The Sea in My Hand?

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Last night I found myself holding the sea in my hands.

Now, I first need to point out that it was only the Barents Sea, which Wikipedia describes as “marginal” -- “marginal” being a technical term for territorial waters, with no disrespect intended…though how the Barents itself feels about the description is another question. (Its former name, the Murmans Sea, has a certain allure, until one realizes that it translates to, “The Sea of Norwegians”.)

The second, and even more critical, thing to note is that I wasn’t actually holding the Barents Sea. I was actually holding a few plastic pieces from a 3-D globe puzzle one of my sons is working on. The pieces had fallen on the floor and I had slipped them into my pocket while cleaning up. The pieces represented the Barents Sea – they weren’t the sea itself.

And now for the inevitable lesson.

As we carry our Bibles about, in our hands or in our heads, we can sometimes imagine that the mere possession of the book magically sanctifies us. The words on the page, or the smart phone, or the brain cell, seem to possess a talismanic power to lead us on the path of blessing. We have God’s word, and thus to some extent God, right in our hands.

I want to choose my words carefully hear, and assure the reader that my goals here are modest. I believe the Bible is God’s Word in a unique way. I am not getting into the question of whether the Scriptures simply contains the word, or whether it needs to be activated by the Spirit to become God’s word, or any of those questions which understandably keeps theologians up at night. All I am saying is that the words on the page gain their currency because they point to something greater than themselves: the reality of God and his kingdom.

Take the words, “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Five simple English words, with one English-ed Greek name itself derived from a Hebrew original. I hope you hear them as the stunning climax of the greatest story ever told. But that power comes not from the mere words, but from the fact that they point to the truth that God did in fact raise Jesus from the dead.

The fact that the words are sign pointing to something doesn’t diminish their value; it establishes their value. My puzzle-solving son remarked the other day that we ought simply to print out endless barrels money so people can have whatever they want. (Note to government officials and presidents of large banks: this is not actually a good idea.) I tried to explain with my own feeble economic understanding that the dollar bills only stand in for, or mark out, value; the paper points towards one’s labor or one’s land. So it is with words, at least in many instances: they point towards reality.

This is no idle academic musing. When we focus merely on the words in Scripture, and not on the reality they are gesturing towards, we can end up deluding ourselves with a “faith” that is nothing more than the barest assent to a few propositions. We need to recognize that God’s word is there to throw us into the reality of his kingdom, with all the peril and promise that holds. The word is there to point us to a God who actually does hold the Barents Sea, and the whole cosmos, in his almighty hand.

Approaching the Center (and Temptations) of Imperial Power

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I spent last week in Istanbul. It was my first time ever in Turkey and I loved the experience. Most of the week was spent with some of my favorite kinds of people – Bible translators – as an invited participant in a global consultation called by SIL International to discuss some challenging issues being faced by Wycliffe Bible Translators and others working in the field.

On Saturday¸ my last day in the country, I was able to do some basic exploring of the city. I visited the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul and got to see the Soreg Inscription, the Siloam Inscription and the Gezer calendar, among other things. I also visited the Hagia Sophia museum, which was Constantinople’s cathedral from A.D. 360 until it was turned into a mosque in A.D. 1453. It has been a museum since 1935. It is a fascinating place, the key to so much important history in that time period. Among other sights in the main hall one may see the Omphalion, the spot where the coronation of every Byzantine emperor took place over many centuries (the large round slab in the middle of the smaller marble slabs) and where they would sit during religious ceremonies.

I couldn’t help but think about the continuing relationship between religion and politics through time – of both the good and the bad things that flowed from establishing Christian (and then Islamic) empires – and of our current political situation here in the U.S. where one can find a fusing together of some forms of evangelical piety with Republican political agendas with little or no attention being given to the exploitation that takes place when political agendas and religious identification are merged. All the talk about “culture wars” suggests a very dangerous metaphor is at work that is designed to lead to militant political fighting and to perceiving some Americans as enemies to be opposed and beaten. As the political campaigning in this country begins to get more and more heated I’m sure we can expect to see more and more candidates seeking votes on the basis (in part, at least) of the religious convictions they hold, and with the explicit or implicit promise that those convictions would lead them to support policies that would be pleasing to those who hold similar religious convictions.

I confess this keeps me thinking about issues of cultural and religious imperialism and their presence even in places that lack kings, emperors and thrones…. May God give us all wisdom to discern the kind of leadership our nation needs and to live out our faith with a humility that honors Christ, the perfect King, the one who taught us to put the needs of others (especially the weak, powerless and marginalized – those who are unable to help themselves) above our own interests. In 1 Peter 5:3-4 we are told that Christian leaders should follow Christ’s example and “not lord it over those in your charge, but be examples to the flock. And when the chief shepherd appears, you will win the crown of glory that never fades away” (NRSV).

If only our politicians (and the Christian leaders they woo) would demonstrate a commitment to using their influence not to build the coffers and power of one political party at the expense of the other, or to lead one sector of our society to lord it over any other, but to lead us all to adopt stances of humility marked by wisdom, compassion and selflessness. I think that kind of power would show just how wrong-headed both explicit and implicit forms of imperialism are when it comes to seeking the common good.

Accuracy in Bible translation

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

“Gender Debate: SBC Pastors Denounce NIV

Southern Baptist delegates passed a resolution criticizing the 2011 update and asked LifeWay stores not to sell the Bible translation.”

This was the headline in the Christianity Today Direct e-mail I receive as a subscriber of the magazine, today, July 26, 2011. I clicked through to the website to see what this was about. At their annual meeting in Phoenix in June, the Southern Baptist convention passed a resolution denouncing the 2011 NIV update, and asked their bookstores to not carry it. The accusation is “gender inclusive” and they claim the new NIV is an inaccurate translation.

These are fighting words. In fact we have heard that repeatedly as the publishers have tried to update and edit the NIV to improve the translation based on new scholarship. These attempts have been beaten down and battered by groups such as Focus On The Family, and the Council Of Biblical Manhood And Womanhood. If these claims were true, I’d be the first in line to agree with the objections raised. Unfortunately, they are not.

There are some passages of Scripture which have been used to argue that women should be excluded from leadership in the church and subordinated to their husbands in the home. The Southern Baptist convention has codified this in their revised faith and mission statement (http://www.sbc.net/bfm/bfm2000.asp). The difficulty is that many passages of Scripture which we read unthinkingly in terms of gender restricted language turn out to be inaccurate translations. What the new NIV editions have been trying to do is to correct those inaccuracies.

I will give you one of many examples I could cite to give you a flavor for the difficulty. In I Timothy 3:1, we read

It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. ^[1]

This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. ^[2]

And now, for the NIV:

Here is a trustworthy saying: If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task^[3]

This year we have been celebrating the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible. It basically was the official Bible of United States of America since the founding of the country practically. For example when Bible reading was mandated in the public schools, it was a King James version that was read. When we quote the Bible we often quote the King James Version. It has been powerfully influential in shaping what we believe the Bible says about many topics. In this verse, the King James Version taught us to see the office of bishop occupied exclusively by men (gender distinctive intended). The radical mistranslation of the NIV suggests that not only men may aspire to be bishops but also women, as they would be included in the “anyone” of this translation. This is the kind of “mistranslation” to which the Southern Baptists are objecting. However, if we look at the original language we learn the following: it is not the Greek word for man, aner. Nor is it the Greek word for human being often translated as man, anthropos. It is a gender-neutral pronoun, most accurately translated “anyone,” tis.

So, which is the most accurate translation? The one with which we grew up and which we memorized and learned to trust as truly God’s word? Or is it this new NIV against which the Southern Baptists delegates have reacted so strongly? I agree that the Holy Spirit has been at work in our world since its beginning, and he has been teaching the church since its birth on Pentecost. I believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture, and I believe that the Holy Spirit has guided and preserved its translation. Because of this, I believe we must respect traditional understandings and interpretations and translations. However, translators are human beings. They are, like the rest of us, fallen sinners saved by grace, and therefore capable of error in their work. That error may come from their expectations and biases, unintentional or otherwise. Therefore, in my mind, it is imperative that we remain open to the teaching of the Holy Spirit. When we see such obvious errors in translation as those described above, we must correct them. Not to do so would leave the church burdened with restrictions on women not authorized by Scripture because of inaccurate and biased translation. Therefore I would say that we should welcome the NIV which corrects mistakes like this in earlier translations and try to accurately reflect gender when gender is indicated in the original language and inclusiveness when inclusiveness is indicated in the original language. Anything less is bad translation.

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^[1] New American Standard Bible : 1995 update. 1995 (1 Ti 3:1). LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

^[2] The Holy Bible: King James Version. 2009 (Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version.) (1 Ti 3:1). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

^[3] The Holy Bible: New International Version. 1996 (electronic ed.) (1 Ti 3:1). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

The Bible in the World: Abolitionist, Contemporary and Future Perceptions

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I just returned from the 2011 iteration of the Nida School of Translation Studies and the second residency of our new D.Min. track in Bible Translation, which took place in Misano Adriatico, Italy.

Faculty and Associates of the Nida School come from diverse places and perspectives with some coming from the field of Bible translation and others from the wider academic field of Translation Studies, with special affinity to Post-Colonial criticism and other ideological criticisms. For many people on one side (you can guess which one) the positive impact of the Bible in people’s lives and in society is perfectly obvious and the thought that Bible translation could contribute to injustice or oppression in the world is hard to believe. For many people on the other side (again, you can guess which one), it is obvious that the Bible and its translation have been part of oppressive imperialistic and colonizing powers and movements and that the Bible has shown itself to be a dangerous book with a problematical reception-history.

I think this is another of those instances where each side tends to be correct in what it affirms but reductionist in what it denies. That is, the Bible has led millions of people to peace, forgiveness, grace and hope, and have led to the establishment of hospitals, schools, orphanages, and innumerable charitable ministries around the world. And it has also been used through the centuries to support unjust and oppressive institutions, relationships and behaviors.

On the flight home from Italy I began reading Allen Dwight Callahan’s The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Although I’ve only read the first four chapters so far I can say I highly recommend it (for what I have read so far). But it has also provided a remarkable parallel to what I had just observed at the Nida School.

Callahan discusses the opposing positions of Frederick Douglass (whom I have mentioned in an earlier ETC post) and Henry Highland Garnet in a debate that took place in New York in 1849:

“Douglass and Garnet were both African Americans. Both had escaped slavery from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. But their respective experiences of slavery, literacy, and religion—and so their respective experiences of the Bible—were profoundly different, and those differences crystallized in diametrically opposed views of the Bible's liberating power…. Garnet saw the liberating power of the Bible as self-evident. It was so for him: he assumed it would be so for slaves in the South who might manage to read or have read to them a contraband copy of the holy scriptures that he knew so well” (page 22).

Callahan reminds us that “the abolitionists of the North and the planter class of the South read from the same Bible. Long before Lincoln, Douglass had learned that the Bible was the highest authority of American slavery and the strongest link in the chain of oppression and violence that warranted slavery as the sacred basis for the Christian culture of what would become the Confederacy” (23).

“Bitter experience had taught Douglass and other slaves and former slaves that the master class of the United States bore a whip in one hand and a Bible in the other. It was this Bible that Garnet and his colleagues were now proposing to send to the South” (23).

“Douglass anticipated that the Bibles sent to the South would become raw material for proslavery propaganda” since he “knew intimately what Garnet's limited experience with slavery could not teach: that the justice of the Bible was not self-evident. Douglass had begun to learn the Bible as a slave, and he knew that some people reading the Bible under the slave regime remained tone-deaf to its message of justice” (24).

The two former slaves held dramatically different perceptions of the Bible’s role in either combating or supporting injustice and oppression in ways that directly parallel perceptions found today (over 160 years later) among those who also see the Bible as naturally supporting one side or the other of this justice/injustice divide. So abolitionist and contemporary perceptions of the Bible are similarly divided. What will it take if future perceptions of the Bible are not to be similarly divided on this crucial point?

We who love the Bible cannot afford to be naïve about the fact that while it does and should do great good in people’s lives and in the world (including supporting battles against slavery, prejudice and other social evils) it has also been used to promote and/or justify oppressive relationships, institutions or cultural realities, including crusades, inquisition, slavery, apartheid, genocide, the abuse of women, children and minorities. It has been used to empower the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

How can we work to make sure that it serves as a weapon of justice rather than an accessory to injustice? Callahan points out that “none of Jesus’s words have been more influential—and more troublesome for the ideology of American slavery—than the Golden Rule: ‘Do unto others what you would have them do unto you’ (Matt. 7:12). Simple observance of this simple principle would have rendered American slavery impossible” (35). Of course, the Golden Rule turns out to be a paraphrase of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves (found in Leviticus 19:18 and repeatedly cited by Jesus and his apostles [Matt. 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mark 12:31; Rom. 13:9; Gal. 5:14; Jas. 2:8]). So we are brought back again to Jesus’ own hermeneutic of love.

In his teaching On Christian Doctrine (1.36-37), Saint Augustine of Hippo stressed the importance of a hermeneutic of love. He argued that “[t]he fulfillment and end of scripture is the love of God and our neighbor.” Furthermore, “[t]hat interpretation of Scripture which builds us up in love is not perniciously deceptive nor mendacious, even though it be faulty…. Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought. If, on the other hand, a man draws a meaning from them that may be used for the building up of love, even though he does not happen upon the precise meaning which the author whom he reads intended to express in that place, his error is not pernicious, and he is wholly clear from the charge of deception.”

What if future generations could not look back (as I have just done with Callahan’s help) and continue to see that the same contradictory patterns continued through the 21^st century? What if the hermeneutic of Jesus, Augustine, abolitionists and others, a hermeneutic of love for God and neighbor might become so widely accepted that those that continue to interpret the Bible abusively would find themselves without any significant following due to a widespread awareness of such tragic abuse?

It is my prayer that God might bring that about and glorify himself through the church in that way… “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21; ESV)

The Centre for Public Christianity: Communicating Christian Perspectives in Clear and Compelling Ways

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I’m writing this from Sydney, Australia, where I will be participating in the Moore Theological College conference on “The Wisdom of the Cross: Exploring 1 Corinthians.” Today, however, I had the special treat of going to the offices and studio of the Centre for Public Christianity (also known here as CPX) here in Sydney, where they interviewed me on the topics of Paul’s approach to sexual ethics in 1 Corinthians and on issues in Bible translation. For the former topic we did a longer audio interview to be posted as a pod-cast (and possibly a radio bit) and a shorter video interview to be posted online. On the subject of Bible translation we just did a couple of video pieces.

I must say I am very impressed with the work of CPX. They have put together quite nice library of audio, video and print pieces on a wide range of topics of interest to Christians and non-Christians alike. Their key categories are Christianity, Society & Politics, The arts, World Religions, Science & Religion, Ethics, History, and Big Questions.

The folks at CPX are an impressive and gifted group who are committed to articulating the Christian worldview and its implications in a way that is clear and (hopefully) compelling to modern listeners of various stripes. And for their efforts they have gained a reputation with some key media outlets here in Australia as being the key go-to people for getting the/a contemporary Christian perspective on whatever issue comes to their attention.

I encourage you to take a look at the resources available through CPX and to think about how they might be used in your ministry context, and how they might serve as a model for our own challenges in reflecting upon and communicating the implications of the gospel message for the issues of our days.

I think we need a ministry like CPX in North America. In the meantime I give thanks for the example they have set for the rest of us!

Christian Life as a Work of Translation

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

I find myself writing this from Misano Adriatico, Italy, at the start of the second week of the 2009 Nida School for Translation Studies, where about 30 scholars from around the world have gathered to discuss various topics related to the general theme of “translation and culture.” We are hearing lectures/presentations on topics like “Translation and Comparative Literature,” “Gender Issues in Translation,” “Linguistic Aspects of Translation: the case of metaphor,” “Translation, American English and the National Insecurities of Empire,” “Translating Hebrew Poetry,” and “Translation Studies and Bible Translation,” along with many other topics related to the translation of literature, comic strips, video games, the Quran, and the Jewish and Christian Bibles. An amazingly diverse set of approaches and issues is being discussed and the stimulation is wonderful. The hope and expectation is that this experience will result in fruitful crosspollination that will benefit both the work of Bible translation and translation studies in general.

Gordon-Conwell is starting a new D.Min. track in Bible Translation and I look forward to the participation of our D.Min. students in the Nida School of 2011 and am sure they will find it to be a stimulating and challenging place in which their own thinking about translation will be enriched.

Spending so much time thinking about translation also reminds me of the numerous ways in which translation may serve as a powerful theological metaphor. As the body of Christ, the church is to continue being built up “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13 NIV). We are to “to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24 NIV). That is, we are to become better and better translations of Christ in this world – translations that are undergoing constant revision so as to become ever more perfect (or, better, less and less imperfect) representations of Christ.

We tend to be such imperfect translations of Christ (or perhaps I should just speak for myself) that it is very easy for other people to get the wrong message, to get the wrong idea about who Christ is and what he is all about. By God’s grace and the power of his Spirit, may the world recognize Christ’s people to be (imperfect but) adequate translations through which they may come to know his truth, love, grace and righteousness, giving praise and recognition not to the translation itself, but to the One who has provided such a translation so that he might be known (cf. Matt 5:16).