In eternity past, God devised His Bible project. He decided that
He would create a group of writings to teach human beings things that they need
to know. And then in history He fulfilled this plan by using certain people to
bring this literature into existence.
Although humans had some input into the Bible, it is essentially a
divine thing. God chose what to put in it, and we should trust that He knew
what He was doing.
DISHONESTY FOR A
SUPPOSED GOOD REASON
Something that I often come across is dishonest use of Scripture
for some supposed good purpose.
The following, or something similar to it, frequently happens:
A truth of the Christian faith comes under attack. A Christian
sees this happening and wants to defend against it. They therefore respond by
quoting biblical passages. However, they don’t find it easy to make their case.
So they try to manufacture extra support for their arguments by dishonestly
interpreting parts of the Bible. Honesty in biblical interpretation is
sacrificed because an important issue is seen to be at stake.
I am not saying that Christians who misinterpret Scripture in this
way are open about what they are doing, even to themselves. It is a more subtle
thing. They suppress their consciences, and they presumably find it easy to do
this because their goal is to stand up for something that is true.
EXAMPLES OF DISHONEST
USE OF SCRIPTURE
Here are a few examples of how Christians seem sometimes to be
dishonest with Scripture for the purpose of trying to support some truth or
other.
I am not saying that every Christian who uses the Bible in the
following ways is guilty of dishonesty. But I am sure that many are not being
as honest as they could be.
Peter, the rock
The first
example comes from Matthew 16:18. Here Jesus states:
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
(Scripture
readings in this article are from the English Standard Version except where
stated.)
In this translation the Greek word underlying “Peter” is petros,
which means “rock.”
Jesus is therefore making a play on words:
“. . . you are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church . . .”
The best and by far the most natural way of interpreting this
saying is to understand Peter as the rock on which the church is to be built. (For
more on this, see my article, Identifying
the Rock in Matthew 16:18.)
Roman Catholics interpret the verse in this way. However, they
also usually claim that this verse supports their doctrine of papal succession,
i.e., of popes following each other. They say that Peter was the first pope and
that the building of the church on Peter is a reference to the line of popes that
would succeed him.
When confronted by Catholic use of this verse, evangelicals
rightly want to oppose the mistaken doctrine of papal succession. However,
instead of just saying that Catholics are reading far too much out of this
verse, most evangelicals claim that Peter is not even the rock that Jesus is
referring to! Instead, evangelicals usually interpret the rock that the church
is built on as Jesus or as Peter’s confession about Jesus or something similar.
It is understandable that there is concern with Catholic teaching
on papal succession. However, that doesn’t make it right to misinterpret the
passage. Instead, we should be honest with the text, interpret Peter as the
rock, and then confront any difficulties that arise.
As it happens, it is easy to take Peter as the rock in this verse and to reject the idea that papal
succession is in view. See my aforementioned article for details.
The deity of the Holy
Spirit
Our second example of apparently dishonest use of the Bible for a
supposed good cause concerns the deity of the Holy Spirit.
The group known as Jehovah’s Witnesses is well known for denying
the deity of the Spirit.
In arguing against Witnesses’ rejection of the deity of the
Spirit, Christians often make an argument using the Greek grammar of several
verses in John’s Gospel: John 14:26 ; 15:26 ; 16:13 , 14. I will comment on
the first of these, although the same sort of wrong argument is often made using
the other verses too.
In John 14:26 Jesus says:
“But the Helper [parakletos], the Holy Spirit [pneuma], whom the Father will send in my name, he [ekeinos] will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”
In this translation the Greek word underlying “Spirit” is the
neuter noun pneuma. And the word underlying “he” is the masculine pronoun
ekeinos.
There are many Christians who claim that the gender of the Greek
words in this verse shows that the Holy Spirit is personal and therefore divine.
The argument goes in this way:
In Greek it is normal for the gender of a pronoun to be the same
as the gender of the noun that the pronoun refers to. In this verse, however,
the masculine pronoun ekeinos rather than the neuter pronoun ekeino is used to
refer to the neuter noun pneuma. A masculine pronoun was irregularly chosen to
agree with pneuma so as to imply the personality of the Spirit.
It is, of course, right to support belief in the personality and
divinity of the Spirit. The Bible certainly teaches these things.
However, this argument from the gender of words doesn’t actually work.
In this verse the word parakletos, underlying “Helper” in the English
translation, is a masculine noun. And the easiest interpretation of the text is
that the masculine pronoun ekeinos refers to parakletos, not to pneuma. This
means that there is no irregularity of agreement in gender in John 14:26. And
the same seems to be true in John 15:26; 16:13 , 14.
Interpreting these verses correctly removes one potential argument
that can be used against Jehovah’s Witnesses’ theology. However, honesty must
always come first. It is never right to misinterpret Scripture, even if we are
trying to combat heretical ideas.
The deity of Christ
Another example of apparently dishonest use of the Bible for a
supposed good reason concerns the deity of Christ. This time it is a matter of
mistranslation rather than misinterpretation.
In Colossians 1:15 Paul states:
“He [God’s Son] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.”
This translation of
the verse in the ESV is a good one.
At first sight Paul might
seem to be saying that Jesus was created. “The firstborn of all creation”
sounds as if He was either the first created entity or the most important
entity that was created.
Of course, it is
true that the human part of Jesus, the God-Man, was created. But the divine
part of Him was certainly not created. When the whole Bible is taken into account, we
should have no hesitation in saying that Jesus is the divine Son of God.
Perhaps a technically imprecise phrase is being used in this verse
to stress how closely Jesus is related to creation. Or perhaps “firstborn” is
being used in the sense of “heir.” Or just possibly Paul is referring to Christ’s
human part as the most important created entity. Or maybe there is another
solution.
Whatever the correct interpretation is, however, this verse is
certainly awkward for orthodox, i.e., non-heretical, Christian belief. It has
the potential to be misunderstood.
Because of this awkwardness, it is not uncommon to find the verse
translated in ways that remove the difficulty.
For example, the New International Version translates using the
word “over” in place of “of”:
“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
No reader of this translation would suppose that Paul is saying
that Jesus was created.
The problem with translating in this way, however, is quite simply
that it is not what the Greek says. The Greek preposition epano meant “over,”
and if Paul had wanted to use this word, he could easily have done so. But he
clearly chose not to.
The inspired text of this verse states that Christ is “the firstborn
of all creation,” and it is wrong to mistranslate to make the passage fit more
obviously with orthodox Christian beliefs. The difficulty in this verse needs to
be faced honestly and dealt with as best we are able.
Jesus as only-begotten
Another likely example of dishonesty in Bible translation for a
supposed good cause comes from the 4th century, from the Latin Vulgate translation
of the Bible. This example also concerns the deity of Jesus.
The Vulgate was composed by a church leader and scholar called
Jerome. When Jerome was writing it, he and other Christians were involved in a
vigorous dispute with a sect known as the Arians. Unlike Christians, who
believe that Jesus was begotten by God the Father, the Arians believed that He
was fully created by God the Father.
Jerome was, of course, absolutely right to oppose Arian teaching.
However, there are four verses in John’s Gospel, where it seems probable that he
dishonestly translated from Greek into Latin, so that he could help make his
case against the Arians. These verses are John 1:14, 18; 3:16 , 18. I will comment on the first of them, although the
same point applies to the other three verses as well.
In the ESV translation of John 1:14 we read:
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only [monogenes] Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The Greek word that
underlies “only” in the ESV translation is the adjective monogenes. This
word means “only,” “unique,” “one and only.” The ESV translation of this verse is a good one.
In most of the places
in the New Testament where monogenes is used, Jerome correctly translated it
into the Latin unicus, meaning “only.”
However, in John 1:14 (and in John 1:18 ; 3:16 , 18), where monogenes refers to Jesus, Jerome translated
it into Latin as unigenitus, meaning “only-begotten.”
The result was that Jerome’s Latin translation of these four
verses explicitly contradicted Arian theology, which denied that Jesus was
begotten. Jerome’s translation has influenced English translations that have
“only begotten” in these verses.
As it happens, however, monogenes does not mean “only begotten” in
these passages (or anywhere else, for that matter). If that had been the
intended sense, the Greek word we would expect to have been used is monogennetos.
Although I am hesitant to claim that Jerome was dishonest when I
don’t know all the facts, it seems likely that he did exactly what I am
criticizing in this article. It seems that he knowingly mistranslated the Bible
in an attempt to make certain passages more explicitly anti-Arian. If so, he
should have been content to confront the Arians using Scripture as God inspired
it, even if that made his task more difficult.
PROBLEMS WITH USING
THE BIBLE DISHONESTLY
Whenever someone is dishonest in how they use the Bible, they are
committing a sin. And in God’s sight the gravity of sin is enormous. It is a
kind of infinite insult to Him.
Even if a Christian’s motive is to support something true, that
doesn’t excuse knowingly misinterpreting or mistranslating Scripture. Honesty
must take precedence over everything else. So we should fight as hard as possible
to be as honest as possible about every passage.
Furthermore, when someone tries to doctor the Bible to make it
“more helpful,” they are actually revealing a lack of faith. If we trust God
that He knew what He was doing when He inspired Scripture, we will be content
not to force it to say something that it doesn’t. If that means that we have to
wrestle with a text or that it causes us some difficulty, then so be it.
It is bad enough for Christians to be dishonest with the Bible
when they are trying to support something that is true. But it is even worse
when they are trying to support something that they only mistakenly think is
true.
There is a huge amount of Christian writing, on the internet and in
other places too, where not only does the author seem to be the using the biblical
text dishonestly, but what they are teaching is completely wrong as well.
However, on the Day of Judgment we will all have to give an
account to God for every word we have spoken or written (Matthew 12:36 ). That prospect alone should make us take great care in
what we say.
See also:
