"While you and Kosta are very learned, you can't tell me that there aren't plenty of new or otherwise unlearned, English speaking Orthodox out there, whose English Bibles are so full of errors that they are virtually unusable." I wouldn't tell you that because what you say is true. English versions of the Bible are full of errors and therefore Orthodox people, learned or unlearned, cradle or convert know that the only safe way to understand the Bible is to read it in light of what The Church has always taught. If we read the Bible in Greek, we see the religion of The Apostles and The Fathers. Some posts back I set out a quote from John Kalomiros commenting that the problems about which we are speaking have their origins in language and culture. I have seen over my lifetime that Americans especially have a difficult time understanding that different cultures have very, very different views of how the world goes around. Anglophones have a difficult time understanding that not everything can be clearly expressed in English. The West's understanding of "sin" is simply not what the Greek means, now or when it was written. None of the foregoing means that there is some sort of universal salvation; none of the foregoing means that those who fail of their created purpose, choosing rather to reject God in favor of the self, will not suffer indescribable, flaming torment by being scourged with the love of God as those who have become like Christ will be embraced and comforted by that same love. There is no way to fully describe the horrors which await the damned, but there is no question but that their torment is a result of their own rejection of God, not God's rejection of them, and that which torments them is precisely what will mean bliss for those who have met the mark. "Now, excellent scholars can disagree on the definitions of Greek words, just as they can with English words. Hence, we have more than one reputable English dictionary. But the Orthodox do not recognize this fact at all. Comparatively, the Orthodox would say that the American Heritage Dictionary was full of lies because no one related to Noah Webster contributed to it, but Webster's Dictionary was 100% truth because only a Webster could ever understand English. Even the Latins resist this approach. Is it really intellectually honest to say that ONLY Orthodox scholars, throughout time, have ever understood the true Greek?" FK, neither Kosta nor I are saying that Webster's or the American Heritage are mis-defining English words. We are saying that "sin" as defined in English is not the same word as "Αμαρτια" in Greek. An English dictionary doesn't deal with that. I don't mean to make this any more complex than it already is, but there are a number of words used theologically where we see the same problem; the West thinks it has translated a Greek word into a Western word with the same meaning, but it hasn't and that leads to trouble. Arguably it has worked that way in the East too, with the schism with the Monophysites arising out of the non-congruence of Greek and Syriac. Finally, I think it is distinctly possible that the only people who have truly understood the NT, as far as we do understand it, are those who understand it in concordance with what the Orthodox Church teaches.
HD asked what "Αμαρτια" means. In English it is translated as "sin" with all the understood meanings of that word. The Greek word however means, as FK pointed out, a "missing of the mark", the "mark" being Christ. If you think about it for a minute, this meaning of "Αμαρτια" lies at the base of most of Eastern Christian theology while the Western misunderstanding of the word lies at the base of Western theology, especially the Protestant form of Augustinian theology. "While you and Kosta are very learned, you can't tell me that there aren't plenty of new or otherwise unlearned, English speaking Orthodox out there, whose English Bibles are so full of errors that they are virtually unusable."
I wouldn't tell you that because what you say is true. English versions of the Bible are full of errors and therefore Orthodox people, learned or unlearned, cradle or convert know that the only safe way to understand the Bible is to read it in light of what The Church has always taught. If we read the Bible in Greek, we see the religion of The Apostles and The Fathers. Some posts back I set out a quote from John Kalomiros commenting that the problems about which we are speaking have their origins in language and culture. I have seen over my lifetime that Americans especially have a difficult time understanding that different cultures have very, very different views of how the world goes around. Anglophones have a difficult time understanding that not everything can be clearly expressed in English. The West's understanding of "sin" is simply not what the Greek means, now or when it was written. None of the foregoing means that there is some sort of universal salvation; none of the foregoing means that those who fail of their created purpose, choosing rather to reject God in favor of the self, will not suffer indescribable, flaming torment by being scourged with the love of God as those who have become like Christ will be embraced and comforted by that same love. There is no way to fully describe the horrors which await the damned, but there is no question but that their torment is a result of their own rejection of God, not God's rejection of them, and that which torments them is precisely what will mean bliss for those who have met the mark.
"Now, excellent scholars can disagree on the definitions of Greek words, just as they can with English words. Hence, we have more than one reputable English dictionary. But the Orthodox do not recognize this fact at all. Comparatively, the Orthodox would say that the American Heritage Dictionary was full of lies because no one related to Noah Webster contributed to it, but Webster's Dictionary was 100% truth because only a Webster could ever understand English. Even the Latins resist this approach. Is it really intellectually honest to say that ONLY Orthodox scholars, throughout time, have ever understood the true Greek?"
FK, neither Kosta nor I are saying that Webster's or the American Heritage are mis-defining English words. We are saying that "sin" as defined in English is not the same word as "Αμαρτια" in Greek. An English dictionary doesn't deal with that. I don't mean to make this any more complex than it already is, but there are a number of words used theologically where we see the same problem; the West thinks it has translated a Greek word into a Western word with the same meaning, but it hasn't and that leads to trouble. Arguably it has worked that way in the East too, with the schism with the Monophysites arising out of the non-congruence of Greek and Syriac. Finally, I think it is distinctly possible that the only people who have truly understood the NT, as far as we do understand it, are those who understand it in concordance with what the Orthodox Church teaches.