More Than Grammar

More Than Grammar September 5, 2014

Matthew Easter summarizes the back-and-forth of the arguments in the debate over pistis Christou. It’s a careful, judicious summary, and his conclusion seems irrefutable: The debate won’t be resolved by grammar alone, since “interpreters resort either intentionally or unintentionally to their larger models for reading Paul that are already in place” (42). 

Easter knows that there’s a necessary relation between whole and part, but he worries when the relationship goes unacknowledged. He quotes Thomas Schreiner’s comment that “[N]owhere is there any unambiguous indication that Paul spoke of the faith/faithfulness of Christ. . . . Granted, the obedience of Christ is an important element in Pauline theology. But there is not a shred of evidence anywhere else that he speaks of that obedience as Christ’s [pistis].”

Easter observes, “excluding from the start every pistis Christou reference and writing off without defence such passages as Romans 5 and Philippians 2 proves little. This is tantamount to saying that if we ignore much of Galatians 2, then we have no other evidence in Paul’s letters that Paul confronted Peter. That may be true, but it does not advance the conversation” (43). 

He’s not picking on Schreiner, nor on the advocates of what he describes as the “anthropological” interpretation (that is, those who believe that pistis Christou describes a human act of belief). He acknowledges that those who advocate a “christological” understanding of the phrase are just as apt to import larger interpretive decisions into their debates over the grammar.

Echoing Richard Hays, Easter wisely suggests that the debate can make progress if this circularity is acknowledged and the debate turns into what it should be and actually is, namely, a debate about Paul’s theology: “attempts at reading Paul grammatically and syntactically without a wider theological lens have fallen flat. This presses the debate beyond the immediate context of the pistis Christou passages to the whole of Paul’s theology. If supporters of the anthropological position can offer a holistic account of Paul’s texts and gospel in such a way that demands an objective genitive reading of pistis Christou, while at the same time answering the growing tide of questions from the other side, then the debate can move forward on those grounds. Likewise, if supporters of the christological position can offer a holistic reading of Paul that does more than simply overturn the objective genitive reading of pistis Christou but makes the subjective genitive an instrumental part of their account of Paul’s theology, then the debate can progress on those grounds” (44).

Easter, “The Pistis Christou Debate: Main Arguments and Responses in Summary,” Currents in Biblical Research 9 (2010) 33-47.


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