Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 05/09/2005 12:35, Kevin Graham wrote:

> ...
>
> I'll give you a perfect example of what I'm talking about. A couple of years 
> ago I was discussing the Gospel of John with a student from Dallas 
> Theological Seminary. He insisted the Bible teaches that God is not 
> anthropomorphic, metaphysically, because John 4:24 demands such an 
> interpretation. I pummeled him with scholarship indicating how 
> anthropomorphism was the norm for the  Ancient Jewish understanding of God, 
> and how it passed over to the early Christians. He went further to say that 
> the "rules of Greek grammar" insisted on his interpretation, and he said 
> this was something he learned from his Greek professor at DTS. Now this is 
> something you could only learn at a "Bible college."
>
> I emailed Evangelical Greek authority, Carlton Winbery about this and he 
> pretty much said this was nonsense. The question for God's metaphysics is 
> one for a theologian, and not something that can be conclusively determined 
> through "rules of Greek grammar."
>  

Kevin, this is getting a bit remote from b-hebrew, but I think here you 
have a case of a student who has misinterpreted what he has studied, and 
mixed his theology and his Greek. The rule he learned for John 4:24, 
"God is spirit", is a well recognised rule of Greek grammar, Colwell's 
Rule. For a discussion of this rule by a faculty member at the same 
Dallas Theological Seminary (incidentally I think this institution has 
the rule about graduation which I referred to earlier), very likely the 
same Greek professor the student referred to, see 
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1812. The rule is somewhat 
controversial, but it is not "something you could only learn at a "Bible 
college."" Indeed, it was originally published in JBL: Colwell, E.C., "A 
Definite Rule of the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament," JBL 
52 (1933) 12-21.

The student's oversimplification was in claiming that it is this rule 
and this verse which implies that God is not anthropomorphic. The rule 
may imply that *for the author of John's Gospel* God is not 
anthropomorphic. (Actually I think this is clear whether or not 
Colwell's Rule is applied to this particular verse - even without this 
rule I don't think anyone would actually understand it as "The (Holy) 
Spirit is God", or "God is the (Holy) Spirit".) A further step has been 
introduced here which is part of the student's, and the seminary's, 
theology, that the gospel of John and/or the words of Jesus are inerrant 
and authoritative - although many might consider that even this theology 
has been applied over-zealously if used to reinterpret Hebrew Bible 
passages which appear to suggest human characteristics of God.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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