From: CWestf5155@aol.com
Date: Sun Jan 14 2001 - 21:01:48 EST
In a message dated 01/13/2001 3:49:37 PM Mountain Standard Time,
doulos@chorus.net writes:
> > Another controversy that came to mind as I worked on this was whether some
> > have tried to suggest that there was an order of salvation expressed
here
> in
> > supposing that the perfect METEBAINW indicates past action that precedes
> the
> > presents AKOUWN and PISTEUWN (participles) as well as EXEI and (OUK)
> > ERCETAI, perhaps proving through the tenses that regeneration (expressed
> by
> > the transfer of death to life) precedes the other actions.
> >
> > I don't think that this kind of application of time to the tense can be
> > justified either.
>
> Hi Cindy
>
> Was the above controversy that came to mind an actual one or one that you
> supposed could possibly arise from the passage? I can tell you that I have
> never in my life heard such a claim made by those who hold the doctrinal
> position you seem to be addressing, and I read a fair amount of literature
> coming from that camp. I get the impression that this doctrinal position is
> in the background the whole time you are discussing this issue.
>
Steve,
I think that your answer is in my post. I was completely up-front about
'wondering'.
I do have a bundle of pressuppositions that I am tweaking, but they are
linguistic presuppositions--in this case I brain-stormed about the possible
results of a temporally-based reading.
I think that a first or second year Greek student who is applying a primarily
temporally-based view of the perfect might come up with this one in the same
way that I did (seeing the perfect in verbal opposition to two presents). In
fact, if the perfect is primarily temporal, this would be a fair inference
(and right in the frontal lobe for one like me who toted a now-ragged Berkhof
to six theology courses--but still can't spell his name). So, my cogitations
actually reflect my foundations, both undergraduate and graduate, rather than
a membership in another 'group'.
My interest is first and foremost in the handling the Word of God accurately
and has been for some time secondarily related to discourse analysis and
systemic/
functional linguistics. But, I have no sacred cows that I'm not ready to lay
down before the two-edged sword.
So--while posting, let me deal with your last post to me about the
'traditional view' of the perfect which at the beginning of the history of
the discussion of the perfect was primarily temporally-based. As Dana and
Mantey said in <<A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament>>, p. 200 (my
first intermediate grammar):
"In the indicative the perfect signifies action as complete from the point of
view of the present time." The present time would be the deictic present--the
time of speech.
Action completed before the time of speaking is not the same as omnitemporal
or gnomic or future. Therefore, many scholars suggested that a
temporally-based definition of the perfect did not have sufficient
explanatory power to account for Jn. 5:24.
As both Wallace and Porter say, there is now a lot of agreement about the
perfect after much discussion, though there is still some disagreement in
particulars. Where they go with aspect, temporal force and lexis depends--I
see that Wallace suggests normative perfects, collapsed perfects and
specialized perfects with seven different uses--we've come a long way baby.
Cindy Westfall
PhD Student, University of Surrey at Roehampton
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