W.
Answer: I am of opinion that there is no ground grammatically, any more than in the scope of our Lord’s doctrine, to suppose that the participle δεδεμένον expresses time past relatively to that which is signified by the future ἒσωαι. The idea is that of a certain condition viewed abstractedly from consideration of actual time. “Whatever thou mayest bind on the earth shall be a thing bound in the heavens,” &e. It is well known that, according to the grammarians, the futurum III or exactum in many verbs (as δέω κόπτω, παύω, πιπράσκω) supplies the place of the simple future passive, as may be seen in Jelf’s Gr. Gr. second ed. Vol. II. p. 71. The difference, I would add, is that the complex form before us views the result as permanent (δεδμένον) but, beyond doubt, of a future act (ἒσται τὸ δεδεμένον). Had the meaning contended for been meant, care would have been taken to express it distinctly, as ἢὀη όεόεμένον ἔσται ἐν, or ἔσται τὸ δεδεμένον or in some other way quite different from the actual construction, which appears to me to admit of no other translation than that which is given in the Authorized Version.
2 Timothy, just as the apostle is going to be offered up, turns to associations which are not in connection with the glory of Christ and the gospel as a workman.... Nature, and grace in nature, is fully owned of God. Man and wife are heirs together of the grace of life. But the power of the work is a newly introduced thing in the Second Adam, and Him risen, and by the Holy Ghost. The other was sweetly owned in its place; but then, with this, the thoughts of God are owned as before the existence of the world. There is the creation, and it is owned in its place, though man be fallen; there is power above it, and acting in it. But that which power brings in and reveals was in the counsels of God and given us in Christ, subsisting in Him, before there was a creation, fallen or unfallen. Power had abolished death, the present result of the first creation, and brought life and incorruptibility to light—what was before the first creation, and is the result in the new creation. Chapters ii. and iii. give the path of conduct as to the Church, and the ground of confidence and warrant of conduct when it is corrupt and fallen—a weighty instruction. It takes death, life, and reign; and Christ, not the Church, as the test of conduct; evil and good judged in individual conduct; judgment of the whole; association with what is good; and then (in the form of piety, or godliness, but reality of wickedness) the Scriptures for the individual the sure guide. What mail would call presumption becomes an imperious duty; and nothing is so humble as duty.