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θεοστυγής (Theostygēs): The Heart That Hates God · Reformed Thinking

0:00
Welcome to reformed thinking. It is great to be here for this.
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So imagine you are sitting at a desk, right?
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And you have this fragile ancient manuscript right in
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front of you. Oh, setting the scene.
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I like it. You're translating a text that
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literally shapes the worldview of billions of people across the
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globe, and as you're scanning the faded ink, you come across a
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single, highly unusual word. Which happens a lot more often
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than people realize, you know? It really does.
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So you pull out your heavy academic dictionaries, and the
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definitions present you with two starkly different choices.
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Two very distinct paths to go. Down Choice A tells you this
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word means a person who harbors a vicious act of hatred toward
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God, right? But choice B tells you this word
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means a person whom God actively hates and finds totally
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abhorrent. You have to pick one.
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And whichever 1 you pick, I mean you alter the theological
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reality of the entire passage. Yes, you do.
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Yeah. You know you read a sentence in
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English, and you probably assume there's a clean one to one
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equivalent in the original ancient language.
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Like a math equation or something.
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Yeah, like you assume the translator took a Greek word,
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found the English word that means that specific thing and
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just, you know, slotted it in it.
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Feels safe to assume that we like our reading experience to
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be straightforward, especially when dealing with texts that
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carry massive spiritual and historical weight, right?
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We want the dictionary to give US1 solid, objective answer.
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We do not want to think about the translator sweating over an
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impossible choice. But then you step into the world
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of ancient Greek linguistics, specifically the language of the
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New Testament and classical literature.
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And suddenly that pristine dictionary looks a lot more like
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a battlefield. It really does.
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Today our mission is a comprehensive analysis of a
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single, highly debated ancient Greek word.
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It is a theocedes. Yeah, Theostes.
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We have a massive stack of sources on the table today.
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For this deep dive, we are looking at theological lexicons,
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grammatical commentaries from scholars like David Abernathy
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and CED Cranfield. We also have the Lunita Lexicon
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in the stack. We do, and we have classical
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Greek citations that range all the way from Homer's ancient
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epic poetry to the Apostle Paul's letter to the Romans.
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What makes the stack of sources so fascinating is the central
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mystery they present to us. Oh.
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For sure. We were looking at one specific
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adjective that somehow possesses 2 completely opposite
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directional meanings depending on which translator you ask.
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Or which century you happen to be reading it in.
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Yes. Does theostes mean someone who
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actively hates God? Or does it mean someone who is
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abhorrent to God? Right.
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Does the hatred flow from the human upward or from the divine
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downward? That is the $1,000,000 question.
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You might think every word in your translated texts has a
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simple static meaning, but this discussion is going to show you
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how a single adjective carries a massive theological debate on
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its shoulders. To understand how a word can
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point in 2 completely different directions, we have to start by
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taking the word apart. Yeah, let's look at the anatomy
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and assembly of theostides. Taking a scalpel to the word is
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the best place to start. In linguistics, we call this
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looking at the morphology of the word.
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Morphology is just a technical term for dissecting a word into
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its individual anatomical parts, right?
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Just to see how it was built. Spot on Theostigas is a compound
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word. It is formed by joining 2
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distinct Greek elements. The first half is theos, which
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is the standard Greek word for God or a deity.
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OK, pretty straightforward so far.
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And the second-half comes from the base of the verb stygio or
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the adjective stijettos. And that root word does not mean
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a mild dislike, does it? Not at all.
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It denotes intense hatred, severe antipathy of visceral
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loathing. OK, let's visualize this.
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Think of ancient Greek compound words like distinct Lego bricks.
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I like that analogy. You have your God Brick, and you
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have your intense hatred Brick. Snap them together to build a
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new concept, right? But here's the tricky part about
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Greek grammar. Simply snapping those two bricks
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together does not automatically tell you who is holding the
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drinks and who is getting hit by them.
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That is a great way to put it. The morphology alone leaves the
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direction ambiguous. It is like the English word
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fearful. If I say to you, we are in for a
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fearful storm, you understand that the storm is causing the
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fear. Yeah, the energy is moving from
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the storm to the people. But if I say look at that
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fearful child, the child is not causing the fear.
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The child is experiencing it. The building blocks of the word
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are the same, but the direction of the energy completely changes
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based on context. Right.
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So is Theosti is the storm, or is it the child?
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Well, to figure out the direction of the energy, we have
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to look at what linguists call cognates.
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OK, break that down for us. What is a cognate?
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A cognate is simply a word that shares a common origin or a
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similar structural pattern with the word you are studying.
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They belong to the same linguistic family.
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So he checks the family tree. Yes, and our sources give us a
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helpful list of related compound words.
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For example, we have atheos, which means without God.
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And we have philotheos, which means a lover.
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Of God we also have Theo Machos, which translates to fighting
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God. So we look at the family tree to
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see how the relatives behave. Correct.
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When you look at how these specific compounds function,
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especially the ones describing a human disposition toward the
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divine, the human is usually the subject performing the action.
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OK, that makes sense. A Philothios is someone who
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actively loves God, not someone God loves.
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A Theo Machos is a person actively fighting against God,
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not someone God is fighting against.
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The energy flows from the human upward.
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Yes it does. Following that pattern, if
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Philothios is someone who actively loves God, it makes
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logical sense that Theosios would be someone who actively
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hates God. It follows the pattern
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perfectly. And the rootstigeo implies a
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severe active antipathy. It is an aggressive posture is
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not a passive disregard. No, it's not.
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It is not just sleeping in on a Sunday morning and ignoring
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religion. It is a burning animosity.
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That active, aggressive posture is a critical detail in the
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sources. The root steggio carries a heavy
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emotional and volitional weight. Meaning it involves the human
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will. Yes, it requires A conscious
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rejection and loathing. Knowing the raw materials of the
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word, knowing these two heavy concepts that are snapped
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together, we have to look at how ancient people actually used the
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word. Right in everyday language and
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literature. We need to look at the
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historical timeline long before the New Testament was even
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written. Wait, if the Word family
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suggests the human is the one doing the hating, the historical
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usage should back that up. Right, you would assume so.
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But here is where the plot thickens considerably.
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Our sources note that in earlier times, going back centuries
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before the 1st century, the word was exclusively used in a
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passive sense. Yeah, it is a huge twist.
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It did not mean hating God. It meant God detested, hated of
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the gods, or God forsaken. And the historical consensus on
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this early usage is overwhelming.
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The passive meaning was the undisputed standard in classical
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Greek literature. Oh wow, so it was everywhere.
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It was when you look at the citations provided in the
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lexicons, you see a consistent pattern of authors applying this
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word to individuals who are cursed by the heavens.
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The hatred is moving from the divine realm downward onto the
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subject. Always.
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We are not talking about obscure, forgotten writers here
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either. The sources list the absolute
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heavy hitters of ancient Greek literature.
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Homer, for instance. Yeah, we have Homer using it in
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the Iliad. We have Euripides using it in
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his plays like the Georgian Women and the Cyclops.
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We have Aeschylus, Sophocles, Pindar and Plato.
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All of these core authors of western literature use theosta
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guys with this passive meaning. Let's look at Euripides for a
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second. When he writes about the cyclops
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Polyphemus, he is describing A monstrous, brutal man eating
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creature who lives in a cave and slaughters sailors not.
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Exactly. A great guy, right?
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And Euripides describes this monster as theostigies hated by
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the gods. To understand why this passive
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meaning dominated classical thought, we have to look closely
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at the Greco Roman worldview. How do they see the world?
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Well, in that culture, human tragedy, monstrous figures, or
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catastrophic misfortunes were viewed as a direct result of
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divine cursing. So it wasn't just bad luck.
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No. If someone suffered A horrific
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fate, or if a creature like the cyclops existed outside the
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bounds of natural order and morality, the immediate cultural
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assumption was that the gods lonely.
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Them, the gods of Lipus, were capricious.
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Very capricious. If they decided they hated you,
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your life was ruined. You were assigned a status from
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heaven downward. You were literally God detested.
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Hold on though, this creates a massive point of friction.
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It really does. If centuries of famous authors,
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from Homer all the way down to Plato agreed this word meant
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cursed by the gods, Paul could not just invent a new definition
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out of thin air in a letter to Rome.
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His readers would have been incredibly confused.
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Right, if you are a translator today and you see a word that
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Homer and Sophocles used to mean God forsaken, what justifies
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changing the definition later on?
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It is a massive leap. What gave a 1st century writer
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the linguistic right to flip this word on its head and
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suddenly say it means hating God?
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That is the core tension of our whole analysis.
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To answer it, we have to examine the specific mechanism of
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linguistic drift. And how a specific religious
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subculture can adopt and shift the meaning of a word.
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Yes. We have to look at a textual
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moment that pushes the discussion directly into the 1st
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century, where a writer uses the word in a way that forces the
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classical definition to break. And this shift occurs in Paul's
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letter to the Romans. It does.
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Let's set the scene for Romans chapter one, verse 30, Paul's
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writing to a Christian community living in the capital of the
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Roman Empire. The culture around them is
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saturated with the Greco Roman worldview we just talked about.
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Right. And Paul writes this dense,
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relentless catalog of human vices.
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He is listing out the characteristics of a humanity
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that has completely rejected its creator.
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It's a very intense passage. It is.
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The list includes whisperers, slanderers, the insolent, the
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arrogant and boasters. And right there, wedged between
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slanderers and the insolent, is our word, theistic gaze.
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The linguistic pivot happens specifically because of this
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surrounding context. Scholars argue the meaning
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shifts to the active sense, hating God, or one who hates God
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because of the company the word keeps in this sentence.
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Look at every other word in this immediate list.
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They all describe a wicked human behavior or a sinful human
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attitude. Whisperers are people actively
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gossiping. Slanderers are people actively
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tearing down the reputations of others.
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The arrogant are people actively elevating themselves above their
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neighbors. It is a continuous list of
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things people are actively doing to rebel.
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It describes human impiousness. If you were reading this list
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and suddenly the author dropped in the word that meant people
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who are hated by God, it would completely break the rhythm and
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the logic of the sentence. It would be like saying the
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suspect was a thief, a liar, a person who got struck by
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lightning and a cheat. Yes, the third item does not fit
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the category of personal vices. It makes no sense to put a
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cosmic curse in the middle of a list of daily human sins.
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That is the precise grammatical argument made by the
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heavyweights in our sources. Ada Bruner, in his extensive
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work on Greek word formation, points this out.
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What did he say about it? He states that in the list of
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vices in Romans 130, the active meaning of hating God is highly
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preferable. Because it fits the flow.
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Yes, it aligns with the morphology of other similar
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compound adjectives that describe human attitudes, and it
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perfectly fits the flow of the argument Paul is making about
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human rebellion. We also see this active sense
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maintained in writings that came shortly after the New Testament.
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Yeah, that is a really good point.
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The sources point out that Pseudo Clement, which is a
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collection of early Christian writings from the centuries
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following Paul, uses the word in a clearly active way.
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It pairs it with the word for unjust.
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And the letter of First Clement, written around the end of the
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1st century, uses the noun form Theostigia, which is also taken
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in the active sense. Those later writings are crucial
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evidence. They show how a religious
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subculture, the early Christians Co, opted A cultural word and
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shifted its meaning within just a few generations.
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They isolated themselves linguistically from the
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classical Greek world to create a vocabulary that accurately
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described their theological framework.
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From their perspective of human depravity, the active
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translation makes total. Sense it really does, the list
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in Romans 1 is a chilling diagnosis of the unregenerate
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human heart. It moves from subtle
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interpersonal sins like the quiet gossip of a whisperer to
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outright active hostility toward the Creator.
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It defines the natural human state as one characterized by
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intense dislike toward God. It paints A terrifying
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progression. You start by rejecting the
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knowledge of God, suppressing the truth, and eventually, the
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text argues, it devolves into a visceral hatred of the very
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concept of God. It is a total rebellion.
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But while the active meaning fits the surrounding list of
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sins so well, overturning centuries of classical Greek
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usage still bothers some people. Oh, absolutely.
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You do not just ignore the linguistic precedent of Homer
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and Plato without some serious pushback from other scholars.
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You certainly do not, and this debate leads us directly into a
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major split among scholars on how to render Romans 130 into
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other languages. The sources reveal a sharp
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dividing line and both sides have highly prominent defenders.
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It gives us a clear look at how translators weigh different
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types of evidence when making their final decisions.
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Let's outline the two sides of this translation debate.
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On the active side, favoring hating God, we have the Lunita
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Lexicon. For context, the Lunita lexicon
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is unique because it categorizes Greek words not alphabetically,
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but by semantic domains. Meaning it groups words based on
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related concepts, right? Yes, in entry 88.205 they define
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our word as pertaining to hatred for God.
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We also have the scholar David Abernathy, who provides an
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exegetical summary strongly supporting the active
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translation. These sources prioritize the
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immediate biblical context and the grammatical alignment with
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the other vices in Paul's list. Now, on the other side, holding
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onto the classical passive meaning, we have a formidable
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list of scholars and historical texts.
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Edgar Goodspeed translates it as abhorrent to God.
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James Moffett translates it as Loathed by God.
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The new revised standard version actually includes the passive
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meaning in its margin notes as an alternative.
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Historically, the Latin Vulgate translated it with a passive
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sense, and the scholar C Fricia also argued for the passive
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interpretation. These scholars are looking at
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the massive weight of classical Greek history and arguing that a
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word's established meaning over hundreds of years does not just
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vanish because of its neighbors in a sentence.
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Let's talk about the Latin Vulgate for a second, because
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that is not just some obscure textbook.
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No, it is incredibly significant.
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The Vulgate was the late 4th century Latin translation of the
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Bible produced by Jerome. It became the definitive text
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for the Western Church for over 1000 years.
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It essentially locked in Western theological thought.
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So if Jerome, sitting in his cave in Bethlehem, translating
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Greek into Latin, decided to use the passive meaning, essentially
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saying these people are loathed by God, why would he make that
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choice? Did he just miss the context of
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the vice list? Yeah, that's the question.
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Well, Jerome was an incredibly brilliant linguist, so it is
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highly unlikely he just missed the context.
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To understand his reasoning, we have to consider how he might
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have viewed the theological implications of those extreme
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sins. The list in Romans 1 describes
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behaviors that are intensely offensive to a holy Creator.
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A translator looking at that list might conclude that
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engaging in such severe wickedness, being a slanderer,
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being insolent, being a boaster, renders a person abhorrent to
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the divine. In that view, Theos DGA's
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functions as a summary judgment on the whole list of actions.
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Yes, you commit these sins and therefore as a consequence you
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become loathed by God. It becomes a statement of divine
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reaction rather than human action.
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Think about the practical impact this has on how you read the
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text. Changes everything.
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You have to wonder, if you were sitting in Rome reading this
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letter for the first time, would you have caught that linguistic
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shift? Probably not right away.
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How does reading a list of gossips, slanderers, and people
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loathed by God hit your ear differently than reading
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gossips, slanderers, and people who hate God?
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The act of translation makes it a human action.
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It is a diagnosis of the bitter rebellion in the human heart.
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But the passive translation makes it a terrifying divine
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judgment. It is a statement about God's
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absolute revulsion towards sin. The difference in perspective
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alters the entire tone of the passage, even though both
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concepts address the broken relationship between humanity
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and the Creator. The act of reading highlights
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the extent of human corruption, showing that sin is an act of
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hatred of the law giver. While the passive reading
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highlights the holiness of God and is necessary abhorrence of
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evil. Lunita explicitly addresses this
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tension. They do.
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They state that interpreting piostegaze in Romans 1:30 as
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those whom God hates is possible, though unlikely.
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So they acknowledge the classical background, but
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ultimately decide the context of the vice list overrules the
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historical precedent. Yes, they land on the active
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side based on context. Which brings us to our final
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evaluation of what this word actually reveals about the
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relationship between humanity and the divine.
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Let's focus on the primary definition of the active usage,
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which the majority of modern biblical scholars lean toward
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for Romans 1:30. And that definition is
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characterized by intense dislike and antipathy toward God.
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When we connect the dots between the theological implications and
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the linguistic roots, a very dark picture of human nature
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emerges. This word signifies A conscious
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act of hostility. We mentioned the word atheos
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earlier, which means without God.
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Atheos can sometimes imply A passive state.
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A lack of belief or an ignorance of the divine can be a state of
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emptiness. But Theos leaves absolutely no
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room for neutrality. None.
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It is not agnostic. It is an active, aggressive
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rebellion. It requires an incredible amount
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of cognitive effort to hate something.
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You have to acknowledge the authority of the thing in order
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to harbor animosity toward it. You can't hate something you
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don't care about. Right.
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The Greek language has specific categories for this kind of
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active spiritual. For warfare they had the word
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Theo machos meaning fighting God.
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They had vocabulary to describe a person who is not just
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ignoring heaven, but actively throwing stones at.
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It to hate God is an exertion of energy.
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It requires A focused, deliberate animosity toward the
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authority and character of the Creator.
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The human mind, when completely alienated from its source, does
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not just drift into a neutral, quiet void.
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According to the progression described in the text, that
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alienation metastasizes into a fierce opposition.
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The use of this specific compound word, drawing on the
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visceral hatred implied by the root stygio, tells us that the
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bitter end of human rebellion is not unbelief, but a deep seated
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revulsion toward the divine nature itself.
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You can see how looking at just one word in a lexicon opens up
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an entire theological worldview. It's amazing.
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We started with a linguistic puzzle, trying to figure out
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which way a word pointed, and we ended up staring at a staggering
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assessment of the severity of human sin.
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It shows the precision of ancient languages and how
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translators have to wrestle with every single syllable to convey
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the correct theological weight. The transition of this word from
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classical literature to the New Testament is a master class in
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how language adapts to describe new realities.
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It took a word used by Homer to describe someone cursed by the
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gods from above and repurposed it to describe the internal
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curse of a heart that hates its maker from below.
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The vocabulary remain the same, but the focus shifted from a
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passive tragedy to an active, culpable rebellion.
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Let's recap the dual life of theostigies.
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We saw it start as a tragic classical label for those cursed
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by the gods, the monsters, the doomed figures of Greek plays
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like the Cyclops. Then we saw it evolve in the New
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Testament, placed right in the middle of a list of vices, into
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a stark description of human hostility toward the Creator.
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We looked at the intense debate among scholars from Lunita to
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Jerome's Latin Vulgate, trying to decide if the hatred flows up
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or if it flows down. That ongoing tension leaves us
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with a lingering question, one that is not directly answered by
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the lexicons or the grammatical commentaries.
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If a single word holds the capacity for both hating God and
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hated by God, does that linguistic ambiguity suggest a
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terrifying reciprocal reality? Reciprocal reality.
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What do you mean by that? Think about the relationship
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between the active and passive meanings.
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If a person gives themselves over to the act of meaning, if
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they cultivate an intense antipathy toward their Creator,
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actively rebelling against him, do they inherently bring about
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the passive meaning upon themselves?
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Oh wow. Does the act of being a hater of
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God inevitably result in becoming abhorrent to God?
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The word itself blurs the line between the human crime and the
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divine consequence, suggesting that the two are inextricably
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linked. Yes.
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That is a weighty thought to walk away with.
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The word holds the crime and the consequence in the exact same
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breath. It certainly does.
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Well, thank you for joining us on this deep dive into the
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sources today. It was a fascinating discussion.
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We hope this analysis of a single ancient word encourages
21:53
you to keep questioning the text in front of you, and to realize
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that beneath the surface of a simple translation, there is
21:59
always a much larger conversation happening.