[B-Greek] I John 5:1belief and regeneration

George F Somsel gfsomsel at juno.com
Fri Jan 21 22:51:28 EST 2005


On Fri, 21 Jan 2005 22:07:11 EST MAKARIOIOIPRAEIS at aol.com writes:
> Is it correct to say that 1 John 5:1a is a grammatical example of the 
> order 
> of faith and regeneration? 
> The substantive: pas ho pisteuon..."All the believing ones..." a 
> participle 
> in the present tense 
> The verb: gegennetai   "has been born of God" is a perfect passive 
> indicative
> 
> It was explained to me once that this verse is actually an indirect 
> statement 
> and that "John used perfect passives soley as adjectives without 
> emphasizing 
> time". The example that was given for the perfect passive was: "The 
> tired man 
> took a shower" "tired" functioning as an attributive adjective using 
> the 
> perfect passive tense, which does not emphasize when the man 
> actually got tired 
> (before or after he took a shower) . The example to explain the 
> verse was: " 
> Everyone believing that the sewer is filthy, from the sewer has been 
> rescued" 
> "Everyone believing..." the present participle 
> "has been rescued"     the perfect passive
> I questioned this because if John did not want to stress an event in 
> the past 
> with results abiding in the present he would have used an aorist 
> passive for 
> "been born of..." That would be the aspect of the aorist tense. 
> Also, although 
> the analogies were good he gave no examples from Scripture nor any 
> Greek 
> sources where perfect passives are used solely as adjectives as he 
> claimed. 
> Any comments? 
> Rich
____________________

I'm not sure after all of this if I'm supposed to be climbing into the
sewer or what!

Let's get the text in front of us

PAS hO PISTEUWN hOTI IHSOUS ESTIN hO XRISTOS, EK QEOU GEGENNHTAI . . .

Every one who believes . . .
PISTEUW does not primarily relate to intellectual assent but rather to
trust, but this slips over into intellectual assent particularly with the
addition of hOTI.  That which is trusted or assented to is that Jesus is
the Christ.

EK QEOU GEGENNHTAI . . .
Has been born (or "is in a state of having been born").  It would be
difficult, if not impossible, to assert that the "being born" is
subsequent to the "believing."  It would seem that the emphasis is upon
the antecedent work of God in regeneration which produces the believing. 
Wallace in his _Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics_, p. 573 has 
The force of the perfect tense is simply that it describes an event that,
completed in the past (we are speaking of the perfect indicative here),
has results existing in the present time (i.e., in relation to the time
of the speaker). Or, as Zerwick puts it, the perfect tense is used for
“indicating not the past action as such but the present ‘state of
affairs’ resulting from the past action.”
BDF suggest that the perfect tense “combines in itself, so to speak, the
present and the aorist in that it denotes the continuance of completed
action… .”

Thus, the believing might be construed as the continuing action of the
act of regeneration by God.

george
gfsomsel
___________


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