"Continuous, on-going, never ceasing" construct
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Sun Aug 18 20:15:41 EDT 2002
On Sun, 2002-08-18 at 09:16, waldo slusher wrote:
<snip>
> Here is just about what I read:
>
> "The Perfect Tense in 'you have been saved' means that
> which happened at a point in time in the past, and
> CONTINUES FOREVER AND EVER." Therefore, most would
> give assurance to the readers with a follow up
> statement like... "your salvation is eternal... that
> is what the PERFECT TENSE teaches us!
<snip>
>
> What would be the most likely construct a Greek would
> use in statements attempting to express a belief in
> the "forever nature" of something?
Please forgive me for the terseness of my reply, but the immediate
knee-jerk answer which came to mind is...a sentence.
Perhaps a clause or even a phrase would work. I think I can see how an
author could use any one of a number of tenses, WHEN COMBINED WITH A
NUMBER OF OTHER FACTORS IN A TEXT, to indicate a "forever nature".
A rule I follow is that an infix is much, much, much too small a
construct to hold the semantic bulk of a tenet of theology. When you're
relating theology to tiny things like infixes (or even a lexeme), the
best you can hope for is consistency, not revelation. The problem is
that the infix can be consistent with a number of different theologies.
You can't say "the PERFECT TENSE teaches us <some bulky theological
thing goes here>." You can merely observe a level of consistency.
And THAT is why authors use bigger things to convey theology. Like
entire epistles.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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