Aquinas on Tongues: I Corinthians 14:1-4

Aquinas’ Lecture on I Corinthians 14:1 – 4 translated into English.

Translated from the Latin text: Reportationes 088 R1C cp 14 Pg. 387 lc1

I Corinthians 14: 1 – 4


IC1. The excellency of charity of which has been posited against another gift. This Apostle consequently compares a different gift to another one, showing the excellency of prophecy to the gift of tongues. In regards to this, he does two things. First, he relates the excellence of prophecy to the gift of tongues. Secondly, as to how one should go about to use the gift of tongues and of prophecy.

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Death, Religion and the Modern Man

A look at death from contemporary, religious, philosophical, and personal perspectives.
Death is the one question that modern science still has yet to answer in the most preliminary way. Religion answers questions about death, but this is largely ignored. Philosophy touches on the subject, but this falls short.
In modern western society, our thoughts on the subject are so thoroughly deficient, that we are not only unprepared, we emotionally flee.
It also produces many outcomes in the modern mind which are mainly on the subconscious level.

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Thomas Aquinas on the Prophet and Imaginary Visions

How to understand Aquinas’ use of imaginarius and imaginarias visiones in the office of prophecy.

The English translation of the Latin Imaginarius is typically imaginary, and imaginarius visiones as imaginary visions. However, this is not satisfactory. The use of the English word imaginary may mislead the reader. To many it means a personal fantasy, a child-like hallucination, an imaginary friend, or something that is totally cognatively disassociated. This is not what Aquinas intended.

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The Language of Ecclesiastical Greek

This article is intended to help beginners in Ecclesiastical Greek develop a strategy to translate a wide range of Church writings.

The Church fathers used the common written language in use during their time. This was Attic Greek.

There are two caveats though: first there are many sub-dialects in Attic Greek that the translator has to be conscious of. Secondly, many manuscripts were modified by medieval copyists and are mixed-bag of old and newer constructs.

Greek in the ancient world was much like the contemporary English language. There is koine English, which is a base form of English which many countries and regions share very similar commonalities. For example the United States south, British, and Australians can communicate with only a few problems. However, each one does have some distinct words and pronunciations that each party quickly recognizes and makes adjustments. Ecclesiastical Greek has many authors that wrote in their own sub-dialect similar to the slight differences found between British, American and Australian literature.

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Ancient Digitized Greek Dictionaries

How to utilize the internet for multiple ancient Greek dictionaries when translating Patristic or Ecclesiastical Greek