Replies

"What I mean is learning Latin, Greek, Hebrew, etc is not necessary." --> I get what you're trying to say cva, but you don't mean "not necessary", you seem to be "it's not the basic criteria"

you are right that being a scholar or not is no indicator of holiness, or even of being a good preacher

But to debate on the esoterics of theology, to debate at a certain level, begs for knowledge of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic

Let me take the example of Monophysites or Miaphysites and the nature of Jesus. A lot of debates over this was by what was meant at different stages in the Gospel.

Another case is Rock or rock -- I'm not going to argue on that theological matter now, but taking it as an example, many languages -- Aramaic, Greek, Polish, Tamil, have different words for a large rock and for a small rock. Malayalam and Tagalog would have deeper nuances, yet English has a limited word "rock"

Or even another word - "sofa": when I was searching for one here in Poland I found out that they have a number of different words for different types of sofas -- a sofa-cum-bed is a "wersalka", a plain sofa is a "kanapa", then "tapczan" etc. -- why they also have two different words for a vacation depending on whether it's in summer or winter!

Reading say Balzac or Goethe or Mickiewicz in French/German/Polish and then reading them in English is like comparing a 256 color picture to a 24 color picture -- a lot of the meaning is lost.

And, just as someone seeing the 24 color picture gets an idea of what is trying to be conveyed, yet they cannot argue the subtleties of color with someone who has seen the picture in 256, in the same way, a simple believer KNOWs enough to believe the big picture, but arguing on homouisis when one doesn't know Latin is silly. Let me repeat though -- this level of knowledge has no impact whatsoever on the holiness of a person.

Cronos, it’s homoousios. And it’s Greek, not Latin.

And, yes, I know what you are talking about when it comes to buying furniture in eastern/central Europe, but one country south of Poland. And I know what reading an author is like in his native tongue and not a translation.

Cronos I know and understand what you are saying. But in truth it will be The Holy Spirit who determines and teaches us final truth in meaning of a wording. Mans readings meaning anyones can be in error as well as mans writings for they are works of man. That is why I said what I said in Post 1344. Even the Disciples own understndings at times were in error as The Bible shows. The corrections came from The Holy Spirit either by Divine Revelation or by The Holy Spirt within a person doing the correcting like Paul correcting Peter.