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.

More on faith

Having progressed from Matthew into Mark, I again find myself wrestling with the same issues regarding faith as in the last posting. The text this time is Mark 6.5, in which we read that Jesus was not able to do many miracles in his home town.

I don't know whether it's a simple case of reading too far into the text, but the reason appears to be related to their unbelief (Mk 6.6). While certainly faith is involved in miracles (Mark five contains the stories of Jairus' daughter—who exercised no faith to be raised—and the woman with a hemorrhage, who did exercise faith to be healed), it's hard for me to ever see fragile and infantile human faith as the way to rub the cosmic genie bottle to get your three wishes.

I'm writing on borrowed time, so I had best leave on that note—but it seems worthwhile to mention that wisdom is also consider the source of the miracles (6.2). The people assume that authority and wisdom and miracles are commingled, which might be a worthwhile avenue to explore.

Faith

I suppose I haven't much excuse for not writing here lately. I have had some thoughts kicking around in my head about a variety of topics, and actually have a post in draft that's not ready yet.

But in the meantime, I thought I would share some thoughts on faith generated by Matthew 21.21. The text is problematic to me because it seems to imply that faith is some sort of lever we pull on the slot machine that is God, and if we have enough of it, or the right sort, it'll drop all sevens and we'll get what we wanted.

Since a fair number of people (present readership excluded, I'm sure) treat God like a genie in a bottle, I guess that such interpretations aren't surprising.

But I think perhaps that we might better reconsider the definition of faith; it is not simply believing (whether you think of it as belief in the head, or some emotionally gripping response to God's grace, or whatever), but also conforming our own wills to God's.

This is probably no earth-shattering perspective, but as I think about it more, I find it an attractive view of faith for several reasons.

First, because it immediately resolves the issue at hand: my faith no longer prompts God to do something I want, it simply confirms his will. This seems to jive nicely with the understanding that the phrase "in my name" is not a formula to end prayer but actually means "with my authority."

Second, because it speaks most dramatically to the submission of Christ to the will of the father. We read in Psalm 22 that Jesus "hoped {i.e., trusted, had faith} on his mother's breasts." It's interesting to me to consider the faith of Christ, as he also believed in his father. If we're willing to accept the notion that faith is not just a mental or emotional agreement with some proposition, but a description of how we conform our will to God's, we can see most readily in the Scripture the faith of Christ.

I like that in particular because it clarifies the link between his faithfulness ("from faith" in Romans 1) and our own ("to faith").


It's certainly something I'd like to mull over for a little while, but this could be the start of a fruitful area of study.