This is part of a series on Roman Catholicism. See this index.

In “Living Voice,” I discussed the official Roman Catholic position on scripture and teased the upcoming series on justification by faith. But, before we delve into the new series, I want to continue setting up the background for that post.

One of the more common problems one faces when discussing church doctrine is the fact that language changes. If you want to know what the Bible says, you have to know what the original writers meant to say. Even if you know the words they used in the original Greek (or Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament), such as eucharist or musterion (both described below), it is possible for those words to have changed in meaning over two thousand years. If you interpret them through what you believe the word means now, you won’t understand what it meant then.

In this article, I will discuss some of the major developments and changes, both intentional and unintentional, to the language of the Bible that have led to doctrinal error. A number of them have direct implications on sanctification, salvation, and justification, and so are relevant to the upcoming series on justification by faith.

Head

I’ve written about the Greek word kephale many times on this blog. The word denoted ‘head’ (as in the literal thing sitting on the top of the neck and shoulders). It also connoted preeminence (of higher status, exalted, elevated, or the first position). It did not mean authority or leader, although often people of higher status are leaders.

The Greek word head is figuratively closer to the English word ‘face’ than it is the English word ‘head’ or ‘leader.’ For example, consider the statement “Aaron Judge is the face of baseball.” Aaron has no authority over baseball itself, but he is in a place of prominence, arguably its preeminent hitter in the toughest environment. Despite Aaron judge being a star and playing his first game for the Yankees way back in 2016, he was not even made captain of his own team until December, 2022.

In Ephesians, Paul used two metaphors involving the word head. The first, in Ephesians 1, describes a head-feet metaphor. The second, in Ephesians 5, is a head-body metaphor. This distinction is very important because the context of the former (i.e. feet) was authoritarian, while the latter (i.e. body) was cooperative. When Paul spoke of husbands and wives, he referred to husbands as the head—the face, to use the modern idiom—of the Roman marriage.

For the first four centuries of the church, kephale did not mean leader or connote authority. ‘Head’ did not mean ‘leader’ or ‘authority’ anywhere—including secular usage—until the 4th century AD at the earliest and only in isolated, mostly Christian, instances. Richard S. Cervin notes that none of the (secular) Greek lexicons from the 1800s and 1900s contain the meaning of authority or leader, with the exception of one by D. Dhimitrakou in Athens who explicitly states that the meaning of ‘leader’ is medieval. This is why the much earlier Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament almost never translated the Hebrew rosh (head; leader) into the Greek kephale (head; preeminent).

Thus when Jerome translated the Greek scriptures into the Latin Vulgate, he translated the word as caput (which just means ‘head’):

Notice how in Roman times, the word referred to status even in the Latin. Only in medieval history did it develop the “historical” definition.

In the late 4th century, Christianity became the official religion of the empire. The Ephesians 1 reference to kephale (referring to Christ’s authority) became more well-known and influential, leading eventually to the word ‘head’ morphing to take on the connotation of the head-feet metaphor, that is, taking on the meaning of leader or chief. This was far from universal. It wouldn’t be until the medieval period before this religious use would become notable in the secular setting. However, once established, the head-body metaphor in scripture would be reinterpreted as if ‘head’ was used in the same sense as in the head-feet metaphor, establishing a so-called Christian Patriarchal view where none previously existed.

Thus was doctrinal change initiated based on a failure to appreciate how language changes over time. Even more ironic is that the popularity of the Bible itself (Ephesians 1) was what indirectly instituted that change (Ephesians 5) in the common language of the church.

This is how language develops. Head became a living metaphor for the leadership and authority of Christ in Ephesians 1. Then it became a dead metaphor, which was back-applied to Ephesians 5 in a way that was never intended. Today ‘head’ is no longer a metaphor at all but has its own dictionary entry meaning ‘leader.’^[4]

In theory, church doctrine isn’t supposed to change simply because the definitions of words have shifted over time, but that’s precisely what has happened.

Eucharist

Regarding the Eucharist, we have three examples of language changing over time.

eucharist

When the Greek word eucharist is translated from the Bible into English, it means thanksgiving. But when the Greek word is translated from the early writers into English or from Greek into Latin, it is transliterated not translated. It is often capitalized as well. This has the effect from turning the normal word thanks and thanksgiving into a title or proper name of a ceremony. By turning a literal practice of real thanksgiving into a figure-of-speech for a ritual, the language itself presumes the later medieval development.

Historically, this had the effect of hiding the real meaning of thanksgiving from the laity. When you read one of the early fathers (such as Justin Martyr) talk of the eucharist, do you think he is talking about the tithe, the Lord’s Supper, or the Roman Catholic Eucharist? Of these three, only the first is what the word originally meant. It eventually developed the second meaning (around the 4th century) and then developed the third meaning centuries later. Now when you hear an early writer mention “The Eucharist” (capitalized by translators) you can’t help but hear Roman Catholicism where it was not previously.

The change in language allows doctrinal error to persist.

Wine mixed with water

In the first century, water was mixed with wine (merum) to produce the table wine that was consumed. This was performed as part of the meal preparation (when bread was baked and animals were slaughtered and cooked). As the centuries progressed, the processing of wine brought to the table had changed and no longer was wine mixed with water just prior to drinking it. By the 4th century, the church had no idea why Jesus served watered wine. By the schism between the East and the West, the two halves of the church were fighting over this very topic, both coming to different, but both incorrect, conclusions about the topic.

Thus did both the East and the West err and were divided. They could not even have communion with each other, which persists today between Catholics and Protestants. Both assumed that their own views were apostolic, when in fact there was no apostolic tradition and neither got it right due to historical ignorance. The cultural framework behind the language had changed, thus changing what the language meant to readers. That the Roman Catholic church claimed apostolicity for something that was plainly not apostolic is both doctrinal error and tragically comical.

Thus is the danger of language changing over time: taking a meaningless non-liturgical cultural practice into something that stupidly divides the church. It’s just as dumb as a schism over the color of the carpet in the sanctuary or whether pews should have padding.

Sacrifice of the Mass / Dismissal Sacrifice

The Sacrifice of the Mass and the Dismissal Sacrifice are two ways of saying the same thing, for “Mass” means “Dismissal.” But, their meaning has changed over time. In the time of Justin Martyr, the tithe was a dismissal of repentant baptized believers followed by a thanksgiving sacrifice. It was literally the sacrifice of the dismissal: you dismiss and then you sacrifice. Those two words more-or-less fully summarized the rite.

By the late 4th century, the dismissal had begun split into two: a dismissal of catechumens at the beginning and a dismissal at the end of the Lord’s Supper. Neither fully reflected the dismissal found in scripture or in Justin Martyr. Eventually as the thanksgiving became The Eucharist, the Roman Catholic term Sacrifice of the Mass would become synonymous with The Eucharist while completely losing its original significance. Thus would the Catholic Encyclopedia attest:

The language had changed, leading to doctrinal error.

Jerome’s Mistranslations

Jerome made a number of errors in his translation from Hebrew and Greek into Latin.

Genesis 3:15

Jerome’s translation of Genesis 3:15 altered the original “he” into “she”:

This mistranslation would lead to the infallible Marian dogmas. Indeed, the interpretation of Genesis 3:15 as “she” and “her” would be declared infallibly. Later, Pope John Paul II would acknowledge that the original Hebrew was correctly translated as “he/him” not “she/her.” The “Protestant” translations had been right all along.

All of this corruption was enabled by a change in the language of scripture that went unidentified. Though the corruptions were identified, the erroneous Marian dogmas remain infallibly defined. The interpretation of Genesis 3:15 is now a dogmatically defined lie.

Psalm 99:5

In the encyclical Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI would defend Eucharistic Adoration as if had always been the practice of the church:

Did Augustine describe Eucharistic Adoration?

First we have a mistranslation from Jerome. Then, Augustine, while awkwardly fumbling with that corrupted text, manages to reason himself away from idolatry into the original meaning of the verse. Lastly, Pope Paul VI takes Augustine’s quote out of context to justify the very thing that Augustine was trying to avoid!

All this was enabled by an unidentified change in the language of scripture.

Sacraments and Mysteries

When Paul wrote, in Greek, of the musterion—sacred secrets— he had in mind revealed knowledge about the gospel—good news—of Christ and his saving work of grace through faith. He made no mention of sacraments. He didn’t tie the idea of separate Christian practices (e.g. baptism, thanksgiving, Lord’s Supper, prayer, helping the poor, etc.) in with the sacred secrets. Mysteries are divinely revealed knowledge.^[1]

Meanwhile, in ancient Rome, the Latin sacramentum referred to a sacred and legal vow taken before the gods. Eventually this would morph into the vow or pledge that soldiers made when they were initiated into the army, giving it the sense of an “initiation rite.”^[2] Later, when Roman practices changed, the sacramentum became a yearly vow, giving the word a new sense of “repeated rituals.”

The two words connoted different things, but shared an overlap in their description of sacredness.

It is within this context that Tertullian—the son of a Roman soldier—contrasted the pagan mysteries—divine secrets or revelation—with the Christian “initiation rites” (“sacramentum“). Tertullian saw a natural parallel between the sacramentum and baptism. He would also add the newly baptized member’s first thanksgiving tithe offering (eucharist) to the initiation rite, as these typically happened on the same day in the early church. Even so, Tertullian never confused the divinely revealed sacred secrets of God with the Christian initiation rites (e.g. baptism, thanksgiving).

When Jerome translated the Latin Vulgate, he had a choice. In every case in the synoptic gospels, Jerome  translated the Greek musterion into the transliterated Latin mysterium. But in Ephesians and Colossians, Jerome chose to translate about half of the instances of musterion into the Latin sacramentum, in particular in Ephesians 3:3-9, Ephesians 5:32, and Colossians 1:26-27.

Why did he do this? The answer is somewhat understandable. The Latin words mysterium and sacramentum preexisted the time of Christ, and so Paul’s use of the word musterion in the 1st century didn’t automatically fit with either Latin word in the 4th century. Jerome picked the one he thought fit best, because he didn’t have good options available: in 350 years, the words had diverged too much. The advantage of sacramentum is that, ironically, in Christ the sacred things had already been revealed, so calling what was now widely known in the new state religion as “sacred secrets” (Greek: musterion) or “mysteries” (Latin: mysterium) didn’t seem to fit anymore (see the explanation here). On the other hand, the pagan mysteries—hidden, secret, knowledge only known to initiates—were directly opposed to the Christian sacraments—available and known to all.

While Tertullian had written at a time when sacramentum referred to initiation rites, Jerome was writing at a time when sacramentum referred to repeated rituals. The church was already using the terms mysterium and sacramentum in to describe the repeated church rituals (e.g. the thanksgiving offering), and so Jerome merely continued in the same tradition described by Hilary [310-367], Ambrose [339-397], and (later) Theodoret [393-458].^[3]

Thus, at the stroke of a pen, did Jerome conflate the salvific sacred secrets of God with the repeated rites of the church. He may not have intended to do so, but that is the effect of his choice nonetheless.

This would naturally lead to his mistranslated of justification.

Justification

Although Jerome’s many translation errors had critical consequences, arguably none are more significant than his translation of “repent” [metanoeite; μετανοεῖτε] as “do penance” [poenitentiam agite].

Keep this corruption in mind as we enter into the series on justification by faith.

Footnotes

^[1] This is also why mystics and mysticism refer to the revelation of divine knowledge only accessible to the mystic: the one to whom it was divinely revealed. By definition, Jesus and his disciples were mystics: recipients of direct divine revelation.

^[2] In the second century, Apuleius—a Latin Platonist philosopher—gives sacramentum the meaning of “religious initiation rite.” Presumably this is because the Roman sacramentum—the sacred oath of service taken before the gods by a soldier before he was initiated into military service—was both a legal and a religious rite.

^[3] Some have claimed that the words sacramentum and mysterium were equivalent in the days of Cyprian (210-258) and Tertullian (155-250), but this is difficult to assert as not even the meaning of sacramentum was constant over that period! Jerome himself clearly believed that the two words were different enough to have to choose between them.

^[4] The English word head as leader may have borrowed from other languages as well.