Ryken and Functional Equivalency

The blog world is abuzz today with rave reviews of Leland Ryken’s new book, Understanding English Bible Translation: The Case for an Essentially Literal Approach, and I must cede to formal equivalence theorists their day in the sun. Of course, if you’ve paid attention to my blog you’ll recognize from my choice of translations that I’m not completely convinced of the thesis of Ryken’s book. My position seems a bit out-of-vogue in today’s milieu, what with the fiasco of the TNIV and Zondervan’s public humiliation on the gender issue. I’ll frankly concede my disappointment with the avant-garde path that the NIV has taken in the past few years, and am hopeful that its chastened translators will return to the task of accurate translation rather than political expediency.

That being said, I remain convinced of the propriety of the functional equivalence theory of translation--not because it is simpler or easier to read (though it is), but because I have become convinced that this theory has the potential to produce the very most accurate translations. And as an inerrantist, I am extremely interested in accurate translation.

A few years back Rod Decker published an article on this topic that confirmed me in this understanding, and I’d like to take a few moments to point out a few of his arguments (mixed together with a few of my own):

(1) Functional equivalence most successfully accounts for idioms (not that formal equivalency has no answer to this problem, but their answer is simply to say this is an exception).

(2) Functional equivalence most successfully accounts for the extremes of highly paratactic languages (long strings of independent clauses connected by “and,” such as is common in Hebrew) and highly hypotactic languages (long strings of dependent clauses connected by a huge variety of logical connecting devices, such as is common in Greek). This discovery satisfactorily addressed (for me at least) my last lingering concern with functional equivalence (viz., that functional equivalency translations do not translate all the words), though I freely admit that a number of very great minds are not so convinced as I.

(3) Functional equivalence most successfully accounts for the problem of non-SVO languages (subject-verb-object) without producing translations that sound faintly like Yoda from Star Wars narrating the Bible.

(4) Functional equivalence most successfully accounts for the problem of non-corresponding vocabulary sets between transmitter and receiver languages without opting for obscure terms that average readers do not recognize.

(5) Functional equivalence, in summary, most successfully accounts for the principle that the basic unit of propositional thought is not properly the word, but the clause.


My point here today is not to criticize formal equivalency in Bible translation. Throughout my professional career I have made it a strict point never to criticize any translation of the Bible, no matter how humorous, wooden, or Jonathan-Edwards-sounding a given reading may be. Every translation of the Bible is the Word of God, and I treat every one with due reverence as such.

Nor do I have any devices about ridding the church of formal equivalence. As some have pointed out, those who know Greek and Hebrew can often "see" the original languages bleeding through formal equivalency translations, making it easier to reconstruct the original an interpret it. For this reason I use and promote formal equivalency translations regularly and with great profit.

Nor do I have any tension using and preaching from a formal equivalence translation in the many churches where I attend and fill pulpits. I am deeply indebted to countless such churches and church leaders who use formal equivalence translations and I am far from suggesting that church life is damaged by their usage.

But I do think that one can construct a legitimate, valid defense of functional equivalency today despite the growing aggregate of arguments against it. And I hope that this post contributes to it.

MAS

The Importance of a Literal Reading of Genesis 1-11 Illustrated

By now it's old news, but in view of my post last week on a literal reading of Genesis 1-11 as a critical watershed for conservative evangelicalism, I can't help but point to Tremper Longman's recent comments that all but deny a historical Adam. This is a stunning commentary on the trajectory of evangelical abuses of Genesis 1-11.

Longman's smiling professionalism is very reassuring. Kind of like that pleasant snake who chatted with Eve in the Garden of Eden. Oh, wait. That's just a myth. Strike that last comment.

For a good rejoinder to Longman's heretical suggestion check out this site.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 7: Summary and Conclusion

I am a fundamentalist. I say this without hesitation, but also with a realization that such an affirmation conveys many ideas (fair and foul) to society at large. I find this is true of nearly all the "labels" to which I ascribe--Baptist, dispensational, Calvinist, and even Christian, to name a few. Despite the abuse each label has received both from without and within, however, I am not ready to jettison these labels, because each represents an idea that is worth saving.

Fundamentalism is not fundamentally a reactionary movement, but a movement that stands ready to defend something, namely the core doctrines surrounding the intersection of Christ and the Scriptures with the world--the Gospel. This defense has taken several material forms that correspond variously to the kinds of attacks levelled against it throughout the history of fundamentalism--from the outright assaults of liberalist modernism to the more subtle compromises of the "new" evangelicalism.

Now, it seems, many of the children of the new evangelicalism are abandoning their parents for dead and returning home to embrace their fundamentalist cousins. Some suggest that any hesitancy to return the embrace is akin to the disgruntled son refusing to embrace the prodigal (Luke 15), a troubling suggestion with which I regularly wrestle, and a suggestion with which every fundamentalist ought to so wrestle. But as I emerge from my self-struggle, I find myself beset with the nagging thought that this particular prodigal still retains some affinity for the "distant country" to which he fled so many years ago--and he's brought home a packet of corn husks to share.

Specifically, I'm still concerned that the prevaling conservative evangelical view of the kingdom and its continuing attraction to non-Christian culture will pollute the gospel. And I'm still concerned that its accommodation of continuing tongues and prophecies and ambivalence toward aberrant interpretations of Genesis 1-11 will dillute the gospel by asking the Bible to share its exclusive authority with existential and uniformitarian sources of authority.

I am not saying that the "new" fundamentals of 21st-century fundamentalism are a "not-yet" view of the Kingdom, cultural conservatism, cessationism, and young earth creationism. What I am saying is that these four heads correspond to blind spots of conservative evangelicalism, and represent peculiar areas where the gospel is most vulnerable. They represent, in short, a fundamentalist raison d'être, a continuing reason to exist in an increasingly conservative evangelical world.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 6: Young Earth Creationism

In his fascinating 1986 work Without God, Without Creed: The Origins of Unbelief in America James Turner traces the rise of agnosticism/atheism in late-18th to early-20th century America, and assigns much of the blame to Christians accommodating science as an independently authoritative discipline. His thesis appears on p. xiii:

"In trying to adapt their religious beliefs to socioeconomic change, to new moral challenges, to novel problems of knowledge, to the tightening standards of science, the defenders of God slowly strangled Him.”

Specifically, he points to the Princeton School as leaders in compromising the role of Christian theology as queen of the sciences. Little by little, he argues, they surrendered bits and pieces of the plain truth of Genesis 1-11 in an effort to accommodate uniformitarian science, abandoning the flood and adopting geological evolution and even biological evolution. But then in Dayton, Tennessee, to the guffaws of the scientific world, they finally took a stand, resisting human evolution in a heroic bid to save Adam (and with him the Second Adam).

And only then did Christianity realize that, due to their inconsistency and compromise, they had lost their distinctive voice in the world. Theology had been dethroned as the queen of the sciences. Agnosticism and atheism had taken firm root. All because "the defenders of God had slowly strangled him."

One would think that the fundamentalism that emerged from the ensuing malaise would have immediately addressed the problem, but it was not until the 1960 release of Whitcomb and Morris's The Genesis Flood that young earth creationism finally recovered its voice. Happily, much of fundamentalism saw the biblical demands set out in this and succeeding books and adopted young earth creationism. But not all have. And certainly conservative evengelicalism has not. To be sure, this is not a unanimous verdict, and I commend those conservative evangelicals who endure the scorn of their comrades and hold to young earth creationism. But young earth creationism clearly has not emerged among conservative evangelicals as a core doctrine.

I must admit great perplexity at this. The fundamentalist community has little to gain and much to lose by merging with those who are, however unintentionally, slowly strangling God.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 5b: Cessationism and Non-Verbal Revelation

A few years ago Dan Wallace wrote a Christianity Today article that later emerged as the introductory contribution of the 2005 book Who's Afraid of the Holy Spirit? The story line is heart-wrenching and difficult to read, telling of Wallace's 8-year-old son and his bout with a horrific form of cancer. It is the point of the story, however, that most arrested me as a reader. Wallace's faith was deeply shaken by the event—and it was his cessationist environment that was the culprit:

Through this experience I found that the Bible was not adequate. I needed God in a personal way—not as an object of my study, but as friend, guide, comforter. I needed an existential experience of the Holy One. Quite frankly, I found that the Bible was not the answer. I found the Scriptures to be helpful—even authoritatively helpful—as a guide. But without my feeling God, the Bible gave me little solace. In the midst of this “summer from hell,” I began to examine what had become of my faith. I found a longing to get closer to God, but found myself unable to do so through my normal means: exegesis, scripture reading, more exegesis. I believe that I had depersonalized God so much that when I really needed him I didn’t know how to relate. I looked for God, but found many community-wide restrictions in my cessationist environment.

Interestingly, Wallace still describes himself as a cessationist, even a "hard-line" cessationist, but concludes,

I am increasingly convinced that although God does not communicate in a way that opposes the scriptures, he often communicates in a non-verbal manner to his children.… To deny that God speaks verbally to us today apart from the scriptures is not to deny that he communicates to us apart from the scriptures.

I'd like to suggest that this "soft" non-cessationist sentiment is something that needs to be rejected as emphatically as the full-blown, prophetic, tongues-speaking variety. Why?

1. Claims to private revelation seem to be precisely what God was trying to suppress when he gave us the inspired Scriptures (2 Pet 1:19-21). God's normative instructions for the church today are public (i.e., the Bible), not private.
2. Non-verbal "impressions" in some senses are even more sinister than verbal ones since they must be privately "interpreted" by wholly non-objective means to be of any value to the (highly-impressionable) recipient. As such they tend, in truly post-modern fashion, to transfer authority away from fixed, objective truth to the transient whim of the recipient. Scripture clearly tells us that in the absence of propositional commentary, people tend to assign to "events" interpretations that are consistent with their own biases and personal worldviews (Matt 12:24; John 9:2-3; Luke 13:4; Acts 14:11; 28:4ff).
3. Private, non-verbal revelations cannot be tested or verified for accuracy by the Christian community, yet are treated with "thus saith the Lord" reliability, giving the recipient (a) the illusion of certainty and (b) reason to ignore reasoned and even biblical objections and counsel. (Who, after all, can dare to argue with what GOD told you to do?)
4. Private, non-verbal revelations seem to be little more than the long shadow of Kant (or perhaps the longer shadow of Plato) that continues to cast its pall over Christianity--a pall that sees the Word of God not as the revelation of God, but a Hinweis to a wholly-other god truly known only by existential encounter.
5. The need for private, non-verbal revelations seems implicitly to deny the sufficiency of Scripture (2 Pet 1:3; 2 Tim 3:17). This is not to say that the Spirit cannot do something in the believer "above the text" (i.e., illumination) but this is not revelatory, per se, but providential in turning the believer's will to embrace and apply what already stands revealed.
6. The quest for private, non-verbal revelations seems to blur the line so carefully fixed in Deuteronomy 29:29 between what is revealed (God's moral will) and what is not revealed (God's secret will) and creates the amorphous middle of God's "perfect" will (an idea drawn from a rather poorly exegeted phrase in Romans 12).

I must concede, of course, that fundamentalism has no peculiar claim to high ground on which to stand on this issue. My fundamentalist life has been laced with those whom God "burdened," "led," and "spoke to the heart," sometimes concerning very specific actions and important life decisions. So when I say that cessationism is part of the raison d'être for fundamentalism, I do so with the uncomfortable realization that we have a great deal of tension to address within our own movement before addressing problems without. To turn a phrase offered by Sam Waldron, "There has been a real tendency to devotionalize and spiritualize the Bible in a way that was made to order and set a lot of people up, when a [conservative evangelical] charismatic came with his views, to not see all that much difference between charismatic subjectivism and the prevailing [fundamentalist] subjectivism." He's right.

Despite the tentacles of this "soft" non-cessationist praxis already entrenched in our movement, though, I believe that a rigorous defense of cessationism (and corresponding extirpation of continuationism) commends itself as a valid and meaningful raison d'être for fundamentalism.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 5a: Cessationism and Sola Scriptura

On March 7th of this year, David Wilkerson, a seasoned “prophet” from New York City, issued a warning that is particularly eerie in view of today's date: “An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen…. It will engulf the whole [New York City] megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires.” Most of those who were aware of his “prophecy” reacted to it with more amusement than alarm, a decision that in the passing of time proves to have been an apt one.

A few bloggers, though, responded to Wilkerson’s doomsaying remarks in an effort to calm the panicked naïve among their readership. It seems that the previously simple task of answering this kind of alarmism, however, has been rendered increasingly complex by a recent uptick in sympathy for prophecy and tongues in conservative evangelicalism today. Simple denunciation of such prophetic foolishness is apparently no longer acceptable in today’s “open but cautious” evangelical milieu. Instead it would seem that one is now obliged to give Wilkerson a studied hearing and remain cautiously open to the possibility that his prophecy just might be accurate.

John Piper, for instance, denounced Wilkerson's comments, but in a strikingly anemic way: “Wilkerson’s prophecy,” he reassures us, “does not resonate with my spirit…. God might have said this. But it doesn’t smell authentic to me.” All I can say after reading this is that I’m glad I live in Michigan.

Piper goes on to speak of the governing authority of Scripture, so I don’t want to be more critical than is due, but the comment arrested me. If, in fact, God is bombarding the church today with authoritative prophecies and coded messages (i.e., tongues), this cannot help but mute or at best distill one's claim to two critical fundamentals of the faith, namely, biblical sufficiency and biblical authority (sola scriptura). It seems to me to go without saying that if the church needs additional revelations, then the Bible does not give everything we need for life and godliness (2 Pet 1:3) and does not thoroughly equip us for every good work (2 Tim 3:17). Further, if the theological landscape becomes littered with an endless corpus of private and normative revelatory material, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how sola scriptura can be successfully maintained (for a detailed unfolding of this idea see Sam Waldron’s excellent book To Be Continued? Are the Miraculous Gifts for Today? which I recommend highly).

I am not suggesting here that Piper (or Grudem or Carson or Mahaney or anybody in particular) has explicitly denied these cardinal doctrines. Such would be an unfair assessment. But I would say that this accommodation and embrace of continuationism by such prominent evangelical figures, coupled with an increasing suppression of differences on “non-essential” doctrines in the interest of standing “together for the gospel,” represents a troubling and potentially disastrous fissure in conservative evangelicalism that needs to be exposed as ultimately destructive to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.

MAS

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 4: Transition and Apology

The next two parts in this apologetic series (a defense of the continuing viability of fundamentalism in the face of an increasingly conservative evangelicalism) reflect a slight shift in emphasis--a shift away from historical fundamentalist concerns that I see as in jeopardy of being lost, and a shift to more contemporary threats to orthodoxy to which conservative evangelicalism as a whole seems rather ambivalent.

Some will no doubt cry foul at this point because I have ceased defending historic fundamentalism and have, to some readers at least, begun grasping wildly at my own pet non-essentials in an effort to preserve my particular slice of fundamentalist identity. I'm prone to self-deception, so maybe such naysaying is accurate. I'm not sure, though, that this is the case. The "fundamentals" around which the movement coalesced both in its first life (the fight against modernist liberalism) and its second life (the fight against the new evangelicalism) do not represent a comprehensive list. One looks in vain, for instance, for the fundamental doctrine of the justification by faith or the doctrine of the Trinity as major emphases in the two lives of fundamentalism. Why? Because these doctrines were not under peculiar attack in the day, and so were not defended as rigorously as other doctrines. The fundamentalist waged war on the fields where error was camping and defended the citadels that were under attack. But this does not mean that fundamentalism is obliged to remain static and refrain from battling elsewhere (as some seem to suggest).

The theological landscape is changing, and so must the polemic. Modernist liberalism is a crippled old man, dying as much from self-inflicted wounds as by any inflicted by its foes. And a new favorite pastime in evangelicalism today seems to be the renunciation and abandonment of the New Evangelicalism for dead. But the fact that fundamentalism's traditional enemies lie dead or dying does not demand that fundamentalism lie down and die with them (again, as some seem to suggest). What has arisen to dethrone modernism is not fundamentalism, but post-modernism. And what has arisen to dethrone new evangelicalism is not not fundamentalism, either.

It is an unfortunate reality that fundamentalism has often been defined by what it stands against rather than what it stands for, thus leaving the impression that once its enemies fall, it no longer has a raison d'être. But in fact there is something we stand for and thus a perpetual raison d'être. So as new threats emerge to threaten orthodoxy, even in incipient form, we as fundamentalists must adapt our arguments to meet them.

I am convinced that at least two doctrines deemed non-essential by the conservative evangelical majority are more essential than at first meets the eye, viz., cessationism and young earth creationism, which will be the topics of my next two posts. Ambivalence to these blind spots, in my mind, does not serve Christian unity, but rather functions to erode biblical authority. And that is something fundamentalism most definitely stands for.

MAS

Work and Worship

Since it’s a holiday, I thought the day might offer opportunity to talk theologically about its occasion—labor. I know, I know, Labor Day is a celebration of organized labor, but from my vantage, writing a theology of organized labor would not be a very edifying exercise. If you’re looking for something on organized labor, take the time to read Matthew 20:1–16 and extrapolate from it to discover my take on organized labor. I’ll resist the urge to say more.

The liberal mind for decades attempted to convince that there is no distinction between work and worship, or as Carlyle told us, that “work is worship”—a sentiment that served to glorify industry at the expense of worship. This sentiment has been preserved by some, but increasingly rejected by others. The trend now, it would seem, has shifted away from the “work is worship” motif to a mindset that work and worship operate in totally separate realms—work is detached not only from worship, but from religion itself.

The result of such a shift is that the work is reduced to (1) something that must be endured as a necessary evil (a sort of prison house of the soul to be escaped not by death, but by retirement) and/or (2) something that may be neglected or avoided as somehow ancillary to the Christian life. And as the Church has done with almost comic regularity throughout her long history, we are slowly abandoning Aristotle only to embrace Plato, failing to realize that the Bible endorses neither.

Instead, the Bible informs us that people (and most specifically, men) find their greatest dignity in their work. It is a primary responsibility of man before God and was so before the entrance of sin into the world (Gen 1:28). And while sin has made work more difficult than it ought to be, work remains not only a responsibility, but a bona fide gift from God (Eccl 3:13) and a true source of pleasure (Eccl 5:18). Lest there be any question of the connection of work and worship, however, Paul reminds us that the diligence with which we do our work directly corresponds to the success of the gospel (1 Thess 4:12) and the health of the church (Eph 4:28).

Work is not worship. It is a manifestation of our religion, yes, but it is no substitute for worship. Instead, the expression of religion has two faces—worship and work, cultus and culture, sacred and secular, ora et labora. Neither may rightly be neglected.

So as we celebrate this Labor Day (ironically, perhaps, by not laboring), let us take the time to thank God for this gift and pleasure from his hand, and resolve to work very hard, not just for our own sustenance and profit, but “as to the Lord,…for it is the Lord Christ we are serving” (Col 3:23–24).

MAS

Friday Free-for-All

I got a bit behind at the end of this week, so no substantive post today. I did come across a website yesterday, though, that I thought was good all at once for a good laugh, a shake of the head, and a bit of theological reflection. Click here to buy Rapture insurance for Fido.

Yep, it's a bona fide website. Have a good Weekend.

MAS

[HT Bill Combs]

A Fundamentalist raison d'être, part 3: Culture

A few days ago Doug Wilson made an interesting observation here about fundamentalism:

American fundamentalism made a series of strategic mistakes in its battles with liberalism in the early twentieth century. In the first rank of these mistakes was the retreat from a full-orbed world and life view, where everything is understood to be under the authority of Jesus Christ. They held to the fundamentals of the faith, true enough, but retreated with them into a truncated personal space.

I’m the first to admit that fundamentalism has made its fair share of mistakes over the years, and I readily concede that Wilson has correctly identified an area where some fundamentalists erred in overreacting to the abuses of their opponents. But I’m not convinced that the historic fundamentalist response was as flawed as Wilson suggests.

(1) First, I do not believe that Wilson’s generalized assessment of fundamentalism is entirely accurate—or even generally accurate. The fundamentalists did, as we have noted, abandon the “kingdom-now” motif as a significant factor in determining the mission of the church, departing from both modernist liberalism and Reformed postmillennialism. But this does not amount to surrendering Christ’s authority in every area of life. It simply means that fundamentalism, as a general whole, abandoned the “Christ transforming culture” paradigm of Reformed postmillennialism and also the “Christ of culture” paradigm of modernist liberalism. Specifically, they rejected the idea that the church’s mission is to capture every area of culture/society and subdue it for Christ or, worse, to operate in a fantasy world where this has already occurred.

(2) This radical shift in viewing the church’s responsibility toward culture was not an ancillary “mistake” that fundamentalists made, but a significant piece of the fundamentalist agenda. Wilson's willingness to embrace a version of fundamentalism without this “mistake” is not possible—this “mistake” is essential to what historic fundamentalism was.

(3) Wilson is correct, though, that some fundamentalists swung the pendulum too far and adopted an isolationist “Christ against culture” mindset that reduced some expressions of fundamentalism to hermetically sealed islands of cultural dissent. I concede that fundamentalist taxa that are neither in the world nor of it are indeed a terrible mistake—a casualty of careless overreaction.

(4) I’m convinced that the majority expression of fundamentalism was somewhere in the middle, adopting a variation of Neibuhr’s “Christ and culture in paradox” paradigm. Now this category is very broad, encompassing traditional Lutheranism, neo-orthodoxy, and even (as I suggested last Friday) some expressions of Reformed confessionalism such as the burgeoning “two-kingdom-theology” folks. That’s why I say fundamentalism represents a variation of this paradigm. But the fundamentalists are on to something here, and this should not be abandoned.

All this leads, then, to my conclusion that part of the continuing fundamentalist raison d’être is the perpetuation of this final view of culture—one that (1) takes seriously the radical depravity of the world and resists the powerful and pragmatic urge to assume the world's cultural expressions to be good or "neutral" and (2) takes seriously the incorrigibility of culture and recognizes the futility of salvaging it—except, perhaps as an incidental, localized, and temporary consequence of evangelism.

MAS