Ephesians 1:13

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Aug 25 15:25:50 EDT 1999


At 2:15 PM -0400 8/25/99, Mike Sangrey wrote:
>cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu said:
>> At 3:28 PM +1000 8/25/99, Richard A. Creighton wrote:
>> > EN hW(i) KAI hUMEIS AKOUSANTES TON LOGON THS ALHQEIAS,
>> >     TO EUAGGELION THS SWTHRIAS hUMWN,
>> > EN hW(i) KAI PISTEUSANTES ESFRAGISQHTE TW(i) PNEUMATI
>> >     THS EPAGGELIAS TW(i) hAGIW(i)
>> > I'm trying to work out how the two
>> > halves of this verse relate to each other [ie "EN hW(i) ... hUMWN"
>> > and "EN hW(i) ... hAGIW(i)"].  Is Paul describing the same thing from
>> > two different perspectives?  Is he describing two consecutive events?
>> >  What are the options?
>
>> Must it not pretty clearly be two consecutive events--or at any rate,
>> phases in the process of reception of God's grace? Successful hearing
>> of the gospel results in faith and reception of the seal of the
>> promised Holy Spirit. I don't really see any other option.
>
>This depends on how your understanding of regeneration is conditioned
>by the mention of election in the preceeding verses.
>
> . . . omission
>But, that's theology!!!!!

Precisely, and the omitted portion does have something to say about the way
one's theologically presuppositions condition one to look at the text.
But that's hermeneutics!!!!!

>        . . .                       The order of events is not clear
>since that is not Paul's focus here.  If the order were important,
>then the grammar would say it.  That is, the clauses would not be so
>clearly in parallel.  Christ is the focus, not the order of events.
>This is theology, too, of course; but it comes from the text. :-)

Presumably ALL theology comes from the text. You have hit directly,
however, on the reason Paul Dixon reads this passage differently from the
way I do--and also, incidentally, on one of the reasons I find this textual
sequence in Ephesians 1 so frustrating: the syntax of the passage does not
lie upon its surface, a fact which makes it all the more susceptible to
eisegesis.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/ 



More information about the B-Greek mailing list