I'm glad to see that you're no longer arguing that Greek grammar at John 20:28 provides "proof" for your particular interpretation.calvinist wrote:Hi Isaac, I know I said I'd avoid your threads, but I want to correct your misunderstanding without getting into a christological debate. No one has said "with an expression like εἶπεν αὐτῷ those being referred to with the personal pronoun (αὐτῷ) are necessarily being "identified" by what follows." Of course that would be a bogus argument, in fact it would be ridiculous to say. Anything could follow εἶπεν αὐτῷ. No one with any knowledge of Greek would claim that whatever follows that phrase must be identified with αὐτῷ, that's just silly. For instance, assume John asks Jim what Genesis is about and then εἶπεν αὐτῷ... and the whole book of Genesis follows word for word. Using grammar "rules" to prove things is bad anyway, context always trumps "rules" because human languages aren't computer codes and they don't work as neatly in reality as they do in grammar books.Isaac Newton wrote:I was reading the gospel of Matthew this evening and the following captured my interest:
So this pretty much takes away the bogus [trinitarian] argument that with an expression like εἶπεν αὐτῷ those being referred to with the personal pronoun (αὐτῷ) are necessarily being "identified" by what follows. .ὁ δὲ ἔφη αὐτοῖς Ἐχθρὸς ἄνθρωπος τοῦτο ἐποίησεν. οἱ δὲ δοῦλοι αὐτῷ λέγουσιν Θέλεις οὖν ἀπελθόντες συλλέξωμεν αὐτά;
The argument for John 20:28 is based upon the context.
Even in English (where there is no distinction between the vocative and nominative) no reasonable person would think (let alone insist) that if Jack says to John, "dog!" that the former is identifying the latter as a "dog."If it said ἀπεκρίθη Θωμᾶς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ὁ κύριός μου καὶ ὁ θεός μου εν τη οικια εστιν, then it'd be quite possible that he was telling Jesus about someone else, but the context would determine that. And if the verb were plural εισιν, no one would argue against you. As it stands though, there is no predicate, and so it is not a clause. When someone says "dog!" or "John!" or "airplane!", they are either calling that person/thing (vocative) or pointing out the person/thing to someone (nominative).
I think you have inadvertently proved my position here. In the Koine Greek ( of the GNT) we have a constant distinction made between the vocative and the nominative forms of κύριός . And you will discover that at John 20:28 the nominative form of this word is used, which is grammatical proof that Thomas , to use your own words, was not "calling that person (vocative)" .