“Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins.”

– Martin Heidegger, Über den Humanismus (1947)

Monsieur Blanc,

At some point I wonder if it is even worth diving into the meaning of meaning and whether definitions accurately represent what they are trying to describe. On the one hand, making sure that all relevant parties agree on the basics is important, but on the other hand this tends to get a bit pedantic, doesn’t it? This is where faith comes in. A lot of people only associate faith with religion and vice versa. A curse from the enlightenment maybe. But this is really missing the point. People have faith all the time and in many different things.

When voting in an election, deciding to get a vaccine, or deciding where to go to school, how much research does one actually do? I could lie to you and say that I research everything in depth and go to the voting booth with a head full of knowledge, but the truth is I don’t. And I don’t think I’m alone in this. When it comes to big decisions, people still often just go with their gut and pick whichever option feels right in the moment.

The connection to definitions is that at some point we just have to hope that the other person has a definition that is similar enough. There are times where two people’s definitions are quite far apart, but I find that this doesn’t happen as often as those of us who are chronically online fear. This is an interesting connection here with language. As a card-carrying bilingual, it is interesting to see how words are translated to and from different languages. Generally speaking, it is easy enough to translate from English to German. For example, water in English is Wasser in German. Its use case tends to be similar across the board and when one would say water in English, Wasser in German fits well. That being said, even with other simple words there can be trouble. Brot is the German word for bread, and even this simple word can’t always be translated one to one. Because German bread is the best in the world (no, this isn’t a discussion or a question, this is a fact), what exactly counts as bread and what Americans think of bread isn’t completely the same. Sure, Brot and bread can be translated one to one most of the time, maybe in nine out of ten cases. But still, not always and not universally.

This question of language and translation is one that meets the Bible as well. Because of God and his sovereignty, we have many ancient manuscripts of the old and new testament that were written very close to the time in which the things from the Bible transpired. Due to a long history of research and knowledge in ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, we also know how to translate these manuscripts. However, when translating, we have to decide how exactly we want to convey the meaning of the text. Some translations are more word for word and others are more thought for thought. Which one is better?

I used to think that word for word was better and that that was the only way to really understand the Bible, but I have since softened. For a younger audience or those who maybe aren’t as intellectually inclined, it may be nice to have a translation that is more approachable. I do think that one should maybe slowly transition to reading more literal translations over time, as the sanctification process is at work. However, I am not sure that everyone needs to be reading the same translation. I have been reading the Bible in English and in German over the past couple years and it has been nice to sometimes get different lessons or different points of focus when looking at one or the other. The core message doesn’t change, but how it is expressed can sometimes differ in a valuable way.

Though, I must say that I worry about literacy and the future of reading and writing. The history of literacy goes hand in hand with the Protestant reformation and Protestantism more broadly. Sola scriptura is a core tenet of our faith. Meaning that reading and the ability to understand a text at multiple levels is not really optional. But is this changing? With AI, writing essays and texts is becoming a relic of the past. I can only imagine how much trouble AI is causing in schools. How many essays and research projects are done in ten minutes with AI? I don’t want to hate AI unnecessarily, and certainly tools are useful to humanity. The calculator has made mathematics far more approachable and doable than if it could only be done by hand.

That being said, are people writing anymore? Will humanity forget how to write? There have been some articles saying that the Vatican’s newest encyclical; the Magnifica Humanitas, has 11% of it or so written by AI. While not damning per say, I expected better from the supposed one true, apolstolic, and universal church. I don’t fear sentient AI or automation, but I do worry that future students won’t actually read anything. They’ll not just ask AI to summarize a book, but they’ll ask it to write an essay as well. Maybe people will even use AI when reading the Bible or to write a sermon. If literacy is going down, will Protestantism go down with it?

Apropos the Catholic Church, it seems to me that one of the biggest draws of the Catholics is that much of what they post online is aesthetic and visual in nature. Same thing with the Orthodox. I think a lot of people are drawn to the old churches, liturgy, and the feeling of being connected with something deeper and richer than modern life. You wrote about this somewhat recently, and I think you make a lot of good points in regards to the danger of superficial beauty. That being said, I think you’re missing the forest for the trees.

To start, America is ugly. Like catastrophically and offensively ugly. Nature in America is truly breathtaking and awe inspiring and when it comes to the natural world, there is a lot in the US to love. But we need to be honest, the built and urban environment in the US is pretty ugly. This is maybe different on the East Coast and there are some pockets of historic beauty, but especially in the newer cities, things look pretty bad. Dilapidated roads next to concrete and steel boxes. Six-lane stroads lined with tacky billboards and comically large signs. Cookie-cutter suburbia is connected to rundown stripmalls without any ounce of soul to be seen anywhere. I don’t want to be harsh, but this is the reality. Especially out west, a typical sight will be beautiful mountains next to a lame urban environment. I think we are pretty inoculated to this travesty because it is the only thing we know. It is when we visit older places like England or Italy, this is when we realize how things could be.

All this to say, I think a desire for beauty should be treated with the respect that it deserves. Surface level beauty isn’t everything, but it isn’t nothing. I would even argue that the beauty of an attractive person is worth some amount of goodness on its own. It is certainly more important to live a life of virtue and to be a follower of Christ, but all things being equal, being beautiful is a good thing. I would say something similar about intelligence. It isn’t everything, but it is still a good thing.

The “Pizza Hut church” may have a sound pastor and a faithful congregation. And these things are certainly more important than how the building looks. That being said, this doesn’t negate the fact that their church building is ugly. Now, if the choice is to have no church, or to meet in the stripmal, obviously we need to make due with what we have. But as a society shouldn’t we aim to build infrastructure that is beautiful and excellent? I don’t want to dog on a smaller congregation like the “Pizza Hut church”, but I do absolutely want to critique bigger churches with more money. For example, Calvary Church in Albuquerque. They spent many millions to build a campus that looks just like a concrete box. It is entirely uninspiring and they could have done better. Beautiful buildings tend to stand the test of time and are always renovated again and again, unlike modern buildings, which will inevitably be torn down and replaced with something equally depressing.

I don’t think it would be hard for Protestants to capitalize on the current zeitgeist if we wanted to. There are very beautiful Lutheran, Anglican, and Presbyterian churches. Instead of fighting against the desire for beauty, maybe we should just go with it and expect more from ourselves. I am not sure this will solve the literacy crisis, but that may be a more difficult issue to solve. I also don’t think reading will go away, I can just imagine that reading and writing becoming a pastime and hobby for the elite, with the average joe never reading nor writing anything ever.

This has happened before. Owning horses was an important method of transportation, but then the invention of the car made them obsolete. Now, owning horses is a luxury for the rich. They didn’t disappear, but their use case shifted. Because we are living through this AI revolution, it is hard to predict how the chips will fall. Everything might change forever, or maybe it won’t be so bad. Hard to tell.

I wonder how AI deals with definitions. I suppose that it probably just uses the definitions of whatever data source fed it. Or, maybe it uses a definition that the user would be most happy with. It is interesting that AI has so much to do with language, almost poetic even. Maybe AI is a fad, but it appears more and more likely that it will be an important part of human history, like the computer or the internet. Even as we navigate a postmodern (maybe even metamodern) and increasing post-literate age, language still has such a large impact on everything we do. Literacy appears like it can’t be put back into the bottle.

Veritas vos liberabit.

Ihr ergebener,

Nate Martin