Yesterday I read a book review that issued a passing commentary on the author’s decision to read πίστις Χριστοῦ (pistis christou) as “Christ’ faithfulness” rather than “faith in Christ.” The review’s comment was, “Once we take faith out of Paul’s doctrine of justification by faith, one wonders what we have left.”
To which my reply is, “Really?” That sort of comment, while no doubt rhetorically effective for the primarily Lutheran audience for whom it was written, strikes me as shallow theology and shallow scholarship. Please note: I am not claiming that anyone who holds to the objective genitive position (“faith in Christ”) is theologically shallow or an incompetent scholar. I’m arguing instead that this particular assessment is off base.
First, most of us who hold to the subjective genitive reading also affirm that people do have to exhibit faith/fulness in/to Christ in order to be saved. Not only does Paul say in Gal 2:16 that we are saved by Christ’s faithfulness, he also says, “We believed in Christ” (or something thereabouts). Setting aside for the moment the various opinions people hold as to how to translate “we believed in(to) Christ,” the point is that there is a necessary place for a human response of faith to the faithful self-giving of Jesus.
This is why the comment strikes me as shoddy scholarship: the subjective genitive (Christ’s faithfulness) position does not eliminate a human faith response, even if such a response is relativized. And the person who wrote the review, a more polished an respected NT scholar than I will ever be, should know better.
Second, the comment strikes me as theologically shallow. The last time I checked, our theology is not weakened when we recognize that the work of Christ is the lifeblood of our soteriology. What’s left when we recognize that our response of faith is not as central to Paul’s soteriology as the death of Christ? What’s left is that God’s act of redemption, in the offering up of his beloved son, moves more clearly into the foreground so that we can never make the mistake of thinking that our faith saves us [full stop]. We must always recognize that the human disposition is only as good as the object to which it takes hold. Our faith in the faithful self-giving Messiah saves us.
Is that really such an impoverishment of Paul’s theology of justification by faith?
I often hear the same thing as well from people who have heard of work about the subjective genitive reading. Apart from Paul still using the verb (pisteuw) twice for ‘Christians’ needing to do whatever that verb means (Rom 3.22 and Gal 2.16…the latter with eis Christon…; Rom 10.11 may also be relevant here), he seems to envision some sort of reflex of Christ’s faithfulness when he talks of “the one who is out-of/from the faithfulness of Christ” (e.g. Rom 3.26; c.f. 4.16) and speaks of Christ’s faithfulness as something somehow defining ‘Christians’ in contrast to, say, the works of the Law. Much more could be said here…
At the same time, I do think there is something to the point that Paul does not stress “faith in Christ” as much as traditional readings and doctrines necessitate. Setting aside the seven instances of ‘pistis Christou,’ Paul does not use the noun pistis in reference to a person’s “faith” in Christ elsewhere, to my knowledge. He does talk about “faith” in God (1 Thess 1.8) or God’s power (1 Cor 2.5). Also, getting back to the verb, though a host of issues obtain with how to understand Abraham and Romans 4, in Rom 4.24 Paul speaks of all the good things happening tois pisteuousin epi ton egeiranta ihsoun ton kurion hmwn ek nekrwn, “to the ones [doing whatever pisteuw means here] upon/to the one who raised Jesus our Lord from death.” So, pisteuw decidedly not “in Christ,” but with reference to God.
Just some thoughts…
Stephen, I do think that there is an interesting point about God being the object of faith. This is at the heart of our commonality with Abraham, as you point out. It’s too often assumed without thinking it all through that we simply believe in Jesus–yes, that’s in the NT, too. But I find it fascinating that God is more often the object of faith. In 1 Peter, too: believing in the resurrection means that “your faith and hope are in God” (not that Jesus is God in this case, but that God raised Jesus).
Amen, Daniel!
This is my favorite line in your post: “What’s left is that God’s act of redemption, in the offering up of his beloved son, moves more clearly into the foreground so that we can never make the mistake of thinking that our faith saves us.”
It is is not our faith, but the faithfulness of Christ in obedience unto death, that frees us from our sin, guilt and bondage to the Devil. Yes, we must have faith (e.g. belief in action) in order to receive from the merits of Christ’s faithfulness, but our belief (in action or stagnant) is not the cornerstone of our soteriology, but Christ’s willingness to do what none of the rest of Israel (and, by ingrafting, “the rest of the world”) could or would do: bring us back into the proper relation we were always meant to have with the Father (namely, sonship). Our belief matters not in comparison to his faithfulness to us – we can only cry out for mercy as we attempt to follow His example.
Amen!
I dunno man. This is so subjective.
Profound critique here! I think I am understanding the gist of your argument, but I am not quite sure..
I am not very familiar with Greek and its subsequent technical terms in the NT, and so, if you will just bear with me as I try to make sense of this topic in laymen’s terms.
There are, at least, two different readings of Paul and his “pistis Christou:” Some wish to emphasize the object of faith/pistis as generating the saving-action of humankind and creation via Christ [objective genitive], whereas others wish to emphasize the subject of Christ/Christou as generating the saving-action via faith [subjective genitive].
Thus, in the subjective genitive we have an agent – or concrete noun-actor – foremostly enacting the saving process of humankind and creation via faith, said agent being of course the corporeal body of Christ; whereas with the objective genitive we have, for the most part, the abstract noun of “faith” primarily or foremostly acting out redemption of creation via Christ.
No doubt, it is both — but which factor is prominent seems to be where scholars differ..
Does this make sense?
Not exactly sure what you’re going for, Dm, so let me lay it out for you.
In “faith of Christ,” think of “faith” as containing an implied verbal idea: to exercise faith. The question: when we say “of Christ” do we think of Christ as the subject of that verb or the object of that verb?
Those arguing for a subjective genitive say Christ is the subject of the verb: “Christ’s [act of] faith” saves us.
Those arguing for an objective genitive say Christ is the object of the verb: “faith in Christ” saves us.
For a parallel, think of this book title: The Worship of the English Puritans When I was in seminary, I knew a lot of people who worshiped the English Puritans! Was this book talking about them? That would be an “objective genitive”: the Puritans are the object of Worship.
Alternatively, the book might just be about how the English Puritans themselves worshiped God. This would be a subjective genitive: the Puritans are the subject of the verb “worship.”
I’m not convinced the subjective genitive works in every instance of “pistis christou” but I think your point is excellent nonetheless. Indeed, the faithfulness of Christ (and of God in Christ) seems to me to provide the indispensable context for our faith. We believe and entrust ourselves to God because God in Christ has proven himself faithful. I wonder if this might even color our understanding as faith as a “gift” – as something we experience “in Christ,” as enfolded and caught up into his own faithfulness.
Garver, can you say more about the implications for how we understand faith as “gift”? Maybe fill in a little?
I’m not sure I have much else to say. It’s a half-formed thought. I guess my thinking is along these lines: Everything we have in salvation is a gift and is to be contemplated in union with Christ, as aspects of “being raised with Christ,” as gifts given “in Christ.”
This is obvious perhaps in the cases of justification (where the verdict pronounced over Christ in his resurrection is now ours) or adoption (where we participate in Christ’s own messianic sonship) or glorification (where we are conformed to the glorified humanity of Jesus).
Less obvious for Reformed dogmatics might be regeneration and faith as aspects of union with Christ.
But, with regard to regeneration, if Christ is the new creation, the one preeminently “born from above,” the one with God’s law upon his heart, etc., then regeneration also is to be contemplated as an aspect of being raised with Christ, both in its subjectively transformative dimension, as well as our transfer into the sphere of new creation.
Well, might something similar be going on with how Paul and the NT think of Christian faith, the believer’s response to the gospel message? After all, it seems that Paul’s provocative (and seemingly polysemous) notion of “faith” in Galatians as something that has now “come” in Christ and his resurrection situates faith as something analogous to “new creation.”
The fact that God was faithful to Christ in Christ’s own faithfulness, raising him from the dead, provides a new context for our own belief and trust. We can trust God to redeem us since we have seen his faithfulness to Christ, even through the curse of the cross, and Christ’s own faith in his Father was vindicated in his resurrection. So every reason to disbelieve is swept aside in Christ and in our being raised with him, as we are caught up into his own faith(fulness).
While faith may have an “instrumental” role in our receiving and resting upon God’s promises that are Yes and Amen in Christ, it also seems to me to be that case that it is “in” our being raised with Christ that our own faith finds its life and source, as we are incorporated into Jesus’ resurrection-vindicated self-surrender to the Father. So (to paraphrase Gaffin), we might suggest that there’s a correlation between faith as Christ-receiving and faith as Christ-given that carries back to the very point of inception of salvation.
This also resonates, it seems to me, with Hebrews 11 and Christ himself as the pioneer and finisher of faith, as well as the Johannine portrayal of Jesus as listening to and entrusting himself to the Father.
Does that help explain where my thoughts were drifting? This is a dogmatic riff on the NT data more than narrowly exegetical point.
Very helpful. And as always, great stuff. Thanks!
Seconding Stephen: Not only is faith (pistis) “preserved” in the subject -genitive interpretation, it is there in the context of every faith-of-Christ text. The question, to some degree, is what Paul means by pistis. As you (Daniel), I, and others have argued, it is a more robust reality than is often thought.
Garver,
Paul does, according to Wright, speak of the ‘koinonia’ faith in Philemon I think. This would support the idea you are suggesting. Check out his article in ‘The Climax of the Covenant”.