Prepositions

A preposition is a small word that sets a noun in relation to something else: in the house, through the door, for the people. Greek has about seventeen proper prepositions in the New Testament, and they are among the commonest words in it. Each one is followed by a noun or pronoun in a particular case, and the preposition is said to govern that case. ἐν always takes the dative. εἰς always takes the accusative. ἐκ, ἀπό and ἀντί always take the genitive. That is why the previous three lessons kept setting aside genitives and datives that follow prepositions: their meaning comes mainly from the preposition.

Some prepositions take more than one case, and then the case changes the meaning. διά with the genitive means through; with the accusative it means because of or for the sake of. ὑπέρ with the genitive means for, on behalf of; with the accusative it means above or beyond. κατά with the genitive means against or down from; with the accusative according to or throughout. Romans 4:25 shows διά with the accusative twice, ὃς παρεδόθη διὰ τὰ παραπτώματα ἡμῶν (hos paredothē dia ta paraptōmata hēmōn), 'He was delivered over to death for our trespasses', and then διὰ τὴν δικαίωσιν ἡμῶν, 'for our justification'. Because of our trespasses, and for the sake of our justification: the case after διά tells you which kind of for.

Romans 8:11 shows how much can hang on that one change. Manuscripts differ over whether the end of the verse reads διά with the genitive, through his Spirit who dwells in you, or διά with the accusative, because of his Spirit who dwells in you. The SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT) prints the accusative; the BSB renders 'through His Spirit', which matches the genitive reading. Both readings are ancient and both make good sense. You do not need to settle that variant now; Module 8 teaches how. But notice that one ending on one noun after one preposition is the whole difference between the Spirit as the agent of resurrection and the Spirit as its ground.

Two spelling changes will trip a beginner. Before a vowel, many prepositions drop their last vowel and mark the loss with an apostrophe: διά becomes δι’, as in Romans 11:36, and ἀπό becomes ἀπ’. And ἐκ becomes ἐξ before a vowel, as in ἐξ αὐτοῦ. Your tool will give you the dictionary form, so tap the word if you are not sure. Prepositions are also often fixed to the front of verbs, as in ἐκβάλλω, throw out, or συνίστημι, show, from σύν and ἵστημι. Module 2 has already warned you against reading a compound verb's meaning off its parts; the preposition at the front is a clue to a word's history, not a guarantee of its meaning in a sentence.

Here are six prepositions you will meet on every page, set out as a simple table. Read each line as: the preposition, the case it takes, its core sense, then its range.

ἐν (en), with the dative. Core: in. Range: in, among, at, when, by means of, with. Galatians 2:20 uses it for sphere, in the body, and means, by faith, in one sentence, as the last lesson showed. Its most important use in Paul, ἐν Χριστῷ (en Christō, in Christ), can mean union with Christ, belonging to him, or the sphere of his rule, and sometimes simply by means of what Christ has done. The Systematic Theology lesson Union with Christ treats what the phrase teaches; here the point is that one preposition carries all those possibilities and the context must choose.

εἰς (eis), with the accusative. Core: into. Range: into, to, toward, for, with a view to, and in Koine sometimes simply in. Mark 1:9 says Jesus was baptised εἰς τὸν Ἰορδάνην (eis ton Iordanēn), which the BSB rightly renders 'in the Jordan', and John 1:18 says the Son is εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς, at the Father's side, where nobody is moving anywhere. In the Greek of this period εἰς was taking over ground that ἐν once held, so a student should not insist that εἰς always means motion into. That warning matters, because several famous arguments have been built on εἰς meaning one thing only.

ἐκ (ek), with the genitive. Core: out of. Range: out of, from, by reason of, belonging to. ἐκ πίστεως (ek pisteōs, out of faith, by faith) in Romans 1:17 and the BSB's 'from yourselves' in Ephesians 2:8, οὐκ ἐξ ὑμῶν, are both this preposition. διά (dia), with the genitive, through, by means of; with the accusative, because of, for the sake of. ὑπέρ (hyper), with the genitive, for, on behalf of, for the sake of, concerning, and in some contexts in place of; with the accusative, above, beyond, more than. ἀντί (anti), with the genitive only. Core: instead of. Range: instead of, in place of, in exchange for, and occasionally because of. ἀντί is rare in the New Testament, appearing only about twenty times, while ὑπέρ is far commoner.

Notice one thing about English. The BSB, like most translations, renders ἀντί, ὑπέρ, διά with the accusative and sometimes εἰς all as for. That is not a fault, since for is often the best English word, but it means the English reader cannot see which Greek preposition stands behind a given for. In the inquiry you saw this in the phrases about the death of Christ. A ransom for many and a ransom for all are ἀντί and ὑπέρ respectively. That small difference is where the next two sections begin.

Romans 11:36 closes three chapters of argument about Israel and the nations with a doxology, and it is built entirely on prepositions. ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα (ex autou kai di’ autou kai eis auton ta panta): out of him, and through him, and to him, the all things. There is no verb; the BSB supplies 'are'. The him is God, the God of 11:33-35 whose wisdom is unsearchable and who has never been anyone's debtor. Everything comes from God as its source, exists through God as its means, and moves toward God as its goal. Paul has just finished arguing that God's purposes for Israel and the Gentiles cannot fail, and three prepositions are his summary of why.

1 Corinthians 8:6 uses the same prepositions and distributes them. ἀλλ’ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν (all’ hēmin heis theos ho patēr, ex hou ta panta kai hēmeis eis auton): 'yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist'. Then: καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα, 'And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came'. Many scholars, Richard Bauckham prominent among them, have argued that Paul has here taken the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4, the confession that the Lord is one, and placed Jesus inside it. Whether or not one follows that argument in every detail, the prepositions show the shape of the claim: the Father as source and goal, the Son as the one through whom creation came.

Colossians 1:16 complicates any neat scheme. ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα (en autō ektisthē ta panta), in him all things were created, and at the end of the verse, τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται, 'All things were created through Him and for Him'. Here the Son is not only the one through whom but also the one for whom, the εἰς that 1 Corinthians 8:6 used of the Father. Romans 11:36 had all three prepositions said of God without distinction. So the New Testament does use prepositions to say something about how the Father and the Son relate to creation, and it does not use them as a rigid code.

The church learned that lesson the hard way. In the fourth century some opponents of the full deity of the Son and the Spirit argued that the prepositions proved a ranking: the Father is the one from whom, the Son the lesser one through whom, the Spirit the lesser still in whom. Basil of Caesarea answered them in On the Holy Spirit, written around 375. Part of his answer was simply to read the texts. He pointed out that Romans 11:36 applies from, through and to all to one subject, which he read as the Lord, the Son; and that even if the verse is read of the Father, through whom is then said of the Father too. Scripture, he showed, uses the prepositions interchangeably of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. A theology built on the supposed fixed meaning of a preposition, he argued, falls apart when the preposition is checked across the whole Bible. That warning is sixteen centuries old, and it is the right one to carry into the next two sections.

Start with what nobody in the debate disputes, because it is a great deal. The New Testament says, again and again, that Christ died for us. Romans 5:8, 'While we were still sinners, Christ died for us', is Χριστὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν ἀπέθανεν (Christos hyper hēmōn apethanen). 1 Corinthians 15:3 says Christ died ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, 'for our sins'. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says God made him to be sin ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, 'on our behalf'. Galatians 3:13 says Christ became a curse ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, 'for us'. And Jesus himself, in Mark 10:45, said that he came 'to give His life as a ransom for many', λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν (lytron anti pollōn). Whatever else is argued, the death of Christ was for others, for their sins, and as a ransom.

The ranges of the two prepositions are also settled. ἀντί means instead of, in place of, in exchange for. In Matthew 2:22 Archelaus reigns ἀντί his father Herod, in his place; and Jesus asks in Luke 11:11 which father would give a snake ἀντί a fish, instead of it. When Mark 10:45 says a ransom ἀντὶ πολλῶν, the most natural sense is a ransom in place of, or in exchange for, the many. ὑπέρ is wider. Its basic sense is for the benefit of, on behalf of, and it can also mean concerning. But it can carry the sense in place of where the context requires it. In Philemon 13 Paul says he would have liked to keep Onesimus 'so that on your behalf he could minister to me', ὑπὲρ σοῦ: Onesimus would serve in Philemon's place. In John 11:50 Caiaphas says it is better that one man die ὑπὲρ τοῦ λαοῦ, 'for the people', than that the whole nation perish: the one dies so that the many do not.

Notice also what the prepositions by themselves do not settle. They do not tell you whether the death of Christ was a penalty borne, a victory won over the powers, a sacrifice offered, an example given, or all of these together. Those are questions about the whole biblical witness, and the Systematic Theology lesson The Work of Christ sets out the main accounts of the atonement with their defenders and their texts. The question for a Greek student is narrower and still important: when the New Testament says Christ died ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, does the preposition itself say in our place, or only on our behalf? On that, careful scholars disagree, and both sides deserve to be heard as their own defenders would put it.

The case that the prepositions carry substitution runs like this. First, ἀντί in Mark 10:45 means in place of, and 1 Timothy 2:6 joins the two prepositions in one phrase, ἀντίλυτρον ὑπὲρ πάντων (antilytron hyper pantōn), a ransom for all, where the noun itself is built on ἀντί. That suggests the two were understood together, and that ὑπέρ in Paul's phrases about Christ's death carries the substitutionary sense of the saying of Jesus. Second, ὑπέρ demonstrably can mean in place of: Philemon 13 and John 11:50 show it, and grammarians since A. T. Robertson have pointed to papyrus documents in which a scribe writes ὑπέρ, on behalf of, a person who cannot write, that is, in that person's place. Third, Romans 5:6-8 sets Christ's dying ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν, 'for the ungodly', beside the rare case in which 'anyone die for a righteous man', and dying for another in that sense is dying in his place. Simon Gathercole, in Defending Substitution (2015), has set such texts beside the classical Greek tradition of one person dying in place of another, as in Euripides' play Alcestis, where a wife dies so that her husband may live. Leon Morris argued along similar lines in The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (1955), and Murray J. Harris, in Prepositions and Theology in the Greek New Testament (2012), concluded that in several of these texts ὑπέρ includes the sense in place of. On this reading, the prepositions do not prove a full doctrine of the atonement, but they do say that Christ stood where we should have stood.

The case for caution runs like this. First, ὑπέρ is overwhelmingly a word for benefit, and substitution, where it appears, comes from the context rather than from the preposition. 1 Corinthians 15:3 shows the limit: Christ died ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν, and he did not die in place of our sins; the preposition there means for, concerning, to deal with. Second, the logic of 2 Corinthians 5:14, 'One died for all, therefore all died', is not the logic of simple replacement. If one died instead of all, one might expect the conclusion that all need not die. Paul concludes that all died, which suggests that those for whom he died are included in his death rather than spared it. Morna Hooker described this pattern as interchange in an article of 1971: Christ became what we are, so that in him we might become what he is, as in 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 3:13. Third, ἀντί is used of Christ's death only in Mark 10:45 and its parallel in Matthew 20:28, and the background of that saying is itself argued: Hooker, in Jesus and the Servant (1959), and C. K. Barrett, in an essay of the same year, questioned how far it depends on Isaiah 53, and so how much of that chapter's language of bearing sin it brings with it. On this reading the prepositions say that Christ died for us and for our good, which is true and glorious, and the question of exactly how his death saves must be argued from larger features of the texts than one small word.

Each side has a reply. To the papyri and Philemon, the caution side answers that a scribe writing for an illiterate man and a slave serving in his master's stead show that ὑπέρ can mean in place of, not that it does mean that whenever Christ's death is the subject. To 1 Corinthians 15:3, the substitution side answers that dying for sins is a sacrificial phrase, and that the sacrificial system itself was a matter of one life given for another, so the preposition still sits inside a substitutionary picture. To Mark 10:45, the caution side agrees that ἀντί suggests exchange, while asking what kind of exchange a ransom involves, a question the word ransom itself does not settle. And to 2 Corinthians 5:14, the substitution side answers that representation and substitution are not opposites: a representative can stand in our place and include us in what he does, and many of its defenders hold both.

So hold three things together. The texts settle that Christ died for us, for our sins, as a ransom for many, and nobody in this argument doubts it. The prepositions settle that ἀντί means in place of and that ὑπέρ can mean it, sometimes plainly does, and sometimes plainly does not. What they do not settle by themselves is how much of the doctrine of the atonement can be read off them. Basil's warning applies: a preposition checked across the whole Bible is a good witness and a poor foundation. When you preach that Christ died for you, you are on the firmest ground in the New Testament. When you preach that the word for proves a particular theory of the atonement, say which word, show the verse, and be ready to show the verses that point the other way.

This is the last layer of your case map, and when it is done you will have a page that shows how every noun in two verses of your chosen passage is working. Return to that page now.

First, on your phone, find every preposition in your two verses on STEP Bible or Blue Letter Bible. For each one, write in your notebook the preposition, its dictionary form if the spelling has changed, the case of the word that follows, and the line of the table in section 2 that it belongs to. If your preposition is not one of the six in this lesson, tap it and copy the range your tool's lexicon gives.

Second, for each preposition, write the meaning you think it has in your verse and one other meaning from its range that a fair reader might choose. Then check the BSB and the King James Version and note whether they render the preposition the same way, and whether either has used a word like for that could hide which Greek preposition stands behind it.

Third, read your whole case map back from the top: cases, articles, genitives, datives, prepositions. Underneath it, write a paragraph of five or six sentences headed What the grammar settles and what it leaves open. Name at least one thing the grammar of your verses makes certain, and at least one place where a choice remains and you can say what the choices are. That paragraph is the first finished piece of your capstone, and Module 4 will add the verbs.