[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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