I often find myself out of step in many conversations about difficult decisions.   Other people seem much more impressed with the wisdom that can be found in experience or in experts.  Or they are very confident in the wisdom they will gain from the subjective experience they will have as a result of prayer. I am not.  They may be right and I may be wrong, but for me the only authority that carries much weight is the Bible.

This is why I devote so much of my energy to learning how to wisely and faithfully interpret the Bible and apply it to our lives.  As the old line goes, it is our only rule for faith and practice.  That doesn’t merely mean that it is the best one, it means what it says, it is the only one.

Consequently although I am not a biblicist, the Bible is where I will start for any major investigation of what the church is called to believe and how the church is called to live.  So long before I consider what we can know about God through the post-biblical language of the trinity, I am going to consider what we can learn about God from scripture. And long before I consider what I can learn from the traditions of church worship and programming that I have inherited in my life of faith, I want to return to scripture, to ask, “What is the church doing?”

So I am not a biblicist.  I know that God has continued to guide the church and we must learn from the wisdom of all of church history.

But as my rule for faith and practice there is one source.  The Bible.

So that is where we will turn for our foundation of the core events of the church.

on the walk

-Ethan

There are some Christian circles in which this is not a radical suggestion, but I grew up in a tradition and I minister in a tradition in which biblicism is easy to find.  In fact a major family of this movement of churches goes by the name acapella Churches of Christ.  They will not use instruments in worship.  This is because in the new Testament there is no record of instruments being used in a worship service.  Some other Christians insist that women where head coverings. This is biblicism.  This view holds that every post-biblical innovation is an innapropriate Christian practice.

If this view had a motto it would be “If it is not in the Bible, I won’t do it.”

You may be thinking to yourself, “that sounds like a great motto.”  I agree.  It does sound like a great motto, but believe me, it isn’t.   It turns out that Christians have thought of lots of good things that aren’t in the Bible.  Now of course because they are not in the Bible that means that we can’t pretend they are essential, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good things.

Here are a few things that are not in the bible,(or at least not in the same way we have them today.)

• Church Buildings
• Offering Trays
• Projectors
• Christmas
• Easter
• Sunday School
• Seminaries
• Heated Baptisteries
• “Quiet Time”
• Church Calendar
• Daily Office
• The Trinity
• Alter calls
• and lots of other stuff why don’t you help me add to my list.

See that is all good stuff.  I wish that it was as easy as being a biblicist.  INstead we have to ask the much more difficult question.  Is this practice or teaching that is not in scripture still faithful to scripture.  Does it exprtess what scripture teaches without going further than scritpure does?

That takes discernment and the wisdom of the whole church guided by the Spirit and that is why I am not a biblicist.

(tune in to my next post for the big BUT…)

And this matters for our conversation about church events.  It won’t be as simple as asking what are the 3 or ten or fifty types of events that the church in Acts had.  Just because they had an event doesn’t mean that we must and just because they didn’t doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.  As we ponder the core evens of the church we will need submit fully to the authority of scripture but to do that we must do more than just copy the church in Jerusalem or Phillipi or Corinth (please don’t copy the church in Corinth).
on the walk

-Ethan

1. Since the last frenzy in the 60’s and 70’s, American English has changed pretty significantly and in some unanticipated ways.  As a result new translations are needed.  And for someone like me, I was never very happy with the options I had and I am glad to see some new options.
2. New translations require all of us to think carefully about how we translate and that the Bible is translated.  For years is was easy for English speaking Christian to just assume that the KJV was the Bible.  This created a crisis when the translations of the 60’s and 70′ caught on in such a big way.  Now we a generation or two who have never read anything but the NIV.  So it is good to remember that translation is real work and none of us should be dogmatic about translation.

There are some dangers however.

1. New translations can make people nervous, as we wonder if we can really trust the Bible.
2. Some of them will undoubtedly be junk.
3. Some which have real value to offer will be misused.
4. Some people will spend all their time fighting over which one is the best and will consequently get distracted from real kingdom work.
5. Bible paraphrases will be confused with Bible translations.

If there is interest, I may in the future post in some specific way about Bible translations, but for now I would suggest that every Christian might want three bibles that are purchased in this order.

A good translation designed for readability and faithfulness to the meaning of the original- NRSV, NLT, TNIV and NIV would be examples.  These are most excellent for devotional reading, group study and worship services.
A word for word translation designed to render as rigidly as possible the thought forms of the original text.  ESV or the older NASB, and for a different era, the KJV would be good examples of this category. These are most suited for careful study of a text focused on detailed meanings and arguments.

An evocative paraphrase that tries to capture the passion and feel of the original text using modern idioms, images and sentence structure.  The Message would be the most popular current example.  The Good News Bible would be an example from the past. These are most suited as devotional reading or in publics service when we want to capture the spirit of a text but are not dealing with the letter of the text.

I leave this with one good example of what a paraphrase is good for.  Here is the Message of Heb. 12:1-2.

Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in.

That is good catchy stuff.  It well captures the energy and pacing that the original text would have had and since the images connect with us so easily we don’t have to slow down and can just let the call to action inspire us.  That is exactly what a paraphrase should do.  Of course there are problems.  The last phrase, “who both began and finished this race we’re in” gives us the impression that Jesus as previously run and completed the race course that we are now running but what Paul means is that Jesus actually finishes our running of the race.  For another examples check out “all these veterans cheering us on” and compare that to my thoughts here. You may think that Peterson got this one right, but even in this case you see that the paraphrase forces a conclusion that is not forced by the text (and in my opinion it is the wrong conclusion).

In summary, I am not a translation dogmatist and I am excited to see all these new translations.  At the very least it will prompt us all to get talking about what the Bible means and that is a conversation I always love.

on the walk

-Ethan

Ps. If you have a translation question you want to ask, why don’t you share it and we can discuss it in the comments.  Later today I will share my least favorite NIV translation issues.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the power and usefulness of genre studies. This post will make more sense if you read that one, so you may want to check it out. You can find it here or look in the list of recent posts for “i love genre studies.”

I certainly don’t have time to talk about all the implication of genre studies. That is just as well since most of the time the real power comes out when you are ready to study a particular text. It probably wouldn’t be interesting for me to blab on and on about the nature of first century historical writing unless you were about to study Luke or Acts because without that incentive you probably would fall asleep.

Nevertheless to give a glimpse of the things we learn from genre studies, I will comment a bit about the letter form and the book of Galatians.

First century letter form began in a very typical way. In fact I used it to begin my blog. It is “Sender to Recipient, greetings.” Paul expands on this form to develop this form.

Paul to Church(or person) grace and peace to you; thanksgiving.

this opening pattern is almost universal. Sometimes he will pause and descirbe himself and sometimes he will flower up his description of his readers. Often the offer of grace peace gets rolling into a praise of Christ, but it is very rare to see him break the form. In case you are curious, you don’t need any fancy degree to figure this out. If you read the opening to all of Paul’s letters, this pattern will practically jump off the page.
If you are still wondering why you care, I would invite you to take a look at the first chapter of Galatians. I’ll wait while you read it.

I hope you noticed that up to verse 5 Paul is following his pattern perfectly. He has introduced himself, addressed his readers and wished them grace and peace (as often happens this turns into praise for Christ.) The shock comes in verse 6. He does not thank God for them. This is a major departure from he very consistent use of the letter form. Writing as he did with a very conscious form, he did not forget to offer thanks, and they would very likely notice the absence. Certainly we should notice it as we look at the collected letters of Paul. Now I will grant you that even without observation from genre studies, you could figure out that Paul is mad when he writes Galatians. But i think that genre analysis helps to make sure we don’t miss it.

You must be pretty mad if in the same place that you would usually write, “I thank God for you every day in my prayers saying …” , you instead write, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.”

Yep, pretty mad.

on the walk

-Ethan