From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 04 2000 - 08:59:05 EDT
<x-charset iso-8859-1>At 9:02 PM -0700 4/3/00, Jason Hare wrote:
>Carl,
>
>I would still have to disagree with this assertion.
>>From what you have sent me, the same is to be seen as
>was said before: hOUTWS would indicate "in this way"
>and not "soooo much." This is basically what you have
>used as evidence: Acts 14:1 ("and they spoke in such a
>way that..." not "and they spoke so much that...") and
>Matthew 5:16 ("let your light shine in this way before
>men..." [see verse 15] not "let your light shine soooo
>much..."). From these two verses, John 3:16 would
>indeed seem to be saying what our brother has said,
>that God loved the world "in this way" (like the verse
>above) with the result that he sent his Son.
Jason, I applaud your independent judgment; you must certainly read the
evidence in the way that you yourself find it convincing. It happens
repeatedly that different people draw different conclusions from the same
evidence, the probable reason being that they don't approach the problem
with the same presuppositions--and that may well be the case here.
>This can especially be seen in Matthew 5:15 and 16.
>The construction is the same. It says: ĽOUDE KAIOUSIN
>LUCNON KAI TIQEASIN AUTON hUPO TON MODION ALL' EPI THN
>LUCNIAN, KAI LAMPEI PASIN TOIS EN THi OIKIAi. hOUTWS
>LAMYATW TO FWS hUMWN EMPROSQEN TWN ANQRWPWN, hOPWS
>IDWSIN hUMWN TA KALA ERGA KAI DOXASWSIN TON PATERA
>hUMWN TON EN TOIS OURANOIS.
>
>He described a picture (lighting a candle and putting
>it on a candlestick) and said to "let your light so
>shine," that is, "in this way."
What I'm arguing is not, actually, that hOUTWS doesn't mean "in this way."
Rather, what I am arguing is that the linkage of hOUTWS is fundamentally
forward to the hWSTE clause and not backwards to an antecedent adverb or
description of a way. Lighting a candle and putting it on a candlestick so
that it will give light is an illustration by example of what is the basic
proposition stated in 5:16 (as I see it): YOUR light (and I assume that
means the way that YOU demonstrate the gospel's truth) should shine in THE
PARTICULAR WAY that produces the result that people see your good works and
glorify God. The hOUTWS points to the desired result of your "letting your
light shine"--it doesn't point backwards to the picture of lighting the
candle and putting it on the candlestick. Now it may well be that the
candle-and-candlestick simile has become for some readers the be-all and
end-all of evangelism: posting the gospel message in one form or another
(like John 3:16!) in huge letters on a billboard, but I don't get the
impression that such a strategy earns a significant amount of praise of God
from people who see the billboard. Rather my impression is that
(particularly since this is Matthew's gospel, where "good works" are indeed
emphasized as desirable) the desired result is that people should praise
God because they have observed your behavior as behavior that demonstrates
the truth of the gospel.
> The same can be said
>of John 3:14-16. Jesus described a picture (the Son
>of Man being lifted up so that people, having seen
>him, would believe in him) and then said that "God so
>loved the world," that is, "in this way." I see that
>this makes absolute sense.
But I'm afraid I must still say that I don't see it that way. Again I see
the hOUTWS as referring forward to the hWSTE clause rather than backwards
to the parallel statements about raising the serpent in the wilderness and
the raising-up of the Son of Man on the cross. The "particular way" that
God loved the world, as I read the text, is "giving his only son" (of
course, with all that is attached to that). Do we really mean to say that
crucifixion--because it involves public spectacle--is the only particular
way in which God could have loved the world and produced the stated result?
Do we mean to say that a hanging on a high platform in the town square
wouldn't have done the trick? Granted, an electric chair or a firing squad
or lethal injection on a gurney might not have drawn the public exposure.
But I still think that the point of hOUTWS is not backward referential but
forward to the hWSTE clause that expresses the intended result of God's
love (which is why hWSTE came to be used more and more for purpose as well
as for result constructions). At any rate, I will continue to believe that
"giving his only son" is what hOUTWS points to rather than the manner of
execution by which the gift was given.
>The last verse that you use, however, 1 Corinthians
>6:5, seems to be commonly understood in the way that
>you are saying. It would be "so wise" or "wise
>enough" (NIV). Then again, it seems to do the same as
>the last two passages in a way. "Appoint as judges
>even men of little account in the church!... Is there
>no one wise in this way, who may judge between his
>brother?" Even still it appears that such a meaning
>is inherent in what hOUTWS means.
Quite. But it's perhaps easier to see the relationship when the hOUTWS is
qualifying an adjective or another adverb than when it is qualifying a verb.
I don't really object to understanding hOUTWS as "in this way"--although I
think that when it links syntactically with a hWSTE clause, the better
English is to combine the two words in the phrase "such that" or "so that."
And in the case of John 3:16 I see the item pointed at by hOUTWS as "giving
his only son for the purpose of salvation of believers in him." And when
it's understood thus, the hOUTWS implies love (as I said in an earlier post
on this topic) of a sort SUCH THAT a distinction between quality and
quantity seems meaningless--so that "in this way" is hardly
distinguishable--if at all--from "this much."
Another way to phrase the difference between your way of reading John 3:16
and my way is to say that yours emphasizes a semantic relationship between
hOUTWS and adverbial antecedents implicit or explicit in what preceded,
whereas mine emphasize a syntactic relationship between hOUTWS and hWSTE.
--Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
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