It seems like the NIV and NKJV want to translate the central phrase in 2 Peter 1.5 differently than the NAS, with potentially different results. Here are the three translations:
- NIV: “For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness, knowledge…”
- NAS: “Now for the very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge…”
- NKJV: “But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge…”
Question: So which translation is it? “Add to your faith” or “in your faith, supply“? There seems to be no difference at first, but to someone who asked me about it, it makes a big difference. It seems like we should not need to add anything to faith in order for it to be saving. Faith alone is enough, isn’t it? So why does this verse say we need to add something more to faith? Or does it say that at all?
Answer: The answer is simply understood in the Greek. I think we can, and should (in good postmodern fashion), answer this question with two more questions (and answers):
1) Should the verb be translated “to add” (NIV and NKJV) or “to supply” (NAS)?
This is the easy and less important of the two. Friberg’s lexicon lists both the NIV/NKJV and NAS translation, though in the following way:
“…literally, of one who provides out of his own expense furnish, supply (2C 9.10); figuratively provide in addition, add (2P 1.5)…”
Which is to say, the literal translation is supply, while the figurative translation is add. Where Friberg allows for either, others do not. Supply or furnish is the only sense that Louw-Nida give the Greek verb, as well as Liddell-Scott and Bauer-Gingrich, such that, in the end, the normal (and thus better) translation of the verb is to supply or furnish, not to add.
2) Should the prepositional phrase be rendered “in your faith” (NAS) or “to your faith” (NIV and NKJV)?
Most simply, the normal Greek word for “in” is used here, not the normal Greek word for “to.” The normal Greek word for “in” is ev in Greek, whereas the normal term for “to” or “into” is eis. More significantly, however, is that the phrase is in the dative case, and likely is either a dative of reference or dative of sphere. Either way, the dative sense locates the traits that follow the prepositional object (in this case, “faith“) within its referent, not outside it.
Put simply, the virtues that are listed in 2 Peter 1.5-10 are found within the sphere of faith. They are not something that is to be added on to faith, as if saving faith lacked something that needed to be added to in order to make it complete/saving. As the old saying goes, faith alone saves, but saving faith is never alone.
In other words, you don’t need to add things to complete saving faith, you need to supply things that exist already within saving faith. Without a doubt there is a difference, and it makes a difference. One translation, read uncritically, can lead one to believe that additions are needed from outside of faith for faith to be complete (implication–for faith to be saving). Another translation communicates that no additions are needed, only that, within the sphere of saving faith, other things need to be supplied.
If the other translation of supply can be used (taken from the lexicons) and its metaphor extended as well, then a good, exegetically-sound-but-useful sense of the phrase could be: “Furnish your home (i.e., “sphere”) of faith with…”
With the two issues resolved in this way, then, the NAS’s translation of 2 Peter 1.5 is most accurate and helpful: “in your faith, supply…” None of the characteristics are added into faith, they’re all supplied within it.
Just to the left of this bench in St. Andrews is a martyr’s monument commerarating the lives of those who were burned for their faith during the Scottish Reformation. This is the place where golf was born globally, the place where the Reformation was nurtured nationally, and the place where Julie and I sat and reflected on it all personally. It says:
and we all took our places in the courtroom/family room. I was the Father, Julie was the Advocate, Tyler was the Accuser, Lauren was the defendant, and Will was the jury.