Would you tell me about "faith" in Greek?
Is it a noun, a verb, or a word that can be either and does it mean. for example, believe?
The Greek noun is pistis, and it has the -pist- root, that can be easily made into a verb...
It is closely related to our English word epistemology, that nefarious branch of philosophy so dear to the unfaithful!
A condensation of two Greek terms: EPI + hISTEMI - EPI of course means upon, and hISTEMI means stand(ing) - Drop the E of EPI and conflate the hISTemi as IST and you get PIST, the root of PISTIS... So that the central and essential meaning is inseparable from the action of STANDING... And this means action, because one's stance enables one to act in accord with the manner of one's standing. The dead are not standing - They are laying down... Hence the Orthodox tend to pray standing with their heads bowed and their necks inclined, and in this manner are helped to "remember that we are dust"... Yet standing dust...
And more generally, PISTIS is that upon which we stand... It requires virtue to stand - It is so easy to lay down and rest, and we are weak in this fallen condition in which we struggle to attain standing before God in his Ways... And yet, when God in His Mercy gives us His Strength, how easy it is for us to stand and walk in His Ways! And when he draws back, how onerous is our lot and how little we can do and how hard it is even to lift a finger...
And yet our effort to lift that finger is more beneficial to our Salvation than all the Grace we had before in which we walked so effortlessly, because the struggle to stand builds the virtue of standing, and our stature all the more increases before God as we struggle to embrace the cross and follow Christ...
The early Christians were not even called Christians until Antioch became Christianized by Paul... They were called the People of the Way, and that Way was a manner of life, THE manner of Life discipled by the Disciples-now-Apostles of Christ... They came to be in Him cleansed of the defilement of flesh that being born into the rulership of death on earth had engendered in them... This is one reason I always try to show how it is that the Faith of Christ is a Way of living, and not mere belief that something is true because it has been logically proven - eg Epistemically established... And the understanding of that Way of Life is attained IN THE WALKING therein... It becomes KNOWN to the faithful in the DOING of the Faith that is DISCIPLED by those who are WALKING the talk that the words of the Gospel proclaim...
Faith is the taking of a stand upon which one will not depart of betray the stand upon which one is standing...
My Brother used to joke: "Everyone has to believe in something: So I believe I will have another beer!"
So the Faith has beliefs and teachings, but is itself attained ONLY in the DOING of the Faith...
And within this doing - eg THROUGH this practice OF the Faith discipled BY the Ekklesia, the ground and the pillar of the Faith, we are therein Justified and Glorified BY God... And this according to our struggle to overcome demonic powers and principalities first in our own souls, and then doing so as a help, as alms, in the souls of others...
This is the meaning of being saved by Grace through Faith...
Arsenios
