Does the fact that “blasphemed” is in the aorist tense make a difference?
Question:
Hello,
I have looked at Luke 12:10 in Greek. I have been trouble by this because "blasphemed" appears to be in that past tense in English and in Young's Literal Translation of the Bible. In Greek, the tense is Aorist participle. I am not sure exactly what that means. In Mark 3:29 and Matthew 12:32 it is in the Aorist Subjunctive. To me looking at this it seems this is a one-time sin, not a continuing state. So according to this can I still be forgiven if I called God evil even though God is not? I know I have emailed you about this sin many times, but I did not about the Greek tenses. I have also come across the wording in Young's Literal Translation. How does the tense of the works speak and blaspheme work out?
Answer:
You continue to assume that God refuses to forgive some sins, despite the many passages which state that the problem is on man's side and not God's (such as II Peter 3:9). There are some sins people never leave and there is at least one sin that Jesus says people don't turn from. But nowhere does it say that a repentant believer is refused forgiveness.
Aorist is the "undefined" or "indefinite" tense. It means something happened with no assumption about how long, how often, or whether it is still going on. It would be like being told "The ball flew" without you being able to conclude if the ball is still up in the air or not. The aorist "indicates an undefined action. It tells you nothing about the aspect of the action other than it occurred." [William D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek]. Aorist words are translated using the past tense with no indication of continuance.
