dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu (David M Tate) (11/24/89)
I posted an article in response to Dave Mielke (sp?), to which he replied.
Unfortunately, I never received his reply, and only saw Gary Sanderson's
quoting reply in my defense. I apologize for not knowing what was said in
its entirety, but I can gather the tone pretty well...
This may reduce (yet again) to a fundamental disagreement between those of us
who believe in Free Will and those who believe in Predestination. If only the
Elect can understand/be saved/benefit, then I can see how my own intellectual
reflections on Scripture and God would be useless. So would everything else.
Either I'm "hardwired for heaven" or I'm not, and it doesn't matter which at
this point.
On the other hand, if I really must choose whether to accept God's grace, then
I need to do so, and see to the corresponding changes in my life. Before you
say "You don't have to, the Spirit does it for you", recall that Paul had to
keep urging the European/Asia Minor churches to do just that. I have to make
the conscious, intellectual effort to *let* the Spirit work in me...
On to the original topic, which was translation. If I were to translate the
Bible from the oldest known texts, the result would be an odd mishmash of half-
remembered KJV and NIV, some paraphrase, and a lot of gobbledygook where I was
not familiar with the passage and didn't know any Greek/Aramaic/Hebrew/whatever
to back me up. Would Mr. Mielke say that this translation is just as good as
any other? What distinguishes it? If the Spirit interprets infallibly in your
ear as you read, what matter that the text *looks* like gibberish? Or is the
Spirit not quite up to the task of translating?
Anyone who has studied language at all knows that everyone brings to the act of
"reading" a massive system of interpretive filters, most of which are below
conscious level. These include "connotation" triggers that convey nonliteral
emotions and flavors of words, "diction" triggers that tell us if it is formal
or informal speech, or somewhere in the middle, personal experiences that make
particular images spring to mind when we read certain passages, and so on. I
find it extremely irresponsible to attribute all of that uncritically to "THE
HOLY GHOST", and deliberately avoid analyzing the prejudices we bring to what
we read. Especially when reading a language (sixteenth century english) that
we are not fluent in.
Mr. Mielke, the scripture says "If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out." Well,
to paraphrase, "If thy brain offend thee..."
--
David M. Tate, "The Thinker" | DISCLAIMER:
dtate@unix.cis.pitt.edu |
dtate@pittvms.bitnet | "Hey! That's *my* Dis!"
He *looks* smart, but what does he *do*? |