February 2008 Archives

The annual Catholic Blog Awards are up again, and yours truly was nominated. My campaign slogan is above.

I am honored to have gotten the nomination (I really am), but in reality, I have no chance whatsoever of winning. I have mixed feelings about this kind of thing really. The likes of Jimmy Akin and Mark Shea are professionals. They make their living in apologetics, they write books, and they get paid. I don’t. I can’t dedicate the time and energy to blog writing that pros can. It makes perfect sense that this blog will never be as popular as the likes of Catholic and Enjoying it. They can, if they chose to, produce more volume in one day than I can in an average month.

Would I support a change of format for the awards? Sure, why not. But if I remember correctly, it’s one guy’s effort, so my voice isn’t likely to be heard. But if they don’t change, what then? Well, I got nothin’ here.

What was that line from Napoleon Dynamite? “Vote for me, and all your wildest dreams will come true.” I’m pretty good with a bo staff too…

I haven’t actually disappeared. I’ve just been terribly busy. I’m still working on blog related things, but I’ve had some personal, professional, and parish related things that have had to come first. (That and everyone in my house has had a stomach flu in the past 10 days or so.) I’ll be back.

Many Protestants use the word “salvation” in a very narrow and specific way. They often ask, “have you been saved”? If the answer is “yes”, then it’s accepted that this is a completed action, a thing already accomplished. But Catholics see salvation in broader terms. When a Protestant looks at Catholic documents that use the word salvation in this broader sense, they often see something that’s not really there – a denial of the sufficiency of the Cross and Christ’s sacrifice thereon.

So, when a Catholic speaks of salvation, what are these broader senses and how are they upheld scripturally?

The importance of this word will come out in time, over several posts, but I want to introduce it now.

In Greek, it’s αναμνεσις. It appears in both the Old and New Testaments. It corresponds to the Hebrew “zikkaron” (no, I’m not going to try to figure out the Hebrew script for this one). Both anamnesis and zikkaron are words for which there is no modern English equivalent. In fact, according to Scott Hahn in Letter and Spirit, most modern languages cannot translate anamnesis into anything truly meaningful.

Most modern Bible translations use “remembrance,” “memorial,” “memory,” or “commemoration.” These words don’t convey the meaning of anamnesis sufficiently.

The problem is this – anamnesis appears at a particularly critical juncture of the Bible story. Luke 22:19 and 1 Corinthians 11:25 both use anamnesis at the institution of the Eucharist. “And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’”

“Do this in anamnesis of me.” What does this mean, with a word that we can’t translate completely into English?

Anamnesis is more than just “remembrance.” It’s an active memorial, not just a function of memory or imagination. It is, in fact, a re-living of the event being remembered. Whether it’s the deliverance from Egypt in Exodus, or the institution of the Eucharist in Matthew, Mark and Luke, this remembrance is intended take us back spiritually and sacramentally to the event being remembered. There is far, far more depth here than simply remembering an event in the past. You live it – body and soul – at that particular moment.

More on this in a later post.

In a day or two, I plan to kick off a Translation Department here at the Raft. Why have a whole file on translations?

One thing I’ve noticed over time - we use language in ways that are beneficial to our cause. This is especially true in religion. One side of an issue wants to prove their point, so they use a particular word in a particular way. The other side uses that same word in a slightly different way.

To a guy with a history degree, this really doesn’t work. There is only one truth. The search for that Truth is why we're here. If we foul the language with our 21st century, English-centric views, we run a very great danger of fouling the lessons of the Bible. Example…

Catholics believe that John 6 means that Christ is really present in the Eucharist. Many Protestants say that’s hogwash. The word “eat” means something to one group, and something else to another. How to resolve this? Simple. Go back to the Greek and see what the original author intended. To do that, we have to be able to translate the Greek.

There are many words in the Bible that don’t translate well into English. There were ideas in Aramaic that didn’t translate into Greek well. All this has to be factored into our search for the truth. So, as time passes, I’ll add translations of critical words and critical passages of Scripture. Hopefully, this will help.

Well, I'm back. Unfortunately, I stepped into a hornets nest when I got home – both professionally and personally. All will be ultimately fixed, but it's taking a bit more time and energy than expected. I have a post about done, but still I still need to proof it. I still have another writing project for my parish due before that, so I hope to have something up in a day or so.

Sorry, but the real world has to come first at times like these.