MetaCatholic

“Mummy, mummy, do all fairy stories begin “Once upon a time”?
“No, dear, some of them begin “When I became a Christian all my problems were over.”

I sometimes wonder whether the mark of the many “biblical” churches is a deep-rooted conviction that God gave us the wrong kind of Bible. It’s true of those churches that spend all their time reducing narratives to propositions, and it’s true of all churches that believe the prayer and worship book of the Bible – the Psalms – is in serious need of replacement with more upbeat praise. Nor is this an entirely recent trend.

Take some verses of Psalms 42-43:

As a deer longs for flowing streams,
so my soul longs for you, O God
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When shall I come and behold the face of God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” (42:1-3)

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God. (42:5,11; 43:5 — the chorus)

Now look at a modern song (which I happen to quite like in itself):

As the deer pants for the water,
So my soul longs after you.
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship you.

    You alone are my strength, my shield,
    To you alone may my spirit yield.
    You alone are my heart’s desire
    And I long to worship you.

The idea at the start of the psalm has been picked up, but the brutal honesty of faith struggling to hold on in suffering, opposition and depression has completely gone. Struggling to find God, hold on to faith, and cope with the hardships of life seems to have little place in contemporary songs. As those songs become more and more dominant in worship (even being described as “the time of worship” which takes place in the service, the meeting or whatever), so it becomes harder for Christians to have permission to articulate the dark side of life before God

Some of it, no doubt, is due to musical style. As the church borrows from (often yesterday’s) soft pop, it selects an idiom that struggles to rise above the banal and cheerful. But some of it, perhaps, is due to an almost docetic Christology (see this fairly old post by Daniel David Congdon). That is not true formally: these churches are not docetic in creed. It may be true materially: not only does the divinity of Christ subsume his humanity, but the divine action of atonement subsumes the human suffering of the cross.

When it comes to the psalms, it may also be that these churches are docetic about scripture. Its origin as God’s word totally subsumes its human authors, so that people read the psalms primarily to see what God has to say to them. The sense that the psalms are the speech of fallible, faithful, revengeful, loving, believing, doubting, praising and struggling people is in danger of being lost. With it goes the sense that our speech and song before God is not only allowed to be this honest, but in some sense is scripturally authorised to be this honest.

Suzanne McCarthy on Better Bibles Blog introduces what she intends to be a series of posts looking at the translations of some key verses used in debates about women and their role in the church. This plays into an ongoing, and as far as I can see, often vitriolic inter-evangelical dispute focusing on the TNIV (intended to be a gender-accurate / gender-neutral / gender inclusive or whatever) revision of the NIV. There are sites dedicated to discussing it, attacking it and defending it.

Before commenting directly, I should note some disclaimers. I look on this dispute from a certain distance, from the other side of the Atlantic (and it does seem to be a particularly American dispute) and from a different ecclesial tradition. Sometimes I look on with bemusement and bafflement at the way in which the whole argument about translation is a proxy fight over so-called egalitarian and complementarian understandings of the role of women (Suzanne’s particular concern here.)

As far as I can see, if anyone asked any NT writer whether they were complementarian or egalitarian, they would have said “Huh??” One of the areas I agree, for example with Dale Martin (see this post) is that biologically and conceptually, Paul thought about gender entirely differently to any contemporary reconstruction. Part of the problem, in my view, is that some evangelicals (in particular) don’t give enough space to theological work in moving from ancient text to contemporary interpretation, and therefore translation is made to assume a burden too heavy for it to bear. For them, “my” view must be found in the text, not developed from the text, and therefore the text has to say what “I” need it to say.

In identifying the problems with arguments and disputes over translating these verses concerning women Suzanne notes that

“My major concern has always been that of intense regret that there seems to be no Bible that the evangelical Christian community can share. No Bible has replaced the King James Version in that respect.”

I find this concern laudable, but in one sense not ambitious enough, and in another a counsel of perfection. First I would say, why stop at the evangelical community? If accuracy (or perhaps better, fidelity) of translation is primary, shouldn’t it commend itself more broadly? And in principle, shouldn’t it be the case that if those of widely differing theological standpoints and biases can agree on a translation, it is likely to be more faithful to the original? In principle this has been the idea behind a number of translations, although arguably the net could have been more widely cast even for the RSV / NRSV tradition in which evangelicals were probably not well-enough represented. (I note also in passing that such a common translation would have to include the Apocrypha)

At the same time, I would have to note that the KJV won its way slowly, and not without considerable controversy. Then the major flashpoint was using language like “church” instead of “congregation” which made it deeply unacceptable, initially, to Puritans. Its lack of theological footnotes, the force of the Jacobean state, and its judicious continuity with the tradition of Tyndale were as influential as any perceived linguistic superiority. It is doubtful whether, in a much more widely diverse and divided church, in a world in which English comes in several different standard varieties (e.g. American, British, Indian etc), and in the whirlwind of free-market publishing that ultimately funds and promotes translations, the KJV would have achieved the degree of common usage that an earlier and more circumscribed age made possible.

While I by no means think it is the whole enterprise (see here), I do think the idea of seeking common translations of controversial verses is a worthwhile task, and I look forward to the forthcoming posts in this series, which might at least help clarify some of the issues whirling in the maelstrom (or possibly male-strom) around the TNIV.