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Interview: David Alan Black

In thinking about scholarship in service of the church, I thought it would be great to get a scholar’s opinion who I know thinks in terms of the benefit of the church (as do my previous two interviewees).

David Alan Black is Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina. He blogs avidly at www.daveblackonline.com/blog. His love for missions and his walk with his wife’s cancer have been an inspiration to me. He has shared his academic pilgrimage here. It’s a pleasure to interview him on the topic of scholarship.

AR: How would you define scholarship?

DB: Great question! Well, we live in a day of anti-intellectualism, do we not? Many of our ills stem from false philosophies and just plain biblical ignorance. History is divorced from theology. When I was a doctoral student at the University of Switzerland I was told many times that you could not be a Christian and a university student at the same time. Christianity was only for children and the elderly – i.e., people who don’t know any better. At the same time, I recall listening to Francis Schaeffer tell his audience in Basel that the contradiction between faith and reason was a false one. “When you become a Christian you don’t have to put your mind in park or neutral.” And he was right. Mark Noll once put it this way (my paraphrase): “The question today is not between faith and reason. It is between a faithless reason and a reasonable faith.” The great and good Charles Malik echoed these remarks in an address at Wheaton College, noting that he craved to see “an institution that will produce as many Nobel Prize winners as saints.” For a follower of Jesus, then, scholarship is nothing but acknowledging the two-way causal connection between thinking and doing. I, for one, am very thankful for evangelical scholars who have modeled for me responsible intellectual existence. Oh goodness, how we need scholarship in the evangelical church today. Ideas have consequences, and the truly integrated life will always eschew intellectual apathy.

AR: Is scholarship a benefit to the church and how should it serve the church?

DB: “Is” or “should be”? Frankly, Andrew, I think we so-called scholars can do a much better job of placing our knowledge in the service of the Body of Christ. I tell my students that the key to being an effective preacher/teacher is being simple without being simplistic. Someone has said, “Great preachers are like an iceberg: you only see 10 percent, but underneath you sense the other 90 percent.” I personally use the KISS technique when preaching: Keep It Simple Stupid. People aren’t even faintly interested in “the aorist passive imperative means ….” They want to know two things: This is what the text means, and this is what it is telling us we must do.” Of course, I have been the chief of sinners in this regards. When I was in grad school I had a great deal of difficulty navigating the treacherous intellectual waters there. Passages such as Ephesians 2:10 (“For we are His masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works”) are all too often forgotten in a discussion of the synoptic problem or verbal aspect. Did I mention verbal aspect? Grateful I am for my friends who are on the front lines in this battle to understand verbal aspect in Koine Greek. Have the fruits been noticeable? Not in my opinion. I urge myself and every other student in the academy to ask ourselves with all honesty whether we are only playing intellectual games with the scholarly guild or whether we are committed to placing our knowledge at the feet of King Jesus. An Old Scottish proverb says, “Hebrew, Greek, and Latin all have their proper place, but it is not at the head of the cross, where Pilate put them, but at the foot of the cross, in humble service to Christ.” Incidentally, it is for this reason that my books are becoming shorter and shorter. I am also writing less for the scholarly guild and more for my students. To be fully integrated biblical scholars, we must integrate (or at least try to integrate) what we do in the study with what we do in the church and on the mission field.

AR: Is scholarship something that is misunderstood by many in the church? If so, does it matter?

DB: Yes, indeed – and both by pastors and laypeople. Pastors, for their part, often abuse scholarship. It’s like when I heard a famous radio preacher wax elephant against the ordination of women to ministry because the Greek of 1 Tim. 3:1 disallowed it. “The word for ‘any man’ here is tis, which is a masculine pronoun,” he said. “Therefore the Bible excludes women from holding the highest authoritative teaching office in the church!” The pronoun tis, of course, can be either masculine or feminine (or gender neutral – the context telling us which one is in view), but this pastor felt led to use Greek to support his own a priori conclusion as to what the text meant. This is what I call “evangelical Greek.” And it is anathema. Pastors should know better these days. After all, Don Carson has published his Exegetical Fallacies, and I discuss, in detail, lexical and syntactical fallacies in the fifth chapter of my Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek. As for laypeople, I believe there is a tendency toward cultism as more and more people follow their favorite Bible teacher almost blindly. After all, the man has a doctorate and knows Greek! How can he ever go awry? This is why I enjoy teaching Greek to lay people so much. Greek does two things simultaneously: it equips and empowers you to do your own study of the New Testament, and it begins to wean you from your slavish overdependence on your favorite teacher or study Bible. This includes the ESV Study Bible, to which I contributed an essay but which some students almost think was handed down on Mount Sinai.

AR: Should every Christian be a scholar?

DB: Yes. Or better, a disciple. As I mentioned above, I have taught a Greek class in my local church. Of course, the Bible draws no distinction between clergy and laity, even if our churches do. Every Christian is called to serve, and every Christian needs training to serve effectively. Certainly Greek is not a requirement for everyone. But for those who desire to tap into this wonderful resource I am always eager to make myself available to help. Actually, I am quite diffident about the location. The training may occur in a college setting or a local church setting or a home setting. Let training be available to all — without fees for students and pay for teachers! Of course, Greek is no Open Sesame to biblical interpretation. Yet I cherish the hope that a reading knowledge of the language might drive us back towards New Testament principles.

So what’s the point of training? It is to help us become more like our Master. And it is to equip us to serve Him skillfully. God warns us not to waste our talents. In the Gospels we find that Jesus was indeed a master teacher. He trained His disciples by pouring out His life into theirs and then asking them to pour out their lives into others. In so doing He made one thing abundantly clear: the kingdom of God is not comprised of kings and warriors but of servants and children.

I know that Greek can be tough. If anyone ever experienced a sinking feeling while studying this language, it was me. I dropped out of my beginning Greek class at Biola after only three weeks! Thankfully I went on to take Moody Bible Institute’s correspondence course and, by God’s grace, aced it. Remember what Peter’s problem was when he was walking on the water? He took his eyes off the Lord.

And that just about says it all.

Misunderstood Scholarship

Several times lately I have found myself and my scholarship misunderstood by others in the church. The last thing I think I should do is publicly gripe about it but I think offering some clarification regarding my interests and passions, resulting in a defense of the Christian engaging in those things, would be of help rather than hurt. I’ll focus in this post on the issue of misunderstanding and in subsequent blog posts (at leisure) defend those interests for the sake of the church.

What sparked these moments of seeing myself misunderstood were two instances listening to sermons in church and a third being a conversation had with a friend after church.
In one sermon the preacher was talking about one of Paul’s letters and he spent a little bit of time on the opening greeting, you know the ones that include, “grace and peace to you….” The preacher was great in what he said but he also joked that probably only Bible geeks care in these details. He’s sort of right but it shouldn’t be the case, I don’t think, that only Bible geeks care about Paul’s greetings (so called “details”) in the letters. They are a part of Scripture and informative to us as Christians. Three guys down the row from me all started joking and pointing me out, in good fun. I don’t mind being the/(a) Bible geek but I think it misunderstands my engaging in scholarship as though it is the unimportant details that I’m interested in rather than getting at the meaning of the biblical text.

The second instance happened when another preacher, rightly in my opinion, railed against those who care too much about speculation on things that miss the point of the Scripture text. So, Jesus heals a man born blind by making mud and placing it on his eyes. Lots of ink has been spilled on why Jesus used that method and misses the point of the text. While I don’t think we should never say anything on the issue, I agree with the preacher. And I believe my scholarship is interested in the same thing. But of course someone gives the ol’ “haha, that’s you” elbow and face. But why is that me? Well, others have been interested in things away from the text and I suppose they think that we scholars are all the same.

The third instance was less humorous. A friend basically challenged my engaging in linguistics, failing to see the use. Upon further reflection he had decided that translation was an important use, but that was about it. I think this one is a misunderstanding too because the friend doesn’t seem to have understood what it is I study and therefore can’t see how it is helpful to the church. The things I’m extremely passionate about aren’t everyone’s passions and I get that, but how come my passions are less helpful to the church than others?

Now, I have a sense of humour about my scholarship and interests, but these occurrences all made me see how my interests are misunderstood by many.

Does it matter that I’m misunderstood? Well, I have to admit that I’m like most people and I don’t like to be misunderstood. I see value in the scholarship I’m engaged in for the church and would like others to recognize that as well. And because I see value in what I’m doing for the church I see a place for defending that. But, I have to also recognize that I am always going to be misunderstood and it’s not my responsibility to change everyone’s mind about me. So long as I am convinced in my own mind, and listen thoughtfully to my brothers and sisters’ criticism, I think I should continue doing what I believe it is God is having me do to bless the church as one member of the body among others.

Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics Journal

Exciting times at McMaster Divinity College as it has released a new online and print journal, Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics. The first two articles are by excellent scholars, Wally Cirafesi and Greg Fewster.

The about section of the website gives the following information:

 

Biblical and Ancient Greek Linguistics (BAGL), in conjunction with the Centre for Biblical Linguistics, Translation, and Exegesis at McMaster Divinity College and the OpenText.org project (www.opentext.org) is a fully refereed on-line and print journal specializing in widely disseminating the latest advances in linguistic study of ancient and biblical Greek. Under the senior editorship of Professor Dr. Stanley E. Porter and Dr. Matthew Brook O’Donnell, along with its assistant editors and editorial board, BAGL looks to publish significant work that advances knowledge of ancient Greek through the utilization of modern linguistic methods. Accepted pieces are in the first instance posted on-line in page-consistent pdf format, and then (except for reviews) are published in print form each volume year. This format ensures timely posting of the most recent work in Greek linguistics with consistently referencable articles then available in permanent print form.

What’s Good about this Friday?

What is so good about this Friday? Why call it good?

Good Friday is a remembering and celebration of Jesus’ death on a Roman cross. Hardly seems worthy of celebration, 2000 years later or at any time really. Understanding why it is even conceivable to call it a celebration or good requires understanding what its purpose was.

The crucifixion of Jesus comes at the end of an approximately 30 year life and 3 year ministry for Jesus. In his time on earth he had healed the sick, cast out demons, and preached that the kingdom of God was at hand. In light of his coming he called on people to repent, or turn away from their sin, and call on God.

Jesus Predicts His own Death

What may seem strange at first is that Jesus also predicted and told those around him that he would be killed. He made this explicit upon Peter’s declaration that Jesus is the Messiah (Matt. 16:13ff. & parallels). Matthew’s text says that “from then on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and to rise on the third day” (Matt. 16:21).

That Peter and the disciples didn’t understand what Jesus exactly meant or how it could be so is clear from how Peter responds. He takes him aside and rebukes him, saying that it will never happen to him! (Matt. 16:22) Twice more the Gospel writer tells us that Jesus predicted his death but everyone was slow to understand its import. No one had a category for a crucified Messiah. They thought that the Messiah would establish his kingly reign on earth at that time.

Passover Lamb

But in God’s plan was a different sort of first coming for the Messiah. Instead of reigning victoriously in a clear earthly sense, he would come as a lamb, slaughtered and offered up to God. In Exodus we read of the last plague placed on the Egyptians, the killing of the firstborns. Whoever did not have the blood of a slaughtered lamb on their door posts would find their firstborn killed by morning on a set day. The blood of the slaughtered lamb acted as a sacrifice in place of those who deserved the death. The Passover then became a yearly celebration to celebrate when God passed over those who had faith in him as evidenced by their slaughtering the lamb and placing its blood on the doorposts.

The shedding of blood would continue to be required to atone for the peoples’ sins, but this could never make perfect those who wish to worship God; “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:1, 4). But Jesus’ sacrifice was once-for-all, the second person of the Trinity, himself one with God, laid down his life as a ransom for us.

Who Deserved to Die?

The answer to this question is simple. You and I deserved to die (Rom. 3:23). Our sin requires a just punishment and Jesus stood in our place. We can now turn from our sin by acknowledging it before God and accept Jesus through whom we are justified, or made right with God. Our fundamental problem is that we are not right with God. Jesus makes us right with God.

This is the victory. It is victory over sin and death. And Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday is where the story finds its culmination.

Why I Switched to the NIV (Part 1) – A Response to Kevin DeYoung

The book isn’t brand new (a year old), but I’m interested in the little tract (31 pages) by Kevin DeYoung called Why Our Church Switched to the ESV. In it, DeYoung doesn’t attempt to advance scholarship on the translation issues but rather seeks to address why he and his church switched from the NIV to the ESV. My interest in it lies in the fact that I have made the opposite switch for my main English reading Bible.

I used to be convinced by the arguments found in this book and others and so had an ESV-is-best mentality. Soon after I started to seriously study how language creates meaning and worked more in depth with translation, I found the claims of many ESV-is-best proponents, including my own, to be lacking.

In the same way that DeYoung offers thoughts on his own move from the NIV to the ESV (personally and in his church), I want to offer my own thoughts on why I moved from the ESV to the NIV. But in DeYoung’s case, he wants to say that the ESV is the better translation for use (30). I personally don’t want to say that the NIV is a necessarily better translation for use, but more so that the ESV-is-best mentality is false and then offer why I prefer the NIV as my main English reading Bible. The difference is important as I won’t be bound to defend every decision the NIV translators made or even to defend the NIV as the best English version.

DeYoung offers up in his introduction that he thinks God has and can use other types of translations and he complements the NIV. He states that the ESV isn’t perfect but he still wants to say that he hopes it becomes the new standard “used for prayer, preaching, memorization, study, and worship in more and more churches” (8). The fact that he thinks God can use the NIV and other translations isn’t so much a complement, however, since God can use some pretty awful things to bring glory to his name. The issue of whether or not it is a “faithful” or good translation still remains and DeYoung recognizes this otherwise there would be no reason for him to write this book.

DeYoung gives 7 reasons he and his church switched to the ESV:

1. The ESV employs an “essentially literal” translation philosophy.
2. The ESV is a more transparent translation.
3. The ESV engages in less over-translation.
4. The ESV engages in less under-translation.
5. The ESV does a better job of translating important Greek or Hebrew words with the same English word throughout a passage or book.
6. The ESV retains more of the literary qualities of the Bible.
7. The ESV requires much less “correcting” in preaching.

Since the issues underlying these points are massive, I will only offer up 7 counterpoints at the moment with a little bit of substance (so that I’m not just saying the negation of each point), and then as I have time I will fill out the series one by one, responding to them.

My seven counterpoints are as follows:

1. “Essentially literal” translation philosophy provides a modification of a category within a sphere that offers up a false dichotomy (literal vs. thoughts). The modification of the literal notion does not go far enough in addressing the false dichotomy, still insinuating that meaning occurs at the level of words while introducing a vague notion of context. This vague notion of context at least recognizes that the meaning of words are constrained, but it fails to address meaning that occurs beyond the level of the words. After all, “the meaning [of a text] is always more than the sum of individual words” (Thompson, Introducing Functional Grammar, 29).

2. The notion of transparency comes from a false notion, I believe, of glossing rather than a robust notion of languages as systems with their own meaning-making resources. There is some awareness that languages are not codes for each other in DeYoung’s work, but it is also clear that no robust understanding of systems is considered leading to a notion of transparency based on… what? Glosses from our favourite Greek lexicons? BDAG perhaps? The notion of the Greek lexicon itself may be scandalous, however. Confer, in the meantime, John A. Lee’s work A History of New Testament Lexicography and Stanley E. Porter’s chapter on lexicography in Studies in the Greek New Testament. This issue requires a lot more discussion and I have some thoughts here.

3. DeYoung argues that the NIV adds words unnecessarily and so over-translates but this is dependent upon his view of literal translation in the first place which I will argue is not accurate. I am more interested in what stands behind this notion than in whether or not the NIV “got it right” in particular passages.

4. DeYoung argues that the NIV under-translates as well by at times avoiding theological terms and important concepts though he doesn’t provide arguments that this is a bad thing, he only implies it is by calling it “under translation” and attempting to provide a couple of examples. He may be right but whether this is good or bad is another issue. His implication is that it is bad, of course.

5. Consistency in translating words may aid an English only reader in concordance type searches but it doesn’t necessarily aid in the interpretation of meaning in passages, the more important issue. If I had to choose one, I would go for meaning in context rather than consistency in wording. We may have to choose one of the two options for a single translation but both options in separate translations may help the English only reader best.

6. This one kind of cracks me up, as if the literary qualities of a book only exist and are created at the word level! Literary qualities are created at a higher level than simple words and the sum thereof. A dynamic equivalence translation (I don’t like the category but I use it here) may be even better suited for such a task since it is not bound to the level of the words and word groups.

7.  I think this “correcting” idea comes from a false sense of (again) languages as systems and also how to preach exegetically and what can be carried over from the original text into English. It’s funny that one of the greatest proponents of our day of expository preaching is D.A. Carson and he has used the NIV and TNIV for a number of years in preaching! When I hear him preach I don’t hear him “correcting” the text except to make adjustments based on his scholarship as he would of any imperfect translation (i.e., all of them). Some of the issue here is related to #2.

So much more needs to be said and arguments need to be offered in full. That’s why I will break this up into a series of posts. Given my current schedule I won’t be promising a certain output on a specific schedule, however. But I hope I have said at least enough to get the reader thinking in the meantime.

Now, I said I personally switched to the NIV. I will devote an entire post to this once this blog series is done. But for now, I will say that this move was not because I think it is necessarily the best translation out there. I switched to it because it more consistently tries to translate meaning at the level of the clause where the real meaning-making in the lexicogrammar (lexis and grammar) occurs.

At the same time, I have a certain level of proficiency in Greek so I spend the bulk of my study there and am not bound to English versions (though my Hebrew is not near where it needs to be yet so I am bound to English in the OT). Not everyone has the luxury. Sometimes the fact that the majority of Christians don’t have original language proficiency is used as an argument for the ESV. In my mind, and this will be argued at length later, it shouldn’t lead a person to one translation or the other, but rather to a number of translations. This recognizes that the Bible was not written in English, but in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. No one translation can capture all the meaning of the original in one go, although I get the impression from ESV-is-best folks that it is attainable. I don’t think so.