“Literal” does not mean “morphological”. That words like priest or bishop have morphological origin in various ordinary ways to describe a leader of any kind, — even a leader of animals — does not mean they should not be used in the narrow technical sense in the Church.
“Literal” means “in the sense directly meant and understood by the writer and contemporaneous reader”. For example, “this is my body” literally means the physical body. The opposite of that is allegorical, for example, “this is my body” really refers to my friends or relatives. The Church teches that the literal meaning is to be preferred unless the allegorical is clearly indicated by context. For example, “I am the door through which sheep enter the pen” cannot be taken literally because the context is an allegory of the Church being like a pen of sheep.
"This is my body" when referring to things other than ones literal body is allegorical usage - if I took a piece of bread and said "this is my body", that is allegorical usage - That is what Jesus did. "This is my body" can also be used in a spiritual sense, which Jesus also spoke about; "The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." This was spoken in response to his allegorical reference of his body being food and his blood being drink - which his disciples said was a "hard teaching" if referring to his "literal body." Your allegorical use of "this is my body" being a reference to "my friends or relatives" is sort of ridiculous usage. You can do better than that :-)
The Church teches that the literal meaning is to be preferred unless the allegorical is clearly indicated by context.
Exactly, just as I said above about "this is my body."
“Literal” does not mean “morphological”. That words like priest or bishop have morphological origin in various ordinary ways to describe a leader of any kind, — even a leader of animals — does not mean they should not be used in the narrow technical sense in the Church.
Hmm...Salvation must have pinged you to explain something he/she couldn't do - is that right? Regardless, the terms used in the Bible do have literal meanings in the cases I cited about the terms presbuteros, episkopos, etc. They are used to describe the office of certain people. Explain, please, exactly what those verses and words mean that I bought out about the offices of the church in post #22. I sure would like to hear from you on that specifically! Ref: Acts 20:17, 27–28 and 1 Peter 5:1–2.
Good luck...