cwconrad wrote:My puzzlement remains. One idea occurs to me, however. Supposing that different members of the congregation do indeed have different χαρίσματα, two or more members might be teachers: should we suppose that the superior ability of one teacher over another's be in proportion to the relative strength of each other's faith? That still seems a bit troublesome to me.
Well, I'm not going to bring enlightenment - a way out of your puzzlement, but I can keep chatting with you till sombody else does.
I think that more or less moves on to the question, "What is (the nature of) faith?". There are a number of categories of meaning listed in the larger Greek dictionaries and in the theological dictionaries. The basic question seems to be is "faith" a homogeneous revelation for all believers - i.e. do all appreciate equally the life of Christ in the same way to the same extent? I'm not sure that Greek alone is the answer to this issue, but I feel sure that discussing it at the level of the Greek is a positive step.
It is thinking along the same lines as you seem to be suggesting that lead me to the extention of κατὰ τὴν ἀναλογίαν τῆς to all the ἐν τῇ's that follow. As much as one who teaches has a cheerful disposition, they will minister alms with that disposition etc. As an example of how prepositions are simplified, we could make up something like, "Dress shoes
are selling at two hundred and fifty dollars a pair, sneakers
for seventy, deck shoes
for sixty and
thongs for seven dollars fifty." It is a feature of English, so I'm assuming (until I have a reason to discard the idea) that it is a human speech habit, and I'm also assuming that a simpler or more generic preposition would be the most likely candidate for carrying a wide range of meanings. (cf. Eph. 4:14, 15 ἵνα μηκέτι ὦμεν νήπιοι, κλυδωνιζόμενοι καὶ περιφερόμενοι
παντὶ ἀνέμῳ τῆς διδασκαλίας,
ἐν τῇ κυβείᾳ τῶν ἀνθρώπων,
ἐν πανουργίᾳ πρὸς τὴν μεθοδείαν τῆς πλάνης·)
A little bit different from what you appear to be saying, I thought that the ἀναλογία is in proportion to Christ the fullness or perfect man OR the entire faith expressed in the life of the Church, as the mathematical unity (since ἀναλογία is a mathematical term), not relative to each other, though in effect is does mean that one person
is better or worse than another at one of the functions (πρᾶξιν) - each has a certain proportion of the faith - in some respects expressing the life of Christ in the congregation - as much as it has been given. I suspect that we will have to find out whether the ἀναλογία is measured against an absolute or relatively - but for all intents and purposes, in the case of two things, the larger of the two is the unity against which the other would be measured.
As a curio, and for those who would like to think about this in Greek, these two words might be useful; τοιουτότης , ητος, ἡ, quality - What it is about the person/thing that the τοιοῦτος is bringing attention to. It is a generalisation of a particular example based on one particular quality. For example, οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες βασιλείαν θεοῦ οὐ κληρονομήσουσιν. "Those who do thing of the sort that have just been mentioned", conforming to the general quality of what was just mentioned. It is not the right word to translate "quality", in phrases like "high / low quality". ποσότης , ητος, ἡ, quantity - what the πόσος measures, cf. πλῆθος, μέτρον.