Diction and rhetoric are words that I rarely see used by contemporary speakers.  Good diction was once considered a virtue.  Rhetoric was almost considered a sacred art.  Today diction and rhetoric are marginal aspects in the world of speech.  The principle denigrates the proper use of the language in our culture.  I would like to lay the blame for the misuse of language at the feet of the postmodern deconstructionists.  Their influence has been great in the western world, but the intentional effort to equivocate language has been with us since the fall of the human race.  In fact, deceit was one of the causal factors in the fall.  It was the father of deception that said to Eve, “Has God indeed said... (Genesis 3:1).  From Adam and Eve to the last baby born, there will always be the twisting of language.  The Sophists of the 5th century B.C. were famous for turning philosophical skepticism into the impossibility of absolute knowledge, which in essence denies absolute truth.  In his book “Speech and Reality”  Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy correctly observes that “words are trifles, to most men”  (p. 46).  The Bible is replete with warnings about using “useless words” but that does not mean the all words are useless.  It depends on the motivation for using words and the way they are used so that they reflect intelligent communication.  I quote Rosenstock-Huessy again:  “Grammar books are dull only as long as we pretend that we all and always are able to articulate” (p. 47).  Pretension is the monster of unintelligent discourse.  I’m 63 years old and I still devote a brief portion of my time as regularly as possible to learn more about the discipline of diction and the art of rhetoric.  It was the use and misuse of words that compelled me to write “Theological Terms in Layman Language.”