"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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