Thursday, April 10, 2008

 

GO!

Jollyblogger looks at Greek, hermeneutics and the Great Commission via a post from Dan Wallace. David makes some excellent points, but it is the pull quote from Wallace that I find most enlightening:
I don’t know the source, but I suspect it is from a Christian magazine article written in the last 75 years. My guess is that this idea would have found fertile soil during the Great Depression (when funds were definitely low and excuses for lack of action could be high; for a parallel, see Jas 2.1-13). There’s a myth foisted on the Christian public about the meaning of the Great Commission (Matt 28.19-20). It goes something like this: “In the Greek, the word translated ‘Go’ is really a participle and it literally means, ‘as you are going.’ But the words ‘make disciples’ are an imperative in Greek. That’s the only imperative in these two verses. Therefore, the Great Commission is not a command to go; rather, it is a command to make disciples as you are going, or make disciples along the way.” The exposition based on this understanding of the Greek text then attempts to salve the consciences of the congregation, permitting them to do nothing about the lost if it at all means going out of their way.

There are two major problems with this treatment of Matt 28.19-20. First, it is a misunderstanding of the Greek. Second, it is a misunderstanding of the historical context. This blog will deal with the first issue.

As for the Greek, it is true that the word translated ‘go’ is a participle. But it is not a present participle, which is the one that would be required if the meaning were ‘as you are going.’ It is an aorist participle, πορευθέντες (poreuthentes). As such, it hardly means ‘as you are going’ or ‘while you are going.’ The basic idea would be ‘after you have gone,’ and as such would presuppose that one would have gone forth before making disciples. But in collocation with certain kinds of verbs this basic meaning is altered. When an aorist participle is followed by an aorist imperative in narrative literature, it almost invariably piggy-backs on the force of the imperative. That is, it is translated like an imperative because the author is trying to communicate a command.
Forgive my impertinence here, and while I heard the "as you go" thing before I never took it seriously and I don't know how any protestant worthy the name could. I guess it is because I am a practical guy and not necessarily given to spending my time dissecting the words, apart from their apparent ramifications.

See, the whole "as you go" thing has ramifications that any serious student of history and business knows won't work. I don't need the Greek to tell me that "Go" is a command, because "going" is the ONLY thing that makes any sense in the circumstances.

Any decent business man will tell you that if you wait for the customer to come to you, your business will die. You have got to go get new customers. Any movement means going and getting people to join it. Consider presidential candidates - do they wait for voters to come hear them speak? No, they travel the country like mad persons, near to the point of exhaustion - they GO!

Now to my mention of "protestant" a moment ago. By the time The Reformation rolled around the Roman Catholic church was definitely an "as you go" type institution. It had political advantages which maintained its corporate viability, but it was a dead institution as far as its original mission was concerned. Any institution that is not actively "going" becomes its own end, instead of serving the end for which it was created.

We tend to get all balled up in the theology of reformation, but we neglect the institutional realities that drove it - big mistake. The Reformers knew they had to GO because it was the only way to restore the mission for which the church was founded - in fact, in the church's case GOING WAS THE MISSION, as we see here. But this institutional reality lies at the heart of the catchphrase "Always reforming." Do you every stop and think that that is a just a theo-speak way of saying "GO!"?

Where have you gone today?

Technorati Tags:, , , ,
Generated By Technorati Tag Generator

|

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

Site Feed

Blogotional

eXTReMe Tracker

Blogarama - The Blog Directory