faith coming into existence; faith and knowledge; faith and love; the immanence of Jesus in believers; faith as reception of the Spirit.

Sixth Chapter: Collocating the Two Accounts of the Gospels

Unity and difference between the Synoptic Gospels and John; the hidden Christ of the Synoptic Gospels; the overlap of the Synoptics and John in their exhortation to faith; the unveiled Christ of John; John’s elucidation of faith; the reappearance of synoptic elements in John; the act of faith as the basis of both Gospel types.

III.THE NEW COMMUNITY OF BELIEVERS

Seventh Chapter: The Posture of Faith in the Apostolic Church

Faith as a designation for the community; as the crucial element of Christian piety; the scriptural proof for faith; the genesis of the believing community; the spread of the linguistic usage; the psychological duality in the act of faith; the origin and goal of faith in God; faith through Christ; his resurrection as the motive for faith; faith in Christ; faith as the condition for entrance into the kingdom; faith and the law; faith as a present good; faithfulness; truth; the synonyms for faith; faith and repentance.

Eighth Chapter: The Pauline Preaching of Faith

The portrayal of faith in the figure of Abraham; the affirmation of the death and resurrection of Jesus; the lack of righteousness as a motive for faith; the antithesis between faith and works; faith and law; the renunciation of righteousness; the inability to act; faith as the ground of righteousness; the fellowship of Jesus’s death and life; the value of faith conditioned by grace; faith as a result of God’s action; the indispensability of faith; the ethical character of faith; deliverance from sin; the establishment of love; the fulfillment of the law; the nullity of faith without Christ; the all-sufficiency of faith; freedom from the law; the contrast with ascesis; faith and the ethical imperatives; the root of works; faith and knowledge; the historical ground of faith; universalism; faith as the unifying principle for the community.

Ninth Chapter: The Palestinians

The lack of dialectic in James; the affirmation of God’s oneness; the superiority of faith to everything earthly; the death of faith without works; the perfection of faith by works; the dereliction of faith in despising the poor; victory in trials; faith in prayer; the antithesis between faith and desire; the law; the historical reason for the polemic; the conflict with Paul in Antioch; the emphasis on the joy of faith in the writings of Peter; faith and hope; Christian duty; the ethical effects of fellowship with God in the church in the writings of John; the presence of Jesus in the community; the unity of the phenomenon of faith; faith as victory over the world.

Tenth Chapter: The Letter to the Hebrews

Faith as the subject of the apologia; the definition of faith; the material content of faith; the divine testimony given to faith; the grounding of faith by the act of creation; the proof from history; the beginner and perfectors of faith; unbelief; fear of God.

Eleventh Chapter: Faith and Gnosis

The emphasis on good works; natural obligation; the value of good works before God; Gnosis as the destruction of faith; faith as the preservation of received teaching.

Twelfth Chapter: The Results of the Apostolic Preaching

The relation to the synagogue; the genesis of Paulinism; James and Paul; John; the goal of Jesus.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

The usage of Jewish literature; Polybius’s linguistic usage of pistis; Philo’s linguistic usage; Matt 23:23; the variations between the synoptic parallels; the objective genitive with pistis; the prepositions with pisteuein; diakrithēnai; Luke 18:8; Luke 7:46; the Johannine alēthēs and alēthinos; the linguistic use of pistis in the letters; Rom 6:8; Rom 4:17–21; Rom 4:2; akoē and hypakoē pisteōs; 2 Cor 4:13; Rom 12:6; hypostasis.

SCRIPTURE AND ANCIENT SOURCES INDEX

Translator’s Introduction

THE WORK AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE

Adolf Schlatter is among the few New Testament scholars active over a century ago who are still widely known in the field today. It is therefore remarkable that up until now there has been no English translation of a work as significant as Der Glaube im Neuen Testament, which first appeared in 1885. As the title indicates, the work provides a comprehensive analysis of faith in the New Testament, though Schlatter reaches out beyond the New Testament to consider historical antecedents, contemporary parallels, and later developments.

Those familiar with New Testament scholarship will quickly notice how modern arguments about faith in the New Testament, whether pertaining to the faith of Jesus or the differences between Paul and James, find substantial echoes—and indeed occasionally, ultimately, their grounding—in Schlatter’s detailed discussions. As a scholar particularly sensitive to the presuppositions and implications of his work, Schlatter often expounds at greater length what appears in more abbreviated form in the work of subsequent scholars. His work may therefore be used in part to fill out what is frequently tacit in later discussions, including those that take place in our own day. While Schlatter’s presuppositions, arguments, and conclusions may be questioned, especially in light of subsequent scholarship, his rare combination of candor and rigor make him a fruitful conversation partner for scholars even today.

FEATURES OF THE TRANSLATION

This translation seeks to provide as direct access as possible to Schlatter’s text. While Schlatter’s prose is at times unwieldy, the goal of this translation is less to provide an eminently readable text than to faithfully give a sense of Schlatter’s style. Extremely long sentences are retained in as closely corresponding a form as possible; such sentences are altered only when necessary. When Schlatter’s prose is wooden or awkward, there has been little attempt to smooth it out. Where Schlatter maintains atypical word order in German, the English tries to reflect this as much as possible. Where Schlatter’s words are ambiguous, the English aims to retain this, though often notes have been provided by the translator to indicate the possible shades of meaning. These notes are explicitly marked as coming from the translator. The citations of primary sources are not corrected in line with the original but rather are rendered in accordance with Schlatter’s own translation. When egregious typos have been identified in the original, they have been corrected. The original page numbers have been provided so that one can locate the original German text more easily.

Introduction

The fruitlessness of the secondary literature on faith; the historical task; a look back on the pre-Christian period; the portrayal of the church alongside that of the apostles; the relationship between historical analysis and faith.

The power with which the word and concept of faith has intervened in the course of history corresponds with a vast literature that is devoted to it in philosophical-dogmatic reflection, though this literature has very limited informative value and practical fruitfulness. Yet the internal processes that are demarcated and specified by the word faith, in distinction from other psychological events, entail a very significant problem, whether they arise in human common life or in relation to God. The question concerning the conditions and the course of those syntheses of the will by which the I opens or closes itself to a certain You, establishing or closing off fellowship, and about the relation of dependence or independence they have with perception, touches on a fundamental phenomenon of the inner¹ life; yet, notoriously, our psychological analysis quickly finds that it cannot go further, especially if it deals with processes that are associated with the sphere of volition. Still more detrimental for those discussions about faith and knowledge and the like, however, has been a certain self-deception about the reason that gives those syntheses power and effect. [2] As a rule, these discussions operate with an abstract concept of faith, in which the relational point of faith, which gives faith its concrete definiteness, is detached from the trusting demeanor; and then it is overlooked that the investigation is thereby at the same time stripped of that which gives faith force and effect. This force and effect adheres to the essence and workings of the one to whom the I opens itself in trust, and not to the formal course of the psychological process. Hence, this force and effect can never be discovered in the concept of faith when it has become an empty formal concept that seeks to determine only the regular course of the relation into which we enter by faith, yet abstracts from the reality to which the believing demeanor is related. The question about the ground and justification, quality and power of any act of faith is independent of the question about the essence, power, and effect of its object and is not answerable by explanations about the formal course of the act of faith.

Far more fruitful for clarifying the questions that are connected to faith for our time is the historical investigation of how and in what way the word faith came to occupy its powerful place in the inner² life of humanity. This happened because of the events that brought about the formation of the New Testament church. If we turn the investigation to what the New Testament holds up to us as faith, it is not exhausted by an empty, abstract formal concept, but rather it approaches a concrete, relevant activity of faith, by which faith can be perceived in its completeness with its ground and object and therefore also with its effect and its quality. In fact, we encounter it here in its divinely established, normative totality. Even for someone who may wish to question the revelatory purpose of the New Testament events and doctrinal formation and the normative character of the New Testament writings grounded in it, [3] at least this is unmistakable: the concept of faith in the New Testament is historically the reason that faith forever became the fundamental word of piety and framed the choice between religiosity and irreligiosity as a decision between faith and unbelief; thus, here is where one must undertake an examination of the quality and essence of faith.

The purpose of the following investigation is therefore to expound on what the New Testament calls faith. The datum that first presents itself for consideration is the word and our next task is thus of a linguistic-historical kind; we have to trace the movement into which the word faith was transposed in the New Testament period. Yet this task is independent from the development of thought and doctrine; for the latter is the motor that sets the word in motion and gives it a history. The linguistic-historical processes become transparent only through the history of the concept, and the task is defined therefore as being to understand a segment from the development of New Testament doctrine. This in turn directs us back to the divine action from which the New Testament community arises with its teaching and writings, and the final point of the investigation would therefore be that New Testament faith would become recognizable in its divine ground and justification. The categories of empiricism, which perceives the facts, and speculation, which conceptually looks through them, express only a relative opposition, even if they designate different functions of cognition, like all divisions of the mental event into individual capacities or functions; in actual cognition they are not separated by a partition but rather are mutually conditioning and come to completion only in and with each other. A history of New Testament concepts that simply statistically lists and chronologically arranges them [4] is mindless; the New Testament concept of faith is understood only when it is recognized in its ground and when the latter is found in God. Here nothing is presupposed that would bind the freedom and impartiality of the investigation: its results may arise only from itself. Precisely when the development of New Testament conceptuality is portrayed only as a product of temporal, human factors and thus is denied its divine causality—and ignoring God entails negating him—then the investigation is subjected from the start to a dogmatic premise, because negative dogmatics is still dogmatics; and the question is only whether one has the right dogmatics.

Faith is an inner occurrence and in giving an account of it we enter the realm of history. This concept finds all the more use here because the New Testament faith, even after it was established by Jesus, does not exist in the community in rigid immobility, but rather enters into a lively development, determined individually in each apostolic form. This variety arises immediately from the value that the human personality has in the individuality of its life before God. We do not have to stipulate any postulates about this, neither in the sense of a mechanical unity, as if the same concept of faith had to be recovered everywhere in the New Testament, nor do we have to postulate the contrary, as did that metaphysics which, without the contrary, possessed no principle of movement; we do not have to postulate anything at all but rather to perceive what happened. If the spirits lead an individual life according to God’s order, we will also find variety in their faith, though the variety will not lack unity, provided that their particular lives are grounded in God. The formula unity in diversity has a real basis; it resides in the fact that the one God works within a multiplicity of personalities, [5] each of which has and should have its own life.

It would significantly simplify our investigation if the views about the literary-historical relations of the New Testament were less divided and convoluted; for the judgment about the course of the development of doctrine is significantly determined by what is beyond the history of the New Testament writings. Even if we can leave many introductory questions open, we still simply cannot avoid the fact that the account must take positions that are controverted, without being able to enter into a discussion about them.³ Yet the literary history of the New Testament is no less dependent on the history of doctrine than the latter is on the former, since the history of doctrine generated and shaped the New Testament writings, as ultimately the understanding of a writing’s content provides the most important factor in a judgment about the author and time of a writing. The introduction for its part hinges on theological work on the New Testament and thus will be kept pure from a considerable number of incorrect premises that threaten steadily to become traditional.

For the historical approach it is not unimportant first to establish how the word and concept of faith took shape prior to the Christian church in both areas in which the gospel grew, in the synagogue and in Greek culture. This retrospect does not compromise the newly arising, originally creative, and giving character of the activity of Jesus. As little as Jesus can be [6] deduced from the preceding course of history, just as little does he relate to the same by simply negating and dismissing it, being severed from any context. The existing spiritual heritage is subjected to a fundamental purification but not to elimination and destruction; rather, he inserts his impact into what was given naturally and came about historically and therefore he draws to himself the elements of truth in the former and his voice is given in these elements. The whole teaching of Jesus and therefore also the conceptuality of the church is constructed from the materials that had taken shape in Israel so that there is no New Testament concept without a background in the theology of the synagogue. This intellectual⁴ medium in which the activity of Jesus and the life of the church took place becomes perceptible when stock is taken of the existing linguistic and conceptual material; thereby, simultaneously, the fundamental significance of the activity of Jesus, which provides something new, clearly comes to light.

For this, though, we need the philological preliminaries and these are available in fact only imperfectly in the Greek sphere. The linguistic-historical stance of our commentaries is characterized by adducing evidence for striking words and phrases from the tragedians, Plato, etc.; i.e., they work with the material of the 17th century, which was assembled with the point of establishing the classicism of New Testament Greek, and only slowly are scholars transitioning from this aesthetic viewpoint to the historical consideration of New Testament Greek, which sets the latter in relation not with individual samples of aesthetically perfect speech but rather with the living language of its time and environment. Work has only recently turned back to the synagogue completely. If a historical retrospect is employed, one usually looks back to the Old Testament and maybe also to the Septuagint and the Apocrypha, as if [7] there were no rabbis, Pharisees, and synagogues, as if the Israel of Jesus and of the apostles had not long since become the home of a theological task that strove to develop the content of Scripture not only as rules for behavior but also as a concept and system of thought. This task went astray, but it was conducted both with great exertion and with eminent success, because it encompassed the thought and life of the entire people, extending even to the diaspora. Even the change of language that took place on Palestinian soil is customarily ignored and the Greek of the New Testament is placed directly alongside the Old Testament Hebrew word; doubtlessly, the scriptural word in its own original substance continued to influence the thought of the synagogue, but it was in no way without significance and consequence that the Israel of Palestine no longer lived its thought-life in the old scriptural word but rather in Aramaic speech. I know very well how inadequate the following attempt is to portray both the Greek pistis and the heimin of the synagogue, yet it may at least have the value of a wish that aims at a little nurtured but not unimportant aspect of the New Testament task.

Within the New Testament, though, the teaching activity of Jesus and of the apostolate is very specific, and yet the direct transition from Jesus to the individual apostolic forms has often entailed a damaging distortion. The teaching activity of the apostles takes place within a community that is united with them and within itself in a common conviction. Certainly this community arises only through the apostolic preaching; yet the latter too is conditioned by the former. No writing of the New Testament is directed to non-Christian readers; all are written for the community and therefore also from the conceptuality common to it. [8] Attention must be given no less to this common heritage of the whole community than to the individual particularity of each of the apostolic men; even if this cannot be determined everywhere with absolute certainty, it is still not impossible to perceive and depict the continuous stance of apostolic Christianity; the letters give instructive and clear information about this in their fundamental ideas that appear everywhere again and again. If the apostolic figures are isolated from the community in which they live and for which they think and speak, the individual teachings necessarily acquire an abstract theoretical character, and they sink down into mere thought structures robbed of their ground and purpose. Only thus could the points of contact between them be transformed into purely literary uses and the letter writers be endowed with a library from which they could take all kinds of citations, because it is ignored that they lived in a community that is permeated by the same thoughts and that has a unified language. For this reason, what lives together and alongside each other in the same community and together constitutes its wealth and its power, is transformed into periods detached from one another, as if Paul first had to be buried and forgotten before a Petrine letter or the Letter to the Hebrews were possible, and so forth. With fictions like these one projects only the exegete’s own situation back into history; the exegete certainly reads the Letter of Peter after the Letter to the Romans and the Letter to the Hebrews after the Letter of Peter, and their overlap is conveyed by comparing the written documents, but in reality these letters are encompassed by a lively and powerful community life that, since it did not suppress personality but rather renewed and strengthened it, provided space for a rich variety of lines of thought alongside one another, and yet bound all of them to one another in a tight commonality. [9]

As much as the goal of the following investigation is history in the full objectivity that alone gives to an exposition the character of history, just as little is this for me an account of my faith, but rather the perception and rendering of what is experienced, thought of, and described by the men of the New Testament as faith; yet I will not leave unstated that for me that which I may possess of insight into the New Testament demeanor of faith seems to have become accessible only in the closest connection with what I myself have received by the grace of God and Christ in faith, which is why for me it is hardly thinkable that the New Testament concept of faith could become transparent without one’s own believing disposition and only by means of the imagination that strives to emulate and understand the spiritual states of others. The concept is so peculiarly particular and the sayings about it grow so suddenly out of the community’s own believing posture that they necessarily retain a quaint, injudicious, improbable character when the inward life of the observer moves in a contrary direction, as even the New Testament forcefully contains the awareness about its incomprehensibility for spirits with a different orientation (1 John 3:1; 1 Cor 2:15). It would be a baseless and unjustifiable judgment if this ancillary cooperation of one’s own posture of faith per se were charged with altering the historical character of the investigation, as if it were a support and not rather a hindrance to historical insight if the happenings of one’s own experience, which are to be comprehended, are simply removed. In one’s own experience of faith in Jesus, there is rather the possibility, the drive, and the equipment for an understanding of the New Testament that is truly loyal to history, as all our thoughts and judgments [10] are tied to an empirical basis and cannot be detached from this. This fact also means that all such investigations lag far behind their goal and never exhaustively present Scripture’s concept of faith; in the fullness, clarity, and coherence with which this concept comprehends the posture toward God in its grounds, course, and outcome, it without doubt goes far beyond what the following account can indicate.

I. Faith before Jesus

FIRST CHAPTER: FAITH IN THE PALESTINIAN SYNAGOGUE

The concept of 'mn, n'mn, 'mt, h'myn; the relationship in the Old Testament between faithfulness and faith towards God; the Aramaic equivalents of 'mt and h'myn; faith in the law; the divided heart; faith in the teaching; the coordination of faith and works; the postulate of unconditional assurance; hindrance to faith and its consequences; the hidden God; the double result.

Our faith traces back through the New Testament pisteuein to the Old Testament to be firm in the Lord (he'emin veyhwh).

In its primary stem the verb possesses, as far as we know of Israelite speech, a very specific meaning in the active, though this with a fixed, demotic linguistic usage. aman refers to carrying a child in the curve of the garment at the breast (Lam 4:5; cf. Num 11:12; Ruth 4:16), or on the curved part of the hip (Isa 60:4). omeneth is the woman who customarily carries the child around while she attends to it (2 Sam 4:4; Ruth 4:16; cf. the extended usage of omen in 2 Kgs 10:1, 5; Isa 49:23; Esth 2:7). There is a clear analogy between the woman bearing the child and the pillars that bear the building, which are also omenoth (2 Kgs 18:16). This use of the active makes it indisputable that the sensory idea connected to the root is holding and carrying. The notion of support corresponds less to the root because the local idea of being under is scarcely in view here, and therefore the ideas ground, foundation, and the like could be kept separate from the development of the notion of the stem.¹

Alongside the active aman there is the stative word amen, which remained impersonal and limited to a particular linguistic usage as the word of oath taking. It holds, it is valid, is what the person bound by the oath responds to the curse spoken over him, and the hearer affirms the praise of God in the same way, or he uses it to confirm what is said in conversation as true and valid (1 Kgs 1:35; Jer 11:5; cf. 28:6). The active holding, when used statively, becomes firmness and from here invulnerable certainty and sacrosanct validity, analogously to how in one and the same stem being short appears alongside cutting, and being high alongside throwing, and being strong alongside turning, and so forth.

[13] The stem acquired great flexibility in the feminine form emeth, alongside which we find emunah as the later formation, and, in the reflexive secondary stem, ne'eman. In these words, too, the basic idea is that of firmness, where the reflexive stem views this firmness as the product of a person’s or thing’s own action: it itself steadies itself, it holds itself. The linguistic usage comprehended as an activity of firmness a great variety of phenomena in nature as well as in human life. Only rarely do the words serve to designate actually being held physically. So the child that is seated firmly on its mother is called ne'eman (Isa 60:4); the held arm becomes emunah (Exod 17:12); the firm wall that securely holds the stake driven into it is ne'eman (Isa 22:23, 25), as is the firmly grounded house that does not collapse (1 Sam 2:35; 25:28; 2 Sam 7:16; 1 Kgs 11:38, where the firmness of the house is transferred to the security and endurance of the entire happiness of life). Yet the steady stream that does not dry up in the summer heat holds itself (Jer 15:18; Isa 33:16), as does the choice vine that produces valuable and abundant fruit (Jer 2:21), or the way that happily leads to the goal (Gen 24:28), or the people that safely rides out the war (Isa 7:9; 39:8), or peace and welfare that achieve lasting permanence (Jer 14:13), or the son who buries the father according to his will (Gen 47:29), or the relative who gives his daughter as a wife to his fellow tribesman (Gen 24:49), or the messenger who carries out his mission (Prov 25:13), or the witness who gives valid testimony (Jer 42:5; Ps 89:38; Isa 8:2; Prov 14:5, 25), or the warrior whom the king can use for any mission (1 Sam 22:14), or the woman who gives herself to her husband and no other as his own (Isa 1:21), or the judge who cannot be bribed (Ezek 18:8; Zech 8:16; 7:9; Prov 29:14; Exod 18:21), [14] or the priest who serves God according to the rule of his priesthood (1 Sam 2:35; Mal 2:6): they all make themselves firm for those with whom they are connected. The standard by which this conduct of various things and persons is portrayed as emeth is neither an abstract logical one, such as the agreement of appearance with reality, nor an abstract ethical one such as the notion of dutifulness, but rather, as everywhere in language, here too the factor shaping the word is the concrete need and desire of the living person; if the things and persons do not deceive the expectation placed upon them, they show themselves to be ne'eman. Only very occasionally is the standard by which the firmness is measured fear and pain, instead of hope and desire; so when Deut 28:59 calls the plague that torments a person thoroughly and for a long time ne'eman, here too it receives this predicate in the speech of the one who sends it and this with the purpose of striking the people severely, not, though, in the mind of the sufferer; he himself would hardly have called the plague ne'eman.

In human conduct, emeth has its primary place in the already established and existing forms of fellowship between one person and another; both people first set the requirements and expectations in respect to which the other person has to show his firmness. It is not so much the act that establishes fellowship as the act that acknowledges the fellowship that exists. Hence, this word forms a tightly connected word pair with chesed, where the words mutually complement each other. That which chesed names—the goodness that arises and gives from its own impulse—is not the primary notion of emeth; the latter adds to chesed the element of consistency and elevates the goodness above the momentary stirring of compassion or the particular form of assistance rendered within the context of an existing bond. [15] Thus, when it comes to emeth, the language leaves unseparated the inner,² interior aspect and the external demonstration of the deed; in no way does the language have in mind only what occurs in the disposition, but also active assistance, keeping a promise, executing a mission, and so forth are above all emeth (cf. be'emeth yish'ekha, Ps 69:14); one does emeth as one does chesed (Gen 32:11; Ezek 18:9; Isa 25:1; Prov 12:22; Neh 9:33); one gives it (Mic 7:20); one sends it (Ps 43:3; 57:4). Nor is the multiplicity of the processes that are summarized as firmness separated into their individual components: the goodwill that is sealed off to hate and jealousy, the truthfulness that hides nothing and does not lie, the trust that gives no space for suspicion about a companion, the reliability that remains the same in fortune and misfortune, in jubilation and in trouble, the courage that fearlessly stands by a companion, the skill that knows how to perform the service and really provides the help, not one or the other, no, all of this together is generated by emeth.

Linguistic usage particularly highlighted emeth in certain circumstances, e.g., in the case of a witness. Even here the idea is in no way exhausted by the formal concept of truth; the tenacity and faithfulness of memory, which preserve what has been seen without forgetting, the unyieldingness and incorruptibility that is not amenable to concealing or distorting the matter, the victorious power of the testimony that holds its ground in the face of contestation and objection and finds its recognition in the verdict of the judge, this altogether is what the firmness of the witnesses produces. Likewise, it is highlighted in the case of a judge, and in his case, it names that firmness that considers nothing other than justice, and hence that which materially is, finds, and brings about justice, and so the expectation placed on a judge does not deceive. What is thought of above all as the emeth of a judge [16] is shown by Exod 18:21. Therefore, this quality is particularly emphasized when what is at issue is preserving justice for a poor man against the rich man (Prov 29:14).

Stemming from such usage, emeth comes into a conflicting relation with appearance. One does not expect water from arid, sandy soil, nor does one desire service from an enemy. The expectation which the person or item should fulfill in emeth presupposes in these people or items indications that awaken and justify such an expectation; if the expectation is not fulfilled, the subject acted with a deceptive appearance. Hence emeth is rarefied in the abstraction process that occurs in the language, resulting in a similar idea as it exists in our reality; this is what happens when Jeremiah says that God sent him ve'emeth (Jer 26:15), or, in the language of Chronicles, elohei emeth, a true God, who is true (2 Chr 15:3), in the adverbs umnam and so forth that branched off from the stem. The transitions are shown in passages such as Josh 2:12: Rahab desires a oth emeth, a true sign, that, since it is given without cunning and therefore is also respected during the taking of the city, thereby shows itself as a true sign in that it efficaciously protects the members of the house.

At the same time the notion becomes connected with the inner life. Forms of human fellowship have an objective reality even when the help that flows from them is refused or the service expected of them changes into its opposite, yet then they become a lie as an empty, external form. The plaintiff gives the appearance of being the ed even when he lies, the judge officiates and gives a mishpat even when he is bribed and his decision is thereby the opposite of the mishpat. So emeth becomes the negation of dissimulation, of hypocrisy, of the form that is adopted only by rote. [17] It reaches so firmly into the interior life, and brings out the orientation of disposition and will that corresponds with conduct, for only when this orientation forms the basis of conduct is the latter firm. So the word comes to denote the notion of uprightness, integrity; it is elucidated as the whole soul and the whole heart (Jer 32:41; cf. 1 Sam 12:24); it has as synonyms lev shalem, tamim, tom levav alongside itself (Isa 38:3; 2 Chr 19:9; Judg 9:16; Josh 24:14); or the concept straight appears near it (1 Kgs 3:6; Hab 2:4; Neh 9:13); where there is no bending, no twists or turns, there is emeth (Deut 32:4, 20).

So, as much as emeth has its primary place in human conduct, it also comes to have a special relation to speech. Speech too arouses expectations that are deceived or fulfilled; speech too passes away as empty appearance into nothing or it shows itself to be unshakeably fixed; speech too offers certainty, sometimes merely as a means to show hostility, but at other times in truth as benevolence and succor. Hence, for language, weight falls on the fact that speech too has emeth as its property: dibber emeth (Jer 9:4; Zech 8:16; cf. sephath emeth, Prov 12:19; Jer 7:28). Here too the word is not merely a formal concept that would express, say, accordance with objective facts; nor does it designate only the uprightness that gives genuine expression to the interior disposition, but rather speech preserves emeth as a property above all by its legitimate and benevolent purpose. A curse, even if it be indeed the true expression of genuine hatred, is not dover emeth, and hence the pious man does not speak emeth only with words but already in his heart (Ps 15:2).

The firmness of the word is not located only in the relation of the speaker to the word, but also in the relation of the word [18] to the hearer. For him the word becomes emeth by evidence. When the brothers bring Benjamin to Egypt, and thereby adduce the demanded sign of truth, then ye'amnu divreikhem, then their word is kept (Gen 42:20). This no'eman does not predicate the consistent relation in which their word already stands to reality; rather their word obtains emeth only when the event demanded as proof has occurred. The same thought is present when ne'eman is predicated of the pledge concerning the future, which is corroborated by what is promised being rendered (1 Kgs 8:26; 1 Chr 17:23f.; 2 Chr 1:9; 6:17), or when emeth accrues to the word as a result of close examination (Deut 17:4; 13:15; 22:20), when judges and listeners acknowledge the evidence of witnesses as valid with the word emeth parallel to yitsdaq (He is right, Isa 43:9), when a word that is doubted becomes emeth because the matter is seen with one’s own eyes (1 Kgs 10:6).

From here the term acquires content similar to our truth. That firmness that is bestowed on the word by examination, proof, and one’s own perception grows out of its original, abiding quality. The word does not fall over but rather stays upright if it emerges from a reality that expresses it, a will that sticks to it, a power that realizes it. The transitions in thought are shown in passages such as 1 Kgs 17:24: after the revival of her child, the woman says to Elijah: Now I have known that you are a man of God and the word of the Lord in your mouth is emeth. Here too this refers to the accomplishment of the word by the action connected to it, though it is thought of as the property that already abides in and [19] inheres in the mere word from the beginning. Analogously, for the judge, emeth is transferred from the motif of passing judgment to the content thereof; when the judgment proceeds from impartiality and incorruptibility, it substantively will also be and have emeth, insofar as it renders a verdict that is indisputable, true, obvious as justice and law. Or when it says of the priest in Mal 2:6: In his mouth is thorath emeth, both of the following are united in this thought: the reference to the uprightness and faithfulness with which he faithfully executes his priestly service for God, and the reference to the material integrity of his priestly instruction, which gave unadulterated expression to the divine will. When, though, God’s throne itself is further described as emeth (Ps 119:142; Neh 9:13), when emeth appears as the sum of the divine word (Ps 119:160), as a predicate of the prophetic vision (Dan 10:1, 21; 8:26; 11:2; cf. Song 2:10), the word has lost some of the emphasis on the personal aspect of a trustworthy spirit and an upright manner of acting; this emeth is conceived objectively; it pertains to the instruction in its objective substance because it is true and righteous per se. This usage appears most markedly in Daniel when the king who repeals the law and blasphemes the Most High tosses emeth to the earth (Dan 8:12), or when the fruit of the visitation is double-sidedly specified as turning from our sins and attending to God’s emeth (Dan 9:13); here emeth is presented to the person in its objective substance, the truth and justice given to Israel in their unchangeableness and holy validity. Incidentally, only emeth takes this objective path, while emunah remains connected to human or divine conduct in upright integrity and reliable faithfulness. [20]

Linguistic usage kept the hiphil formation connected to a limited circle of phenomena. A person experiences uncertainty and vacillation also in his own interior life through fear and trepidation, through distrust and suspicion, through doubt and concern. The opposite of these unsteady and insecure states of the soul, the demonstration of firmness inwardly through security and trust, is designated by he'emin ³ (1 Sam 27:12; Judg 11:20; Prov 26:25; Mic 7:5; Job 15:15), which is why this state has its opposite in the trembling heart (Isa 7:9) and in fearful haste (Isa 28:16). Only in poetry does the word take a subject other than a human person (Job 39:24), where it is related to the rousing of a steed: when the battle horn calls, lo ya'amin, it no longer constrains itself nor remains in quiet steadiness. Yet assurance can also have a substantive point of reference; whoever feels insecure in anxious fear does not have faith in his life (Deut 28:66; Job 24:22). Therefore, an infinitive can also be connected to the verb, whereby the word acquires the idea of a certain expectation: If I were not certain that I would see the goodness of the Lord, says the psalmist (Ps 27:3; cf. Job 15:22), and then adds the imperative: wait for him, qawweh; this longing expectation has its foundation in that confident stability. Yet a certain measure of trust constantly enters even into the volatile relations that life always produces between people, as this trust ultimately grounds the speech of each person. So the concept is rarefied into [21] the trust with which the speech of someone else is accepted as reliable (1 Kgs 10:7; Prov 14:15; Gen 45:26; Hab 1:5; Jer 40:14; Isa 53:1; Lam 4:12; cf. Exod 4:1ff.).⁴

No hiphil nouns derived from the verb; the verb retains its corresponding noun formations in emunah and emeth. Yet the latter two provide the particular way in which the verb expresses the human act of being firm, not by itself but rather included in its more comprehensive notion; emunah says more than he'emin, though it also means the latter. With ne'eman, he'emin is divided between the two sides of any relationship. Giving here corresponds to taking there, activity to receptivity. If the ne'eman becomes firm for someone else by taking action for him in goodness and assistance, the ma'amin displays his firmness by trusting the former.

The notion of emeth as firmness also enters with central significance into the idea of God. In the lively bond in which the people and, within the people, all its members stand to God, God too becomes the subject of the faithfulness that he shows to his people by acting with his whole heart toward them in a complete and flawless work (Jer 32:41; Deut 32:4). In this faithfulness, it is established that the people experiences from its God not merely individual demonstrations of grace and help, but also has in him an always present and effective power of help and salvation; this faithfulness assigns to his goodness consistency for a thousand generations. The emphasis that the notion takes on as a property of God in the Old Testament [22] hangs directly together with his fundamental disposition. If what was in mind were a natural affiliation between the people and God, the idea of consistency would immediately adhere to this affiliation, as to everything natural, and there would be no need to emphasize this. Yet, as fixed and exclusive as it is conceived, the bond that makes God Israel’s God does not trace back to a relationship of nature, but rather to the calling and election of the fathers, to the help that repeatedly came to the people from God, to the making of the covenant, and thus to history, to the acts of God, to divine willing and acting. That history, which established the relationship of the people to God, belongs to the past; to the fathers God gave a covenant and an oath; he rescued them and made them his inheritance; the connection between the people’s past and present is God’s faithfulness. The value for later generations of what the fathers experienced consists in this faithfulness; it gives the onetime making of the covenant its continuing validity and power for blessing. On the other hand, a mounting treasury of words of promise are gathered from prophecy. As the community was aware of its roots in the past, and saw its relationship to God founded there, so too it learned to look out into the future to the end of days, though the thread between this future and the present, which is still so very different from that future, also consists in God’s faithfulness (Ps 89). His faithfulness carries all the more weight because the people constantly tears up its relationship to God by its disloyalty; therefore, the preservation of this relationship clings to this alone, namely that God in his own constancy does not withdraw his goodness from his people. Opposite the dissolute vagrancy of the people stands the Holy One who shows himself to be constant and faithful (Hos 12:1).

At the same time, faithfulness also becomes a postulate for the behavior of the people toward God; one’s whole heart and all of one’s strength was required to serve him, though here precisely emeth in the full sense of the term, as it implies uprightness, trust, persevering endurance, obedience (cf. 1 Sam 12:24; Josh 24:14; Isa 48:1; Ps 78:8). Still more frequently the word appears in prophecy as that which God requires from one person toward another, as this provides one of the great, holy features of prophecy, namely that it designates the service that one person has to render to another as the first and most pressing imperative of God. So the term appears as a cardinal virtue, sometimes connected with goodness (Hos 4:10), at other times with justice (Jer 5:1), but also by itself designating everything that God desires from a person (Jer 5:3; cf. Hab 2:4; Isa 26:1ff.) The word can obtain this meaning because of the fullness embracing all of life, a fullness that is subsumed in the concept as a unity: the notion branches out into all relationships of life, it ties together the internal and external, it involves the heart and word and deed, it reaches into the deepest interior life and speaks of uprightness and integrity of the spirit⁵ and extends also to performing the act that furnishes justice and goodness, it is to be enacted toward humans and toward God, and this not as a fleeting or passing impulse, but rather as persevering constancy; so in this word there is a whole, in effect, as Jer 32:41, says: kal-lev wekhal-nephesh.

In the Israel of the Old Testament, many words could be used to denote trust and hope in God. Prophecy and the poetry of the psalms, as they themselves are rooted in strong confidence in God, explicitly strove for awakening and preserving such confidence in the community as well and therefore they required a rich linguistic expression for this purpose, though he'emin, in comparison with its synonyms, is used relatively rarely for the trust given to God; where it appears, though, it shows up with great poignancy. Etymology and linguistic usage [24] make this phenomenon clear. As emeth finds its meaning in fellowship that is already established and existing, so too he'emin finds its meaning vis-à-vis God where he has spoken and acted. he'emin did not present itself as a fitting expression to denote the desire for God’s help and the petition for his gifts, to denote that confidence that turns to him first in hope and in seeking; for this there developed that series of words that repeatedly appears in prophecy and the Psalter, that is, hochil and chasah, chikkah, qiwwah, yichel, to or in God. Yet Isaiah, after he offered the king and people God’s guidance, which will guide them safely through the dangerous time that is beginning, now demands ha'amin (Isa 7:9), and, analogously, the narrative uses the word repeatedly in the story of the rescue from Egypt (Exod 4:31; 14:31; 19:9; Num 14:11; 20:12), after God has promised and also rendered the redeeming help to the people. So the word is also written about Abraham (Gen 15:6), who without doubt or objection trusts the promise made to him. Then in this firmness there is the idea of struggle and resistance overcome; this firmness is apparent in the blow it sustains and staves off. Just as mutual solidarity comes to conscious awareness as faithfulness when it holds its ground through difficulty, struggle, and sacrifice, so too trusting constancy toward God arises when he promises or demands something difficult, and, encountering realities opposing his speech, one finds conditions that make what he says appear impossible and infeasible and therefore arouse doubt and suspicion. This element appears in the faith of Abraham, as well as in the faith and unbelief of the generation that went out of Egypt, as well as in the faith that Isaiah preaches. The rest that is free and secure from fear and concern when one has God in view is first of all designated by [25] batach; he'emin is a trusting decision for God against the impressions that would undermine it; this word implies that the temptation has been overcome.

God directs his word to his people through prophecy; so the usage of faith that has in mind the acceptance of the speech of another person also takes on meaning in relation to God. If the people cast the prophecy aside, they do not believe it (Isa 53:1). The purpose of prophetic predication, as it is bestowed only on Israel and not the Gentiles, is highlighted as follows: so that you may believe me (Isa 43:10)—li, not bi—in a sense that clearly overlaps with accepting a particular, concrete prophetic message, since the recognition follows that he is—that pregnant formula that testifies that the Lord alone is God, though now really as God. The divine speech generally, above all that which announces him himself in his being and essence, should be recognized as true and certain, and this is designated here as believing him. Related to this is the passage in Jonah that says of the Ninevites who treat the prophetic threat as imminent: they believed God, ya'aminu … belohim (Jonah 3:5).⁶

This faith is not at all separated from action and works. In Isaiah’s exhortation to faith (Isa 7:9; 28:16), there is the trust that relies on the divinely performed assistance, the main element; yet in these situations, this trust entails doing without the help of Assyria and Egypt, without lies or betrayal, without secret plans to be hidden from God, and thus immediately becomes active faithfulness that does what God tells it to do. In a look back to the history of the wilderness wandering, Deut 1:32; 9:23, and 2 Kgs 17:14 stress not-believing as the sin of the ancestors, following Num 14:11, and they [26] interpret this unbelief as not being obedient, being rebellious, hardness of neck, and rejection of the divine commandment; the unbelief of the ancestors occurs in their insubordination, which does not obey God’s instruction. Hence, in Ps 119:66, faith is related to God’s commandments: he'emanti vemitswotheikha, I have clung to your commandments, trusting them and being loyal to them. The rescue of Daniel is given the following reason in Dan 6:24: He believed in his God; this belief entails first and foremost trusting in the saving power of God, though the word also goes further back; that in this trust Daniel does not neglect the practice of prayer, despite the prohibition, and accepts martyrdom, this is what he believed God means.

As he'emin in such usage transitions into the full notion that is summed up in emunah, so too, in emunah, trust in God can emerge as the main idea of the word. Prophecy sets the person before God in a receiving position and therefore his faithfulness to God consists essentially in his trusting him: He relied on his God be'emeth (Isa 10:20). The righteous people that safeguards emunim is characterized by relying on the eternal rock (Isa 26:1ff.); for whoever, sitting in victorious Babylon in light of the judgment of Jerusalem, draws confidence and peace from thinking of the Lord, this person remains the faithful one, because he is the one who trusts. In Hab 2:4 too, the opposite of the overconfident Chaldean whose soul is not upright in its boisterous defiance, gives a strongly receptive sense to the faithfulness of the righteous; in this case it consists in its not bending to such presumption but rather clinging to the promise, even though its fulfillment is delayed. Both passages likewise connect emunah with righteousness (cf. Gen 15:6), which is opposed to emunah just as little as goodness is. [27] As in human relationships the man of emeth is the one who does what is right and is in the right, and thus is tsaddiq, so too in relation to God is emunah, which yields that upright heart and that clean hand that one can show to God as righteousness. Hence whoever girds himself with righteousness also girds himself with emunah (Isa 11:5), and it yields an internally tightly connected conceptual sequence: the righteous in his emunah (Hab 2:4; Ezek 18:9).

The Hebrew word and conceptual field had to transition into Aramaic, a transference that was facilitated, though, by the similarity of the two dialects; yet it was precisely the religious terms that formed a specifically Hebraic vocabulary, and therefore they were affected in their essence by this change.⁷

Concerning he'emin, there is the peculiar fact that it continues to live on in Aramaic unchanged, without its Hebraic formation being completely Aramaicized; the other members of the family emeth, emunah, ne'eman, as well as the other verbs for confidence, batach, qiwwah, hochil, do not migrate into the language, and sevar developed in their place, a word from the household that would have been more Aramaic than Hebrew, though it still extends into Hebrew; in Aramaic it becomes an extensive word family with the notion of hope, of steadfast expectation and firm confidence, and alongside it, rechats; only heimin survives without change, not only as a religious concept, but also with the whole field of use that the Hebrew word acquired.⁸

Along with its form there also remained its construction. Yet the causative meaning of the form will have to be regarded as extinct in the Aramaic speaker’s natural feeling for the language; if it had still lived on, a regular Aramaic causative would probably have been formed; from this point on, heimin, without the living etymology for the sense of language, without the connection with its root, means simply to trust. Insofar as confidence clings to its object as its basis, it retains its b. Yet the construction of heimin with l increases, also in relation to God, partly because faith is presented as the first act that arises, entailing in itself the bond to God.⁹

If the breaking of the verb from its root results in a loss for the word, there is also a loss in its separation from its cognates; yet this is partly compensated for in turn by the equivalents for ne'eman and emunah being formed from heimin. The objective usage of the word group is lost; and as the heir of emeth, insofar as it means certainty and truth, we find qeshot, which alongside itself has an adjective, qashit, qashshit, honest, truthful, and an abstract noun, qashshitu, truthfulness. ne'eman, though, which means faithfulness, finds its replacement in meheiman; yet [29] the relation of each form to heimin is not entirely congruent; the ne'eman was thought of as the subject of emunah in its full sense, as it too entails trust; this trust was conceived not only as being received from him but also as being proven by him; meheiman designates the dependable and faithful one as the receiver of trust, as the one to whom one can cling, the axiopistos, and now, in the two participial formations, two forms stand opposite each other, of which the active denotes only the giver of trust, the passive only the receiver of trust, the former the one who trusts and the latter the faithful one, whereby, though, both are so close to each other phonetically and conceptually that even here the concepts easily merged with each other.

Aramaic is flexible in forming abstract nouns; from heimin grew heimanu; so now a word exists that designates the act of trust not only verbally but also substantively, isolated from the rest of the content of emunah, which can therefore express faith as an abiding human posture and characteristic. It is peculiar, though, that heimanu in turn assimilates the active notion of faithful spirit¹⁰ and conduct, and thus fully represents emunah and shares with qeshot in the legacy of emeth. One does heimanutha; goodness and faithfulness frequently become teivutha weheimanutha; to speak of God’s heimanu is just as common as it is in Hebrew to speak of God’s emeth. Now, though, the old understanding of the concept that was present in the Hebrew emeth and emunah is directly involved in this extension of the word, since the scriptural text exercises a thoroughgoing influence on the thought and expression of the Aramaic-speaking Jewish community; this change of the word at least shows how tightly Israelite thought linked the ideas combined in emunah. [30] From the comprehensive content that is present in the notion of a firm demeanor, trust is separated out and discretely designated, though the narrowed concept is broadened again; the isolated aspect again draws to itself all the other content of emunah, and he'emin bends backs into heimanu as its starting point.

In the separation that breaks apart the content of emeth into qeshot and heimanu, the emeth that the judge has to enact is above all designated as