The Tragedy of Virtual Worship

Virtual worship has become the norm in the evangelical church. The fact that reality has been forfeited for illusory good feelings should be obvious to anyone. Where is the reality in seeking to conduct church services with the slick patter of a Master of Ceremonies, punctuated by empty songs that mimic a worldly, easy style of rock music? And when all this is achieved by the pragmatics of applied marketing and business growth strategy rather than biblical principle where again is the reality?

Should we be surprised when religion is characterised in the media by a lack of reality and when in popular culture in general, Christian words have become empty words? The idea of the sacred seems to have vanished. The church thinks that it can broaden its appeal by mimicing the virtuality of the world. Why should folk want a mediocre version from the church of what they can already have from the world? In the same way that popular culture (particularly the sinister world of club culture) offers and manufactures brief ecstatic emotional experiences, the church has invented virtual worship (some, horrifically, have gone the whole way and developed 'rave' services). It is all of course, commercially driven with the latest worship fad also neatly manifesting itself as the leading marketing edge.

As Peter Masters shows this is the current point to which the sixties development of a popular culture version of worship has taken us. This revolution produced "a form of worship fashioned and conceived in the womb of the hippie meditational mysticism, in which hippies in their hundreds and thousands would sit on California hillsides with eyes closed, swaying themselves into an ecstatic state of experience. Former hippies carried into their new Christian allegiance the method of seeking the emotional release or sensations to which they were accustomed, and no one showed them a better way." Peter Masters, "Worship in the Melting Pot: Is New Worship Compatible with Traditional Worship?" in Sword and Trowel (no. 3, 1998), p. 13.

The apostle Paul speaks of the spiritual reality that should obtain in the worship of the Church, the unbeliever should come into the church service and be so convicted by God's Word that "falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth" (1Cor 14:25). Virtual worship creates 'virtual religion', and virtual religion creates virtual Christians. And sadly evangelicals have long been too effective at producing virtual Christians through the virtual conversions of high-pressure evangelistic technique.

Thus we hear of "post-modern" evangelical worship developing in the United States as the next stage beyond the blandness of so-called contemporary worship music and "seeker-sensitive/user-friendly" services. This can be a heady cocktail of any of the following: orthodox icons, rock music, candles, Gregorian chant, snippets stolen from Roman Catholic liturgies not forgetting some charismatic elements (see article by Daniel Harrell, Leadership Journal, Spring 1999, Vol.XX, No. 2, p.37). Youth For Christ in the UK have likewise developed in past years something called Labyrinth a multi-media "spiritual" journey experience that involves meditation, candles and music Anything is permitted as long as it feels "authentic." But what feels authentic is no standard of what is authentic, no longer is the standard spoken words that conform to Scripture. There may be a show of humility (and that word "show" is vitally significant) in these things but they are "will-worship".

But where carnal pretence reigns we find nothing better than the "novel spirituality" that was generated through manufacturing a golden calf which could be worshipped as the gods who had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt. As John Calvin notes, man's mind, "so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols," so that "it dares to imagine a god according to its own capacity; as it sluggishly plods, indeed is overwhelmed with the crassest ignorance, it conceives an unreality and an empty appearance as God." (Institutes 1.11.8). Virtual worship brings God down to the conceptions of man and squeezes God into human capacities: human preferences and thoughts. The LORD has made it clear that He will not be worshipped according to the mind and will of man. "Forasmuch as this people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men" (Isaiah 29:13).

It is a conflict between carnal pretence and divine precept. The same conflict was apparent at the time of the Reformation (read "War Against the Idols", Carlos M. Eire). In fact, the Roman Catholic Church with its refusal to be instructed and directed by the Word of God alone has always mastered its own virtual worship of a man-made syncretistic type that focuses on the visual. Evangelicalism with its fashion-driven will-worship has taken the same route. We must remember, however, that the great tragedy of virtual worship is not just its fictitious nature but that it transgresses the second commandment and strikes at the glory of God.

mistaken assumptions about the Church

In the current climate of evangelical indifferentism there is a vital necessity of regulating our doctrine of the Church and its government by Scripture alone or establishing what is of divine right and authority. We must be clear that we have been provided with the revealed will of God
concerning the Church in the Scriptures. We are confined to express statement and command, approved example, or to what these entail, "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for his own glory...is either expressly set down in scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture" (WCF I.6, 2 Tim. 3:16). We are not permitted
to govern the Church in our own wisdom, instituting that which is right in our own eyes for this would deny Christ His headship over His own Church. In matters of "ordinances" in the Church, there is a single definite will of God (1 Cor. 11:2, 16 &23).

What is meant by "good and necessary consequence" is not human wisdom but "reason captivated and subdued to the obedience of Christ" (George Gillespie). The consequence must be necessary, that is to say it must be demanded by a relevant Scripture passage. This means taking premises stated in the Scripture and using sanctified reason in order to draw their
inexorable conclusions which although not expressly stated in a particular verse are nevertheless entirely warranted as the conclusions of such a process. The doctrine of the Trinity (besides others) belongs to this method of using the Scriptures.

Some in our day will deny this application of the regulative principle. In fact they do not wish to apply the principle much at all except perhaps in the area of doctrinal teaching in order to maintain some sort of deference to the doctrine of the sufficiency of the Scriptures. Most evangelical doctrinal statements claim to regard the Bible as the final authority in all matters of belief and practice, which actually entails a wider application of that doctrine whether they acknowledge this or not. The attitude has prevailed for a lengthy period in evangelicalism that there is a simple gospel to be safeguarded in the Scriptures but nothing else much matters. We
now live in a day when that "simple gospel" is, however, no longer purely scriptural in the mainstream of evangelical proclamation. Evangelicalism as David Wells has shown in No Place for Truth no longer has a theology: "Being evangelical has come to mean simply that one has had a certain kind of religious experience that gives colour to the private aspects of daily life,
but in which few identifiable theological elements can be discerned or, as it turns out, are necessary...It is enough for them to know that Christ somehow died for people" (p.131).

In a day of pragmatism and simply doing what works rather than what has Scriptural authority, it is anathema to the secularised ideology of evangelicalism to suggest that we should be bound by Scripture and its principles. Scripture is to bind us as little as possible. This is in fact an old battle that had to be faced squarely at the Westminster Assembly and during the whole post-reformation era. There were members of the Assembly that sought to defend the old Anglican view that gave "indifferent things" such as Church government to the monarch so that they could control the church, this is sometimes called Erastianism after Erastus who articulated the theoretical basis. Thomas Coleman was one of the Erastian Westminster divines, although their views were not prevalent in the eventual documents of the Assembly, they made themselves heard, as when Coleman preached to Parliament (July 1645) that the Assembly's agenda ought to be "Establish as few things by divine right, as well can be".

Divine right or jus divinum meant scriptural warrant. But if we do not give the authority to the Divine scriptures we give it instead to men, the king or individuals, human reason or prejudice or mere pragmatism and cultural influence. Although Coleman's principle may seem plausible it was crafted to serve his own agenda: he made it clear in the same sermon that the only thing that he wanted to establish by divine right was the King's/Parliament's authority by divine right. The attitude of the Scots commissioners to the Assembly on the other hand was "establish as much as possible by divine warrant" - it is in fact a stark choice, God's or man's authority.

It is necessary to be keenly aware of the other false assumptions that are most powerful and prevalent in the midst of these issues. Biblical studies has been under the influence of what are basically evolutionary assumptions for the last century and a half. The assumption of nineteenth-century liberalism, most notably represented by Friedrich Schleiermacher and Adolf Harnack was that religion evolved from polytheism through to monotheism and was becoming ever more rational. Schleiermacher's development was to make God simply a principle rather than a person, and to replace the Scriptures with "religious consciousness" as divine revelation. Thus the whole of religion became essentially subjective:the attributes of God were merely a
symbolical way of expressing aspects of "religious consciousness" such as the feeling of dependence. An individualistic religion like this, deemed the Church to be not strictly necessary, except as a "mere social centre, a human institution rather than the planting of God" (Louis Berkhof, p.561 -summarising the liberal position).

This was in fact quite similar to the Quaker view of each man inspired by the Spirit which bypassed all need for the Church, ordinances, sacraments, and even the Scriptures. It was
customary for quite a while therefore to deny that Jesus had ever intended to set up any kind of institution such as a Church, or even a community. All that he was concerned with, according to this view, was the more "pure", rational and evolved religion of liberalism: the Kingdom of God was merely a spiritual relation between the individual and his God. Developments of this view claim that Jesus expected an immediate apocalypse which would have made a new community a futile idea. Some evangelicals have taken on this higher critical idea: J.D. Allan in The Evangelicals: An illustrated version (Paternoster/Baker 1989) writes that, "when Jesus died, he seems to have made no provision for a continuing organization which would keep his ideas
alive" (p.5).

More prevalent is the idea that the disciples were something like a charismatic (or Quaker) sect who were immediately inspired by the Spirit and that there was no office or government in the early Church, but that the Holy Spirit governed alone and that this became quickly institutionalised with monarchical bishops in place by the end of the first century in a fixed
hierarchy. This is not only an academic notion but loosely corresponds to popular evangelical assumptions. Too often we read back our own reflection on to the New Testament Early Church and our own experience and ideal of charismatic chaotic spontaneity which has far more to do with a tradition of Evangelical pietism of the last century or so with its subjective, individualist fads than authentic apostolic experience. Millenarian or apocalyptic sects such as the Quakers and the Plymouth Brethren have often assumed that they are restoring a preinstitutionalist church where the Holy Spirit governs alone, and in doing so have exalted a particular interpretation of the Book of Acts above the other material in the New Testament. Restorationist charismatics do this in the same way that Edward Irving in the 19th century did, aiming to restore apostles as a prelude to Christ's second coming or other eschatological events. Such groups do not really use the book of Acts as an exact blueprint anyway, but rather their
interpretation. As Edward Donnelly points out: "Constitutions of Restoration churches do not, as far as we know, make provision for discipline by supernatural capital punishment (5:1-1)...Some who insist on a weekly Lord's Supper as the only scriptural pattern, for example, are not noted for a willingness to sell their possessions and hold all property in common (2:44,45)". (p.7, RTJ, 1998). We must seek to understand the full sweep of Biblical material and take especial note of the commands of Scripture rather than adopt assumptions and slogans that do not do justice
to the Scriptures.

How considering Christ restrains sin

“...let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us...Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” Hebrews 12:1-4

There is enough provision in the person and work of Christ to escape and mortify every and any sin (Phil. 4:13; Rom. 13:4). Help has been laid upon this Mighty One so that He is able to give all needed grace to those that are in Him and that abide in Him (Jn. 15:3; Is. 40: 27-31; 2 Cor. 12:9). This is received and strengthened by acting faith upon the Lord Jesus Christ (Eph. 3:16-17). The consideration of Christ assists and enables us to act faith upon Him in order that we may find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). Faith acted upon Christ cannot change sin in its nature but it can take away its efficacy or power to work. We ought then to consider each of the aspects of the person and work of Christ the Mediator in order to seek strengthening in the restraint of sin in the affections and conscience.

1. Consider Christ in eternity, when His delights were with the sons of men (Prov. 8:31). His delights were in His own people, not in their sins but rather in their justification, sanctification and glorification from sin. Sin is therefore averse to that which was Christ's eternal delight, the joy that was set before Him – that He might present to Himself a sinless, pure Bride with exceeding great joy. He loved you believer, with an everlasting loved and do you think that He loved you so in order that you might despise such love by continuing in sin?
2. Consider Christ in His covenanting with the Father in eternity to lay down His life for the sheep, to be a Surety for His people. His soul would be an offering for sin. Did he covenant His blood with God against sin and will you covenant with sin against God and against such a provision? Did He consider you from all eternity and will you not consider Him aright? Did He esteem you in the loathsomeness of your sin and will you then esteem your loathsome sins more highly than Him?
3. Consider His humbling of Himself by coming into a world of sin for you, and will you not forsake the world of sin for Him?
4. Consider Him taking a sinless human nature into union with His own Divine Person in order that He might be like unto His brethren in all things apart from sin. Scripture even says that he came in the likeness of sinful flesh (Rom. 8:3), such was the humiliation though He was yet holy, undefiled and separate from sinners. If the soul of righteous Lot was vexed each day by the sin that he witnessed in Sodom, how much greater was the trial for the holy soul of Christ to witness sin on every hand. Shall we delight in that which must have vexed His soul so grievously? He that was rich became exceeding poor that we through His poverty might become rich and not so that we might yet long after the destitute poverty and disgrace of sin.
5. Consider Him being circumcised as symbolic of putting away sin that He did not have, promising that He would perform all righteousness and as humbled by being made under the Law (Gal. 4:4; 5:3). This was His voluntary obedience – shall we match it with our wilful disobedience?
6. Consider Him in the temptations that He experienced at the hands of Satan and will you not seek strength and help from Him in the day of temptation?
7. Consider His betrayal at the hands of one of His friends, and will you, as it were, covenant with sin to betray Him?
8. Consider His exceeding sorrow and anguish in Gethsemane because of the nature of the sacrifice that was required for sin. Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto His sorrow – will you despise such sorrow and go on in sin and not rather grieve over your past sins and the corruption of your heart?
9. Consider His denial by Peter and how he was forsaken by all His disciples, are you going to deny and forsake your Master out of love to sin and this present evil world?
10. Consider the cruel mocking and scourging that He faced at the hands of wicked men, being set at nought by the men of war. Will you yourself turn enemy to your Beloved and Friend by warring with sin against Him and despising His sufferings for sin as a thing of nought?
11. Consider the people's choice of Barrabas in preference to Christ. Will you choose sin above Christ, which is a murderer of men's souls, of Christ Himself and a thief of God's glory?
12. Consider His prayer for those that crucified Him. “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”. Will you go on in sin with these words in the ears of your conscience, knowing what YOU do in sinning against Him? Surely it is true that if apostasy can be described as crucifying Christ afresh and putting Him to an open shame, sin lapsed into by the professing Christian wounds Him afresh in some way.
13. Consider His sufferings in His body, painfully and shamefully bleeding to death. Read Psalm 22 in order to have a sense of the physical agonies that He experienced in every part of His body to the utmost (Ps. 22:14). Will you despise such sufferings in embracing the sin that caused your Saviour such agonies?
14. Consider what it means when Scripture declares that He “condemned sin in the flesh” and “suffered in the flesh”. He came to condemn that which condemned us. Let Christ be the ruin of sin in you.
15. Consider the railing and blasphemy He endured upon the cross and will you revile Him to the face by joining company with sin and so standing in the way of sinners and sitting in the seat of the scornful?
16. Consider the depth of His soul sufferings. Forsaken of God that you should never be forsaken of God eternally. Passing through the overwhelming consuming fire of the wrath of God and drinking the sup of damnation to the uttermost. Will you love the sin that poured Hell intensively into the soul of the Saviour, all for your sake that this should not be your eternal portion?
17. Consider His continuing under the power of death for a time. The sting of death is sin. Your sin meant death for Christ – will you not put it to death?
18. Consider His resurrection and that it is the same exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead (Eph. 2:19-20). How then with such power at work in you through the Spirit of Him that raised Christ from the dead are you not able to mortify the deeds of the body and live unto righteousness?
19. Consider His exaltation to the right hand of the Father. It was when He had by Himself purged our sins that He sat down. We are seated with Him there. “ If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry”
20. Consider His kingly rule, the purpose of which is to subdue all His and our enemies. What a rebellious enemy sin is – and will you join with an enemy of the King of Kings and your own self? Will you not rather plead the promise: “he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).
21. Consider His prophetic office which is to teach us the will of God for our salvation. “This is the will of God even your sanctification” (1 Thess. 4:3). “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven” (Heb. 12:25).
22. Consider His high priestly intercession for us: “I have prayed for thee”. His wounds and blood intercede on behalf of His people. “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1). Yet we are told of this in order that “ye sin not”.
23. Consider the second coming of Christ. “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry...But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth. Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:4-5, 8-10). “it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.” (1 John 3:2-3).
    O that you and I would be without offence until the day of Christ (Phil 1:10). “the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it.”
    

The incarnation correctly stated and defined

The correct way of stating the incarnation is to say that the Eternal Son took a human nature into union with His own Divine Person. This is what is stated by the Westminster Confession of Faith (VIII 2). "The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man's nature, with all the essential properties, and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin" It is also implied in the Larger Catechism (Q36) that the Lord Jesus Christ "who, being the eternal Son of God, of one substance and equal with the Father, in the fulness of time became man, and so was and continues to be God and man, in two entire distinct natures, and one person, forever." See also Shorter Catechism Q21.

The Scriptures make this truth clear in the following passages:

John 1:1, 14; John 10:30; I John 5:20; I Tim. 2:5; Phil. 2:6; Gal. 4:4; Phil. 2:7; Heb. 2:14, 16-17; Heb. 4:15; Luke 1:35; Rom. 9:5; Col. 2:9; Heb. 7:24-25

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas used this terminology: "It is more proper to say that a divine person assumed a human nature, than to say that a divine nature assumed a human nature".

But why is this the case?

1. The Divine nature cannot be said to have assumed a human nature, because this would entail that the whole Godhead rather than just the Eternal Son, would have been united to human nature. The whole Godhead would have become incarnate. We only read in Scripture, however, that it was the divine essence of the Son which was united to man's nature.

2. The Divine nature cannot be said to have assumed a human person. If this was so there would have been a fourth person in the Godhead. Rather we understand that His human nature assumed a personality only in union with the Eternal Son. A human nature was assumed rather than a human person because he identified with what was common to that nature and not was particular to individuals. Thus, it was necessary for him to experience the hunger, thirst, grief, pain, weariness etc. that was common to human nature but not necessarily the diseases which only afflict individuals.

3. The Eternal Son cannot be said to have assumed a distinct human person because the human nature would have then belonged to that person and not to the Eternal Son.

4. The Eternal Son rather than the Father or Spirit must have assumed a human nature because there would then be two Sons in the Trinity. It was more fitting that the Eternally begotten son should be the one through whom the adoption believers as sons should be accomplished (Gal. 4:4-7).

5. The Word was made flesh by a personal action - he took human nature to Himself. He did not cease to be what he was before rather he added a nature to His person.

Emptied himself of all but love? A strange error

The very popular hymn by Charles Wesley, “And Can it be That I should gain,” originally entitled "Free Grace": contains several serious heresies in the following words.

Amazing love!
How can it be?
That thou my God shouldst die for me!
'Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies:
Who can explore his strange design?
In vain the first born seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
'Tis mercy all!
Let earth adore
Let angel minds enquire no more!

He left his father's throne above,
So free, so infinite his grace,
Emptied himself of all but love,
and bled for Adam’s helpless race.

The first error is Theopaschitism, a heresy from the 5th century which emphasises the idea that God suffered. Wesley revived this idea with his assertion "Amazing love! How can it be - that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?" and "’Tis mystery all! The Immortal dies". The divine nature cannot suffer, though a divine person in a human nature can suffer. It is dangerous to express the idea that God died or suffered The second heresy is in the words "Emptied Himself of all but love" which is the error of kenoticism, that Christ laid aside either the possession or exercise of divine attributes at the incarnation. Wesley"s words seem to lean towards the former. This idea is also known as the kenosis theory and is derived from a false interpretation of Philippians 2:6–8. Kenosis comes from the Greek word to empty which is behind the translation "made himself of no reputation". The third heresy is that of Universal Atonement that Christ died for all mankind in all ages. This is against the testimony of Scripture which teaches that Christ died for His people. It is also against justice since it asserts the double punishment of sin, those who are eternally punished are punished for sin that has already been punished in Christ. The danger of devising, using and approving human, non-inspired materials of praise in the worship of God in place of those inspired and provided by the Holy Spirit (Psalms 1-150) is clearly demonstrated by such heresies. All put together it makes little theological sense. Few may realise what errors they take on their lips in singing such hymns, others imbibe them through an emotional attachment to such words.

What is the kenotic theory?
Wesley may well have derived the second error from Moravian influences, particularly Count von Zinzendorf (1702-1760). Dorner, summarises the Moravian"s views "we assume Zinzendorf's idea to have been that the self-conversion into a human germ, which then appropriated to itself material elements from Mary, so that the Son of God woke up to life in Mary a man." Charles" brother John Wesley seems to have had a more orthodox view of Philippians 2:6–8 stating that Christ "veiled his fullness from the eyes of men and angels; "taking," and by that very act emptying himself, "the form of a servant; being made in the likeness of man," a real man, like other men... "becoming obedient" to God, though equal with him" Sermon 85 "On Working out our own Salvation". Charles Wesley's view appears to be similar to the Lutheran theologian Gottfried Thomasius (1802 - 75), who argued that there are two kinds of divine attributes, internal/ethical (love, joy) and external (omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.). The eternal Son "set aside" the external attributes and revealed the internal “love”. This was also the view of A M Fairbairn in “The Place of Christ in Modern Theology” (1893).

There have been various ways of asserting kenoticism. All in some way maintain the idea that the divine nature was in some way essentially adjusted and limited by the incarnation. The kenoticism of the 19th century Tübingen theologians was that the divine Logos limited himself in becoming incarnate. For instance, kenotic theorists maintain that Christ as God was not omniscient and did not know the time of the end of the world (Mark 13:32) he was limited by his human limits of knowledge. The eternally pre-existent Logos was brought within the limitations of finite personality. There is therefore a connection between kenoticism and theopaschitism since the latter also teaches that the incarnation has changed the nature of Deity, in this case that it imports passibility or the ability to suffer into the divine nature. These are a selection of the variations among those that espouse some form of kenotic theory:

1.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of His divine consciousness,”
2.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of the eternity-form of His being,”
3.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of the relative attributes of His Deity (omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence),”
4.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of the integrity of infinite Divine existence,”
5.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of the Divine activity,”
6.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of the actual exercise of His Divine prerogatives.”
7.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself of all the divine attributes”
8.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself by giving up the independent use of His divine attributes.”
9.The Eternal Son “emptied Himself because self-limitation was a natural principle within the eternal trinity between Son and Father”

Some of these are not at all easy to follow. The Baptist theologian A H Strong in his Systematic Theology, took the view that this self-emptying referred to the laying aside of “the independent exercise of the divine attributes”. He continues to elaborate on this however, “Omniscience gives up all knowledge but that of the child, the infant, the embryo, the infinitesimal germ of humanity. Omnipotence gives up all power but that of the impregnated ovum in the womb of the Virgin. The Godhead narrows itself down to a point that is next to absolute extinction”. The kenotic theory has led to many unguarded rhetorical remarks that are unfitting in dealing with the mystery of godliness, that God was manifest in the flesh. It is still very popular at the present time. The Macarthur Study Bible comments: “Though Christ had all the rights, privileges and honours of deity...His attitude was not to cling to those or His position but to be willing to give them up for a season”.

Some paraphrases taking liberty with the very words of God, have sought to enforce the kenosis theory. J B Phillips renders this, "For he, who had always been God by nature, did not cling to his privileges as God"s equal, but stripped Himself of every advantage by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born a man." Moffatt makes it to read, "Though he was divine by nature, he did not set store upon equality with God, but emptied himself by taking the nature of a servant; born in human guise and appearing in human form."

Criticism
It is vital that we understand that this does not so much concern the interpretation of Philippians chapter 2, rather it concerns the fundamental question as to how the Lord Jesus Christ is God and Man and what the nature of God is. The kenotic theory amounts to a redefinition of God. If the Eternal Son "suspended" His omnipresence and omniscience until His ascension then such attributes must be able to be limited indeed put in abeyance without affecting the true divine nature of God. How can kenotic theorists be sure that these attributes were resumed after the ascension? How could one member of the Trinity suspend such aspects of the Godhead since the Trinity work in harmony rather than independently? Presumably the theory does not maintain that the whole Godhead suspended omnipotence etc. during the incarnation yet it allows for this as a possibility. The truth is that omnipotence, omniscience etc. are not "rights" or "prerogatives" that God possesses but rather what He is. The divine essence is immortal, invisible, only wise. Moreover, God is unchangeable He cannot change in His divine being and essence without ceasing to be God. Any suggestion that through the incarnation the divine nature changed can only mean the claim that God ceased to be God.

The kenotic Christ is not truly the Eternal Son, "by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high" (Heb 1:2-3). It was only the one who was God omnipotent creator and sustainer of all things who could have "by himself purged our sins". He was the "fullness of the Godhead bodily" (Col. 2:9). Christ could refer to Himself as the “Son of Man which is in heaven” (John 3:13). How was this so if he was not omnipresent?

The Chalcedonian Creed expresses the orthodox doctrine of the person of Christ "at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one substance with the Father as regards his Godhead... one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ". The kenotic theory seriously errs from this because it does not confess the incarnate Son to have been complete in Godhead and to have had the same substance with the Father as regards his Godhead. The kenotic theorists also regard the natures as being subject to change (contrary to Heb 13:8) and confusion.

The Eternal Son emptied himself of nothing. He did not leave behind Him His divinity or His power, or any of His attributes. He made himself of no reputation by taking the form of a servant, He emptied Himself not by subtraction but by addition, by taking a human nature into union with His own divine person. It was not the essential glory, the glory which He had with the Father before the world began, that he laid aside but only the manifest revealed glory before men. The essential glory remained while the external revealed glory was veiled but not limited in any significant or essential way. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. Despite the veil of flesh those with Spirit-given faith could perceive the essential glory, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, (the glory as of the only begotten from the Father) full of grace and truth". “No man can see God at any time” in His essential glory, thus His glory was revealed in various ways at different times. “The only begotten son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him”. The theophanies of the Old Testament where the Eternal Son appeared as the Angel of the Lord and in the likeness of human flesh are instances of a different revelation of that glory. His glory was revealed through his miracles (John 2:11). There was a glory revealed at the transfiguration yet Christ was hid from even his disciples on the road to Emmaus. We can speak therefore of the revealed divine glory of Christ being in part concealed or veiled by flesh as it were, and so to some extent laid aside before men when he took the form of a servant.

Translating the AV: John Bois' Notes

In the previous article on the life and labours of John Bois we followed him until his death in 1643. Before he died, however, he prepared his last will and testament in which he first bequeathed his soul 'unto the hands of almighty God, from whom I first received it, nothing doubting but that he will restore it unto me again at the general resurrection'. Bois also made clear instructions for the preservation of his papers, which recorded a lifetime of study in the languages of the Scriptures and amongst these were the notes of all the proceedings of the revision committee of the Authorised Version. Anthony Walker, who wrote the biography of John Bois, tells us that while the work of the revision was being done 'he [Bois], and he only took notes of their proceedings, which he diligently kept to his dying day'. These notes were lost from 1688 until 1964, when Professor Ward Allen located a handwritten copy among the papers of William Fulham, a seventeenth century antiquarian and collector, whose papers were in the Corpus Christi College Library at Oxford University.

In 1969 the notes were published and remain in print (Translating For King James: Notes Made by a Translator of King James's Bible, trans. and ed. by Ward Allen, Vanderbilt University Press, 156pp, pbk, $19.95 ISBN 0-8265-1246-1). They run to thirty-nine pages and are the only record of some of the deliberations and preferences of the translators, most especially the twelve members of the revision committees, covering the text from Romans to Revelation. (Ward Allen has also, together with Edward C. Jacobs, collated the scribal notes in a copy of the Bishops’ Bible used by the translators to record revisions for the Gospels, The Coming of the King James Gospels: A Collation of the Translators’ Work-in-Progress, University of Arkansas Press, 1995). Since Ward Allen published the notes another earlier copy has been discovered and has been compared with Allen’s copy by David Norton in 'John Bois’s Notes on the Revision of the King James Bible New Testament: A New Manuscript' (The Library, 1996, 18/4, pp.328-346). Norton comments that Bois’s notes, 'give a unique insight into the way the translators worked, and they show above all the translators’ sensitivity to the nuances of the Greek and the level of scholarship they brought to their work' (p. 328). The notes are crucial as a testimony to the piety, learning and scrupulous diligence of the translators in searching into the language and meaning of the Scriptures. In what follows there are a sample of passages in which the notes testify to this.

Carefulness
One way in which we see the endeavours of the translators to follow strict faithfulness to the letter of Scripture is in passages where there are various possible interpretations which are not resolved by the grammar of the Greek. In such instances the translators refused to impose a translation which would favour one single interpretation above other possibilities. In 1 Peter 1:7 we find the phrase 'that the trial of your faith...might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ'. The question of interpretation relates to the words 'unto praise' and who the praise would be directed to? Since it is 'your faith', should it also be 'your praise'? Or is the praise to God alone? As Ward Allen notes the Geneva and the Bishop's Bible had added extra words such as 'your' or 'to be unto you' in order to interpret the praise as accruing to the believer. The AV, however, followed Tyndale in translating the words simply as they are in the Greek without additions. John Bois records in his note the alternatives 'that is to say, praise of God, or your praise'. He believed that the grammar of the Greek gave no authority for making explicit either interpretation. This was not a desire for obscurity, however, but a refusal to impose interpretation in translation. In recognition of this, Bois adds 'We have not thought that the indefinite sense ought to be defined'. It should be noted in passing that at least the Geneva and Bishop's Bible translations indicated the extra words by brackets or italics whereas many modern translations (particularly those wedded to a paraphrasing 'thought for thought' mode of translation) simply decide upon what they think the writer means and then impose that interpretation in their own words.

Another question of interpretation arose in considering Hebrews 2:9 'we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour'. As Bois puts it 'it is uncertain whether the suffering of death should be considered as an argument of the humility of Christ , or as a cause of glory'. In other words should it read that Christ was crowned with glory and honour as a reward because of the suffering of death or should it read that Christ humbled himself by taking a human nature (made a little lower than the angels) in order that he should enter into the ultimate humiliation of the suffering of death? Both are truth, but which is the truth taught by the text? Simply rearranging the commas would render either possible. In part the interpretation centred on how the Greek word 'dia' (translated 'for' above) should be translated. As Bois shows, it can be rendered 'through', 'for' or 'for the sake of' or even 'by'. Those who favoured either could both appeal to Phil. 2:8-9 where both doctrines are set forth. The simple word 'for' was chosen ultimately and the translation favours the view that the suffering of death in this verse is more closely related to Christ's humiliation than his exaltation, nevertheless the margin gives the alternative possibility of translating 'dia' with the word 'by' which would tend to the other interpretation. This reveals the evenhandedness and carefulness of the translators. As the Preface says they 'sought the truth rather than their own praise'.

The translators used the margin to include what they termed 'diversity of signification and sense' and a close study of the notes shows how the the margin was used in order to supply a secondary or fuller meaning to the words translated in the text (e.g. Phil 2:20; 1 Tim1:6). In Hebrews 5:7 there is a difficult verse to render which speaks of the prayers offered by Christ in the days of his flesh, he was heard 'in that he feared'. Bois' notes reveal that there are two difficulties in these words. The Greek word 'eulabeian' in context could mean fear, reverence or piety. The Greek word 'apo' could mean from, after, out of, because of. The translation 'in that he feared' allows the interpretation that Christ was heard in the expression of his fears, so as to be saved from his fear or that he was heard because of his reverential Godward fear, which is reinforced by the marginal note 'or for his piety'. The New King James Version asserts without question and without alternative, 'because of his godly fear'. It may well be that this is the correct interpretation, but it is clear that the AV translators shrank from imposing it upon the text as the only possibility.

We ought also to note the carefulness of the translators to the literal sense of Scripture. Instead of rendering the thought they sought to render the words as far as possible. In relation Hebrews 13:3 'Remember...them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body' they noted that the idea behind the last clause was 'as being even men yourselves' and 'as even yourselves enduring adversity with them', but Bois notes that the most literal is 'as being yourselves also in a body' and it is the most literal that they chose. Again the most literal rendering does not narrow down the options of interpretation and is therefore a more careful and faithful way of dealing with the words of Scripture.

Knowledge of Greek
The notes that John Bois has left are also crucial because they show the fallacy of many modern assumptions about the 'limited' knowledge of Greek that they suppose the translators of the AV to have possessed. An interesting story of how the same mistake was made in the seventeenth century is often told about Dr Richard Kilbye who was Oxford Professor of Hebrew, and reckoned among the foremost Hebraists of his day. One Lord’s Day Dr Kilbye heard a young preacher spend most of his sermon criticising several words as they were translated in the then recent translation. The preacher painstakingly gave three reasons why the Greek word should not be translated as found in the AV. Later that evening both the preacher and Dr Kilbye were invited to a meal. Dr Kilbye began to explain that the translators were very much aware of the preacher’s three reasons and had given them careful consideration, but they had thirteen other reasons that were far more compelling for making the translation that they did.

Men still leap to such assumptions. Take for instance 2 Corinthians 2:17 'For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.' The Greek word translated 'corrupt' is the word 'kapeleuontes'. James R. White in The King James Only Controversy claims that 'if the KJV translators were alive today they would gladly admit that 'peddle' is a better translation than 'corrupt,' and would adopt it themselves.' (p.114). Edwin H. Palmer, who was the Executive Secretary of the NIV Committee on Bible Translation, regards 2 Corinthians 2:17 as an obscurity in the AV. (The NIV: The Making of a Contemporary Translation, Kenneth Barker, editor. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986], p.149). John Bois' note shows that the translators were in fact aware of the various shades of meaning present in the word kapelountes. 'v. 17. kapeleuontes] [being a retail dealer, playing tricks, corrupting] i.e. notheuonetes [adultering]. kapelos is derived apo tou kallunein ton pelon [from glossing over lees] by corrupting and adultering wine.' (p. 51).

It was commonplace for wine merchants to water down their wine, mixing it with new harsh wine in order to pass the product off as vintage quality which would be more expensive (see New Testament Metaphors, Anthony Byatt, Pentland Press, 1995, pp.259-60). Thus the word 'kapeleuontes', as Bois rightly notes, has a double meaning of deceitful adulterating and cheating. The most important notion is not the profit made from the adulteration but the corruption itself. One can peddle the word for profit without necessarily seeking to adulterate it. Thus the AV translation is to be preferred over against that of the NIV and NKJV. The translation 'corrupt' is also borne out by the word 'sincerity' (Greek 'eilikrines') used later in the verse which is a word that literally signifies freedom from impurities or complete purity, something that has been held up to the light to confirm its purity. The English word sincere had an original meaning of pure and unmixed.

Various lexicons show that while the word can mean a peddler or retailer it was also used to refer to one who sells with deceit, a corrupter. According to Bauer's Greek-English Lexicon Of The New Testament And Other Early Christian Literature, p.403 the word came to mean 'to adulterate'. Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon Of The New Testament, [Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 1977 edition], pp.324-325) states, 'But as peddlers were in the habit of adulterating their commodities for the sake of gain . . . (the word) was also used as synonymous with 'to corrupt, to adulterate.' Kittle's Theological Dictionary Of The New Testament notes that it has the meaning 'to falsify the word (as the 'kapelos' purchases pure wine and then adulterates it with water) by making additions...This refers to the false Gospel of the Judaizers.' (Vol. III., p. 605).The early Church Fathers understood the verse to refer to those who corrupt God's word. Athanasius wrote: 'Let them therefore be anathema to you, because they have, 'corrupted the word of truth.' (Defence Against the Arians, III:49.) Gregory-Nazianzus alludes to 2 Corinthians 2:17 using the word 'corrupt:' 'And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as the many, able to corrupt the word of truth, and mix the wine, which maketh glad the heart of man, with water, mix, that is, our doctrine with what is common and cheap, and debased, and stale, and tasteless, in order to turn the adulteration...' (In Defence Of His Flight To Pontus, II:46)

In places the knowledge of Greek and its wider usage possessed by the translators is certainly illuminating. The note for 1 Peter 5:5 shows that the word that the apostle uses to exhort Christians to 'clothe' themselves with humility relates to a white outer garment worn by slaves which identified them as such. Ward Allen notes that previous translations had all understood the requirement to be an inward ornamentation with humility whereas in the light of this knowledge of the word and the context the AV shows that it relates very much to our outward conduct and testimony.

Doctrine
Bois' notes tell us much more about the translators, however, than their linguistic erudition. Bois often interprets and comments on certain passages in his notes showing a perceptive grasp of vital doctrine. For instance in relation to justification by faith alone Bois comments on Romans 3:25-26 'to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus'. Bois shows how God's justice and mercy are both perfectly fulfilled in justification, and that the meaning of the verse is that 'the justice of God stands whole, whether we contemplate sins having been pardoned, or indeed to be pardoned, and which are now pardoned'. 'Scarcely another place is to be found more apt to this point, so that there is exhibited how well the justice of God joins with His mercy: He is dikaios [righteous], i.e. at the same time just; and nevertheless dikaioei [He justifies], i.e. He justifies the sinner, i.e. He is merciful in the highest degree'.

There are also useful reflections upon passages that are difficult doctrinally. Commenting on Hebrews 12:15 'Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God' Bois says that these 'words seem to be said to those specifically, to whom the care has been assigned of ecamining the habits and life of others, that none through negligence be deprived of, etc. or that none absent them selves from the grace of God. by charitos tou Theou [the grace of God] I understand the public proclamation of the Gospel'. In other words Bois does not interpret these words in an Arminian way, that is is possible to fall from saving grace but that it is dangerous to forsake the means of grace and the word of God's grace negligently as in Hebrews 10:25.
In relation to Hebrews 12:17, Bois gives his understanding of the difficulty in relation to Esau not being able to find any place for repentance, though he sought it diligently with tears. It is not to be understood that someone such as Esau can forego repentance though they earnestly desire it rather 'he could not bend the mind of his father, or persuade him, so that having altered his determination he would recall and rescind the blessing with which he had blessed Jacob'. The margin of the AV confirms this with the explanation 'or way to change his mind'

Piety
At times, Bois cannot resist commenting in such a way on the text that he not only explains but applies its truth. There is the delightful aside on the words 'there is none occasion of stumbling in him' 1 John 2:10 - 'the placid course of him who remains in the light'. He notes solemnly upon James 1:15 which describes the progress of sin: 'Suggestion, Delight, Agreement, Act, the four steps of sin'. He is also practical in his comments, such as on Romans 12:10 'In honour preferring one another', which is elucidated as, 'let each one of you strive to prevail in giving honour to another'. On Ephesians 6:4, he notes as an experienced father notes 'it falls out from too great austerity that children are angry with their parents, and bear their authority reluctantly and impatiently. In relation to Romans 14:5 'Let every man be persuaded in his own mind', the note reads 'let each one acquire for himself true knowledge from the word of God, so that without doubt be may perceive what the will of God is'. Such comments show that this was not a scientific and detached enterprise for the translators but a humble and devout search after the truth with a real endeavour after the practical outworking of it.

These notes resolve some but not all questions of interest in relation to the reasons for the translation of certain words and passages in the AV. This brief book provides interest to those who wish to know more about the translators and the translation of the AV but also gives genuine insight into the Scriptures, and so may be of use in reference for ministers and students of the Bible. We should remember the translators not simply for their eminent scholarship but also for their piety, 'in what sort did these assemble? In the trust of their own knowledge, or of their sharpness of it, or deepness of judgment, as it were in an arm of flesh? At no hand. They trusted in him that hath the key of David, opening and no man shutting; they prayed to the Lord'. The translators were conscious of their indebtedness to the help of God in their studies, acknowledging that it was 'through the good hand of the Lord upon us' that they succeeded in their work. As one of the 'poor instruments to make God's Holy Truth to be yet more and more known', we are indebted to John Bois for having preserved a small portion of the labours that were required for so great a work.

The English Standard Version in historical perspective

In order to understand the origins of the ESV we must go back to the Revised Version of 1881. The claims that were made for the RV, especially in the USA, are of great interest. The publication of this version was a huge media event, with newspapers competing against each other to print extracts. The Chicago Tribune ran the headline that 107,000 copies of its printing had been sold in 4 days. The New York Evening Post lauded the revision as a New Testament that needed neither commentary nor glossary, rather like more recent versions that have claimed: “now no interpretation needed”. Philip Schaff, chairman of the American committee, called it the year of the republication of the gospel, claiming that the RV brought modern Bible readers “as near to Christ as the Christians of the first generation” (In discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant battles over translating the Bible, Peter J Thuesen, Oxford University Press, 1999, p.106). Schaff, in common with modern Bible translators, was not however, averse to mixing a little commercialism with his idealistic faith and less than modest advertisements. Enthused perhaps by the level of consumer demand at the publication of the RV he suggested that updating it every 50 years or so would pique the curiosity of the general public, with satisfactory results. As it happened a revision was forthcoming within just 20 years in the American Standard Version of 1901. A revision of this had been successfully accomplished in the publication of the RSV New Testament in 1946, not quite 50 years. With the publication of the ESV, as a revision of the RSV in 2001, things are keeping to schedule.

The momentum for the RSV had been building since the 1920s when perceived advances in biblical scholarship were deemed to justify retranslation. The mainline denominations responded with alacrity and pursuing the goal of closer denominational integration they imitated the ecumenical structure of the RV translation committee. Schaff had exulted in “a commonwealth...of Christian life and Christian scholarship which transcends all sectarian boundaries” (p.47). For all this, however, only the American Baptists formally endorsed the RV. The RSV ran no such risks in being promoting by the National Council of Churches. The dedication service of the RSV New Testament in 1946 included a prayer referring to that version as “a standard for the Christian Church whereby she may be corrected in error, healed of her divisions, and made One in Christ so that the world may believe”. Ultimately the imprimatur of the NCC was their justification for referring to it as “the fifth authorised English Bible”. It was estimated that upwards of $500,000.00 was spent to promote the advertisement and sale of the RSV. On the first day of publication of the complete RSV Bible 30September, 1952 it sold one million copies.

On receiving his specially presented copy President Truman predicted “peace for all mankind” if only the Bible could be successful behind the Iron Curtain. The Cold War background is a vital aspect of the reception of the RSV: it was in fact tarred with the un-American or Communist brush by dead-end McCarthyist investigations into the NCC. A conspiratorial climate ensured that the decreeing power of a seemingly totalitarian “super-Church” upon the Scriptures was viewed with immense suspicion. Ultimately the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) launched their own flagship in this analogue of the Space race of the Cold War: the NIV bore their de facto imprimatur.

A significant dispute arose concerning Isaiah 7:14, where the RSV rendered the Hebrew word “almah” as “young woman” rather than “virgin” thus putting the scientific method into conflict with theology. The NIV translators were sure to have the word “virgin” in their version.
Yet, ironically this allegedly conservative version made a distinct break with the AV in terms of using dynamically equivalent language whereas the RSV had sought to retain a certain connection. The ESV at least attempts to restore the link with the AV and have some formal correspondence with the words that it is translating. If the NIV made its position at the expense of the RSV, the promoters of the ESV are now seeking to make use of criticisms of the NIV to further its position in the marketplace. As various studies have indicated, the ESV does not always achieve its goal in this way, however and the claim of an essentially literal translation is to be interpreted rather ambiguously.

Both the RV and RSV were highly academic productions. A. H. Nichols observes that the RV and ASV ‘gained acceptance only amongst the scholarly elite who could appreciate the translation because of their familiarity with the original languages’ (A. H. Nichols, Translating the Bible: A Critical Analysis of E. A. Nida’s Theory of Dynamic Equivalence and its Impact upon Recent Bible Translations (unpublished Ph.D thesis, Sheffield University, 1996, p. 8). The Preface to the RSV trumpeted "the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures"
claimed that in Biblical translation there can be such a thing as "linguistic science" which "knows no theology" and that "those of the most contradictory view can meet on common ground devoid of polemic, agreed that Hebrew words mean such and such, and their inflection and syntactical relations imply this or that."

Those evangelical academics who always had a predilection for the RSV haven't let go and now want to popularise it. The ESV is another instance of the Academy dictating to the Church. It is somewhat about the coming of age of evangelical academia. The Translation Oversight committee membership reads as a Who's Who of evangelical academics. There is an inordinate emphasis on contemporary academic pretensions in General Editor JI Packer’s rhapsody of praise for the ESV: “We are drawing on commentaries which roll off the press in great numbers these days. We are drawing on the increased knowledge of culture of the ancient world, which modern study has given us. We are drawing on the fact that computers now enable us to search the English Bible, the whole of the Hebrew heritage, the whole of the Greek heritage that has come down to us. It makes it a great deal easier for us to handle particular words and make decisions about how best to translate them. And in all these ways I think the ESV is going to go beyond its predecessors”. We are inclined to ask: “All this in a lightly revised translation dating from 1952?”

The ESV has been estimated to be 97-98% identical to the RSV, retaining some of its esoteric textual decisions and deliberate undermining of trinitarian passages whilst mainly revising areas of gender specific language and removing the remaining thees and thous. O.T Allis regarded the RSV as a new translation with lax views of plenary inspiration and not a revision of the AV. R. Laird Harris wrote:
“It is a curious study to check the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, a monument of higher critical scholarship, and note how every important Old Testament passage purporting to predict directly the coming of Christ has been altered so as to remove this possibility ... It is almost impossible to escape the conclusion that the admittedly higher critical bias of the translators has operated in all of these places.” Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible: An Historical and Exegetical Study, p. 58.

From a historical point of view it is exceedingly ironic that the RSV disguised is being touted as the answer to the NIV (which was itself supposed to be the answer to the RSV). It is even more strange that evangelicals are keen to support financially the organisation they once viewed with so much disdain and is now only more opposed than ever to their fundamental principles and professed convictions. The ESV bought the rights to the RSV from the National Council of Churches (the copyright holder of the RSV) are as liberal and apostate as you get in theology and principles, supporting same-sex marriage etc. The inside cover of every ESV proclaims: "The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright Division Of Christian Education Of The National Council Of Christian Churches Of Christ In The U.S.A. All Rights Reserved.” These evangelicals are now turning round the fortunes of a liberal translation that had declined to 5 percent of the USA market share in Bibles by 1990.

This radical shift almost reads like a parable of the change in evangelical subculture. The RSV controversy in America, largely a struggle between the mainline Protestant Churches and the evangelicals who opposed them, has been turned right around through the capitulation of evangelical academia to the liberal scholarship that they are breathlessly pursuing. The 'success' of evangelicals attaining to university chairs is rather too similar to their success in being made bishops within the Church of England. It is a 'success' arrived at by the bypath of compromise and silence in relation to error. In No Place for Truth (1993), David F Wells warned of the potential theological corruption of evangelicalism in this way. Robert L Thomas and F. David Farnell have written The Jesus Crisis: The Inroads of Historical Criticism into Evangelical Scholarship (1998). John F. MacArthur writes in the Forward; "Some of Evangelicalism’s best-known theologians and seminary and college professors are now debating among themselves ideas that would have been deemed entirely nonnegotiable before the last quarter of the twentieth century. Destructive applications of redaction theories, source criticism, literary speculations, and so on have always been the theological liberals’ stock in trade. However, to see evangelicals applying this sort of Historical Criticism in order to cast doubt on the authenticity or historicity of the biblical text is unprecedented. Tragically, the prevailing attitude among evangelical scholars today closely mirrors the extreme tolerance that left the door wide open for Historical Criticism in the leading mainline schools and denominations of a hundred years ago." Now we have a bible prepared by higher critics only lightly revised by evangelical scholars.

The ESV promoters and translators attempt to align themselves with the Tyndale-King James legacy, and no doubt are closer than the NIV and others in this, but they are still very far adrift and the legacy that they are closer to is particularly dubious in its treatment of the Word of God. It is unlikely that the ESV will become the standard bible for evangelicals, but even if it did it will not signal an upward trend but will rather consolidate defections.

Rutherford and the Gospel Offer

Excerpts from Trial and Triumph of Faith

• Now, the special intent of the gospel is to bring men to put a high and rich price upon Christ, and this is one gospel-offer: What thinkest thou of so excellent a one as Christ? What wouldst thou part with? What wouldst thou do or suffer for Christ?
  
• Faith can stand upon one foot, even on a general word; hence, this is a gospel word in the Prophets, which requireth faith, Turn to the Lord for he is merciful, (Jer. 3:12; Joel 2:13; John 4:2). And because a general promise received with heart-adherence and confidence giveth glory to God; and if it be holden forth to a humbled soul, who is now within the lists and bounds of grace, and, for any thing that the person thus laden with sin knoweth on the contrary, (for the secrets of election and reprobation belong to the Lord) Christ mindeth and intendeth to him salvation, therefore he is to believe.
  
• This would be considered, that unbelief breaketh with Christ first, before Christ break with the unbeliever; and the elect of God findeth no more, nor any higher favour in the kind of external means to open the Lamb's book of life, which is sealed and closed with God's own hand, than the commandment of believing. Now, when our Lord maketh offer of the kingdom of sons, to slaves, and casteth his jewel of Christ offered in the gospel, in the lap and bosom of a bastard, whatever be the Lord's secret decree and purpose in so doing, the bastard is to take God at his word, and to catch the opportunity of God's love in so far; and if he do it not, the gospel offer to the reprobate being a treaty of peace, then the treaty breaketh off first upon his side; for Christ cometh within a mile of mercy, to meet the sinner, and the sinner cometh not the fourth part of a mile, yea, not half a step of love and thankful obedience, to meet Christ; and so, Christ killeth the unbeliever with the sweetness of the preventing courtesy of offered mercy.
  
• But if the sinner be wearied and laden, and seeth, though through a cloud only, Christ only must help and save, if not, he is utterly and eternally lost, What is there upon Christ's part to hinder thee to believe, O guilty wretch? Oh, (saith he,) I fear Christ only offereth himself to me, but he mindeth no salvation to me.
  —Answer. Is not this to raise an evil report and slander on the holy One of Israel? For Christ's offer is really an offer, and in so far, it is real love, though it cannot infer the love of election to glory, yet the total denial of this offer openeth up the black seal of reprobation to heathens without the church. And therefore it is love to thee, if thou be humbled for sin; (2.) And have half an eye to the unsearchable riches of gospel mercy; (3.) And be self-condemned; (4.) And have half a desire of Christ: thou mayest expound love by love, and lay hold on the promise, and be saved. An error of humble love to Christ, is no error.
  Though it were true, that you were upon the borders of hell, yet the gospel, though it except you from actual mercy, yet excepts you not from the duty of believing and coming to Christ; and though such think and imagine, that they believe Christ is able to save and redeem them, only they doubt of his will, yet the truth is, the doubt of unbelief is more of the power of mercy and infinite grace in Christ than of his will; and my reason is, "that whosoever believeth, hath set to his seal that God is true;" (John 3:33;) and "He that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of his Son." (1 John 5:10.)
  
• It is true, the gospel excepteth no man from pardon, and all that hear the gospel are to be wearied and laden, and to receive Christ by faith, as if God intended to save them. But the promises of the gospel are not simply universal, as if God intended and purposed, that all and every one should be actually redeemed and saved in Christ, as Arminians teach; and so God excepteth in his own hidden decree, not a few, though he reveal not in the gospel who they are, yet he revealeth in the gospel the general, that "many are called, but few are chosen:"
  And I grant, there is no ground for any one man not to believe upon this ground, because some are reprobated from eternity, and it may be I am one of those, for the contrary is a sure logic; many are chosen to life eternal, and it may be that I am one of those. (2.) It is most untrue, that Christ belongeth to sinners as sinners, for then, Christ should belong to all unbelievers, how obstinate soever, even to those that sin against the Holy Ghost. Nay, Christ belongeth only to sinners elected to glory, as elected to glory in regard of God's gracious purpose, and He belongeth only to believing sinners, as believing, in regard of actual union with Christ, (Eph. 3:17, Gal. 2:20). (3.) It is false that sinners, as sinners, do receive Christ, for so, Judas and all sinners should receive Christ: now the Scripture showeth, that believers only receive him, (John 1:12, Gal. 2:20, Eph. 3:17). (4.) It is false, that sinners, as sinners, believe in Christ. This way of libertines is a broad way for sorcerers, thieves, murderers, parricides, idolaters, remaining in that damnable state, to believe; whereas sinners, as such, sinners thus and thus qualified, are to believe; that is, humbled, wearied, and self-condemned sinners only, are to believe, and come to Christ. It is true, all sinners are obliged to believe, but to believe after the order of free grace; that is, that they be first self-lost and sick, and then be saved by the physician.
  
• If Christ be sent for lost Israel, and say in the gospel, 'Who will go with me?' and say to thee, 'My Father the King sent me, his own Son, to bring thee up to his house,' why, but thou shouldst go? When old Jacob saw the chariots and messengers that Prince Joseph, his own son, yet living, had sent to fetch him, "His heart failed for joy." Seest thou the chariot of Pharaoh paved with love? make, then, for the journey. The home we have here is a taking lover; why, but thou mayest say, I cannot stay here, the king hath sent for me.
  Christ's act of dying was a special law: "This commandment received I of my Father, that I should lay down my life." (John 10:18.) (3.) By his death and resurrection he is made a Prince by law, and hath law and authority to forgive sins, (Acts 5:31; Matt. 9:6); and power to give life eternal, (John 17:2,)—and rule all by a new law in his new kingdom. (Matt. 28:8.) Our heaven now, is by law and a special commission; but the gospel is a general: he brought all God's secrets from heaven; and in his special commission, Christ hath, as it were, private instructions: Save such and such persons, not any other, not all Israel, but the lost sheep; not the goats. There is a great mystery, how there be no double-dealing in the gospel, and two contrary wills in God.
  
• He offereth, in the gospel, life to all, so they believe; and God mindeth to work faith, and intendeth to bestow life on a few only; like a king's son coming to a prison of condemned men, with offered pardons to all, upon condition they accept of them; but yet he singleth out some, and persuadeth them to lay hold on the Father's grace; and by the head taketh them out, and leaveth all the rest to justice. Yet is it no greater mystery than this, "Many are called, but few are chosen." So Christ's sending with his commission, cometh under a two-fold notion: one is, in the intention of the Evangel; the other is, in the intention of him who proposeth the Evangel to men,—I mean, God's intention to give faith and effectual grace. The former is nothing but God's moral complacency of grace, revealing an obligation that all are to believe if they would be saved; and upon their own peril be it, if they refuse Christ. This is the heart and mind of Christ to persons, revealing two things: (1.) Men's duty; (2.) God's grace to give life eternal to believers. But the latter is not a moral will in God only, but a real physical will, (to speak so,) according to the which, Christ effectually, strongly layeth bands of love, cords of sweet enforcing grace, to persuade the soul to take Jesus Christ. Christ cometh to the mind under a higher apprehension, with his rainy and wet hair, knocking, and again knocking, to show his face in such soul-redeeming beauty and excellency, as the soul must be taken captive, subdued, and overcome with the love of Christ; as the spouse is so wrought on with the beauty, grace, riches, endowments of excellency, words of love of such an husband, that she is forced to say, 'I have no power, neither heart nor hand to refuse you.' Now, the former notion of the gospel is enough to lay the obligation of believing on all; so as though the gospel reveal not God's purpose of election, (that is only and formally revealed in, and by God's efficacious working of faith, called the inward calling,) yet it saith this to all, 'You are all to believe no less, than if there were not any reprobated persons amongst you.' If, therefore, any despairing ones, as Cain, yea, and many weak ones, refuse to believe, on this ground, Why should I believe? the gospel hath excepted me, it belongeth not to me, I am a reprobate,—they are deluded, for the gospel formally revealeth neither the Lord's decree of election nor reprobation. The embracing of the gospel, and the final rejection thereof, can speak to both these; but that is neither the gospel voice, nor the gospel spirit, that revealeth any such bad tidings.
  

The communication fallacy in modern Bible translation

Dynamic equivalence

Eugene Nida a Bible translator devised the theory of dynamic equivalence in the early 1960s. Since then he and his theory have been a domineering presence in the American Bible Society, the United Bible Societies, and Wycliffe Bible Translators - in short, influencing almost completely the structures and institutions of modern evangelical Bible translation. Dr. Anthony H. Nichols completed a PhD thesis on this very issue, he observes that the "literature on Bible translation in particular over the last half century is dominated by Eugene A. Nida and his proteges in the United Bible Societies (UBS) and Wycliffe Bible Translators".

The dynamic equivalence (sometimes called "functional equivalence") philosophy of translation undergirds many/most modern Bible versions (exceptions to a fair extent are the ESV, RSV, ASV/NASV and NKJV). The goal and method of dynamic equivalence is to produce an effect in the modern-day reader that is exactly equivalent to that registered by the very first readers in their culture. The translator must have the same "empathetic" spirit of the author and the ability to impersonate the author's demeanor, speech, and ways with the "utmost verisimilitude". All of this intuition is required in order to express by a telepathic process, the thoughts of the author as he himself would have, had he been writing in the language and culture into which the translator is translating.

Thus, translation becomes equated with revelation, and the finished product every bit as much the Word of God as the original Greek and Hebrew, since it is the thoughts and not the words that count. Nida believes that: "God's revelation involved limitations...Biblical revelation is not absolute and all divine revelation is essentially incarnational...Even if a truth is given only in words, it has no real validity until it has been translated into life...The words are in a sense nothing in and of themselves...the word is void unless related to experience". It needs no emphasising surely, that this is entirely heterodox. Revelation is not when God has spoken but when man has received, this is presumably what makes it relative.

Modern translators of the Bible have made the rendering of its "spirit" rather than "letter" their basic assumption, and this assumption is rarely questioned even though it is decidedly untenable. An abstract distinction is drawn between the form of the Scriptures (the words used) and their content (meaning of the phrases). Nida (following the Saphir-Whorf linguistic hypothesis) continually speaks of the "essence" or "spirit" of the text as though the words were mere labels.

The distinction is fundamentally flawed, however, since as Henry Zylstra noted, "separation of truth from statement, of content from form, of idea from style, is a false and fatal separation. The form is essential to the meaning, to the understanding of it and to the communication of it". Discarding form in favour of content is the basic principle of the philosophy of dynamic equivalence, but clearly it radically "underestimates the intricate relationship between form and meaning in language" (Anthony Nichols, p.159). To "translate meaning while ignoring the way that meaning has been articulated is no translation at all but merely replacement - murdering the original instead of recreating it" (Gerald Hammond).This crudely mechanical idea "has led to a simplistic view of text, in which a particular sequence of meaning is couched in a particular linguistic form, according to the 'stylistic'preference (or, at worst, whim) of a given writer". In terms of the Bible this would mean the view (defective in its doctrine of inspiration) that the individual authors of Scripture and their mode of expression was irrelevant, accidental, or simply whimsical.

Historically, however, translation has always been understood as subordinate to the originals and dependent upon them, in the same way that streams are dependent upon their source. According to Reformed theologians such as Francis Turretin, the authority of the things/substance/content of Scripture (authoritas rerum) may be conveyed by means of accurate translation as well as in the original languages. The authority of the words of Scripture (authoritas verborum), however, may be maintained only in the words of the original languages. It is important to note that Nida's theory not only diminishes the authority of Scriptures by dismissing any significance in their original phrasing or form, it also degrades material authority. This is because material authority may be endangered by what is lost (inflections of meaning) through paraphrase and because with the original words obscured only one interpretation of them (which may be rarely true and never adequate) is instituted. Nida maintains that doctrines are in a sense culturally relative, that where substitutionary atonement has no communicable value it should be replaced by a doctrine of the atonement as simply reconciliation. It is alarmingly clear that material authority has only a tenuous existence when dynamic equivalence is rigorously applied. Material authority is destroyed when Nida tells us that part of the necessity of the translation process requires that ideas must be "modified". (On Translation, quoted Prickett, p.31).

One linguistics scholar has little time for Nida's idea of "equivalent effect": "The principle of "'equivalent effect'...involves us in areas of speculation and at times can lead to very dubious conclusions". Dr. Anthony Nichol's recent doctoral research concludes frankly that "equivalence defined in terms of receptor's response is impossible to measure". In some versions Western principles and thought forms seem to dominate making the Scriptures in effect Westernised a opposed to reflective of biblical language and culture. Dr. Nichols' highly important research investigates the influence of dynamic equivalence in several Far Eastern translations. The results are alarming: " what emerged was the immense influence of the GNB [Good News Bible] on three important non-western versions". It was concluded that "the renderings of the more traditional 'formal-correspondence' Indonesian versions were regularly more culturally appropriate [in comparison with the dynamic equivalent versions]".

It becomes readily apparent that Eugene Nida's idea of translation is one that obliterates the distinction between translation and exegesis, the latter is to be absorbed into the responsibility of translation. Nida proceeds to redefine exegesis as (the) "interpretation of a passage in terms of relevance to the present-day world, not to the biblical culture" (On Translation). In anyone else's book, however, this is hermeneutics and exegesis is the basic process of a historical-grammatical understanding of the text. Nida has simply switched the labels in pursuit of transforming the missionary and evangelist into a translator and vice versa. Dr. AH Nichols speaks of the way that Nida's notion of "equivalence" 'blurs the distinction between "translation" and "communication"'. Many versions like to promote this idea e.g. God's Word (1995) the translation published by World Bible Publishers who claim preposterously, "Now no interpretation needed. The Bible: the all-time best-seller but hardly the best understood. God's Word the revolutionary new translation that allows you to immediately understand exactly what the original writers meant".

Preaching and communication

No doubt, historically, the Bible has been widely distributed and every encouragement given that it be read. Never before, however, has its contents been tailored so brutally upon the Procrustean bed of communication. Historically, the preaching of the gospel - the personal and direct God-appointed means - has always been the primary means by which it is proclaimed. New Testament evangelism did not centre around making endless copies of Scripture portions or apostolic tracts. In our own day printed communication is not necessarily as perfect a means as we may assume. There is the problem of information-saturation and overkill through junk mail and the constant background noise of communication in our society.

It might be objected that the Bible says that it is the Word of God that produces faith. The reference is to Romans 10:17, "Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God", and it is that word "hearing" that makes us look again at the whole passage. "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call upon him whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things!" (verses 13-15, my emphasis). Why did the apostles preach? Not surely because of the pragmatic choice that the cultural situation entailed, but simply because they were "sent" and commanded by the "wisdom of God" (Luke 11:49). They were the herald and witnesses of Christ, speaking as ambassadors on his behalf: "As though God did beseech you by us", says Paul, "we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). Often in fact the apostle's preaching is spoken of as Christ himself preaching (Eph. 2:17 and 4:20-21, I Pet. 4:11).

In Scripture we find that God always deals and speaks personally, that at least always speaks through authorised representatives (Exodus 7:1). The incident of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is instructive in the midst of these issues. Reading Isaiah 53 in his chariot, he is asked "understandest thou what thou readest?" This line is happily quoted for a joke by peddlers of the modern versions in their adverts, but perhaps they might take the trouble to understand the issues that the passage presents. The eunuch was probably reading a 300 year old Greek translation but his main concern was to have someone to guide him. The literal meaning of the word that he uses, hodogetos, refers to a guide, one who shows the way. The desire is not for an exegete but a hodogete. God is gracious to provide not only a map but a guide also, as it were. A dynamically equivalent translation would not have answered the burning question, "of whom speaketh the prophet this?" Even a study bible with its peremptory explanation in the study notes would still be very far from:

"Then Philip opened his mouth, and began at the same scripture, and preached unto him Jesus" (emphasis mine).

Bible and literature distribution has been greatly blessed in the conversion of many, and the work of the Gideons is crucially significant. In general, however, we would want to be able to present the gospel personally also. While many have the ability to read, that is not at all the same thing as having either the desire or the time to do so. Handing someone a Bible does not fulfill our evangelistic responsibility towards them, it only marks its beginning. An oral presentation deals upon personal terms - the way in which God Himself always deals, seeking to confront the sinner with a personal Christ as well as a personal frame of reference.

The apostle Paul saw no problem in reaching pagans by making use of a three-hundred year old Bible translation that was written in a form of the common language that no-one spoke. Paul also wrote in this dialect and used much terminology and many Old Testament analogies that were even more culturally alien.

The apostles correctly maintained a distinction between the covenant document that God has given to the church and the church's proclamation of the good news to unbelievers. Martin Luther understood this distinction well and expressed it memorably when he spoke of the 'synagogue' as the 'book house' but the 'Church' as the 'mouth-house'. The Westminster Divines placed a similar emphasis upon preaching in the means that are effectual for salvation. Question 89 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism reads 'How is the Word made effectual to salvation?' The answer is given: 'The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching, of the Word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation'. Modern evangelicals need a higher view of both preaching and the Scriptures. The Reformed view of translations was that preaching supplied the inadequacies of translation, J. W. Beardslee III sums up the Reformed position as believing that preaching "continues the work of Bible translation; hence the importance of an educated ministry".

We are sometimes told that the incarnation is analogous to the Bible, that just as Christ came in 1st Century clothing so the Word must be translated into modern everyday idiom. Historically, however, this has been understood rather differently, Richard Sibbes advises ministers in their preaching to "take heed that they hide not their meaning in dark speeches, speaking in the clouds". Speaking of Christ's preaching Sibbes says "Our blessed Saviour, as he took our nature upon him, so he took upon him our familiar manner of speech, which was part of his voluntary abasement". Preachers cannot be held to be evangelistically inert if they fail to use a modern rewriting of the Scriptures. Noone will quarrel with the assertion that evangelistic communication must be vital and intelligible.

Edwin H Palmer (one of the NIV translators) argues emotively that it is almost unethical and unchristian for preachers to use the AV. With excessively absurd imagery Palmer importunes: "Do not give them a loaf of bread covered with an inedible, impenetrable crust, fossilized by three and a half centuries. Give them the Word of God as fresh and warm as the Holy Spirit gave it to the authors of the Bible [note the influence of Nida here, we can have the original thoughts of the authors] "For any preacher or theologian who loves God's Word to allow that word to go on being misunderstood because of the veneration of an archaic, not understood version of four centuries ago [it was 3 ½ centuries above] is inexcusable and almost unconscionable". As Don Carson has remarked, the most manipulative arguments in some of these kinds of debate are the "spiritual" ones. Noel Weeks states the issues much more clearly in the following remarks:

"Why this emphasis on simplicity in translation? Is it not a result of the fact that the prime means of converting the unbeliever has changed from the preaching and teaching of the gospel to the distribution of literature, especially of Scripture portions? [however] if the unbeliever is unable to understand the Bible as easily as his pulp novel, the cause is not lost. Let us go back to preaching the gospel as our prime means of evangelism. I cannot be convinced by arguments that Scripture must read like any other book if it is to have force. The New Testament was written in Hebraized Greek. The AV with its literalism is Hebraized English. Rather than being passed by as unreadable the Authorised Version has shaped our whole language whether people read it will ultimately depend upon whether God gives us power to preach it with boldness and conviction, rather than upon its simplicity and lack of technical words."

street English or biblical English?

^{The main mantra of modern Bible production has been the "need to communicate" the Scriptures in a "modern" idiom. Clearly none of the vast array of available versions has achieved this since the stream of new improved "more contemporary than ever" versions continues to flow, rising to a deluge. Publishers tell us the Bible must be translated into an idiom that they term "street English". The history of biblical language has proved however, that the Bible has never been inscripturated in everyday idiom: the prevalent assumption that it ought to be contradicts God's own wisdom.}

^{From the perspective of language study this obsession with "street English" is strange, since it is clear that different varieties of English do exist in different contexts. These 'varieties' are known as 'registers' and they vary according to the setting and purpose of the interaction, the relationship of those speaking together, and whether the language is spoken or written. Prof. WH Stevenson explains: "at any given time, there is more than one "English" in use. The language of the corner shop is not the language of the most "popular" journalist, and the language of the pulpit, even with the most modern of preachers installed, is different from either". Where can we find an agreed definition of "the language of today" that is spoken of so glibly in discussions about Bible versions? Rather than speak loosely about contemporary English we must be more specific in order to define the register of the English language that is in question.}

^{The English of the Authorised Version, contrary to much misleading prejudice, is "clearly a form of Modern English" (WH Stevenson, p.38). Most of its language is still part of English as currently used; indeed the AV has shaped the language. Certainly, it is an early form of modern English but it is more removed from Medieval English (Chaucer and Wycliffe) than it is from 20th century English. It has not only shaped the English language as a whole, it is the most significant influence on "religious English", the register proper for the public worship of God. Linguists Crystal and Davy observe that: "The older versions [of religious English] are of greater linguistic significance within the speech community as a whole, having had more time to become part of its 'linguistic consciousness'". Translators must therefore, pay attention to the most significant and influential versions of religious English to appreciate the local or native tradition enough. The "whole recognizable past" (CH Sisson) of those registers must be in view.}

^{A translation into the English language is simply, what the Westminster divines intended in the Westminster Confession of Faith stating that "they are to be translated into the language of every people unto which they come". In the Directory for Publick Worship the divines state that the Scriptures "shall be publickly read in the vulgar tongue, out of the best allowed translation". The divines have not changed their thinking. Contrary to the mistaken meaning that some have given to it, the term "vulgar" does not mean popular, common or low-standard. It means in the common sense of national vernacular languages (known as vulgar tongues) i.e. not Latin or other classical languages. The phrase means therefore, the local or native language. A translation must be a faithfully accurate rendering in the English language, the AV satisfies this criteria.}

^{A century after it was published, the AV was almost as out-of-date in its English as at any time afterwards. It was still readily understandable, however, as the translation in the vulgar tongue. At the time Jonathan Swift explained, the significant role that it exercised, "if it were not for the Bible and Common Prayer Book in the vulgar tongue, we should hardly be able to understand anything that was written among us an hundred years ago for those books being perpetually read in churches, have proved a kind of standard for the language, especially to the common people. I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work, than any we see in our present writings, which I take to be owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole". According to Swift, the secret of the influence borne by the AV is in the simplicity of its language.}

^{There is wide recognition that the English language is now in decline, but there is little impetus to arrest the decline. Translators, do not appreciate the possibility of enriching the language through the contact with other languages that translation brings about. Bible translators and modern-minded Christians simply throw up their hands and say "what can we do?", "we can only work with the language as it is spoken in street idiom". There is a short-termism that seems blind to the idea of exerting influence and only understands how to be shaped by the state of the language whatever the result. One of the principal translators of the New English Bible, Prof. Kenneth Grayston eptomised this attitude: "Modern English, it seems to me, is slack instead of taut, verbose and not concise, infested with this month’s cliché it seems to me a repository for the bad habits of foreigners speaking English. This is how we must speak if people are to listen and grasp what we say". According to popular evangelical thinking, the church must move the Scriptures along with the times even if that is a downward spiral. At the same time the influence of modern idiom is thought to be a Midas touch that will transform the Church entirely and guarantee evangelistic success.}

^{More and more we are cut off from the past, from the rich spiritual heritage of literature that previous generations have bequeathed to us. This is because the translators have sought to wrest religious English away from the influence of the AV. It is easy to see the effect of this on the output of modern evangelicalism whether the short-lived jingles or the badly written paperbacks and their equally brief shelf-life. As J G Vos , commented: "Secularism is like a chlorine bleach. It takes the real colour out of everything". In restricting itself to current fashionable jargon in everything (including Bible translation) aping secularist forms and language, evangelicalism has become culturally anaemic - the colour has gone from its language.}

biblical language

Modern-minded Bible translators have not only cut themselves off from four centuries of the AV and English speaking Christians; they have also cut themselves off from the entire history of the Church’s (including the Old Testament Church) approach to the language of God’s written Word. It seems clear that the language of the Old Testament differs from the more colloquial Mishnaic Hebrew, that of rabbinic oral teaching. The language of the Old Testament stood above and apart from Israelite tribal dialect as a formal language, the product of a literary tradition centuries old. There was no attempt to retranslate for individual dialects or to update the biblical text as the dialects and colloquial aspect of the language evolved. The LORD continued also to deliver God-breathed Scripture by means of this formal language. The Scriptures witness a distinct style and terminology, as one would expect given their unique subject matter. Despite past theories amongst scholars, it is clear that Hebrew survived in Israel as a robustly vernacular language through to the time of Christ, when it coexisted with Greek and Aramaic. Christ himself seems to have spoken or understood all three. In Luke chapter 4, he simply reads the scroll and then expounds the passage, there is no indication of translation into another language. Philip Edgcumbe Hughes gathers the conclusions that may be drawn concerning first-century Hebrew, particularly making use of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

"In evaluating the evidence from Qumran, Chaim Rabin, another Jerusalem scholar, declares that the Scrolls show that "the ordinary, run-of-the-mill sectarian must have understood Biblical Hebrew, much as the uneducated Arab of today understands a sermon preached in Literary Arabic" - or, one might also suggest, much as in the English-speaking world the King James Version of the Bible is still comprehensible to the average person, though future historians may decide otherwise in view of the current clamor for new translations! As James Barr has said regarding the situation in first-century Palestine, "One has to allow for the possibility that the 'common people' might be able to understand levels of discourse which they could not themselves freely produce".

In the third and second century BC the Old Testament was translated into Greek for Jews who were now Greek-speaking and resident in other parts of the world, this translation is usually referred to as the Septuagaint or LXX. This was a very important development for New Testament times because it stimulated the interest of Gentiles who might then become proselytes, or "God-fearers" as the New Testament invariably refers to them. This translation also helped the spread of the Christian message and the apostles appealed to it accordingly, so that many (but by no means all) of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from this translation. Not only is it inevitably in a literary, that is to say written rather than spoken Greek, but its language and style are also stamped with the rhythms and thought forms of the literary Hebrew that it translates. This is because the translators reshaped Greek so that it could adapt itself to Hebrew idiom, and in fact it is this type of Hebraic-Greek that the New Testament was written in. It was by no means the "street language" of the known world but rather a minority and ethnic style of a literary language. Biblical Greek is not in fact identical with the secular papyri, rather it "is a unique language with a unity and character of its own" (Nigel Turner). "This language, like the Hebrew of the OT which moulded it, was a language apart from the beginning; biblical Greek is a peculiar language, the language of a peculiar people" (Matthew Black). Nigel Turner draws the patent conclusion in developing the issue of a "Holy Ghost language" that "we now have to concede that not only is the subject matter of the Scriptures unique but so also is the language in which they came to be written".

The Hebrew scholar Robert Alter speaks of the ‘extraordinary concreteness of Biblical Hebrew’ (p.xii). Modern English versions, however, fail to acknowledge this important feature, Alter complains that they ‘have placed readers at a grotesque distance from the distinctive literary experience of the Bible in its original language’. We ought to The philosophy of dynamic equivalence entailing as it does the subjection of Scripture to its readers, provides for this since as Anthony H Nichols concludes, ‘the determinative role given to receptor response constantly jeopardises the historical "otherness" of the biblical text’ (p.159). The depreciation of form in translation, through the rejection of formal equivalence, is doubly strange in that Bible scholars have begun to see, to a greater extent than previously, that the books of the Bible are highly structured and that a close understanding of the form (particularly literary form) of a passage is crucial to exegesis and interpretation. Questing for total unambiguity the modern translators must iron out anything concrete or enigmatic, with the general result that they ‘reduce, simplify, and denature the Bible’ (Alter, pxi). ‘The modern translators and the Bible Society, confident of understanding "correctly the meaning of the original" text, have in fact shown very little interest in the literal sense of the Bible with its attendant complexity and resonances, and have instead chosen quite blatantly, interpretative paraphrases which, it appears, they feel are more culturally acceptable to modern sensibilities’. There is another more shocking aspect to this treatment of the Bible, Robert Alter calls attention to it in the following words: ‘The unacknowledged heresy underlying most modern English versions of the Bible is the use of translation as a vehicle for explaining the Bible instead of representing it in another language, and in the most egregious instances this amounts to explaining away the Bible’ (p.xi).

Apparently we need continually to insist upon what should be self-evident, that the Scriptures are different to anything else: they have an "otherness" through their historical character but even more so through their divinely inspired character. The world of biblical language is "another world, not ours, and our unaltered language won’t do insofar as it reflects our world only" (Michael Black). In translation one must come as close to the source language as possible. As has been discussed above, most modern English versions are denying and destroying the "otherness" of the Scriptures (and therefore their authority) in a highly alarming way. Without access to the original languages, how can the average English-speaking reader appreciate the unique qualities of the Scriptures and the language that they use? They are not without hope, however, since "the Authorised Version has the kind of transparency which makes it possible for the reader to see the original more clearly. It lacks the narrow interpretative bias of modern versions, and is the stronger for it" (Gerald Hammond). The latter versions decide for the reader what a verse means and inscribe their own interpretation in the biblical text during the process of "translation" to the exclusion of all other available possibilities. In the modern versions the translator stands between the reader and the original, but "through its transparency the reader of the Authorised Version not only sees the original but learns how to read it" (Hammond). In other words - the English of the AV is Biblical English. As J Gresham Machen expressed it;

"The marvel is that the truly English beauty of the King James Version is attained without any of that freedom - not to say licence - which modern translators pronounce necessary. The original in this version is followed with admirable closeness; paraphrase is eschewed; and yet the result is an English masterpiece. The fortieth chapter of Isaiah in the Authorised Version is a masterpiece not because it is a new work - as some of our recent alleged translations of the Bible really are - but because it has reproduced faithfully both letter and spirit of the majestic original".

thees and thous

For many evangelicals, securing a contemporary English Bible will mean very simply that it avoids like the plague words such as thou/thee/thy/thine. According to popular misbelief these are "archaic and Elizabethan". In fact the English spoken in 1611 used the term "you" as the normal form of address. In this respect and every other, the AV is distinct from the speech and literature of its time (even in comparison with its Preface, "The Translators to the Reader"). Contemporary writers such as Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and Ben Jonson are decidedly more challenging in terms of obsolete words and idiom (yet Shakespeare’s works in particular remain very popular). The fact is that the AV uses a biblical English found nowhere else.

The question of thees and thous is slightly strange though, because it is assumed that simply because this is not contemporary conversational English that it is illegitimate and will not be understood. This is highly questionable since these forms do appear in conversational English from time to time in the form of quotations such as "holier than thou", or "thou shalt not..." etc as well as dialect. They can also be used similarly in written English without any danger of misunderstanding, it is in fact well known what these words mean. Granted, such words may not have a ring of up-to-the-minute newness, but that is no great problem. In their discussion of the question of updated alterations to traditional hymns, the compilers of the recent New English Hymnal stated, "we have made no attempt to alter into the ‘you’ form hymns which use the second person singular [thou] in addressing God. As far as we are aware, congregations experience no difficulty in understanding and using the traditional form in which most hymns have been written". The ostensible motive for updating lanaguage is apparently to remove barriers to understanding, but part of the real motivation is surely a pathological fear of appearing "unfashionable".

When Martin Buber’s Ich und Du was translated from the German into English, the translators found that the singular person pronoun "thou" was necessary and also supplied the vital added connotations of intimacy and respect in addition, it was crucial to what the whole book was trying to say. This aspect of significance and association marries well with careful accuracy in Bible translation as well and ought not to be neglected. (This is not a recommendation of Buber's book itself, simply an illustration).

The question of accuracy is of course, paramount; these pronouns are a more accurate translation of what is there in the words that God has inspired. Dr Ammanuel Mikre-Selassie, a present day Bible translator and linguist makes this very clear in an important article, "Problems in Translating Pronouns from English Versions", “The Bible Translator", vol. 39 (April 1988, pp.230-37). 'Translators, and especially those in common language projects, may find it strange and surprising to hear a consultant recommending use of the King James Version for translation...The archaic English pronouns of the KJV distinguish number in the second person pronoun in all cases...Thus the KJV can certainly render an important service to those translators who do not have any knowledge of the source languages of the Bible and therefore work only from an English base, in easily distinguishing between "you singular" and "you plural".' The uniform translation "you" is in fact confusing because it fails to distinguish between the singular and plural, this invites misinterpretation: the term "you" ought only to be used for the plural. There are at least two dozen passages of Scripture that when compared between modern version and the AV reveal the necessity of thees and thous.

We cannot be blasé about what we do with God’s Word, and how we treat the way in which God has represented Himself. God has revealed Himself as nothing else than singular, referred to in the second person singular "thou", and through careful reverence and faithful accuracy we must respect this. The Shorter Catechism reminds us that: "The third commandment requireth the holy and reverent use of God’s names, titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, and works" and "forbiddeth all profaning or abusing of anything whereby God maketh Himself known". This is the ethical requirement of translation: that the translator does not violently twist and force the words that he translates in the wrong direction. If this is true in general translation, it is surely much more true in translating God’s Word. The translator must not impose himself and his culture arbitrarily upon the text, greater sensitivity and versatility is required. This is the ethical requirement of translation: that the translator does not "traduce" his author, twisting and forcing his words violently in the wrong direction. If this is true in general translation, it is surely much more true in translating God’s Word. The translator must not impose himself and his culture arbitrarily upon the text, greater sensitivity is required - in the words of the translators of the AV: "we cannot follow a better pattern for elocution than God himself". The urgent necessity for translation of the Scriptures is not street English but Biblical English.