Flowing from a discussion about whether new Bible translations should, with indigenous people groups, substitute names such as “Great Spirit” for Scripture’s language, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and comments in response to the question stating that Bible translation is complicated and difficult, I write:
Actually, the key thing under debate for decades has been whether to retain Scripture’s male semantic meaning components, and this is precisely what is at stake with “Father,” the first member of the Trinity. The defense of Scripture’s thousands of words with male semantic meaning components flows from the archetypal Fatherhood of God. It is His Fatherhood which gives the male of the species He named “man” federal headship, and that headship is reinforced with all the words with male semantic meaning components, especially Scripture’s male inclusives.
Because of God the Father Almighty, our race is named “adam” (or “man”) and in Adam we all die and Christ was not God’s daughter, but His Son, with a body that is male…
So this is very simple. God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Fatherhood of God requires it and the inspiration of Scripture requires it.
Don’t take your eye off the ball. Either every word of Scripture is inspired by God or merely the concepts behind His words. The entire church has moved from words to concepts during my short lifetime and that’s why people think the question of how to translate Father and Son and Holy Spirit is difficult.
Sure, Sorbonists tell everyone translation is extremely complicated needing experts, but this is always the way of the guilds. It was this same argument made by Rome for not allowing the plowboy to read Scripture in his own language. It was this same argument which gave rise to the Reformers’ doctrinal statement of the perspicuity of Scripture.
All the decline of the church which dulls the scalpel of God’s Word, rather than sharpening it (Keller vs. Apostle Paul) justifies itself with talk of evangelization and contextualization and meeting people where they are, which doesn’t make any of these things intrinsically wrong.
They’re wrong, though, when they are used to justify corruption of the inspired Hebrew and Greek of God’s Word such that His words can be left behind in order, purportedly, to better communicate His meaning. Bunk!
What’s really true is that His words are left behind in order for us to become the message of the Gospel: our sensitivity, our scholarly judgments, our aspirational work of translation, our soul patch, our brewskis, our compassion, or oh-so-humble attempts at contextualization, etc. Start with the Godhead’s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, then with God naming the race “adam,” then with God’s Son becoming a male, and then the attempt to speak of “Great Spirit” becomes evidently unfaithful as well as foolish.
Remember what I showed in my book, Daddy Tried: most modern Bible translations (paraphrases) since the nineties use the “father” and its cognates between one-quarter and one-third fewer times than prior translations.
Spent my life on this issue and it’s my judgment that the most important thing humble Christians need to have explained concerning why Bible translators are changing thousands of words is not that the work of translation is difficult or complicated, but that the scholars doing the work are aspirational.
In their translation of Scripture, scholars yearn to impress their peers by cleaning up the holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
I suppose we all know that Muslims deny God is “father.” Always seemed to me this alone is sufficient to use this precise Name for the Only True God we confess as “God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth.”
It reminds me of an old saying that the problem between us is not that we don’t understand each other, but that we do—and disagree. Love,
