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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Jud_1:19. Final description of the false teachers, not specially, but according to their general nature.
οὗτοί εἰσιν ] parallel with Jud_1:16.
οἱ ἀποδιορίζοντες ] the article marks the idea as definite: “these are they who,” etc.
ἀποδιορίζειν , a word which occurs only in Aristotle’s Polit. iv. 8. 9, is here very differently explained; with the reading ἑαυτούς it would most naturally be taken as equivalent to separate; thus, “who separate themselves from the church, whether internally or externally” (Wahl); without ἑαυτούς it is explained either as = to secede (Fronmüller), or = to cause separations and divisions, namely, in the church (Luther: “who make factions;” de Wette-Brückner, Wiesinger; so also in this commentary). Neither explanation is, however, justified from the use of the word διορίζειν . It is still more arbitrary, with Schott, to explain it: “who make a distinction, namely, between the pneumatical (Pneumatikern), as what they consider themselves, and the psychical (Psychikern), as what true Christians regard them;” for there is no indication of such a distinction made by them. If we base the explanation on the significance of διορίζειν , the word may be understood as = to make definitions. But in this case what follows must be closely connected with it, by which the mode and manner of their doing so is stated, namely, that they do so as psychical men, who are without the πνεῦμα . Hofmann gives to the verb the meaning: “to determine (define) something exactly in detail,” and then assumes that the preceding genitive τῶν ἀσεβειῶν depends on οἱ ἀποδιοριζόμενοι , which may well be the case, because a participle standing for a substantive may as well as a substantive govern the genitive. According to this explanation, Jude intends to describe those men as persons “who make impieties the object of an exercise of thought exactly defining everything, and so are the philosophers of impieties.” This explanation is condemned by the harsh and artificial construction which it requires.[44]
ψυχικοὶ , πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες ] πνεῦμα is not man’s natural spirit,[45] for Jude could not deny this to his opponents; and to explain μὴ ἔχοντες in the sense: “I might say that they have no spirit at all” (Fronmüller), is completely arbitrary. It is rather to be understood of the Holy Spirit (de Wette-Brückner, Wiesinger, Hofmann); the want of the article and of an epithet, such as ἁγίου or Θεοῦ , is no objection against this interpretation, since the simple word πνεῦμα is often used in the N. T. as a designation for the objective Holy Spirit. It is erroneous to affirm that by this interpretation the conclusion of the description is too flat, for nothing worse can be said of a man who desires to be esteemed a Christian than that he wants the Holy Spirit. Moreover, only so understood does πνεῦμα μὴ ἔχοντες correspond to the preceding ψυχικοί , to which it is added as an explanation; ψυχικοί they are, inasmuch as their natural spiritual life left to itself is under the unbroken power of the σάρξ ; see 1Co_2:14-15; Jam_3:15.
[44] Certainly the dependent genitive may precede the governing substantive; but this union is here rendered impossible by the intervening οὗτοι . A participle also, taken as a substantive, may sometimes govern a genitive; but this is only found with the neuter, and then only rarely. Add to this that οὗτοί εἰσιν here corresponds to the οὗτοί εἰσιν in vv. 16 and 12, and accordingly must stand at the beginning of the sentence.
[45] Schott explains πνεῦμα “spiritual life in the distinctive character of its being, that it is self-controlled in personal self-consciousness and self-determination,” and so equivalent to “free personality of the spirit”(!); but this free personality, Schott further observes, is not denied to them in the sense as “if they were actually deprived of it,” but only that it “does not attain permanence and reality in actual performance.” This distorted interpretation is contradicted by the fact that Jude simply denies to them πνεῦμα ἔχειν .
REMARK.
Schott attempts to prove that the three verses, 12, 16, and 19, beginning with οὗτοι , refer to the threefold expression contained in Jud_1:11, namely, in this manner: that the Antinomians, in showing themselves to be σπιλάδες in their agapé (Jud_1:12), resembled Cain; that in being γογγυσταὶ μεμψίμοιροι , and out of greed for material gain indulging in mercenary flattery (Jud_1:16), they resembled Balaam; and that in establishing a self-invented ungodly sanctity in opposition to the divinely appointed and divinely effective Christian sanctity (Jud_1:19), they resembled Korah. This juxtaposition, however, is anything but appropriate, resting, on the one hand, on incorrect explanations; and, on the other hand, on the arbitrary selection of separate points. It is incorrect to affirm that the similarity of the Antinomians with Cain consisted in this, that what he did corporally they did spiritually; there is contained in this rather a distinction than a similarity. It is arbitrary to bring forward only the last clause of Jud_1:16, which reproaches the Antinomians with flattery, and which may also be found in Balaam; whereas the other expressions in the verse do not suit in the least degree. And lastly, it is erroneous so to interpret Jud_1:19 that the Antinomians were accused of the setting up of a false sanctity; even were this correct, yet the sanctity claimed by them is of a totally different nature from that to which Korah and his company laid claim.