Faithfulness

There's an interesting translational difference between the Septuagint version of Habakkuk 2.4 and that of the Hebrew. We read in English, "Behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him; but the righteous will live by his faith." In the Septuagint, we get another rendering: "If he should draw back, My soul has no pleasure in him: but the just shall live by My faith."

As Christians, we're interested in the Septuagint because the New Testament writers quote from it (almost) exclusively, and it provides some hints about how Jewish translators understood the Hebrew text before the coming of Christ.


I have spent some time in the past trying to write a coherent argument for understanding the genitives involving "faith" in the New Testament subjectively, and it begins, I think, with this verse. The doctrine of justification by faith is the defining one of the Reformation, I think, and it begins with the phrase, "The just shall live by faith."

Two things are typically understood: first, that we are justified by our faith in Jesus, and second, that such faith is a gift from God. The latter condition prevents us from treating faith as a work—we claim no merit of our own by claiming to be justified by our faith, since that faith is given to use as a result of regeneration.

I'd like to propose a parallel understanding of justification by faith, one that I hope complements it. This entry serves, I hope, as an introduction, with some additional notes to follow in the coming days and (realistically) weeks.