Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §13.2
'faith in God' , 59 This strongly suggests that stories and teaching about the faith
encouraged and commended by Jesus had already assumed a definitive shape before
Easter. Equally striking is the complete absence of any reference to Jesus'
own faith, or to Jesus as 'believing'. 60 Jesus is not the one who believes/trusts in
God so much as the medium of God's healing power to those who trust in God. 61
In short, Jesus is presented neither as the example of one who believed, nor as the
one in whom subsequent hearers should believe.
Behind the Greekpisteuö no doubt lies the hiphil of Hebrew 'mn (he'emin,
'to trust, believe in, rely on, be confident in'), used of trust in God in passages
scattered across the Hebrew Scriptures. 62 The noun equivalent to the Greek
pistis, Hebrew 'emunä or 'emet, had more the sense of 'firmness, reliability,
faithfulness', 63 but it could embrace the sense of the hiphil verb, as seems to be
implied by the usage attributed to Jesus. So if Jesus did indeed use the Aramaic
equivalent of the noun (hemanuta), in echo of the verb encouraging individuals
to trust in God, it should be noted that the concept would be of 'firm faith', faith
which is steady and committed in its reliance on God. 64 It was the firmness of the
ian literature); Matthew has made it one of his own motifs (Matt. 6.30; 8.26; 14.31; 16.8;
17.20). Since oligopistos 'lacks any real equivalent in the Semitic languages' Fitzmyer concludes
that it can hardly be traced back to Jesus himself (Luke 979); but even if a direct translation
equivalent is lacking, the thought itself could certainly be expressed by Jesus (cf. Str-B
1.438-39; Davies and Allison, Matthew 1.656).
59. Cf. Bornkamm, Jesus 129-37. Stegemann presses the point: 'Jesus appears simply as
a mediator of heavenly, divine power' {Library 236).
60. Roloff, Kerygma 166-8, 172-3. Despite Fuchs (see above, chapter 5 n. 61) and the
renewed emphasis on this point in Pauline studies consequent upon Richard Hays, The Faith of
Jesus Christ: An Investigation of the Narrative Substructure of Galatians iii.l—iv.ll (Chico:
Scholars, 1983); further bibliography in my Theology of Paul 335. The one exception might be
Mark 9.23: it is because Jesus has faith that 'all things are possible' to him; but the primary
function of the reference is to encourage the father of the boy to believe (9.24) (brief discussion
in Meier, Marginal Jew 2.655 with bibliography in notes).
61. In Matt. 9.28 Jesus encourages the two blind men to believe that he is able to help
them; cf. Mark 11.31 pars, and Matt. 21.32, where the talk is of believing the Baptist. See further
below, §15.7g(3).
62. Gen. 15.6; Exod. 14.31; Num. 14.11; 20.12; Deut. 1.32; 2 Kgs. 17.14; 2 Chron.
20.20; Ps. 78.22; Jonah 3.5 (BDB 'aman hiphil 2c); plus Isa. 7.9; 28.16; 43.10 (A. Jepsen,
'aman, TDOT 1.305-307); more consistently in the Apocrypha — Jdt. 14.10; Sir. 2.6, 8, 10;
11.21; Wis. 1.2; 12.2; 16.26; 18.6; 1 Mace. 2.59.
63. BDB 'emunah, 'emeth; Jepsen, TDOT 1.310-13, 316-19.
64. The condemnation of a 'faithless (apistos) generation' (Mark 9.19) may echo Deut.
32.20 ('a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faithfulness [lo'-'emunY. Matt. 17.17/
Luke 9.41 ('a faithless and perverse generation') is usually reckoned a minor agreement against
Mark, influenced more explicitly by Deuteronomy 32. Stuhlmacher, however, argues that Jesus
presented 'a wholly novel view of faith' as a gift of God and as such faith in God (Biblische
Theologie 1.91-92).
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