There is an interesting article at http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222018000400010
The article is written by Albert J. Coetsee and entitled, "By His Word"? Creation, Preservation and Consummation in the book of Hebrews.
I found the original research of Coetsee to be helpful, but there is one section I'd like to critique. He writes:
The main sentence of 1:3-4 is ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης ἐν ὑψηλοῖς, with the aorist indicative ἐκάθισεν indicating an act in the past. This main clause is preceded by three clauses: the first (ὃς ὢν ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ) and second clause (φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ) are joined by the conjunction τε, indicating the close relationship between them.9 In near hymnal fashion,10 these two phrases describe the eternity of the Son, specifically his eternal status and his eternal activity. Consequently, both present participles (ὢν and φέρων) indicate timeless actions (cf. Ellingworth 1993:98; Mackie 2008:446).11 The aorist participium (ποιησάμενος) of the third clause (καθαρισμὸν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ποιησάμενος) indicates a once-off, prior action.
My remarks: This section of his paper is supposed to be a "syntactical analysis," which in large part, it is. Yet when Coetsee extracts the Son's "eternity," "eternal status," and "eternal activity" from ὃς ὢν ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ and φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ, he has shifted from syntactical analysis to theological commentary. While the field of NT studies will probably never move away from these kinds of analyses, I just think too much is being asked of debatable terms and Greek parts of speech when someone makes such affirmations on the basis of terms that could mean "reflection, radiation, gleam, out-raying" or "exact representation/reproduction" in the case of χαρακτὴρ. Even taking the entire nominal phrases into consideration does not necessarily yield the datum that the Son is eternal and doing an eternal activity. But Trinitarians, for the most part, will be Trinitarians.
My second critique is when Coetsee claims that ὢν and φέρων suggest "timeless actions." I would like to research this point further, but I'm fairly certain that "timeless action" is a dubious way to explain these present participles, even in this context: this is not a grammatical observation far as I can tell but a theological one. Finally, Greek grammarians and scholars have long pointed out that aorist forms (including the aorist participium) may indicate prior actions, but they do not inherently portray once-off actions: the aorist is the default tense (form) and it depicts action as a whole, not just once-off action. Any punctiliar action must be extracted from the marked features of a verb (i.e., from its context of utterance); without the markedness, there is no punctiliarity.
God isn't timeless anyway. He has no beginning but he has succession. Jesus has a beginning.
ReplyDeleteI agree, but traditional theology claims God is timeless, Christ is God the Son, so then Christ is timeless. But Hebrews 1:3 teaches no such thing.
ReplyDeleteI have little patience for scholars who pretend to be doing purely grammatical analysis and sneak on theological arguemnts. I have found that just sticking to pure syntax and grammer will not get you very far, at most it will limit the possibilities, and provide a framework in which content provides meaning, the real meaning comes from the various levels of context and concepts.
ReplyDeleteI feel like this is sometimes done to give the claims an air of objectivity and "scientific" rigour, to pretend like the theological claim is not theological but just scientific and grammatical, if you're making a theological claim, I think you should just do the theological argumentation, can grammer be a part of that? Of course, inso far as it's a part of exegesis which is part of theology, but you have to make the actual theological argument, and theological arguments can be just as rigourous as any other discipline.
But I don't see why one should pretend grammar/syntax can do more than it actually can, if language was that rigid it wouldn't work, I mean could you imagine if present participles represented "timeless" action in the theological sense of "timeless"?
Like you, I have no problem with theological arguments, but I believe we should try to keep syntactical and grammatical considerations distinct from theological views. On the other hand, I really think most NT scholars don't even think about these things because it just seems so obvious to them that Hebrews affirms the deity of Christ and these statements have been repeated by luminaries such as Westcott, Robertson, and Alford, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm also not against mingling theology with biblical exegesis so long as the exegesis is done before carting in theology. And regarding timeless participles, it seems like Coetsee and Alford play on the ambiguity of the word "timeless." Participles are timeless in a sense, but I still don't see how a present participle can tell us that God (or Christ) is timeless ontologically. After all, the participle can get its tense (time) from the context. Present participle are used in nontheological contexts throughout Greek literature, where they clearly don't refer to timeless entities.
I absolutely agree with the exegesis. One has to do the historical exegesis first, and then interpretation through a theological hermenuitic, and then theological construction with the philosophical theology.
ReplyDeleteI agree, of course participles are "timeless" that they are indeterminate temporally, but that isn't the timeless Coetsee is trying to sneak in. It's unfortunate that this kind of sloppiness is so common.
Yeah, I admit that I haven't always caught these comments, but if we slow down and read these writers closely, we'll probably catch a lot of it that's done by major scholars. I remember that Jason Beduhn called Rob Bowman out for these kind of indiscretions like making up grammatical categories for Greek.
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