We agree on the faith/noun/gift but it seems you are saying that faith, not the person, subsequently performs the believing.
I think I would disagree - if that was your position. It seems to me that the person, having received faith as a gift, will use it; not that it will use itself independent of the individual's will.
Nevertheless, I am willing to listen to reason - something, I have found, that you possess by the truckload...
This is all regarding the general topic of Greek anarthrous nouns; a grammatical construct that is absolutely missing from English and most other languages. I’m convinced it’s one of the premiere reasons God inspired the use of Greek for the New Testament through its human authorship.
In English, nouns are referred to by either the definite article (the, this, that) or indefinite article (a, an). These are very simple distinctions for basic specificity of items. The definite article particularizes in a way that highlights a specific object over many/all such objects.
Greek nouns are all innately anarthrous, which most overarchingly means “unsegmented”; and the anarthrous form of the noun refers to the qualities, characteristics, and functional activities of the noun. This generally designates the state of being for the noun, referring to all its many aspects and facets.
An example would be “table”. In Greek, the default noun construct refers to “table-ness”, and broadly always refers to every possible attribute that could be ascribed to any table of any kind for any use.
Tables are generally utilized to hold certain things up. A dining table, for instance, is utilized to support various place settings of dishes and utensils and beverage containers, along with any number of prepared food dishes. A dining table would then be performing certain passive forms of action, but a table is never referred to as “tabling” when holding up things it was designed to support for usage.
This is a table’s functional activity, which is an aspect or facet of its “table-ness”. The table isn’t actively “doing” anything. It’s static, not dynamic. There is no economy of action being overtly accomplished by a table when it is exhibiting its functional activity as a table. There is no verb here. Only the noun and all its qualitative considerations.
The same is true for faith. It’s an anarthrous noun like all other Greek nouns. It’s the thing that comes out of the message/report in Romans 10:17 that is also a noun (but is almost universally misunderstood as a verb by English speakers).
“So then, faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” Hearing is a NOUN in both instances in this verse. It is NOT a verb indicating actING or resulting actION/S. It’s rendered as “report” (in the KJV and others) in the previous verse, but “hearing” in v17. More explicitly it is “the thing heard”, just as faith is “the thing believed”.
Faith is the confident assurance and persuasion that comes out of the thing heard as the thing believed. And faith is the anarthrous noun that has all internal functional activity for believING. Faith is the thing given by God so that when we “have” it we can then believe because faith has the functional activity we need to accomplish the act of believING.
We cannot believe without the faith itself. Faith has all believING within it, for belief (faith) is that which comes out of the thing heard as the thing believed. By man “having” faith, he then can function according to the funcional activity of the thing he has.
An example would be a person and a cell phone. A person cannot make a call on a cellular network without “having” a cell phone. The cell phone has all the internal functional hardware and software to make calls, so if someone “has” a cell phone they can make a call. But without the thing that does the calling, man cannot make any cell phone calls. It’s impossible.
The same is true of an axe and a tree. Man cannot chop down a tree unless he has an axe (or other implement). So it IS man chopping down a tree, but it’s the axe that is the thing man has to chop down the tree. There must be an axe or man cannot accomplish the action.
Without faith as the confident assurance and persuasion as the thing believed, man cannot believe. So the internal functional activity of faith is that which does the believING, but it is man who HAS the faith that believes. So man indeed believes, but only because he has faith.
Make no mistake, faith has all the latent internal functional activity for believING, and man does not. Man must be given faith by God for man to believe. Man only believes because he has faith. And faith in all these instances is articular. It is THE faith, not just “a” faith.
Anyone who has been confidently assured and persuaded by a message/report that came by any word/s has “a” faith. But THE faith is the thing that comes out of THE message/report which came by means of THE very Rhema of God.
The quality of the rhema is the means of the message/report as the thing heard. And out of that will come a commensurate quality of faith that will either be THE faith (by God’s Rhema) or “another” faith (by whatever other rhema).
Of course man believes. But man only believes because THE faith has the internal functional activity of believING within it, and that man can then thus believe.
