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Stewarding
the Mysteries of God:
Implications
for the Use
and Abuse of Language
Andrew
Dionne
October,
2002
I
have been very careful to see that where everything
turns on a single passage, I have kept to the original
quite literally and have not lightly departed from
it.... I preferred to do violence to the German
language rather than to depart from the word. -Martin
Luther [1]
Language
has the power to transform cultures. In the case of
the Babylonians, recorded in Genesis 10-11, God dealt
with man's capacity to do "whatsoever he willed"
by introducing the confusion of language. His judgment
led to the proliferation of tongues among the peoples
of the earth; thus we are now forced to translate
the Word of God, faithfully rendering the original
text into a multitude of contemporary languages. But
the difficulty of the task is due not only to differences
that exist between languages; languages themselves
also change over time, immeasurably complicating the
translator's task. Read Chaucer's fourteenth century
originals and you will notice how dissimilar they
are to contemporary English usage.
Then
too, the divine origin of Scripture should lead us
to a particular humility and diligence in the translation
task. Christians holding to the orthodox faith acknowledge
the plenary verbal inspiration
of the Bible—that God inspired all the
words of His Word.
Thus the Greek found in 2 Timothy 3:16 describing
this process—theopneustos—literally means God-breathed, and translation undertaken in the shadow of this perfection
carries a particularly heavy burden of caution and
sobriety. The very words, all of them, were written
by the Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). He is the Master Grammarian,
the Linguist, the Story-Teller.
Couple
the difficulty of translation across languages and
centuries with the divine origin of Scripture and
a complex situation is created. Add the depravity
of man—always leading him to rebel against his Creator,
manifested even in his use of language—and translation
moves to the edge of impossibility. Scripture expresses
the intensity of this corrupting influence this way:
"But no one can tame
the tongue; it is a restless evil and
full of deadly poison" (James 3:8).
Thus,
prior to the work of translating Scripture to the
end that idioms of modern English are used, the translator
must ask what is causing our language to change? Are
some of the changes taking place in English occurring
due to the influence of the redemptive mission of
the Church in our culture or due to the influence
of the sinful hearts of those whose minds "the
god of this world has blinded" (2 Cor. 4:4)?
Scholars
breathing the radically relativistic air of academe
might naturally assume that changes in English usage
are inevitable and value-neutral, but the Christian
who lives in the light of the perfection of God's
Word and the radical imperfection of man's mind and
heart may not engage in such naivete as he labors
over God's Word. Modern linguists, as Darwinian as
any other branch of the modern university, convince
us that language does change due to social pressure,
but that it must be allowed to do so without being
condemned by such benighted terms as 'good' or 'bad.'
Thus Dr. Jean Aitchison, the Rupert Murdoch Professor
of Language and Communication at the University of
Oxford, writes:
The rapid turnover in vocabulary and
the continual changes in the meaning of words often
directly reflect social changes. As Samuel Johnson
said in the preface to his dictionary (1755): 'As
any custom is disused, the words that expressed it
must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular,
it will innovate speech in the same proportion as
it alters practice.' [2]
Aitchison goes on to describe this change as morally neutral:
Continual language change is natural
and inevitable, and is due to a combination of psycholinguistic
and sociolinguistic factors.
Once we have stripped away religious
and philosophical preconceptions, there is no evidence
that language is either progressing or decaying.
Disruption and therapy seem to balance one another
in perpetual stalemate. These two opposing pulls
are an essential characteristic of language.
Language change is in no sense wrong... [3]
Aitchison
asserts that language change "is in no sense
wrong." But in the same breath, she acknowledges
that the philosopher or religious man will see the
matter differently. What wise Christian would neglect
to run his word choice in daily speech through his
own "religious and philosophical preconceptions?"
Such a filtering process will easily demonstrate that
usage is anything but morally and theologically neutral.
Rather, much of our out-with-the-old-in-with-the-new
linguistic culture is driven by worldly ideologies
[4] and, if embraced in an undiscerning
way, would often constitute a direct attack upon orthodox
biblical doctrine.
Consider
briefly the ideologically motivated attempt to remove
masculine referents from the English language and
the impact it would have on orthodox doctrine if incorporated
into our translations of Scripture. First, reflect
on the incorporation of "brothers and sisters"
for the Greek adelphoi ("brothers") in Hebrews 2:17: "Therefore
he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful
and faithful high priest...". If we substitute
"brothers and sisters" for "brothers"
we have reformed Jesus into an androgynous human and
distorted the male-only priesthood of Israel. This
change is anything but morally or theologically neutral.
Also, consider the same change made to James 3:1:
"Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers...". If this becomes "brothers and sisters," a move has
been made toward overturning the orthodox doctrine
of the teaching office of the church being exclusively
male. [5]
If
changes taking place in modern English collaborate
to enforce a particular world view upon its speakers,
we would be wise to investigate the following questions:
Should vernacular language conventions be imposed
on modern translations of Scripture or should the
grammar, structure and language conventions of Scripture
(in so far as they are transposable into English—however
difficult) impose themselves on modern language conventions?
Should Christians allow the translation of Scripture
to follow the evolutionary trend of the English language
or should we carefully steward the English language
so that the very words we speak and write are a testimony
to the truth of God?
S.
M. Hutchens answers these questions in an editorial
that ran in the April 2002 edition of Touchstone:
It will not do to say
that language has changed so readers accustomed
to the new order must be accommodated for evangelical
reasons, as though these changes were not imposed
by an anti-Christian ideology enforced by political
and economic sanctions. Even if the language were
undergoing natural evolution to a more egalitarian
form quite apart from these artificial and all too
frequently mandatory constraints, the Scriptures
themselves provide a theological-grammatical contradiction
that requires, for those who regard them as authoritative,
the reformation not of biblical, but of vernacular
language. If, for example, our native speech had
only a gender-neutral word to describe the human
race, our conversion to the Christian faith and
its theology would necessitate the addition of "man"
to our vocabulary as its proper name.
It is more than dismaying to hear educated
people who present themselves as orthodox, resting
their own teaching authority on an infallible Bible,
insist that our standard for its translation includes
conformance to the mind and vocabulary of people whose
discourse and understanding their Bibles tell them
is pervaded by sin and error. The proponents of these
new versions have got it exactly backwards: It is
the Word of God that is to rule the word of man, not
the other way around. The first question to be asked
is not whether language has changed, but how God has
taught us to speak. Where the ancestral tongue serves
Scripture, altering it so it can serve no longer must
be identified by Christians not as change to accept,
but as corruption to resist. [6]
Contrast
Hutchens' statements with those found in an introductory
pamphlet produced by the International Bible Society
(IBS) for inclusion with their complimentary copy
of Today's New International Version (TNIV), sent to church leaders around the world. The IBS describes the motivation
behind their work as follows:
Early in the 1960s,
America was working its way toward the moon—but
the language of the Bible was firmly rooted in the
1600s.
It was becoming increasingly difficult
for committed Christians to share their faith using
a Bible whose English was out of date at the least,
and simply not understandable at the worst.
The issue at hand was more than just
a preference of style. For a generation that was
adopting terms such as "transistor" and
"rocket booster," the antiquated language
of the Bible was, for some, a stumbling block to
faith.
Clearly, the Church needed God's eternal
and infallible Word translated into "shirt sleeve
English" that America could understand. [7]
Later
in this introductory pamphlet, the IBS describes their
work on the TNIV as having successfully taken into account the evolving
nature of the English language.
The uniqueness of the TNIV rests in
its ability to speak God's words clearly and accurately
in English that has evolved and changed. [8]
And,
again, in the TNIV's preface entitled "A Word to the Reader":
The chief goal of this review has always
been to bring the text of the NIV abreast of contemporary
biblical scholarship and of shifts in English idioms
and usage.
[9]
Finally, from the TNIV website's "Frequently Asked Questions" page
is the following question and answer:
There is a growing need to reach today's
generation with language they can understand and relate
to. As English language usage changes, the Scriptures
must be presented with unwavering accuracy in a way
that clearly and accurately communicates in today's
language. [10]
International
Bible Society and her Committee on Bible Translation
(CBT) feel the need to adapt the English of the NIV
to modern usage. [11] Even Aitchison, though she sees no
moral decay evident in language change, states that
it (change) may be "socially undesirable"
in "certain circumstances". She then proposes
that, in such circumstances, standardization might
be useful:
Language change is in no sense wrong,
but it may, in certain circumstances, be socially
undesirable. Minor variations in pronunciation from
region to region are unimportant, but change which
disrupts the mutual intelligibility of a community
can be socially and politically inconvenient. If this
happens, it may be useful to encourage standardization—the
adoption of a standard variety of one particular language
which everybody will be able to use, alongside the
existing regional dialects or languages. [12]
Far
beyond considerations of social utility are those
of the Christian to whom God has given stewardship
of His inspired Word. If secular concerns might cause
the linguist unencumbered by doctrinal commitments
to decline to salute the latest idioms, how much more
worthy of standardized language [13] might
be the very words—all of them—by which the God of
the Universe has deigned to reveal Himself?
Who
would deny that the endless array of Bible translations
filling evangelical pews and homes, as well as the
addition of arguably politically motivated transitions
in those texts done under the guise of the incorporation
of contemporary usage, has "disrupt(ed) (the)
mutual intelligibility of a community?"
Instead
of a unified voice, the Evangelical church gives in
to the leadership of Bible societies and publishers
whose stockholders have a vested interest in the modern
proliferation of translations—a Bible for teens,
another for those afflicted by low self-esteem, and
so on. Planned obsolescence, justified by simplistic
appeals to changes in usage, offers the church infinite
Bible branding. Thus believers and unbelievers alike
are assisted in finding a version that fits their
disposition, but also their ideology.
Advocates
of such translations say "No" to standardized
language and are motivated to produce translations
of Scripture that incorporate the dialect of the community
hostile to the church. [14] How ironic that one
of the TNIV's
motivations is evangelism. If words and word constructions
have specific meanings, and these words are exchanged
for others that avoid offense (an offense felt by
the natural man because of his unregenerate mind and
heart), how will our message express something distinct
from the ubiquitous doctrines of the American civil
religion and her inane and vaporous language? If we
are not speaking the dialect of Scripture, how will
our message intelligibly express the uniqueness of
Christ and the scandal of the Cross? Those who undertake
to remove the offense of Scripture should ask themselves
the question that Paul asks himself before the Galatian
church: "For am I now
seeking the favor of men, or of God?" (Gal. 1:10).
Richard
Chenevix Trench, [15]
professor of Divinity at King's College
and Archbishop of Dublin in the nineteenth-century,
wrote extensively on the change of language, principally
in two books, English Past and Present,
and On the Study of Words.
Trench does not fear to attribute a moral dimension
to language change: "God gave man language, just
as He gave him reason..." [16]
and since God gave man language, it, as
in all the things that God gave to man, will indicate
through its cultivation or destruction where his heart
is. While speaking of the nature of language among
primitive tribes, he says,
But what does their language on close
inspection prove? In every case what they are themselves,
the remnant and ruin of a better and nobler past.
Fearful indeed is the impress of degradation which
is stamped on the language of the savage, more fearful
perhaps even than that which is stamped upon his form.
When wholly letting go the truth, when long and greatly
sinning against light and conscience, a people has
thus gone the downward way, has been scattered off
by some violent revolution from that portion of the
world which is the seat of advance and progress, and
driven to its remote isles and further corners, then
as one nobler thought, one spiritual idea after another
has perished from it, the words also that expressed
these have perished too. [17]
On the contrary, he writes that as a culture is brought in
conformity with the Word, its language will reflect
that enlightenment.
But while it is thus with him, while this is the downward
course of all those that have chosen the downward
path, while with the impoverishing and debasing of
personal or national life there goes hand in hand
a corresponding impoverishment and debasement of language,
so on the contrary, where there is advance and progress,
where a divine idea is in any measure realizing itself
in a people, where they are learning more accurately
to define and distinguish, more truly to know, where
they are ruling, as men ought to rule, over nature,
and making her to give up her secrets to them, where
new thoughts are rising up over the horizon of a nation's
mind, new feelings are stirring at a nation's heart,
new facts coming within the sphere of its knowledge,
there will language be growing and advancing too.
It cannot lag behind; for man feels that nothing is
properly his own, that he has not secured any new
thought, or entered upon any new spiritual inheritance,
till he has fixed it in language, till he can contemplate
it, not as himself, but as his word; he is conscious
that he must express truth, if he is to preserve it,
and still more if he would propagate it among others. [18]
If
the English language is changing, is it changing in
the right direction? In order to be faithful to God's
call to walk in a manner worthy of Christ, we must
resist any change in the English language which is
motivated by unbiblical ideologies. We are capitulating
to the sins of those who hate God when we accept change
motivated by worldly principles. Exactly where will
the current fad of adaptation of God's Word to the
religiously, morally, and sinfully motivated conventions
of pagans end? What exactly is conversion and might
it not involve the vocabulary and speech of those
who come to know the truth of Scripture?
Trench,
at least, believes conversion will cause men to become
more articulate, to have their language grow richer
and deeper. As Christ renews a man's mind, we should
expect the difficulties of Scripture, whether doctrinal
or linguistic, will be wrestled with in humble submission
to their Author and reliance upon the illumination
of the Holy Spirit. If he accepts the divine origin
of the Heavenly Father's Word, we should expect him
to come to an understanding of the way the Creator
has spoken. How disgusting to think that we, mere
men, can decide where to place a buffer between the
Word of God and the reader—protecting him from what
modern man considers offensive—and withhold from
him God's Word.
The
operating principle behind the TNIV
(to adapt the translation of God's word to today's
usage) is necessary in the production of every new
translation of Scripture. Yet, when the fiercest attack
against the Church today is by gender-anarchists,
we should not make Scripture conform to their sensibilities
and "mute the patriarchalism" [19] of the text. Consider that the hatred
and fury of the unregenerate for God's Word might
well be one of the greatest proofs of its inspiration.
Does not the Word bring knowledge of sin (Rom. 7:7)?
For
those who believe in the depravity of man and the
word-centeredness of the Christian faith, major shifts
in usage will never be value-neutral. Rather, they
will always be for better or worse, toward life or
death, motivated by the fear of God or man. Those
called to be stewards of the mysteries of God must
bless the nations by cultivating and protecting usage
that, though at key points quite different from the
world around us, is in possession of as keen an edge
as Scripture in communicating all God's Truth.
Great then will be our
gains, if, having these treasures of wisdom and
knowledge lying round about us, so far more precious
than mines of Californian gold, we determine that
we will make what portion of them we can our own,
that we will ask the words which we use to give
an account of themselves, to say whence they are,
and whither they tend. Then shall we often rub off
the dust and rust from what seemed to us but a common
token, which as such we had taken and given a thousand
times; but which now we shall perceive to be a precious
coin, bearing the "image and superscription"
of the great King: then shall we often stand in
surprise and in something of shame, while we behold
the great spiritual realities which underlie our
common speech, the marvelous truths which we have
been witnessing for in our words, but, it
may be, witnessing against in our lives.
...It was something for the children
of Israel when they came into Canaan, to enter upon
wells which they digged not, and vineyards which they
had not planted, and houses which they had not built;
but how much greater a boon, how much more glorious
a prerogative, for any one generation to enter upon
the inheritance of a language, which other generations
by their truth and toil have made already a receptacle
of choicest treasure, a storehouse of so much unconscious
wisdom, a fit organ for expressing the subtlest distinctions,
the tenderest sentiments, the largest thoughts, and
the loftiest imaginations, which at any time the heart
of man can conceive. [20]
Let
it be clearly stated that the International Bible
Society and her Committee on Bible Translation naively
have accepted and implemented the presupposition of
modern linguists that language change is neither good
nor bad. Thus they have, in thousands of places, adapted
the words of Scripture to a wholesale shift in English
usage that springs from the womb of feminist ideology.
But
wait! IBS, the CBT, and Zondervan all give us their
solemn word that this is absolutely, without doubt,
completely not true! Never and nowhere has feminism
influenced their work! In a February 12, 2002 press
release IBS boldly proclaimed, "Accusations that
these godly servants [CBT members] have been influenced
by feminism or political correctness are false." [21]
And again, Peter Bradley, the president
of IBS writes, "IBS never has and never will
follow a social agenda in regard to its translation
work." [22] Later in the same publication, Bradley
states, "I will restate for the record—the CBT
members are not, and never will be, influenced by
any social agendas." [23]
These
statements are self-evidently false. What Christian
alive today would claim he is beyond being influenced
by the overwhelming feminist pressures ubiquitous
in our culture—certainly not I! And to claim
this precisely at the fault line of gender language
where feminist browbeating has been most intense—how
precious! No, one thing that may, most certainly,
be said about the translators of gender-neutral versions
of Scripture is that they have been influenced by
feminism. The question remains, though, whether that
influence has been adverse or salubrious? By now the
good reader is aware it is our conviction that feminist
political correctness has fueled the gender-related
language changes incorporated into the TNIV.
The
Bible we bequeath to our children must not be blindly
modern, and thereby distort the distinctively glorious
light of Scripture. Only to the destruction of the
souls of future generations will we haphazardly incorporate
the poison of modern linguistic agnosticism and unbiblical
worldviews. Just as Christ taught us how to pray in
a specific manner, we must teach our children and
those who come into the Church to speak and read the
dialect of the Holy Spirit. We must struggle to make
our English Christian—not simply up-to-date or idiomatic.
The very form and meaning of our words will be a testimony
to God's truth and a rebuke to the sins of our culture.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and
those who love it will eat its fruit. Proverbs 18:21
[1] Martin Luther, "On Translating:
An Open Letter," in Selected Writings of Martin
Luther, ed. T. G. Tappert, trans. by C. M. Jacobs,
rev. by E. T. Bachman, vol. 4 (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1967), 186.
[2] Jean Aitchison, Language Change:
Progress or Decay? (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 17.
[4] For detailed analysis see Wayne A.
Grudem and Vern S. Poythress, The Gender-Neutral
Bible Controversy: Muting the Masculinity of God's
Words (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), chapter
8.
[5] Both of these changes are found in
the TNIV. Her translators state, "In no
cases do these updates [gender related updates] impose
upon or change the doctrinal impact of Scripture."
TNIV: The Facts that Inspired an Updated Scripture
Text for Today's Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
no date), 10.
[6] S. M. Hutchens, "Heretical Bibles,"
April, 2002, http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/15.3docs/15-3pg3.html
(5 October 2002).
[7] TNIV: The Facts that Inspired an
Updated Scripture Text for Today's Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, no date), 2. (ISBN: 0-310-95593-9).
Also online: "TNIV Story," http://www.tniv.info/story/introduction.php
(3 October 2002).
[9] Today's New International Version:
New Testament Preview Edition (Colorado Springs, CO: International Bible Society, 2001),
v.
[10] "TNIV FAQs," http://www.tniv.info/QandA.php
(3 October 2002). See also the endorsement of Richard
D. Patterson on TNIV's "Endorsements" page: http://www.tniv.info/endorsements.php
(3 October 2002).
[11] A modern translation that has slipped
further down the slope in the incorporation of modern
ideologically motivated language conventions (to the
point of changing "Father" to "Father-Mother"),
the Oxford University Press 1995 The New Testament
and Psalms: An Inclusive Version could well be a harbinger of the way modern secular
English usage and contemporary secular thought will
force itself upon future translations of God's Word.
The editors of this edition have this to say in the
"General Introduction":
"Why do we need so many versions of the Bible?" people
often ask whenever a new one is introduced. The answer
is twofold.
First, we need new versions because the languages into which
the Bible is rendered (hundreds worldwide) are themselves
changing. New words and expressions come into use
and older expressions fall out of use, seem tired
and trite, or do not convey much meaning at all. Do
we ask "whither" we are going, or claim
that we are going "thither"? No, we ask
"where" and go "there." Christians
in every culture around the world want to hear their
Bible in the language of their time, speaking specifically
to them, as well it should.
And
also, in an interesting circular argument, they state:
This new, inclusive version of the Bible not only reflects
the newest scholarly work on the most reliable manuscripts
available, it also reflects and attempts to anticipate
developments in the English language with regard to
specificity about a number of issues such as gender,
race, and physical disability. Bibles are widely read
and therefore can serve to influence the development
of important changes in language. Martin Luther's
translation of the Bible into the German spoken by
the common people in his country is an example of
this. Luther's translation helped to develop and unify
German as not only a spoken, but also a written language.
[12] Aitchison, Language Change: Progress
or Decay?, 259-260.
[13] I'm not implying a return to the KJV
or something of that sort. As explained earlier, our
English usage should be dictated by the language of
Scripture—a standard usage that seeks, as Luther
said of German, to do violence to English rather than
to the Word of God. This can be done while availing
ourselves of the valuable studies of textual criticism
and modern linguistic theory.
[14] This "flip-flop", it seems
to me, is tied into the impoverished doctrine of the
church in American Evangelicalism. The church has
lost its self-identity as the "pillar and support
of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15) and is content to
import the culture of the world into the church. The
Evangelical church is desperately seeking to speak
the truths of Christ using a cultural language that
is incapable of expressing those deep truths. Meanwhile,
the culture of Christianity as uniquely expressed
in the community of the church is being sacrificed
for the sake of retaining respectability within the
structures of the world.
[15] Interestingly, Aitchison pokes a bit
of fun at Trench in her book Language Change
by calling his statements "thunderous pronouncements."
Even this statement is indicative of a general feminization
of discourse and hatred of "straight talk"
in today's society and academic world.
[16] Richard Chenevix Trench, On the
Study of Words (London: J. W. Parker, 1851; reprint,
London: Routledge/Thoemmer Press, 1994), 15 (page
citations are to reprint edition).
[19] As famously expressed in the preface
to the New International Version: Inclusive Language
Edition (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1999),
vii.
[20] Trench, On the Study of Words,
24-26.
[21] "An Open Statement About the TNIV
from the International Bible Society and Zondervan", http://www.tniv.info/resources/openstatement.php
(15 October 2002).
[22] Peter Bradley, "An Open Letter
from the President of International Bible Society,"
Light Magazine, July 2002, 3
[23] "Peter Bradley and the Truth about
the TNIV," Light Magazine, July
2002,10.
Andrew Dionne, editor
and webmaster of www.keptthefaith.org, received a
Doctor of Music degree in composition from Indiana
University. Currently, he is the Assistant Pastor
of Christ the
Word PCA in Toledo, OH.
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