Isaac, I asked you a couple times, so here is my conclusion:
Cite a source that says John couldn’t use constructio ad sensum in John 1:2 (τουτο) because it would introduce confusion, or else I call that assertion pure fantasy.
You gave no source, so this assertion is pure fantasy.
Cite a source that says a native Greek speaker would read 1 John 1 the way you propose (λογος as the antecedent of o/ the ghost verb λεγω), or else I call that assertion pure fantasy.
You gave no source, so this assertion is pure fantasy.
What is the earliest reference of anyone seeing theological value in this verse via constructio ad sensum? It’s the “natural” reading for a native Greek speaker, so we should find lots of discussion of it and early right? If not, I reaffirm that your assertion of it being the “natural” reading is pure fantasy.
You gave no references to this verse by the early Greek-speaking church affirming that your assertion is pure fantasy.
Hypothetical: 10 Greek students unfamiliar with the text… How do they translate it? How many interpret λογος as the antecedent of o? How many insert the ghost verb “I say” in their translation? How many?
I must assume that you don’t want to answer this because you agree with me that no one would interpret this verse the way you do unless they come to it with an agenda.
Are you uncertain about the reading/grammar/syntax of this passage? If so, where? If not, and you just want us to explain to you why we read it the way we do then you are merely looking to debate and this thread should be moved to the debate forum.
I’m done discussing this with you. You will convince no one on this forum to accept your position, you’re wasting your time. Textkit is not the mission field. You’d have more success convincing people with no knowledge of Greek.
Yes, we’ve been back-and-forth many times on CARM, where he goes by the name “John Milton.” He joined B-Greek for a time and was banned. I’ve offered to actually teach him Greek over Skype, but he refused. He really knows next to nothing.
If you don’t believe that τὸ φῶς has a natural masculine gender, then it would make no sense for constructio ad sensum to be used. This betrays a complete ignorance of how and why constructio ad sensum appears in a text. It is natural gender (and number) overriding grammatical gender (and number). If there is no natural gender, then constructio ad sensumwill not occur.
This is what I stated of your position, and you said that I was misrepresenting you. There you have it. You think that φῶς has a natural gender, and that it is masculine. I did not misrepresent you.
Light can not be naturally masculine or feminine. This is why φῶς is neuter in Greek, while in Spanish and Latin luz and lux are both feminine, respectively. It does not have a natural gender. It has only grammatical gender, which is arbitrary. The same is true of all nouns - they all have grammatical gender that is not related to natural gender. “Table” is masculine in Hebrew (שולחן), feminine in Greek (ἡ τράπεζα), feminine in Spanish (la mesa) and masculine in German (der Tisch). Grammatical gender is arbitrary and unpredictable between languages - unless it is in line with natural gender.
Your obsession with the question of the Trinity and your lack of real desire to become engaged in learning the Greek language drew the moderators’ attention to your posts. You received warnings about how we (moderators at B-Greek) expect people to behave on the forum. You refused to relent and were banned. The why is your behavior. The who were the moderators of the forum - among whom I belong.
Thanks for your opinion. It has again been recorded and ignored.
I’m afraid not. Where did you state that the Unitarian position is that τὸ φῶς in verses 10, 11 and 12 has natural gender ?
Light can not be naturally masculine or feminine. This is why φῶς is neuter in Greek, while in Spanish and Latin > luz > and > lux > are both feminine, respectively. It does not have a natural gender. It has only grammatical gender, which is arbitrary. The same is true of all nouns - they all have grammatical gender that is not related to natural gender. “Table” is masculine in Hebrew (שולחן), feminine in Greek (ἡ τράπεζα), feminine in Spanish (> la mesa> ) and masculine in German (> der Tisch> ). Grammatical gender is arbitrary and unpredictable between languages - unless it is in line with natural gender.
Those are not the reasons given to me for why I was banned . It was done on the basis of a technicality , which you highlighted to the moderators. I’ll give you another opportunity to tell the truth on this score, …to give the real reason, the one you [conveniently] left off.
FWIW, Daniel Wallace (a Trinitarian) agrees with me that natural gender of τὸ φῶς is
used in the place of it’s grammatical gender in John 1:12, that is, that αὐτόν here refers to τὸ φῶς by ad sensum construction. . Not that I hold Wallace’s opinion or even his “scholarship” in high esteem, but I know that he carries weight with our resident “intermediate Greek students” at Textkit.
I don’t really care what the “technicality” was, I’ve experienced your behavior firsthand. You resort to ad hominems regularly and question everyone else’s competence in Greek even respected Greek scholars. You are obviously obsessed with debating the deity of Christ as jaihare has said. How do you explain your behavior in this thread where jeidsath was just translating the Didache as an exercise? http://discourse.textkit.com/t/didache/13394/1
And this was the assistance you gave:
Can you not see that such behavior makes you look obsessed with this topic in a very unhealthy way? Like I asked before, what is wrong with you? I wouldn’t be surprised if the major driving force behind you learning Greek, or at least how to talk about it, was so that you could debate this topic and tower above those who can’t discuss technical grammar concepts like constructio ad sensum.
jaihare is correct that you misunderstand the concept of grammatical gender. Greek has 3 grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), but only 2 natural genders (male/female). You seem to think that m/f/n are essentially natural genders in Greek which sometimes don’t match up. Actually, it’s the opposite. Greek, as well as Latin and Hebrew for that matter, are essentially based on grammatical gender, that means it’s purely a function of grammar and agreement between nominals. There are languages that have many more than 3 grammatical genders, which affirms that grammatical gender is distinct from natural gender. English, by contrast, does not have grammatical gender, but only natural gender. The pronoun “it” in English is not a third gender but the absence of gender, there are only two natural genders. You are confusing Greek with English. Read this article thoroughly especially the section on “grammatical vs. natural gender”:
The key phrase is “This usually means masculine or feminine, depending on the referent’s sex”, i.e. natural gender is biological sex, male or female. Jaihare is exactly right in that if John wanted to express some theological point about the λογος being impersonal he wouldn’t do it with a neuter relative/demonstrative referring back to λογος, because “neuter” is not a natural gender, only a grammatical gender and it would be unclear at most what John was trying to express. If John wanted to make the point you want him to make, he would do it explicitly, not through some grammar “magic”. I call approaches like yours “linguistic mysticism”.
There seems to be rather profound ignorance of simple grammar concepts here. For those readers who do not know , in Greek the masculine form of a pronoun is regularly used to convey the fact that a person, not a thing is in view even though it is referring to a grammatically neuter noun. This is known as construction according to sense.
Here’s Daniel Wallace explaining ad sensum construction , quite well:
A word should be mentioned first about the use of natural grammar
in the NT. All exegetes recognize that natural gender is sometimes
used in the place of grammatical gender in Greek. Robertson
notes that > "substantives have two sorts of gender, natural and grammatical.
The two do not always agree. > The apparent violations of the
rules of gender can generally be explained by the conflict in these
two points of view."2
…In Matt 28:19 the Lord instructs
the eleven to “make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them”
(maqhteu/sate pa/nta ta_ e@qnh, bapti/zontej au)tou/j): > although “nations”
is neuter, the pronoun “them” is masculine because people are in
view. In Gal 4:19, Paul speaks of “my children, whom” (te/kna mou
ou#j), using the masculine relative pronoun to refer to the "children> ."3
Here’s Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985), 3.859-60 making the case that holy spirit is a “person” because it is [apparently] being referred to with masculine pronouns in John 16:13-14:
The first evidence of the Spirit’s personality is the use of the mascu-
line pronoun in representing him. > Since the word pneu=ma is neuter,
and since pronouns are to agree with their antecedents in person,
number, and gender, we would expect the neuter pronoun to be
used to represent the Holy Spirit. Yet in John 16:13-14 we find an
unusual phenomenon. > As Jesus describes the Holy Spirit’s ministry,
he uses a masculine pronoun (e)kei=noj) where we would expect a
neuter pronoun. > The only possible antecedent in the immediate con-
text is “Spirit of Truth” (v. 13). . . . > [John] deliberately chose to use
the masculine to convey to us the fact that Jesus is referring to a per-
son, not a thing. > A similar reference is Ephesians 1:14, where, in a
relative clause modifying “Holy Spirit,” the preferred textual read-
ing is o#j.
I agree, and it’s on your part. What you cited refers to constructio ad sensum with the masculine, that is irrelevant to what jaihare and now I have said, which is that there are 3 grammatical genders in Greek (masculine, feminine, neuter) and 2 natural genders (male, female). There are only 2 natural genders, that is just an objective truth of reality. Natural gender is independent of the grammar of any particular language, that’s why it’s “natural” and not “grammatical”. What jaihare has aptly demonstrated is that constructio ad sensum can be used to affirm the personality of a noun that has a neuter grammatical gender but it cannot be used to make a noun with masculine grammatical gender impersonal. Nail in the coffin of your argument if you ask me. Jaihare is obviously more knowledgeable on this subject than me or you, and his argument is persuasive. Of course it won’t persuade you because that would mean abandoning your position and this entire thread which has been active for over a year, which would require a massive amount of humility.
Here’s an honest and accurate perspective of the grammar at John 1 and at 1 John 1 as understood by Unitarians, …by Dr. Buzzard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJoS3zWd4uA
I am not " trying to make a noun with masculine grammatical gender impersonal." In fact this statement does not make sense to me. If Jaihare also believes that i’m doing this (whatever it’s supposed to be) , then he’s clearly misunderstood me as you have.
Your refusal to identify the antecedent (or postcedent) of αὐτόν at John 1:12 suggests to me that you may now be lingering around just to troll.
Yes you are, that’s the whole reason why you’re trying to get everyone to accept λογος as the antecedent of o in 1 John 1. Now you’re just being disingenuous. λογος has masculine grammatical gender and your argument is that the neuter relative o is to make λογος impersonal.
The contradictions in your personality are almost comical.
I believe in second (and third, and fourth…) chances – I shall assume (at least for now) that you sincerely want to learn but truly don’t understand our argument.
That being said, what you wrote ( bold ) below is not what Unitarians like myself and Dr. Buzzard teach or believe (in fact, I can’t even make head or tail of that statement, frankly). Our real argument in a nutshell is that the relative pronoun ὃ in 1 John 1:1 refers to τοῦ λόγου τῆς ζωῆς .This is as simply as I can put it. Do you understand what I just said ? –
