Re: hOUTWS Jn3.16 "In this way"

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 01 2000 - 09:35:20 EST


At 7:18 AM -0600 4/1/00, Charles Skallerud wrote:
>Don't these two interpretations overlap? While the sense of 'in this way'
>is primary, the event described is inherently spectacular. Perhaps the
>context makes hOUTOS rather expansive and intense. I've always taken it in
>your sense and am now just trying to see what the other might mean. I
>don't have Brown to hand so I'm not basing my thoughts on his
>interpretation.
>
>Charles Skallerud
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Joseph A. Weaks" <jweaks@delta.is.tcu.edu>

>> I have often made the point of explaining to church folk the function
>> of hOUTWS in John 3, as an adverb of hOUTOS meaning 'this-ly' or 'in
>> this way'. I have a web page called This Weaks' Hermeneutic where I
>> post a weekly lectionary reflection as a resource for preachers, and
>> this week I made similar comments. You see the whole statement on
>> This Weaks' Hermeneutic at
>> http://delta.is.tcu.edu/~jweaks/herm.html
>>
>> But I was surprised to read that Raymond Brown supports the popular
>> reading of 'so' as an intensive of extent, that God loved the world
>> 'sooooooo much'. It seemed silly to me, in the context of the whole
>> chapter which speaks about the ways God has acted in the world.
>> Anyone care to give me the argument for the intensive of extent
>> interpretation of hOUTWS?

I have to agree with Charles Skallerud here. The endeavor to draw a
significant distinction between "in this way" and "so (much)" as ways of
understanding hOUTWS in John 3:16 and to insist that "in this way" alone is
valid, that "so (much)" is silly and absurd strikes me, to paraphrase a
proverbial expression, as making a molehill out of a mountain, or like
insisting that we should sing NOT "How great Thou art!" but rather "HOW
Thou art!"

Technically speaking it is true that hOUTWS is the adverb for
hOUTOS/hAUTH/TOUTO and means "thus" or "so" or "in this manner." Yet the
correlation of a clause including a hOUTWS, more commonly, to be sure,
modifying an adjective or another adverb, with a clause beginning with
hWSTE is conventionally referred to as a "result" or "consecutive"
construction. In this particular instance the hWSTE clause speaks of an act
of divine self-sacrifice (or if one prefers it, even in non-trinitarian
terms, an act of profound divine giving). If one objects to conveying
hOUTWS ... hWSTE as "so much ... that he gave" and insists that the hWSTE
clause is simply correlative with hOUTWS, so that we have a simple
equation: the manner of His loving is self-giving for the salvation of
believers, I still have a problem with the equation of an action with a
manner, and I prefer to think that the action is a consequence God's love
of the world rather than a mere description of it. "How shall I love thee?
Let me describe the way."

I think that what puzzles me most about this insistence that hOUTWS in this
instance is devoid of any implication of extent (i.e. it cannot be an
equivalent to the classical TOSOUTON or TOSON) is the claim that there's
all the difference in the world between understanding hOUTWS in this
instance as "so much" and "in this way"--it seems a pretty superficial
distinction to me in view of the assertions made in these two clauses. So
let me make a suggestion that we rephrase hOUTWS ... hWSTE as "such that
..." and see if it won't work: "For God loved the world such that he gave
his only son, so that anyone who believes in him may have eternal life."
Perhaps "such love" may sound a little less problematic than "so much
love"--or how about "nonesuch love"? In the last analysis I still think
that in John 3:16 the distinction between quality and quantity has become
moot, and that to insist on it is tantamount to making a molehill out of a
mountain.

-- 

Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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