Jonathan Robie wrote:The phrase ὁ ἀψευδὴς θεὸς means "God, who is truthful" or "God, who never lies"
Depending on how you define the word "lie," those could be two very different thoughts.
If you remove "with intent to deceive, and define ψευδὴς as...
Stephen Hughes wrote:- to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive
- to create a false or misleading impression
transitive verb[/code]
It's difficult to see how Paul (a former Rabbi who was very familiar with the story of Abraham, and often falls back on it when he's trying to make a point) could have used ἀψευδὴς of the God who told Abraham to go to a certain mountain and offer Isaac as a burnt offering, and then sent an angel to stop him in the act and tell him it was just a test.
If that God's ultimate intention wasn't to deceive Abraham, but to teach him and future generations something about faith and obedience, I can see how Paul could say that He is truthful (just as Andronicus said the physician who temporarily deceived his patient was truthful), but I can't see how he could say that that God is incapable of deliderately creating a false impression, can you?
Especially if the same Paul wrote the book of Hebrews, where it is implied that Abraham expected God to have to raise Isaac from the dead in order to keep the promises He made to him--that credits Abraham with a lot of faith, but it also implies that he was fully laboring under the false impression that God wanted him to kill his son.
Jonathan Robie wrote:...philosophizing about what the lexicon says doesn't help either. Read the word in context of the sentence, look at other, similar sentences, look up the meaning in a lexicon. Keep it simple.
I don't think the meaning of this word is simple, and I want to look at how it was used in other sentences outside the New Testament corpus, before the New Testament was written, which is why I'd be interested in any citations BDAG has to offer.
I'm also really interested in how pre-Christian philosophers (like Andronicus) used the word, since that would be part of the history of the word's ussage, and I've been told that usage determines meaning (and Paul was a man of letters, who quoted Greek philosophers in his Mars Hill sermon, and the pastoral epistles.)
Look at what Paul said about the God who gave Abraham the false impression that He wanted Isaac killed and offered as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of Moriah (ὁ ἀψευδὴς θεὸς), and what Andronicus said of the physician who temporarily deceives his patient (He deceives indeed, but he is not a deceiver, for his aim is not the deception of the sick man, but his cure.)
I would love to see the original Greek text of that quote, and to know what words Andronicus used there, and how the philosophers (learned men who gave some thought to what the words they used meant) were using the words ψευδὴς and ἀψευδὴς before the New Testament was written.
I'd still be interested in what BDAG has to say, and far from looking for a one word definition for ψευδὴς (or ψευδὴς), I'm interested in the full scope and range of meaning of these words.
Please don't over simplify things that aren't simple, or pat me on my pointed little head and tell me to just forget about it and learn more Greek before I ask such questions.