Mounce's first year grammar

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Wed Dec 1 10:09:05 EST 1999


At 10:03 PM 11/30/99 -0600, Michael Burer wrote:

>It is certainly appropriate to use a well-known, theologically
>freighted passage to illustrate an aspect of grammar or syntax as long as it
>is a true illustration of the point under consideration.

Frankly, I think that the well-known, theologically freighted passages are 
the passages that are least likely to illustrate a point well, since our 
theology tends to cloud our judgement, and also because these passages are 
often subject to more than one legitimate interpretation on syntactic or 
grammatical grounds. I find it much more helpful to illustrate a 
grammatical or syntactic feature using a series of examples that are 
theologically neutral, and in which the context makes the meaning of the 
construct clear. In fact, I would like to teach students how to compare 
textbooks and examine the examples they give to verify the principles they 
teach, since texts often contain principles that turn out not to be true.

The essays in Mounce sometimes conflate linguistics with theology, making 
it difficult to even see aspects of grammar or syntax are being 
illustrated. For instance, in the vignette that starts Chapter 6 in my 
edition, we have sentences like "Its lack of a definite article keeps us 
from identifying the person of the Word (Jesus Christ) with the person of 
"God" (the Father). That is to say, the word order tells us that Jesus 
Christ has all the divine attributes that the Father has..." or "the lack 
of an article is against Sabellianism; the word order is against Arianism". 
There is not enough detail in this essay to tell me exactly what the 
linguistic features are that protect us against these heresies, and the 
missing information is not provided in the chapter that follows.

Jonathan



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