Some more questions flowed in via the feedback cards.
'What is current Roman Catholic thinking regarding the Greek Bible? Do they still dispute it?' A second question 'How can we lovingly show our Pentecostal friends that the Bible is more important than their own personal revelations and visions'.
The first one is a good question for how we might speak to our Roman Catholic friends today.
My understanding is that since Vatican II (1960s) most Roman Catholics have been using Bible's translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek. I've met and talked with people who attend Roman Catholic churches who read the NIV and Good News Bibles. So the short answer to the question is that the situation is not the same as in Tyndale's time.
However, I need to say more about this. It's important to be clear that the Roman Catholic Church never disputed or rejected the original Hebrew and Greek text. In fact, there was a scholar called Erasmus who wrote about and made available the Greek New Testament. He was a strong Roman Catholic and vehemently disagreed with Martin Luther. So it was not a matter of dismissing the Greek Bible.
The real issue with the Roman Catholic Bible in Tyndale and Luther's day was that it was a second stage translation. So nearly 1,000yrs before Luther a scholar named Jerome had translated the Hebrew OT and Greek NT into Latin. This created problems down the track. Firstly, Latin had been the main language of Jerome's day but by Luther's day it had become the language of priests, the aristocracy and scholars. It was not the language of the people. So the average person who spoke only German or French or English didn't have a Bible in their own language. Now as Neil mentioned on Sunday this was resolved as translations were provided in difference languages. However, these were second hand translations. They were translated from the Latin not from the original Hebrew and Greek. To think of it in today's terms it would be like producing the Kriol Bible for Aboriginal people (launched in 2007 as the first whole Bible in an Aboriginal tongue) by translating the NIV into Kriol. You're simply not getting a direct translation of the original into your own language - the room for errors and confusion is greater.
This is exactly what happened with the Latin bible. For example, Jerome choose to translate the Greek word metanoia not as repentance but penance (repentance is a better translation). Now the problem was that penance was fast becoming a word tied up with church practices. Penance came to mean the works (prayers, giving money, pilgrimages etc) that you did to express that you were genuine about following God. A priest would tell you what your penance should be and without them you could not be sure you were forgiven. That was the practice. Now imagine you're living in the 15th century and you read or you're told that in Mark 1:15 Jesus tells you to believe and do penance! You're now in a situation where you must do what the Priest instructs you do as penance or remain unforgiven and be condemned to hell. Do you see what happened? A church word and church practices is driving how you read the Bible. Church practices became the grid or filter through which you read the Bible. The whole idea of Bible alone is that we start from the Bible and change our practices to submit to the Word of God. We have assurance that we're saved not because the Church tells us but because God tells is his Word that all who entrust themselves to Jesus are saved. If you remember this is what Luther said at his 'trial' - (paraphrasing) 'Popes and church councils have often erred and contradicted themselves...so unless I am convinced by Scripture I will not recant. My conscience is captive to the Word of God'. It is much better as Tyndale and others did to translate metanoia as repentance and allow the Bible to define that word as - turn from serving yourself to serving God (see it's about your direct relationship with God not with a Priest).
So it is important to get a good translation direct from the Greek and Hebrew. But that alone doesn't help us if we still allow church practices or our personal experience to control our reading the Bible. We must submit all our thinking to the Word of God.
This helps us with our second question about how to help our Pentecostal friends to see the Bible must sit above their personal revelations and visions. There are several things to say. Firstly, we must not think that Pentecostal church goers are bad or evil. As the question rightly highlights many of us have 'friends' in these churches. But what we must be clear about is that they are often confused about how God speaks to us. So, secondly, we must ask them how they know that the vision or dream was from God? It might be from God or it might be their subconscious or something else. It is foolish and even dangerous to make decisions based on a dream that may or may not be from God. Bible alone means that the Word of God is the supreme factor in our thinking not visions and dreams. Thirdly, we need to help our friends read their Bibles better. We must not make the arrogant mistake of putting ourselves into Bible history. So just because Daniel had dreams from God does not mean we will. Any attempt to draw a straight line from Daniel to us fails to understand the Bible. Yes God speaks to us in all the Bible but not in exactly the same way at each point. We sit in a very difference position to Daniel. Thirdly, my fear for our Pentecostal friends is that they listen to dreams and visions because of a weak lower view of the Bible. The Bible is seen as just information about God - a road map, rules, the story of salvation. Dreams, visions or the Spirit's leading are then seen as the way God speaks personally and directly to individual situations. This misunderstands that God is personally powerfully present in his Word by his Spirit, addressing us as individuals and as the body of Christ. The Spirit does not operate in a way independent of God's Word. That's some big ideas (perhaps the subject of another blog) but it means we should encourage our Pentecostal friends with the treasure trove of blessing and personal meeting we have from God in his Word.
James Lewis
