Christian Terminology

It's hard to notice things that aren't happening.

So if you've been reading through since the beginning, or following me for a while, you may not have noticed that I have a policy of trying to avoid certain Christian terms. Especially if you're reading this through a translation, or you don't know anything about Christian terminology.

From about the 1600s to the 1800s, the United States was a sufficiently Christian country that everyone knew at least something about the terminology of Christianity.

Much of the terminology was also normal day-to-day terminology. For instance, several of the terms come from accounting. When one doesn't have a computer doing it all for you, accounting is a bigger part of one's life, so accounting terminology that is obscure today was much more common. Others words were still in common use, and the common usage was obviously related to the Christian meanings.

I think a lot of Christians in the United States today who try to speak to the rest of their culture have not noticed that this moment has passed. The terms used only by Christians are not understood by the general public. There are also words still in general use, but that have specific Christian meanings, and those meanings are also generally dead. Above, I limited the time that people generally knew about the Christian meanings of words to the 1800s, because I think even by the 1960s those meanings were no longer all that common, let alone the present.

When we go out to the world and tell everyone about the thing represented by the English letters S, I, N, I don't think the people are ignoring us. I think they are simply confused. They have not picked up from their surrounding culture what it means.

It is even worse than a word from some foreign language. If I tell someone to "stop pidge-mongling!", they at least know that they don't know what I'm talking about, and realize they need to learn what that means if they want to know what I said. They probably won't, of course, but they at least know that they would need to.

If I tell a non-Christian American to "stop sinning!", they think they know what I'm saying, but are almost certainly wrong. It's the worst-case failure for communication.

So I try to largely avoid those words. I try to use them very carefully and in a way that they can be understood within the context of the given post, without assuming people just know what the word means. For those who are non-Christian but interested, it should help them understand. For those who are knowledgeable about Christian terminology, the translation should not be difficult.

But the problem is also an opportunity. I will post about what some of these words are, translate them into modern terminology, and take the opportunity to explain where they fit into the Christian explanation of the world and the solution it presents.

I will start with something I typed in the previous sentence and then had to erase: the Good News, or in the Greek-descended English word, the Gospel. I wanted to type "Good News" rather than "solution". This is the news that you are not stuck with the problems of the world, or the errors you make in your life, or the eternal consequences of those errors.

Jesus offers you what you could never get on your efforts: He will pay for those errors, He will welcome you into his family, and the eternal negative consequences of your errors will be removed. You will be made into someone who can live forever, perfected, with God and all the other perfect beings.

But this "good news", and the term "good news", only appeals to people who know the "bad news" in the first place. I know many people would think that Jesus' "good news" would be something like "I guess people can be nice if they try.", which is not only not what the Good News is, it is outright contradicted by the Bible.

As it is written, "There is no one righteous; no, not one. There is no one who understands. There is no one who seeks after God. They have all turned aside. They have together become unprofitable. There is no one who does good, no, not, so much as one." - Romans 3:10-12

There is a whole set of meanings and relationships to other terms that the term "Good News" has to go with before it means anything.

Before that term, or any of the other Christian terms, can be used to communicate with a modern person, it must first be explained from the very beginning.

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher? - Romans 10:14