The Use of the Aorist Imperative in the Pastoral Epistles 77 Yet Morrice does end up suggesting that the aorist imperative might be “more forceful and urgent than the present” (though he is more hesitant than Heidt and considers other possibilities)16. John Thorley similarly suggests that the aorist is “concerned with an action as a complete event” and that the aorist imperative “often has an urgency or immediacy to do it”17. Daniel Wallace, however, views the aorist imperative simply as a “summary command,” one where “the action is viewed as a whole”18. He concurs with the others, however, in that the present imperative focuses on the action “as an ongoing process”19. Similarly, William Mounce speaks of the aorist imperative as concerned with an “undefined action” while the present “indicates a continuous action”20. Ernst De Witt Burton likewise sees the aorist of the dependent moods (including the imperative mood) as concerning itself with the action as a “simple event or fact” while the present views the action “as in progress or as repeated”21. Porter likewise rejects the traditional view and argues that the aorist imperative can act as a “summery-term for the following specifying or particularizing present imperatives” (e.g. 1 Pet 2,17)22. James Boyer provides a similar but slightly different way of viewing the two tenses of the imperatives. For Boyer, “the present imperative expresses a command or request that calls for action that is continued or repeated” (e.g. “Love one another” means “always be doing things for one another”); by contrast, the aorist imperative “is used to command or request an action that is specific and occasional, dealing with everyday procedural decisions, or in general admonitions simply to say ‘Do it’”23. McKay apparently agrees: In the imperative the essential difference between the aorist and the imperfective is that the former urges an activity as whole action and the latter urges it as ongoing process. The most common realizations of the imperfective are likely to be continue doing, begin to do, try to do, do habitually, (or from time to time), do at the same time (parallel with), and a combination of these. 16 Ibid., 130. 17 Thorley, “Aktionsart in New Testament Greek” 305. 18 Wallace, Beyond the Basics 485, 719. 19 Ibid., 485. 20 W. D. Mounce, Basics of Biblical Greek (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1993) 303. 21 E. De Witt Burton, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek (2nd ed.; Chicago: 1893) 46-47. 22 Porter, Idioms 54. 23 J. L. Boyer, “The Classification of Imperatives: A Statistical Study”, Grace Theological Journal 8 (Spring 1987) 41.