P
paulonei
Guest
When I read in Brazilian newspapers about the atheist bus campaign in England I thought about the words in “There’s (there is) probably no God”. In my language, it would be easier to write something like “Probably God does not exist” instead (“Provavelmente Deus não existe.”). But when someone writes this, I have to agree that these words say something true about God: because God “created” the “existence”; and so He cannot “exist” only as a “creature”. So it would be better to say (?) something like “God is” instead of “God exist”, as God called Himself YHWH (“I AM HE WHO IS”, “I AM WHO AM” or “I AM WHAT I AM”):
Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you’, and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” and he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’. . . this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”
“… It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the “hidden God”, his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men.”
(Catechism 206, vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P16.HTM)
But this seems a little confuse to me when thought in English:** “there is” is the same as “exist” **? The two words “there is” do not have a simple translation to Portuguese… “there” remember some “place” (is there “alone” a verb?) and “is” is a “verb”. The conjunction “place” + “verb” is very strange in my language; we would simply use “one word” verb: “há” (verb “haver”), that is the same as the verb “to exist” (verb “existir”). So the atheist campaign, when translated literally, is more or less “strange”.
How is to think in English about the words “God exist”, “There is God” and “God is” (“I AM”) ? How the atheist campaign words relate to the more correct Name of God: “I AM” (not the name “I exist”)?
Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you’, and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” and he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you’. . . this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.”
“… It is at once a name revealed and something like the refusal of a name, and hence it better expresses God as what he is - infinitely above everything that we can understand or say: he is the “hidden God”, his name is ineffable, and he is the God who makes himself close to men.”
(Catechism 206, vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P16.HTM)
But this seems a little confuse to me when thought in English:** “there is” is the same as “exist” **? The two words “there is” do not have a simple translation to Portuguese… “there” remember some “place” (is there “alone” a verb?) and “is” is a “verb”. The conjunction “place” + “verb” is very strange in my language; we would simply use “one word” verb: “há” (verb “haver”), that is the same as the verb “to exist” (verb “existir”). So the atheist campaign, when translated literally, is more or less “strange”.
How is to think in English about the words “God exist”, “There is God” and “God is” (“I AM”) ? How the atheist campaign words relate to the more correct Name of God: “I AM” (not the name “I exist”)?
