-John Wesley, An Address to the Clergy

Languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit;
they are the casket which contains the priceless jewels of antique thought;
they are the vessel that holds the wine;
and as the gospel says, they are the baskets
in which the loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude. . . .
As dear as the gospel is to us all,
let us as hard contend with its language.

-Martin Luther

I have become increasingly frustrated as of late with the unabashed ignorance of many clergy men and women when it comes to the knowledge which is absolutely necessary to interpret and teach Scripture properly. Within this category fall such things as the cultural, social, and literary backgrounds of the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds; however, the most important skill for proper interpretation is without a doubt the ability to read the Scriptures in their original languages, namely Greek and Hebrew. Indeed, it is the inability to read the Scriptures in their original languages that lead to exegetical blunders like this one and this one, and far worse.

David Alan Black, a well known author and professor of New Testament Greek, has rightly said:

Consider … the alternative-pastors who do not know Greek are forced to borrow their ideas from others. They are slaves to the commentators, but have no means to check their accuracy. The best tools of interpretation are beyond their reach. Not even the English translations they use are completely trustworthy. Worst of all, without thorough training in Greek they may discover that they are passing on in the name of God their own ignorance, based upon erroneous interpretations.

-David Alan Black, Using New Testament Greek in Ministry: A Practical Guide for Students and Pastors(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1993)

Unfortunately, this appears to be a problem especially in evangelical Protestant churches. I had classmates both in college and in seminary who, because of a variety of factors including laziness, disinterest, and lack of diligence, barely made it through their required original language courses with a passing grade. I had other classmates who dropped their original language courses or transferred to a different degree program or school which didn’t require them simply because learning to read the Scriptures in their original languages was “too hard.” Most of these former classmates of mine are now pastors.

It is true; learning Greek and Hebrew is hard. I will readily admit that I still struggle with properly understanding the Scriptures in their original languages (and I will doubtless continue to struggle with it until the day I die!), and I read Greek and Hebrew every single day. Indeed, it takes a great deal of time, commitment, and self-control, not to mention a great sense of calling, in order to endure the pain and frustration that often accompany learning Greek and Hebrew. But aren’t these character qualities that ordained clergy should possess anyway? Should those who lack the self-control even to acquire the skills necessary to properly interpret the living Word of God really be ordained clergy? To put it another way, Do pastors who can’t even read the Scriptures in their original languages-and therefore must rely on what others say about them-have any business teaching them to their congregations who regard their teaching as authoritative? Moreover, how can they authoritatively proclaim and exposit Scripture if they haven’t acquired the skills necessary to do so?

While I have some strong disagreements with the über-Calvinism to which John Piper subscribes, I appreciate his enthusiasm for Scripture and his commitment to reading them in their original languages. Following is an article by John Piper (used by permission) about the topic at hand, and it is well worth reading (and perhaps passing on to your pastor!).

_______________

Brothers, Bitzer Was a Banker!

by John Piper, The Standard, June 1983, 18-19. Used by permission.
A slightly revised version of this article now also appears in Piper’s book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (Broadman & Holman, 2002).

“As dear as the gospel is to us all, let us as hard contend with its language”

Last year Baker Book House reissued a 1969 book of daily Scripture readings in Hebrew and Greek called Light on the Path. The readings are quite short, and vocabulary helps are given with the Hebrew verses. The aim of the editor, who died in 1980, was to help pastors preserve and improve their ability to interpret the Bible from the original languages.

His name was Heinrich Bitzer, and he was a banker.

A banker! Brothers, must we be admonished by the sheep what our responsibility is as shepherds? Evidently so. For we are surely not admonishing and encouraging each other to press on in Greek and Hebrew. And most seminaries-evangelical as well as liberal-have communicated by their curriculum emphases that learning Greek and Hebrew well is merely optional for the pastoral ministry.

I have a debt to pay to Heinrich Bitzer, and I would like to discharge it by exhorting all of us to ponder his thesis: “The more a theologian detaches himself from the basic Hebrew and Greek text of Holy Scripture, the more he detaches himself from the source of real theology! And real theology is the foundation of a fruitful and blessed ministry! (p.10).

A Plague of Uncertainty

What happens to a denomination where a useful knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is not cherished and promoted as crucial for the pastoral office? (I don’t mean offered and admired. I mean cherished, promoted and sought.)

Several things happen as the original languages fall into disuse among pastors. First, the confidence of pastors to determine the precise meaning of biblical texts diminishes. And with the confidence to interpret rigorously goes the confidence to preach powerfully. You can’t preach week in and week out over the whole range of God’s revelation with depth and power if you are plagued with uncertainty when you venture beyond basic gospel generalities.

Second, the uncertainty of having to depend on differing human translations (which always involve much interpretation) will tend to discourage careful textual analysis in sermon preparation. For as soon as you start attending to crucial details (like tenses, conjunctions and vocabulary repetitions), you realize the translations are too diverse to provide a sure basis for such analysis.

So the preacher often contents himself with the general focus or flavor of the text, and his exposition lacks the precision and clarity which excite a congregation with the Word of God.

Expository preaching, therefore, falls into disuse and disfavor. I say disfavor because we often tend to protect ourselves from difficult tasks by belittling or ignoring their importance. So what we find in groups where Greek and Hebrew are not cherished and pursued and promoted is that expository preaching (which devotes a good bit of the sermon to explaining the original meaning of the texts) is not much esteemed by the clergy or taught in the seminaries.

Sometimes this is evident in outright denunciation of schoolish exposition. More often there is simply a benign neglect; and the emphasis on valuable sermonic features (like order, diction, illustration and relevance) crowds out the need for careful textual exposition.

Another result when pastors do not study the Bible in Greek and Hebrew is that they (and their churches with them) tend to become second-handers. The harder it is for us to get at the original meaning of the Bible, the more we will revert to the secondary literature. For one thing, it is easier to read. It also gives us a superficial glow that we are “keeping up” on things. And it provides us with ideas and insights which we can’t dig out of the original for ourselves.

We may impress one another for a while by dropping the name of the latest book, but second-hand food will not sustain and deepen our people’s faith and holiness.

The Mother of Liberalism

Weakness in Greek and Hebrew also gives rise to exegetical imprecision and carelessness. And exegetical imprecision is the mother of liberal theology.

Where pastors by and large can no longer articulate and defend doctrine by a reasonable and careful appeal to the original meaning of biblical texts, they will tend to become close-minded traditionalists who clutch their inherited ideas, or open-ended relativists who don’t put much stock in doctrinal formulations. In both cases the succeeding generations will be theologically impoverished and susceptible to error.

Further, when we fail to stress the use of Greek and Hebrew as crucial in the pastoral office we create an eldership of professional academicians. We surrender to the seminaries and universities essential dimensions of our responsibility as elders and overseers of the churches.

Acts 20:27 charges us with the proclamation of “the whole counsel of God.” But we look more and more to the professional academicians for books which fit the jagged pieces of revelation into a unified whole. Acts 20:28 charges us to take heed for the flock and guard it from wolves who rise up in the church and speak perverse things. But we look more and more to the linguistic and historical specialists to fight our battles for us in books and articles. We have, by and large, lost the biblical vision of a pastor as one who is mighty in the Scriptures, apt to teach, competent to confute opponents and able to penetrate to the unity of the whole counsel of God.

Is it healthy or biblical for the church to cultivate an eldership of pastors (weak in the Word) and an eldership of professors (strong in the Word)?

The Pastor Debased

One of the greatest tragedies in the church today is the debasement of the pastoral office. From the seminaries to the denominational headquarters, the prevalent mood and theme is managerial, organizational and psychological. And we think thereby to heighten our professional self-esteem! Hundreds of teachers and leaders put the mastery of the Word first with their lips, but by their curriculums, conferences, seminars and personal example show that it is anything but foremost.

One glaring example is the nature of the Doctor of Ministry programs across the country.

The theory is good: continuing education makes for better ministers. But where can you do a D.Min. in Hebrew language and exegesis? Yet what is more important and more deeply practical for the pastoral office than advancing in Greek and Hebrew exegesis by which we mine God’s treasures?

Why then do hundreds of young and middle-aged pastors devote years of effort to everything but the languages when pursuing continuing education? And why do seminaries not offer incentives and degrees to help pastors maintain the most important pastoral skill-exegesis of the original meanings of Scripture?

No matter what we say about the inerrancy of the Bible, our actions reveal our true convictions about its centrality and power.

We need to recover our vision of the pastoral office which embraces, if nothing else, the passion and power to understand the original revelation of God. We need to pray for the day when pastors can carry their Greek Testaments to conferences and seminars without being greeted with one-liners. The day when the esteem for God’s Word and its careful exposition is so high among pastors that the few who neglect to bring their Testaments will go home to study. The day when prayer and grammar will meet each other with great spiritual combustion.

Never Too Late

In 1829 the 24-year-old George Muller wrote, “I now studied much, about 12 hours a day, chiefly Hebrew … [and] committed portions of the Hebrew Old Testament to memory; and this I did with prayer, often falling on my knees…. I looked up to the Lord even whilst turning over the leaves of my Hebrew dictionary” (Autobiography, p. 31).

In the Methodist Archives of Manchester you can see the two-volume Greek Testament of the evangelist George Whitefield liberally furnished with notes on the interleaved paper. He wrote of his time at Oxford, “Though weak, I often spent two hours in my evening retirements and prayed over my Greek Testament, and Bishop Hall’s most excellent Contemplations, every hour that my health would permit” (Dallimore, Whitefield, I, p. 77).

Brothers, perhaps the vision can grow with your help. It is never too late to learn the languages. There are men who began after retirement! It is not a question of time but of values.

Continuing education is being pursued everywhere. Let’s give heed to the word of Martin Luther: “As dear as the gospel is to us all, let us as hard contend with its language.” Bitzer did. And Bitzer was a banker!

Consider this nearly true story: A professor finds himself angered by the bad theology espoused by a shady faith healer who guarantees a healing in return for a seed-faith gift of only $100.  Now the professor knows his theology pretty well, and posts a notice on his blog asking his subscribers what they think about the faith healer.  Before you know it, the story is posted on the Drudge Report and the professor’s story is the hot news story of the day.

I called this a “nearly true” story because it really happened, but I took liberties with a few facts.  Nearly 500 years ago, an Augustinian monk was very unhappy about some shady business conducted by a guy named Tetzel, and he posted a notice on the door of his church.  A few college students read the posting, translated it into the local language, and printed up a few thousand copies on the newly invented Gutenberg press.  It is said that within 2 weeks all of Germany was in an uproar over the 95 Theses.  Martin Luther went from being a monk and professor to heretic and hero of the Christian faith.

At the risk of oversimplifying what started on the door of the Castle Church, I would like to share five major issues that were at the center of the Protestant Reformation.  They are nicely summarized in five expressions that are easily remembered and central to a proper understanding of our faith:

Sola Fide (Faith Alone): If the reformation was an earthquake, Sola Fide was the epicenter.  The Roman Catholic faith had become more corrupt and polluted over the centuries, built on the idea that one was justified (declared righteous) by faith PLUS good works.  Luther and the reformers understood that it was faith alone that resulted in justification, and that good works were the natural result of salvation.

Sola Gratia (Grace Alone): There is nothing we can do to merit our salvation; it is totally, wholly, and fully a free gift of God.  Our works do not impress God in the least.  He chooses those He will choose, and the basis for this choice is His will, determined long before the foundation of the earth.  Some people think that God will save them because they are, “a good person”, or because they prayed a prayer.  The problem with that picture is that the Bible says we are dead in our sins.  Imagine a corpse doing CPR on itself.  You can’t?  I’m not surprised.  A corpse is dead.

Sola Scriptura (The Scriptures Alone): Some people like to place Sola Scriptura first in the list of Solas, for the simple reason that scripture is the only source of authority for matters of faith.  Regardless of where it falls in the list, it is important to understand why this was a big deal in 1517 and why it is a big deal today.

In 1517, the scriptures were out of reach of ordinary people.  The church believed that people were unable to read it themselves and gain a true understanding of what it meant and how it applied to their lives.  The position of the church was that the Bible could be understood only when interpreted by the Roman church.  The authoritative voice of the church was spoken by the pope and by church councils, and this ultimately meant that the pope and these councils were more authoritative than the plain words of scripture.  This is evident in the faulty logic the Roman church used to explain the basis for salvation (Faith + Works = Justification).

Sola Scriptura did two things: it set aside the authority of popes and councils, and asserted that ordinary people could understand, interpret, and apply scripture to their own lives.

Sola Christus (Christ Alone): It is easy, in our post-modern age, to misunderstand the meaning of Sola Christus and its implications.  Our focus is not on the “many paths to god” heresy espoused by Oprah and her minions, but rather on three elements within the Roman church that robbed Jesus of His full glory:

1. The Roman church believed that the Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a mediator between God and man.  Catholics will explain that Mary represents someone vital to the life of Christ, sort of like a mother who will put in a good word with her son to gain His favor.
2. In the Roman church placed faith in the elements of communion (bread and wine).  Their belief was that these elements became, in substance, the flesh and blood of Jesus when the priest consecrated them.  By implication, the elements then were treated with the same reverence as the living Lord Jesus Christ – they were worshipped.  The reformers rightly rejected this as idolatry.
3. Another area in which the reformers and the Roman church disagreed was the area of the priesthood.  The Roman church believed it was the final and only means for grace to be delivered to the people.  The priesthood became, in effect, the means of access to God.

All of these alternatives (Mary, communion, the priesthood) were unnecessary because we have direct access to God the Father through His son, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Soli Deo Gloria: The final of the five solas is the summation of them all meaning Glory to God Alone.  Nothing we can do, have done, or ever will do, is worthy of glory.  Any works-based theological system, including Arminianism, attacks God’s glory by taking some part the glory that is rightfully God’s and placing it before man.  The Ordo Salutis, or order of salvation, as understood by the reformers, begins with God’s will (His decree) and bears fruit in His effectual calling, faith (His gift to us), justification (His declaration of our innocence, based totally on Christ’s atoning sacrifice), sanctification (the Holy Spirit working in us to make us more holy), and ultimately, our glorification (the fullness of salvation revealed in us, all as a result of His work). 

To the extent that we receive glory for any work of Christ, we are guilty of stealing God’s glory.  This would include assertions that we chose Christ of our own “Free Will”.

+ + + + + + + + + + +

It may appear that this short essay is a bit harsh on the Roman church, so allow me a short opportunity here at the end to mention a few things that God did in using the Roman church that positively benefit us today.  The concept of Providence is clearly illustrated in these examples.

1. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, it received the protection of the most powerful earthly kingdom of the day.  As a result, the church spread far and wide.
2. One of the side effects of being a state religion is that the heads of state tended to interfere in church affairs.  This wasn’t all bad – when a dispute arose among theologians, the government was in a position to help resolve the situation.  The Roman Emperor would send a call out to the bishops telling them to meet for a church council and the issues would be debated and decided.  Once the matter was put to rest, the Emperor would put his stamp of approval on the matter and no one would dare question it.  As a result, the church’s theological basis was established.
3. Bad theology didn’t keep popping up over and over again.  As a contrast, consider how many popular “Christian” teachers & musicians continue to receive wide support in the church despite their clearly unbiblical and heretical underpinnings.  The music group Phillips, Craig and Dean denies the Trinity, as does the popular teacher T.D. Jakes.  Many Word of Faith teachers hold aberrant beliefs but are well-received at Christian conferences.