[B-Greek] PISTIS, faith or faithfulness
Mitch Larramore
mitchlarramore at yahoo.com
Sat May 12 19:35:38 EDT 2007
--- "Bryant J. Williams III" <bjwvmw at com-pair.net>
wrote:
> On page 593, "PISTIS, faith; PISTEUW, believe;
> PISTOS, pass. trustworthy,
> faithful, act. trusting, believing..." Therefore,
> PISTIS, will refer to the
> individual's faith or belief and/or doctrine; while,
> PISTOS, will refer to
> in the passive to what is trustworthy or faithful
> with regards to
> statements, account, reports, etc.; in the active,
> it is the actual
> believing/trusting, thus one's own act regarding the
> testimony, etc.
My Greek dictionary gives definitions of PISTIS as (1)
Active: faith...(3) Passive: faithfulness
When I read this I was trying to determine when the
Active sense is to be understood, and when the Passive
sense is to be understood. But then I wondered if BOTH
could not be understood. That is why I originally
asked if I could translate this word something like:
"I have heard of your faith/faithfulness..." and by
this indicate that the context does not restrict
PISTIS to its Active or Passive sense. How about this
example:
AKOUSAS THN KAQ' hUMAS PISTIN EN TWi KURIWi...
(Ephesians 1.17a)
Can I say this: having heard of your
faith/faithfulness in the Lord...
But my bigger question is HOW DO I DECIDE whenever I
come across any word that has both an Active and
Passive sense and the context doesn't seem to
eliminate one? Can such ambiguity be intended,
rhetorically or whatever? (Hope my question is clearer.)
Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas
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