Featured Faith of Jesus or In Jesus?

Do you have a reference?

 

On another board someone asked about a related phrase, Mk 11:22, Έχετε πιστιν Θεού — should it be "Have faith in God" as per most translations, or literally but awkward-sounding and more difficult of interpretation, "Have faith of God"?

 

This triggered him:

Which Bible translation is your...

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Faith is not a choice

 

I think we can find many examples of "faith of Jesus" in the KJV family of translations, and many "faith in Jesus" in other translations. The first step to find a solution is to come up with a consistent way of translating phrases where faith and Jesus appear without an intervening preposition, and where faith and Jesus appear with "en," "ek," and "eis" are found. Often, when we find faith of Jesus, the meaning is Christ's faithfulness.

Lets look at just one verse, Romans 3:22 (NASB) even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe; for there is no distinction;

And then compare with the NET: namely, the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction

Two completely different messages, when there is no intervening preposition, but the nouns are in the genitive case. I think Dr. Wallace is spot on and all those "in" renderings are wrong.

 

3 For what if some were without faith? shall their want of faith make of none effect the faithfulness of God? Ro 3

13 if we are faithless, he abideth faithful; for he cannot deny himself. 2 Tim 2

Thank God He's faithful.

 

Looking at Romans 3:22, ". . . the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all . . . ."
The genitive case includeds "faith" to be "of faith of Jesus of Christ." the problem is how are we to say this in English?
". . . the righteousness of God which is by of faith Jesus Christ unto all . . . "?
". . . the righteousness of God which is by of faith [in] Jesus Christ unto all . . ."? Notice the added words "which is" as well.

At this point, I am not sure.

 

It's not so much that Christ would have faith in the same sense we would. Typically, one would translate "faith" as "faithfulness" in that situation.

 

And that difficulty is exactly why we have the same Greek translated in differing ways. Is the intent a subjective genitive where the subject Jesus has faith or faithfulness? Or is it an objective genitive, where Jesus is the object of our faith. How to discern this distinction is over most everyone's head, but in at least 5 places, Dr. Wallace's team (NET) goes with the subjective genitive view while many others go with the objective.

 

Context determines the meaning, as always. I'm not sure I would necessarily agree with your exact phrasing, but, generally speaking, the perspectives are such:

Faith in Jesus is the perspective of us toward Jesus. Faithfulness of Jesus is the perspective of Jesus toward us.