Gal 2:20 - to the Son

From: Harold R. Holmyard III (hholmyard@ont.com)
Date: Sat Apr 29 2000 - 10:40:55 EDT


Dear Dale,
     You ask:

>I have been working on Galatians in my personal time and have come upon a
>few structure puzzles. The latest, and a stumper to me, is in 2:20.
>There we read EN PISTEI ZW THi TOU hUIOU TOU QEOU. To what does the
>article THi (dative/locative fem sing) refer? It seems to have no
>antecedent in this structure. The NKJV translates the verse as though it
>reads TWi hUIWi. I would prefer to read it :in faith I live to the ????
>of the Son of God . . . any insight to this will be appreciated.

    In Gal 2:20 the phrase EN PISTEI ZW THi TOU hUIOU TOU QEOU involves a
definite article (THi) serving like a relative pronoun, thus translated as
"which." It agrees with PISTEI in number, gender, and case. The following
genitive is either subjective or objective. You would translate either: "I
live in faith which is in the Son of God" (objective genitive), or "I live
in the faithfulness which is of the Son of God" (subjective genitive). Dan
Wallace, in _Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics_, says that the preponderance
of the evidence is for the subjective genitive, but I favor the objective
genitive at this time. There has been a lot of scholarly debate on the
subject in recent years, and Dan gives the bibliography.
     Dan says that prepositional phrases often drop the article, even when
the object of the preposition is definite. Thus the full concept may be ZW
EN THi PISTEI THi Tou hUIOU TOU QEOU. The construction is an attributive,
adjectival one. A comparable attributive in 1 Cor 1:18 is hO LOGOS hO TOU
STAUPOU, or literally in English, "the word which is of the cross." But we
would translate it: "the word of the cross." So here in Gal 2:20 we would
translate "I live in the faithfulness of the Son of God" (subj. gen.), or
"I live in faith in the Son of God." Since the preposition EN can have a
causal or instrumental force ("by," or "with"), it is also possible to
translate: "I live by faith in the Son of God" or "I live by the
faithfulness of the Son of God."

                                Yours,
                                Harold Holmyard

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