Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Author Related

Posts that relate in some way to my books. Excludes administrative posts and most reviews of other people’s books.

  • Persecution for Christians who Accept Evolution

    When Troy Brittain started blogging, I knew we’d get some good stuff, and his post More Irony from the ID Creationist Crowd is a good example. It seems unlikely that the real interest of the ID crowd is academic freedom.

  • Expelled! and the Atheism-Evolution Connection

    There is something I want to clarify from my previous post on the topic. Nobody has mentioned this to me, but it is a common enough error that I think I need to say something explicit.

    I object both to the comparison of scientists supporting the theory of evolution to Nazis and the equation of acceptance of evolution with atheism, but I do so for rather different reasons.

    I regard Nazism as ethically repugnant and pretty much without redeeming value. It’s manifestation in Germany was particularly evil. The passage of years, however, has resulted in a variety of people comparing just about anyone they disagree with to the Nazis. If you get by with it, it guarantees a win. I regard the comparison of scientists denying tenure to a professor with Nazis as a slander. It also demonstrates a lack of ethical judgment, and specifically devalues the true evil of Nazism.

    I think it’s quite possible that for the producers of Expelled, the connection to atheists is more important. Atheism is more present and real to modern Americans, and it is the one thing they expect Christians of all denominations and believers from other faiths to be able to agree on–atheism is bad. So if you can hammer the concept into people that belief in evolution is the equivalent of atheism, they will viscerally reject evolution as they already do atheism.

    It’s a fairly standard propaganda ploy. Find something that is already in disrepute amongst your audience (and polls on the perception of atheists will show the basis for this), then all you have to do is completely (subconsciously if possible) relate the idea you dislike to the one people already dislike. Unfortunately, all that is necessary to accomplish this goal is to repeat it often enough and loudly enough.

    So my problem with “evolution is atheism” is quite different from my concern about Nazism. Nazism is nasty, and it is slander to connect it with evolutionary science. Atheists are generally good, moral, productive people, and there is nothing about their belief system that says they will be anything else. There’s a big difference between a group of people who believe as a tenet of their ideology that you ought to be killed, and a group that disagrees with you on certain philosophical points, even very basic ones.

    So I want to make myself clear. I do not object to the connection of atheism and evolution because atheism is nasty, and you shouldn’t smear evolution in that way. I object to this connection because it is incorrect. The theory of evolution describes the natural world, and is not incompatible with theism. It is also not incompatible with atheism. It is simply organized information about the natural world. Connecting it with a philosophy is completely unrelated to determining its truth value.

    Nazism is an ideology with an ethically repugnant set of actions inherent in it. It is slanderous to connect evolution with that ideology.

    It remains true, of course, that both connections are inappropriate propaganda ploys and the producers of Expelled! should be ashamed of themselves for both.

  • Audiences and the KJV

    . . . or any Bible translation, for that matter.

    My post on reading from the KJV elicited a response from Iyov, who doesn’t agree with a number of things, some of which I haven’t said. But some of them I have said, so I want to clarify just a bit.

    Note that I will make a couple of comments that are direct responses, which will be headed by quotes from his post as linked above. Where I am not directly responding to one of these quotes, I am making general comments, and these comments should not be read as directed at Iyov. I agree with a number of things he says, and would prefer that readers not assume disagreement where it doesn’t exist.

    I related my experience with young readers who did not comprehend passages from the KJV, and Iyov responds thus:

    Neufeld’s argument is odd. Certainly we expect young people to learn material substantially more difficult than the KJV. I do understand that Shakespeare and Milton remain in the high school curriculum, and those works use language far more complex than the KJV.

    I’m afraid I find his counterargument odd. I cannot comment on his hypothetical young people who have supposedly studied more complex English literature in High School, but the actual young people in front of me were not comprehending the KJV. Further, when I asked them to read from the not-so-good NASB they were quickly able to comprehend things that they did not from the KJV. The NIV was even better.

    Now I don’t want to make assumptions as to Iyov’s position, but I have had many people argue that I should teach the young people to read and understand the KJV. So in response to those who have made such an argument to me, I must say that I find it ridiculous. I also like the French Louis Segond version. Should I perhaps teach them French before I teach them a Bible class? Whether the educational system should prepare them to read Jacobean English or not (and I would say NOT as a general rule), when I teach Bible class I need to start from a text they can read. If I’m going to teach them anything about a language that is foreign to them, it will be about Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, as appropriate.

    Of course there are varying levels of difficulty in the Bible, but that is hardly the point. In general use, a translation should not make the text more obscure than is necessary in order to convey the intent of the writer.

    Iyov states further:

    The Bible, even to those who have access to Biblical languages, is difficult. The Hebrew of the Bible is often obscure and difficult. Translations that hide this fact from readers (and this category includes the vast majority of all translations) are not accurately reflecting the text.

    Again, I find this argument odd. One of the difficulties with the Hebrew text is that we lack cultural context and knowledge of the usage of certain words and constructions. In order to translate at all, one must make decisions on these matters and convey the result. There is no particular value to maintaining obscurity, except by indicating in a footnote that there are alternatives.

    I’m not sure what Iyov expects translators to do with these obscure texts. Perhaps they should translate obscure Hebrew words with nonsense syllables in English so that the English reader can experience the frustration of trying to work through a difficult passage. No, that would be a bad idea. On of the tasks of a translator is to work through that sort of difficulty. He is a specialist, presenting a text to non-specialists.

    Quoting Iyov again:

    Even stranger is the claim the implication that the KJV allows religious leaders to “infuse meaning” through interpretively biased readings in a way that more modern translations do not.

    It may be strange, though I think it is actually quite plain, and I have observed it many times. This is not, as Iyov seems to have understood me to say, the fault of translators. In fact, I regard the KJV as the greatest single achievement in English Bible translation. I fault the translators for practically nothing. Most criticisms are based, in my view, on applying a later standard to their pioneering work.

    But in many modern congregations, some very near to where I live, the majority of the people do not understand the KJV, and the KJV-Only preachers tell them that the KJV is the sole word of God, superior even to the source texts in Hebrew and Greek. They then use the fact that the congregation is ill-equipped to question them as part of the process of manipulation.

    The KJV was once a great translation for use in church. It is not so in present day America. In fact, I have not seen it used in any church where I would say the choice of the KJV was appropriate to the congregation in question. Hypothetically, I believe there could be such congregations. I have simply never encountered them.

    One of the things I found after I left seminary, went to work in the secular market for some years (also dealing with language), and then returning to the church was that I am simply not the best judge of what a text means. I started learning Biblical languages in my teen years. I have been fascinated by history, geography, and sociology since I could read. What I read in scripture is heavily influenced by this broad exposure to the backgrounds.

    When I first started teaching after returning to the church scene, I tried to teach based on what I assumed people were understanding. I found out very quickly that my assumptions were wrong. So I did something that seems to escape many people, especially scholars–I started asking my audiences what they were hearing or understanding from the scripture texts I used.

    What I found was that they were very often not hearing the same thing, especially from formal equivalence versions such as the NASB (which was once a favorite of mine) or even my much favored NRSV. The situation became much worse when they used the KJV.

    Many languages scholars assume that ambiguity from the source text that is translated by ambiguous English text is more faithful, giving the audience the option of choosing for themselves. (My uncle, Don F. Neufeld, who started me on both Hebrew and Greek, made this argument to me, and it took me some time to realize it was not so.) But the audience doesn’t hear the same set of options that the scholar does.

    A much better approach is for the expert to make a choice, and indicate alternatives in footnotes. Now the audience can comprehend the text with a probable reading, and those who are willing to put in a very small amount of work, much smaller than would be required to learn the source languages or Jacobean English, can get good alternatives.

    I recommend to my students now that they use a variety of translations, and read those footnotes. If they want to get closer to the source languages, a standard battle cry of the formal equivalence advocates, they need to learn the source languages. Formal equivalence has its place, in my view, but it does not better reflect the meaning of the text.

    The meaning of a text is only properly reflected in translation if that translation is understood by the target audience. There is no such thing as accuracy without understanding. If the target audience for a translation is scholars who have some knowledge of the source language, then perhaps formal equivalence will work as it is claimed. For the vast majority of the people I teach on a regular basis, formal equivalence fails to meet that promise.

  • Replacing Reading Scripture with Presentation

    Lingamish made an excellent comment on my previous post, which I want to promote into a post of its own along with a few comments of my own.

    There are a lot of variables to fiddle with on this subject. We tend to assume that reading out loud while a room full of people listen is a valid activity for 21st century believers. But most of these people are used to sitting and watching a screen whether TV or computer and they process information much differently than people did even fifty years ago. So as much as I am an advocate of public reading I can see the strength of an approach that is more multimedia and interactive.

    Another variable is of course the lack of recognized authority. If the pastor told you something in the good ol’ days he had a lot of authority behind him. These days he is just one voice of millions and post-modernists are going to be using the pastor’s message as one element of their own solipsistic truth construct.

    Finally, there’s quite a retro impulse in a lot of modern spirituality so I can imagine that KJV/ESV can exert a strong attraction because of their foreignness. The human heart hungers for holiness and KJV oozes it.

    Now I would plead innocent to the tendency to assume that public reading is the way to present scripture, though most of us will find ourselves reading at least a few lines publicly at one time or another. Personally I have tried combining this with PowerPoint and also using some of the multimedia scriptures prepared by the American Bible Society. But I’m not really that good at creative presentation.

    I like to hear the Bible read aloud, and I like to read it aloud. I frequently read it aloud during my own devotional time. Sometimes my wife and I will read passages to one another. It helps me in study.

    Now notice the use of I and me in that previous paragraph. My wife, while she indulges my desire to hear scripture read, is less enthusiastic about it than I am. She is much more visual. She is much more likely to be impressed by a multimedia presentation or a drama that presents the scripture. That doesn’t mean she never wants to hear it read; it just means that there are other means that work for her.

    I have tried asking these questions in classes on Bible translations or Bible study, and it’s interesting to watch the responses. In one class I had perhaps thirty people divided pretty evenly along generational lines. The older group wanted to hear more scripture read, and they wanted to hear it from the KJV. The younger group was OK with hearing it read, but after hearing me read from several versions during the class, they preferred something like the CEV.

    But there was a minority in both groups that heard a different question, one I was ready to present explicitly, but which I hoped somebody would notice. And in that class, somebody did. What about seekers who come in off the street? What is going to reach them? And that is another matter.

    This is where Philippians 2:4 comes in. We each need to think about what other people need. How does someone like me, who is not oriented toward video and multimedia, and who is just a bit old fashioned, learn to reach other people? Well, I can think of a few ways. Drama, multimedia, more interactive presentations, and so forth. But the real way to work is to ask the folks you’re going to work with just what it is that they want to hear.

    What is a good time for the service? Ask the people you hope will attend.

    How should the scriptures be presented? Ask the people you hope will attend.

    What type of music should be played? Ask the people you hope will attend.

    How much preaching should there be? Ask the people you hope will attend.

    Now there is a place for education, for expanding people’s horizons. But very often if you listen to the answers to these questions you can create a worship service, a class, or an event that will both attract people, and also present the content you believe needs to be heard and understood.

    It does no good to present good material to an empty room, or to a room filled with people who are not the ones who need it. Just as I argue that inspiration must include a consideration of both the human and the divine side, good teaching has to consider both the teacher and those taught, and may often confuse or even practically erase the categories.

  • Reading from the KJV

    I chose to do my lectionary reading today from the KJV, and specifically from an edition of the C. I. Scofield study Bible. This is an interesting exercise for me, since I grew up on the KJV. In fact, it’s no harder for me to do my reading from the KJV than from a very modern version.

    There’s a great scene in The Fountainhead, in which Howard Roark is criticizing the architecture of the Parthenon in the presence of the dean of the school of architecture. The dean’s response? “But it’s the Parthenon!” That seems to be the most common response I get to comments on the KJV. People love the quality of literature it represents, and so they want to stick with it. How can I criticize it? It’s the KJV! And to be honest, a literary appreciation is a good reason to hold onto your KJV.

    But very often when we appreciate something, we try to force it on others on whom it may not have the same effect. Consider the Revised English Bible. There is no modern version I would prefer to hear read aloud. Yet when I read it aloud to most American audiences, the response is disappointing to say the least. The particular vocabulary and cadences of the REB just doesn’t strike them in the same way. Thus in recommending Bible versions I have to remember that what strikes me as high literary quality doesn’t necessarily strike someone else in the same way. (The New Jerusalem Bible is another version that I love to hear read aloud, but which often doesn’t elicit the same response from others. I’m not sure why.)

    Nonetheless, within proper boundaries, the literary beauty argument is a good argument for the KJV. Those constraints must include considerations of audience. A key factor in making me change from the KJV in public reading and teaching was that I noticed that young people very simply didn’t understand it. They could make out the words, but they couldn’t express the content in their own words. That is, of course, an important limitation.

    I do believe that many KJV-Only teachers and preachers actually prefer this state. If their audience doesn’t comprehend the words of scripture, the teacher can infuse into them just about any meaning he prefers. Some of the things I have heard recently suggest that this is not something I imagined. Having scriptures in language the people do not understand is a great boon to those who would like to maintain power over them. It seems like we’ve tried this sort of thing before, only then it was the Latin Vulgate that was God’s gift to the church, and the sole translation of the word of God worth reading.

    For enjoyment and literary appreciation–if you do, in fact, understand it–the KJV is good. For understanding by most modern church members and seekers, not so much.

  • Acts 2:45 – A Short and Simple Lesson in Gender Accuracy

    This passage in the KJV reads:

    And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need. [italics in original]

    Note that the italicized “men” is an indication from the KJV translators that this was an addition of a word not reflected in the Greek. But the adjective here, “all (pasin)” is masculine in form (it could be neuter, but in context doubtless is not), and thus is translated “men” by the KJV.

    As a side note, the use of italics to indicate added words is questionable, because since there are no words in the English text that are also in the Greek text, it is difficult to draw the line. What exactly is reflected in the Greek text, and what is added by the translators? Note the second word “man,” which is not italicized in my edition of the KJV. (Not all KJV editions are identical.) It is reflected in the Greek text just as little, or just as much, as is the first “men,” but it is not italicized. It is probably impossible for someone to be perfectly consistent on this point.

    Now note a couple of modern versions that normally try to reflect the masculine in their translations, at least where those represent words like “adelfoi (brothers)” or “anthropos (human being).”

    And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. (ESV)

    and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need. (NKJV)

    I haven’t searched exhaustively, but I haven’t found any of the translations that avoid gender neutral language that reflect the masculine form here. And of course they should not. They should refer to its referent by the appropriate English form for referring to a referent that doubtlessly included both men and women. One is conveniently available in this case, “all” which is not specified as to gender in English. So we don’t hear about “male representation” in this case.

    But I believe a similar argument could be made for dozens of cases at least of occurrences of “anthropos” or “adelfoi” in the Greek text where those terms refer to groups of mixed gender.

    In general, this whole debate is more about modern culture and language usage, I suspect, than it is about reflecting the actual meaning of the Biblical writers.

  • What is a Level Playing Field?

    According to the New York Times, Dr. Richard Dawkins “withered” when confronted with questions in the screening of expelled:

    Mr. Mathis said in an interview that he had confronted Dr. Dawkins in the question and answer period after the screening and that Dr. Dawkins withered. “These people who own the academic establishment and who have great friends in the media — they are not accustomed to having a level, open playing field,” Mr. Mathis said. “I watched a man who has been a large figure, an imposing figure, I watched this man shrink in front of my eyes.”

    Check this post on The Panda’s Thumb for some more comments on the development of this story. It appears that “spin” in this case has involved some very creative retelling. Did security miss Dr. Dawkins? Did they let him in intentionally? Inquiring minds may find themselves challenged by the large number of alternate stories. Personally I suspect that they missed Dawkins (while recognizing PZ Myers) as was initially reported, then thought it would look better to have intentionally allowed him in. That is just an opinion, however.

    What is most revealing about this quote, however, is what Mathis must regard as a “level, open playing field.” As I commented in in an earlier post there is a child’s view of fairness that involves each person winning the same number of times, irrespective of skill. Normally, as people mature, they replace this with the idea that the playing field should be the same for all, but that the “best” person (most skilled, prepared, determined, etc.) should win.

    (more…)

  • NOTHING Ends on Friday

    I want to recommend my wife’s encouraging Good Friday post NOTHING Ends on Friday. Sometimes we see holy week just as a commemoration of the past, but there are life lessons here as well.

  • Causes, Excuses, Reasons, and Justifications

    I’m giving in to my tendency to write about broad principles rather than specific situations, though of course I’ll have to use a few specific situations as examples. I’ve heard this issue raised numerous times in numerous different situations. It can be stated this way: Does finding causes and reasons for an event or an action constitute justifying it or providing an excuse for it?

    We often encounter this in court cases with certain types of “justification” argument. Does the fact that a defendant was abused as a child provide justification for his or her criminal actions as an adult? It is very likely that the way someone grew up contributed to criminal activity later, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good excuse.

    In politics I’ve heard this frequently in connection with the Palestinian situation. If anyone starts talking about reasons that Palestinians might be angry, there’s a quick negative reaction from supporters of Israel. Somehow we’re supposed to imagine that Palestinians are naturally evil and want to blow as many Israelis up as possible. If we find any reason for their anger and alienation, then we are justifying acts of terrorism. (Note that I refer here to folks in the United States, elsewhere in the world Israel is not so popular.)

    Similarly when we talk about the current war on terror, any discussion of reasons why people might hate us, why they might be angry, and why some might go so far as to try to kill us. But the fact is that terrorists are not born terrorists; they become terrorists. This involves the education to hate that can occur in their culture, but it also results from their experiences or those of folks close to them. Like it or not, if you blow up people’s houses and kill some of them, a certain number will become angry enough to be driven to be more radical than they are.

    The fear, of course, is that if we find reasons why terrorists have become what they are we will diminish the sense of them being evil, and provide excuses for their actions. This would in turn result in appeasement rather than vigorous suppression. But if we ignore the very real reasons why people become terrorists, we can quite easily design methods of responding to them that tend to produce more terrorists rather than less.

    I do believe that there are people who have become evil beyond hope of our doing anything to change them, so they must be dealt with forcefully. At the same time there are many people who have been pushed over the edge, and many sympathizers whose position has not been settled.

    That’s why any anti-terrorism policy needs to include both a diplomatic and a military option, and any anti-crime policy needs to deal both with enforcement and with the causes of crime. It’s easier to think of just one or the other; to propose that we simply hunt down every terrorist and invade and occupy every nation that supports terrorism. Similarly we can propose solely a diplomatic solution. Most unfortunately it seems to be easier to propose the violent solution than the diplomatic one.

    Similarly it’s easier to propose draconian penalties than to deal with education, economic issues, and the quality of enforcement (equipment, sufficient number of officers, and so forth) that might prevent crime before it occurs.

    If we use an examination of the causes to provide an excuse for evil actions, then there will be a significant danger. But we must examine the causes, and we must correct those that we are able, or we risk multiplying our problems as we try to solve them.

  • John 18:1-4 – Getting Christological Perspective

    If you’re acquainted with the synoptic gospels, in reading John 18:1-4 you may notice some substantial differences. What’s missing here is the time of tarrying and waiting, the prayer, any sort of agony or question about what Jesus was about to go through is gone. Verse 4 puts the different feel of the text into words when it says, “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him . . .” (TNIV).

    So which is it? Was Jesus confident and in control, finally giving up his own life, or did he pray that the cup might pass from him? One could try to reconcile these by saying that he knew, but he also wished to avoid, but I think it’s impossible to read the passion story in the gospel of John without seeing a different picture of Jesus than the synoptics portray, always assuming that one lets John speak for himself, and each of the synoptic writers for himself.

    But I’m going to suggest that nonetheless “which is it?” is the wrong question. This is where we get into mystery. Orthodox christology holds that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Human logic balks at the combination. When we think about Jesus we generally are either thinking of him as more human or more divine. Lacking an infinite perspective, we have to see something finite. In our minds 2 * fully (or 2 * 100%) is just too much to see at once.

    So we have different pictures in the gospels, because being written by finite people (inspired by God) and in finite human language, they can only give us part of the perspective at once. In John we see the divinity of Jesus in the foreground. In Luke especially (22:39-51) we see a much more human Jesus. Again, “which is it?” is the wrong question to ask. It is both, which is how the doctrine developed.

    When we see all the Biblical perspectives on Jesus we realize that he cannot be simply one thing. Various christological heresies have tried to make some one perspective be the perspective. But we can be sure that any explanation that makes too much sense, that makes it too simple to understand isn’t adequate to the task.

    I’m reminded also of God’s work in a person’s life. Who am I? Am I Henry Neufeld, defined by my history, my education, my actions in the past? Or am I a human being in the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, with Christ dwelling in me? I assure you that I don’t present the kind of challenge that Jesus, fully human and fully divine, does. But I do present contradictions, and I do look different when you look at me from the perspective of the work God is doing on me.

    In Hebrews 11 we have person after person who was called and used by God. The presentation of these people is invariably more positive than what you find in the Hebrew scriptures. Sarah is filled with faith, rather than laughter. Moses doesn’t fear the wrath of the king, even though he flees. I think Hebrews 11 looks at these people in terms of what God is doing in them, not who they were on their own.

    We can’t have a God’s eye view. God has the infinite expression. But by looking from these various angles that scripture provides, we two can see just a little of what God sees.