"The sentence “He failed to ἑλκύω” merely says the drawing did not occur; it doesn’t tell you if that was because
the subject was too weak, or
the object was too resistant."
This is a statement about the
syntax/grammar of the sentence, not the
semantic core of ἑλκύω itself. That suggests you gave ChatGPT a prompt that didn't actually reflect the issue we're discussing. Out of curiosity, what exactly did you ask it?
The point ChatGPT is making in what you quoted is simply that a sentence like "He failed to perform an action" doesn't specify
why he failed. But of course it doesn't. That is trivially true of verbs in general. That's not what we are disputing. We are discussing the
meaning of ἑλκύω. Its semantic core denotes a decisive movement from one position to another, just as the English verb "lift" denotes a decisive raising of an object off the ground. The failure of the action does not redefine the verb. "Lift" does not mean "
try to raise"; it means "
to raise." Someone can
attempt to lift and
fail, but that does not alter the verb's
meaning.
Similarly, if the Father attempts to ἑλκύω and fails, the failure is
external to the verb itself. The verb still
means "to haul/drag with decisive force." It is not inherently soft or conditional. Any context of failure is determined by
circumstance, not the
definition of ἑλκύω. Thus, the term
should not be rendered "attract" or "woo" with the understanding of
inherent resistibility.
So your quotation does not contradict my statement that, in John 21:6 and John 6:44, any failure would be attributable to the
subject's weakness (the agent performing the drawing), not the object's resistance. That was the point of my original argument, not a generic observation about how verbs work. If you try to attribute it to the object's resistance, you will have changed the meaning of the verb itself. ἑλκύω does not
mean "to attempt to draw someone, who may resist"; rather, its
meaning entails decisive movement, just as the English verb "lift" does. Whether or not it's successful is not a question of semantics.
The reason this matters (you are missing the forest for the trees) is that a reading of ἑλκύω in John 6:44 as inherently meaning "
try to draw" leaves open the possibility that God might fail in
enabling a person
to come to Christ (
not simply fail in
bringing them to Christ), which undermines the logic of the text. In John 6:44, ἑλκύω modifies
δύναται ("is able"), not ἐλθεῖν ("to come"). "No one
can come to me
unless the Father draws him" is a statement about
inability. The Father's drawing is what
effects the ability to come. If the drawing can fail, then the very
possibility of salvation itself would not be guaranteed.
Imagine someone locked in a vault with no access to the combination. The act of unlocking the vault is what makes exit
possible. Whether the person inside "resists" or not is irrelevant. They
have no access to the lock; that's the point. If the unlocker fails, it is solely because of the unlocker's inability, not the person's resistance. Moreover, what that failure would mean is that
it remains impossible for the person in the vault to ever escape. This is why this whole attempt to read a soft/conditional meaning into ἑλκύω
hurts your case. It does not help it. If ἑλκύω does not entail a decisive movement from one position (inability) to another (ability), then there
is no assurance that the very
possibility of coming to Christ has actually been made a reality.