THE THEOLOGY OF THANKS AND THE THEOLOGY OF OLD WORDS
Wed. March 2nd, 2022 to Thurs. March 3rd, 2022
Introduction
I started thinking about the expression "to return thanks." But my train of thought went from that topic to another topic, and then to another. I decided to try to write down the series of thoughts that occurred to me.
1. Returning Thanks
Christianity abounds in technical terms. One technical term is "to return thanks." That expression is common among conservative Christians. Both liberal Christians and non-Christians are more likely to use the other expression which means the same thing, namely "to give thanks."
Both liberal Christians and non-Christians may misunderstand returning thanks to mean "thanking someone back, after they have thanked you." But that's not what returning thanks means. Returning thanks means "thanking someone, after they have shown you a kindness." The expression "to return thanks" is based on the idea that thanking someone is a natural response after they have shown you a kindness.
For me, the expression "to return thanks" is one of things I admire about conservative Christians. I am a liberal Christian myself. But I agree with the premise of "to return thanks." I agree with conservative Christians that thanking someone is a natural response after they have shown you a kindness.
That does not mean, however, that I frown on the expression "to give thanks." I do not believe that the expression "to give thanks" is inferior to the expression "to return thanks."
2. Blessedness
It seems to me that Jesus used various technical terms himself. One of his technical terms is the word or words in Jesus' native language which is commonly translated into English as "blessed." I would argue that, in Jesus' terminology, "Blessed are you when you . . ." means "It makes you happy when you . . ." and "Blessed are you if you . . ." means "It makes you happy if you . . ." For example, in the Acts of the Apostles chapter 20, verse 35, St. Paul quotes Jesus: "remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." That saying of Jesus can be read to mean, "It makes you happier to give than to receive."
Jesus often spoke in paradoxes, and it seems that many of his "Blessed are you . . ." sayings can be interpreted as paradoxes. To bring out -- or smooth out -- the paradoxical nature of Jesus' "Blessed are you . . ." sayings, one can add "in the long run" at the beginning of the translation, for example: "In the long run, it makes you happier to give than to receive." That suggests the interpretation that when you look back on your good deeds when you are downcast, the memory of your good deeds will cheer you up. For me, that has the ring of truth. When I am downcast, and when I am thinking that I am not a good person, the memory of my deeds which I consider good deeds will cheer me up. I do not know if that works for everybody, but I know it works for me.
After suggesting that "Blessed are you . . ." in the Bible can be understood to mean "It makes you happy when you . . ." we could go on and try that interpretation out on many other Bible verses, to see if it fits. But that is not the turn which my thoughts took, and as I have said, I will follow my train of thought here.
3. The Theology of Thanks
Now we will try to make a connection between returning (or giving) thanks, and blessedness.
We have already professed our belief that saying "I thank you" is a natural response to being shown a kindness. But what does "I thank you" mean?
I would suggest that "I thank you" can mean "I will repay your kindness if I have an opportunity."
That reminds me of the fable of the lion and the mouse. Wikipedia describes that fable in the following words:
"In the oldest versions, a lion
threatens a mouse that wakes him from sleep. The mouse begs forgiveness and
makes the point that such unworthy prey would bring the lion no honour. The
lion then agrees and sets the mouse free. Later, the lion is netted by hunters.
Hearing it roaring, the mouse . . . [summons a bunch of his friends (other
mice), and with their help, he] frees it by gnawing through the ropes. The
moral of the story is that . . . there is no being so small that it cannot help
a greater. Later English versions reinforce this by having the mouse promise to
return the lion's favor, to its [the lion's] sceptical amusement."
Therefore, the person who is thanked may feel "There is no way you will be able to repay me." But because the person who is thanked has heard Aesop's fable -- or a similar fable in another culture -- that person refrains from saying "There is no way you will be able to repay me," and says "You are welcome" instead.
Now to try to connect giving or returning thanks with blessedness. Although Jesus did not say so as far as I know, I would propose a further blessing: Blessed are you when you thank someone. Meaning: It makes you happy when you thank someone. You have implied -- if your thought-paths are similar to mine -- "I will repay your kindness if I have an opportunity." The act of returning thanks can be seen as a down payment on the act of repaying someone's kindness.
One of the distinctive features of Christians is that we thank God in addition to thanking people who have shown us a kindness. Christians thank God in spite of the fact that we know we cannot repay to God the kindness which God has shown us.
But of course the same thing is sometimes true when we thank human beings. In other words, when we thank a person, sometimes the opportunity to repay their kindness never arises. And we all know that. When we say "Thank you," the opportunity to repay the other person's kindness may never arise. Sometimes the down payment -- the "Thank you" -- is all the payment the other person ever gets from us.
An extreme case of our inability to repay is when we are thankful to people who have given their lives for our country. In that case the only possible repayment is for us to honor the memory of those who have died.
That may make it easier to understand the idea of thanking God. It seems to imply that we honor God -- although for religious people, we are not honoring the memory of God (we are not implying that God is dead). For Christians, it is as if we are saying "I thank you, God, for showing me a kindness, and/or I thank you for ordering the universe in such a way that the person I am thanking has shown me a kindness."
Essentially, when we bless or return thanks to God, then blessing, and thanking, and honoring, are all the same thing. For example, in my prayer book, in the old prayer of general thanksgiving, we say, "We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life." That can be understood to mean We honor you and thank you, God, for our creation, preservation, and all the things which have made us happy in this life. The blessings of this life -- the things which have made us happy in this life -- can include the food we have gotten or been given to eat ; the love which our parents have shown us ; the opportunity to have friends ; and all other similar things.
This is my effort to put into words a theology of thanks.
4. Sayings
We will speak very briefly about one other technical term, and then try to draw some conclusions about the language which Christians use. Very briefly about the term "a saying": in Christianity, "a saying of Jesus" means "a thing when Jesus said, and someone else wrote down."
The New Testament makes it plain that Jesus did not write his ideas down. In my view, it does not matter whether Jesus chose not to write, or did not know how to write. It does not matter theologically. Since Jesus was born into a poor family, and honored poor people, the fact that most poor people were illiterate when Jesus was on earth would not have deterred Jesus from being illiterate if he chose to be illiterate. Jesus planned his work, and worked his plan.
5. Trusting Old Language
In the society I live in, many people mistrust old words and expressions. They seem to feel that words which have gone out of use should not be used any more with the old meaning. If the idea behind the old word is still useful, a newer way of saying the same thing should be found or created.
For example, "blind people" and "the blind" mean the same thing. But "the blind" is an old-fashioned way of talking, and it tends to be mistrusted by many Americans nowadays.
There is some secret grammar in the expression "the blind." In other words, the expression "the blind" exemplifies an old grammatical pattern in English, which is nowadays rarely discussed, and nowadays people tend to be unaware of it. To see the pattern, consider these four sentences:
a) He is radical.
b) He is one of the radicals.
c) He is blind.
d) He is one of the blind.
The old grammatical pattern is this: when you put the word "the" before an adjective, and you do not add a noun, you need not add the ending -s to make it plural when you are talking about people. In other words, we say "the blind" instead of saying "the blinds" if we are talking about people.
"Radical" adds an -s in "He is one of the radicals" because "radical" is seen as a noun, even though it is used as an adjective in the shorter sentence "He is radical." "Radical" is seen as a noun because you can also say "He is a radical" -- adding the little word "a," which makes "radical" a noun. But you cannot say (people do not say) *"He is a blind." That's because "blind" is only an adjective.
This "secret grammar" lingers in many expressions in modern English. For example, we say "the dead" to mean "the people who were killed in a battle, or died in a tragedy." For another example, there is or there was an American television show called "The Young and the Restless." The show's title means "the young and restless people." For a third example, "The good die young" means "The good people die young." As with "the blinds," if we say "the goods" we are no longer talking about people.
So the pattern we find in "the blind" lingers in current-day English. But it is probably shrinking -- probably less common than it used to be. I am guessing that it is perceived as old-fashioned by numerous Americans. But in the case of "The Young and the Restless", it gives a poetic feel to the show's title.
I would suggest that the old-fashionedness of the grammatical pattern which we are using when we say "the blind" is the reason young people avoid using this pattern with handicaps, such as when people say "the blind," "the deaf," etc. Because that way of talking is seen as old-fashioned, I think modern people mistrust it.
But it seems to me that Christians do not mistrust old words. For example, if you tell a Christian that the word charity used to mean love, a typical Christian feeling in response to that would be "That will help me understand older sentences in which the word charity is used."
But if, in my American society, you tell a person who is not a Christian that charity used to mean love, they will typically stop listening after "used to mean."
6. The Relation Between Mistrusting Old Words and Bible Translations
If someone says that an English word in an English Bible has changed its meaning, the typical modern response of a Christian whose native language is English will be to re-translate the Bible, or to ask or clamor for someone else to re-translate the Bible.
That sounds like a contradiction of our previous generalization, that Christians do not mistrust old words.
But modern ideas about English Bible translations are an example of Christians in the English-speaking world being influenced by the people around them.
It is not so, I think, in many societies in which other languages are prevalent. Christians who speak one of the world's many, many minority languages are likely to respect the labor that went into the translation, even if the translation is now old-fashioned. I would even suggest that Christians who speak minority languages might think that re-translating the Bible into their language is a project they do not have enough time to carry out.
The idea that there is not enough time to re-translate the Bible into English would not occur to a modern English-speaking Christian.
7. Coded Messages
Modern American ideas about mistrusting old words are influenced by modern American ideas about coded messages. Current American thinking is that coded messages are used by oppressors. Nowadays when an American says "It is a coded message," it is often meant as a devastating criticism. In other words, it means "It is expressed in the typical double-talk of oppressors."
For example, modern Americans liberals mistrust the term "aliens," a legal term used by the United States government; used by the government because it is a term written into American laws. In the laws, it means a person living in a country they are not a citizen of. In the Old Testament in English, it means a person not living in the country where their ancestors lived -- in other words, an immigrant.
The fact that "alien" originally meant "foreigner" simply isn't relevant to most modern liberal Americans. Nowadays the most common meaning for "alien" is "a person from another planet" (an idea which is native to science fiction, in which aliens are always bad guys). So when modern liberal Americans hear the word alien applied to foreigners, they assume it is a coded message of fear and loathing, or at least of disrespect.
But older thinking included the idea that coded messages are often used by oppressed people. In the words of a 1960's song by the American musical group Peter, Paul, and Mary, "If I really say it, the radio won't play it, unless I lay it between the lines."
Some of Jesus' sayings can be interpreted as coded messages. But if so, they are coded messages in favor of the oppressed, not in favor of the oppressors. For example, there is the question about whether Jews should pay taxes to the Roman occupiers in several Gospels. In Matthew chapter 22 verses 15-21:
15
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. 16 And
they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians . . . [and the ones
they sent asked Jesus] 17 Tell us . . . What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or
not? 18
But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye
hypocrites? 19 Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a [Roman]
penny. 20 And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription? 21
They say unto him, Cæsar's. Then
saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's;
and unto God the things that are God's.
A little bit of commentary:
-- Verse 16: They sent to Jesus some of
the students of the Pharisees, mingled with some people who would report what
Jesus said to King Herod.
-- Verse 18: Why tempt ye me? (Why are
you all asking me a trick question?)
-- Verse 19: the tribute money (the currency
used to pay Roman taxes).
-- Verse 20: Whose is this image and superscription?
(Whose picture is on the coin, and whose wording is above the picture?)
A few years ago, my adult Sunday school lesson discussed this conversation between Jesus and some of the Pharisees, the Pharisees being mixed with some supporters of the Roman overlords.
The Sunday school lesson-book showed a picture of a Roman penny (Latin denarius, worth much more than an American penny is worth now), with the head of the Roman emperor on it, and a picture of an ancient Jewish shekel, with the likeness of the seven-branched candlestick on it.
The Sunday school lesson explained that in this conversation Jesus did not mention a Jewish shekel, but a contrast with the shekel was implied: the shekel was Jewish money, which the Romans allowed the Jews to continue minting; the shekel's main use in Jesus' day was to pay tithes and offerings to the Temple in Jerusalem.
In effect, Jesus was saying "Give back to the Roman emperor the coin with the picture of the Roman emperor, and give back to God's temple the coin with the picture of the seven-branched candlestick."
On the surface, that was just an answer that neither the Roman overlords nor the Jewish patriots could complain about.
But was it a coded message? Jesus implied a lot in a little. I would suggest that Jesus' answer implied, "Do not talk as if you believe that paying taxes to the Romans is a more important question than paying offerings to God."
If it was a coded message, it was a coded message in favor of the oppressed people -- not in favor of the oppressor.
8. Conclusion
I would like to conclude by suggesting that not mistrusting old words simply makes sense for a Christian.
The Greek language has been used to express Christian ideas for two thousand years. The Latin language has been used for over fifteen hundred years to translate Christian ideas. Many other European languages, including English, have been used to translate Christian ideas for a thousand years. Old words (some of them borrowed from Latin and Greek) are woven into the fabric of Christianity.
For many Native American languages, a translation of the Bible into their native language may have been made a hundred years ago. Already there may be some old-fashioned expressions in the translation. But it is, in fact, a lot of work to re-translate the Bible into a language spoken by a small number of people. Besides, many Native Americans may know that one of their grandparents or great-grandparents assisted in the translation. Or to use the modern expression, one of their grandparents or great-grandparents may have been on the translation team.
All of these languages which have been written for a while (if not centuries) have what some people call baggage. But other people call the same fact about their language a glorious heritage.
I hope my fellow Christians will continue not mistrusting old words.
Frank Newton
