Fwd: Meaning of the perfect tense

CWestf5155 at aol.com CWestf5155 at aol.com
Tue Jan 9 16:46:54 EST 2001


Mark,

In a message dated 01/09/2001 1:44:55 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
emory2oo2 at hotmail.com writes:

> Cindy:
>  
>  You wrote:
>  
>  >Neither am I saying that the author could not be holding to a view of
>  >perseverance of the saints--you just couldn't prove that it indicates "the
>  >permanency of the step of salvation" by the use of the perfect tense here.
>  >You would need that to come from further information in the context. In 
>  >other
>  >words, theoretically, this construction could occur in a discussion about 
>  >the
>  >perseverance of the saints and does not exclude the possibility.
>  
>  
>  Yes. THAT is what I was trying to say. The Perfect tense does not 
eliminate 
>  it, which is what I understood you to say in the earlier post.
>  
>  I think your wording here is much clearer, namely, that the Perfect tense 
>  can not be used to prove OR disprove perseverance. I understood your 
>  previous post to say that the Perfect tense positively asserts that the 
>  "permanency of the step of salvation" can not be supported. But that would 
>  be incorrect. The Perfect tense does not semantically exclude such a 
>  possibility, nor does it semantically include it. It simply makes no 
>  assertion about it.
>  
>  In other words, to say that the on-going results of a situation are not 
>  semantically part of the Perfect goes beyond the Perfect tense itself. 
That 
>  is, whether the results continue forever or not (in actuality) is simply 
not 
> 
>  addressed by the Perfect tense at all. Am I correct?
>  
Yes, you're right. 

I was interacting only with Rienecker's statement: 'THE PERFECT TENSE 
indicates the permenancy of the step of salvation'.  And I think that his 
view is a fair inference from the traditional definition of the perfect, 
though not inevitable.

I guess that my comments would have been less open to misinterpretation (with 
a suspected theological slant!) if Jonathan had chosen a potentially less 
explosive example about what the perfect means--but this one is really 
interesting. It is much like those 'abused aorist' passages where complex 
theological issues have found support from the simple use of a 'once for all' 
definition of the aorist.

Cindy Westfall
PhD Student, Roehampton



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