[B-Greek] Subjunctive Aorist & Future Indicative in Rom 10:9

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jan 1 11:44:55 EST 2007


On Monday, January 01, 2007, at 08:53AM, "Fuller Ming" <fullerming at gmail.com> wrote:

>Greetings and Happy New Year,
>
>I am new to this list, so I have no idea how busy it is...

Welcome to the list. How busy it is varies considerably from one day to the next! You ought, if you haven't already done so, to read carefully through the B-Greek FAQ at http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/faq.html  -- you'll find our rules governing appropriate topics for list discussion, list-etiquette, and also our transliteration scheme that we use for representing Greek text in plain-text ASCII (our messages all go out in plain-text ASCII).

>Can someone help me with something?
>
>I want to understand Roman 10:9 a little better.  (note - I'm learning NTG
>so if I mess up below, please feel free to correct me!)

We normally reproduce the text in question (using the standard B-Greek
transliteration scheme) so that readers and responders can more readily
see exactly what's involved:

Rom 10:0 hOTI EAN hOMOLOGHSHiS EN TWi STOMATI SOU KURION IHSOUN
KAI PISTEUSHiS EN THi KARDIAi SOU hOTI hO QEOS AUTON HGEIREN
EK NEKRWN SWQHSHi

>Why the subjunctive mood for confess (homologeo) and believe (pisteuo)? What
>does it mean to be aorist subjunctive?  These words are not translated in
>the past tense in English.   Would it be safe to translate something like,
>"if you actually confessed..." or " if you really had confessed...",
>indicating the mood and putting it in the past tense?  Why don't translators
>do this - is there a theological prejudice here?  Or am I really off base?
>Does this construct eliminate the "time" element typically associated with
>the tense?  Aorist is "a point in time", right?  It is thus, past tense and
>a summary, correct? This is the "Deliberative Subjunctive" - what I was
>sleeping through because NT Greek was starting to get way too complicated
>for my brain!

Several questions there:
(1) This is a CONDITIONAL formula: "IF you do X, THEN Y will occur." In Biblical
Greek the IF clause generally requires EAN + subjunctive, and in this particular
kind of conditional sentence, it's more often than not an aorist subjunctive in
the IF clause and a future indicative in the result clause.

(2) In the indicative mood the Aorist usually represents past action, but in
subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, and participle it represents VERBAL ASPECT,
and for the aorist that's normally "perfective" -- meaning "get something done"
or "accomplish something" -- as opposed to the verbal aspect of a Present,
which is ordinarily "durative" -- meaning "action in process, ordinarily not yet
completed." Verbal aspect is something that takes some getting used to
through reading lots of texts, so if you have some initial difficulty, don't worry
too much about it. It's also something about ancient Greek that linguists have 
been disputing for a few decades now without quite yet achieving any real
consensus.

>In addition, save (sotzo) is a future, passive, indicative - pretty straight
>forward.  Saved by who? (by God, but He is not specified, thus the passive),
>and it's a future indicative.  The plain meaning then is that you will at
>some time in the future be saved.  Why do so many people take this as
>immediately after the confession and belief?  Is there a better way in Greek
>to indicate an immediate result?

(3) I would English the sentence as "If you believe (have believed/once come 
to belief) that ... , then you will be saved." Nothing is said about WHEN you
will be saved, only that it depends upon your believing (and confessing). It's
simply a matter of contingency: IF you believe, THEN you will get saved.
You can be sure that Y will follow upon completion of X.

>Finally, it seems that the overall context of this verse is the fact that
>everyone can be saved - on behalf of them (huper autwn)- probably referring
>to the Jews, "i.e. Israel" in verse 1- but the point is specified later in
>verses 13 and following:  For all/"everyone" (pas) who call (epikaleo) -
>another subjunctive aorist word - will be saved (future, indicative of
>sotzo).  It seems that the overall message is that Everyone CAN be saved -
>it is not a formula for HOW to be saved, but I have frequently seen this
>verse used in the "Roman Road" as a scripted evangelistic tool.  Is the
>"Roman Road" and "The Four Spiritual Laws (Rom 10:9 has been used as the
>basis for the prayer at the end)" and other such "tools" - are these things
>a poor and over-simplified use of God's word?
>
>It seems, then, that the passage is saying, "there is no way anyone will
>eventually be saved unless there is authentic faith (i.e.
>confession/belief).  Or put another way, "anyone can eventually be saved as
>long as they start with authentic faith".
>
>Help - this is a little important for me.

One thing you must realize (and I think it's spelled out pretty clearly in the
FAQ) is that we don't discuss doctrinal questions on B-Greek. We stick to
what the Greek text AS A GREEK TEXT can be shown to say and avoid
drawing out the implications (because that's generally where the pre-
suppositions that people bring to bear on the text enter in and skew 
their ways of understanding the implications considerably. There are
different conceptions of what "confess" and "believe" mean here and
there are also different conceptions about some time-frame for the
WHEN of salvation.

>--Fuller

Please not in the FAQ that we do ask list-members to sign their full
names to messages sent to the list. Once again, let me bid you
welcome to B-Greek.

Carl W. Conrad, Co-Chair, B-Greek discussion list
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)



More information about the B-Greek mailing list