Happy or Blessed - which do you prefer?

Jack Caviness said:

Perhaps I am being a bit dense, but
truthfully, your usage still puzzles me. Who is "the right person" and
the "wrong person"?

I understood fgh's latest explanation.
I agree, previously, it had been uncertain what she meant. But her
latest post clarified it for me, with a good analogy. Hearing something
from "the right person" means someone whom you'd understand it from, vs.
someone who would irritate you by it because of who they
are (perhaps our own prejudices about where they stand, etc.), even if they said
exactly the same words as the other person. We interpret what people say through the lens
of our preconceptions about their beliefs and their relationship to us,
etc. We might in fact be misunderstanding what they mean by something, and that could trigger a reaction in us. I thought the analogy was quite helpful. Maybe fgh was the wrong person for you to hear that explanation from. But maybe I haven't understood it properly, and maybe I'm not the right person to clarify it to you any better. [:)]

I think fgh wisely would rather not specify what type of person exactly might be the "wrong" person to speak to her of the Eucharist as a "symbol" that would set her alarm bells ringing -- but I'm guessing it would not be universally the wrong person in an objective sense, just the wrong person for her. And she seems to imply from one of her posts that it wouldn't likely be any of us. So thus should end our probing to get her to clarify further. It could become divisive, which she clearly is trying not to do.

Rob Suggs said:

We always have to remember that words communicate not based on their dictionary definitions, but their popular perceptions. Language is fluid and ultimately democratic. A lot of people hate that

Yes, fgh and many others (me, for one [A]) have to hear it from "the right" person. I just hate it when "the wrong" person says it.

Matthew C Jones said:

In real life communication a colloquial usage trumps linguistics and proper grammar every time. It is probably a poor way to handle God's word,

I said either answer is problematic because I believe any & all persons are not only fallible but actually flawed. Therefore it is taking a risk to rely on any person to be correct all the time. Remember the C. S. Lewis quote about no man is fit to be a master?  Cafeteria plan à la  Judges 21:25 ,  or benevolent dictatorship, neither style works well coupled with sin nature.

MJ. Smith said:

Therefore, I assume you do not refer to the three members of the Trinity as "persons" ... obviously another minefield for me to avoid.

You assume correctly. Had I said "all men are fallible" we would have no more debate. [;)]

I was trying to avoid setting myself up to be agreed with by all those of feminine persuasion  Another minefield I 've blundered into.

You're still talking Dogmatics, when I'm talking Semantics. This has nothing whatsoever to do with who's dogmatically correct; it has to do with understanding each other correctly. 

"The right person" would be a person I could trust to use the word "symbol" in the same way I would; "the wrong person" would be a person who sounds like he is using the word in the same sense, but my alarm bells make me suspect he means something totally different and tell me I need to pay attention to the nuances. And then there's the whole group most of you probably belong to, who are neither. You wouldn't use the word the same way as me, so you're not quite "the right person", but I know you're not using the word the same way as me (and you probably wouldn't sound as if you were using it the same way as me either), so there's no confusion, which means you're not "the wrong person" either. You simply don't play any part in that particular example.

It all depends on what the particular word or phrase is. A person can be "the right person" for one theological term, which I know he uses the same way as me, "the wrong person" for another theological term, where he sets off my alarms, and outside the picture for a third theological term, which he clearly and unequivocally uses in a different way. 

Furthermore, people who use terms the same way can still disagree on the issue, and people who use them differently can still agree (once they've sorted out the semantic issues). So someone can be "the right person" from a semantic perspective, but still wrong from my personal dogmatic perspective; and somone who's "the wrong person" from the semantic perspective can still turn out to be right from my personal dogmatic perspective (once we understand each other correctly).

Matthew C Jones said:

MJ. Smith said:

Matthew C Jones said:

any & all persons are not only fallible but actually flawed

Therefore, I assume you do not refer to the three members of the Trinity as "persons" ... obviously another minefield for me to avoid. [*-)]

You assume correctly. Had I said "all men are fallible" we would have no more debate. [;)]

Jack Caviness said:

You could have said, "All humans are fallible"[:D] 

Then I assume the two of you don't hold Jesus to be infallible? (Or not a man? Not a human?)

See how understanding the person is more important than understanding the literal words. Even though we don't generally discuss theology here I suspect I can trust that you don't mean Jesus was fallible and flawed, nor that He wasn't a true man. You just didn't quite think before writing. Or, rather, you assumed you'd be understood the way you meant it. If "the wrong person" had said that, I might have started to wonder if I'd misjudged him.

Thanks for providing such a good example! [:D]

MJ. Smith said:

Therefore, I assume you do not refer to the three members of the Trinity as "persons"

MJ. Smith said:

If you read fgh's post,

And if you read my post in context you will see I refer to "sin nature" of which no person of the Trinity has.

Matthew C Jones said:

I said either answer is problematic because I believe any & all persons are not only fallible but actually flawed. Therefore it is taking a risk to rely on any person to be correct all the time. Remember the C. S. Lewis quote about no man is fit to be a master?  Cafeteria plan à la  Judges 21:25 ,  or benevolent dictatorship, neither style works well coupled with sin nature.

So I maintain: Original intent of the speaker is infinitely more important than the meaning ascribed to the message by the hearer. Applying this to the word of God: It is more important to find out what God is really saying than to find the message I prefer to hear. And if we can not count on God to mean what he says & say what he means, how can we believe anything he says?

Remember, I did say I'm not delving deeply into the linguistics of the matter.  [C]