From: DSiddle@aol.com
Date: Wed Jun 12 1996 - 21:40:14 EDT
Dear Sister or Brother in Christ;
I am very interested in an issue you raise in this last post, specifically:
<The issue[s] of whether PISTIS should be translated "faith" or
"faithfulness"[...]>. I wonder if this issue doesn't have more to do with
current Christian use of the terms "faith" and "faithfulness" than it does
with a distinction in our definitions of koine PISTIS.
I write this because in my research for a Master's Thesis on "Hope in the
Pauline Epistles," I became convinced that the common useage of "Faith" (at
least in the Evangelical churches) has usurped some of the intellectual
aspects of "Hope" (as used by Paul.) Because of this shift of meanings,
"Hope" became superfluous, and Faith lost its connotation of "faithfulness"
to become a mental acquiescence to "orthodox" Biblical interpretation
(Believing PISTEUW). It also meant that "doubt" was "lack of faith".
I don't want to try to recreate my thesis here, but I am interested in how
the folks on this list might compare and contrast "faith" and "faithfulness"
as alternate readings for PISTIS, and how you perceive the relationship
between PISTIS, 'ELPIS and AGAPH in Paul's materials. (pardon me if my
transliteration is not up to par, I'm not used to transliterating the
alphabets.)
Grace and Peace,
Dan (DSiddle@AOL.COM)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:44 EDT