Cheryl Schatz

Mark,

You said:

So what you have said above, as if you are the only person dealing with the precise grammar is terribly misleading. Let me say it again. A present tense verb can have two functions or meaning- 1) a continual state of being or the process is continuing, 2) the undefined aspect which can either be just the default position OR it can be used to deliberately oppose #1.

Nice try. Here is the “normal” meaning of the Greek present:

present — The verb tense where the writer portrays an action in process or a state of being with no assessment of the action’s completion.
Heiser, M. S. (2005; 2005). Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology.

Notice that the meaning of 1) is an action that is in process – means something that is happening now. And 2) a state of being with no statement about the state or actions’s end. This means that the state of being is set up as a real state with no expectation that it has already come to an end. Thus Eph 2:1 cannot be said the default grammar which would be either a past action or a state of being that is already finished. Therefore Eph 2:1 would have to be a special pleading as it doesn’t follow the default grammar. We can look at the claims to the outside of the norm of grammar a bit later.

You said:

It could be true that Eph 2 could have been in the imperfect tense, but it is not.

The question is why is the grammar note in the imperfect tense when this would have been the clearest way for God to a past action that is no longer in effect?

More to come….