Cheryl Schatz

Mark, you wrote quoting me and then answered:

“So the $64,000 dollar question is why did God inspire Ephesians 2:1 in the present tense and not the imperfect tense which would show a past state? If we believe that the Bible is completely inspired including the grammar and the inspired words, this is a valid question…”

This is very misleading and wrong. Does the present tense in the greek have to always be a continuous state of being? Yes or No? Of course it does not!

The present tense is the natural tense to express continued state of being. While it can mean other things if there is specific grammar to determine this, the “natural” meaning is the default unless there are markers showing it falls outside the norm. For some reason you didn’t even try to address the question I asked. Here it is again: If God wanted to make sure that we knew that Ephesians 2:1 was a past event that was no longer a functioning part of our being, then clearly He could have easily used the imperfect tense which would have shown this. So why would He chose the present tense which is almost always either 1) action in process or 2) a state of being that is continuous? Can you try to answer that question? While there are exceptions to the present tense being either 1) or 2), they are exceptions not the general usage of the grammar that is called the present tense in Greek.

So it appears to me that you are saying that God inspired a piece of grammar that could be taken the exact opposite of what He intended if we take the grammar with its general usage in the Scriptures so that it should be instead considered to be a past action that is neither in process and is not a state of being that is continuous? It appears that you are not daring to say that the passage cannot be taken the way I take it because surely you know and whoever is helping you with this challenge knows that the grammar as it is written in this passage can validly be interpreted in the way that I have interpreted it. For I interpret it with the grammar as the default or “normal” usage of the present tense and without special pleading.

As a greek scholar I am surprised at your comments.

I find it quite interesting that you are now appealing to our personal “scholarship”. Why are you doing that? Are you trying to make yourself a real Greek scholar? I know you are not a scholar as you make way too many mistakes on the Greek to be considered a Greek scholar. I also have never claimed to be a Greek scholar. There are few who deserve to be considered on this level and all of the ones who are real Greek scholars have doctorate degrees in the languages. Do you have a doctorate degree?

One of the great apologists who was a very big influence on my life was the late Dr. Walter Martin. He had a doctorate degree and 7 years of Greek but he also said that he was not a Greek scholar since he considered that 7 years was not enough to be considered a Greek scholar. Now since you are claiming to be a scholar on the Greek, perhaps you can reveal to all of us your doctorate designation, how many years of Greek you have and where you completed your Greek studies that qualify you as a scholar in the Greek language?

More to come…