Re: Romans 1:17 EK PISTEWS EIS PISTIN

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 27 1997 - 11:30:59 EST


At 12:03 PM -0600 2/26/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Roma 1:17 (GNT) dikaiosunh gar qeou en autw apokaluptetai ek pistews eis
>pistin, kaqws gegraptai: ho de dikaios ek pistews zhsetai.
>
>I think it is time to stop simmering in my own juices and see if somebody
>out there can help me understand this!

Which last sentence makes me think only of, "You shall not boil a kid in
its mother's milk." Which leads us to separate the "milchelich" from the
"fleischelich," but leads us no further.

Okay, if we are going to pool our ignorance here and hope that maybe that
will lead to understanding? But maybe someone already understands it? Thus
far nobody has responded.

The most intriguing explanation of this phrase I ever read was not an
explanation but a version: "a righteousness that begins and ends in faith."

Here's pure speculation without any pretense of anything else, but it does
derive from two or three threads we've had on PISTIS CRISTOU IHSOU and the
question whether IHSOU CRISTOU is subjective or objective genitive in that
phrase.

Suppose that the PISTIS of the phrase EK PISTEWS is the "faithfulness of
God in Jesus Christ" and suppose that the PISTIS of the phrase EIS PISTIN
is "the faith of the believer in Jesus Christ," which last phrase can be
understood in many different ways. My own tentative (would anyone believe
me if I said that I've never thought about this before? then I won't try to
say that!) thought is that this is the response of the believer to the
initiative of God in Christ, fundamentally a trust in God's acceptance and
assistance as well as a commitment to God's demanding authority.

I don't think I need to go any further with this, inasmuch as there are
numerous distinct theological interpretations of what PISTIS IHSOU CRISTOU
as an objective genitive means. But there, at any rate, is a stab: that
this PISTIS of EK PISTEWS is a "subjective" PISTIS IHSOU CRISTOU while the
PISTIS of EIS PISTIN is an "objective" PISTIS IHSOU CRISTOU.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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