Book Review: The Authenticity Hoax

Courtesy of Marc Hays.

http://kuyperiancommentary.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/book-review-the-authenticity-hoax/

Mission to Read All of C.S. Lewis

If it appears that this blog is turning into a C.S. Lewis fest, here's why.

Having already read a good number of Lewis's books, and having noticed that he can make almost any subject interesting, the thought occurred to me: "What if I were to set a goal of reading all of C.S. Lewis's published writings?" After all, I've often thought of choosing some author and reading his or her entire corpus. Several reasons suggested Lewis as a good candidate for this goal:

(1) I already have a fairly good start on him (it's not as though I'd be starting from scratch).
(2) He's extremely readable (it's not as though I'd be reading John Owen for 40 years).
(3) His entire corpus is manageable (it's not as though he wrote 50 massive volumes like Spurgeon or Luther or Augustine).
(4) He would provide variety: his work is a unique mixture of theology (admittedly not always the best), fiction (almost always the best), and literary criticism.
(5) Since I can read Narnia and the Space Trilogy out loud to my kids, I'll be able to kill two birds with one stone with several of the volumes. :-)

So there it is. Sounds like a good idea. I'm young yet. I think I'll do it.

I've got a list of his published works, and the toughest part will be the three big volumes of personal letters, although I could argue that those shouldn't count since they weren't written for publication anyway.

I close with an excerpt from the man himself.

Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But the on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development: When I was ten I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

-C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" 

"Nice Means Nice:" How Not to Use Greek in Bible Study

OK. Unoriginal thought number 2.

Have any of you ACE homeschool kids ever took the PACES called "Etymology"? I did. Etymology deals with the 'roots' of words--where a word originally came from way back in the foggy mists of time. Etymology is a valuable area to study, and nothing in the following excerpt is meant to suggest otherwise (i.e. your Etymology PACES were not a waste of time). 

Nevertheless, a problem arises when people mistakenly think that a word's etymology tells them "what it really means." We can see the fallacy of this notion clearly in our native English language. For example, the word "nice" comes from the Latin root 'nescius,' meaning 'ignorant.' But no one but a whacko would respond to your calling them 'nice' by saying 'Oh, I see what you really mean! You're saying I'm ignorant! I'm onto your veiled Latin insults! You can't call me 'nice,' maaaan!' No one does this in their native language, but many Christians do this very thing when studying the Bible. They look up Greek words in their Strong's Concordance, find the original Greek root of a word, and conclude that they have found the word's 'real' meaning.

Here's the point: roots and etymology are good. They can sometimes give you an interesting backstory on why a particular word came to be used to describe a particular thing. They can even help you out in the national spelling bee. But they don't tell you the 'real meaning' of a word. A word's meaning is not determined by its etymology, but by its usage. If you proposed to your girlfriend and she said "No," but you could somehow prove that "No" came from a Latin root meaning "Yes," it wouldn't do you much good. Sadly, meaning is determined by usage, not etymology. The reason no one today would take 'nice' as an insult is that no one today uses 'nice' as an insult. If you want to know what a word means today, you must find out how it's used today. That's what an up-to-date dictionary will tell you. Contrary to what is sometimes believed, dictionary writers do not determine word-meanings; they simply tell you how words are currently being used. Rather than prescribing they are simply describing. 

Incidentally, this is also why it is counterproductive to be an "1828 Noah Webster-Onlyist." Webster's 1828 Dictionary (which I, along with many homeschooling families, own) is a valuable resource for finding out how words were used in 1828, and as such can be used profitably to discover the meanings of unfamiliar words you might find in pre-19th century works like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Shakespeare's plays, and the King James Version of the Bible. In fact, it contains thousands of definitions that are still accurate. But it can't serve as your only dictionary, because word usage has changed significantly in the last 200 years. Some words have lost old meanings ('let' is no longer used to mean 'hinder'), others have gained new ones ('cell' is now used to describe a phone), and others have simply come into existence (babysitter, internet, etc.). Living, spoken languages are not frozen in time, nor are they constrained by etymology.       

When it comes to Bible study, many Christians think that knowing Greek is like a magic bullet that will unlock all the secrets of biblical meaning. This is simply not the case. Come to find out, Greek scholars have disagreements, too. The truth is, the main thing I learned in the first couple of weeks of Greek class was that most of what I thought I knew about Greek was malarky. Turns out that 'agapao' and 'phileo' weren't really different kinds of love after all, and the gospel wasn't really the 'dynamite' of God. In many ways, Greek was much more mundane than I had thought. 

I'm not trying to discourage anyone from studying Greek. In fact, I would encourage more people to learn as much as they can. But the hard truth is that most people don't have time to learn it. The good news, however, is that God never intended all (or even most) of his people to have to learn Hebrew and Greek in order to understand his word. There is a happy division of labor in the body of Christ, just as there is in society in general. God is merciful--some people become experts in Greek and Hebrew so the rest of us don't have to. As my hermeneutics prof Rob Plummer has said, 

"Never before in the history of Christianity has there been less need for word studies than today. With the multiplicity of many excellent English Bible translations, readers of the Bible have the fruit of scholars' painstaking research."

And as 19th century Baptist theologian John Dagg put it:

"Translations, though made with uninspired human skill, are sufficient for those who have not access to the inspired original. Unlearned men will not be held accountable for a degree of light beyond what is granted to them; and the benevolence of God in making revelation has not endowed all with the gift of interpreting tongues...God has seen it wiser and better to leave the  members of Christ to feel the necessity of mutual sympathy and dependence, than to bestow every gift on every individual. He has bestowed the knowledge necessary for the translation of his word on a sufficient number of faithful men to answer the purpose of his benevolence. And the least accurate of the translations with which the common people are favored is full of divine truth and able to make wise to salvation."

If Dagg is right, and I think he is, then the impulse that says "I don't want to be dependent on scholars" may be a latent form of pride. It may be the hand saying to the foot 'I have no need of you.' I'm not trying to turn scholar-translators into an infallible high priestly class. I'm just saying that unless God expects us all to become experts in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic, then he must have willed for there to be a division of labor in this area. We are dependent on experts whether we like it or not. Pride will chafe at this. Paranoia will invent conspiracy theories. But until we become self-sufficient and omniscient the way God is, nothing will change it. Even the King James Onlyist is dependent on experts (namely, the King James translators). 

But humility will see this as good news, and will be relieved at God's way of dividing the labor. The sad news is that many Christians spend too much time looking up Greek words and coming to misguided conclusions because they don't really understand how the language works (often they know just enough to be dangerous). But for those who think they can't understand the Bible unless they can understand Greek, the good news is that 9 times out of 10 you will gain a better understanding of what a word means simply by reading it in its context. 

Here's what I mean by 'reading it in its context:' don't just zero in on one word, read the entire sentence. Then read the entire paragraph. As Paul Baker once wisely told us in one of his parable messages, "Words shouldn't be read with blinders on." The reason for this is obvious when you think about it. There is a sense in which an individual word doesn't even have a meaning--rather, it has a range of possible meanings. That's why a dictionary will usually list several possible options. It's only when a word is used in a context that the more definite meaning becomes clear. Context usually narrows the possible meanings to one (an exception would be those wonderful things called "puns"). So for example, if you want to know what John means by the word "sin" in 1 John 3:4, instead of zeroing in on the word "sin" and doing a word study of 'hamartia' and trying to find out what 'hamarita' 'really' means based on its root, read the entire sentence: "Sin is lawlessness." Then read the surrounding context: "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin." It's not as flashy a study method, and it probably won't make you look as smart, but it'll save you a lot of time and give you much more accurate results. :-) 

If all this sounds new to you, I promise that this is indeed an unoriginal thought. Nothing radical. ;-)

Wanna Avoid Being a Job's Comforter? Study Hermeneutics!

The title of this blog is two-pronged: (1) "Excerpts" (2) "Unoriginal Thoughts." So far, I have posted only excerpts: ideas that come directly from other people. This post will serve as my first sharing of an unoriginal thought--ideas that come indirectly from other people after being filtered through my mind, personality, and experience (both first-hand and vicarious). The words of C.J. Mahaney also apply to me: "I've never had an original thought" (Tilly disagrees with me on this, but she's wrong. :-) )

This unoriginal thought comes from my final exam in Dr. Robert Plummer's hermeneutics class. Hermeneutics is the study of how to interpret the Bible. I took this class in the Fall of 2009. Since then, Dr. Plummer has published his own book on hermeneutics called 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible (which I own if anyone wants to borrow it). This was apparently question number 7 on the exam. The question was:

(7) “Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.”  I recently received an email from an old friend who told me to “claim the promise” of this verse.  Is this a correct way to think about this text? (10 points)

To which I responded:

I’m sure the friend meant well, and his or her trust in the truth of God’s word is admirable. However, before we go “claiming any promises,” we must first ask the question, “Is this a promise?”

We must keep in mind that the Bible contains many literary genres, such as historical narrative, poetry, prophecy, and apocalypse. Each genre has different rules for how we are to interpret it. So in order to interpret any passage properly, we must know what genre it belongs to and how to interpret that genre.

The answer to the question “Is this a promise?” is actually “No.” This verse belongs to the genre (and book) known as “proverbs.” Proverbs are not promises that hold true in every instance, but instead are short, pithy sayings that convey general truths. For example, when one proverb counsels us to “answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him,” it does not mean that we should never answer a fool, because the very next verse tells us to “answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes.” Neither proverb is an absolute statement that applies in every case. Both are appropriate at given times, just as both are inappropriate at given times. Deciding which proverb applies requires wisdom. As I said, proverbs are short, pithy sayings. In order to remain short and pithy, however, they can't go into the exceptions; they simply state the rule. In this case, as a rule, if you raise a child properly, he will turn out well. But this does not guarantee that that will happen in every case.

In a similar example, there are proverbs that talk about how prosperity comes from hard work and poverty comes from laziness. Again, this is generally true, but this does not mean that all poverty comes from laziness, or that if someone is poor he must be lazy. Scripture often speaks of poor people who are righteous. If we were to interpret these proverbs as promises, we would end up acting like Job’s miserable comforters toward all poor people, telling them that they must have sinned or been lazy, otherwise they wouldn’t be poor. In the same way, we can easily become Job’s comforters toward Christian parents with wayward children if we misconstrue this proverb as a promise, telling them that they must have failed in some way, since the Bible promises that if you train up a child in the way he should go then he will not turn from it."