This sounds like an unfounded presumptive attack, rather than a substantive critique.
And you're clearly just firing off a response just to have something to say. I would encourage you to engage the actual literature on the subject. Nothing I said is novel or even controversial among scholars who work in lexical semantics. A simple Google search will confirm everything I said.
Barr's critique of TDNT is one of the most widely cited methodological corrections in 20th-century biblical studies. Silva's work on lexical method (see
Biblical Words and Their Meaning) demonstrates why concept-historical studies produce semantic anachronism and illegitimate totality transfer. You're dismissing fifty years of scholarship just to have something to say in reply. That's a great witness for your position.
As for the claim that Louw-Nida is "far more theologically driven" than TDNT, that is
demonstrably false. Louw-Nida is explicitly usage-based and organized by semantic domains drawn from actual corpora, not by theological trajectories or concept-histories. Kittel
explicitly states that TDNT is a theological project. Read the preface.
None of this is relevant, and instead appears to be a pretext to force fit your pre-arrived at understanding rather than dealing with the contextual usage.
Establishing a verb's semantic core is
always relevant before discussing its contextual function. Context determines
usage, not
lexical meaning. Pretending the lexical question is irrelevant demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of how language works.
Nothing in my explanation "force fit" a conclusion, and I wager you won't actually attempt to
show otherwise. It was a summary of standard lexical method: (1) identify the semantic core; (2) distinguish meaning from contextual effect; (3) prevent theological conclusions from being smuggled into the lexeme itself. If you want to argue that the context of John 6 modifies, nuances, or limits the force of ἑλκύω, then make that case from the text. But right now, the dismissive nature of your comments only signals that you don't want to deal with the steps necessary to make a coherent argument.
and your whole argument is theologically driven, particularly in your failure to recognize the role of context in meaning and instead seeming to cling to a word-concept fallacy of meaning.
This is not even coherent. My argument did three things that are simply standard lexical method (as noted above). That is the opposite of a "theologically driven" approach. You're just throwing out assertions, again just for the sake of responding.
If you think I've confused lexeme and concept, then quote the sentence where I equate ἑλκύω with a theological construct. The word-concept fallacy occurs when someone loads a term with an entire doctrinal trajectory. I argued against
that very move in TDNT's handling of ἑλκύω. Likewise, context has a
central role in my analysis. I explicitly stated that success or failure of the action is determined
by context, not by the lexeme itself -- contra
your argument.
In order for the Calvinist conclusion to follow, sure. But not for it to make sense in the context of the passage. All you're doing is imposing your theological baggage
Your entire response has been very disappointing and underwhelming. You'll have to do a lot better for me to read and respond again. Your claim that I've "imposed theological baggage" on ἑλκύω is exceptionally absurd, given what I actually argued (most of which you simply ignored). What I actually did was isolate the term's semantic core and show how the
syntax of John 6:44 functions independently of any theological overlay. The grammatical point -- the identity of the objects of ἑλκύσῃ and ἀναστήσω -- does not depend on whether you interpret the verb as "forceful" or "an attempt." That's the argument itself, and disputing the verb's semantics misses it entirely.
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