[B-Greek] John 15

Brian Swedburg brian at discoveryhills.org
Wed Apr 9 12:37:39 EDT 2003


Greetings B-Greek,
    I would be glad for your collective wisdom.  I am presenting a paper on
John 15 soon and am trying to carefully think through the grammmatical
viability of various temporal views of the use of MENW in John 15:1-11.

In John 15:4 MENW is first an aorist imperative, and then used as the
present active subjunctive of a conditional clause.

In 15:5 it is a present active participle.

In 15:6 it is the present active subjunctive, again, as a part of the
conditional clause.

in 15:7 it is the aorist active subjunctive in a conditional clause.

In 15:9 it is the aorist active imperative.

In 15:10 it is the future active indicative.


So where am I going with this?  There are a number of views of what it means
to "abide in Christ" according top John 15.  As I set them before you in
brief, understand I AM NOT INTERESTED IN DISCUSSING THESE THEOLOGICAL VIEWS,
RATHER THEIR GRAMMATICAL VALIDITY as I have realized that they may be viewed
as differing temporally.

One view sees abiding as an activity maintained by obedience, and inactive
whenever we sin.  Thus it is on again off again.

Another sees abiding as the constant state of all believers. It is a given
which does not flux for the true believer.

I am presently thinking through traditional grammatical lenses like Wallace,
perspectives such as Porters, lexical issues, discourse analyisis, etc...

How would you understand the call to abide temporally in this passage, from
a purely grammatical stand point.  PLEASE, keep this tied to the syntax of
the Greek text.

Thanks in advance,
Brian P. Swedburg



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