From: Dale M. Wheeler (dalemw@teleport.com)
Date: Mon Dec 11 1995 - 14:21:48 EST
With all due respect to Carlton's opinion on the matter (I mean this
sincerely, not flippantly), I would have to vote with Dodd and Marshall
(commentaries) and Kubo (journal article; reference not at hand).
If you want to see a very nice discussion of this issue, there is an
appendix in Buist Fanning's EXCELLENT book on Greek Verbs, _Verbal_Aspect_.
He will take you through the various positions both grammatical and
theological. He ends up agreeing with Marshall, et.al.
As a sidelight to this question, I think its important to realize that the
way the question was originally phrased was in itself misleading. The
question is not whether the present tense is either linear or punctiliar; it
can be either, and a great many other things as well. This is because there
is, for all intents and purposes, only one present time form for the verb in
the indicative mood, the present tense, which thus must cover all of the
verbal nuances of every verb. Some verbs are inherently punctuals ("hit")
and some are inherently linears ("go"), and others have other verbal ideas
involved (prefaced, concluded, etc). The situation in 1John 3:6,9 is not
based on the fact that the tense is present per se, since it could admit
either meaning (and several others as well); the issue, as argued quite
nicely by Marshall, has to do with how John is nuancing the concept of "to
sin" in the letter (which was done in ch 1:8-2:2). That nuance is the
determining factor, not the present tense.
Let me HASTEN to add, that I have neither the time nor the inclination to
get into a Porter vs Fanning thread/debate; as you can see from this and
other postings, I'm inclined toward Fanning's approach to the Greek verb
system and I highly recommend its reading to one and all (since it appears
from many postings that most have read Porter).
***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Th.D.
Chair, Biblical Languages Dept Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street Portland, OR 97220
Voice: 503-251-6416 FAX:503-254-1268 E-Mail: dalemw@teleport.com
***********************************************************************
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:34 EDT