Understanding Tense?

Hey,

I'm trying to find out what tense a section of scripture is.

For example,

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Eph 1:3). (2016). Crossway Bibles.

Who would I found out the tense, ie. has this blessing happed already, is happening, or will happen in the future?

Many thanks,

Matt

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Comments

Lew Worthington

It's an aorist participle, which is typically (and lazily?) understood as a past tense. However, Greek is a little less rigid that that, and Paul could simply be stating that God is the one who blesses us. It's a mistake to push time categories too hard in Greek.

***

After I stated this, I went through my commentaries (and have a pretty good number of them) and most seem to assume the reference is strictly to some thing or some things in the past. The subsequent discussion often centers around WHICH past events Paul is referring to. But I found someone who expresses pretty well what I am trying to say:

The aorist participle εὐλογήσας (‘blessed’) has been taken as referring to a definite event in the past, either the sending of God’s Son (Abbott) or the time when believers were incorporated into Christ and received blessing (at their baptism, according to Schlier and J. Adai). But while it is theologically correct to state that the readers were blessed by God when they were united with Christ, it is quite another thing to suggest that the aorist participle, as such, specifically draws attention to the time note. The other saving acts of God, including his choice and predestination (vv. 4–5), his gracious work in Jesus Christ’s act of salvation (v. 6), and his revelation of the mystery (v. 9), are all reported by means of aorists, and it is doubtful whether the times are specifically in view. For example, the expression could be rendered ‘who blesses us’, referring to the panoply of his blessings perceived as a glorious whole.

Peter Thomas O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1999).

Rosie Perera

Hi Matt,

You can do this in a Bible that has reverse interlinear. ESV is one that does, so you're in luck.

Turn on the Reverse Interlinear Pane at the bottom of your Bible by clicking on the Aleph/Omega button in the toolbar: א_Ω

(Make sure the Reverse Interlinear Pane checkbox is checked in the dropdown menu for that button first; it will remember the setting from last time you used it.)

Navigate to the verse in question and click on the word you are curious about to make the Reverse Interlinear Pane scroll to show that word.

*Make sure the Morphology line (Morph) is turned on in the Reverse Interlinear Pane. If it's not, you can turn it on by right-clicking anywhere in the labels area to the left and turning on the checkmark for Morphology. Logos will remember your setting from the last time you used this pane.

Now you can hover your mouse over the morphology codes under the word you're interested in. In this case the second "blessed" in the verse, whose Morphology is "VAAP-SNM". When you hover your mouse over that, Logos will pop up a gloss showing what all of those abbreviations stand for.

You don't know Greek, I take it (from another post of yours), so you'll have to familiarize yourself with the names of the tenses in Greek to know which of these is the tense. I don't know much about Greek either, but I know that aorist is a tense. Lew's answer gives you more info about this particular word your asking about, but I've shown you how you can figure out the tense for other words you come across.

DMB

Adding to Lew and Rosie, if you're not up to speed on greek (and your example is a good one). comparing translations (in your Text Comparison tool) can hint that there's some difficulty in the meaning, when english is attempted (the translators select differing approaches).

Cameron Reed

Can I ask a question?