After much deliberation, I’m siding with Peter Kirk for two reasons:……

Thanks, Peter.

I felt that my post was bordering on too technical as it is, so I didn’t want to introduce the notions of active and passive. You are, of course, right that the distinction is important for understanding individual verses.

My point is comparing Galatians 5:6 and James 5:16, though, was to demonstrate the possible parallel use of ischuo and energeo. In James 5:15 the (active verb) ischuo is, perhaps, in parallel with the (passive/middle participle) energeo. At least, the NRSV think so. Similarly, we find nouns, not verbs, in Wisdom 18:22, but I still use them to help demonstrate that the verbs can be used in parallel.

More generally, none of the introductory material (about parallel uses of the verbs and about possible use of the participle as a verb) proves anything. I just think it demonstrates the possibility of what I present. I hope I didn’t give the impression that I’m trying to offer a conclusively accurate new reading here.

If I am not mistaken, the vowel pointing provided in the Masoretic text includes a stop after the initial YOD, completely precluding pronouncing as “YAHVEH.” It would have to be pronounced as “Ye-HoVaH” if we accept that Masoretic vowel pointing, yes?

Yes and no. Yes, there’s a stop after the initial yud. But no, because the vowels are symbolic. Nothing in the 1,100-year-old symbolic vowels tells us much about how the tetragrammaton was pronounced 3,000 years ago. But having done considerable research on the tetragrammaton, I’m convinced that it was always symbolic.

(In fact, the 1,100-year-old vowels even when they’re not symbolic don’t necessarily tell us how Hebrew was pronounced 2,000 years before the Masoretes lived, any more than current academic conventions for pronouncing Greek mimic how people spoke in Jesus’ Jerusalem.)

Isn’t that the case in a “divine passive?”

>>>So you could say that the verse sits on the Calvinist/Arminian fence.

That the love of God motivates and energizes the faith of the believer is not a party issue.

2Co 5:14 For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead:
2Co 5:15 And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.

>>>…As for “faithfulness” vs. “faith”, I think that issue needs to be looked at in the light of broader Pauline theology and the discussions of the New Perspective on Paul.

Such schools of thought are not a necessary part of a sound, exegetical hermeneutic.

As for “faithfulness” vs. “faith”, I think that issue needs to be looked at in the light of broader Pauline theology and the discussions of the New Perspective on Paul.

“Circumcision doesn’t accomplish anything at all, nor does
being [becoming?] uncircumcised; but faith, empowered [by God] through love, [does].”