What our friends on the other side of the Tiber need to realize is that a grammatical term like “perfect” doesn’t refer to anything beyond the temporal state of the action. It does nothing to tell you details internal to the action itself.
For example, if I say “my basement was flooded,” period, ths is like the Greek aorist, which just sets down a point in time and boom you’re done.
But if I say “my basement was flooded, and remains so to this day,” I have expressed the sense of the perfect tense, which establishes that some state occurred at a particular point in time, and though the action is complete, the effect continues until now.
But what this “perfect” does not express is how much water there was in my basement. It does not mean my basement was “perfectly filled” with water. Maybe there was only an inch. Maybe it was waist deep. You can’t tell a quantity from the perfect. It’s not about quantity. It’s about placing events in time.
So too with ke-charitomene. We know this is the perfect because of the doubling of the first syllable, sort of like an intentional stutter to signal the perfect, ke-keritomene. What we DON’T have is any sort of qualitative indicator on grace, as we do in John 1:14, where “full of grace” is explicit. Instead, what we have in Luke is that this grace/favor was shown to her at some indeterminate point in the past and that it continues to the present.
Hopefully Akin’s comment, cited in your post, suggests that this amateurish tactic is in it’s waning days. Certainly there are more significant arguments to be undertaken, and Akin seems to get that, at least in regard to this issue, and that’s a good thing.
Peace,
SR
How about, my basement was never flooded until after my wife gave birth?" Different word, but which normally denotes a terminus and infers a change, while God normally describes notable aspects that are departures from the norm (age, excess toes, talking animals, metal floating, dead rising, miraculous births and transport, extended virginity, sinlessness, etc.
Sound doctrine is not that of pleading the extraordinary with only silence from Scripture to support it. But with Rome presuming deity, she presumes she can call things that are not as if they are.
But such objective analysis must mean you hate Mary!
Hopefully Akin’s comment, cited in your post, suggests that this amateurish tactic is in it’s waning days. Certainly there are more significant arguments to be undertaken, and Akin seems to get that, at least in regard to this issue, and that’s a good thing
Seeing how often specious RC apologetics are recycled, "waning days" is more hopeful than realistic.
"What we DON’T have is any sort of qualitative indicator on grace"
Should be:
What we DON’T have is any sort of quantitative indicator on grace