Here is a new Greek Bible study web site that looks to be very promising and helpful to anyone looking to study the New Testament in its original language. Take a look at it and see what you think.
[HT: Jim West]
2 thoughts on “New Online Greek Bible Study Tool!”
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Glenn,
I just noticed that I had never responded to your comment on my blog a couple months ago about Sam Waldron’s article “And He Will Be My Son.” I read it a while back and can’t remember many of the details of the argument, but I will say that I have a hard time seeing grace before the Fall, and the idea of Adam’s “maturation” seems a bit speculative to me.
Thoughts?
Matt Haeck
Matt,
Thanks so much for remembering. 🙂
It’s good to hear from you. I can agree with you about “grace.” Unless one distinguishes betweens kinds of grace before and after the fall, there is no way that grace, in the NT sense of the word, was present before the fall. Grace was a beneficial response to the fall, if anything.
But I’m highly persuaded to see “maturation” as a key perspective or paradigm for the pre-fall process that God was taking Adam through. Since Adam was God’s son, God was bringing Adam to full maturity. I would say that the same thing happened with Christ, and like James Jordan has said, Christ was the first man to reach full maturity… that is “glorification.” Adam was always intended for that eschatological goal, but he fell short of reaching it when he sinned in the Garden.
Now, this doesn’t mean that I need to reject the other ideas of merit or justice in the pre-fall setting. I’m just saying that I favor the paradigm of Sonship, which includes dealing with Justice between God and His son, Adam.
I have a son who is going to be 1 year old on Monday. But the best way I relate to him is, not merely as his judge (though that is part of my role in teaching him justice and righteousness), but as his father. He is my Son and I have chosen to love him more than other humans (not born in my image).
Too often, when I hear people talk about “the covenant of works,” it sounds like they only want to get across the issue of justice, God’s righteousness and holiness as a judge, etc. But this doesn’t account or lead us to see why it is that God would want to be gracious to Adam. I think the perfect picture is that God loved Adam as a son, and thus (not because of anything in Adam) God’s love-choice compelled Him to be gracious to Adam and satisfy His justice by sending another Adam, God’s only Son, to reconcile the World to Himself.
I don’t know. What do you think? I am trying to be careful, because I don’t want to say that Adam merited God’s grace because Adam was God’s son. Am I saying that??? I guess I’m trying to figure out if I can say that God’s love as a Father to His son was the determining factor of God’s grace being displayed, in spite of the sinful being that Adam became in the Fall. Let me hear back from you. Thanks!