Paul (trettep), below is from askelm's web site referenced above:
"To get over his point (which was basically correct in concept), what Mr. Knoch should have done, in my opinion, was first to show that the English is itself full of aorist expressions (which are normally rendered in words that appear to be present tense, but are not). He could then have proceeded to show that the Greek aorist is not a whit different than our English aorist state or condition, and that it is easy and proper to render the Greek aorist into an English aorist. The aorists are equal.
"Now look at how understandable things can become when this is done. As an example, the translators of the KJV (and almost all modern translators) will take the aorist indicative to be a past tense in English, even though the very meaning of the word "aorist" demands that no time indications or limits be associated with it. Look at Romans 8:30 as translated by the KJV. "Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified." Now, the verbs shown in bold letters are all in the Greek aorist. Notice how all the words by the King James translators are rendered in the English Past tense. While it may make doctrinal sense to say that God predestined us (in the past), that he called us (in the past), that he justified us (in the past), it is not true that God has glorified us (in the past). Indeed, our glorification will not come to us until the second advent (which is future). What the apostle Paul actually meant was that God foreordains, he calls, he makes righteous, and he glorifies (without reference to time). True, to foreordain something involves a time when the ordaining occurred, but the apostle Paul used the indefinite aspect which also shows that God may in the future foreordain others (in other worlds besides our own). Paul was showing that it is God who ordains, who calls, who makes righteous, and who glorifies people (no matter what the time is). This is like saying that tap water is liquid. It is liquid no matter what time it is being described. And the English verb describing this condition of water is not in the English present tense, it is in the English aorist which appears to be (as a homonym) like the English present. I plan to write a paper on this very subject one of these days showing extensively that the English language (in fact, with every modern European language) uses the aorist in everyday parlance and in most cases the grammarians are calling it a modified form of the present tense when it is not. The only difference between the Greek aorist and the English aorist is the fact that the Greek uses letter forms within their words to indicate the aorist and the English does not. English uses what appears to be the present tense, but it is not the present. But even the use of the "present" (as does Mr Knoch) for the aorist is not a farfetched procedure because even in the Testament we find that one writer speaking of the same event will place the verb in the present while the other places it in the aorist (see Luke 11:3 with Matthew 6:11; Luke 6:30 with Matthew 5:42; and Matthew 5:12 with Luke 6:23). Mr. Knoch could hardly be accused of inventing some newfangled grammatical usage when the apostles used either the present or the aorist to explain the same thing."
