Comment to 'Authorship of the pastoral epistles'
Comment to Authorship of the pastoral epistles

  • B

    I am extremely encouraged by the responses to this post. It really seemed to me that rejecting scriptures based on the potential theological changes to personal confirmation bias was some what expectable here and that never should be.

    One of the most fascinating aspects of contemporary theology is that all the conflicting polity structures rely on the pastoral Epistles as proof text for polity structures that are completely different. There's certainly no reason to believe that Scriptures that can be interpreted to support all kinds of leadership structures is suspect of corruption or illegitimacy.

    My main focus in the church is that of a missions mobilizer. I admit that it is not popular. In that regard I absolutely insist that the first second language any cross cultural worker learns is biblical Greek. I am dyslexic (you may have noticed that I leave obvious incorrect words, I can't really detect typos). It probably took me three times as much time and effort to achieve the competency in Greek that a non nurodivegant person would need. The fact is that you only have two options in regards to the scriptures. You can learn Greek and study them directly or you will only ever be able to study what others have written about the scriptures. Every translation is an interpretation and highly imperfect.

    The real problem is that the stated goal of the translation is to sell the most Bibles . It's a popularity contest and the concept of accuracy is completely neglected. Just a few generations ago you had to learn Greek if you went to college. Translators would never even try to take some of the libertys that are taken in the novel translations because tons of people many probably not even Christians would call them out on it.

    I'm saying all this to say it is definitely worth the effort to learn to read Greek. I also am an unflinching proponent of studying the Septuagint. It's absolutely the Bible that the early church used and influenced the New testament more than any other writing. I'm not Lutheran I have a problem with Luther's wanting to reject scriptures for his theology (he had problems with James, Hebrews and the Septuagint). I guess that brings me back to where this started. Don't ditch scriptures that challenge your theology.

    • T

      Building on what you've said about language, I'd add that another thing that really holds Christians back, especially in the West, is our regular thought patterns which are very linear in nature. When we see certain words or phrases, we associate meanings with them without once giving thought to whether those meanings are true and accurate. Consider, for example, the word "worship". I think that many Christians, when asked for Biblical references about worship, might cite the 4th commandment, "Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy". But where, exactly, does God say that this means that we must *worship* on the Sabbath? Here is the Scripture from Ex 20:8-11....

      8 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

      Not only do I not see the word "worship" anywhere in the text, but what we see seems to clearly exclude worship in it's definition of Sabbath day holiness. Verse 8 tells us to keep the Sabbath holy. Verses 9 and 10 appear to define what holiness means in this context. Verse 11 brings us back to creation where it all started. Verse 11 also bookends the "rest" aspect of Sabbath day holiness by saying, "[He] *rested* on the seventh day. *Therefore* the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it *holy*" (emphasis mine).

      Now before anyone says that I believe that you can't worship on the Sabbath or that I'm just being too nit-picky, I see nothing wrong with worshipping on the Sabbath. But growing up in a culture where the Sunday was considered to be the Sabbath day of rest (it is not) and Sundays were packed with church activities that offered very little actual rest for the week's activities, I think that we Christians would do well to take a step back to see how we got to the convoluted system that exists today. We should listen to what God is telling us in Scripture and adjust accordingly. What prevents us from even thinking about doing this is the fact that when we think of "worship" we pull in all this extra human-invented crud that can't be defended Scripturally. We follow that which we have been taught, not necessarily that which God has ordained.