1 John 5:1

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JM

Puritan Board Doctor
Is this understanding of 1 John 5:1 possible? It seems based on the English and not (what I've seen) from the Greek.

You could also say, whoever lives (present tense, ongoing action) has been born (past perfect). However, everyone still lives before they were born. I just don't think the fact that something is still happening now is proof that something that happened in the past happened first. Just a thought, I know I have a lot more studying to do, but that's how I would interepret 1 Jn 5:1.

Thank you.

jm
 
"Faith in the living God and his Son Jesus Christ is always the result of the new birth, and can never exist except in the regenerate." Charles Spurgeon, from his Sermon on 1 John 5:1.

It seems clear to me that the passage essentially says that faith is proof of regeneration, whether or not all agree that this explicitly teaches that regeneration precedes faith.

:2cents:
 
It is viable in most cases for the English present periphrastic to be used to translate the perfect tense, hence is born. However, it seems better here to render the perfect tense as has been born. This avoids the error of reading the present periphrastic as a simple present tense with the idea that regeneration is here shown to be the "result of" or "reward for" believing -- as if it said, "everyone who believes that . . . is thereby born of God."
 
JM, the original objection is logically fallacious in any language. If it is granted as true that whoever is living has been born, then it cannot be true that people are living before they are born, because the person has just granted that "has been born" is a quality necessarily pertaining to "whoever is living." We could work this out syllogistically:

MP: All persons who are living are persons who have been born
mp: Some persons who are living are not persons who have been born

Obviously, the two premises are contradictories. They cannot both be true. Your objector has equivocated on what he means by "living."
 
"whoever lives (present tense, ongoing action) has been born (past perfect). However, everyone still lives before they were born"

ya that parallel doesn't make sense, cause it is not all who live but all who "believes" continually believe. Regeneration produces continual faith. Nothing weird with that.

For some detail on this verse James White actually recently posted two videos in the last couple of days:

[video=youtube;H5_WvgOxq8A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5_WvgOxq8A[/video]

[video=youtube;PJQYjdpBPBw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJQYjdpBPBw[/video]​
 
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