Present Participle and Faith
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun May 21 08:23:38 EDT 2000
I make a practice of leaving in my "current" BG mailbox messages that
haven't drawn a response from anyone and take note of these when I archive
threads that have come to a close. It's in the course of that process this
morning that I've just read this message again and I am somewhat surprised
that nobody has touched it. Potentially it touches on a question about
which I think there are differences between different groups of believers
and therefore it is potentially a controversial question, but we have dealt
with passages in the GNT that bear on this same question. So I'm going to
essay a response to this question which has gone begging for more than a
week; I think it's interesting enough from a purely aspectual angle that we
may be able to discuss it without getting off into tangential doctrinal
questions that are not appropriate to B-Greek.
At 4:28 PM +0000 5/9/00, B.J. Williamson wrote:
>In a footnote on page 621 of Dan Wallace's
>Exegetical Syntax (1996), the following statements are noted
>in relation to John 3:16:
>
>"The aspectual force of the present O PISTEUWN seems to be
>in contrast with O PISTEUSAS... Thus, it seems that since
>the aorist participle was a live option to describe
>a "believer," it is unlikely that when the present was used,
>it was aspectually flat. The present was the tense of choice
>most likely because the NT writers by and large saw continual
>belief as a necessary condition of salvation."
>
>He also notes that it is "not due to the present tense only, but
>to the use of the present participle of PISTEUW, especially in
>soteriological contexts in the NT."
>
>My question centers around Dan's use of "continual belief"
>as a "necessary condition" of salvation.
>
>I assume that nobody would deny that the present participle
>pictures the action in progress, but to state that this
>"continual" aspect of the present participle becomes a "necessary condition"
>moves beyond the nature of verbal aspect.
>
>In other words, equating the "continual" aspect with a
>"necessary condition" seems extreme to me.
>
>Any thoughts?
May I urge that any respondent endeavor to be careful here to focus
discussion on verbal aspect in the present and aorist participles of
PISTEUW and NOT upon the tangential and doctrinal issue of the nature of
efficacious PISTIS itself.
The FIRST thought that comes to my mind is that IF (AND ONLY IF) one grants
the possibility of "backsliding," one would hardly suppose that a person
who believed at one time but thereafter became apostate meets the requisite
"qualifications" for salvation. But of course one may (and probably WILL!)
argue over the question of what constitutes efficacious faith--in
particular over whether it is necessarily (a) cognitive acceptance of one
or more propositions or (b) being in a trust relationship with God through
Christ, or (c) some linkage of (a) and (b).
The language of John 3 does seem very carefully to use the present
participle to refer to a "believer": 3:15 PAS hO PISTEUWN EN AUTWi, 3;16
PAS hO PISTEUWN EIS AUTON. 3:18 presents the converse: hO MH PISTEUWN and
interestingly explains it with a relative clause containing the perfect
tense of the relevant verb: hO PISTEUWN EIS AUTON OU KRINETAI; hO DE MH
PISTEUWN HDH KEKRITAI, hOTI MH PEPISTEUKEN EIS TO ONOMA TOU MONOGENOUS
hUIOU TOU QEOU. It strikes me that the usage of PEPISTEUKEN here excludes a
'consummative' sense of the perfect (emphasis upon completion) but points
rather toward the 'intensive' sense of the perfect ('used to emphasize the
completed action of a past action or a process from which a present state
emerges' <http://www.xensei.com/users/samato/greek/gtense.html>). It also
seems to me that the usage of articular present participles here (hO
PISTEUWN and hO MH PISTEUWN) most clearly when used with PAS (PAS hO
PISTEUWN) have the generalized force of of a condition: i.e. hO PISTEUWN
EIS AUTON OU KRINETAI = hOSTIS AN PISTEUHI EIS AUTON OU KRINETAI.
Now while it may be dangerous to draw conclusions beyond Johannine usage
and I won't do it, my own examination of GJn's usage of PISTEUW in the
aorist with Jesus as the object either of EIS + acc. or EN + dat. indicates
to me that John uses the aorist of PISTEUW in the sense of "achieve
faith"--to reach the state indicated by the present tense and especially by
the present participle of PISTEUW. My AcCordance search discloses only 2
instances of the articular aorist active participle in GJn, and they seem
to me consistent with what I've just said:
Jn 7:39 TOUTO DE EIPEN PERI TOU PNEUMATOS hO EMELLON LAMBANEIN hOI
PISTEUSANTES EIS AUTON; OUPW GAR HN PNEUMA, hOTI IHSOUS OUDEPW EDOXASQH.
Jn 20:29 LEGEI AUTWi hO IHSOUS: hOTI hEWRAKAS ME PEPISTEUKAS?
MAKARIOI hOI MH IDONTES KAI PISTEUSANTES.
It would appear to me then that, so far as John's usage is concerned,
Wallace is right on target in what he has to say about linkage of the
present tense of PISTEUW with salvation. It strikes me, however, that
there's another question raised/posed by B.J. Williamson's query regarding
Wallace's statement: does PISTEUW in John's usage refer to an ongoing ACT
of believing or to continuation in a STATE of belief? It may well be that
how one understands the Greek usage of the present tense of this particular
verb is the source of the contention between those who admit the
possibility of 'backsliding' and those who do not. If PISTEUEIN is a
continuous/continuing ACT requiring a continuous/continuing exertion of the
will of the believer to sustain the act, then it would seem reasonable
enough to suppose a point in time at which that exertion of the will is
halted and the one who DID believe believes NO LONGER. IF, on the other
hand, one supposes that PISTEUEIN is a continuous/continuing STATE, one
that itself is the resultative consequence of a relationship gained or
achieved by a one-time action of PISTEUSAI or PEPISTEUKENAI, then it's
harder to speak of that state coming to cessation. This strikes me as
consistent with what Bultmann once referred to as GJn's consistent
"determinism." Just as TEQNHKEN means "is dead" so PEPISTEUKEN means "is in
a state of efficacious belief"--which state may and is more common
expressed by John's use of the articular present participle: hO PISTEUWN
EIS/EN EME/EMOI.
BUT: if we suppose some degree of consistency between GJn and the Letters
of John, it would appear that PISTIS is more than a verbal acknowledgement,
or that a verbal assertion of PISTIS can be a YEUDOS--or that's the meaning
I derive from 1 John 4:20, which doesn't use the word PISTIS but
nevertheless seems to me to imply it: EAN TIS EIPHi hOTI AGAPW TON QEON KAI
TON ADELFON AUTOU MISHi, YEUSTHS ESTIN; hO GAR MH AGAPWN TON ADELFON AUTOU
hON hEWRAKEN, TON QEON hON OUC hEWRAKEN OU DUNATAI AGAPAN. It may well seem
to some that I am pushing this farther than the text actually permits, but
it does seem--to me at least--than John or the Johannine author shows
clearly that even as an ongoing state, faith has CONSEQUENCES whereby its
reality may be discerned.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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