News Briefs – 06/07/2020

Hello Sir. I would send this to you privately, but don’t have an email except an old one at the tail of one of your articles, and didn’t feel I should use it.

A few disjointed comments on your paper on 2 Pet 1.5; Supplement Faith with Arete …

I stand by my contention that supplementing faith with ἀρετή is not Paul’s point, but rather we are to take God’s gift of reason or understanding, and use it to mature in our faith to the point where we are able to love each other with a pure, or brotherly, love.

I was wrong about reason being the endpoint and ἀρετή a midpoint. ἀρετή is the beginning, the least valuable of the sequence of events that happen as a Christian matures. The endpoint is love.

Regarding righteousness: ἡ dικαιοσύνη (which is a feminine noun, by the way) is most often translated righteousness in the NT. This is a legal term, or legal-originating term, which is predicated on the idea of Jewish law. In other words, an abstracted sense of righteousness (which you and I may have) was not part of the mind/thought-process of biblical writers and speakers, including Jesus. As you mentioned, the Latin Justitia was a common translation of ἡ dικαιοσύνη: strangely, it’s most often translated “fairness.” So, around dικαιοσύνη hovers a cloud of meaning which includes equity, fairness and something like legal justice.

Regarding arete: ἡ ἀρετή (also a feminine noun) is usually translated either virtue or excellence in the NT. You mentioned the word was related to arrene, (male) which is sorta-not-so true becasue it is most closely related to the noun aristos (the best, being your best, besting others, being the best). ἀρετή has to do with achievement or the end quality of a pursuit, idea or object — not what is intrinsically moral or immoral about or in it.

(Strongs #703 translates this as valor which some like to think of as manliness. But, in Jewish religious practices, a “woman of valor” is the woman in Proverbs 31 – read repetitiously every Friday evening in family worship and a very familiar phrase with the Jews of Biblical times. Also, a woman of valor is mentioned in Ruth 3.11 when Boaz uses the phrase to describe Ruth. The word valor is used to describe men, “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him, and said unto him, The Lord is with thee, though mighty man of valor.” Judges 6.12. So there is no OT or NT justification for thinking of valor as a male attribute only.

I’m sorry, but my Hebrew/Aramaic is so dreadful that I won’t bother translating the OT passages above. Too embarrassed. Sticking to Greek …

Sir, lets go back to 2 peter 1.2f, please. I intuit you’re not a Greek reader, so will try to stick with English. But I’ll translate the exact text – very wooden and unreadable — as I go along, so it won’t read like your standard translations. This is a very difficult passage.

1.2 Grace and peace be added/multiplied/increased (in you) as you recognize/know God and Jesus our master/lord.

1.3 As His divine ability/power having been given freely (perfect passive) to all/every(thing) that (no verb) life and devoutness (eusebeiavvnvvvvv) through the knowledge/recognition of the One calling us through glory and virtue (ἀρετή).

1.4 through which the mega/greatest and most valuable/precious promises having been given freely (same verb as above) that through these you may be becoming participants/communioners (koinonoi) of God’s nature, fleeing from the kosmos/world in lust (and) corruption

1.5 and (for the same reasons), yet (no verb) diligence, beside-into-carrying (or, something like “employing one’s”) you have been supplied in your faith
the virtue (ἀρετή)
in yet the virtue (ἀρετή again) the
in yet the knowledge (gnosei) the
the in-holding/self-control
in yet the under-remaining/endurance
in yet the under-remaining
the devoutness
the fond-brotherness/brotherly-affection
in yet the brotherly-affection
the love.

1.6 these for to you possessing/belonging and increasing neither idle nor unfruitful is down-standing/constitution into our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is a messy, convoluted and difficult text, to say the least. The author is all over the place, skipping verbs and conjoining ideas that should be pulled apart to make sense. Peter is in a hurry, or is thinking quickly, or, perhaps, writing to an audience that understands his verbal shorthand. That’s not us/we!

Whatever Peter’s reason for writing such unreadable prose, we still have to make sense of it. It’s our Bible, after all. The Word of God. Now, to your points about ἀρετή, note that it occurs three times so far – highlighted.

What’s really cool, at least to me, is the strong forward movement of this passage. Bottom line: Peter starts out by talking about knowing/recognizing Jesus and ends up talking about love.

How is this forward movement accomplished?
Jesus does it for us. He gives us knowledge/recognition of Himself.
Why does he give us the knowledge of Himself?
So we can flee evil in the world and participate in His nature.

There is a sequence of gifts given to us by Jesus so we can know Him.
1. ἀρετή leads to knowledge
2. knowledge leads to self-control
3. self-control leads to endurance
4. endurance leads to brotherly love.

To sum: the sequence is ἀρετή to knowledge to self-control to endurance to brotherly love.
ἀρετή, then, is the LEAST important gift in this list – the most important being love.
ἀρετή, too, is where one starts in Christian growth or maturity, not where one ends.

The greatest of these is love.

So, I Peter 1.5f isn’t about supplementing the faith with ἀρετή, but about starting with ἀρετή to get to love. If you agree with this, then your entire argument about manliness, etc. sorta pales to insignificance. (I’m sorry to say this, Sir).

Having said this, it really doesn’t matter because you’ve written a very interesting article on justice, which, as you say, is one of the four cardinal virtues, in fact the “bestest” one.

I agree that to understand the koine, one has to start with classical usage and then reason forward. This is a bit like starting with Chaucer and reasoning forward to Shakespeare, even though we’re actually in the 21st century. Thus we have to make a third translational step to a contemporary understanding. Take it on my word, Sir, that the jump from classical to koine is tiny compared to gap in understanding between koine to contemporary. I can barely read a menu in a contemporary Greek restaurant, but have no problem reading amphora in museums. The koine (common Greek of the Jesus’ era) is much closer to the classical than to contemporary Greek.

I really don’t have more time to spend on this — or the time to edit, so I hope it makes sense — but want you to know that I found your articles in Anvil and Forge quite fascinating and look forward to reading more of them in the near future.