A Little Greek is a Dangerous Thing

Hi there, this is my first, I think this thing's called, not screencast, what's it called?

Screenflow, something like that, I don't know, it's a cool program and it allows me to basically sit here in my kitchen and sort of informally go through some stuff on my computer, play some video, respond to some stuff.

If I can learn how to really work this stuff, this might be something I do more often because something's really on my heart,

I want to get that out and this might be a way to do it. On the last Dividing Line I did, we reviewed a video by Kerrigan Skelly, who seems to be a

Pelagian street preacher, and he has quite a presence on the web, on YouTube.

And we looked at just the slaughter of the context of Romans chapter 8 and the golden chain of redemption.

He was trying to break the golden chain of redemption, failed to do so, but in the process

I thought, man, I wonder what this guy would do with John chapter 6. Well, I found out on a ride this morning what he did with John chapter 6 and it is just unbelievable, absolutely unbelievable.

I'm not going to be able to go through all that today, I'm going to do that on the Dividing Line on another Radio Free Geneva. But what I wanted to do today was to talk with you a little bit about the abuse of Greek.

There are a lot of great programs out there now, Accordance, Logos, BibleWorks, others, those are the three big ones.

And since I'm on a Mac, I use Accordance and Logos, I was a BibleWorks guy and a

Logos guy for a long time on PC but then moved over. And these programs can give you all sorts of really neat information, there's no two ways about it.

But that is no substitute for learning the language. And you can click on words and read about presents and subjunctives and indicatives until the cows come home.

That's not reading Greek and it never will be. Only a person who has been reading the language for years can naturally start to see, ah,

I have a present tense finite verb and I have a present participle, or I have an aorist finite verb and a present participle or vice versa.

And the language communicates not by just discrete packets where I can click on this and oh, all presents mean this and all subjunctives mean this.

That's what Kerrigan Skelly does, oh this is a subjunctive so that means this. Let me show you something over here on the screen.

Here's Wallace's Greek grammar beyond the basics. Back when

I studied Greek many moons ago, seven years in a row before I started teaching it, you would take first year

Greek, and I'm really glad I took Greek in college, I didn't do it in seminary, seminary is just too fast, you don't pick up languages that quickly.

But I had first year Greek in college, then I had second year, I actually minored in Greek. That allowed me to then have second year

Greek, which is where you learn syntax. Syntax is the relationship of words. First year

Greek, I learned the 8K system, that's not the most popular today, now the 5K system is more popular.

But in the 8K system you have genitive, ablative, in the 5Ks they're all rolled together because they're the same form in the language.

And I was just very pleased in first year Greek to be able to even differentiate a genitive and ablative functionally and just to make sure that I recognized that's genitive over against a dative or an accusative or whatever else it might be.

And then you get into syntax, you get into second year, and you discover that depending on the syntax category list you're using, there's anywhere from 12 to 20 different kinds of genitives, not including the ablatives.

And I think that's why they don't tell you during first year Greek about that because you just run screaming out of the room with your hair on fire.

But the point is that one of the beauties of Koine Greek is its ability to express so many nuances of meaning, but you don't do that by ignoring the relationships of words one to another.

And it takes a lot of study to master that stuff. And as you're reading it, you start seeing those things, you start recognizing what's going on.

For me, still one of the toughest areas for me are infinitives. But one of my best areas are participles.

And there's a lot of folks that have that reversed, I can assure you. There are a lot of folks out there watching this going, you like participles?

I've always loved participles. I've loved the syntax of participles. I've always thought that that's really where the color and the texture of the language is found.

But the same is true of infinitives. They're pretty important too, and they hit a different part of my brain than the participles do.

Anyway, the point is that if you look at what's on the screen here, Wallace's list for the subjunctive mood, notice you have subjunctive in independent clauses.

You have a hortatory subjunctive, deliberative subjunctive, the emphatic negation subjunctive, the prohibitive subjunctive, and then independent subordinate clauses, subjunctive in conditional sentences.

There's all sorts of conditionals. You have hinnah plus the subjunctive, which clearly Kerrigan Skelly has never studied, has no idea why that's there or what that means because he just slaughters this in the

John 6 presentation. You have subjunctive with verbs of fearing and indirect questions, subjunctive in indefinite relative clauses, and subjunctive in indefinite temporal clauses.

So obviously, when you see Kerrigan Skelly continually saying, well, this verb's in the subjunctive.

Therefore, it means it's only probable, and it's like he's not even looking at whether it's in a hinnah clause, a dependent clause, independent clause.

He's not looking at any of that stuff, and the only possible result of that is gross misrepresentation, absolutely gross misrepresentation, and that's exactly what you get.

Let's take a look. Check this section of his John 6 presentation out, and then we'll look at a couple things.

Okay. So that's what it's talking about in both of those, and I believe that it's talking about ... So what is the will of the

Father concerning the disciples who have already been given to Jesus? Well, let's see what it says again. The will of the

Father is that all that he has given me I shall lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day.

The Greek word translated as should lose is apollomai, and it's in the subjunctive.

Remember we talked about subjunctive before. Subjunctive deals with what may or may not be.

It deals with possibilities or probabilities, or not something that's fixed, okay?

So that means that losing, that the losing the Father doesn't want to happen is talking about what may or may not be, what may or may not happen, is dealing with possibilities or probabilities.

The Greek word translated as should raise is anistomai, and it is in the subjunctive as well.

You can tell. They both have the word should in front of it. They're both in the subjunctive. That means that the raising up of the

Father wants to happen is talking about what may or may not be.

It is dealing with possibilities or probabilities. So when it comes to those who have already been given to Jesus, the disciples, it is yet to be seen whether they will be lost or not, and whether they will be raised or not.

Now, there's just so much more, but that is not what the subjunctive is talking about.

It's just not. What he ignores, and what you see on the screen here is this little word right there, hinnah.

This is the hinnah clause. This is the will of the one who sent me. By the way, he also completely massacres the present tense, just turns this text on its head because he does not understand the language, just does not get it.

The one sending me, that's present tense, and that would wreak havoc with his entire use of present tense here, but we won't go into that at the moment.

This is the will of the one who sent me. So the will of the Father for the Son is this, hinnah, in order that.

The reason this is in the subjunctive is because it's in a hinnah clause. It's not about, oh, you know, we don't know if Jesus could be able to do this, and maybe the disciples will be lost, and maybe he will lose some, or we don't know if he can really raise everybody up, you know, there might be some power problems,

I don't know. That's not what it's talking about. That's not what it's talking about. That's not the use of the subjunctive here.

It's a hinnah clause, in order that all which he has given me, not

I lose any of it. The will of the Father for the Son is that he lose none of those given to him.

Kerrigan Skelly is so focused upon a man -centered salvation system that he can be reading one of the clearest, most compelling presentations of the absolute freedom and power of God in this case of Jesus Christ to save a people and completely miss it, turn it upside down to where, well, because the subjunctive, you know, we don't know, really, no.

To say that, well, you know, they might be lost because it's in the subjunctive. It's in the subjunctive because it's in a hinnah clause.

That's why it's in the subjunctive. Nothing more than that. Nothing more than that. It's not about, well, it's doubtful, we don't know.

That's not how the language is handled. And then you have Allah connects the rest of it, so that's still why anastaso is in the subjunctive.

And I really doubt Kerrigan Skelly, if you showed him these verbs, because he says, well, it's subjunctive because you see should in front of it.

That's the English translation. I bet you couldn't even tell a subjunctive verb from an indicative in the Greek if he didn't have a computer in front of him.

But anastaso, but raise it up at the last day, but, so it's not this, but this.

So you have a hinnah clause with subjunctive, not this, but this. This is the will of the father for the son.

That's what you've got here. That gets lost because of the man -centeredness of his approach and then his ignorance of the actual

Greek language. Folks, there are a lot of preachers today having these programs, having accordance here, having logos, having this kind of stuff is wonderful.

It's great. It probably cripples a lot of us in our Greek, to be honest with you, but it's great to have, but it's also very dangerous.

And there's a lot of really bad preaching today because it's based upon, well, you know,

I'm going to click on this and that's just in the subjunctive. Well, do you know what the subjunctive means? Do you know what it means?

Can you look back up the, do you see the may in front of it? I mean, I would have told you I've seen may rather than ooh.

And do you notice the hinnah and then the Allah? And so I've got,

I've got, I've got a phrase here. Do you see these things? And a lot of people don't.

Now you say, well, I couldn't either. Well, then I would suggest you not get on YouTube and pretend to be teaching the

Bible to people because there's a reason why James said, let not many of you be teachers, for you will be judged with a stricter judgment.

And Kerrigan Skelly is proclaiming himself to be a teacher of the word of God. And yet he is so dedicated to the establishment of the will of man as supreme in salvation that he's perverting the scriptures badly, very badly.

So just a word of warning. These are great resources to have, great resources to have, but there's much more than just having those resources.

In fact, I'm trying to avoid a sermon here because having taught

Greek in seminary, at least when I had 15 weeks,

I really think I can give somebody a good foundation. That's not really the best way to do it, but it's better than nothing.

There are seminaries that not only have dropped any requirement for Greek at all, but there are some seminaries that will actually offer

Greek and Hebrew as a 13 day Jan course. That's a tools class. That's not, that's, you can't read the language that way.

Just not possible. And that's a shame. We should be going the other direction to a stricter higher standard, not to a lower standard.

So they're great resources, but realize they're sort of crutches. They're really not giving you everything you need to be able to really handle the text appropriately.

So like I said, we're going to be looking at Kerrigan Skelly's video as another classic example of not understanding the text and of totally abusing it.

Isagetical error after isagetical error resulting in literally turning the text upside down as to its meaning.

That'll be hopefully very educational to folks. So thanks for watching. And if this type of thing works out, if I can even remember how to turn it off, we'll do more of it in the future.