CRISIS OF LANGUAGE: SEMANTICS IN GOD-DISCUSSION OF THE FATHERS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbto.2022.1.04Keywords:
Culture, linguistic, logos, patristic, TrinityAbstract
The early Christian discussion on the doctrine of God occurred primarily within the Hellenistic culture. Christians borrowed both concepts and religious and philosophical vocabularies from the existing culture to appropriate their faith. These concepts and vocabularies have inherent meanings associated with them. Thus, a Hellenization of Christianity has been argued for in the existing literature. On the other hand, baptizing them into Christian usage also resulted in a dehellenization of the cultural concepts and vocabularies. This essay focuses on the linguistic aspect of the interaction of Christianity with culture during its early years. It argues that Patristic discussion on God and Godhead needs to be understood within the dynamics of the crisis of language and the semantic differences that accompanied patristic appropriation of the Christian faith.References
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