Faith, or faithfulness

An ongoing debate related to the new perspective has been over Paul's use of the Greek word pistis (πίστις, meaning "trust," "belief," "faith," or "faithfulness"). Old-perspective writers have typically interpreted this word as meaning a belief in God and Christ, and trust in Christ for salvation with faith that he will save you. This interpretation is based on several passages from the Christian Bible, notably Ephesians 2:8-9, which reads "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." Interestingly, E. P. Sanders, a major figure in the development of the "new perspective of Paul", himself notes that Ephesians 2:9 teaches the traditional (or "old") perspective.[10]

By contrast, many recent studies of the Greek word pistis have concluded that its primary and most common meaning was faithfulness, meaning firm commitment in an interpersonal relationship.[11][12][13][14] As such, the word could be almost synonymous with "obedience" when the people in the relationship held different status levels (e.g. a slave being faithful to his master). Far from being equivalent to 'lack of human effort', the word seems to imply and require human effort. The interpretation of Paul's writings that we need to "faithfully" obey God's commands is quite different to one which sees him saying that we need to have "faith" that he will do everything for us. This is also argued to explain why James was adamant that "faith without works is dead" and that "a man is saved by works, and not by faith alone," while also saying that to merely believe places one on the same level as the demons (see James 2). The New Perspective argues that James was concerned with those who were trying to reduce faith to an intellectual subscription without any intent to follow God or Jesus, and that Paul always intended "faith" to mean a full submission to God.

Another related issue is the pistis Christou ('faith of Christ') debate. Paul several times uses this phrase at key points in his writings and it is linguistically ambiguous as to whether it refers to our faith in Christ ("objective genitive"), or Christ's own faithfulness to God ("subjective genitive"), or even our faith/faithfulness to God like that which Christ had ("adjectival genitive"). There is wide disagreement within the academic community over which of these is the best rendering.[15] The NET Bible translation became the first mainstream English Bible translation to use a subjective genitive translation of this phrase.[16]