As a public service, I will give the source of this particular saying. During the early-4th to early-5th century debates among Christians as to the exact status of the relationship between Jesus as Son and God as Father (I will not bore you with the metaphysical details), in order to make the sameness-within-distinction that was thought necessary, some (who eventually succeeded, in having their definition encoded in what has been called the Nicene Creed) came up with Greek idea of homoousios, meaning that God as God and Jesus as human/divine reality shared the same "substance", ousios, divine stuff. There was a large plurality that thought this took the relationship too far and offered up a compromise - the Father and Son were homoiousios, "of similar substance". The addition of that smallest of Greek letters, iota, made all the difference in the world. Or not, according to which resident of Nicaea you spoke to. Thus the saying.
With that in mind, I offer the following observations on evolving discussion over the President in his Constitutional office of Commander-in-Chief. Some would argue that the President is Commander-in-Chief, thus creating an identity between the whole office and one of its functions. A more responsible reading, many argue is the President as Commander-in-Chief, reducing an identity to a predicate. By changing that one letter, "a" to "i", we change everything, not least of which is the horrific, un-Constitutional idea that the President "is" the Commander-in-Chief, thus a military leader even as a civilian. Do those who make this argument not realize that this is, in essence, an attempted military coup d'etat by means of language? It militarizes a civilian office; it militarizes American public life; it places us all under the restrictions and regulations of military discipline.
It is thus that an iota of difference can mean so much.
*After putting the blog to bed for the night, I realized I had made a couple oopsies. First, I put the Christological debates a century earlier - from early-3rd to early-4th centuries; second, I translated ousios as "essence" rather than the more correct translation of "substance". It might mean little to those who don't know the metaphysics, but it means a lot to me who's supposed to know this stuff.
Virtual Tin Cup
