Amy G. said:
Show us scripture that plainly says that any person who does NOT believe will be saved.
Amy,
The ball is really in your court, since the grammar does not assume continuous faith. But if you're looking for a text, well earlier I said about John 1:12, 13...
How about that verb in
John 1:12, 13 "receive?"
"To all who received him, who believe in His name, He gave power/authority to become the children of God who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."
Notice what I underlined about the will of man. I am not saved because I made some commitment to follow christ, or because I really desired to become a child of God. It was a birth brought about by God. And that verb ELABON - an aorist 3P/pl. of LAMBANO - is in the aorist tense. The aorist tense speaks (in the indicative mood) of things which occur in the past. There are many past tenses in Greek:
imperfect - "was believing" - continuous past tense
perfect - "having believed" - both point-in-time in the past and having a state which continues into the present
aorist - "believed" - referring to something which occured at a point-in-time in the past.
If I wanted to refer to someone having been shot yesterday, I'd use the aorist tense, since the person was obviously not continuously being shot. ("Once shot, always shot."
) If I wanted to say that he was shot at a point in time in the past and was now in the state of having been shot, I'd use the perfect tense. If I wanted to speak of a shootout that started yesterday (at the OK-corral) and lasted some time, or perhaps was even still going on, I'd use the imperfect tense. Wyatt Earp "was shooting."
The way that John expressed it in 1:12, as I discussed it in the previous post, makes it clear that we become children of God based on a point-in-time kind of faith. We may struggle with our faith later, but we remain a child of God.
So think about it, according to John 1:12 the giving of this spiritual life is aorist and takes place the moment the faith occurs. The giving is conditioned upon the believing. If believe meant continuous faith, then the giving could not take place until death. Eternal life could not be a present possession in this life since you would have to wait until death to get it. But such is not the case as Jesus and John make clear in 5:24 and 6:47 - it is a present possession. ("He who hears My words and believes in Him who sent Me
has eternal life. He shall not come into judgment, but has passed out of (crossed over out of") death into life.")
Now if Jesus guaranteed that we would not come into judgment but have passed from death into life, how can that be conditioned on anything that occurs after our faith in Christ at a point-in-time?
But there's more in this verse to indicate point-in-time action. The word typically translated "become" in this verse is an aorist infinitive (GENESTHAI) and so it too is punctiliar and cannot mean that at some later time those who received Him would become God's children if they continue to believe. It's past tense, point-in-time action. And this aorist infinitive expresses action that is simultaneous with that of the two preceding finite aorists ELABON ("received") and EDOKEN ("gave"). IOW, the moment of someone accepting/receiving Christ, that, too, is the moment of becoming a child of God. The fact that receiving Christ means receiving him by faith is clear from vs. 7 where we read, "...so that all might believe through Him."
Now aorist infinitives strongly point to punctiliar (point-in-time) action taking place. This point-in-time nature of "become" demands that "received," "gave," and "believe" also be understood as point-in-time.
So then not only is the immediate context of "believe" in verse 12 surrounded with aorist verbs indicating point-in-time action, but the present tense participle "believe" is equated with the aorist tense verb "receive." They are synonymous expressions.
But we're not done here. What about the verb translated "believe" in v. 7? What tense is it? Aorist. And not just indicative aorist, it is an aorist subjunctive which ALWAYS specifies punctiliar ("point-in-time") action. In the indicative mood, the aorist tense is fairly "simple," not necessarily saying a whole lot about the action except that something happened - in a punctiliar fashion. But in other than indicative the focus is no longer on the time of the action, but on the kind of action in Greek - so it's point-in-time kind of action is being emphasized. So then, one act of faith, punctiliar ("point-in-time") action, was required for faith to be saving. Continuous faith is not required. The action spoken of here is clearly point-in-time kind of action.
Now, one more grammatical point about the verb "believes" as used in John's gospel. The use of the present tense does not imply that the action involved cannot stop. On the contrary,
the present participle is used here - with an article ("the").
The present participle is used of actions that have stopped! People sometimes take the Greek present tense and note that it can be continual action. But they ignore the fact that this is a present articular participle used throughout John (PAS hO PISTEUON EIS -
"all the ones who believe in/upon") - for just that reason. For example - John 9:8 (Usually translated as,
"Is this the man who sat and begged?") - has two present participles there. In the final analysis the Greek construction translated by
"he who believes" or
"the one who believes" is merely descriptive. It identifies a person as "a believer," but it does not specify anything at all about the continuity of the action. It might best be described something like
"the believing one" or
"the one who believed."
Amy, the present participle with an article IS used of actions that have stopped, in general. Essentially John does not say anything there about the duration of the believing.
Thx,
FA
