Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

Andy Naselli

Letham Reviews Giles on Subordinationism

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Robert Letham reviews Kevin Giles’s The Trinity and Subordinationism (Downers Grove: IVP, 2002) in this eight-page appendix:

Robert Letham. “Appendix 2: Kevin Giles on Subordinationism.” Pages 489–96 in The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 2004.

Letham explains,

Kevin Giles, vicar of St. Michael’s Church in North Carlton, Australia, has for thirty years contended for the ordination of women. . . .

He targets conservative evangelicals who maintain a hierarchical view of the sexes on the basis of a presumed hierarchy of being, function, or role in the Trinity. By subordinationism he means the idea that the Son is eternally set under the Father. . . . All forms of subordinationism [Giles argues] are ruled out, both by Scripture and church tradition. From this it follows that arguments for the subordination of women cannot be buttressed by appeal to the Trinity.

Letham disagrees with Giles for three major reasons: [Read more…] about Letham Reviews Giles on Subordinationism

Gone Rafting

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I plan to leave today for an eight-day rafting trip through the Grand Canyon, so this blog will be quiet until July 18.

I’ve had several friends go on this same trip with Canyon Ministries in previous summers, and they all loved it. Some people who go on this trip are young-earth creationists, some aren’t, and some are undecided.

Here are some previous reflections on this rafting trip:

Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

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From a funeral homily by Jack Collins:

On Saturday, I heard Jackie say, “No parent should ever have to outlive their own child.” I heard the same words from my father’s mother when my father died; and my wife and I said the same thing when we lost our first child. The pain is horrible; the loss is beyond our ability to describe.

When we feel this grief, we are feeling that it’s just not right for this to happen. We don’t want our loved ones to suffer; we don’t want to be separated from them by death. We want to be sure that they are happy, and we want to be able to enjoy their company always.

The Bible tells us that these feelings we have are right. Death and suffering are intruders in God’s good world; they don’t belong here. And the story of Adam and Eve, the first human beings, tells us how these evil things came in: When these, the parents of us all, disobeyed God, they opened the door to all manner of sin and evil, not only for themselves, but also for us.

You don’t need me to prove it; it’s all around us. It’s why we are here today.

But the Bible story doesn’t end there: instead it tells us about how God wants to help us, to heal us of what is wrong with us.

—C. John Collins, Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? Who They Were and Why You Should Care (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 136. [Read more…] about Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be

The Importance of Dignified Translations

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Translating is complicated because it involves so many factors. One factor is dignity. And that’s not the strength of some translations or paraphrases.

Three examples:

1. 1 Samuel 20:30a

  • וַיִּחַר־אַף שָׁאוּל בִּיהוֹנָתָן וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ בֶּן־נַעֲוַת הַמַּרְדּוּת
  • NASB (cf. KJV, NKJV, RSV, NRSV, ESV, HCSB, NIV): Then Saul’s anger burned against Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman!”
  • NET: Saul became angry with Jonathan and said to him, “You stupid traitor!”
    • Translator’s note: Heb “son of a perverse woman of rebelliousness.” But such an overly literal and domesticated translation of the Hebrew expression fails to capture the force of Saul’s unrestrained reaction. Saul, now incensed and enraged over Jonathan’s liaison with David, is actually hurling very coarse and emotionally charged words at his son. The translation of this phrase suggested by Koehler and Baumgartner is “bastard of a wayward woman” (HALOT 796 s.v. עוה), but this is not an expression commonly used in English. A better English approximation of the sentiments expressed here by the Hebrew phrase would be “You stupid son of a bitch!” However, sensitivity to the various public formats in which the Bible is read aloud has led to a less startling English rendering which focuses on the semantic value of Saul’s utterance (i.e., the behavior of his own son Jonathan, which he viewed as both a personal and a political betrayal [= “traitor”]). But this concession should not obscure the fact that Saul is full of bitterness and frustration. That he would address his son Jonathan with such language, not to mention his apparent readiness even to kill his own son over this friendship with David (v. 33), indicates something of the extreme depth of Saul’s jealousy and hatred of David.
  • NLT: Saul boiled with rage at Jonathan. “You stupid son of a whore!” he swore at him.
  • The Message: Saul exploded in anger at Jonathan: “You son of a slut!”
  • Original Living Bible: Saul boiled with rage. “You son of a bitch!” he yelled at him.

2. Acts 8:20

  • Πέτρος δὲ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν· τὸ ἀργύριόν σου σὺν σοὶ εἴη εἰς ἀπώλειαν ὅτι τὴν δωρεὰν τοῦ θεοῦ ἐνόμισας διὰ χρημάτων κτᾶσθαι·
  • NASB (cf. RSV, NRSV, ESV, NET): But Peter said to him, “May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! [Read more…] about The Importance of Dignified Translations

How Not to Write a Book Review

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Dan Reid explains how.

(Reid is senior editor for reference and academic books at InterVarsity Press, where he has worked since 1986.)

His first “reviewing sloth” is most significant:

The author failed to write a different sort of book, the sort of book that I prefer; and so I dislike this book.

Thank God for Good Bible Translators and Translations

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These two excerpts from Moisés Silva illustrate some ways that Bible translation is complex:

Silva, Moisés. “Are Translators Traitors? Some Personal Reflections,” in The Challenge of Bible Translation: Communicating God’s Word to the World; Understanding the Theory, History, and Practice: Essays in Honor of Ronald F. Youngblood (ed. Glen G. Scorgie, Mark L. Strauss, and Steven M. Voth; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 37–38 (emphasis added in paragraph 3):

During my student days, while looking over a Spanish theological journal, I happened to notice an article on a topic I knew would be of interest to one of my professors. When I brought it to his attention, he asked me whether I would be willing to translate the essay into English for him. Since Spanish is my mother tongue, he figured I’d be able to come up with a rough translation quite quickly. I thought so, too, but to my surprise, the project became a nightmare. I labored over virtually every sentence and felt burdened that at no point was I communicating in a truly satisfactory manner what I knew to be the “total” meaning of the Spanish. Possibly for the first time I sensed what factors may have motivated the old Italian complaint, Traduttore traditore—“A translator is a traitor.”

This incident was rather puzzling and troubling to me. [Read more…] about Thank God for Good Bible Translators and Translations

Translation and the Doctrine of Inspiration

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Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 35–36.

One of the surprising, and from our perspective unfortunate, recent developments in the story of English translations is the reappearance of an old argument that “literal” versions are more compatible with the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of Scripture. We say “old,” because this is precisely what drove Robert Young . . . to produce a version vis-á-vis the KJV (first ed. 1862). . . .

Our first point, then, is that, as with beauty, “literal” is in the eye of the beholder, in this case meaning “in the perception of the user.” This is why we have tried to avoid the word “literal” in this book and have often put it in quote marks when we use it—because those who use it tend to have such a wide range of meanings. Unfortunately, it is also often used in the literature simply as a rhetorical device over against “meaning-based” versions.

Second, much of this rhetoric represents a poor understanding of the doctrine of verbal inspiration, which historically does not refer to the words as “words in themselves,” but “words as they convey meaning.” [Read more…] about Translation and the Doctrine of Inspiration

Reproduce the Meaning

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That’s the goal of Bible translation. If you speak more than one language, then you can easily think of more examples like the ones below.

Gordon D. Fee and Mark L. Strauss, How to Choose a Translation for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding and Using Bible Versions (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007), 25.

There is a common perception among many Bible readers that the most accurate Bible translation is a “literal” one. By literal they usually mean one that is “word-for-word,” that is, one that reproduces the form of the original Greek or Hebrew text as closely as possible. Yet anyone who has ever studied a foreign language soon learns that this is mistaken. Take, for example, the Spanish sentence, ¿Como se llama? A literal (word-for-word) translation would be, “How yourself call?” Yet any first-year Spanish student knows that is a poor translation. The sentence means (in good idiomatic English) “What’s your name?” The form must be changed to express the meaning.

Consider another example. The German sentence Ich habe Hunger means, literally, “I have hunger.” [Read more…] about Reproduce the Meaning