From: Larry Swain (swainl@calcite.rocky.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 07 1998 - 02:44:23 EDT
Hi Edward,
My apologies for not being clear. My language can sometimes be dense, it
isn't you, I assure you. You asked:
"So ... what should I understand from this? If by "latter" you mean the
latter part of Hebrews 11:6b, are you saying that
God being a rewarder
is not to be translated to seem to be a result of
God existing?"
Yes, exactly. There isn't anything in the grammar or nuance that suggest
that the author thinks of God the Rewarder resulting in some way from the
statement that He is. Then you asked:
"As you can probably tell, I'm not quite understanding your point. Also,
does this directly answer my question about
whether the "that" should be
construed also with the end of 11:6b - i.e., " ...
must believe THAT He
exists and THAT He becomes a rewarder ..."? What
are you saying about my
suggested (but obviously highly-unpopular)
alternative - "must believe
THAT He exists; and He becomes a rewarder to those
who seek Him"?
Let me try this again and see if I can do better. What it is necessary for
the one approaching God is that he believes God is, and that he believes
God is the rewarder of those who seek him. Grammatically we have two
phrases governed by the infintive PISTEUEIN. It doesn't really matter if
you use one "that" in English or two-that's simply a stylistic choice. To
translate "must" is fine, DEI covers that although it does add some force
in English that "It is necessary" doesn't quite carry, but again that is a
choice you make as translator and there doesn't seem to be anything in the
text or context to mitigate against it.
The context of the following passage I think argues against attempting to
understand the second phrase of Heb 11.6b as not governed by the infintive
PISTEUEIN. The passage is about those who have faith and receive reward.
That is this verse sets up the remainder of the chapter-the two things that
are necessary to understand what he is saying are right here-belief that
God is and the He rewards seekers. To separate the Reward phrase and make
it ungoverned by the infinitive changes that and sticks out rather sorely
from the following passage. I'm not certain that that is clear at
all......well, it is to me. But if it is necessary for one approaching God
to only believe, but not believe in the promise of the reward which every
person in the following list received doesn't make sense. Your suggestion
makes that second phrase of Heb 11.6 a descriptor of God and not a
"condition" (I'm not talking grammatical conditions here) of receiving the
promises that the author is here detailing. Ok, I think I've clouded the
issue enough, hope it makes some sense.
On another note, I have often wondered about the ESTIN here-one would like
to read it as either a Platonic "being" statement but would expect hO WN or
something similar or some Hebrew reference to Ex 3.11-in which again one
would EGO EIMI or at least AUTOS ESTIN...but neither is the case, so we're
left with ESTIN -"He is", and probably does refer to belief in that God
exists.
One of the respondants here did say that a Greek audience would not
necessarily have believed in God's existence-but that isn't quite true. A
Greek audience would have had no problem believing in the existence of God,
what's one more? They would have instead sought to make (and did by the
way) the Hebrew YHWH in some way equivalent to what they knew-Zeus. The
discussion about whether God exists (or gods exist) is a modern one (with
notable exceptions such as the Pre-Socratic philosopher Zeno who posited
that the gods are made in the image of whatever race worships them).
Enough.
Larry Swain
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