EIS

EIS

Hugo McCord

A telephone call from a man of God, "What is the meaning of eis in Matthew 12:41?" I do not understand why some scholarly theologians and learned preachers who love Jesus and who respect his New Testament give both a forward and a backward meaning to the preposition eis, both prospective and retrospective, both "in order to" and "because of."

The baptism of John the Baptist was not "because" (dia) the people’s sin had been forgiven, but "for [eis] the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4, NIV). Similarly, the blood of Jesus was not poured out "because" (dia) people’s sins had been forgiven, but "for [eis] the forgiveness of sins" (Matthew 26:28, NIV).

A Baptist preacher (A. J. Sloan, in our debate out from Portland (Tenn.) in 1935, affirmed that "the alien sinner is saved before and without baptism." He contended that the "for" in Acts 2:38 of the KJV, "for the remission of sins," means the people had already received the remission of sins, that the word "for" does not look forward, but backward.

He was correct that sometimes "for " looks backward, and so in those instances the word means "because of," as "I called the fire department, for our house was burning," or, "Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out" (Matthew 25:8, NRSV), or, "they gnawed their tongues for pain" (Revelation 16:10, ASV).

But sometimes "for" looks forward, as "I went to the bank for money," or, "I urge you to take some food, for it will help you survive" (Act 27:34, NRSV), or "By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial" (Matthew 26:12, NRSV).

Since "for" is not precise, and can refer both backward and forward, I omitted it from Acts 2:38 of the FHV of the New Testament, making the verse to say: "Change your hearts, and let each one of you be immersed in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins might be forgiven, …" Similarly, the NIV, in its first edition (1973) omitted the ambiguous "for" from Acts 2:38, making the verse to say: "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, so that your sins may be forgiven. …"

But many professors and preachers, of Mr. Sloan’s persuasion, did not like what they were reading in the NIV. They wanted the word "for" retained so that they could still teach people that "for " looked backward, not forward. Protests were sent to the NIV translation committee: "We received many letters from pastors and professors," writes Dr. Ken Barker (an executive member of the NIV translation committee),

asking us to change the way we translated this verse [Acts 2:38]. They wanted to translate it "for the forgiveness of sins" for such a translation could be interpreted in any of three ways. … I might add I believe we translated it correctly the first time (quoted by Cecil May in PREACHER TALK from David Tarbet, 16^th and Pile BULLETIN, 4-15-92, p. 4).

But the translation committee yielded to pressure. An NIV Bible that you buy today does not say, in Acts 2:38, as it did in 1973, "Repent and be baptized … so that your sins may be forgiven." Instead, since 1984 your NIV Bible says, "Repent and be baptized … for the forgiveness of your sins."

The Baptist scholar A. T. Robertson gave up trying to find support from the word eis in Acts 2:8 for his teaching that baptism is because of the remission of sins, writing that such teaching can "only" be learned from other verses that show "the context and tenor of New Testament teaching." "The right translation" of Acts 2:38 is "a task for the interpreter, not the grammarian," wrote the grammarian who authored a ponderous volume, A GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, p. 592, cited by David P. Stevens in THEREFORE STAND, December, 1991, p. 93.

Another grammarian, Charles B. Williams, professor emeritus of Union University, Jackson (Tenn.), translator of the WILLIAMS NEW TESTAMENT, wrote,

I have been informed that the Southern Seminary at Louisville leans to the Retrospective View in Acts 2:38, PRESUMABLY FOLLOWING Dr. John A. Broadus. I do not endorse such a view, and I feel it weakens the Baptist position … with such a Weak Argument on a single Doubtful Text (from a letter written by Dr. Williams, January 14, 1942).

Another grammarian, J. R. Mantey, professor of New Testament Greek in the Northern Baptist Seminary in Chicago, admitted that he too could not speak as a grammarian in teaching that Acts 2:38 means that baptism is because of the remission of sins, "for it may mean for the purpose of remission of sins" (Dana and Mantey, A MANUAL GRAMMAR OF THE GREEK NEW TESTAMENT, p. 104).

The Grimm-Thayer lexicon says that eis means "into, to, towards, among." Even though that lexicon lists "constructions in some respect peculiar" (p. 183), it no where gives a retrospective, a backward, a causal use of eis.

The Bauer-Gingrich-Danker lexicon says that eis means "motion into a thing or into its immediate vicinity" (p. 228, 2^nd edition). It lists "other uses of eis" meaning "at, in the face of" in Matthew 12:41; Luke 11:32: Romans 4:20, and "perhaps" Matthew 3:11. Where the KJV in Matthew 12:41 has "repented at the preaching," B-G-D have "repent at the proclamation," and so they do not endorse changing "at the proclamation" to "because of the proclamation" as does J. R. Mantey in arguing "for a causal use" (JBL 70, ’51, 45-8, 309-11).

B-G-D dismiss Mantey’s theory as being "controversial," and they note that Mantey has been refuted by Ralph Marcus (JBL 70, 129f; 71, ’52, 43f.). Marcus was emphatic that there is not the slightest shadow of causal eis in the passages that Mantey cited, and that Mantey admitted that he had no lexical support, for "none of the Greek lexicons translate eis as causal" (JBL 70, March 1951, p. 45).

Dr. Williams wrote to Professor Mantey "not to take that position." THE WILLIAMS TESTAMENT in Matthew 3:11 has "I am baptizing you in water to picture your repentance," and in Matthew 12:41,

The men of Nineveh will rise with the leaders of this age at the judgment and condemn them, for they turned to the message preached by Jonah.

Dr. Williams wrote that

the people of Nineveh repented and the proof of it was their turning to practice the message preached by Jonah, putting their faith in Jehovah and forsaking their sins--something prospective.

Further, he wrote that eis "is always prospective."

John the Baptist refused to baptize people unless they had repented ("show proof that you have changed your hearts," Matthew 3:8, FHV), but in Matthew 3:11 his focus was not on their baptize you in water unto [eis] repentance." This is evident by his not saying "I baptize because (dia) you have repented," but he used eis), "unto," a referral to their subsequent life of continuing penitence. He knew that dia always points backward and that eis always points forward. J. W. McGarvey wrote,

[T]o assume, as some have, that the preposition has the sense of because of, is to seek escape from a difficulty by attaching to a word a meaning which it never bears. The preposition (eis) is never used to express the idea that one thing is done because of another having been done. Neither, indeed, would it be true that John baptized persons because of their repentance; for, while it is true that repentance did precede baptism, it was not because of this object it was administered (COMMENTARY ON MATTHEW AND MARK, p. 37, cited by David Stevens, THEREFORE STAND, Dec. 1991, p. 93).

Similarly, Jesus used the forward-looking eis in Luke 5:32: "I have not come to call the righteous to [eis] penitence, but sinners." Also, though the men of Nineveh repented because of Jonah’s preaching, that was not the focus of Jesus" words in Mathew 12:41 and Luke 11:32.

The men of Nineveh shall stand up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and, behold, a greater than Jonah is here.

Jesus, like John, knew the difference between dia and eis. Jesus was saying that the Ninevites changed their lives at the preaching of Jonah, or more vividly, into what Jonah had demanded. The backward action had to precede, to quit their sins, but Jesus was talking about their subsequent action after Jonah had left town. Regarding Matthew 12:41, J. W. McGarvey wrote:

The preposition here rendered at is eis, which usually means into. Some writers have contended that it here means because of, or in consequence of, a meaning quite foreign to the word. It is true, as a matter of fact, that the Ninevites repented in consequence of the preaching of Jonah; but if it had been the purpose of the writer [the speaker, Jesus] to express this thought, he would have used the preposition dia instead of eis. The thought of the passage is quite distinct from this. They repented into the preaching of Jonah. This is not idiomatic English, but it conveys the exact thought which a Greek would derive from the original. The term asserted that they repented into this. Their repentance, in other words, brought them into the course of life which the preaching required (McGarvey, ibid., p. 113).

Finally, in a desperate effort among 1773 occurrences of eis to find one example of its being retrospective, a few have turned to Romans 4:20: "He [Abraham] staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief" (KJV). But here again all the leading translation show eis as pointing forward, never backward: "yet, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief" (ASV); "yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief" (NAS); "Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God" (NIV); and "No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God" (NRSV). And so, when Professor Mantey presumed to translate eis in Romans 4:20 as "on account of," he was a loner speaking not as a grammarian but as an interpreter.