Re: 1 John 3:9
Jim West (jwest@highland.net)
Sat, 09 May 1998 11:29:32 -0400
At 09:57 AM 5/9/98 -0500, you wrote:
>MIKE
><snip>
>All in all, therefore, I would translate the verse as: "Whoever has been
>born of God doesn't have the habit of sin, because God's seed remains in
>him. He can't go on sinning, because he has been born of God."
><snip>
>
>BILL
>Your translation is highly interpretive. You are extrapolating to evoke a
>meaning you believe John must have had. Of course your criticisms of the
>other author's confused translation were indeed correct, but let's not swing
>in the opposite direction. "There is a ditch on both sides of the road."
>
>First of all, you add the loaded words "have the habit of", which, besides
>the linguistic issues, pretty much precludes most Christians from being born
>of God, eh? I mean, you could almost say, since John is arguing from the
>perspective of Christians having a new nature, the very thing that we must
>overcome is "old habits" (Romans 12:1-2, Romans 8:1-2).
>
>For translation, sticking to the text requires a reading more like "is not
>sinning" (in the first phrase), and "...is powerless to be sinning" (in the
>second).
>
>To *interpret* these verses, without doing violence to the literal, I would
>argue that John is saying that a true Christian has a new nature ("born of
>God"), one that cannot sin (ie: God is Light, God is Love, "he was
>manifested to destroy the works of the devil", "all that is of the world is
>not of the Father","this is the true God", "keep yourself from idols". From
>this he says, in effect, a Christian will have a walk that corresponds to
>this sinless nature, or else we are right to ask "how does the love of God
>dwell in them"?
You have fallen into the very ditch that you accuse Mike of inhabiting, for
your translation is extraordinarily biased in a theological direction- i.e.,
"sinless perfection". Mike's rendering is much closer to the meaning of the
text. Further, to drag poor Paul into the argument is not proper method as
(surely EVERYONE will agree with this): Paul and John are different writers
who use words differently. Finally, Mike's "habit of sinning" has the great
benefit of clearly reflecting the nature of the Greek verb whilst your
"cannot sin" is an egregious error.
Best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Quartz Hill School of Theology
jwest@highland.net