Gentive Usage in Biblical Texts

"It is the case of genus...The genitive does indeed resemble the adjective...the case does not of itself mean all that one finds in translation. The case adheres to its technical root-idea.  The resultant idea will naturally vary greatly according as the root-conception of the case is applied to different words and different contexts...What the genitive says is that it is a 'Babylon-removal.'  That is all...At every stage one needs to recall the root-idea of the case (genus or kind) and find in that and the environment and history the explanation...In simple point of fact it is not necessary to see any particular inner connection between the many uses of the genitive with substantives other than the common root-idea of the case...After all it is the context that varies rather than the genitive...In itself the genitive is neither subjective nor objective, but lends itself readily to either point of view...Take Ro. 1:17 where dikaiosuna theou means the righteousness which God has and wishes to bestow on us...Thus in Mk. 11:22 ekete pistin theou we rightly translate 'have faith in God,' though the genitive does not mean 'in,' but only the God kind of faith.  Cf. Ro. 3:22." (A Grammar Of The Greek New Testament In The Light Of Historical Research, A T Robertson; Broadman Press, 1934; pp 493, 494, 495, 496, 499, 500)

Robertson claims that the genitive is the specifying case and nothing more.  It merely specifies what kind of item the modified noun is.  So he writes that "pistin theou" just simply means the "God kind of faith", nothing more than that.  Is this genitive an objective or subjective genitive?  We could easily say that it is both.  It could be objective: God is the object of the faith.  But it could also be subjective: the faith is given by God.  It is a God kind of faith.

Trying to nail down whether it is objective or subjective narrows too much the discussion and description found in the Greek.  Allowing the Greek the freedom to just designate the relationship without making the delineations that some scholars would require of us adds much color to the text.

What the delineations found in different grammars does for us is give us many colors and hues that can be found in the genitive.  If we allow ourselves the freedom to use all the different distinctions found in the grammars, it can add so much to the discussion in the text.

After all, those distinctions found in the grammars are only lists created by the grammarians in their attempt to describe all the ways the genitive can be used.  And so some grammarians say there are 8 types of genitives and some say there are 20 types.  These are not God-given distinctions, but attempts by the grammarians to shed light on the many ways God can and does use various words to create the impression and relate the truth He wants related.  And allowing ourselves the freedom to describe the various examples of the genitive usage can help us reach for the description God is creating by the various uses of words.