This summer, America celebrated her 240th birthday. The Fourth of July has always been one of my favorite holidays, mostly because I love any excuse to eat my weight in watermelon and watch things explode, but this summer I spent most of the month of July in England. All “America-as-the-original-Brexit” jokes aside, I found it rather significant that on this particular 4th of July, I found myself in an 800 year old church in Cambridge listening to a lecture by Malcom Guite on the writings of John Milton and Edmund Spenser. I remember thinking how odd it was that not only was the structure I was sitting in older than my country, but that the works I was reading at the time by the two authors mentioned had been in existence and influence centuries before my country was established.
Days before this significant moment on the 4th, I visited Tyndale House for the first time. Our group was introduced to Pete Williams, who is easily one of the most impressive people I’ve ever met (and who is also academic #goals), who took us on a brief (and quiet) tour of the library before giving a lecture. My close friend and fellow Two Cities writer Logan Williams was working at the Tyndale House for the week and had met Dr. Williams previously, so I sort of followed the two of them around the shelves, listening to them talk about how amazing it is to have access to all the Dead Sea Scrolls and other manuscripts just across the room from all the dissertations completed at Cambridge and Tyndale. During this tour, Dr. Williams happened to casually mention that he thinks that the term “The Bible” has become colloquial and secularized in today’s culture. “I mean think about the reformers… Martin Luther? John Calvin? Their word for the particular collection of books we read has always been ‘Scripture.'” Before I could ask what he meant, we were all headed upstairs to hear his lecture on Bible Translation.
Dr. Williams addressed many interesting topics in this talk, but his main idea was this: language is power. He talked about the social, societal constructs behind the word “sex,” how culture has reduced it to the mere mechanism or carnal act, where in Genesis 4, the Hebrew word for the relationship between Adam and Eve that led to conception is translated “to know,” (“Now Adam knew Eve his wife” Gen. 4:1). He talked about trends in Bible translation from the KJV to NIV and how certain choices in translation can subconsciously reflect a particular attitude or belief (for example, the NIV only uses the English word “sex” twice, both times in the phrase “homosexual relations,” which could subconsciously lead the reader to a certain, perhaps even lesser, view of that one sexual sin).
Dr. Williams’ concern in Bible Translation and even in the ways Christians interact with culture is that we have the danger of becoming ashamed of our “product.” As culture at large moves toward post-modernism, acceptance, and tolerance, blurring the lines of morality in issues such as gender, the contemporary Christian church at large has responded by eliminating the immediately controversial or harsh truths in their church services, often seeking to increase attendance by delivering “fluffy” sermons accompanied by feel-good worship songs. This problem does not exist primarily in the church, however, but it is also prevalent in our apologetic and even in academia.
Dr. Williams addressed the social construct behind particular words as power even in the spelling of the words; for example, The “Qur’an”, had its spelling Anglicized to “Koran”, which speaks volumes about the power of the English language in the modern world. This is where apologetics come in as well: The Bible is often included with The Koran in the category of Holy Books, and even the phrase “the Christian faith,” paints Christianity as an option among many truths rather than the objective, absolute truth itself. Philosopher Anscombe wrestles with this idea in Faith in a Hard Ground, where she writes,
“In modern usage ‘faith’ tends to mean religion, or religious belief. But the concept of faith has its original home in a particular religious tradition. If a Buddhist speaks of ‘his faith’, saying for example that his faith ought not to be insulted, he means his religion, and he is borrowing the word ‘faith’ which is really alien to his tradition. In the tradition where that concept has its origin, ‘faith’ is short for ‘divine faith’ and means ‘believing God’. And it was so used, among the Christian thinkers at least, that faith, in this sense, could not be anything but true. Faith was believing God, and no false belief could be part of it.”
This got me thinking… where exactly does “The Holy Bible” come from, anyway? The earliest appearance of “The Holy Bible” naming the collection of books of Scripture is on the earliest English King James Bibles. At the base meaning of the title, I think it was originally meant to convey the solidarity of the text; “Bible” comes from the Greek “biblia” meaning “book”, and the idea of the “holy”, “sacred”, or “set apart” book certainly conveys the nature of the revelation contained inside it. In other words, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with calling the collection of Scripture “The Holy Bible”, but I do think two things are worth noticing in regard to the way the term has changed: first, that the proper title seems to have been shortened to “The Bible” (no doubt in most cases simply because “The Holy Bible” is long and awkward to say), and secondly, that by calling other holy books by similar titles (I use “The Qu’ran” as an example, “qu’ran” being the Arabic word for “to read” or “a reading”), the only true Scripture has been categorized with others of its kind, a concept foreign to the authority of the text itself.
I do not wish to accuse all Christians of failing to acknowledge the authority of Scripture when they use the name “The Bible,” and I’m not proposing that we cease printing “The Holy Bible” on the front of our books of Scripture. How awkward would it be if we walked around asking strangers if they believe God (as Anscombe would have it, vs if they believe in God)? Or if we refused to acknowledge which particular Scripture it is that we read (in a culture that validates multiple “truths”)? I am simply proposing that we consider the way we think and speak about the truth of Christianity. Perhaps we should consider first, the absolute truth of what it is we believe, and second, how we present and share such belief in a culture that is quick to manipulate the meanings of words in order to promote acceptance and tolerance (“gender,” “sex”, etc.). What if Christian’s weren’t so ashamed of our product? What if we lived in accordance to our belief in sola scriptura, or the single authority of the Holy Scriptures given by God in the Bible? (See, I can’t even talk about it without using the categories our secular society has created.) Seeking to preserve tradition is such a fine line to walk that can easily turn into arrogance or ignorance, but I think there is value to be had in teaching sola scriptura in name, not just in concept. Dr. Pete Williams also talked about how people are attracted to the uniqueness of certain words and things, and how we must trust in the product itself, that is Scripture translated to the best of our ability to communicate truth, however blatant it may be. We are much too quick to fear rejection of man, and too slow to trust in the providence of God who has provided us with truth still relevant, applicable, and living, even 2500 years later.
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