Does God “Knew”or “Knows” his own? (2 Tim 2:19 and Covid-19)

¶ You neglected to elaborate on the point that οντας in that same phrase is a present tense participle (not an aorist participle). That gives us "[the] Lord knows the [ones] being of-same [i.e. his]. I can understand how you can, for the sake of English style, change a participle into a verb, but how can you justify changing a present tense participle into a past tense verb, when you say, “The Lord knew (ἔγνω) those who were his.”? ¶ The use of κυριος also normally refers to Jesus, the Son, not the Father, or "God." Although we understand that the Son is God, references to the Lord Jesus in the New Testament are normally indicative of a dynamic, interactive relationship that we have with the person of God who was made flesh and who operates in a temporal fashion. ¶ Given these things, it makes no sense to translate, "The Lord knew those who were his." ¶ Once again, I cannot help but comment on the aorist problem. Since you likely consider me academically unqualified, due to lack of academic credentials, I will again cite the best academic article I have seen dealing with the issue, written by Charles R. Smith, who did the finest job I've seen of decomposing and debunking the collection of status quo aorist conglomerations in the article, ERRANT AORIST INTERPRETERS (Grace Theological Journal 2.2, Fall 1981). Someone uploaded that here: ¶ https://www.academia.edu/24380918/ERRANT_AORIST_INTERPRETERS ¶ So, what I am saying is not without credentialed academic precedent. But then, Jesus and the apostles had no academic credentials. Perhaps the apostle Paul was the exception. ¶ A.T. Robertson certainly recognized and characterized the problem as such for what it was (even though he then proceeded to describe and elaborate upon all the usual complicating "aorist categories" anyway). A.E. Knoch wrote of it in his pamphlet, "The English and Greek Indefinite," and I credit this for tipping me off to the problem so many years ago. Frank Stagg wrote of it in JBL 1972 (p. 222-31), "The Abused Aorist": ¶ https://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/jbl/1972_stagg.pdf ¶ And I've seen many others recognize and address the problem. ¶ I addressed predestination from a translation standpoint in an article, including the paradoxical use of προωριζω, in an online article I wrote a few years back. I quoted the very scant references that I found using Perseus, references that employed that word, a word I cannot even find an entry for in the LSJ or Brill, and I also deconstructed all the classic Calvinist proof-texts: ¶ http://www.wiebefamily.org/predestination.htm ¶ Maybe I need to add 2 Tim 2:9 to the list, although I haven't heard of that used as a Calvinist proof text, and I recognize that your intent was to comment on translation issues, not promote Calvinism or predestination. I recognize that you are not a staunch Calvinist; you just show threads of bias toward it. ¶ Here's my favorite verse to ask of any student of Greek whom I might happen to meet, who starts in on the aorist thing that they learned from their seminary professors: Col 1:23. Was the apostle Paul implying that the gospel had already been preached, at his time of writing, everywhere, including Japan, Australia, Alaska, South America, Hawaii? That's an aorist participle. As the rule you stated in a prior blog ["How much should we ask of our students? (Mark 12:28)" 11/26/2018], reapplied to this, would then have it, "Relative time means the aorist participle, κηρυχθεντος, indicates action occurring prior to the aorist ηκουσατε." So, when "was" the gospel preached the world over? The plain fact of the matter is that, because it is an aorist participle, it is not specifying time or completion but just the fact of the preaching of the gospel. The aorist participial phrase functions adjectivally, describing the gospel that they (without specifying time or completion) "hear." Therefore, it is the "preach-in-all-the-creation-the-under-the-heaven" gospel. Problem solved. Maybe untranslatable into formal English, but problem solved and easy to understand. And that's why we learn Greek. Not to translate into English yet again, but to understand what was said, so that we know the word of God. ¶ And there we have the resolution to a common Bible skeptic's question: Col 1:23 never stated that the gospel was preached everywhere the world over in the first century A.D. It never said that to begin with. Translations just made it look as though it did. ¶ For historical narratives, the original writers in this language described events in the past as though they were there observing them then in that past time. That's just frame of reference. We American English speakers actually sometimes do that informally, colloquially, in verbal speech ("So, I go down the street and meet this guy, and he looks at me funny and talks about this thing and that, so I tell him about Jesus..."), but not in formal English writing ("So, I went down the street, met this guy, and he looked at me in a funny way and talked about this thing and that, so I told him about Jesus..."). ¶ We use [implied aorist indicative] the sense of an implied aorist very commonly in American English. If I tell [implied aorist indicative] you right now, "I play [implied aorist indicative] the piano," that is the English simple present tense, yet you wouldn't assume [implied aorist subjunctive] that I am doing that right now, especially since, by necessity, my fingers are typing right now on a computer keyboard. Rather, it is the case that I claim [implied aorist indicative] to be [implied aorist infinitive] a piano player, without reference to time or completion of any of my piano-playing activity. As you see [implied aorist indicative] from the above, we use [implied aorist indicative] the English simple present tense to commonly express [implied aorist indicative] the same sense as the Greek aorist, yet few people give [implied aorist indicative] it a second thought. ¶ So, after all that, you can see that I would consider all the many existing translations correct in 2 Tim 2:9 (also LXX Num 16:5): "The Lord knows who are his." ¶ Being an engineer by profession, we engineers are used to keeping in mind the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). It's just aorist. Not " aorist," for the ancient Greek writers had no such categorizations in mind. Aorist does not specify time or aspect. ¶ And I cannot see what justification there is for even mentioning "Covid-19" in the context, since any Christian, no matter how Calvinist or Arminian they are, should not be worried about that passing fright of the world. ¶ By the way, you misspelled "unrighteousness" in the last paragraph.