"I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among
you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise,
speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. "Therefore
be on the alert, remembering that night and day for a period of three years I
did not cease to admonish each one with tears. (Act 20:29-31)
The Apostle Paul, giving his farewell address to
the elders of the Ephesian church, warned them of two serious threats to the
people of God: external attacks (“savage wolves”) and internal corruption (“men
. . . of your own selves . . . speaking perverse things”). Of the two threats, the second is by far the
more serious. Persecution, while having
a purifying effect on the Church by testing true commitment and faith,
certainly hinders the progress of the Gospel and the ministry of edification of
the members. That’s why we are to pray “for
kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life
in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:2).
The gravest threat to the spiritual life of the
Church – God’s flock – is the internal threat from those who profess to be
believers, especially ministers who lead people astray with “perverse”
(distorted or corrupt) teachings.
With this article I am beginning a series on what
I see as serious internal threats to the spiritual health of the Church in our
day.
The first threat is a subtle attack on the Holy
Scriptures – The Bible. That is always
the first point of attack. The Serpent’s
challenge to Eve in the garden was a subtle attack on God’s Word: “Has God said
. . .?” Foundational to the Christian
faith is the doctrine of the verbal,
plenary inspiration of the Scriptures. Paul declared, “All Scripture is
given by inspiration of God (literally, ‘God-breathed’), and is
profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for
every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NKJV)
The doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration
affirms that the very words of Scripture (verbal) were given by God’s Spirit
through the agency of the human authors, that all of Scripture (plenary) is
inspired by God, and therefore all of the Bible is inerrant as originally given
by God.
Now there have always been those preachers,
commentators, and theologians who have denied this truth outright. Their
denials come in various forms: Some say that the writers of Scripture were
simply recording their experiences
with God in their own words, more or less accurately. Others have said that the
concepts were inspired by God, but
the authors recorded them as best they could in their own words, however
fallible. Others have denied any divine
inspiration, claiming that the Bible is simply a collection of religious
writings, including myths and legends, and should not be read as fact but for
inspiration and insight into Hebrews and Christian culture. It’s not difficult
to recognize these denials; they’re not subtle.
What is happening in evangelical circles today is, indeed, subtle, and
therefore dangerous!
The
essence of this threat is a diminishing, or outright denial, of the distinct
meaning of the words of Scripture.
According to certain professors of biblical linguistics, words that have
been understood to distinguish various forms of love, righteousness, goodness,
forgiveness, etc., are simply stylistic variations of the writers and should
not be pressed as to their individual significance. To these scholars, making any distinction –
ever, in any context – between agapao (love
involving the will) and phileo (a
love of affection) is “linguistic nonsense.”[1] Biblical word studies, like R. C.
Trench’s Synonyms of the New Testament,
A. T. Robertson’s Word Pictures in The
New Testament, Vine’s Expository
Dictionary of New Testament Words, M. R. Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament, and the like, were all useless
endeavors. Etymology, the study of the
roots and development of word meanings, is likewise, useless since words have
no meaning outside their current context.
It is not difficult to see that this notion has
serious implications regarding our belief in the verbal inspiration of Scripture.
If the words of the Bible, in their original languages, were given by God,
howbeit through the agency of the human writers (2 Peter 1:21), are we not to
give careful attention to the specific meaning of those words, as well as the
context and syntax in which they are found?
Don’t words contain a story, a history in themselves? Indeed they do. James Hope Moulton and George Milligan gave
the Christian world a marvelous gift in their monumental lexicon, The Vocabulary of the New Testament, in
which they trace the usages and development of New Testament Greek words. In the introduction to the 1930 edition,
Milligan gives an example of how the “story” behind a word can be very
edifying.
In Colossians 2:14,
we read that our Lord “blotted out the bond written in ordinances that was
against us, which was contrary to us,” and the verb used for “blotted out” (exaleipsas) is a technical term for “washing out” the writing from a papyrus
sheet.[2]
Normally, a new generation of scholars “stands on the
shoulders” of the giants of the past and climbs higher. The tendency in much of biblical scholarship
today is to be iconoclastic, to tear down and sweep aside the works and views of
great scholars of the past. And as it is
with all iconoclasts, the movement is extreme.
It is one thing to point out inaccurate conclusions from Greek and
Hebrew etymology, but quite another to deprecate the study of etymology
altogether!
This devaluation of the importance of the individual
words of Scripture undermines the uniqueness of the Bible, and it discourages
the average reader from meditating on the very words of Scripture. This new theory of the fluidity of words
forms the basis for the new translations based on “dynamic equivalence.” (See blog post: Is What I'm Reading Really God's Word?)
According to the new school of biblical
linguistics, words have no meaning
apart from their context. I would counter that verbal, plenary inspiration means
that God gave all the words of
Scripture, and therefore the context also. Certainly, biblical words must be understood in
their context. That’s the first rule of biblical interpretation. But words in
context still have individual meanings.
The semantic range of a word is limited by its context, but its meaning
and etymology are not obliterated by the context. Each word brings its accumulated color to the text.
The inspiration and impetus for this new way of
thinking about Scripture came from a Scottish scholar named James Barr. His
monumental work, The Semantics of
Biblical Language, changed the way interpreters and, most importantly,
translators thought about the Scriptures. Barr was an outspoken critic of Fundamentalism, Evangelical Conservatism, and Biblical Inerrancy. His book on biblical semantics was published in 1961, and
in its wake came a line of Bible translations that expressed what the translators
called “dynamic equivalence”. Thanks to
Barr, the individual words of
Scripture were not important so long as the meaning
of the text (as interpreted by the translators) was made clear to modern
readers. That meaning can stray so far from the original words of Scripture that
it is difficult to recognize the passage.
Note the following “translations” of John 6:27:
On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. (NIV, TNIV)
For on him God the Father has set the seal of his authority. (REB)
Because God the Father has given him the right to do so. (CEV)
For God the Father has sent me for that very purpose. (NLT)
He and what he does are guaranteed by God the Father to last. (The
Message)
The liberties taken in these “dynamically
equivalent” translations are what Prof. Leland Ryken calls the “destabilizing
of the text.” A reader could not be sure
if these quotations, especially the last three, were from the same passage of
Scripture.
This all springs from a
depreciation of the very words of
Scripture. The evangelical scholars
involved in this movement would undoubtedly affirm their belief in the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture, but in their writings, they rarely mention
the Holy Spirit’s work in the choice of words in the Bible. Someone has said: “Our beliefs must change
our behavior, or sooner or later, our behavior will change our beliefs.” There is a disconnect between the profession
of these scholars and their practice.
One cannot continue to minimize or ignore the individual inspired words
of Scripture and still affirm faith in verbal inspiration. It will not surprise me when some of the prominent names in this movement declare that they have changed their belief and
now hold to something akin to concept
inspiration. Sadly, it may go virtually unnoticed by most Christians.
In the meantime, I want to know
what the Bible says, not what someone
tells me it means!
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