[B-Greek] Eph 4:11-12

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Wed Dec 29 10:49:54 EST 2004


At 10:34 AM 12/29/2004, you wrote:
>I am responding with a desire to learn the functional rules of this list.
>
>It appears to me that we have two experts who disagree. On the one hand, who
>on the basis of personal authority makes a declarative statement.

I'm not sure what the last sentence means.  Would you mind clarifying?

>Since I
>am not familiar with his qualifications, although I have a tendancy to agree
>with him, I would not accept his statments simply on his personal signature.

Its always wise to weigh the merits of ideas on both a person's 
qualifications and on the evidence (in the reverse order).  What I mean by 
that is that everyones opinion might matter, but not everyone's opinion is 
of equal weight.  To put it simply, would you go to a witchdoctor for 
medical treatment or someone who had been to medical school?  Now, transfer 
that to any discipline- would you ask advice of Jerry Springer regarding 
biblical exegesis or someone who actually had studied it formally?

>On the other hand we have a ?tri-lingualist" who cites a German reference
>which is not inspired and whose state is on the same standing as the first
>assertion, but with whom I would have a tendency to disagree.

I suppose this is a reference to me?  And the "tri-linguist" part implies 
that my mention of German and Greek plus my writing in English persuades 
you that I am at least somewhat familiar with these languages.  I'm just 
guessing here so correct me if I'm wrong.  Your sentence "whose state is on 
the same standing as the first assertion, but with whom I would have a 
tendency to disagree" is a bit unclear to me.  What do you mean?


>Arguments from silence are always weak. And I would think that to establish
>the "then and now" hypothesis, those who support should cite biblical
>examples where it might be clearly evident, or at least hypothetically
>viable, or the argument becomes moot.

Well I don't know that it becomes moot so much as it remains 
undemonstrated.  Carl was kind enough to remind me that in order to 
understand the passage as I had suggested, and please do recall it was just 
a suggestion, not a verbum dei, the phrase would have to be "tote men.... 
nun de".  A reminder for which I am grateful.


>Comments?
>
>Charles D. Rempel
>30 year student
>Without portfolio

I'm not really sure what that means either and if you could flesh it out a 
bit I would be grateful.

Best,

Jim


++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest Biblical Studies Resources
http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com Biblical Theology Weblog






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