The Theology of Heraclitus: a Presocratic Pantheism

34"nonlna1" because they lack a verb.golrever, Lt 1s inportantto reallze that such sentences are only Dorphologlcally verb-Iess. By the nere fact that they are senterces at all theyDust syntactically possess a verb just as much as atry othersentence. llence 1t is nlsleailing to refer to the "nlssitrtve!b" ln such senteoces as belng C!!!. In such sentencesthere ls no verb nlssiog; Lt ls present ln the syotacticsenae of the I'ordls ho theos h€mera euphronE lgl. Maoy inflectedIanguages use s\rch nominal constructloos, but because Entli6has a rule cannot, a norphologtcally p!esent verb Dust be Lnsertedso as !o g3!glg!S from the Creek. It ls utfortunatethat we nust add a copulatlve nrhen we translate because rdhen\re do so we run lhe !isk of 1osin8 the fu11 BeanlnS of theo!iglna1, For as Benveniate has sholrn, ho theos aga!hos estldoes not Eean the same as ho theos agalhos. The verbelphrase reports a fact sltuated ln tlxoe and reletlve to thespeake! (or lrriter). It says thet this particular Bod ls atthe monren! good. Because it drairs attention to the speaker,verbal sentences are produc!s of dlscou!se. On the othe! haIId,the noniral version of these words usually has a ti!|eless,general tneaning. Thls holds true in English too Ln the onetype of nominal construction we do have: proverbs (e.g."finde!s keepers, losers weepers"). !g_$C9j_jg3$99 ."y"that god is ever good, regardless of who says thls, or uhy,or rhen. It is gnonic and absolute. There is no way tocapture a1l this neaning in the Engltsh "the god Ls good".!{e can[o! say "the god good" anal hope to nake sense, so we