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Paul and the Philosophers' Faith
What was the cultural and philosophical significance of Paul’s faith language? By exploring a variety of discourses in Graeco-Roman literature, this work offers a comprehensive mapping of its multifaceted meaning leading to fresh interpretations of pistis usage in the apostle’s letters.
956 pages, Hardcover
Published July 25, 2024
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December 23, 2025
Natuurlijk vind ik mezelf een hele pief dat ik dit boek nu uit heb, en ben ik (gelukkig) niet de eerste die hierover ‘gaat’, maar stel dat het me gevraagd zou worden: “wat vind jij nou van die dikke dissertatie van Suzan Sierksma-Agteres?”, dan zou ik zonder meer zeggen dat ik een standaardwerk heb gelezen.
Wat een prachtige studie. En wat een mooie benadering. En hoe gestructureerd en omvattend is het vormgegeven. Daarvan getuigt ook de laatste zin van het boek:
«All in all, by placing ‘faith’ at the heart of human existence, as a ‘measure’ for all areas of life, Paul invites us to rethink our relationship with reality on a fundamental level. Our mentality, community, and cosmology are formed by the objects of our trust. For Paul, the good life is a connected life lived out of pistis Christou.»
En ja, dit zal met mijn biografie te maken hebben, en met de allicht (te) eenzijdige opvatting van ‘geloof/geloven/gelovig’ die ik me in de loop van de tijd eigen heb gemaakt/laten maken, maar ook met de onvrede die met die eenzijdigheid gepaard gaat en de soms (of vaak?) al te simplistische benadering van ‘geloof’ zoals daarover werd en wordt gesproken: er gaat in dit werk echt een hele en/of nieuwe wereld open.
Voor mezelf constateer ik dat het daarmee ook in apologetisch en pastoraal opzicht een geweldig (behulpzaam) boek is. Ik haast me om daarbij mijn indruk van de zuiver wetenschappelijke intenties van de auteur te vermelden, en dat het bedrijven van apologetiek – met de moderne, ‘opdringerige’ bijklank – of pastoraat geen (bij-)oogmerk is (geweest) bij het doen en verwerken van dit onderzoek. Maar dat het ‘pastorale’ en ‘apologetische’ beide onderdeel zijn van de uitwerking die het boek op mij heeft, kan ik moeilijk ontkennen.
Wat ik er verder hogelijk in waardeer, is dat er vanuit dit boek verbanden zijn te leggen met zo ongeveer alles wat ik (niet alleen) dit jaar las – fictie of non-fictie, en ook (of misschien wel juist) poëzie – maar evenzeer en met name naar de onderwijspraktijk waarvan ik deel uitmaak en waaraan ik in positieve zin denk en hoop bij te dragen. Naar o.a. die onderwijspraktijk wordt overigens expliciet verwezen in §9.2!
Het lijkt me, alvorens (meer dan) een paar ‘representatieve’ citaten te geven, meer dan noemenswaardig dat elk van de negen afzonderlijke hoofdstukken van het boek vrij toegankelijk is (d.w.z. vanwege «open access» ook als pdf te downloaden) via de website van uitgeverij Brill. Alleen al hoofdstuk 9 met de ‘Concluding Reflections’ is die moeite nogal waard: zie de uitvoerige aanhalingen (p.808vv) hieronder.
Voor wie (liever) een Nederlandstalige introductie zou willen bij de inhoud van dit boek, is er de naar mijn smaak bijzonder informatieve aflevering #66 van de podcast ‘Dit is de Bijbel’ – en ter aanvulling nog afleveringen #98, #108, #118-9 en #134 (alle met de auteur als gast).
__________
“The semantic domain I have discussed in this chapter highlights the close semantic connection between pistis and peithō, faith and persuasion. It is within this domain that we find ample ground to reject the widespread dichotomy of relational faith versus cognitive faith, a dichotomy that is often fuelled by the equally unfounded opposition between Jewish and Greek thought.” (p.485)
__________
“We already saw in chapter 3 how pistis and fides function as virtues of statesmen and even of the state itself (...). As an important virtue of the ruler, it actively or passively provides a model for subjects to imitate. The ruler as ultimate example of virtue, or as nomos empsychos, was a familiar motif, and it was commonly thought that the ēthos of the ruler affects the citizen’s morality for better or worse (...). Plutarch, for example, advises the ‘uneducated ruler’ to ‘first gain command of himself, (...) regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects fit his pattern.’”
(p.506-7)
__________
“To sum up, then, we have seen that in the position of the Christ-follower, pistis can refer to both the attitude of faith (trust, belief, conviction, commitment) directed at Christ and the quality of faithfulness (trustworthiness, loyalty) modelled after Christ. Furthermore, through the lens of the motive of imitation, these are not mutually exclusive, as the attitude is the starting point for a relationship in which imitation and participation come to fruition.” (p.558)
__________
“The proper human response to the divine offer is accepting it by entering into a relationship characterized by trust, good faith, and loyalty, a ‘hearing which results in a response of faithfulness’. Hearing, akoē, thus comes close to obeying, hypakoē: actually changing your ways in response to the message of another.” (p.673-4)
__________
“The seven preceding chapters represent an attempt to map Graeco-Roman pistis language, roughly divided in cosmological, mental, and social semantic domains. By distinguishing specific discourses in each domain, the breadth and versatility of the lexeme has come to the fore, which explicates at least part of pistis’s appeal to the Christ-movement in its earliest stages, as evidenced by the prominent place it occupies in the idiom of the apostle Paul.
Nevertheless, the polysemy of pistis is not an excuse to weigh each instance down with a multitude of meanings.[1]”
“[1] Such an outcome, whereby every instance of pistis is understood as carrying all the distinctive ‘uses’ or ‘meanings’ (for instance ‘rhetorical proof’, ‘cognitive belief’, and ‘dispositional trustworthiness’ at the same time) would not pass James Barr’s famous critique of the illegitimate totality transfer, also called the ‘overload fallacy’. See Barr 1961, 218. From the cognitive linguistic approach that informed this study, it is clear that the contextual markers determine the semantic domain and thereby the ‘meaning’ of a particular instance of pistis language (see also §1.2 above). The only exceptions are cases of conscious, sustained ambiguity or playful language use, which I argued for in the case of Paul’s pistis Christou phrases (see §6.4.5).”
(p.808, +n.1)
__________
“In passages such as Romans 14–15, Paul appears to refine the importance of pistis for some of his addressees and transform it from a merely personal conviction into an other-regarding virtue. Having a strong conviction (pistis) enables one to make room for those whose convictions do not meet one’s standards. Innovative in this regard is not Paul’s accommodation-discourse per se, but the fact that it employs pistis’s breadth of meanings. The Stoics would agree that one needs to have a stable conviction (pistis) in order to be reliable (pistos) as a friend and that goodness and badness may be defined as acting congruently or not with one’s own judgements. Paul, in addition, also calls such personal judgements pisteis. At the same time, he relativizes the right of the strong to act congruently with them, as this would exclude the weak from the faith community (Rom 14–15). Instead, they ought to welcome them ‘in faith’ (within this ‘pistis community’), just as Christ would. Thus, in Paul’s mind, pistis in the sense of a strong, cognitive conviction is directly connected to pistis denoting accommodating relationships of mutual trust. The strength of one’s pistis is not evidenced by a restrictive personal lifestyle, but by the generosity of accepting those with different convictions into a pistis
community.”
(p.816-7)
__________
“The distinctiveness of Paul’s model (...) lies in the importance of the incarnation. For Christ’s mediating position involves a radical role reversal between imitator and model: in order to become humanity’s model for faithfulness to God, Christ first played the part of a human being. This is particularly clear in Philippians, where Paul explains that he exchanged the shape of God (Phil 2.6: (…)) for the shape of a slave (Phil 2.7: (…)).
Only thereafter and therein could he become a model for the Philippians to mimic in their disposition (Phil 2.5: (…)) and towards whose virtue of pistis the Philippians were called to ‘strive with one mind’ (Phil 1.27: (…), see §6.4.1 above). Unlike Platonic intermediary divinities or Stoic intermediary sages, Paul’s Christ not only precedes human beings and invites people to become virtuous, he actively came down from a divine to a human level first. This ‘degradation’ of the primary model had a levelling effect on those who became its followers, for imitating this Christ-faithfulness amounted to becoming just as ‘lowly’ and regarding others more ‘highly’ (Phil 2.3). For Paul, ‘becoming like God’ is not an attractive path upward, worth pursuing for the philosophical elite. Pauline homoiōsis Christōi involves a communal training in humility, worked out by God (Phil 2.13) and Christ who actively transforms his followers’ lowly body into the shape of his exalted body (Phil 3.21). Both the move of the divine downward and the active assistance to bring others upward are Pauline emphases unparalleled in the wider Graeco-Roman discourse of ‘becoming like God’.”
(p.818)
__________
“(...) the relationship as a whole has salvific potential according to Paul, not the one-sided loyalty of a human being.
(...)
Paul’s political usage of faith deprives Rome of its faith monopoly.
(...)
Whereas a divine-human covenant is usually understood as connecting a specific deity to a specific people or nation, pistis language foregrounds God’s offer of grace to all peoples and nations. Moreover, if we take philosophical reflection on gift-giving into account (see §7.3.6), pistis language serves to emphasize the transjuridical nature of the offer: the gift is given regardless of worthiness of the receiver, anticipating a long-lasting interior attitude of trust.”
(p.822-3)
__________
“Because of its fundamental nature, faith in [a] ‘cosmological’ or ‘worldview’ sense cannot simply be excluded from certain supposedly neutral public spheres. Instead, in political, educational, or healthcare settings, everyone’s pistis should be subject to an open conversation, as it is from one’s fundamental commitment that values, decisions, and actions are informed.
(...)
The provisionality of pistis as a ‘mentality’ implies that it is subject to human error, to risk and doubt: it is only as certain as the object of trust is trustworthy.”
(p.824)
Wat een prachtige studie. En wat een mooie benadering. En hoe gestructureerd en omvattend is het vormgegeven. Daarvan getuigt ook de laatste zin van het boek:
«All in all, by placing ‘faith’ at the heart of human existence, as a ‘measure’ for all areas of life, Paul invites us to rethink our relationship with reality on a fundamental level. Our mentality, community, and cosmology are formed by the objects of our trust. For Paul, the good life is a connected life lived out of pistis Christou.»
En ja, dit zal met mijn biografie te maken hebben, en met de allicht (te) eenzijdige opvatting van ‘geloof/geloven/gelovig’ die ik me in de loop van de tijd eigen heb gemaakt/laten maken, maar ook met de onvrede die met die eenzijdigheid gepaard gaat en de soms (of vaak?) al te simplistische benadering van ‘geloof’ zoals daarover werd en wordt gesproken: er gaat in dit werk echt een hele en/of nieuwe wereld open.
Voor mezelf constateer ik dat het daarmee ook in apologetisch en pastoraal opzicht een geweldig (behulpzaam) boek is. Ik haast me om daarbij mijn indruk van de zuiver wetenschappelijke intenties van de auteur te vermelden, en dat het bedrijven van apologetiek – met de moderne, ‘opdringerige’ bijklank – of pastoraat geen (bij-)oogmerk is (geweest) bij het doen en verwerken van dit onderzoek. Maar dat het ‘pastorale’ en ‘apologetische’ beide onderdeel zijn van de uitwerking die het boek op mij heeft, kan ik moeilijk ontkennen.
Wat ik er verder hogelijk in waardeer, is dat er vanuit dit boek verbanden zijn te leggen met zo ongeveer alles wat ik (niet alleen) dit jaar las – fictie of non-fictie, en ook (of misschien wel juist) poëzie – maar evenzeer en met name naar de onderwijspraktijk waarvan ik deel uitmaak en waaraan ik in positieve zin denk en hoop bij te dragen. Naar o.a. die onderwijspraktijk wordt overigens expliciet verwezen in §9.2!
Het lijkt me, alvorens (meer dan) een paar ‘representatieve’ citaten te geven, meer dan noemenswaardig dat elk van de negen afzonderlijke hoofdstukken van het boek vrij toegankelijk is (d.w.z. vanwege «open access» ook als pdf te downloaden) via de website van uitgeverij Brill. Alleen al hoofdstuk 9 met de ‘Concluding Reflections’ is die moeite nogal waard: zie de uitvoerige aanhalingen (p.808vv) hieronder.
Voor wie (liever) een Nederlandstalige introductie zou willen bij de inhoud van dit boek, is er de naar mijn smaak bijzonder informatieve aflevering #66 van de podcast ‘Dit is de Bijbel’ – en ter aanvulling nog afleveringen #98, #108, #118-9 en #134 (alle met de auteur als gast).
__________
“The semantic domain I have discussed in this chapter highlights the close semantic connection between pistis and peithō, faith and persuasion. It is within this domain that we find ample ground to reject the widespread dichotomy of relational faith versus cognitive faith, a dichotomy that is often fuelled by the equally unfounded opposition between Jewish and Greek thought.” (p.485)
__________
“We already saw in chapter 3 how pistis and fides function as virtues of statesmen and even of the state itself (...). As an important virtue of the ruler, it actively or passively provides a model for subjects to imitate. The ruler as ultimate example of virtue, or as nomos empsychos, was a familiar motif, and it was commonly thought that the ēthos of the ruler affects the citizen’s morality for better or worse (...). Plutarch, for example, advises the ‘uneducated ruler’ to ‘first gain command of himself, (...) regulate his own soul and establish his own character, then make his subjects fit his pattern.’”
(p.506-7)
__________
“To sum up, then, we have seen that in the position of the Christ-follower, pistis can refer to both the attitude of faith (trust, belief, conviction, commitment) directed at Christ and the quality of faithfulness (trustworthiness, loyalty) modelled after Christ. Furthermore, through the lens of the motive of imitation, these are not mutually exclusive, as the attitude is the starting point for a relationship in which imitation and participation come to fruition.” (p.558)
__________
“The proper human response to the divine offer is accepting it by entering into a relationship characterized by trust, good faith, and loyalty, a ‘hearing which results in a response of faithfulness’. Hearing, akoē, thus comes close to obeying, hypakoē: actually changing your ways in response to the message of another.” (p.673-4)
__________
“The seven preceding chapters represent an attempt to map Graeco-Roman pistis language, roughly divided in cosmological, mental, and social semantic domains. By distinguishing specific discourses in each domain, the breadth and versatility of the lexeme has come to the fore, which explicates at least part of pistis’s appeal to the Christ-movement in its earliest stages, as evidenced by the prominent place it occupies in the idiom of the apostle Paul.
Nevertheless, the polysemy of pistis is not an excuse to weigh each instance down with a multitude of meanings.[1]”
“[1] Such an outcome, whereby every instance of pistis is understood as carrying all the distinctive ‘uses’ or ‘meanings’ (for instance ‘rhetorical proof’, ‘cognitive belief’, and ‘dispositional trustworthiness’ at the same time) would not pass James Barr’s famous critique of the illegitimate totality transfer, also called the ‘overload fallacy’. See Barr 1961, 218. From the cognitive linguistic approach that informed this study, it is clear that the contextual markers determine the semantic domain and thereby the ‘meaning’ of a particular instance of pistis language (see also §1.2 above). The only exceptions are cases of conscious, sustained ambiguity or playful language use, which I argued for in the case of Paul’s pistis Christou phrases (see §6.4.5).”
(p.808, +n.1)
__________
“In passages such as Romans 14–15, Paul appears to refine the importance of pistis for some of his addressees and transform it from a merely personal conviction into an other-regarding virtue. Having a strong conviction (pistis) enables one to make room for those whose convictions do not meet one’s standards. Innovative in this regard is not Paul’s accommodation-discourse per se, but the fact that it employs pistis’s breadth of meanings. The Stoics would agree that one needs to have a stable conviction (pistis) in order to be reliable (pistos) as a friend and that goodness and badness may be defined as acting congruently or not with one’s own judgements. Paul, in addition, also calls such personal judgements pisteis. At the same time, he relativizes the right of the strong to act congruently with them, as this would exclude the weak from the faith community (Rom 14–15). Instead, they ought to welcome them ‘in faith’ (within this ‘pistis community’), just as Christ would. Thus, in Paul’s mind, pistis in the sense of a strong, cognitive conviction is directly connected to pistis denoting accommodating relationships of mutual trust. The strength of one’s pistis is not evidenced by a restrictive personal lifestyle, but by the generosity of accepting those with different convictions into a pistis
community.”
(p.816-7)
__________
“The distinctiveness of Paul’s model (...) lies in the importance of the incarnation. For Christ’s mediating position involves a radical role reversal between imitator and model: in order to become humanity’s model for faithfulness to God, Christ first played the part of a human being. This is particularly clear in Philippians, where Paul explains that he exchanged the shape of God (Phil 2.6: (…)) for the shape of a slave (Phil 2.7: (…)).
Only thereafter and therein could he become a model for the Philippians to mimic in their disposition (Phil 2.5: (…)) and towards whose virtue of pistis the Philippians were called to ‘strive with one mind’ (Phil 1.27: (…), see §6.4.1 above). Unlike Platonic intermediary divinities or Stoic intermediary sages, Paul’s Christ not only precedes human beings and invites people to become virtuous, he actively came down from a divine to a human level first. This ‘degradation’ of the primary model had a levelling effect on those who became its followers, for imitating this Christ-faithfulness amounted to becoming just as ‘lowly’ and regarding others more ‘highly’ (Phil 2.3). For Paul, ‘becoming like God’ is not an attractive path upward, worth pursuing for the philosophical elite. Pauline homoiōsis Christōi involves a communal training in humility, worked out by God (Phil 2.13) and Christ who actively transforms his followers’ lowly body into the shape of his exalted body (Phil 3.21). Both the move of the divine downward and the active assistance to bring others upward are Pauline emphases unparalleled in the wider Graeco-Roman discourse of ‘becoming like God’.”
(p.818)
__________
“(...) the relationship as a whole has salvific potential according to Paul, not the one-sided loyalty of a human being.
(...)
Paul’s political usage of faith deprives Rome of its faith monopoly.
(...)
Whereas a divine-human covenant is usually understood as connecting a specific deity to a specific people or nation, pistis language foregrounds God’s offer of grace to all peoples and nations. Moreover, if we take philosophical reflection on gift-giving into account (see §7.3.6), pistis language serves to emphasize the transjuridical nature of the offer: the gift is given regardless of worthiness of the receiver, anticipating a long-lasting interior attitude of trust.”
(p.822-3)
__________
“Because of its fundamental nature, faith in [a] ‘cosmological’ or ‘worldview’ sense cannot simply be excluded from certain supposedly neutral public spheres. Instead, in political, educational, or healthcare settings, everyone’s pistis should be subject to an open conversation, as it is from one’s fundamental commitment that values, decisions, and actions are informed.
(...)
The provisionality of pistis as a ‘mentality’ implies that it is subject to human error, to risk and doubt: it is only as certain as the object of trust is trustworthy.”
(p.824)
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