Language (of Scripture/Bible)

“…human minds, human reason, and human language are all inadequate for understanding God and expressing Ultimate Truth…Scripture can only be a witness to Truth…even though we are inadequate beings, with inadequate reason and inadequate language which is inadequately transmitted, God can overcome all these inadequacies in order to achieve His primary goal for us: to bring us to His idea of perfection—new life in Him. Scripture—written by people in human language and transmitted inadequately—can still be considered to be perfect, because it is exactly in the linguistic form that people in all times and places need for reaching this primary goal of personal sanctification in and through Christ…Ironically, the very inadequacy of human language and human reason enables Scripture to be more than adequate, because this allows it to have multiple levels, and multiple meanings, endless riches…The ambiguity of human language and the reality of divine inspiration mean that Scripture is inexhaustible…” (Dr. Mary S. Ford)

“The language of the Scriptures…is often incomprehensible without this pagan context. If we have no sense of paganism and its gods, how can we understand what God means when He says He will judge the gods of Egypt (Ex. 12:12; Num. 33:4) or that He is above all gods (1 Chron. 16:25; Ps. 95:3, 96:4, 97:9, 135:5)? Why does God command Israel to make no covenants with other gods (Ex. 23:32)?...what can St. Paul mean when he forbids the Corinthian Christians from participating in pagan sacrifices because they put one into communion with demons (1 Cor.10:20–21)? From these and many other examples, we can see that the Scriptures not only reference pagan worship but even assume the true existence of the gods of the pagans. The model of monotheism versus polytheism…falls apart when we begin to look at the language Scripture uses for the gods of the nations.” (Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick)

“I have rendered the translation myself [1 John 1:6-7]: ‘If we say that we have communion (koinonia) with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have communion (koinonia) with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin’…Contemporary treatments…reconfigure everything into contractual language…Koinonia is rendered as “fellowship” rather than “communion,” changing a very physical/organic meaning into a vague psychologized one. “Walking in the light” is taken to refer to the moral life, with a resulting abstraction invoking the atonement. The passage has a very different meaning when seen in the more primitive concrete/biological understanding. Communion refers to a true coinherence, a co-participation in the life of another. “To lie” is to “walk in darkness,” to break life-giving communion with Christ and others. Repentance and true communion with Christ restore this co-participation which is concretely manifested in the Holy Eucharist…The modern imagination is deaf to the most obvious meanings within Scripture.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“The Bible uses human language to talk about God but we must not then reduce that language to a mere human, literal meaning, for it is opening to us the divine life. Even when the Bible speaks about God in a very human way (anthropomorphizing God or ascribing to God human emotions and behavior), we need to be cautious, not reading the text so literally. ‘Humanizing’ God might help us to understand His intervention in creation, but it can also cause us to misunderstand God as nothing more than a superhuman and then we falsely attribute to God all kinds of human foibles and faults.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“…we should become adept at using the language of Scripture to form our words of prayer.” (Dynamis 3/29/2020)

#DrMarySFord #FrAndrewStephenDamick #FatherStephenFreeman #FrTedBobosh #Dynamis