Interpreting Scripture Across Languages: A Panel Discussion Led by D. A. Carson (Part 1)

This discussion features D.A. Carson and other panelists discussing the challenges of theological interpretation across different languages, examining the impact of translation on biblical understanding and its implications for contemporary faith practices globally.

Don Carson: Well, let me reiterate, in the first place, that the traditional view is not saying something that is doctrinally wrong. It is taught elsewhere in Scripture. The question is whether it is taught here, and I don’t think it is. I think that once you see the way that I’ve put it, it’s hard to see it any other way. In other words, it fits the flow of the passage so much better.

Subsequently, I did find the odd commentator here and there that did take it this way as well (I have to go back and dig out who they were, but I did find the odd one), but the reason I stumbled across it was because I read Greek pretty fluently. I think part of the problem is that we’re reading our English translations, so you see the phrase in me and you just think in locative terms. You think in terms of location, even if it’s metaphorically in me or something.

That’s so with most Western European languages: French and Spanish and German and so on. Whereas, I was just reading Galatians rapidly in Greek one day. I had finished 1:24, was reading on, got to the end of the next chapter, and found en emoi again. So I pulled up every instance of en emoi in the New Testament.

It’s something I should have known, but I didn’t realize just how many times this phrase was, in fact, a kind of en-plus dative of reference, in effect. Once you see that, then you start thinking, “Okay, what are the other possibilities here?” and then it all sort of fell into place. I think partly it’s one of those instances where our translations, sometimes, have determined our bias.

Ryan Kelly: Maybe a little bit of a case for people in churches learning Greek at some point in their lives?

Don: Absolutely!

Ryan: I have a question more on the application side of things. I had not heard, at all, of the interpretation of who the Jews were and really liked the way you went through that.

Don: Now that you can find in great detail, for example, in Bruce’s commentary. Again, that’s not a rare view; it’s a minority view, but it’s not a rare view. Again, once you see it, it seems to me that it makes sense.

Ryan: Yes. I certainly agree with the application of you can’t do anything that sets aside the grace of God, applying that to things like having good days and thinking that that’s what will get us good things with God.

Here’s my question: In a more narrow sense of application, and maybe more global, would there be any parts of the world where persecution takes place … maybe it’s Muslims in Indonesia, Hindus in India, or the government in China (we could list a dozen examples) … where there’s some modern-day parallel now?

In other words, perhaps the Jews equal [fill in the blank] and there are some messengers coming back, like there were messengers from James, to the evangelical church in America saying, “Can you guys change this because it will help us out overseas?” Of course, the final domino would be that our response should be, “Not in that area, or we sacrifice the gospel of Christ.” The question not just for you but for other people up here as well.

Don: Well, my own response would be that there may be a derivative application (about which I’ll say more in a moment), but one always needs to recognize that it is derivative. There is something peculiar, obviously, about the Jews and their authority. They do represent not only another ethnic group, but to them was given the oracles of God. They do have the Scriptures that are commonly our Scriptures as well.

So if one reads, for example, Ephesians, simply as a document on race relations, one begins to overlook that it’s a Jew-Christian reconciliation that is first and foremost. Now there are implications for ethnic oneness and wholeness in the church of the living God; don’t misunderstand me.

In the first instance, however, there’s a powerful and peculiar and exclusive bite in the New Testament on the Jew-Christian thing, precisely because we share the same Bible, at least initially before there was any New Testament. So the question is how you are interpreting it. That raises a whole set of issues that are rather different than when there are Muslims in Indonesia that are persecuting somebody.

In terms of a derivative, then, an admittedly derivative application to the kind of thing you’re saying today: yes, one should be careful, but one should also be careful about identifying our social location with Christianity. It’s too easy to start thinking that because we do it a certain way, that is the Christian way. There may be a place for careful listening and stopping doing things that are offensive to others where we have nothing invested, except for our own biases and traditions, and where it might be a mark of humility and grace to be a little less offensive.

So one needs to be very, very careful about this, and the more so in a global world where we all hear all the time from everybody. It just becomes very important not to make the application only to that side of things and not see that there are some complementary truths that need to be uttered as well.

Ryan: Mike, feel free to jump in here with any questions or comments on this.

Michael Horton: Well, it’s a feast just listening. That was such a marvelous example of exegesis, especially on those two points. It was very illuminating. We have a category in Reformation history called in statu confessionis, which means to go into a state of confession. It refers to a situation in which something that was okay to do or not to do is no longer a thing indifferent. An example is when it was imposed upon the Puritans that they use the prayer book.

They would have been happy to go on using the prayer book, but because they were told by the state, by the queen, who was the supreme head of the church, that they had to use the prayer book in order for genuine worship to take place in the Church of England, they said, “Well, now we can’t.” It was going into a state of confession because something had now been raised to the level of the gospel; something had been required that otherwise they were free to do and might have well been inclined to do.

Another example is when the temperance folks went through town. The founder of Princeton Seminary, Archibald Alexander, said that he didn’t even really like whiskey very much, but when the temperance folks came through town, he felt obliged to stand on the porch and toast. He would take a drink because they were confusing that with the gospel. That was the message they were proclaiming as they went through town.

Don: I’ve said that to my own students.

Michael: Have you? Have you toasted?

Don: Some of them come in from pretty conservative backgrounds and say, “No Christian can drink. If you drink, you’re not a Christian.” As soon as somebody says that to me, I say, “Pass the Beaujolais.” Again, it might be a step of wisdom in a certain culture to be teetotaling or whatever. In this country, I don’t drink, but in Europe, I do. But if somebody in this country says that I mustn’t, then I do.

Michael: That’s in statu confessionis, because then it has become a gospel matter. We have to be careful on the other side of not turning our choice to engage in certain things as gospel, so that if you don’t then you don’t really believe the gospel. As Dr. Carson said, the ingenuity that we have as inveterate Pelagian is unlimited.

We turn the gospel into law in countless ways, and there are all kinds of ways of doing it on both sides of the fence, no matter what our theology is. As Dr. Carson said, being proud of the fact that we know this.… Dr. Edmund Clowney used to say that Calvinists are the only people who can be proud of the fact that we know we’re totally depraved. Think about that! It’s true.

Ryan: That’s good. Listen, this is switching gears slightly, but does Galatians 2 (or how does Galatians 2) relate to contemporary messianic Jewish movements? Particularly, how does it relate to those that seem to imply that the real higher living for God’s people is going to be done by Jewish people believing Christ and then by doing the law (food laws included, or maybe especially), even if just in a memorial way, but thinking that the higher life is really done by getting back to the law? Does that relate to what we just read in Galatians 2?

Don: The contemporary messianic movement is astonishingly complex and diverse, so one needs to be careful about making generalizations. There are some Jews who understand the gospel and integrate well with the broader church. There are some Jews who, out of missiological concern to win other Jews, realize that to have conservative Jews in their own home, they’re going to have to live a kosher lifestyle themselves.

They opt to do this not because they think it makes them more holy but precisely out of submission to 1 Corinthians 9: “To the Jews I became a Jew that I might win some.” So they really already understand that they are in the tertium quid, they are in the third position, but they flex this way (whether they’re Jews or Gentiles, for that matter) precisely in order to win Jews. I’m all for that.

There are some Jews who, by reason of the comfort zones in which they were brought up, might prefer to be more on the kosher side, with meat on Saturday and all this kind of thing, while still acknowledging that it doesn’t really make a lot of difference. It’s just what they’re comfortable with, and it’s with their own people.

Well, I would say that their missiological concern and their vision for the unity of the church are a bit anemic, but I don’t think that the gospel is thereby jeopardized. But then you go a little farther, and eventually, you can find some people who say, “Well, it’s all right for Gentiles who don’t have to eat kosher, but Jews who are Christians do have to eat kosher.” Then you have a kind of two-people-of-God thing.

There are just so many passages in the New Testament that speak of the oneness of the people of God. What that would almost mean, therefore, is that the sacrifice of Christ is exclusively sufficient for Gentiles, but it’s not exclusively sufficient for Jews. Suddenly, you do start having some questions about their understanding of the whole gospel itself.

There are others who still go further and say that it’s the higher level of Christian obedience and conformity for Jews and Gentiles alike. I’ve met all of those. We always get a certain percentage of fine Jewish folk coming through Trinity from one background or another, and I’ve met some of the leaders of these movements who are, today, pretty deeply concerned about where some tracks in the messianic movement are heading. Whether or not it’s a threat to the gospel depends on which one of these tracks they’re actually in.

Ryan: To let everyone know, tomorrow after lunch, for both of these gentlemen, we’ll be letting them talk about the works they’re involved in now with their writing, what kind of things they’re involved in with the church and ministry. So this is not to open that up right now, but would you tell everybody about the commentary on Galatians that you’re writing, what series it’s in, when it may come out, and anything along those lines just for that one piece of work?

Don: I have learned to try and be less predictive about these things because.… Before that one comes out, I have to finish my Johannine epistles commentary. Then Galatians is the next one after that. I have hundreds of pages of notes, but I don’t know when I’ll get it done. There are half a dozen other things that I have to get squeezed in there first.

It does belong to the Pillar series. The Johannine epistles is one is in the NIGTC series (the New International Greek Testament Commentary series), and unless you read Greek, you probably won’t follow it. The advantage of the Galatians one is that is Pillar, so it’s basically accessible. As I’m neither prophet nor the son of a prophet, I’m unwilling to make detailed predictions.

Ryan: We’ll wrap it up there for tonight. I know you probably have questions on your mind that you’re wishing we’d ask and wanting them to talk a little bit more, but for the sake of our schedule, we’ll stop here.

We’ll start at 9:00 sharp tomorrow morning, but let me say this: If you’re interested and/or able (with caffeine or not) to get here by 8:45, we’re going to start at 8:45 with singing. We’ll do a few songs before we actually begin at 9:00. So if you can just make a mental note … it’s not 9:00; it’s 8:45 … that would be great. We can have some singing together before we have a full day of some good teaching from God’s Word. Let me ask Dr. Horton if he’d dismiss us in prayer.

Michael: Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus Christ, not because we pray well but because Christ does. We come because he is our intercessor at your right hand, and the Holy Spirit addresses you in groanings too deep to be uttered.

Father, you have so taken care of our salvation and our life so that not a hair can fall from our head apart from your will but that all things must work together for our salvation. Father, we pray that even as we go this night you would guard our ways as we go to our homes or hotels and bring us back again tomorrow so that we may, once again, learn wonderful things from your Word. For we pray in Christ’s name, amen.