Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.(1 John 5:1).
According to James White, intellectual deficiency is everyone else’s problem, never his. He routinely attempts to belittle opponents by implying they lack competence in Greek or contextual analysis. The performance is meant to project expertise, but it consistently collapses under its own weight. In this instance White claims that provisionists cannot refute his claim that 1 John 5:1 is evidence that the regeneration precedes faith which is the Reformed (Calvinist) soteriological view. I generally avoid theological labels, and I do not identify as a provisionist. Nevertheless various non-provisionist interpreters have answered this question.
Πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων > Everyone believing.. . ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ γεγέννηται > has been born of God.
White: "πιστευων comes from being born of God."
πιστευων is a substantival participle: it is a verbal adjective that functions as a noun > it describes what someone is doing.
Parallel passages
..everyone doing righteousness has been born from him . Why do we do righteousness? Because we have been regenerated. The grammar in 1 John 2:29 supports a causal relationship (because one has been regenerated, one practices righteousness), not a temporal sequence (first X happens, then later Y happens). In other words, it is diagnostic, not chronological. There is no temporal marker suggesting 'first regeneration, then later righteousness'. There is no causal marker suggesting 'righteousness causes regeneration'. The construction simply asserts: the one characterized by righteous practice is one whose origin is in God. This is Johannine cause‑and‑effect, but not time‑indexed. The perfect tense encodes state resulting from prior action, not the timing of that action.
The same structure appears in 1 John 4:7: πᾶς ὁ ἀγαπῶν γεγέννηται ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ. We love because we have been born of God. Again, the logic is causal and evidential, not chronological. The observable action (loving) discloses the underlying state (having been begotten of God).
This principle carries directly into 1 John 5:1: πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων … γεγέννηται ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ. The participle describes the ongoing state of the believer, and the perfect verb identifies the divine begetting as the underlying cause. It is not a chronological construct but a causal one: the state of believing discloses the prior and continuing reality of having been born of God.
The Perfect Tense in Koine Greek
The perfect tense is not a straightforward mechanical category; its semantic force is nuanced and determined by context. Any argument that hinges on its form alone should be approached critically, all the more when it produces tension with broader scriptural evidence or doctrinal coherence.
The perfect tense conveys aspect, not time. In biblical Greek, aspect is a grammatical property of verbs that describes how the action is presented by the speaker or writer, not when it happens. It is distinct from tense (which marks time: past, present, future) and instead focuses on the internal viewpoint of the action.1
Albasciano: "If ó TTIOTEÚCUU and yeyÉvvriTai are to be related temporally in some way, as seems likely, then the grammar actually suggests that believing and being begot ten of God are portrayed as contemporaneous (or perhaps that believing pre cedes being begotten of God; see below). It is well recognized by most Greek implying that relative temporal significance can obtain in other types of participles, such as substantival ones. Later Wallace indicates explicitly that articular participles can bear a temporal significance relative to the main verb (625-26), as does B. M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 409. Even more positively. Camphell, Aspect, 122, states that the present substantival participle 'is normally contemporaneous in time frame' (with the main verb of the sentence). And according to William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 3rd edn, 2009), § 29.13, 'The present and aorist participles have a relative time significance regardless of whether they are adverbial or adjectival.' In my judgment, it seems that substantival participles do typically suggest time relative to the main verb to some extent because they identify on the basis of action, which usually will have some sort of natural temporal relationship to the action of the main verb. Nevertheless, there may be many exceptions, such as suhstantival participles that function as a mere name or title, and as with time even in the indicative, other factors from the context besides tense form help to determine time with respect to any participle; cf. Wallace, 514-16."2
1. New Testament Greek+1.
2. Abasciano.-Does-Regeneration-Precede-Faith.-The-Use-of-1-John-5.1-as-a-Proof-Text.pdf
3. A Reply to Renald Showers on James 5:7–9, Imminency, and the Meaning of the Greek Perfect Tense - Ep. 44
Kings To You, Fernand.pdf
Perfect Tense Fallacies - by Michael F. Bird
The perfect tense conveys aspect, not time. In biblical Greek, aspect is a grammatical property of verbs that describes how the action is presented by the speaker or writer, not when it happens. It is distinct from tense (which marks time: past, present, future) and instead focuses on the internal viewpoint of the action.1
Albasciano: "If ó TTIOTEÚCUU and yeyÉvvriTai are to be related temporally in some way, as seems likely, then the grammar actually suggests that believing and being begot ten of God are portrayed as contemporaneous (or perhaps that believing pre cedes being begotten of God; see below). It is well recognized by most Greek implying that relative temporal significance can obtain in other types of participles, such as substantival ones. Later Wallace indicates explicitly that articular participles can bear a temporal significance relative to the main verb (625-26), as does B. M. Fanning, Verbal Aspect in New Testament Greek (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 409. Even more positively. Camphell, Aspect, 122, states that the present substantival participle 'is normally contemporaneous in time frame' (with the main verb of the sentence). And according to William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 3rd edn, 2009), § 29.13, 'The present and aorist participles have a relative time significance regardless of whether they are adverbial or adjectival.' In my judgment, it seems that substantival participles do typically suggest time relative to the main verb to some extent because they identify on the basis of action, which usually will have some sort of natural temporal relationship to the action of the main verb. Nevertheless, there may be many exceptions, such as suhstantival participles that function as a mere name or title, and as with time even in the indicative, other factors from the context besides tense form help to determine time with respect to any participle; cf. Wallace, 514-16."2
Alan Kurschner: The perfect tense does not encode 'past action,' as it is commonly thought. This is a dated and fallacious understanding of the Greek verb system, not just the perfect tense, because 'tense' is often associated in English for 'time.' Not so in Greek. Only the context—not the tense-form—construes temporal reference of an action happening in the past, present, or future. When that action happens is construed by the larger context, not the tense-form of a Greek verb. The perfect tense-form communicates the semantic value of aspect, which is how the author chooses to view the action. The perfect sense conveys the aspect of a “state of affairs.” And an author typically chose the perfect tense-form to function as discourse prominence.3
1. New Testament Greek+1.
2. Abasciano.-Does-Regeneration-Precede-Faith.-The-Use-of-1-John-5.1-as-a-Proof-Text.pdf
3. A Reply to Renald Showers on James 5:7–9, Imminency, and the Meaning of the Greek Perfect Tense - Ep. 44
Kings To You, Fernand.pdf
Perfect Tense Fallacies - by Michael F. Bird
No comments:
Post a Comment