Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Romans 3:22; Galatians 2:16
Faith in Christ, or the faithfulness of Christ. Greek does not say which.
Romans 3:22, in every translation this tool compares.
The love of a mother. Is that the love she gives, or the love you give her? Same four words, opposite directions, and English has no way to mark which. Now try the fear of God and notice you have been reading past this problem your whole life.
Because how you read two nouns joined by a genitive decides whether justification rests on your believing or on Christ's obedience. That is not a shade of emphasis. It is the centre of Pauline theology, and the Greek does not settle it, which is worth knowing before anyone tells you it does.
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe.
Most versions read faith in Christ. The NET, CSB and NRSV all footnote or adopt the faithfulness of Christ. Notice that the King James reads faith of, which leaves the question open exactly the way the Greek does.
πίστις pistis · G4102
Pistis Christou is a noun followed by a noun in the genitive. Greek genitives can be objective, where Christ is the object of the faith, or subjective, where Christ is the one doing the believing or being faithful. The form is identical either way.
English prepositions force a choice. In and of point in opposite directions and there is no English preposition that leaves it hanging. The King James of is the closest English gets, which is why a four hundred year old translation preserves an ambiguity that modern versions resolve.
Whenever you see of in an older translation where a modern one says in or for, suspect a genitive. The Greek was joining two nouns and letting the reader work out the relationship. Modern English translations usually decide for you, and the decision is rarely flagged.
Faith in Christ makes the verse about the believer's trust. Faithfulness of Christ makes it about Christ's own obedience, with the believer's faith named separately in the next clause, which otherwise repeats itself. The redundancy argument is the strongest point for the subjective reading. The weight of tradition and of Paul's usage elsewhere is the strongest point for the objective one.
- Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ (1983, 2nd ed. 2002), the case for the subjective genitive
- James D. G. Dunn's reply, and the Hays-Dunn exchange in Pauline Theology vol. 4
- NET Bible translators' note at Romans 3:22
