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Natural Law. OK. I can see, perhaps, where you are unclear on what I said. Since you and I are coming from two very different backgrounds it is to be expected. And, no, I am not making any judgment as to the quality of either one.

Let me put it this way: The eternal God has entered into His creation by word, deed, and, finally, forever after in the person of Jesus Christ, who is God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father and also born of the Virgin Mary. His entry is a reality in all cases. What I have tried to determine - not very well, apparently - from the Catholics on this thread is their understanding of what the Holy Scriptures are.

Now, please note, I am not at this point asking what role they play in faith. I am not setting them against the teaching and preaching of the church. I am not saying that such teaching and preaching is either unneeded or ineffective. Of course that is not true. Nor am I making any assertions at this point about the superiority or inferiority of Scripture versus Tradition. Nor am I at this point talking about the primacy of any particular form of God’s word, whether spoken by Himself as at Sinai, spoken through an angel (or a donkey for that matter), rendered in written form, or spoken and taught by the human voice.

However, God chose to speak to man in time and space. He chose also not only to speak to man, but caused certain men to record His words. To do so the words had to be given man in human language, particular languages, languages which are known and understandable. This was, of course, due to our limitations, not His. So, if God deemed His words important enough to be recorded and regarded by man as His words, must we not first have some understanding of what is His written word? And only then can we begin to ask what role that written word plays in the establishment and maintenance of the teaching of His truth.

The analogy I used was in regard to the person of Christ. Just as God’s becoming man necessitated His becoming a particular man - there is no other way to be human - just so God’s causing His word to be recorded, written, necessitated its recording/writing in a particular language. For the Old Testament He chose as His people the descendants of Abraham, in turn and time, the Hebrews, the Israelites, the Jews, respectively, each of these terms meaning something a little different from the others. The language of these people was what we call Hebrew and, later, Aramaic. The written word of God we have today as translated into any particular language is always to be understood in the light of the language in which it was initially given, since the choice of the words, as of the language itself, was God’s alone. The same would be true of the New Testament, recorded in Greek.

I am simply asking what is your understanding of the relationship of the written word in the languages it was originally given and preserved for us to the written word in translation, whichever language that may be. To put it another way - and more specifically - irrespective of the quality of Jerome’s translation, does not primacy have to be given to the languages from which Jerome translated? And, again, I am drawing no conclusions about the role of tradition at this point.

I know that is a long question, but I am trying to understand the Catholic mind on this matter.