How can studying grammar save our culture?
There is tremendous need for conscious and vigorous action to shape and reshape our behavior in accordance with virtue, the common good, and God’s Law. What could studying grammar have to do with saving our culture..?
The Gospel of Jesus Christ spread through a roughshod common language called Koine Greek. Unlike the classical Greek that represented the language of scholars, philosophers, and great minds, the less-sophisticated language is what God used to communicate His Holy Word.
I do not deny tha the decay of language — including grammar, logic, and rhetoric — evidences a decaying society. But it is not, as the article suggests, the other way around. Decay of language is the fruit of a decaying society, not its cause.
"The Midrash Detective"
I’m a big fan of the Trivium in particular and the liberal arts (Trivium + Quadrivium) in general, but this article simply doesn’t make the case. Whatever one’s language—point well taken, Ed—the tools of grammar will help one understand what is actually being said (less fights over misconceptions), the tools of logic will help people discern whether an argument is valid or not, and the tools of rhetoric will help us to formulate a comprehensible response.
But that said, all these tools without regeneration are….really, the Trivium in the hands of medieval monks, creating the mass of Catholic theology that our movement has been working to undo for the past 400 years. The liberal arts are tremendously useful, and quite frankly “genetic fallacies” very often mean “sinful verbal assaults”, but they are no panacea for recovering our society.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
………….improved grammar = cultural salvation???????
I just better not say what I’m thinking…..other than….”I smell Library types!”
Straight Ahead!
jt
Dr. Joel Tetreau serves as Senior Pastor, Southeast Valley Bible Church (sevbc.org); Regional Coordinator for IBL West (iblministry.com), Board Member & friend for several different ministries;
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