From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Fri Apr 03 1998 - 20:28:41 EST
At 07:04 PM 4/3/98 -0500, Stevens, Charles C wrote:
>Well, I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I've run into those that
>claim that the sinning is all in the past. While the English would
>support that, the past-tense sense of the aorist seems to me to be much
>less strong than the English would indicate, I think.
Not even the English supports that. If I say "I ate supper", that doesn't
mean that I won't ever eat supper again. It merely refers to a time of
eating supper in the past.
It's also worth noting that by the NT period, the aorist is often used in
the same way as the perfect, which is slowly on its way to extinction, and
is used with relatively few verbs. This usage feels kinda like a perfect to
me - we are now in the state of having sinned, but that's no guarantee we
ain't gonna sin again.
Jonathan
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Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com
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