The language of God (linguam dei) (لغة الله)

I have grown up for the most part in Protestant-oriented (or Mormon-oriented if we want to differentiate) America with English as my only language for many years. After coming out to Catholic Notre Dame, I was exposed to a very different religious ideology. However, it was in studying theology in tandem with different langugages where I discovered that a lot of ideas and thoughts we have in American Protestant culture are very skewed and mistranslated ideas.
For example, as a Mormon, I always heard the name of Jehovah being tossed around among other Mormons. Later, I realized that Jehovah is really derived from the Latinized iehovah (like in Indiana Jones) which is really better transcribed in today's modern alphabet as YHWH (thanks to the incorporation of the Greek Epsilon and the invention of the W). The vowels we incorporate are purely functional since Hebrew can be read without vowels, and they for sure would not have been incorporated into the tetragramatron. In the Old Testament, the name appears like יהוה and would later have been given vowels as translators (most likely Jerome or those who compiled the Septuagint) would have seen fit.
Likewise, there are many ideas used in Greek that do not translate neatly into English. For example, the opening lines of the Gospel of John use the word "Logos" where it says "In the beginning was the Word." The Greek idea of Logos can be used to mean word, but furthermore it means something more related simple cognitive movement, but especially those movements that are communicative in nature. Thus, Logos can also refer to ideas, thoughts, and, in contemporary usage, even study. Thus the word Logos doesn't just mean the Word, but God's own thought.
There are other controversies that have arisen because of language ambiguation. The Nicene Creed for those from the Roman heritage, for example, says that the Holy Spirit "proceeds from the Father and the Son," whereas in the Greek tradition he "proceeds from the Father through the Son." This seemingly slight difference changes the entire Trinitarian formula depending on whether the Holy Spirit descends or is emitted. Likewise, the early Church councils debated on whether the Word and the Flesh were of one nature or one likeness depending on the placement of a single Greek iota.
Even in these early Church councils, such as Chalcedon and Ephasis, because of the wording of certain theological principles, the Christian Church was schismed against itself and the Oriental Church was broken off from the Church at Constantinople. This division caused such a rift that even until the last fifty years, the Churches had not been in communion with each other.
Perhaps this is why the Catholic Church maintained Latin as the official Liturgical language for so long. Even now, post Vatican II, all official proclamations from the Vatican are written in Latin. And other Churches, such as the Caldeans and the Assyrians practice their liturgies in their native tongues rather than in the common tongue of the area.
But even against this, it is interesting to see the various different languages God's word has been handed down in. The Old Testament, the oldest of the various scriptures adhered to by Monotheists, was originally written in Hebrew. When God speaks to Moses, it's all in Hebrew, and when Isaiah and Jeremiah write poetry, that's also in Hebrew. It would not be incorrect to say that God speaks Hebrew first and foremost.
Then comes something rather peculiar. Due to Alexander the Great's occupation of Israel, many Jews found themselves outside of the former Kingdom of Judah. The TNK (Old Testament) was then recompiled by seventy Jewish scholars into Greek, which we know now as the Septuagint. As far as translations go, there are few big differences between the TNK and the Septuagint, aside from the presence of deutero-canonical (or "apocryphal") texts in the Septuagint. However, with the Bible being in Greek, this took off any claim that could be made that Hebrew is God's language.
Christianity comes along and makes things even worse. Christian scriptures are all written in Greek. The apostles who wrote wrote their epistles in Greek. The Apocalypse is in Greek. Even the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are written in Greek. All of a sudden, there's a new religion claiming to be in right standing with God which writes completely in Greek. However, there's a bigger catch to this. Jesus didn't speak Greek. Jesus spoke Aramaic. Traces of this can be seen even in the Gospels, especially in scenes where one of the Evangelists (John mostly) clarifies his words by saying "....meaning..." or "...that is to say..." Historical critical exegetes see these quotes as being evidence of the historical Jesus.
Now the Christian finds himself in an odd standpoint. His scriptures are in Greek, and, except for the fact that the canon was formed using the Septuagint, have some Hebrew origins, but their founder and the object of their worship spoke Aramaic. Thus we can see why above all the monotheistic faiths, Christianity puts the least emphasis on liturgical language. Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Armenian, Coptic and Hindi were used for centuries as acceptable languages of the faith, with German, French and English developing as acceptable languages in the sixteenth century and all common languages being used today.
Islam enters the story about five hundred years after Christianity. However, the قورئن was handed down to Muhammed in Arabic as the very Word of God. Thus, there is no room for variance. To vary from Arabic in liturgy, or exegesis is to stray from God's actual word. Even the احدث are preserved in Arabic, though they are not official words spoken by the Angel Gabriel. Thus, in Islam, it is very clear that God's language is nothing other than Arabic.
This poses an interesting question and certainly a point for consideration. If so many theological points are untranslatable, how are we to expect all people to know them? Likewise, if God only speaks one language, are we to expect all men and women world-wide to learn this language? To take a passage out of the Bible, one which all three monotheistic faiths recognize, the tower of Babel story demonstrates to us the dangers that can arise when we all speak the same language. Had God wanted us to be able to communicate simply and universally with each other, perhaps it would have been better if our communication were limited to the moans and shrieks of whales, dolphins, dogs and cats. Thus, we are struck with the paradoxical question of "what language does God give preference for?" and likewise "if God had a preferential language, would not we all speak this?"

Scandalus

What is it about Christians that makes a lot of the rest of the world despise us? Surely there is the conservative Christians that make a lot of people cringe. And our reservation and prudence also make us a bit peculiar. But what of our message itself?
"We preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" wrote Paul (1 Corinth 1:23). And really, how silly is it, from the outside, to say that God became man?
From one perspective, we look Greek. Our God is now encased in human flesh, much the way Hercules was. All the Olympic gods existed in a physical sense in this world. They all had bodies. They took on many forms.
"But," we might argue, "our god paid the price for sin and was exalted." This sounds like Odin, the "Allfather" of the Norsemen who hung on a tree for three days in order to give to mankind the sacred runes. After the three days, he regained his spot as head of the gods.
This is where we take on a monotheistic view of God. Not only did our god take on all of our sins, but he is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, a notion that escapes the Romans, Greeks and Vikings. Truly, St. Augustine says that all things are held by our god, and our god is in all things.
So here our God seems more like the God of the Jews, who created the heaven and the earth and has the ability to manipulate time and space itself according to His wishes.
This is why it is a stumbling block. At first glance it looks nonsensical. The outsider gets lost in the trinitarian language of the Council of Nicaea and the message of Word become Flesh.
Here is where Athanasius seems to help out. To Athanasius, and in fact to St. Anselm as well, Christ is God's way of restoring humanity. We have fallen; fallen of our choosing. Because of this transgression against God, we, who are unholy and imperfect, cannot hope to dwell with God, who is holy and perfect. This is not in God's plan, so God comes to restore humanity.
Now, here is where it gets tricky. Man cannot redeem himself, for how can one restore what he never had attained. However, it was necessary for man to make restoration, since it was man who sinned. So God comes down in the person of Jesus, takes on our sins and dies. This process restores us to God.
Even with the explanation of our faith, it still seems incredible. It is a fantastic-sounding story that necessitates our faith. Even with the philosophical arguments for God, Christ's existence is not obvious.
So I say, since our message is one that is offensive enough, our call is to not be offensive. We are to go out with humility, meekness, mercy, temperance and all the commands that Christ laid upon us. St Francis of Assisi once wisely said, "Preach Christ crucified always, if necessary, use words." It is more important that our actions preach our message than our shouts. For, all of our words can be proven wrong by our actions, but our actions are never proven wrong by our words.

Post mortem (Eschatology part 1)

I will first admit that I do not have any hidden knowledge about the "hereafter." Like a good Christian, I believe that there is a glorious afterlife in store for us as part of God's Grace. However, whether this will literally be in the clouds or rather some other, noncorporeal setting, I don't know.
What intrigues me, though, is that there have been so many different accounts of the afterlife. Dante presents a three leveled system that many Catholics hold to today. Many Christians today imagine "heaven" as a place in the clouds. Buddhists and Hindus believe in reincarnation--for the Buddhists until one reaches Nirvana. Muslims and Jews hold to a similar afterlife experience as Christians do, one in which we dwell with God. Mormons believe that eventually they may become like God (a topic for another day).
But we have not held on, for time imemorial, to the idea of a glorious and perfect dwelling with God. In the Old Testament, the afterlife is referred to as Sheol. Eventually, as seen in Luke 16:19-28, the idea that we could dwell with exalted relatives started to emerge. Similarly, in the ancient Greek and Roman system, the Elysian Fields came far after the idea of Hades.
There's where we run into the peculiar thing. For some reason, accounts of suffering and torture are more prominent in our ideas of the afterlife than of glory. The Egyptian Book of the Dead proscribes all sorts of punishments that can befall one's soul if one is not absolutely careful on the way to the underworld. Dante's Inferno is far more popular than Il Purgatorio or Il Paradiso. Even in Norse myth, the realm of Hel is solely devoted to punishing souls while the valiant only get a hall in the vast kingdom of Asgard.
From these facts I gather two observations. The first is that mankind has almost always believed in A) a soul and B) its eternality. Even in the most ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, an afterlife is described (though many scholars believe it to be an addendum to the original text). After we have finished our existence here, we go on to still exist. It is as if, like Pascal says, we are afraid of being hurled into non-existence. Man cannot bear the thought that at some future date he will not exist. Hence, we live our lives as if we will live forever. We amass fortunes that we can never spend. We put events off indefinitely. We trash our bodies as if they're indestructible. Man cannot bear to even dwell on the thought that there isn't something after this without falling into utter despair.
This is what confuses me about atheism. How can atheists really hope for becoming a nonentity? The greatest one can hope for, at that point, is to attain the kind of fame that men like Homer, Cicero, Socrates and Vergil have attained--fame that spans the eons. However, in a world with a population ove six billion, this is more of a pipe dream than any kind of reality. Really, our sole source of hope lies in having something to look forward to once this is done.
The second thing that I observe is that mankind assumes more often than not that he (or at least his enemies) will inherit an eternal punishment. Hell, Hades, Sheol, Hel, Outer Darkness or a lesser reincarnation--all of these stand as unfavorable destinies, some of which are unavoidable (most likely because we are corrupt and sinful) and others of which are inherited because of our infidelity. We get what we earn. For some reason, man cannot either escape the idea of being eternally punished, just as he cannot escape the idea of nonentity.
The implications of this problem are easy enough to solve. Catholicism (viz Vatican II), Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism (to a certain extent) and most ecumenically-minded people all agree that good works will grant you happiness in the hereafter. So, the logical conclusion would be to take on a two-fold effort: first, to conduct good works; and second, to follow Pascal's wager and have faith in a god.

Katholikos

"We believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church" (Nicene Creed).
What does "catholic" mean? And what does it mean when we say "Catholic Church?"
the Greek word "katholikos" means "universal." (Thus making the term Roman Catholic not only an oxymoron but also a mix of Latin and Greek). The term was first used after the Christian Church got used to being called Christian.
The reality of it is that Christian was meant to be an insult. The Greeks and Jews used it to call the believers "followers of Christ," pointing out that they didn't worship the Greek gods nor did they follow the normal Jewish customs. After awhile, the believers took pride in this term. When the leadership of the Church (viz Paul and Peter in Acts) allowed Gentiles into their ranks, they earned the distinction of being "universal."
Fast forward a few centuries. The Church gets the distinction of Roman after Great Schism. It becomes a matter of Rome versus Constantinople. Hence we end up with Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic.
Within the last few centuries, the Catholic Church has distinguished itself in as a conservative way as possible. Trent and Vatican I established the Church in a reactionary light. Then, in the twentieth centuries, figures such as Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day step into the picture. Both of them "leftists."
Then, after the reactions of Trent and Vatican I, Vatican II comes along and establishes many liberal policies for the Church. Pope John Paul II then preaches his doctrine of solidarity, and Mother Theresa of Calcutta. Over the course of fifty years, the big figures of the Church become some of the most liberal figures in the world.
Thus, the term "universal" truly becomes applicable. On one hand we have such conservative figures as Cardinal Ratzinger, and on the other hand, we have people like Dorothy Day. In the Catholic Tradition one can be anarchist, republican, democratic, socialist, capitalist, or libertarian.
So here's where it becomes applicable. In the news recently, and in viewpoint articles, Notre Dame has received a lot of flack for allowing President Obama to speak at our commencement. Some proclaim that this is against our Catholic identity. But, truth be told, it seems as though not only is taking a leftist stance within Catholic Tradition, but there are, in fact, great examples for it.