Paul: A Biography

by N.T. Wright

what mattered was the believing allegiance of these Gentiles; they were staying loyal to the Lord from the bottom of their hearts. This new community was not, then, defined by genealogy. It was defined by the Lord himself, and what counted as the sure sign of belonging to this Lord was “loyalty,” “faithfulness.” Here we run into the kind of problem that meets all serious readers of Paul. One obvious Greek term for “loyalty” is one of Paul’s favorite words, pistis, regularly translated “faith,” but often carrying the overtones of “faithfulness,” “reliability,” and, yes, “loyalty.” The word pistis could mean “faith” in the sense of “belief”—what was believed as well as the fact of believing, or indeed the act of believing, which already seems quite enough meaning for one small word. But pistis could also point to the personal commitment that accompanies any genuine belief, in this case that Jesus was now “Lord,” the world’s rightful sovereign. Hence the term means “loyalty” or “allegiance.” This was what Caesar demanded from his subjects. For Paul, the word meant all of that but also much more. For him, this “believing allegiance”