What of the Faithful but Deceived?
I am reading this fantastic blog post about translation issues in the Bible. And this quote jumped out and grabbed me:
But the topic of the faithfulness of the saints is the question. We are in a communion of the saints, as Christians. "Democracy of the dead," GK Chesterton put it, who has now joined its fell ranks.
People focus so heavily on The Bible itself as a source of truth when the Bible itself also rests upon the faithfulness of its readers, the faithfulness of its authors, the faithfulness of its redactors, and the faithfulness of its translators.
I'm not here to knock the KJV or its adherents, but to bring up the insight into how faithfulness in the text itself still rests upon the faithfulness of Christians themselves. The Bible itself is the testimony of real people. And those people are buried in the catacombs beneath the church as we know it, the bones in the mortar, crushed beneath the foundation stones.
There are cracks in the foundation, how do we repair them? What are we to make of those of us are who are faithful, but deceived?
The topic is the KJV and its primacy, which for the blogger is a fallacious teaching.This is not a sign of a less faithful translation. It is a sign of a more honest one, which ought to matter to anyone who claims to care about what the text actually says.
But the topic of the faithfulness of the saints is the question. We are in a communion of the saints, as Christians. "Democracy of the dead," GK Chesterton put it, who has now joined its fell ranks.
People focus so heavily on The Bible itself as a source of truth when the Bible itself also rests upon the faithfulness of its readers, the faithfulness of its authors, the faithfulness of its redactors, and the faithfulness of its translators.
I'm not here to knock the KJV or its adherents, but to bring up the insight into how faithfulness in the text itself still rests upon the faithfulness of Christians themselves. The Bible itself is the testimony of real people. And those people are buried in the catacombs beneath the church as we know it, the bones in the mortar, crushed beneath the foundation stones.
There are cracks in the foundation, how do we repair them? What are we to make of those of us are who are faithful, but deceived?
Comments
The Orthodox position is that we can't disagregate Holy Scripture from Holy Tradition. It's a both/and thing.
The scriptures are part of Holy Tradition not set apart from it.
We aren't sola scriptura of course.
That doesn't mean that there wasn't politics going on at the various Ecumenical Councils nor in various scriptural translations. The KJV is a case in point. King James I commissioned it so its translators tailored it to suit his particular views on issues like episcopacy etc.
It's been a while since I encountered any 'King James Only' arguments. That seems big in the US in some fundamentalist quarters. Not so much sola scriptura but sola this particular translation of scriptura.
I don't say this to knock those who hold to a sola scriptura position. What we are dealing with in the instance of the KJV-only types is a particular fundamentalist application of that which doesn't reflect the approach all proponents of sola scriptura would take.
Do we trust the scriptures? Yes. Do we trust the Fathers (and Mothers) and the Saints? Yes.
Does that mean we leave our brains at the door when we enter church. No.
This.
It seems to me that your last paragraph is where the real discussion starts--but I'm not sure what exactly you mean. What cracks are you referring to? And what exactly do you mean by "faithful, but deceived"?
As distinct from what other groups? Are "faithful" and "deceived" anything more than matters of degree?
You could easily fault me for picking holes in the post, saying, "He was just trying to point out that some people idolize the King James text and completely miss the fact that there are problems with it." Yes, that's true. But I wish he had made that point without implying that the issues he DOES bring up are settled--or easy to settle. (Not to mention his huge overstatement about the differences between the textual support for the King James version and the support for what exists now. He talks as if there was practically nothing in common between them. In fact, we're talking about texts that are what, maybe 99% in agreement with one another. A newcomer to the whole discussion could be forgiven for throwing the Bible aside permanently, on the (wrong) grounds that the text is completely unstable and worthless.
Seems like the original post is putting too much emphasis on the KJV for one. There are many translations now, and newer translations are constantly improving on what the original texts meant than and now.
I would say the way to fix the foundation of the church is through recentering in Christ, through truth telling, repentance and rebuilding trust in the community. The life of the community is built on Christ crucified and risen. It is the cornerstone of the church. When the church forgets this, cracks appear, but when the church returns to this, the cracks begin to close
At some point, degrees can accumulate into something pretty big. When you have insertions into the text or you lean hard enough on a nuance that it alters the meaning of a word, that can lead to deception.
And if what you're talking about is a matter of authority and ultimate concern, that might be a big deal.
I think the question of Mark's ending is pretty big. When most of the earliest editions don't include it, the argument that it's a later insertion seems to have some considerable evidence. Even my own NRSV makes a note of that.
And I also wish people could find a healthier middle ground where they could accept that the Bible is deeply problematic (yes, by degrees) without reducing it to "throw the whole thing out!"
I've always lived in the middle space of that dichotomy. I see the validity of a lot of his little questions and I think they deserve some examination. For one thing, again, I think the text itself rests on the faith of the community, not the other way around. In fact, over my own spiritual life, I've realized more and more that that's the case. I never came to church for The Bible. I came to church for the community.
As for the relative status of the text and the community, I doubt anybody disagrees that God used the community (parts of it, at least!) to bring the text about; and surely the community continues to use and pass on the text, and to explicate it. But I dare not downgrade the text myself. It was pretty much all I had when I came to faith. I couldn't access the community for years.
There was a movement at some point in the early church to amalgamate all the four gospels into one.
The church decided against doing that as it felt retaining the four different gospels was better.
This tells us a great deal about how the ancients understood scripture. It's the big picture that matters, not the details.
The deception starts when the reformation suddenly decided scripture was infallible.
In terms of the formation of the canon as @Caissa noted above, yes probably political (contra Rome and status quo) but what we currently have included in the NT are close to the earliest of the large amount of circulating texts in the first few centuries. The ancients thought that was important.
I know that's not what you are saying, of course.
Holding both these things together at the same time also, I suggest, helps us to deal with issues such as the later insertion of verses at the end of Mark's Gospel.
It becomes less of an issue if we see text and community together, as it were.
It doesn't 'downgrade' the text if we hold the text and community together neither does it 'downgrade' the community element. What it does is hold each together in balance.
Or where they simply two you could have chosen from across the board?
Why not Orthodox or Anglicans or Baptists or Pentecostals?
Or was that the point you were making?
More technical questions of variants, and depending on how much weight you put on it. I just had a chat with a few guys downtown who were by their own admission out to pass tracts. I told them I was an Episcopalian. They politely scoffed. I mentioned my universalist "Christ saved the world and it's on us to participate in that" to them and they immediately leaped to "Well, Jesus said people are going to hell and what about that?" with the implied intellectual sneering that I have grown accustomed to from certain proselytizing types. Like I'm not a Real Christian Man unless I can accept the eternal suffering of the damned as an expression of God's Love.
My train arrived and I explained to them as I boarded that this was a heart thing, not a logical game. The church is grounded in love, not in logical argumentation. Too much Scriptural Authority without Community and, from my experience, you get this dry, thinly-veiled, fear-driven authoritarianism of "believe as I do or Go To Hell Forever." And the speed with which these guys leap to threats is pretty damning. I should've upgraded to "get thee behind me, Satan" since I'm now wondering if that's their employer, the prosecuting attorney who tempts Jesus.
I don't want to disrespect your past, even acknowledging that it's rather the reverse of mine. I saw the church in the community and saw hate in "sola scriptura" churches. That's not a comment at you but at the traditions as I've experienced them for most of my life. I do respect your walk and I have learned to be more mindful. At the same time, I cannot deny my own context. Ecumenism is a challenge, and it means tough conversations. Maybe this is Purgatory.
For me, to see The Bible as a product of community isn't a denigration, but to recognize the Communion of the Saints as the pillars that properly elevate it. Sola Sciptura is to me more likely to seem a degradation of the text, removing it from the people for/from whom it was given. It takes a community tool and reduces it to a user's manual, or worse a bludgeon to "keep people in line" with threats.
That said, that a process is political is not necessarily an insult or a barrier to the Spirit, to my eyes. The alternative to honest argument is usually tyranny. Constantine, for his considerable faults, did have the sense to admit he wasn't a theologian.
Point of clarification, the"doctrine" of Scriptural infallibility--the doctrine, that is, --did not get postulated until the mid-19th century. It came about in reaction to the beginning of evolutionary science and the development of modern biblical criticism. In other words, don't blame it on Luther, Calvin, or Zwingli, I think it was B.B. Warfield that came up with the idea.
I'm not a sola scriptura proponent but would say that it can certainly be applied in a far more nuanced way than the approach of the tract wielding evangelists in @Bullfrog's post.
I'd also agree with @Gramps49 that the 'modern' view of scriptural infallibility dates from the time of Warfield but that doesn't mean that Luther, Calvin or the Church Fathers come to that, were liberal 'higher critics' before their time.
Not that @Gramps49 is suggesting that, I hasten to add.
There seem to have been a range of approaches from the earliest years of Christianity with famously, the Alexandrians taking a more allegorical approach and Antioch a more literal one. Gradually there was a fusion between these and other approaches.
That's how these things work. They are debated and discussed in dialogue and community.
We can't isolate the scriptures from the communities of faith that wrote, transmitted and 'canonised' them, a process that took place over time. I know nobody here is saying the scriptures simply dropped out of heaven one day like the Book of Mormon but we can't disaggregate the scriptures from the community of faith.
That doesn't obviate or undermine @Lamb Chopped's encounter with the Living Word through the written word. Why should it?
The fact that she had a Bible in her hands in the first place was the result of a centuries of sharing and transmission by people of faith - Orthodox and RCs, Reformers and those who followed. She may not have been 'in community' when she received it initially but there were layers and layers of community effort over many, many years for that Bible to find its way into her hands in the first place.
I'm glad it did. I'm sure many others are too.
I know I keep banging the 'both/and' drum but I really can't see any other of looking at it that doesn't risk falling into a false dichotomy and demeaning either the community of faith on the one hand or the scriptures on the other.
They each go together.
Thank you for that.
I didn't realise there was a difference between infallibility and innerancy. Apparently there is. Quite a big one.
FWIW I'd regard both @Lamb Chopped and your good self as well within the boundaries of small o orthodoxy - not that it is my place to pontificate about such matters - but based on what I've seen of each of your posts that's where I'd 'put' you as it were.
I don't think anyone here is wielding the 'h' word in any direction. From what I can see, @Lamb Chopped is defending a 'high' view of the authority of scripture - and I'm with her on that. You appear to be placing more emphasis on the 'community' angle - which we may describe in a short-hand way as emphasising the 'authority' of the Church - however we define that.
I don't think any of us are suggesting that Church/community doesn't come into it - what any disagreement may focus around is the degree to which we emphasise one or the other - scripture or community.
From an Orthodox perspective - and certainly also from some small o orthodox perspectives - this would be seen as a false dichotomy - although I'm sure we Orthodox would ratchet up Big C Church and Big T Tradition further up the scale than either Lamb Chopped or yourself.
I can understand Lamb Chopped's position and I can also understand yours. I don't think they are necessarily incompatible.
Thinking aloud - and this isn't aimed at anyone here ...
It strikes me that there are two equal and opposite poles we can topple into (or over) in this question.
We can over-emphasise the community / Church dimension to the extent that we end up with a form of 'Church Fundamentalism', as stultefying as anything found in its corrollary, Bibllical Fundamentalism.
Or vice versa.
Equally, we can 'downgrade' things like the 'authority of scripture', the 'supernatural element' and the pneumatic and the numinous to the extent that we end up with a worthy but attenuated moral dimension - which is fine as far as it goes - but which reduces the Gospel to a set of 'be nice to everyone' precepts.
Conversely, we can become obsessive about 'right belief' and doctrine etc to the extent that we become of no earthly use and simply go round trying to convince everyone else of the rightness of our position and the wrongness of theirs.
Elements of those tendencies can creep in very easily anywhere and everywhere.
The 'evangelising other denominations' thread deals with some of those issues.
The Apostle Paul exhorted Timothy - 'watch your life and doctrine closely.'
1 Timothy 4:16 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1 Timothy 4:16&version=NIV
(Could someone tidy up that URL please?)
We'll all fail but we must strive to get both into alignment.
I'll be honest. I find some of the more liberal theological stuff hard to take - 'What do these people actually believe ...?'
Equally, I find full-on fundie stuff whether in a Protestant context or my own Orthodox one very hard to take. Run away! Run away!
I can't speak for the RCs but I'm sure their hard-liners would cause a similar reaction.
We all draw our lines in different places, of course. But I do think there's a 'generous orthodox' spread between the rigidly wooden and hard-line positions at either pole.
I'm not saying anything new, of course. Just thinking aloud.
Agreed. I won't speak for LC, but I think we're in "possibly-prickly nuances" range.
I'm a bit political, opportunistic, pneumatic. I take the Spirit very seriously as a guide to understanding precisely how much weight to put on any of the "pillars of the faith" that we're resting on. I don't think any single pillar can carry the entire weight of my faith. If I must trust, I must trust completely. And that goes to God, not to any of these intermediaries. To confuse the two would be idolatry, and there are reasons idolatry is a Bad Thing besides "It's in the Bible!"
Communities can fail, either by dissolution, narcissism, or other faults. Scripture, forever in interpretation, can fail, usually by failure to read for context, excessive subjectivity, subjectivity hiding in objectivity, self-erasure through text, etc. The Tradition is often a middle ground between the two, but God only knows the Church Fathers screwed up sometimes, and have reified terrible decisions because "that's not how we did things ten years ago!" or "but Pope so-and-so made this decision and wouldn't it be embarrassing to admit he made an error ex cathedra, speaking from the seat of his pants! I carry a great respect for the Catholic Church, but there are some mighty powerful reasons I'm not even remotely tempted to hop the Tiber. I like my Protestant independence.
So in the end I just follow The Spirit as best I can and negotiate my way over all of these faulty pillars. I don't mean to demean The Bible or any other of these important things, but to recognize that I have seen a lot of spiritual abuse in my circles - often coming from seemingly well-meaning people - and that experience gives me a lot of pause when it comes to assigning Authority to what are essentially tools.
Not that I'm about to cross the Tiber but let's be fair to our RC friends, Popes aren't making ex cathedra pronouncements every 15 minutes.
I don't wish to be glib but Holy Tradition doesn't depend on the Fathers getting everything right every time. Heck, St Augustine of Hippo is there but we Orthodox don't put as much weight on him as RCs and Protestants do.
We are talking conciliarity and consensus here not individual proof-texts or proof-figures as it were, be it Chrysostom, Augustine or anyone else.
Those are all fair points. I direct a lot of teasing toward the older churches. I'm not trying to be hostile.
I'm not ashamed of my novelty. Though I am aware of the irony of modern protestants trying to recreate the ancient church by skipping the tradition and going straight back to the Bible. It's an interesting project, but it's one reason I think it's important to keep the community in mind.
And while I do know folks who have been horribly scarred by that project, I'll grant that good works have also come of such churches. And indeed, there are monsters in more old school churches as well.
Honestly, with my training, I can critique any theological approach. It's just how I roll.
Somehow, we've all managed to come through - with scars - the controversies of the 4th, 5th and 11th centuries, the upheavals and blood-letting of the Reformation, the challenges of the Enlightenment and reactions against that, the growth of fundamentalism, Christian nationalism and other distortions.
It ain't pretty and 'when the Son of Man returns will he still find faith on the earth?'
Faith's still there. 'There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.'
I feel like one of my long term spiritual projects has been growing up in one of those "milquetoast mainline churches" and finding my own passionate intensity. Because the church I grew up in did most things right, but they were so quiet about it that nobody noticed. And then the evangelicals were loudly rucking everything up and screaming that they were the "Real Christians" while we were the tepid ones lambasted in Revelation.
Again, no shade to contemporary evangelicals, I've learned more nuance, but that's where I was. And I have seen the flaws in the quiet confidence of the "frozen chosen."
Also, in my life, decay isn't always a bad thing. The church I grew up in, even the entire community sometimes feels like it's figuratively, perhaps literally dying. And maybe that's ok. Maybe I need to grow into something new myself. The resurrection body is a new one.
To @Gamma Gamaliel , I do think there's a pattern where trauma - for good and for ill - can lead to great spirit. When the material world sucks, it's easy to fly away to the spiritual. I've heard that as an explanation for why dispensationalism took off after the existential despair that was World War I. Living hell makes people yearn for heaven. It can lead to terrifying heresies, but also to great spiritual leaders. People love to laud MLK, Jr., but they forget that the KKK was also by all appearances a loud and proud Khristian organization, covered in religious iconography.
Put people under pressure and see what comes out, eh?
Jesus appeared to warn that deceivers would have a dangerous part to play in the future of the church. Personally I have a couple of touchstones.
1. Avoid the self righteous.
2. The humble are better company.
Of course I got both of those touchstones from the Bible. But I’m pretty sure I’m not deceived.
Meanwhile, I’ll confess I’m still trying to figure out exactly the manner of being “deceived” this thread seeks to highlight.
It's a joke about people who are religious and not very emotional about it, in contrast with the more emotional Methodists or Pentecostals or "born again" types. I think I recall a sermon from my adolescence in which a parishioner almost apologized for the fact that our church didn't do these "Personal Salvation" narratives because it wasn't our culture. We were all rather boring. Be kind, love your neighbor, all that stuff. Don't make a big deal about your conversion or your spiritual life. All very meek and humble...right...
I think the deception is in the people who produce flawed interpretations and promulgate them in good faith. The author claims that some translations either contain additions or emendations to The Bible that are suspect. And other Christians, in good faith, may put a lot of weight on these. Snake-handling churches are an extreme example. At the same time, any of us could be deceived in our understanding of the received faith. There were folks I went to church with as a kid who'd be astonished by the church I'm in as an adult.
I think I'm still wrestling with how the Bible relates to Community. Some people use the Bible to try to get around the flawed Community, others use the Community to get around flaws in the Bible. Sometimes Tradition becomes a kind of go-between, but even that's fallible. Or people can splice the Bible and say "I love Jesus but I hate Paul" (I think often in response to how some Christians have misread Paul.)
Perhaps we're all deceived by degrees, even in our faithfulness. We're all dealing with fallible sources, or even if they're infallible, we're too far from that infallibility to protect the infallible from our own foibles. And so a little grace must be employed?
Those are some thoughts. Helpful?
I would say what’s being described isn’t deception, but rather is simple misunderstanding, in many if not most cases honest misunderstanding based on a variety of things—necessary (for most people) reliance on translations, lack of adequate knowledge or information to understand concepts that come from a different time and culture, “how we’ve always understood it,” and many other possibilities.
Labeling what’s generally going on here as “deceived” seems to me to introduce an accusation of bad faith that leads to a pretty strong denial of the grace you rightly say should be employed.
Look at it this way, in any trial you have several witnesses. Tey all saw the same incident, but they will describe it in a number of ways. Does that mean they are deceiving the jury? No. Human perception is not a camera. If everyone told the same story, the judge could throw the case out for collusion. Minor inconsistencies which are found in different translations actually strengthen credibility. Variation is the mark of truthfulness, not deception. To be able to look at the various ways the translators interpret a word, help gives the reader a fuller understanding of the text.
Now, if that were the case, then we would be talking about movements such as Christian nationalism. Maybe I would hasten to add certain cultic translated Bibles such as the JW Bible. But if we are talking about honest translators giving their best interpretation on the original texts, they are trying to work in good faith. If you think they are working in bad faith, the onus is on you.
I think this question contains an assumption that everyone and every tradition that calls Scripture the “Word of God” or the “written Word of God” means exactly the same thing by “Word of God.” And that assumption is both unwarranted and false.
Many Christian traditions have historically referred to Scripture as “the Word of God,” and that includes many Christian traditions that don’t believe in inerrancy, literal interpretation or other positions associated with fundamentalism or Evangelicalism.
Before the question “is the Bible the written Word of God, or is it the cradle on which the Word of God rests?” can be adequately answered, companion questions have to be asked: “What do you/what does your tradition mean when you refer/it refers to Scripture as ‘the (written) Word of God?” “What do you assume others mean when they call Scripture the (written) Word of God?”
I think you’d find, @Gramps49, that what some others mean by Scripture being the written Word of God is pretty much the same as what you mean when you call it the cradle on which the Word of God rests.
That was supposed to be "commended" rather than "commented"
@Nick Tamen I think we both take scripture seriously. It is the church's treasured witness to God's work and God's will. But Christians don't worship a book. We worship the one the book points to.
The written Word is often thought of as the authoritative testimony of the prophets and the apostles. As I look at the previous discussion, I get the impression that the question in the OP was how can we, the faithful. be certain we are not being deceived when there are slight variations in translations?
My answer is Scripture is trustworthy because it bears witness to Christ, not because the ink on a page is divine in itself.
Barth points out the Bible becomes the Word of God when the Spirit uses it to reveal Christ. So, the minor differences in translations, for me, are just that, minor. But TunderBunk and others seem to want to make mountains out of mole hills.
If the Bible is the written Word of God, then the shortened ending of Mark is a crisis. If, on the other hand, the Bible is the cradle that bears witness to the living Word, then the ending of Mark is simply a part of the story of how the Church received and transmitted that witness.
Personally, I think Mark brilliantly ends with the women being afraid because that is whole point of the Gospel. The resurrection is real, but it confronts us before it comforts us. It demands a response. Mark ends the story that throws the reader into the empty tomb and asks, "So what will you do with this?" Mark ends with the women being afraid because the resurrection is not a tidy conclusion--it is an eruption of God that demands a response from the reader.
It does not brother me later scribes added other endings to try to harmonize Mark with Mathew, Luke and John. The Gospel doesn't end on the page, it continues in the life of the church. (Holy Traditions) We are now inside the story.
I don't think that even the most conservative of theological conservatives here, and there aren't many theologically conservative posters here these days, would believe they are worshipping the ink on the page or making scripture the Third Person of the Trinity yadda yadda yadda.
That's something of a caricature. You may as well accuse me of worshipping wood and paint when I venerate an icon.
Some would of course ...
I think there are several parallel discussions going on here that aren't necessarily related to the reliability or otherwise of scriptural translations. Heck, you can find both liberal and theologically conservative congregations using the same translations of the Bible
They have the same written texts but have reached different conclusions. Why? Because these texts are received, transmitted and understood in the context of community - in the context of tradition or Tradition. If their tradition inclines in a liberal direction, that's how they'll receive it. In a conservative direction likewise.
That doesn't mean we can't or don't also apprehend the texts individually or personally, of course. It's another of these both/and things.
I'm not sure what @Bullfrog means by Tradition being some kind of 'middle-ground'. Rather small t and Big T Tradition is the context in which these things are passed on - and we wouldn't have small t ones without a Big T one to draw on in the first place.
The issue then is the weight we put on Tradition or traditions in the interpretive process.
Forgive me, but much of this thread appears to be framed in a purely 'Protestant' kind of way as if the only alternatives are more liberal mainstream MoTR congregations and full on biblical fundamentalism on the other.
Some of the arguments wouldn't make sense within an RC or Orthodox setting, although there are parallels of course.
I'm not saying this to denigrate what Protestant posters have posted. They post as they find.
But we all need to step back a bit I think to find common frames of reference and not just those based on our own experiences within our own small t traditions - or Big T Tradition come to that- as though these were normative for everyone.
It's not a cop out but from an Orthodox perspective Luther saying that the scriptures are the 'cradle in which the Word of God - Christ - is received' is fine. Great. I don't think we ever believed otherwise. Full marks Martin.
That doesn't mean it can't be 'God's word written' at the same time. I remember the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of blessed memory talking about this. He had no problem with people referring to the scriptures as the 'word of God' - provided we also recognise God the Word.
Which we all appear to do here, as far as I can tell.
Neither do I understand Barth's thing about the scriptures becoming God's word to us as we receive them as such as implying that they wouldn't be God's word written if nobody bothered to read them.
But again, all of these things have their place but it's all way, way bigger than whether the end of Mark's Gospel was added to harmonise it with the other Synoptic Gospels or not.
Like Nick Tamen I think it was, I'm not sure the word 'deceived' was particularly helpful in the OP. If we were all using exactly the same translations of scripture we'd still find people who went overboard on some emphasis or other.
We probably agree on what, 80-90% - perhaps more - so if 'deception' comes into the equation it either means we are almost all 'deceived' or a small proportion of us are.
Or am I over-simplifying things?