The Measure Of Stewardship -- By: John C. Poirier

Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 59:1 (NA 2008)
Article: The Measure Of Stewardship
Author: John C. Poirier


The Measure Of Stewardship

Πίστις In Romans 12:3

John C. Poirier

Summary

A tiny handful of studies have recognised that πίστις in Romans 12:3 could be rendered as something like ‘stewardship’, ‘trusteeship’, etc. This article argues that this option deserves to be more widely visited. The explanatory power of this rendering is far greater than that of other options, and the strength of its philological backing (which includes entries from Josephus) has not yet been fully appreciated. One reason this rendering has not received the hearing it deserves is that earlier studies have failed to understand how it fits with the use of πίστις in 12:6.

1. Introduction

If there has been a lasting lesson from the debate over the use of πίστις in Paul, it might simply be that the semantic range of the Greek term is broader than our English renderings have recognised. Those who have considered the lexical data at close range can testify that the debate over πίστις still has not tapped the riches of this term. While ‘faith’ and ‘faithfulness’ represent the two main branches of development of meanings for πίστις, our simply toggling between those two renderings does not recognise the full range of meaning in Greek literature. As this article attempts to show, it also does not do justice to the range of meaning of πίστις in the New Testament.1

Paul uses πίστις in Romans 12:3 to refer to something that God measures out: ‘For by the grace given to me I bid every one among you not to think of oneself more highly than one ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith (µέτρον πίστεως) which God has assigned to each’. Whether God measures out πίστις to every person or just to every believer is not immediately clear, although the context of gifts and their placement within the church suggests the latter.

It should perhaps be mentioned that the traditional rendering (‘measure of faith’) brings us face to face with a divisive theological conceit—that God has dealt each believer the amount of faith that he or she has. With Augustine (and again...

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