Trinitarian confusion at Romans 9:5

Personally I find arguments about the word order irritating.

Seems to me grammatically speaking the following could all have been used.

ὁ ὢν θεὸς ἐπὶ πάντων
ὁ θεὸς ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων
ὁ θεὸς ἐπὶ πάντων ὢν
ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς ὢν
θεὸς ὁ ἐπὶ πάντων ὢν
θεὸς ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων
None of them are the actual text :).
 
In post #452 Harris rejects standard tries because they break up God and blessed, which have a natural association (contiguous and nominative, singular masculine.)

Rejected as breaking the natural association of God and blessed!

“(Christ,) who is God over all.”
“(Christ,) who, as God, is/rules over all.”

We can call this the elephant in the living room.

This actually refutes numerous arguments on opposite sides.
 
In post #452 Harris rejects standard tries because they break up God and blessed, which have a natural association (contiguous and nominative, singular masculine.)
Harris's overall argument is far too complicated. Paul would have anticipated his readers to have no issues understanding what he was saying. The conclusion on Rom 9:5b must be constrained to a single paragraph, not pages of theological waffle. Frankly I see Harris as destroying his own arguments by the sheer amount of mental complexity he requires of his readers.

Any conlusion must be incisive. He's just taken the wrong approach, and I don't credit his conclusions either.
 
Harris's overall argument is far too complicated. Paul would have anticipated his readers to have no issues understanding what he was saying. The conclusion on Rom 9:5b must be constrained to a single paragraph, not pages of theological waffle. Frankly I see Harris as destroying his own arguments by the sheer amount of mental complexity he requires of his readers. Any conlusion must be incisive. He's just taken the wrong approach, and I don't credit his conclusions either.
Yes, overall Harris is far too complex.
And he is inconsistent.
However, he is thorough.

The short paragraph on the natural association is superb.
 
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Here is Daniel Wallace listing the three different functions of adjectival participles;



This is obviously rocket science to some people at Carm., lol.
Wallace's grammar lends no assistance to you here, for the simple fact that Wallace does not assert, as you do, the attributive participle should only consist of an article and the participle itself. That is my point, not that the participle (which is classed as a modifier) is not somehow adjectival. This is why I say you treat it as a "simple adjective," because you believe the attributive participle loses its verbal aspect and therefore can't govern an object or be modified by other parts of speech.

Again,

Even when a participle functions as an adjective or a noun it is still a verbal form, which means it has verbal aspect and it can take a direct object and various modifiers like any other verb. (Whitacre, Rodney A.. A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Eerdmans Language Resources), 5.181.b)​

So you're wrong EDITED BY MOD
 
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All three of you here are literally the blind leading the blind.

Your post is reported.

My discussion with you have less than zero to do with TRJM. And I told you that above.

With cjab I pulled out some important excerpts, mostly about the New Testament style involving God and Christ. Oops, you did not reply.

Above, post #452 I show you the truth about Murray Harris and the “natural association”, which you mangled. It is clear that it refutes your apposition theory. (Even if Harris jumps around.). So you should respond, and this time without long irrelevant diversions to points on Greek mss.

========

See also post #429. Also unanswered.

There are about five unanswered important posts. In response to your insulting comment above, tonight I can repeat them for you. Let’s see you deal with the facts on the ground, without playing a diversion game.
 
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The short paragraph on the natural association is superb.
Well to me Harris is just talking gibberish. The title of his book, "Jesus as God" is gross enough.

Harris: "But what does θεὸς here signify as applied to Christ? θεὸς is anarthrous not only because it is oppositional (or predicative) but also because it functions as a qualitative noun, highlighting Christ's inherent divinity, not as a proper noun, identifying Christ with God the Father. It is not simply that Christ "has the rank of God" (Harrison103), true though that is; he intrinsically shares the divine nature."

θεὸς is no more anarthrous than ἀγάπην (love) is anarthrous in Eph 3:19, where its article τὴν is found before the participle clause. Moreover θεὸς isn't a qualitative noun in the context of the New Testament but a reference to the person of the Father, or the power of the Father being exercised in someway or through some person. Christ doesn't have the rank of God, because God (the Father)'s rank is "the Father."

So all in all, nonsense of a high order: high Trinitarian propaganda of the highest order of nonsense.
 
Wallace's grammar lends no assistance to you here, for the simple fact that Wallace does not assert, as you do, the attributive participle should only consist of an article and the participle itself. That is my point, not that the participle (which is classed as a modifier) is not somehow adjectival. This is why I say you treat it as a "simple adjective," because you believe the attributive participle loses its verbal aspect and therefore can't govern an object or be modified by other parts of speech.
I have never declared bold above. My actual position is that ὁ ὢν in the GNT never seems to function as an attributive participle in the second attributive position, let alone with modifiers.Please recognize the difference between my actual position vs your strawman caricature of it.
Please do not waste time quoting my words back to me from previous posts to try to “prove” your strawman argument. You invariably take my words out of context. I have given you my actual position in bold above. Deal with it.


You are engaging in these shenanigans and cheap evasion tactics because you do not wish to answer the following simple questions:

(1) Do you concede that ὁ ὢν in the GNT rarely if ever functions as an attributive participle in the second attributive position with modifiers? Yes or No ?

(2) If “no” to question (1) above, please list all of the places in the GNT where ὁ ὢν functions as such. Verse & chapter please.
 
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To cjab on Murray Harris:

Perhaps, but what he wrote about the natural association of God and blessed was superb.

And that is the one paragraph I quoted.
 
Your post is reported.

My discussion with you have less than zero to do with TRJM. And I told you that above.

Above, post #452 I show you the truth about Murray Harris and the “natural association”, which you mangled. It is clear that it refutes your apposition theory. (Even if Harris jumps around.)

See also post #429. Also unanswered.
True. He is trying to create confusion because his actual position is weak.
 
I have never asserted bold above.
Sure you did:
Another point to note is that when an adjective has modifiers, it is rarely if ever in the second attributive position. In such cases the adjective with modifiers is an appositive. In other words, the second attributive position is article + noun + article + adjective, not article + noun + article + adjective and it’s modifiers. So at John 12:17 the expression ὁ ὄχλος ὁ ὢν would make no sense without the qualifying μετ’ αὐτοῦ. This tells us that ὁ ὢν μετ’ αὐτοῦ is an appositive. The same holds true at Romans 9:5.​
That's actually a second attributive construction with "modifiers," you just deny it because ὁ ὢν "would make no sense without the qualifying μετ’ αὐτοῦ. This tells us that ὁ ὢν μετ’ αὐτοῦ is an appositive." Which is special pleading. And again, you wrote:
Again, just show us an example of an attributive adjective / participle in the 2nd position, from the GNT , which cannot / does not by itself modify its own head noun, as you are proposing at Romans 9:5.​
And by far the biggest problem with taking ὁ ὢν in Romans 9:5 in the second attributive position is that there is no such thing in all of the GNT where such an attributive adjective fails to modify the head noun by itself:
Of course, John 12:17 was one and I noted several others only to be met with the same or similar attempts at special pleading, even though (because of the special pleading) I gave only examples of attributive participles found in the grammars themselves.

So yes, that is exactly what you have been asserting, and the same reason I quoted the grammars as follows:
Even when a participle functions as an adjective or a noun it is still a verbal form, which means it has verbal aspect and it can take a direct object and various modifiers like any other verb. (Whitacre, Rodney A.. A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Eerdmans Language Resources), 5.181.b. Emphasis mine.)​
29.6 Attributive. The attributive participle modifies a noun or pronoun in the sentence, and agrees with that word in case, number, and gender, just like an adjective. For the time being, it can be translated simply with the “-ing” form.​
ἄνθρωπος ὁ λέγων τῷ ὀχλῷ ἐστὶν ὁ διδάσκαλός μου.​
The man speaking to the crowd is my teacher.​
This is the normal article-noun-article-modifier construction. In this illustration, the modifier is the participial phrase, λέγων τῷ ὀχλῷ. (Mounce, William D. Basics of Biblical Greek Grammar, pp. 628-629).​
In other words, you want one rule for ὁ ὢν, and another for the rest of the attributive participles? That is literally the definition of "special pleading."

ὁ ὢν in the GNT never seems to function as an attributive in the second position, let alone with modifiers.
You've been offered multiple examples of ὁ ὢν in an attributive position, and every case is met with the same sort of special pleading as above. If you didn't get it by now, you're not going to at all. There's no special rules, whether in the 2nd Attributive Position or the 3rd, that restrict the attributive participle in such a way. These are ad hoc rules made up by you after your initial assertions proved incorrect.

A simple admission that you spoke wrongly would have earned you far more respect, and I would have been gracious. You seem intent at doubling down instead.


True. He is trying to create confusion because his actual position is weak.
I'm not creating confusion, because it clearly exists among you:

Cjab: First Attributive
Avery: Compound Adjective (blessed by God)
TRJM: Substantival Apposition

The only common denominator is that you all disagree with me.
 
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To cjab on Murray Harris:

Perhaps, but what he wrote about the natural association of God and blessed was superb.

And that is the one paragraph I quoted.


Not a few scholars who find a reference to Christ in Romans 9:5b, construe θεὸς with ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων,79 “(Christ,) who is God over all.” Alternatively, θεὸς could be taken as being in apposition to ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων (Prümm 140) “(Christ,) who, as God, is/rules over all.”80 Both of these constructions sever the natural association of θεὸς with εὐλογητὸς and cohere better with the word order ὁ ὢν θεὸς ἐπὶ πάντων. Also, as Cranfield notes (Romans 469), if Paul had said that Christ is “God over all,” he could have been misunderstood to suggest “that Christ is God to the exclusion of, or in superiority over, the Father."

79. Olshausen 326; Philippi 68; B. Weiss, Theology 1:393 and n. 5; Alford 2:405; Schlatter,
Gerechtigkeit 295; Nygren 358; Faccio 110, 135; O. Michel, Römer 229. See also table 4, no. 6.

80. Cf. Cassirer: “(Christ...,) he who rules as God over all things.”
As I don't acknowledge the many scholars who find a reference to Christ in Romans 9:5b i.e. “(Christ,) who....", I don't acknowledge that this comment has validity.
 
I have never declared bold above. My actual position is that ὁ ὢν in the GNT never seems to function as an attributive participle in the second attributive position, let alone with modifiers.Please recognize the difference between my actual position vs your strawman caricature of it.
Please do not waste time quoting my words back to me from previous posts to try to “prove” your strawman argument. You invariably take my words out of context. I have given you my actual position in bold above. Deal with it.


You are engaging in these shenanigans and cheap evasion tactics because you do not wish to answer the following simple questions:

(1) Do you concede that ὁ ὢν in the GNT rarely if ever functions as an attributive participle in the second attributive position with modifiers? Yes or No ?

(2) If “no” to question (1) above, please list all of the places in the GNT where ὁ ὢν functions as such. Verse & chapter please.
What's your take on ὁ ὢν in 2Co 11:31?
 
Of course, John 12:17 was one and I noted several others only to be met with the same or similar attempts at special pleading, even though (because of the special pleading) I gave only examples of attributive participles found in the grammars themselves.

So yes, that is exactly what you have been asserting, and the same reason I quoted the grammars as follows:
Would you agree that this is your only example of ὁ ὢν in the GNT functioning as an attributive in the second position with modifiers ?
 
ὁ ὢν here is undoubtedly substantival.
What about ὁ καλέσας in respect of Ὁ Θεὸς in 1Pe 5:10?

Not sure if the attributive versus substantive distinction is that helpful, as both can be brought in at the same time where the article is used. A substantive rendering doesn't negate an attributive rendering, but reinforces it, as in 1 Pet 5:10.

It's interesting that in 2 Cor 11:31, ὁ ὢν is tranlated by Trinitarians as "He who is" but in Rom 9:5 it is translated as "who is," in order to pre-emptively thwart an association between ὁ and Θεὸς.

This suggests pre-emptive English renderings are being used to manipulate Greek renderings to create ambiguities where none would exist if the substantival "He who is...." were to be pre-emptively retained, and which is always justified on technical grounds where an article precedes a substantive.

Changing "He who is" over to "who is" is only permissible for English stylistic reasons, and not to predetermine the Greek rendering.

Thus "He who is above all God blessed for ever" ==> "God who is above all blessed for ever" is permissible because it relates only to English style and retains both the Greek substantival and attributive senses.

But dropping the "He who is" down to "who is" just to bring Christ into the doxology is inadmissible, as an obvious attempt to manipulate the Greek.
 
It's interesting that in 2 Cor 11:31, ὁ ὢν is tranlated by Trinitarians as "He who is" but in Rom 9:5 it is translated as "who is,"

The translations vary, many have "who is". Plus there are other factors. I think you have stretched the envelope here.
 
The translations vary, many have "who is".
I agree
Plus there are other factors.
Such as?

I think you have stretched the envelope here.
No. The article translates to "he" or "the one." The participle translates to "who is."

There isn't any good reason to leave out the "he" or "the one" when consideraing Greek structure. As I inferred, it could only be omitted once the meaning has been fully ascertained.

This is the whole problem with Harris. He doesn't grasp that you can't drop the "The one" until after you have ascertained the meaning. You can't pre-emptively drop "the one" whilst in the middle of a process for working out what it means.
 
As an example,
In English, if we are writing:

Christ, who is over all
God, who is over all

He is rather superfluous, awkward, redundant.

As I said, many translations of 2 Cor 11:13 do not have he.
The AV has which is.

2 Corinthians 11:31 (AV)
The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not.

The long phase of nine words might justify the he in English.
 
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