[B-Greek] faith and faithfulness

MAKARIOIOIPRAEIS at aol.com MAKARIOIOIPRAEIS at aol.com
Sun Apr 10 01:41:11 EDT 2005


If the "faith (or faithfulness) of Christ" is to be understood as a 
subjective genitive, the meaning of the verse would certainly be "a man is justified 
...by, or because of the faithfulness of Christ" but how could this work 
grammatically with the preposition in the sentence? In other words wouldn't the noun 
PISTIS need to be in the accusative case after the preposition DIA to give the 
meaning  'because of' the faithfulness of Christ"? 
Richard Windisch


<While we have two different English words, "faith" and "faithfulness," which 
have rather distinct 
meanings, the Greek PISTIS could mean either. Hence, the problems with 
translating PISTIS 
CRISTOU are not just with respect to what kind of genitive it is, but also 
about what is the 
intended meaning of PISTIS. That is what the NET Bible is discussing.

So you have:

Christ's faith (faith and subjective genitive)
Faith in Christ (faith and objective genitive)
Christ's faithfulness (faithfulness and subjective genitive)

as English translation options/possibilities.

Eric S. Weiss




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