Wednesday, May 07, 2014
"Christ is risen" is archaic grammar, not a theological statement
Well, it's a theological statement, of course, but the use of "is" rather than "has" is historic rather than theological. It says more about what's happened to English grammar in the past few centuries than what happened to Christ in the past few millennia.
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5 comments:
that may be how it came to be, but that doesn't mean we can't take meaning that wasn't initially meant. Otherwise we have a rough time with any of our liturgical use of psalms or Hebrew Scriptures.
You still have that distinction in Modern German, where verbs of being and motion use sein rather than haben to form the perfect tense.
However, re: the first comment, those generally aren't arguments from grammar in the target language.
re: the second. Still in French a little, too.
I think it is equally correct to say, eg. "I am bathed" vs. "I have bathed." Doesn't seem archaic to me.
"I am bathed in blood" and "I have bathed in blood" have very different connotations.
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