St Paul and the gods

29^th July 2020

Verse 6b continued

Now we need to look at this verse from a Christian faith point of view.  We move away from Islam here and there is no way of bridging the gap as Tawhid prohibits this.  For the Christian Believer it is of great importance.  As we said earlier Paul pointed out that all the gods were not gods.  For the Christian there is only one God revealed in the three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

“…we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.”

 

If there are any mistakes in what I say they will be all mine but I have to say these words are seriously important.  So before commenting more I want to go through each section so that we are crystal clear on what they mean.  I have broken the verse into 5 sections (A B C D E )so that you can follow my argument.

My Translation

Section A = Yet for us there is One God the Father out of Whom are all things.

ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα

Here God is the subject of the sentence.  The bit where I translated ‘out of ’ this is ‘ex’ (for example exodus God called His people out of Egypt).

 

Section B= ‘we in Him’  

καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν

The word eis being a preposition here can be translated in various ways;

1.     Locative; ‘in’ or ‘into’  KJV uses ‘in’

2.     Time;   for example, ‘came into’ but not appropriate here

3.     Or purpose; ‘for’

Section C =  ‘and one Lord Jesus Christ’

καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός

This is straight forward

Section D =  ‘’Through’ or ‘by’ all things’

δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα

Section E  =  ‘and we through or by him’

καὶ ἡμεῖς δι’ αὐτοῦ

My final translation for verse 6

‘Yet for us there is One God the Father from Whom are all things. We in (or exist for) Him and one Lord Jesus Christ by all things and we through Him’.

Interpretation

So, we see the all things flow from the father including our own existence that is why some translations use the word ‘exist’ and then purpose ‘for’.   It is no accident that the Lord Jesus Christ the ‘Son’ is mentioned.  We can only come to the Father through the agency of the Son. This is very clear in this verse.  I can also see why ‘in’ is not the favoured translation (although it is used in the KJV).  The reason for this is that the ‘in’ becomes ambiguous in English;

The ambiguity ‘In’;

1.     ‘In’ puts us directly in relation to the Father and circumvents the agency of Christ.  This goes against the Greek.

2.     It relates us to Christ which is the correct reading.