Expert: Maria - 2/25/2011

Question
Thank you for your expression of trust; a laudible quality. Sometimes I wish I would have listened to my mother and learned Latin in church when I was a boy. This is the question. I was involved in a rather heated, in-depth argument recently about religious differences, including agnosticism and atheism. There were several phrases in Latin bandied about. I should mention that all the participants are highly intelligent and educated people. I only caught two phrases well enough to write down so I'm not certain of the spelling. One phrase was, "HOMO VERUS" which I think means "true man". Perhaps you can verify? The other was "DEUS NON EST ERGO OMNIA PERMISSIUM". From what followed I gather it means something on the order of "god doesn't exist so everything is "permissible". Does it? Can you verify or refute? If not correct is there another phrase that would carry the same meaning? Thank you for your consideration.

Answer
Hello,

Generally speaking, "HOMO VERUS" can mean "a true man" (i.e. free from hypocrisy or dishonesty; sincere)  as well as “a right man”( consonant with reason or good morals).

But, if “HOMO VERUS” is related to Jesus within a religious debate, it means “a true man” as the paradigm of authentic humanity and actualisation of what it is to be truly human.

As for  "DEUS NON EST ERGO OMNIA PERMISSIUM", the correct sentence sounds as "DEUS NON EST ERGO OMNIA PERMISSA" just meaning "God doesn't exist so everything is permitted/allowed /permissible”.

See below for grammatical analysis.

Best regards,
Maria
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GRAMMATICAL ANALYSIS

-DEUS (subject in the nominative case, 2nd.declension)= God

-NON EST (NON= not ;EST = is/exists) = doesn't exist

-ERGO (conjunction) = so, therefore

-OMNIA (nominative neuter plural of OMNIS. Literally, “all things”)= everything

-PERMISSA (literally, “are permitted”. Past participle, nominative neuter  plural  agreed with the plural OMNIA) =is permitted/allowed /permissible”.

Note that PERMISSIUM does not exist in Latin.