There are many attacks on the Bible today... from many sides. Sometimes these attacks aim at a Christian's faith in his particular translation of the Holy Bible as opposed to the original languages – Hebrew and Greek. Can a Christian be divinely certain even if he does not know Hebrew or Greek... do the scholars have an advantage in this respect? Must a Christian be made uncertain in his faith when scholars “lord it over” Christendom?
This is where the Lutheran Church shines in its teaching. In Franz Pieper's Christliche Dogmatik, volume 1, p. 420-421 (Archive), (Christian Dogmatics I, p. 348), he writes the following, including a quote from Walther (translation by BTL, all emphasis mine):
[Holy Scripture] is by divine arrangement a light that cannot easily be extinguished even by translation. We find confirmed what Luther says of the Scriptures: “There is no clearer book written on earth than the Holy Scriptures.” (St. L. V:334) [On Psalm 37:40; not in CPH Am. Edition] We should not say, therefore, that even the best translations are merely a human conception or view of God's Word. No, in so far as the translations are really translations, and right translations are especially difficult to avoid in the sedes doctrinae, so they are also God's Word itself. Walther therefore correctly says: (Northern District 1867, p. 34.) “Even he who is ignorant of the basic languages can nevertheless be divinely certain that his German Bible [also his English Bible] is the Word of God, because he receives the testimony of the Holy Spirit through it.” As the Scriptures in the original text prove themselves to be the Word of God, so this also happens through a translation, provided it is a correct translation. Nor is there any lack of Scriptural proof of the fact that Holy Scriptures do not lose the character of the infallible Word of God through translation.
So the next time someone challenges my faith in the Holy Bible, I, as a Christian, can be assured that there is no basis for the argument that translations are not the actual Word of God.
Hello BacktoLuther!
ReplyDeleteOne of the fundamental deceptions being promoted by modern Bible publishers is that the new Bibles are merely "updated styles of writing," or that they are simply "easier to read" than the KJV, and that nothing has been removed or changed in God's word. I fell prey to this deception for over a decade of my Christian life!!:
http://www.1611kingjamesbible.com/altered_verses.html/
http://www.1611kingjamesbible.com/other_translations.html/
http://www.1611kingjamesbible.com/textus_receptus.html/
BacktoLuther,
What are the your opinions and affirmations about the my comment that I quoted above about the modern Bible translations?