[B-Greek] Once For All Time - Luke 18:9-14
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Jul 11 10:15:04 EDT 2009
My apologies are called for as well as some clarification. Apologies
for misreading Richard's unambiguous questions regarding the Lucan
passage in question and the two verb-forms upon which interpretation
of the passage is deemed to hinge. Mark understood precisely what
Richard was getting at and has even shared with list-members, after
his own fashion (ars est celare artem, as some rhetorician once
declared) his warm approval of the substance and intent of the
original message. I really would rather read questions posed to the
list at face value, naive as that may be. In this instance -- not for
the first, and probably not for the last time, either -- I have
suspected subtlety in the formulation of the question when none was
intended; I endeavored to interpret the interlaced annotations
inappropriately. Compounding my own obtuseness, I was obscure and
obtuse in my comments about the way the query was posed. I apologize.
By way of clarification, briefly, I've never claimed to be a proponent
or sponsor of the relatively recent theories on tense/aspect proposed
by Porter, Fanning, McKay, etc. I have stated more than a couple times
my belief that "the dust has not yet settled" on the questions
associated with tense/aspect, and that it seems presumptuous to me to
publish a book touted as a primer on Biblical Greek Verbal Aspect as
if there were some scholarly consensus on this still quite
controversial area. That said, I do indeed believe that some
propositions about tense and aspect set forth in older grammatical
tradition, particularly those evoked in the cited commentary on Lk
18:9-14 (the aorist indicates a "once for all time" event; the perfect
tense indicates a permanent status achieved) seem dubious, indeed
sometimes seem rooted in theological eisegesis. That is my own
perspective; I make no claim to represent any consensus view.
That said, I only want to state a couple points of clarification
regarding what I have written regarding the interpretation (hardly an
exegesis) of the verb-forms in Lk 18:
(1) hILASQHTI: I understand this to be an urgent prayer that God's
mercy be bestowed upon the tax-collector at once. Call that
"punctiliar" if you like. I can understand that many probably do
believe, with Richard's unnamed cited commentator, that this aorist
imperative form should be understood with reference to a "once for all
time" act of God. I don't think that there's anything about the verb-
form requiring that interpretation. I have no difficulty believing
that sincere individuals may, on more than one occasion, fall on their
knees and earnestly plead for God's mercy; I don't think that such an
act of contrition and prayer for God's mercy necessarily secures the
person involved from sinning again thereafter and coming yet once more
to a moment of contrition and confession and plea for God's mercy. The
Jewish Yom Kippur ritual seems to be grounded in the expectation that
human sinfulness and the need for atonement are recurrent, and
passages in 1 John, among others, seem predicated on the notion that
believers are not proof from further sinning nor exonerated from the
need for future confession. Confessional formulae such as the
traditional "I have done things I ought not to have done and left
undone the things which I ought to have done" are deemed an essential
part of many if not most orthodox liturgies of worship. I would guess
that it is not only employees of the IRS who may find this weekly
confession something more than a piece of ritual lip-service.
(2) DEDIKAIWMENOS: Whether it's better to understand this as middle or
passive semantically, I'm not sure (although I AM convinced that
there's a good reason why middle and passive semantics are not clearly
restricted to distinct morphoparadigms). I've said that I'm not
convinced that the Koine perfect tense remains clearly distinct in
sense from the Koine aorist, which is to say, I'm not convinced that
there's any significant difference in meaning between DEDIKAIWMENOS
and DIKAIWQEIS. I do believe, however, that DEDIKAIWMENOS does NOT
need to be understood in terms of a Pauline doctrine of
"justification," and I do NOT believe that the perfect tense of this
word must necessarily imply a permanent status of DIKAIOSUNH imputed
to the tax-collector of this parable.
I realize and acknowledge that I opened myself up to misunderstanding
by stating that DEDIKAIOWMENOS might be Englished as "a man of
demonstrated righteousness or a man who has demonstrated his
righteousness." What I meant was simply that the tax-collector's act
of confession and contrition and his earnest plea for God's mercy had
shown clearly the stance of a DIKAIOS ANHR. It is the attitude
demonstrated in his behavior that is approved and recommended in
Jesus' parable in contrast to the self-righteous attitude of the
parable's Pharisee.
There's clearly a disagreement over how we understand these keys words
in this parable. I'm sure that different interpreters will understand
this passage differently in accordance with the assumptions that they
bring to bear upon it, just as is the case with other Biblical texts.
For my part, I just don't think it's necessary to read hILASQHTI as a
petition for once-for-all-time mercy or to read DEDIKAIWMENOS as an
indicator of the tax-collector's permanent status as one declared
righteous by God.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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