Theological Perfectionism and Translation Wars

Lee Irons, whose blog The Upper Register I've recently discovered, has the following to say in his post, "The Problems of Theological Perfectionism." The whole post is worth reading, but I'm particularly struck by his comments on Bible translation debates:

There are many other examples which show the problems with theological perfectionism.

English versions of the Bible. It's easy to nit-pick at a translation of a particular verse. It's fun to mock someone else's Bible. Some scholars have even written whole books against particular versions, as if to save people from the damaging effects of a bad translation. But would to God that more evangelicals did in fact read and study their TNIVs or their New Living Translations. It would do more good than all the self-help books being cranked out by the evangelical publishing companies. Just as the Spirit can bring people to saving faith through imperfect presentations of the gospel, so he can use flawed translations of the Bible to help us grow in spiritual maturity.

Would that all God's people read more of their "paraphrased" Messages and "wooden" NASBs and "archaic" KJVs and "liberal" NRSVs and "Calvinist" ESVs and "feminist" TNIVs!

God states, "Is not my word like fire, declares the LORD, and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?" (Jer. 23:29). 

Would that God would break our rocky hearts of pride with the hammer of His Word (in whatever imperfect translation we read it)!

Save a Life - Chip Stam

For those of you who know or are familiar with Chip Stam, professor in the School of Church Worship and Music at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (and music minister at my wife's former church in Louisville, Clifton Baptist), he needs help. Click below to find out how you can help.

Save a Life

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D'Souza, Lewis and the Proper Role of Apologetics

What is the appropriate role of apologetics? Dinesh D'Souza, in a Christianity Today interview about his latest book Life After Death: The Evidence, provides a great reply to the question:

What is the role of [your] kind of apologetics in convincing someone to become a Christian?

D'Souza replies:

Apologetics is a very powerful tool, but it's ultimately janitorial. Many people encounter obstacles to the faith. Think of the Christian, for example, who loses a relative and is assailed by the question, Why did God allow that? Even the believer can be haunted by difficulties that get in the way of building a relationship with God.

Apologetics can come in and help to make important distinctions and clarify some of the difficulties. You are doing no more than clearing away debris that blocks the door to faith, and ultimately it is God's love that has to work its way into a heart. Conversion ultimately comes from that; apologetics only clears the driveway.

This is a good reminder that while apologetics can be helpful to faith, they are never the object or ground of faith. That belongs only to Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis warns about the danger of our faith becoming overly dependent on apologetic arguments, rather than on Christ himself:

I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist…. That is why we apologists take our lives in our hands and can be saved only by falling back continually from the web of our own arguments, as from our intellectual counters, into the Reality – from Christian apologetics into Christ Himself. ("Christian Apologetics" in God in the Dock, p. 103)

Adrian Warnock Wants It All!

I stumbled across a link to an old post from British blogger-extraordinaire, Adrian Warnock. In the post, entitled "I Don't Want Balance, I Want It All!", Warnock states that he's tired of merely seeking to be "balanced" spiritually - he asks, "Why can't we have it all?"

In our desire for respectability and "balance" (from the point of view of our respective groups), we have a tendency to set up oppositions between Word, Spirit, doctrinal fidelity, passionate encounters with Jesus, outreach to the world, inreach to the Church, social action, faithful gospel preaching, strategic leadership, missional zeal, heartfelt worship, rigorous study, and Book-of-Acts signs and wonders. But why?

Why pick and choose?

Why can't we have it all?

Review of Bart Ehrman's "Jesus, Interrupted"

Michael Kruger of Reformed Theological Seminary has a fantastic new review of Jesus Interrupted, Bart Ehrman's latest popular attempt to discredit the Christian faith he rejected. One repeatedly gets the sense in Ehrman's writing that he has not so much rejected fundamentalism as simply shifted from a Christian form of fundamentalism to an agnostic form of it.

Kruger notes,

Ehrman's inability to accept the natural verbal flexibility in ancient literature suggests that he (ironically) still may be reading the gospels in the same way he did in his fundamentalist days, placing modern expectations of precision and rigidness on the gospel texts that they were not meant to bear.

In a review of Ehrman's previous book, Misquoting Jesus, Daniel Wallace noted,

It seems that Bart’s black and white mentality as a fundamentalist has hardly been affected as he slogged through the years and trials of life and learning, even when he came out on the other side of the theological spectrum. He still sees things without sufficient nuancing, he overstates his case, and he is entrenched in the security that his own views are right.

Wallace has noted that most theological liberals started out as fundamentalists, and simply shifted their views from a Christian fundamentalism to a liberal (or atheistic) fundamentalism. Ehrman is a good example of someone whose "black and white mentality", particularly in regard to the phenomenon of Scripture, led to an either-or dichotomy between "Bible-as-a-magic-book" and "Bible-as-a-fraud." He serves as a sobering reminder of the need to think Biblically about the Bible, deriving our doctrine of Scripture from Scripture rather than unexamined pre-assumptions about what the nature of the Bible must be. I'm afraid Ehrman has essentially built his career on the claim, "The Bible isn't the way I think it ought to be - therefore, it's a fraud."

Gluttony As an Appetite Suppressant

In Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, Cornelius Plantinga highlights the corruption that sin unleashes in our lives. One of the primary ways in which sin corrupts, he notes, is by dulling our appetite for the things we should desire. He writes

...Self-indulgence tends to suppress gratitude; self-discipline tends to generate it. That is why gluttony is a deadly sin: oddly, it is an appetite suppressant. The reason is that a person's appetites are linked: full stomachs and jaded palates take the edge from our hunger and thirst for justice. And they spoil the appetite for God" (p. 35)*.

So, what are you glutting yourself on today?


* Plantinga, C. (1995). Not the way it's supposed to be: A breviary of sin. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman's

Nevertheless, Love Your Church

Ray Ortlund, pastor of Emmanuel Church in Nashville, TN, had a great post yesterday, "My Church or the Kingdom?". In it, Ortlund addresses the common notion that building up God's kingdom is more important than building up one's own church. He asks:

Suppose I said, "My passion isn't to build up my marriage. My passion is for Marriage. I want the institution of Marriage to be revered again. I'll work for that. I'll pray for that. I'll sacrifice for that. But don't expect me to hunker down in the humble daily realities of building a great marriage with my wife Jani. I'm aiming at something grander."

We would rightly call such a view of marriage absurd. How can one have a passion for Marriage without having a passion for one's own, particular marriage?

Likewise, Ortlund points out the absurdity of working for "The Church" without working for one's own, local church. How often do we say things like, "It's not about going to church, it's about being the Church"? How often do we strive for "global justice" while neglecting the pursuit of justice in our own churches, home and neighborhoods? How often do we rail against "false doctrine in the Church" while making little effort to build our own churches up through solid, Biblical doctrine?

I'm reminded of Paul's admonition to husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:22-33. In it, Paul gives undoubtedly the most exalted, transcendant view of marriage ever written, probing the unsearchable mystery of marriage as a cosmic portrait of Christ and the Church. Lest his readers be tempted to then say, "Ah! So what really matters is not marriage itself, but that greater spiritual reality that it signifies", Paul pointedly returns to the necessity of loving one's own spouse. He says,

"This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband" (Eph. 5:32-33, NKJV, emphasis added).

Paul knows our temptation to focus on abstract spirtitual principles and neglect our day-to-day duties. His point is that, if we are ever to glorify Christ and the Church in our marriages, we must start by individually, daily, loving our spouses. Only then we ever hope to reflect the greater image that marriage points to.

I believe Paul would say the same to us today in relation to our churches. "Yes," he'd say, "by all means be Kingdom-minded. By all means, seek to build up the universal Church. Nevertheless, let each one of your in particular love your flawed, human, local church. Only then can you ever hope to truly build up the Church and the Kingdom."