HOW MISLEADING ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF THE THEOLOGICAL LANGUAGE OF THE GREEK BIBLE
DISTORT BELIEFS:  THE ECUMENICAL DILEMMA

© 2007 by Orchid Land Publications (20070319)

     The reason why many Orthodox writings in English come across as a sort of desiccated or second-rate version of Roman Catholicism─hereafter, as Vatican Lite─is due to mistranslations of theological terms according to the Western paradigm rather than according to the Eastern paradigm (see HERE).  This writer has even heard Orthodox clergy speak of "original sin" (a Western doctrine due to a misunderstanding of a Greek word); of seminarians speak of "justification" with the claim that the Orthodox view is the same as Luther's; and of translators that did not know how to render the Apostle Paul's 26 uses in accord with the definition of the inventor of the terminology─Aristotle.  I mention these points to draw attention to the need for better English.  I will illustrate the problematic character of English mistranslations with 2 Pet. 1:4 (which is correctly rendered but misunderstood) and with the pointless tautology of English renderings of Gen. 1:26 (in the Greek LXX, which was the canonical Bible of the holy Apostles.)

     The fourth verse of 2 Peter speaks of becoming partakers of the divine Nature.  Some Western theologians dismiss 2 Peter from the canon; those who accept it metaphorize the passage because (i) nature and essence are not distinguished by them and (ii) partaking of the imparticipable divine Essence is out of the question (for Eastern and Western Christians).  Once it is recognized that God's Nature and everyone nature consists of energies (uncreated Energies in the case of God) through which the essence relates to everything else.  So what are energies according to their inventor, Aristotle's, Physics and especially Metaphysics?  The simplest way to put it is to say that that philosophers world view of pairings of a dýnamis or potential and an enérgeia ("energy") that makes it real, actual, and functional.  So partaking of the divine Energies is Divinization and, for the Orthodox, what Salvation IS.  It is of course not a pagan Deification that has human essence becoming divine Essence.
    How is this relevant for Genesis 1:26, which tells us that the first human "was made according to the Icon ["image, likeness"] of God and according to Assimilation."  The word for "assimilation" has an ending in Greek that is equivalent to English -ization or
-ification and is clearly an energizing noun derived from an energizing/causative verb.  If it mean "likeness," it would create a pointless tautology and would in fact have a differ-ent ending and gender according to the principles of Greek word-formation.  The word in fact exists along with five others in use that also mean "likeness."

     The result of the first humans' sin, Greek hamártēma, was hamartía, i.e. a state or condition of being deprived of the Energies of Assimilation, i.e. the uncreated Energies of God's Life─Grace in Eastern theology.  Western translators' confusion of the two hamart- words led to the (literally immoral) notion of inherited sin or guilt─so-called "original sin."  The distinction between an ontic state and a deontic* sin.  Their opposites

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     *A term from modal logic for moral (viz. volitional-juridical) reasoning.

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are, respectively, holiness (an ontic state) and righteousness (deontic or moral behavior, whether mere obedience or to what promotes natural─a distinction between what in Latin is called justum quia jussum ("right because commanded") and jussum quia justum ("co-manded because right").  Since the ontic state of holiness and deontic righteousness have been as much confused in Western Christianity as ontic hamartia and deontic sin, it is no wonder that East and West talk past each other. 

     The purpose here is not to go through a larger vocabulary of differences that preserve the distinction between essence and energies (or nature) and deontic behavior (see HERE for the principal terms), I will end by simply emphasize how our starting points─the axiomatic assumptions or premises that constitute the matter and interpretative form of our conflicting world-views, outlooks, paradigms) determine what our terms mean . . . and how they may talking across paradigms so problematic that agreeing on words so often represents no agreement on the level of meaning.  Isn't it time that ecumenists recognized the reality?