"The Greek means..."

I haven't had a rant in a while. I hope this doesn't turn into a full-fledged one, but I have to get this off my chest.

Please, would every Christian in America advise their leaders to stop saying "the Greek says/means..."!?!

Allow me to explain...

By way of background, let me simply state that I've had nine semesters of formal Greek training, plus one year of tutoring. I've studied Attic (3 semesters), Homeric (1 semester), and Koine (5 semesters). I do not claim to be a "Greek expert" or even a "Greek scholar", nor am I boasting. But I write this post as a man with more than twice the formal Greek training of most seminary grads.

Let me chronicle the path of Greek knowledge for you. I've discovered this to be true in my own life and the lives of many, many other Greek students (with 9 semesters you meet lots).

Stage 1: Infatuation - "Wow, I'm gonna study the language God chose for the New Testament!"

Stage 2: Trials and Tribulations - "Dude!, this is freakishly hard!"

Stage 3: Depression - "Honest, professor, I'm just not getting it and never will."

Stage 4: Revelation - "I just woke up one morning and - poof! - it totally made sense!"

Stage 5: Arrogance - "God chose Greek because it's the most precise language of all time, and now that I know it I can make sense of all those so-called hard passages."

Stage 6: Upon Further Evaluation (aka: Advanced Participles) - "You know, the more I study Greek the more I realize it's not as clear-cut as I thought."

Stage 7: Humility - "Greek is a great language, but even full knowledge of it alone won't solve the time-tested difficult passages of Scripture."

Here's the fundamental problem with Greek training at nearly every seminary in America:

The vast majority of students never get past Stage 5.

Because of that, these guys have graduated, taken jobs in the pastorate and boldly proclaimed from the pulpit that "the Greek says..." thus-and-so. It's almost never that simple, folks. Almost never.

So to help you non-Greek readers out, I offer this list of red flags - warning signs that perhaps the speaker doesn't quite speak with the authority you might think.

1.) Anytime you hear "the Greek...". Would you take seriously a English teacher who constantly referred to "the English"?

2.) Anytime you hear "the Greek means/says...". Trust me on this one - there is hardly any text that a preacher would ever use this phrase on that is actually that cut and dry.

3.) Anytime you hear "this verb is in the aorist tense, so it means...". The aorist tense can mean lots of things, folks. It often means what most preachers say it always means - a once-and-done (snapshot) past action.

4.) Anytime you hear "this verb is in the present tense, so it means...". Like the aorist (and all tenses, frankly), the present tense can mean a number of things. It often means what most preachers say it always means - an ongoing action.

... and the number one warning sign is ...

5.) Anytime you hear "this is a participle in the Greek, so it should be translated...". Participles are notoriously mean in Greek. Some would say evil (in a colloquial way). While it is sometimes possible to pinpoint the nuance of a given participle (though rarely), virtually every use of a participle in the NT could be taken in more than one way without doing violence to context or theology.

...

Having said all that, please don't think I'm devaluing the study of Greek. On the contrary - I highly encourage it! What I don't encourage is a cursory study of the language that leads to Stage 5 and no further.

Honestly, I'd rather have people stuck at Stage 3 than at Stage 5. At least Depression is more humble than Arrogance.

Hatushili