Rom. 1:4 EN DUNAMEI adverbial or adjectival

David L. Moore dvdmoore at ix.netcom.com
Sun Jul 12 16:29:09 EDT 1998


Fellow list members:

	I came across a verse recently (Rom. 1:4) that presents some difficulties
for exegesis.  One of these has to do with how EN DUNAMEI is to be taken -
or rather with what it is to be construed.  Walter Grundmann (in TDNT,
II:304, s.v. DUNAMAI/DUNAMIS), followed by K. L. Schmidt (_Ibid._, V:453,
s.v. ORIZW), says that EN DUNAMEI in Rom. 1:4 is to be construed with hUIOU
QEOU rather than with the verb ORISQENTOS, so that the passage is saying
Chist, at His resurrection, entered into the divine sonship with fullness
of power, whereas His power was limited before by the constraints of His
humanity.

	This may make neat theology, but it doesn't seem to me the nost natural
way to take the Greek here.  A check of the LXX shows several cases where
this usage is clearly adverbial (e.g. Ex. 12:51 [SUN DUNAMIE]; I Kings
10:2; Neh. 1:10; Ps. 138:3).  Could there be warrant for taking it with the
noun phrase according to some syntactical usage I may not be aware of?

Regards,
David Moore


David L. Moore
Miami, Florida, USA
E-mail: dvdmoore at ix.netcom.com
Home Page: http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore

            



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