“Because Of His Mercy”

By Douglas J. Moo

[Douglas J. Moo is Wessner Chair of Biblical Studies, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.]

[This is the first article in the four-part series “Salvation in Paul’s Epistles,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 5–8, 2019.]

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. 
—Titus 3:5

The dominant and distinctive feature of New Testament teaching is the way the early believers celebrate their identity as members of the new realm. Paul, of course, joins the chorus of joyful wonder: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor 5:17); “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (6:2); “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ” (Eph 1:3); “Giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:12–14).[1]

Of course, this enthusiasm for the “already” arrival of the new realm is tempered by the reality of the “not yet” culmination to come—and keeping these in right balance is critical to understanding and living in the new realm. But we should not mute the note of rejoicing in the present enjoyment of the new realm that permeates the letters of Paul.

In these lectures, I focus on the inauguration of this new realm. I use the language of “new realm” to capture the basic salvation-historical framework of Paul’s theology. With Jesus and other New Testament authors, Paul views Christian experience in terms of a new era that God has brought into being, in fulfillment of his Old Testament promises. Labeling this new era a “realm” reminds us that Christian identity is determined by and guided by the powers of this new era: Christ the Lord, of course, but also righteousness, life, holiness, etc. The founding events of that new realm are my concern.[2]

From the standpoint of salvation history generally, the establishment of the new realm can be located in the climactic events of Jesus’s death and resurrection, along with the subsequent pouring out of God’s Spirit. Yet that Paul addresses pastoral situations means he is usually focused on the entrance of believers into that new realm. From the believer’s perspective, then, there are two decisive moments in the transfer from old realm to new: God’s inauguration of the new realm through the work of Christ and the believer’s own entrance into that realm—cross and conversion, we might say. Or, to use the language of historical theology, we find in Paul an outline of both the historia salutis and the ordo salutis. Each needs to receive appropriate emphasis. A history of the acts of salvation without the order of application of salvation would make salvation wholly theoretical. But there can be no ordo salutis without its basis in the historia salutis.

While both of these are certainly present in Paul’s letters, he does not neatly separate these moments. For instance, he proclaims that believers have been “redeemed.” This redemption was secured on the cross, when Christ bore the curse of the law on our behalf (Gal 3:13). Yet the experience of that redeeming event becomes real to the believer only at conversion. In Colossians 1:13–14, for instance, our redemption appears to be linked with God’s rescue of us “from the dominion of darkness” and transfer of us into “the kingdom of the Son he loves.” The title of John Murray’s book makes the point succinctly: Redemption Accomplished and Applied.[3] Complicating the issue is the way Paul sometimes suggests that believers’ own experience of transfer from old realm to new is the product of identification with and participation in those founding events. Our new life, Paul proclaims, arises from our having been “crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20; Rom 6:6), “buried with him” (Rom 6:4; Col 2:12), and “raised with him” (Col 2:12; cf. Rom 6:5, 8). Our own entrance into the new realm appears to have two moments itself: our coming to faith and our participation with Christ in the inaugural redemptive events.

Paul’s theology resists, then, any neat and consistent distinction between cross and conversion, and we must be careful not to separate what Paul keeps together. Nevertheless, while significant overlap exists, Paul clearly also recognizes two distinct moments in acquiring salvation: God’s work in Christ to inaugurate the new realm and the individual’s entrance into that new realm.

What I am calling inauguration of the new realm overlaps considerably with the dogmatic category “atonement.” Contemporary discussions of atonement reveal uncertainty about just what “atonement” refers to. Traditionally, the word has been used to refer especially to the means by which God cares for the human sin problem. Recently, however, scholars have criticized this focus because it neglects the New Testament concern with the entire panoply of new covenant blessings: transformed lives, transformed communities, and a transformed cosmos. Traditional atonement theologies have been far too limited to do justice to the New Testament emphases on these matters.[4] An example of this more expansive understanding of atonement is seen in Scot McKnight’s definition: “Atonement itself is a metaphor for everything and anything God does for us to make us what he wants to make us in light of who we were, who we are, and who we are meant to be.”[5] We confront here, of course, a problem of definition, and appeal to the biblical use of the word is little help. The word “atonement” occurs in the New International Version as a rendering of words from the כפר root in the Old Testament and the corresponding ἱλασκ- root in the New: thus, for instance, “atonement cover” in Leviticus 16 and Romans 3:25. These words tend to focus on means rather than outcome, but this cannot settle the matter. There is some connection, of course, between this biblical use of the word and its use in theology to denote a doctrinal locus. But the connection is general and imprecise, and, practically, “atonement” is open to whatever meaning a particular exegete or theologian chooses to give it.

My preference is to use the word in its more traditional, limited sense, to refer to the means of atonement.[6] I worry that the currently popular, more expansive definition might either lose the distinct doctrinal focus of traditional atonement theories or mix up the issues of means and outcome in a way that obscures more than it reveals.[7] I acknowledge the occasional failure of believers to draw connections between Christ’s work for us and Christ’s work in us; we tend to celebrate the cross while failing to live out our calling to a cross-shaped life. However, collapsing atonement into its outcomes risks losing the objectivity of our new covenant status. The Reformers rightly insisted that justification is “forensic only” and “by faith alone”—vital points that protected the extra nos (“outside of us”) basis for our assurance. I suggest that we add to that list a means of atonement that is also “outside of us,” a change not in us but in the objective, legal standing of sinners before a holy God.[8] Nevertheless, in the spirit of the Reformers themselves, who insisted that the church be “always reforming,” I also want to balance the means of atonement with appropriate focus on its outcome. While distinguishing the means of atonement from its outcome, we must insist that the various outcomes—transformed people, transformed communities, transformed cosmos—arise inevitably from that initial atoning event.[9]

These lectures will therefore include a survey of some of the outcomes of atonement in Paul’s soteriological “map.” But the focus will be on the means by which those outcomes are achieved.

Motivation: God’s Love, Grace, And Mercy

One of Paul’s most distinctive and fundamental theological words is “grace.” Its prominence in Paul’s teaching is due to at least two factors. First, grace is a fundamental characteristic of God himself. This is revealed in the logic of Romans 4:4–5, among other texts. Justification, Paul argues here, cannot be based on works because that would mean that God, like an employer honoring a contract, would be obliged to justify a person. Paul rules this scenario out because a God who is obligated to his creatures would not be a God of grace. This text reveals that Paul’s view of grace has to do especially with God’s “wholly other” character: his unique sovereign relationship to the cosmos means that what he does is always a matter of his own free decision. Strikingly, Paul does not here, or anywhere else, argue for grace as a constituent aspect of God—he assumes it, as kind of a theological postulate (cf. Rom 11:6). A second reason why Paul features grace so significantly in his teaching is personal: he himself, the violent persecutor of the church who has become a servant of God and an apostle, has radically experienced grace in his own life. “The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly” (1 Tim 1:4; cf. Rom 1:5; 12:3; 15:15; 1 Cor 3:10; 15:10; 2 Cor 12:9; Gal 1:15; 2:9; Eph 3:2, 8).

The grace Paul personally experienced is manifested in the events that inaugurate the new realm. Romans 5:6–8 is a classic expression of this point: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (cf. Eph 1:4, 6; 2:4; 2 Thess 2:16; Titus 3:4).

So basic is grace to the inauguration of the new realm that Paul can use the word “grace” on its own to depict it: “the grace of God has appeared” (Titus 2:11). Romans 5:15–17 highlights the prominence of grace in both moments of the experience of the new realm. In contrast to Adam’s trespass that inaugurated the old realm is the “grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ” (v. 15). And it is those “who receive God’s abundant provision of grace” who will “reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (v. 17). Atonement, as Hans Boersma has emphasized, is the product of the “hospitality of God, his welcoming love.”[10] The famous long sentence that opens the body of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians makes this point repeatedly: God predestines his people to adoption “in love” and in accordance with his “pleasure and will” (1:4–5); he freely gives his people “his glorious grace” (v. 6); our redemption, secured through Christ’s death, is “in accordance with the riches of God’s grace” (v. 7); he reveals the mystery of his will “according to his good pleasure” (v. 9); he predestines us “according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will” (v. 11). At the same time, this great run-on sentence highlights the supremacy of God at the other end of his redemptive work: as he initiates his new realm work by his own decision and will, so its ultimate purpose is to bring glory to God (vv. 12, 14). God’s grace is the motivating cause of the inauguration of the new realm, and his glory is its goal.[11]

The Faithfulness Of Christ[12]

As we will see, Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross is the heart of the events that inaugurated the new realm. Yet focusing too exclusively on this point can give the impression that Christ’s role in inaugurating the new realm is essentially, or even only, passive: he is the victim upon whom God pours his wrath. In particularly unfortunate caricatures of this view, the notion of a violent God inflicting punishment unfairly and arbitrarily on the Son is read into Paul or into the tradition. This way of thinking about Paul’s teaching must be resisted and corrected.

While it is no doubt true that the center of gravity in Paul’s atonement teaching is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, that sacrifice, Paul makes clear, is made willingly by Christ. The divine love that motivates the work of atonement is ultimately triune, as Paul hints at by including Christ’s own love in the work of atonement (Gal 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25; cf. Rom 8:35, 39).

This point emerges especially in Paul’s focus on Christ’s obedience. In the famous Philippians 2 christological hymn, Paul describes the “mindset” of Christ that believers are to imitate, a mindset of humility that, in Christ’s case, was manifested in “becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross” (v. 8). Romans 5 makes the same point, contrasting the disobedience of Adam to the obedience of Christ (v. 19). Many interpreters think this obedience in Romans 5 refers only to what is often labeled “passive obedience”: Christ’s submission to the Father’s will in succumbing to the cross. This interpretation is buttressed by the parallel contrast in verse 18 between the “one trespass” (or “trespass of the one”) and the “one righteous act” (or “the righteous act of the one”). However, it is also possible that the obedience of Christ here encompasses his entire life of obedience that culminated in his willingness to bear the cross—what Michael Horton calls “active self-offering.”[13]

Many theologians in the Reformed tradition have argued that Christ’s obedience has a very specific role to play in the salvation of sinners—specifically in justifying the sinner. The Old Testament makes clear that the forensic verdict of “justified” must be based on the actual facts of the situation. Judges who justify the guilty are condemned (Isa 5:23; Prov 17:15). They are to imitate God himself, who “will not justify the guilty” (Exod 23:7, CSB). Yet, in a famous text expressing the essence of Paul’s teaching about justification, Paul claims that God is one who, in Christ, “justifies the ungodly” (Rom 4:5). Since the context refers explicitly to faith being credited as righteousness (citing Gen 15:6), it might be simply that the believer’s faith is counted as sufficient basis for the declaration of righteousness.[14] But it is questionable whether human faith provides an adequate basis for God to act in a way apparently contrary to his own expressed standard of justice. It is possible, then, that Paul here implies an intermediary role for Christ’s obedience. When God justifies sinners, he does so on the basis of the righ-teousness of Christ.[15] I am not convinced that any single text in Paul (or elsewhere in the New Testament) teaches this notion of what is usually called “the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”16 But I do think it captures a certain logic that explains larger patterns of biblical teaching about righteousness and justification.[17]

Considerably more focus on Christ’s active role in the inauguration of the new realm would be present in Paul if his references to “the faith of Christ” were interpreted to mean “Christ’s faith/faithfulness.” Indeed, one of the reasons many contemporary interpreters are attracted to this view is just for this reason. The combination of “faith” with various forms of the name of Christ in the genitive has generated a great deal of discussion and debate in the last thirty years.[18] This phrase (that is, the noun πίστις followed by the name of Christ or some combination of Christ’s names in the genitive), occurs four times in Galatians (2:16 [2x], 20; 3:21), twice in Romans (3:22, 26), once in Ephesians (3:12), and once in Philippians (3:9).[19] A rather neutral English scan of the phrase would be “Jesus Christ faith,” and the obvious question is how exactly “Jesus Christ” qualifies “faith.” When we add to this syntactical uncertainty the lexical uncertainty about the meaning of πίστις—“faith” and “faithfulness,” it is claimed, both are options—the situation becomes quite complicated.[20] The traditional view, reflected in most English translations, is that the genitive in these phrases is objective, yielding the sense “faith in Jesus Christ.” However, a view that has grown quickly in popularity over the last decades is that the genitive is subjective: “the faith/faithfulness exercised by Christ” (see NET and CEB).[21] Advocates of this view note that this interpretation results in an attractive balance between the divine and human elements in God’s salvific work: it is achieved by means of Christ’s own faithfulness and appropriated by human believing (“for all who believe”). A powerful impetus to this way of reading the phrase is the claim that in some of the texts where the phrase occurs, Paul’s argument is undergirded by the story of Christ.[22] Within this narrative and participatory framework, “faith” is not so much believing “in” Christ as it is believing “with” Christ—sharing with Christ the kind of faith in God that Abraham also exhibited.

“Faith of [Jesus] Christ” then most naturally refers to Christ’s own faith. This participatory focus has been picked up and extended to Paul’s theology in general by many others in recent years, and it is this larger theological perspective that has given the greatest impetus to the “faith of Christ” interpretation.

Proponents of the “faith/faithfulness of Christ” also argue that it fits better than the alternative in the contexts in which it occurs. In Romans 3:21–22, for instance, Paul claims that God has revealed his righteousness “through Christ faith” and “for everyone who believes.” A reference here to Christ’s faithfulness would avoid the tautology of Paul referring twice to human faith. The same argument pertains to Galatians 3:22, with the additional point that Paul here refers to this faith as “coming” when Christ was manifested.[23] Finally, it is also argued that a subjective genitive interpretation is the more natural reading of the grammar.[24]

I readily acknowledge that the subjective genitive interpretation has much to be said for it. It is also important to stress that objective and subjective genitive are not the only options. We could also understand the relationship in a less defined sense, Paul simply associating faith with Christ in an unspecified way.[25] Nevertheless, I think the objective genitive understanding of the phrase makes better sense. Many of the lexical, syntactical, historical, and contextual arguments end in a standoff.[26] The decisive point is the comparison between the noun + genitive construction that we find here and the constructions using the cognate verb. In the case of the verb, all uncertainly disappears: nouns are always clearly subjects or objects. In the case of “faith” language in Paul, then, the situation is pretty clear: Paul often makes believers the subject of the verb “believe” (πιστεύω), but he never clearly makes Christ the subject of the verb.[27] In Paul, Christians “believe,” but Christ does not (at the linguistic level, of course).[28] This semantic pattern should determine how we interpret the ambiguous genitive in this construction here and elsewhere.[29] The relationship in both Romans 3 and Galatians 3 between this “Christ faith” and the faith of Abraham also supports an objective genitive view.

Two common objections to the objective genitive view are theological and contextual. Some argue that a focus on human faith detracts from a robustly christological element in justification. But this misses the fact that the faith involved is faith in Christ. Paul’s faith takes its significance and power from its object, Christ; sola fide and solus Christus are two sides of the same theological coin.[30] The contextual argument, as I noted above, is that it would be odd for Paul to refer to human faith twice in the same context (Rom 3:22; Gal 3:22). However, there could be good reason for Paul to do so. In Romans 3 Paul wants to say that God’s righteousness is available only through faith in Christ and it is available to anyone who has faith in Christ. An explanation for the repetition in Galatians 3:22 is admittedly harder to discover. Yet it is important to consider the wider context of this verse. Central to Paul’s argument in this part of the letter is the faith of Abraham (3:6–9). The discussion of Abraham’s faith in this paragraph is a Janus, pointing both backwards and forwards. The “hearing of faith” of 3:2 and 5 is compared with the faith of Abraham. And the reference to being blessed along with “Abraham who believed” in verse 9 connects with the claim in verse 14 that the “blessing of Abraham,” related in some way to the “promised Spirit,” is given through faith. “Faith,” then, in this crucial middle part of Paul’s argument, is unarguably human faith. This, however, makes it unlikely that “faith” has any other significance in Galatians 3:22, which continues this theme.[31] It is likely, then, that Paul repeats “faith” in 3:22 simply to emphasize its importance.

It is important to keep this argument about the phrase “Christ faith” in perspective. While a subjective genitive interpretation adds to texts in which Paul stresses the active role of Christ in inaugurating the new realm, this theologically important point is clear enough without those texts. Following in line with Jesus himself, who taught that he lays down his life “of my accord” (John 10:17–18), and the author of Hebrews, who contrasts Christ’s willing sacrifice with old covenant sacrifices (10:5–11), Paul locates the initiative for salvation in Christ as well as in God the Father.

Notes

1. Quotations of Scripture come from the New International Version, unless noted otherwise.
2. A brief justification of this “realm” language: (1) It is a direct inference from language Paul uses in texts such as Romans 5:21: “Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (2) It ties into the idea of “kingdom” that many interpreters think gets to the heart of biblical theology. Paul, of course, does not use kingdom language as much as Jesus, but it still has a respectable place in his teaching, referring to both the future (1 Cor 6:9, 10; 15:50; Gal 5:21; Eph 5:5; 2 Tim 4:1, 18) and the pres-ent (Rom 14:17; 1 Cor 4:20; 15:24; Col 1:12; 4:11; 2 Thess 1:5; 1 Thess 2:12 is unclear). Finally, (3) it hints at a pervasive theme in Paul: the lordship of Christ.
3. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015.
4. Michael J. Gorman, The Death of the Messiah and the Birth of the New Covenant: A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014).
5. Scot McKnight, A Community Called Atonement (Nashville: Abingdon, 2007), 36. See also, for example, Adam J. Johnson, Atonement: A Guide to the Perplexed (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015); Thomas Andrew Bennett, Labor of God: The Agony of the Cross and the Birth of the Church (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2017). Jeremy Treat notes the conflicting evaluations of Hans Boersma and Henri Blocher: for the former, penal substitution is a subordinate idea because it is only the means to an end; for the latter, it is primary because it is the means to an end. Jeremy Treat, The Crucified King: Atonement and Kingdom of God in Biblical and Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 222–23. The different evaluations depend on whether we focus on the “what” or the “how” of atonement.
6. Treat notes that theologians have traditionally used “atonement” to describe the means, or mechanism, by which God in Christ accomplishes his purposes (The Crucified King, 45–49).
7. For example, Jason Hood criticizes McKnight for expanding the idea of atonement to the extent that we miss the theological point of the term. Jason Hood, “The Cross in the New Testament: Two Theses in Conversation with Recent Literature (2000–2007),” Westminster Theological Journal 71 (2009): 287. See also John Webster, Word and Church: Essays in Christian Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001), 218–20.
8. For a recent emphasis on this point, see Michael S. Horton, Lord and Servant: A Covenant Christology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), 178–202.
9. R. W. Yarbrough’s definition captures both sides of atonement in their relation to each other: “God’s work on sinners’ behalf to reconcile them to himself. It is the divine activity that confronts and resolves the problem of human sin so that people may enjoy full fellowship with God both now and in the age to come.” “Atonement,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 388.
10. Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004).
11. The “spiritual blessings” that this passage celebrates focus on the believer’s appropriation of the new realm; but there is clearly significant overlap with the moment of inauguration.
12. As Graham Cole notes, “faithfulness” is an appropriate umbrella term for this concept, including within it, for example, obedience. God the Peacemaker: How Atonement Brings Shalom, New Studies in Biblical Theology 25 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 103–19.
13. Horton, Lord and Servant, 223. See also Richard N. Longenecker, “The Obedience of Christ in the Theology of the Early Church,” in Reconciliation and Hope: New Testament Essays on Atonement and Eschatology, ed. Robert S. Banks (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 142–52.
14. For example, Robert H. Gundry, “The Nonimputation of Christ’s Righteousness,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates?, ed. Mark A. Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 17–45.
15. For example, D. A. Carson, “The Vindication of Imputation: On Fields of Discourse and, of Course, Semantic Fields,” in Justification: What’s at Stake in the Current Debates?, 58–66.
16. In contrast to, for example, John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s Righteousness? (Wheaton: Crossway, 2002).
17. See, for example, Brian Vickers, Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Imputation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2006), 73–86; Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ; Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 399–401; G. K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2011), 469–80; Mark A. Garcia, “Imputation and the Christology of Union with Christ: Calvin, Osiander, and the Contemporary Quest for a Reformed Model,” Westminster Theological Journal 68 (2006): 219–51. Bird’s view is similar, though he prefers “incorporated righteousness.” Michael F. Bird, “Justification as Forensic Declaration and Covenant Membership: A Via Media between Reformed and Revisionist Readings of Paul,” Tyndale Bulletin 57, no. 1 (2006): 114–15.
18. A thorough analysis of the issue and of the arguments on both sides is found in Michael F. Bird and Preston M. Sprinkle, eds., The Faith of Jesus Christ: Exegetical, Biblical, and Theological Studies (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009).
19. Elsewhere in the New Testament, such phrases occur in James 2:1, Revelation 2:13, and Revelation 14:12. Similar are Acts 3:16, where πίστις is followed by τοῦὀνόματοςαὐτοῦ (“the name of Jesus”; cf. v. 13), and Romans 3:3 and Mark 11:22, the two New Testament examples of πίστις followed by θεός in the genitive. It is unlikely that the construction is found 1 Thessalonians 1:3 and Ephesians 4:13. In the former case, we would have to take “our Lord Jesus Christ” (τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ) at the end of the verse with “faith” much earlier; in the latter case, we would have to construe “faith” as well as “knowledge” with “the Son of God” (in the genitive: τοῦ ὑιοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ).
20. As R. Barry Matlock notes, πίστις has two basic meanings relevant to this context: “believing, trusting, having faith,” on the one hand and “being trustworthy, dependable, reliable,” on the other. “Saving Faith: The Rhetoric and Semantics of πίστις in Paul,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, 74.
21. Richard N. Longenecker’s defense of the subjective genitive reading is particularly clear, balanced, and theologically sensitive. The Epistle to the Romans, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 408–13. See also Luke Timothy Johnson, “Rom 3:21–26 and the Faith of Jesus,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 44 (1982): 77–90; Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), 610–16; Richard B. Hays, “ΠΙΣΤΙΣ and Pauline Christology: What Is at Stake?,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers, ed. E. H. Lovering Jr. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 714–29; Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 114–16. See also the interchange between Richard Hays and James D. G. Dunn in the papers of the Society of Biblical Literature Pauline Theology Seminar in 1991. While the subjective genitive interpretation has grown in popularity recently, it has a relatively long heritage. See, for example, Thomas F. Torrance, “One Aspect of the Biblical Conception of Faith,” Expository Times 68 (1957): 111–14, and the interchange between Torrance and C. F. D. Moule in the same volume, pp. 221–22; Richard N. Longenecker, Paul, Apostle of Liberty: The Origin and Nature of Paul’s Christianity (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1964), 149–50; George Howard, “The Faith of Christ,” Expository Times 85 (1974): 212–14; D. W. B. Robinson, “ ‘Faith of Jesus Christ’—A New Testament Debate,” Reformed Theological Review 29 (1970): 71–81.
22. See especially Hays’s influential monograph on Galatians: Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1–4:11, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
23. For a good summary of the theological appropriateness of this interpretation in Galatians, see Ardel B. Caneday, “The Faithfulness of Jesus Christ as a Theme in Paul’s Theology in Galatians,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, 185–205.
24. Proponents note that in cases where πίστις is followed by the genitive of a noun denoting a person (or persons), the genitive is usually subjective or possessive. For example, πίστιςἈβραάμ in Romans 4:12 and 16 means “the faith exercised by Abraham”; an objective genitive, “faith in Abraham,” is obviously impossible. This subjective rendering of the genitive when it follows πίστις is, it is argued, typical in Greek, and makes it a priori likely that ἸησοῦΧριστοῦ is also a subjective genitive.
25. See especially Karl Friedrich Ulrichs, Christusglaube: Studien zum SyntagmaΠίστιςΧριστοῦ und zum Paulinischen Verständnis von Glaube und Rechtfertigung, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/227 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); and also Sam K. Williams, “Again Pistis Christou,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 49 (1987): 431–47; Dennis R. Lindsay, “Works of Law, Hearing of Faith and ΠίστιςΧριστοῦ in Galatians 2:16–3:5, ” Stone-Campbell Journal 3 (2000): 79–88; Benjamin Schliesser, Abraham’s Faith in Romans 4: Paul’s Concept of Faith in Light of the History of Reception of Genesis 15:6, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/224 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 257–80; Preston M. Sprinkle, “ΠίστιςΧριστοῦ as Eschatological Event,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, 165–84.
26. Thus, for instance, in response to the semantic argument for the subjective genitive (see above), it should be noted that a genitive following πίστις need not be subjective. Most such genitives in the New Testament are possessive or subjective, usually employing the personal pronoun (for example, Rom 1:8: ἡ πίστις ὑμῶν, “your faith”). One is objective (Mark 11:22); four others, while debated, are also probably objective (Jas 2:1; Rev 2:13; 14:12), while only a few are purely subjective (Rom 3:3; 4:12, 16). Only context, then, can determine the force of the genitive. Many early Greek interpreters of Paul interpreted the genitive as objective. See especially Mark W. Elliott, “ΠίστιςΧριστοῦ in the Church Fathers and Beyond,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, 277–89; see also Ian G. Wallis, The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 84 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), who recognizes more diversity in the early witnesses.
27. To be sure, Campbell (The Deliverance of God, 914–24) has argued that the subject of ἐπίστευσα (“I believe”) in 2 Corinthians 4:13 (quoting Ps 116:10) is Christ, but this is, I think, unlikely.
28. R. Michael Allen has argued that the notion of Christ’s faith is dogmatically necessary in terms of a proper understanding of redemption. The Christ’s Faith: A Dogmatic Account, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology (London: T&T Clark, 2009); R. Michael Allen, “ ‘From the Time He Took on the Form of a Servant’: The Christ’s Pilgrimage of Faith,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16 (2014): 4–24.
29. For these points and others, see especially Douglas J. Moo, Galatians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2013), 38–48; James D. G. Dunn, “Once More, ΠΙΣΤΙΣΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ,” in Society of Biblical Literature 1991 Seminar Papers, 730–44; Stanley E. Porter and Andrew W. Pitts, “Πίστις with a Preposition and Genitive Modifier: Lexical, Semantic, and Syntactic Considerations in the ΠίστιςΧριστοῦ Discussion,” in The Faith of Jesus Christ, 33–53; R. Barry Matlock, “Detheologizing the ΠΙΣΤΙΣΧΡΙΣΤΟΥDebate: Cautionary Remarks from a Lexical Semantic Perspective,” Novum Testamentum 42 (2000): 1–23; R. Barry Matlock, “The Rhetoric of πίστις in Paul: Galatians 2.16, 3.22, Romans 3.22, and Philippians 3.9,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 30 (2007): 173–203; Matlock, “Saving Faith”; Robert Matthew Calhoun, Paul’s Definitions of the Gospel in Romans 1, Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/316 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 204–12.
30. See, for example, Jonathan A. Linebaugh, God, Grace and Righteousness in Wisdom of Solomon and Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Supplements to Novum Testamentum 152 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 157–60; John M. G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 379–82. On the other side of the matter, there is concern that, as Dunn has put it, a focus on “Christ’s faith/faithfulness” might detract from a key focus in Paul’s thought on human believing. James D. G. Dunn, “New Perspective View,” in Justification: Five Views, ed. James K. Beilby and Paul Rhodes Eddy (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 197.
31. See especially James D. G. Dunn, “ΕΚΠΙΣΤΕΟΣ: A Key to the Meaning of ΠΙΣΤΙΣΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ,” in The Word Leaps the Gap: Essays on Scripture and Theology in Honor of Richard B. Hays, ed. J. Ross Wagner, Kavin C. Rowe, and Katherine Grieb (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 361–65; Ulrichs, Christusglaube, 140–48; Debbie Hunn, “ΠΙΣΤΙΣΧΡΙΣΤΟΥ in Galatians 2:16: Clarification from 3:1–6, ” Tyndale Bulletin 57 (2006): 30–33.