kgYesterday, I responded to Tim Challies’ review of Leland Ryken’s book defending the “essentially literal” translation methods, and the idea of a “word-for-word” translation. While no one made these comments, I want to make it clear that this isn’t simply a theoretical discussion for me, but that there are pastoral concerns as well:

Brothers and sisters, trust your translations!

Challies says, reflecting (I assume) the shared thoughts of Ryken, that “in the end I hope, I trust, you will have greater confidence in the Bible you read.”

However, when they say it, they mean “those of you who are using (so-called) word-for-word translations should have confidence.”

Here’s my concern: people are throwing out the work of experts for the opinions of hobbyists (at best). What about those who simply cannot read their (Ryken et al.) preferred translations? Let’s face it, the NASB’s grammar is anything but English—with fractured sentences that can actually obscure the point of a passage for anyone not familiar with the original languages—and the ESV is academic at best and archaic at worst. If Seminary professors struggle over their wording sometimes, what chance do those who have reading difficulties have?

So what should we do? If you ask some people, their response seems to be throw out that easy-to-read translation and go with something unnecessarily hard. Sure, the KJV and the ESV might be excellent literary translations, but not everyone is a literary enthusiast. The vast majority of people couldn’t care less about how much meter and rhyme they have.

They want the word of God, and they want it in language they can understand.

Now, at this point, someone will bring up 2 Peter 3:15—even Peter thought Scripture was hard to understand!

True. Not the same point. The argument is not that Paul’s Greek was so literary that it made it hard to understand, but that his concepts were difficult to understand. If the concepts are hard—and they are!—then why should we make it harder for people to wrestle with them?

Translation teams are made up of people who have trained in the technicalities of translation and linguistics. They are also primarily comprised of confessing Christians who hold Scripture very highly.1 For example, would critics who claim that NLT translators are changing the word of God want to bring that charge up face to face with Tom Schriener? Alan Ross? Paul House? Eugene Merrill? Raymond Ortlund, Jr.? Craig Blomberg? Robert Stein? D.A. Carson? Doug Moo? Moises Silva? That was just a sampling of the conservative scholars who worked on the NLT who all affirm the doctrine of inerrancy. They are hardly the liberals that Ryken and others have charged with tampering with the Word of God.

Are they perfect? Of course not. No translation is. That’s why we should employ several types from across the spectrum of translation method.
Brothers and Sisters, we can trust these experts with not wanting to tamper with the word of God. We may disagree with some of their decisions, but we cannot demonize them, spreading false information to win a theological battle.

Christianity has a weird affinity for not wanting to trust the experts. We trust them in everything else—from the engineers who put our cars together to the pharmacists who mix our medicines. Why such a priori doubt about the qualifications of the experts behind our translations?

Brothers and sisters, trust your translations!

  1. Of course, there are some translations that we should absolutely reject. These are few and far between. An obvious example is the NWT by the Watchtower Bible Society should be rejected for their errors in translation. ↩
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