Dan Wallace on the "Go" of the Great Commission
At the blog "Parchment and Pen," Dan Wallace gets into some technical nuances of the Greek language that corrects a misunderstanding of the text that I have been teaching for years (my apologies to all I have misled):
I don’t know the source, but I suspect it is from a Christian magazine article written in the last 75 years. My guess is that this idea would have found fertile soil during the Great Depression (when funds were definitely low and excuses for lack of action could be high; for a parallel, see Jas 2.1-13). There’s a myth foisted on the Christian public about the meaning of the Great Commission (Matt 28.19-20). It goes something like this: “In the Greek, the word translated ‘Go’ is really a participle and it literally means, ‘as you are going.’ But the words ‘make disciples’ are an imperative in Greek. That’s the only imperative in these two verses. Therefore, the Great Commission is not a command to go; rather, it is a command to make disciples as you are going, or make disciples along the way.” The exposition based on this understanding of the Greek text then attempts to salve the consciences of the congregation, permitting them to do nothing about the lost if it at all means going out of their way.
There are two major problems with this treatment of Matt 28.19-20. First, it is a misunderstanding of the Greek. Second, it is a misunderstanding of the historical context. This blog will deal with the first issue.
As for the Greek, it is true that the word translated ‘go’ is a participle. But it is not a present participle, which is the one that would be required if the meaning were ‘as you are going.’ It is an aorist participle, πορευθέντες (poreuthentes). As such, it hardly means ‘as you are going’ or ‘while you are going.’ The basic idea would be ‘after you have gone,’ and as such would presuppose that one would have gone forth before making disciples. But in collocation with certain kinds of verbs this basic meaning is altered. When an aorist participle is followed by an aorist imperative in narrative literature, it almost invariably piggy-backs on the force of the imperative. That is, it is translated like an imperative because the author is trying to communicate a command.
There's more, so be sure to read the rest.
And oh by the way - this is a good post to balance out a previous post of mine on reading the Bible. In my post "Do We Need to Be Taught How to Understand Scripture?" I argued that most people can understand most everything they need to understand from most of the Bible, most of the time." My point was to encourage you that you don't need advanced degrees in hermeneutics or a knowledge of the original languages to understand the Bible.
Professor Wallace's post is an example of where such knowledge is greatly beneficial. However, it is beneficial in a curious way. What Prof. Wallace is saying is that your English translations of the Bible that have the word "go" translated as an imperative, or a command, are basically right. The only reason for confusion in this case is that a lot of pastors and teachers with a rudimentary understanding of Greek (such as I!) have tried to be too cute or too sophisticated with their Greek. It's a good example of where a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. With our rudimentary understanding of Greek, we have found something in the text that isn't there. In this case the people in the pew would be better off trusting their English translations instead of pastors and teachers who are wannabe Greek experts.
Thus, in this case, Prof. Wallace, a true Greek scholar, uses his advanced knowledge of the Greek to affirm the simple reading and understanding of the text.
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