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Old 01-21-2007, 11:43 PM   #101
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The grammatical discussion related to the dog with no nose has been split off here. If I missed anything, PM me.

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Old 01-22-2007, 03:49 AM   #102
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[size="5"]Folks, the main point of this thread is concerning αιων and its adjectival form: αἰώνιον.

Does αιων have an adjectival form? Or is αἰώνιον an adjective that shares a root with αιων?
Just as ψυχὴ (psuche) has it's adjectival form as ψυχικὸς (psuchikos) i.e., that which pertains to the soul . . .

and just as οὐρανὸς (ouranos/heaven) has it's adjectival form as οὐρανοῖς (ouranois/heavenly) i.e. that which pertains to heaven . . .

Thus αιων (eon) has as its adjectival form αἰώνιον (eonian) i.e., that which pertains to the eon(s).

Therefore, where it is stated in Matthew 25:46:
Mat 25:46 And these shall be coming away into chastening eonian, yet the just into life eonian" (Concordant Literal) the duration is equivalent in that both the life and the chastening of the nations are pertaining to the eon.

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The main point of this thread is concerning whether or not the adjective means "eternal." It does not.

There is no eternal torment. God will have all mankind to be saved because Christ ransomed all mankind (see 1 Timothy 2:4-6) therefore there cannot be eternal torment either linguistically nor theologically.

As I suspected. You work from the principle that the meaning(s) of a word is determined by, and has to cohere with, dogma.

Leaving aside the question of how methodologically execrable this principle is for determining the meaning(s) that a word has, let me ask: Are you sure the dogma you derive from 1 Tim. 2:4-6 is sound? That is to say, are you sure that the theological "truth" you think is asserted there (i.e., that the god of Israel will not allow any human not to be saved) is actually what the text asserts, especially given the use of QELW in v. 4?


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Dear JB,
Actually, no, that would be working from an improper premise as to a word being determined by dogma. First the word is established and then dogma follows.

Posalutely, absotively yes I am sure the dogma derived from 1 Timothy 2:4-6 is sound. If one ventures into the Old Testament and researches every usage of "ransom" one will be delighted to find that every animal or human ransomed had to be loosed from that which was binding upon them. In the New Testament mankind is bound by sin and death. All mankind have been ransomed. Now they must be loosed from that sin and death into God's salvation.
You wrote: "QELW in v.4"? Do you mean θέλει in verse 4?

Of course there are still judgments looming on the horizon for the nations (Matthew 25:31-46) and for mankind (Revelation 20:11-15) but that is not the final goal God has for all mankind. It is just part of getting to that goal.
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Old 01-22-2007, 04:00 AM   #103
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Originally Posted by TonyN View Post
Folks, the main point of this thread is concerning αιων and its adjectival form: αἰώνιον.

The main point of this thread is concerning whether or not the adjective means "eternal." It does not.

There is no eternal torment. God will have all mankind to be saved because Christ ransomed all mankind (see 1 Timothy 2:4-6) therefore there cannot be eternal torment either linguistically nor theologically.
DBT: It appears that it is difficult to refute your point concerning αιων and its adjective. But the doctrine of universal salvation still doesn't seem to fit into the overall context of the NT. The overall impression one gets from reading the NT - the character of this God, the fall, original sin, damnation, etc - paints quite a different picture to what you are proposing. So apart from the problem with the interpretion of a single word, there still appears to be a contradiction in Theology.


Tony's reply:
Thanks for the reply DBT. I'm not sure why one would think that the character of God would relagate the mass of humanity to the trash heap. If Christ is any indication of the Character of God then He is most mercifully kind, compassionate to sinners.
If one looks at the "the fall and original sin" which you bring up, one may peruse Romans 5:12 and see the problem and the solution for all mankind in Romans 5:18,19.

As to damnation, it is never eternal. Even John in his gospel/account stated that Christ is the Saviour of the world and recorded John the Baptist as stating of Christ: Behold the lamb of God which is taking away the sin of the world. And in one of John's three epistles he states again that Jesus is the Saviour of the world and that He is the propitiatory shelter concerned not only with our sins but with the sins of the whole world also. In other words, Christ not only covered our sins but the whole world's sins also. There are plenty more verses.
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Old 01-22-2007, 09:42 AM   #104
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[MOD]
A quick note on Greek fonts. Select any Unicode font that includes the Greek charcaters, like Tahoma, for example, like this:

[FONT="Tahoma"]<Paste in your Greek text here>[/FONT]

IMPORTANT: THIS WILL ONLY WORK WITH UNICODE TEXT!!! This will not work if you copy from most commercial bible programs which are written by people who shouldn't be allowed to program anything, ever. It doesn't work because their text is encoded according to a particular font scheme, i.e. it only works with the fonts that follow their scheme, fonts you probably only have if you bought their program. That is why it is impossible to read much of the stuff that some people paste into their posts.

There are ways to translate from a font-encoded useless text to a proper unicode text. Over at SIL International they have lots of nice utilities that can do helpful font stuff. If you are more technically minded you can read my blog and download a Perl module that I wrote which will translate everything to everything else. Start here The ins and outs of displaying Greek text on the web… Part II. If anyone has any questions, please send me a PM.

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Old 01-22-2007, 09:51 AM   #105
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I agree with you on this part in bold above. That is my major premise. So why are you raking me over the coals as if I did not adhere to the above?
You are being 'raked over the coals' because you didn't read my post. To wit:

DBT quotes this:
...either before the noun as in the passage on the previous page: tou aioniou Theou
or after the noun which would then look like this: tou Theou tou aioniou...

To which you say:
...you are reversing the role of the adjective and noun. The adjective modifies the noun. You have the noun "God" modifying the adjective "aiwonios."...

Despite the fact that DBT's examples never had an adjective modifying a noun (and I would be curious to see an example of such a construction), as shown by my examples, specifically:

1st attributive: article adjective noun
2nd attributive: article noun article adjective

Now, the reason that his example quotes in the final sentence as for why it should be translated 'eternal' is as ridiculous as it is bizarre but that is not a gramatical issue, nor is it presented as such.

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Old 01-22-2007, 10:27 AM   #106
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Despite the fact that DBT's examples never had an adjective modifying a noun (and I would be curious to see an example of such a construction)....
Julian, did you mean to say that DBT never gave an example of a noun modifying an adjective? Because his examples did in fact have an adjective (eternal) modifying a noun (God).

Tony: I think you are confusing people with your use of the word modify. You seem to be saying that those examples that DBT offered have a noun (God, known to be everlasting) changing the meaning of the adjective from your preferred eonic to everlasting. But, in a grammatical context, that is not what people mean by that word modify; nobody here AFAICT thinks that nouns modify (in the grammatical sense) adjectives, and for you to say that the proferred examples in fact have a noun modifying an adjective is leading to all sorts of confusion. I think you should rephrase what you are saying so that people will understand you.

Your point is well taken that, just because an adjective grammatically modifies something that we know to be everlasting does not make the adjective mean everlasting; for example, the phrase red car does not imply that the word red means drivable just because we know cars are drivable. I think that is basically what you are trying to say (and, if it is not, then I am lost), but your talk of nouns modifying adjectives is confusing the matter.

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Old 01-22-2007, 10:45 AM   #107
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Originally Posted by Ben C Smith View Post
Julian, did you mean to say that DBT never gave an example of a noun modifying an adjective? Because his examples did in fact have an adjective (eternal) modifying a noun (God).
Here is what TonyN responded to when he said that DBT had a noun modifying an adjective:
Quote:
Quote;
"Adjectives may be used in three distinct ways in Greek: attributively, predicatively and substantively. The attributive use of the adjective is that use in which the adjective attributes a quality to the noun modified. In the attributive construction there are two possible positions of the adjective in relation to the noun:
either before the noun as in the passage on the previous page: tou aioniou Theou
or after the noun which would then look like this: tou Theou tou aioniou
Note that the adjective aioniou is immediately preceded by the definite article tou in this second possibility of the attributive case.
In the attributive case therefore the adjective aioniou strongly modifies Theou in whichever position the adjective is placed. Since God is an eternal God the adjective aioniou must be translated eternal or everlasting in the above two examples."
I may have simply missed it, but I see nothing here where DBT has a noun modifying an adjective.

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Old 01-22-2007, 10:51 AM   #108
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Originally Posted by Ben C Smith View Post
Tony: I think you are confusing people with your use of the word modify. You seem to be saying that those examples that DBT offered have a noun (God, known to be everlasting) changing the meaning of the adjective from your preferred eonic to everlasting. But, in a grammatical context, that is not what people mean by that word modify; nobody here AFAICT thinks that nouns modify (in the grammatical sense) adjectives, and for you to say that the proferred examples in fact have a noun modifying an adjective is leading to all sorts of confusion. I think you should rephrase what you are saying so that people will understand you.
I am one of the guilty parties when it comes to not using the proper terminology. When a word is required in a construction it is a complement and when it is not required but adds addtional detail it is an adjunct. In our case we can say that the adjective is a substantival adjunct, it adds detail to the noun it modifies. Ooops!

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Old 01-22-2007, 11:22 AM   #109
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(God, known to be everlasting)
Is that not also an assumption that needs to be proven?

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Their counting system is this: one, two, many
http://quidnimis.squarespace.com/yanomami/
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Old 01-22-2007, 11:31 AM   #110
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Is that not also an assumption that needs to be proven?
It is the ultimate in circular reasoning. αιων must mean eternal. Why? Because we know god is eternal. How? It says right here that god is eternal. Rinse and repeat.

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