Common Significations of Lexical Units in Greek and English

Eimi (‘to be’) can signify:
•    identity (‘Is the law sin?’ Rom 7:7)
•    attribute (‘No one is good except God alone’ Mark 10:18)
•    cause (‘To be carnally minded is death’ Rom 8:6)
•    resemblance (‘The tongue is a fire’ James 3:6)
•    fulfillment (‘This is what was spoken by the prophet’ Acts 2:16, NIV).

Ton (‘the’ [article]) is not the same as the English articles:
1)    When the article is given, there are two primary significations:
    a)    definite
    b)    generic
2)    When the article is omitted, there are also two primary significations:
    a)    indefinite (qualitative)
    b)    nongeneric (individual)
As you can see, 1a) = 2b), and 1b) = 2a), which should discourage any hasty deductions from a given instance or omission.

Genitive (‘of’):
•    of attribution (‘body of sin’ Rom 6:6)
•    attributed (‘newness of life’ Rom 6:4)
•    of possession (‘people of God’ Heb 11:25)
•    partitive (‘half of my possessions’ Luke 19:8)
•    of definition/identification (‘the sign of circumcision’ Rom 4:11)
•    of apposition (‘the body, [of] the church’ Col 1:18)
•    of comparison (‘the Father is greater than I’ John 14:28)
•    of description/connection (‘armor of light’ Rom 13:12)

•    subjective (‘the coming of the Son’ Matt 24:27)
•    objective (‘blasphemy of the Spirit’ Matt 12:31)
•    plenary=subjective+objective (‘the love of Christ constrains us’ 2 Cor 5:14)
•    absolute (‘while they were worshiping’ Acts 13:2)

•    of time (‘during the night’ John 3:2)
•    of measure (‘bought at a price’ 1 Cor 6:20)
•    of space/place (‘He was about to pass through that way’ Luke 19:4)
•    of means (‘even death on a cross’ Phil 2:8)
•    of agency (‘they shall all be taught of God’ John 6:45)
•    of relationship (‘David of Jesse’ Acts 13:22)
•    of location (‘Cana of Galilee’ John 2:1)
•    of material (‘this body of flesh’ Col 1:22)
•    of content (‘the net of fish’ John 21:8)
•    of destination/purpose/movement (‘children of wrath’ Eph 2:3)
•    of subordination (‘prince of demons’ Matt 9:34)
•    of production/producer/product (‘the end of faith’ 1 Pet 1:9)
•    of separation (‘ceased from sin’ 1 Pet 4:1)
•    of source (‘a letter from Christ’ 2 Cor 3:3)
•    of reference (‘a heart evil in unbelief’ Heb 3:12)
•    of association (‘fellow-citizens with the saints’ Ephesians 2:19)
Are the most important usages in Greek. Which is nothing compared to the 150+ entries under ‘of’ in the OED.
—www.ntgreek.org/pdf/genitive_case.pdf

Exegetical Fallacies

        I.            Word Fallacies –

1.       Root – defining a word by the sum of its root words, or assuming its meaning is determined by its etymology

2.       Semantic anachronism – reading a meaning or picture which developed later or the meaning of a derivative word back into the original

3.       Semantic obsolescence – reading a meaning or picture which had already disappeared or become outdated forward into the original

4.       Appeal to unknown or unlikely meanings – inventing or stretching definitions to avoid the obvious meaning

5.       Careless appeal to background material – assuming a meaning attested only in a different context

6.       Verbal parallelomania – finding supposed parallel usages of words and assuming the meaning is the same

7.       Linkage of language and mentality – assuming that the language used so constrained the thinking process of the author who used it that he was forced into certain patterns of thought and shielded from others

8.       False assumptions about technical meaning – assuming that a word always has a certain technical meaning, usually derived from a subset of the evidence or from the interpreter's personal systematic theology

9.       Problems surrounding synonyms and componential analysis –

                                                             a.      taking different words in parallel settings as synonyms, then using them to define each other

                                                            b.      finding a difference in precise meaning between two synonyms, then assuming they can never be used synonymously in a given context

10.   Selective and prejudicial use of evidence – limiting evidence to limit meaning

11.   Unwarranted semantic disjunctions and restrictions – false dichotomy

12.   Unwarranted restriction of the semantic field – ignoring homonyms and metaphors

13.   Unwarranted adoption of an expanded semantic field – assuming the meaning of a word in a given context takes into consideration all dictionary definitions at once

14.   Problems relating to the Semitic background of the Greek New Testament –

                                                             a.      defining Greek words by finding Hebrew equivalents (using Septuagint)

                                                            b.      generally assuming the content of the Greek New Testament is limited by Semitic languages presumably underlying parts of it

15.   Unwarranted neglect of distinguishing peculiarities of a corpus – assuming that a given New Testament writer's usage of a given word is roughly the same as that of all other New Testament writers

16.   Unwarranted linking of sense and reference – assuming every word must refer to a real entity (rather than an abstract concept such as ‘beautiful’)

      II.            Grammatical Fallacies –

1.       Fallacies Connected with Various Tenses and Moods –

                                                             a.      The aorist tense – does not necessarily imply the action was once for all (but does not have no influence on meaning)

                                                            b.      The first person aorist subjunctive – grammatical category masks as much as it reveals

                                                             c.      The middle voice – does not necessarily mean that the subject acts of itself

2.       Fallacies Connected with Various Syntactical Units –

                                                             a.      Conditionals –

i.          in a first-class condition the protasis is assumed true for the sake of the argument, but the thing actually assumed may or may not be true

ii.       third-class conditions do not necessarily have some built-in expectation of fulfillment

                                                            b.      The article: preliminary considerations – assuming that because the Greek has an article, the translation should, and vice versa

                                                             c.      The article: the Granville Sharp rule – if  two substantives are connected by taxi and both have the article, they refer to different persons or things; if the first has an article and the second does not, the second refers to the same person or thing as the first (too simplistic, does not apply to plural nouns, the converse does not hold, etc)

                                                            d.      The article: the Colwell rule and related matters – the noun with the article is the subject, even though it is placed after the verb (does not say anything about the noun without the article)

                                                            e.      Relationships of tenses – ignoring differences in tenses between adjacent clauses

    III.            Logic –

1.       False disjunctions – improperly excluding a middle ground

2.       Failure to recognize distinctions – assuming because things are alike in certain respects they are alike in all respects

3.       Appeal to selective evidence – ignoring evidence that does not agree with your conclusion

4.       Improperly handled syllogisms – an invalid syllogism

5.       Negative inferences – assuming that if a proposition is true, the converse is also true

6.       World-view confusion – think that your own experience and interpretation are the complete and only ground for interpreting a text

7.       Fallacies of question-framing – requiring an explanation for something that is not proved; leading questions; posing false dichotomies

8.       Unwarranted confusion of truth and precision – accuracy does not require precision

9.       Purely emotive appeals – emotive appeals must be accompanied with logical accuracy, not substituted for it

10.   Unwarranted generalization and overspecification – taking an example as a universal rule; interpreting a text too broadly; reading into a text specific details or limitations which are actually part of the baggage you brought in

11.   Unwarranted associative jumps – combining different passages on disparate subjects to produce the desired conclusion

12.   False statements – misinformation or disinformation

13.   The non sequitur – making claims that do not follow from the arguments given

14.   Cavalier dismissal – writing off an argument instead of dealing with it rationally

15.   Fallacies based on equivocal argumentation – assuming valid arguments are necessarily conclusive; using intentionally ambiguous language

16.   Inadequate analogies – relying on analogies that are not parallel to the point at issue

17.   Abuse of “obviously” and similar expressions – unfounded claims of certainty

18.   Simplistic appeals to authority – a quote from someone who agrees with you is not a substitute for a reasoned defense, it only proves you’re not crazy

    IV.            Presuppositional and Historical Fallacies –

1.       Presuppositional Fallacies –

                                                             a.      Fallacies arising from omission of distanciation in the interpretative process – reading one’s personal theology into the text

                                                            b.      Interpretations that ignore the Bible's story-line – denying that the Bible fits together

                                                             c.      Fallacies that arise from a bleak insistence on working outside the Bible's "givens" – conforming the text to your social agenda

2.       Historical Fallacies –

                                                             a.      Uncontrolled historical reconstruction – forgetting that the best record of the early church’s struggles is the New Testament; using your own imagined history to reject the text

                                                            b.      Fallacies of causation –

i.         post hoc, propter hoc – the mistaken idea that if event B happened after event A, it happened because of event A

ii.       cum hoc, propter hoc – mistaking correlation for cause

iii.      pro hoc, propter hoc – putting the effect before the cause

iv.     the reductive fallacy – reducing complexity to simplicity, or diversity to uniformity, in causal explanations

v.       the fallacy of reason as cause – mistaking a causal for a logical order, or vice versa

vi.     the fallacy of responsibility as cause – confusing a problem of ethics with a problem of agency in a way which falsifies both

                                                             c.      Fallacies of motivation – attempting to psychoanalyze the past

                                                            d.      Conceptual parallelomania – reading your field of interest into the text

      V.            Opportunities for Even More Fallacies –

1.       Problems related to literary genre – not taking genre into account

2.       Problems related to the New Testament use of the Old – authority, literalness, context

3.       Arguments from silence – weak

4.       Problems relating to juxtapositions of texts – linking texts without justification

5.       Problems relating to statistical arguments – bad

6.       Problems in distinguishing the figurative and the literal – not

Outline taken from D.A. Carson,  Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd Edition.

O God beyond All Praising

The Planets - O God Beyond All Praising

From a series of arrangements of unison hymns in the new Trinity Hymnal.

Genealogies

Just putting these links here:

http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=brauningfirst&id=I1
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=DESC&db=nasb&id=I01975

If only I could connect them....

Federal Vision

It's hard to pin down how we differ from the FV people. I would go so far as to say that, if they were not so visually distinctive, there would not be such an opposition to them, as we might not even identify them as a distinct movement. Things being as they are, there does seem to be a disagreement. And the central issue seems to be confusion over what makes someone a Christian, or what being a Christian makes of someone. I cannot tell for sure whether the disagreement is over theology or merely terminology. They certainly use the terms visible and invisible church to describe things in conflict with the customary definition. But they seem to use the terms historical and eschatological church accurately as substitutes. If however there is a theological disagreement, then they are falling into the sin of Israel, which thought that the grace of God's call gave it a special privilege in his sight.


http://www.federal-vision.com/resources/joint_FV_Statement.pdf

On Paradoxes (mostly from Chesterton).

The four or five things that it is most practically essential that a man should know, are all of them what are called paradoxes. That is to say, that though we all find them in life to be mere plain truths, yet we cannot easily state them in words without being guilty of seeming verbal contradictions.

A man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

The more a man looks at a thing, the less he can see it, and the more a man learns a thing the less he knows it.

The man who finds most pleasure for himself is often the man who least hunts for it.

The very fact of two things possessing differences implies that they are mostly similar.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.

The man who wishes to be strong must despise the strong.

Every man, however wise, who begins by worshiping success, must end in mere mediocrity. It is not the folly of the man which brings about this necessary fall; it is his wisdom.

The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave; and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted, in time of doubt, to be strong. The only way in which a giant could really keep himself in training against the inevitable Jack would be by continually fighting other giants ten times as big as himself. That is by ceasing to be a giant and becoming a Jack.

Vanity is a much wiser and more vigorous thing than is pride. Vanity is social—it is almost a kind of comradeship; pride is solitary and uncivilized. Vanity is active; it desires the applause of infinite multitudes; pride is passive, desiring only the applause of one person, which it already possesses.

The only serious reason which could possibly induce any one person to listen to any other is, that the first person looks to the second person with an ardent faith and a fixed attention, expecting him to say what he does not expect him to say. If we do not expect the unexpected, why do we listen at all? If we expect the expected, why do we not sit at home and expect it by ourselves?

Individualism is the foe of individuality. Where men are trying to compete with each other they are trying to copy each other. They become featureless by 'featuring' the same part. Personality, in becoming a conscious ideal, becomes a common ideal.

It is a great mistake to suppose that love unites and unifies men. Love diversifies them, because love is directed towards individuality. The thing that really unites men and makes them like to each other is hatred.

Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. Madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness.

It is idle to talk always of the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all. If you are merely a skeptic, you must sooner or later ask yourself the question, "Why should anything go right; even observation and deduction? Why should not good logic be as misleading as bad logic? Are they not both movements in the brain of a bewildered ape?"

The sane person always cares more for truth than consistency. If he sees two truths that seem to contradict each other, he accepts both truths and the contradiction along with them. His intellectual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.

--------------------

Similarly, Christianity rests on a few paradoxes or mysteries which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life.

The paradox of constancy—that the more doubtful the situation the more faithful must be the man.

The paradox of chivalry—that the weaker a thing the more it should be respected, and the more indefensible a thing the more it should require our deference.

The paradox of humility-that we can only safely be proud of the things we had nothing to do with, except be the recipient.

Each of these Christian or mystical virtues involves a paradox in its own nature, which is not true of any of the typically pagan or rationalist virtues. Justice consists in finding out a certain thing due to a certain man and giving it to him. Temperance consists in finding out the proper limit of a particular indulgence and adhering to that.

But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all. Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. And trust means believing the incredible, or it is no virtue at all. The famous childish definition of faith is "the power of believing that which we know to be untrue." Yet this is not one atom more paradoxical than hope or charity. Charity is the power of defending that which we know to be indefensible. Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances which we know to be desperate.

They are all paradoxical, they are all practical, and they are all paradoxical because they are practical. Paradox is not a frivolous thing, but a very serious thing. Paradox simply means a certain defiant joy which belongs to belief. All philosophical problems tend to become paradoxical.

Sometimes when you try to reason something too precisely you only succeed in demonstrating the paucity of your conception. Anthony Collins joked no one doubted the existence of a deity until Samuel Clarke tried to prove it. [Samuel Clarke, Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, tried to prove the existence of God a posteriori, and was accused of philosophical materialism.] Leslie Stephen joked no one doubted the doctrine of the trinity until William Sherlock tried to demonstrate it. [William Sherlock, A vindication of the doctrine of the holy and ever blessed Trinity, attempted to disprove unitarianism during the first Socinian controversy (1690 in England), and was accused of tri-theism.]

If you cannot succeed in wrapping your mind about some axiom, it does not prove that the axiom is false, only that your mind plays you false. It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that He should not exist; that the soul should be joined to the body, and that we should have no soul; that the universe should be created, and that it should not be created; that original sin should be, and that it should not be. Contradiction is a unreliable sign of validity; several things which are certain are contradictory; several things which are false pass without contradiction. Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the want of contradiction a sign of truth.

Christ came as a servant (Phil. 2:6) and a Lord (Luke 2:11).

All things are possible for God (Matt. 19:26) and God cannot lie (Tit. 1:2).

God will not acquit the wicked (Exod. 23:7) and God justifies the ungodly (Rom. 4:5).

There will be no poor among you (Deut. 15:4, Acts 4:31) and you always have the poor with you (Matt. 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8).

We are to bear one another's burdens (Gal. 6:2) and bear our own burdens (Gal. 6:5).

We are to take no thought for tomorrow (Matt. 6:34) and provide for our own (1 Tim. 5:8).

We are to let our light shine before men (Matt. 5:16) and not let our left hand know what our right is doing (Matt. 6:4).

The hands that made the sun and stars (John 1:2) were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle (Luke 2).

Psalm 42

I've wanted to do this for years, and never found a program which would let me. So I finally just wrote my own.

thin m                                                                                                      
As the deer pants for the                                                      e? Hope in                                                                     yer             me, While the    
    water broo    ks, So mys                                                      God, fo                                                                   to the         y say     to me al  
      oul pant      s for You,                                                     r I sh                                                                    God o         l da        y long, 
      O God. M        y soul t                                                     all ag                                                                 f my lif       '€œWhe          re is   
      hirsts f        or God,                                                      ain pr                                                               e. I will        your G          od?'€  
      for the         living G                                                     aise H                                                               say to God        Why a          re you
      od; When       shall Ico        things I           the house o               im For       emember You from the     land of t                     my   rock,           in desp    air, O m
      me and a    ppear befo       reme  mber a       f God, With the              the he       he Jordan And the peaks of Hermon, f                  '€    œWhy h         y soul? An  d why ha  
      re God? My tears hav       nd I       pou       voice     of joy             lp of            rom Moun    t Mizar.       Deep ca              ave     You fo                   ve you b  
      e been m                   r out     my s          a      nd tha             His pr           lls to         deep         at the            rgot      ten me                   ecome     
      y food d                   oul within                     nksgiv             esence            sound         of Yo        ur wat            ? Wh      y do I   g             disturbe    
      ay and n                      me. For I u             ing, a mul             . O my           erfall        s; All         Your           o mo        urning bec           d within      
      ight, Wh                       sed to go        titude keeping f             God, m           breake        rs and         Your           ause of the oppression          me? Hop        
      ile they                   al      ong with     estiva    l. Why             y soul           waves         have r        olled            of the enemy?'€ As a         e in         God  
      say to m                    the       thron    are you     in de             is in            over m        e. The         LORD                        shatt  er       , for I shall yet 
    e all day                    g an      d le     spair, O     my soul  ?        despai           will c        ommand         His l                    ing of m  y      praise Him, The help
long, '€œWhere is                ad them in pro       And why have you becom   r within me; T   ovingkindness in the daytime; And His song              bones, my adve    of my countenance a    
your God?'€ These               ce  ssion to           e distur    bed wi     herefore I r      will be wit  h me in the   night, A pra                rsaries revile   nd my God. -Psalm 42