Re: eis afesin twn hamartiwn humwn

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Fri, 31 May 1996 18:39:13 -0500

At 1:43 PM -0500 5/31/96, DRPartain@aol.com wrote:
> Rod Rogers wrote:
>
> >Thanks again for your time and help. I hope that everyone on the b-greek
>>list takes seriously the ramifications of this discussion. The issue is,
>>Does baptism wash away your sins or does the blood of Christ wash away your
>>sins?
>
>And, yes, Rod, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the extreme seriousness of
>the ramifications of this issue. I fear for you, to think you have publicly
>taken a stance in opposition to clear teaching on the Lord's design for
>baptism.

This is precisely what I feared when this thread continued in a way that
made quite evident that it was being pursued less for the sake of
clarifying the Greek than for the sake of publishing one's faith stance. I
violated that earlier today myself when, in commenting on EIS, I made a
remark about baptism as magic. There are places for doing that, but this is
not it, and for my part I'll say that I think both of the above items, as
well as my own earlier today, violate the conventions of B-Greek.* We
don't use the list as a platform for the promotion of theological positions
we favor, even though there are theological implications in many of the
passages we discuss, and we don't warn people about the state of their
souls. PLEASE, if you feel an intestinal urge to do that, do it in a
private communication.

* "B-GREEK is an electronic conference designed to foster
communication concerning the scholarly study of the Greek
Bible. Anyone interested in New Testament Studies is invited
to subscribe, but the list will assume at least a working
knowledge of Biblical Greek. Those interested in learning
to study the Bible more personally and less exclusively
academic should join the BIBLE list."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/