tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14696592.post4511088317295937865..comments2024-03-20T17:04:44.789-05:00Comments on Westing Peacefully: If You Love Me, You Will Keep My CommandsKent Westhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04419374220761564120noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14696592.post-25319703722385763542010-08-23T10:56:33.768-05:002010-08-23T10:56:33.768-05:00Yep :-)
Firstly, I think antiquated English gets ...Yep :-)<br /><br />Firstly, I think antiquated English gets in the way.<br /><br />Paul said he'd rather speak five clearly-intelligible words in the assembly than ten-thousand in a tongue. <br /><br />Also, God recorded the New Testament in "street Greek", not the formalized scholarly Greek usually used for books at the time.<br /><br />The implication of these two things is that the Message should be clearly understandable. Nowadays, to insist that a non-churched person read the King James Bible would require him to learn a "foreign" language first, before he could even begin working on the actual concepts of the Bible. (Just pick a 5-verse or so passage out of the KJV Bible at random and have your non-churched neighbor read it and tell you what it says. He may be able to read it and understand it, but not without thinking about it and making mental translations and putting in effort to understand the language which robs him of the effort he could be putting into understanding the concept behind the language.)<br /><br />Secondly, not only is there the issue of understandability, there's also the issue of compartmentalization. Christianity should be a 24-7 way of life, but if we use everyday English in part of our lives and antiquated English in the religious part of our lives, have we not compartmentalized the two? We've made a subconscious distinction between the part of our lives that belongs to God and the part that belongs to us. This ought not to be so.<br /><br />Thirdly, it's not Biblical. God does not require us to "do church" in a special "church language". This is strictly a human-devised tradition.<br /><br />Fourthly, it's not even historically accurate. The "thee" and "thine" used to address God in the King James era specified a singular "you" (as opposed to a plural "y'all"), and had nothing to do with reverence or respect. We've morphed it into being a sign of respect, which has nothing to do with the way the language was used in the KJ Bible. So again, we've added a human-devised tradition to the mix, which has no Biblical or historical support.<br /><br />I believe the use of antiquated English in church matters is non-Biblical, historically inaccurate, and harmful.Kent Westhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04419374220761564120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14696592.post-45936054812923258202010-07-01T20:13:40.831-05:002010-07-01T20:13:40.831-05:00You have issues about Elizabethan English. :)You have issues about Elizabethan English. :)Shepherd's Ewehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16552259190784150059noreply@blogger.com